Once, when I was fifteen, after I’d started wearing mascara and lip gloss,
Shawn had told Dad that he’d heard rumors about me in town, that I had a
reputation. Immediately Dad thought I was pregnant. He should never have
allowed those plays in town, he screamed at Mother. Mother said I was
trustworthy, modest. Shawn said no teenage girl was trustworthy, and that in
his experience those who seemed pious were sometimes the worst of all.
I sat on my bed, knees pressed to my chest, and listened to them shout.
Was I pregnant? I wasn’t sure. I considered every interaction I’d had with a
boy, every glance, every touch. I walked to the mirror and raised my shirt,
then ran my fingers across my abdomen, examining it inch by inch and
thought, Maybe.
I had never kissed a boy.
I had witnessed birth, but I’d been given none of the facts of conception.
While my father and brother shouted, ignorance kept me silent: I couldn’t
defend myself, because I didn’t understand the accusation.
Days later, when it was confirmed that I was not pregnant, I evolved a new
understanding of the word “whore,” one that was less about actions and more
about essence. It was not that I had done something wrong so much as that I
existed in the wrong way. There was something impure in the fact of my
being.
It’s strange how you give the people you love so much power over you, I
had written in my journal. But Shawn had more power over me than I could
possibly have imagined. He had defined me to myself, and there’s no greater
power than that.
I stood outside the bishop’s office on a cold night in February. I didn’t know
what had taken me there.
The bishop sat calmly behind his desk. He asked what he could do for me,
and I said I didn’t know. No one could give me what I wanted, because what
I wanted was to be remade.
“I can help,” he said, “but you’ll need to tell me what’s bothering you.”
His voice was gentle, and that gentleness was cruel. I wished he would yell.
If he yelled, it would make me angry, and when angry I felt powerful. I didn’t
know if I could do this without feeling powerful.
I cleared my throat, then talked for an hour.
The bishop and I met every Sunday until spring. To me he was a patriarch
with authority over me, but he seemed to surrender that authority the moment