LITMIR.BIZ

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found me my new calling: to scrub and chop and endure the likes of Lars Larsen, a widower who kept the smithy out at the edge of the Barrens. Brother Larsen was Danish, older than time and hard as a passed-over turnip. His house and livery lay out west of town, facing the broad mud flats of the Great Salt Lake. Never mind the beauty of the Wasatch Range to the east, with the green city fleshing itself along the banks of Box Elder Creek. Lars preferred the quiet. He preferred salt waste to green trees. Just like me among the Mormons, Lars’ life was set apart.

      Morning one, Brother Larsen did not flinch at the sight of the purple-red stain that covers my left cheek and flutes down my neck like I’ve been scalded. Lars crossed the kitchen without even looking over—like I was one and the same wife been standing there for years, ready to serve—and demanded ebelskievers for breakfast. “Able-whats?” I asked, not meaning to be intractable. And two years later, my skievers remained disabled. Lars never complained, as long as they were more round than flat, as long as I kept his clothes clean and pressed, even his work shirts for the smithy, canned his preserves with honey, and took his dinner to him, rain, shine, smithy or fields.

      I got food, as I could harvest and prepare it, and a bed in the tack room off the stable. No adornment money. No burden on the Ward. The Prophet Brigham Young would surely have been proud the way the Priesthood had handled it, my life.

      I spent summers tending Lars’ half acre in the Big Field. Brother Pratt paraded by us on his sweaty horse as the Sisters planted and weeded their plots, bent over in the high heat in calico bonnets. I planted the expected rows of corn and squash, but my kitchen garden took a daring turn, the shapely curved plantings all bordered with marigolds and nasturtiums. I told Brother Pratt it was to draw off pests. He saw no beauty in things.

      I secretly lived for beauty. During luncheon breaks, I would climb the foothills in search of wildflowers. Sego, paintbrush, lupine, wild blue flax. Theirs was a calming company. When I had a private evening, I arranged and glued pressed wildflowers onto paper with lace and ribbons that were castoffs from Florrie Gradon. Florrie was my best friend. My only friend. She would have said, my champion. Florrie chose to see more than orphan, servant, the liveryman’s girl. “Sisters in the Gospel, if not the flesh,” Florrie said, swinging hands with me as we walked down Forest Street to school together. She kept the boys from taunting me in public, and silenced gossip among the girls.

      Her ma seen a barn burn down.

      Her ma stood too next a fire while encumbered.

      Her ma had cravings, she craved and ate strawberries till her baby inside broke out stained.

      Nah, the way I heard, her ma seen Indians and the fright crawled right up her own baby’s neck.

      Those were the schoolgirls’ reasons for my facial marking, but they were just tales. I knew the origin was not fear or fire or craving. The origin was sin.

      I’d opened Brother Lars’ Book of Mormon, once, seeking solace for my loneliness. The myriad And it came to passes, the Thus saiths and the columns and columns of men’s names made me blench. Men killed and men died. I couldn’t pronounce their names, much less fathom their workings for or against God’s will on this continent. Nothing for me, nothing at all. Dread swelled my heart, until I reached the page where God cursed Nephi’s wicked brother with dark skin. Then the scriptures spoke right to me. Then the passages came clear. God cursed the idolatrous Laman with dark skin to keep his kind separate from holy Nephi and his seed. The Lord declared He would mark everyone who mingled his seed with the Lamanites’, that they would be cursed also. And lastly, God promised Nephi to “set a mark upon him that fighteth against thee and thy seed.”

      I was so marked. My private fights against the chosen, battles of jealousy and willfulness, never quite believing myself a Saint—these were why the Spirit had never spoken within, why every prayer in memory only echoed in my skull.

      I wept at my forsakenness. I mourned through the night until a strange, strong peace offered itself. Failure is a soft bed once striving dies, a rest from all care. God clearly despised me. I’d earned all of the unfairness of my life. The most sacred book on earth showed me my place. It also told me why I dared desire a Lamanite. A Bannock Indian, the first man I ever loved.

      I met him in the mountains while picking wildflowers. Looked up from a stream bank covered in blue flax and saw a horse grazing. On the horse, a man. Black eyes, broad mouth, black hair down to his waist. He carried a rifle on his back.

      Words could have passed between us, we stood so close.

      The Bannock never moved, never shifted his eyes from me. The jagged hair along the crown of his head told me he was Bannock. Braids twisted with buckskin hung from temple to chin. A green feather rose from his hair. I thought to touch it. I would have drowned in that hair willingly, died gladly without protest or reproach.

      He did not flinch at the sight of my skin.

      I managed to break his gaze—the handsomest human face I had been blessed to see—and look out over the valley, the gray mud flats, the uncoiled rope of the Promontory Mountains ghosted in the waters of the Great Salt Lake. I took it all in. Then, when I knew my legs would carry me, I climbed the bank and ran, skidding downhill toward town.

      I did not go for help or call the Brethren to make chase. I marked that place as sacred, the man sacred, memorizing my route back to it, to him.

      I never once felt fear.

      The Sisters working in the Big Field already thought me indolent or crazy, trekking through the scrub in the heat all summer long to gather weeds. If they only knew what I really sought.

      Didn’t his hair fill the darkness of the rafters in my room, almost familiar there? Couldn’t a smile have rested behind that stern, generous mouth? He’d shown no fear at the sight of me. Cursed as he was with dark skin, perhaps my face hadn’t mattered. It made us kin. I dreamed that I would win him, convert him to the truth and claim God’s mercy. We would sit side by side at Sacrament Meeting, holding hands, both our skins scrubbed to whiteness from repentance.

      These were the waking dreams.

      At night, my dreams grew searing bright, the green of a private grove far from contentions, where the Bannock sang to me, his black hair loose, shade and branches overhead glistening. Oh, the keenness to elope with God’s forsaken! Being as young as I was foolish, I prayed fervently that my Father in Heaven would end the dreams for me. I begged Him to remove their sting, since I had no power to. And for the first time in my life, a prayer was answered. The sacred grove, my joy, my kin—erased.

      I stumbled through the next few days bewildered, lonelier than I had ever been. I searched the foothills noon and evening, without result. I baked plain vinegar pies, and cut them in small slices. From the cemetery to the flour mill, I placed a piece in every gully, hoping the Bannock would find one while watering his horse and know the taste of my distress.

      The summer passed. The curse stood firm. I would stay separate. Who could ever bridge a gulf designed by God?

      CHAPTER 2

      Florrie Gradon never guessed my sins. She wouldn’t stand for any differences between us. She had a mother and a father sealed in marriage for time and eternity, seven happy siblings and a green two-story house amid the poplars on Forest Street. Florrie taught me to play piano so we could perform duets, but I wouldn’t play a note outside her house. She swooned over my “pressed flower cards,” and made the Sisters behind the Co-op counter display them and sell them for scrip. She dragged me to church socials, asking this boy or that to dance with me. They tolerated it in good humor, to get closer to Florrie, until one evening at a harvest dance, Tom Dean refused.

      Florrie said, “Don’t be log-headed, Tom.”

      “I ain’t log-headed,” he said. “And sure as salvation, I ain’t gonna dance with no girl has a face like a brush fire.”

      It cut me like a felling axe.

      Florrie trembled. Her voice raised up. “Our Heavenly Father does not stop at the skin. He sees us inside out.”

      “Well, if God was

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