Excerpt from A LITTLE MORMON GIRL by Eva Hunter publication September 2013 SEVEN—1953 six years old I’d known how to use the telephone since I was five, but I only called Kathy Turner. The Turner’s number was 155, and our number was 244. The black, boxy telephone perched in a wall niche on top of a skinny yellow Boulder City telephone book and the thick white Las Vegas directory. I picked up the two-cupped receiver held by a white and gray braided cord and after a few seconds and a click, the operator said, “number, please.” “155,” I said. “One moment, please.” Mostly when I wanted to play with Kathy Turner, I ran along the top of the front lawns, or I walked two houses down the alley to Kathy’s. But down the alley wasn’t my favorite way, because to get to Kathy’s back door, I had to go through the Turner’s green picket fence gate, and walk across the yard. Sometimes Kathy’s daddy was there, and I was shy of him. Or sometimes Kathy’s big brother, David, who was a little bit younger than my sister Kathleen, answered the back door, and snarled at me like a dog. One day, I put a note for Kathy in the Turner’s metal front-porch mailbox, and rattled its top, so they would know something was there. David opened the door and yelled, “What are you doing?” “I was leaving a letter for Kathy,” I said. “Don’t you know it’s a federal crime to mess around with a mailbox?” he said. “Get out of here!” I dropped the mailbox lid, and ran. I crossed my fingers when I called Kathy on the phone, because I hoped David wouldn’t answer. *** The phone’s bell shrilled so loudly, we could hear it anywhere in the house. Whoever was nearest answered, “hello," except Daddy, who answered, “Hunter,” like he did at work. Most of the calls were for Daddy or Sharon or Kathleen, and sometimes for Mama, but I liked to answer anyway, liked to hear a voice say, “May I speak with Charley?” or someone else; liked to say, “Just a minute,” and run to report the phone call. Mama didn’t get many calls because she didn’t go to church much, or visit with the church ladies in other ways. She was close to her sisters and her brother in Utah. They wrote letters back and forth, and every once in a while someone made a long distance call, but long distance calls were too expensive to make often. Most of Mama’s contact with her family came when we visited Utah, or one of them came to Boulder City. When I was two, Aunt Doreen, the youngest of the sisters, lived with us. She was thirteen, but I didn’t remember that. Mama told me. Mama said in Utah, families had to pay for high school, but it was free in Nevada, so her little sister came to live with us to go to high school, just like Mama had lived with her cousins in Overton, Nevada. Aunt Doreen stayed with us for one year. She had epilepsy. Daddy thought it came from being born when Grandma was 49. I remembered one thing about Aunt Doreen, but it was after she decided she didn’t want to live at our house any more. I was three, and Grandma and Grandpa Gubler and Doreen came to visit on their way back from a trip to Arizona, where some of Grandma’s polygamist cousins lived. They said they were stopping in for an hour or so, before the three-hour drive from Boulder City to Santa Clara. Mama and Daddy and Grandpa and Grandma and Doreen and I were in the front room. Doreen sat on the pink loveseat next to Grandma and Grandpa. I played on the floor with my baby doll, combing her short blonde hair with a pink plastic doll brush. Mama and Daddy sat next to the dining room, on the dark-green scratchy couch. Mama brushed my hair so I would look good for Grandma. Daddy stood up and stretched. He smiled at Doreen. “Doreen, come on out to the shop with me—I’ll show you what I’m making.” Daddy built things from metal and wood, and did repairs on tools or electrical appliances, like toasters or drills, for some of the neighbor men. His shop door faced the alley next to the garage, and Daddy kept it locked. Doreen looked at Daddy. She looked at Grandma. She stood up, but hung her head as she followed Daddy from the living room. I ran through the kitchen after them, but Daddy pushed me and said, “You stay here!” I fell on the floor. I cried, and Mama picked me up. She said in a hard voice, “And just why can’t Eva come with you, Charles?” Daddy looked at Mama. “Never mind, Doreen,” Daddy said. “It wasn’t anything important.” He put his hand on Aunt Doreen’s shoulder, and gave her a nudge toward the front room. Grandma looked hard at Doreen. Mama held me on her lap. That was the only thing I remembered about Aunt Doreen from when I was little. *** The phone ran after dinner. I sat on the living room floor, playing with my Betsy McCall paper dolls. They were like the real Betsy McCall doll, who was only as tall as to the middle finger of Mama’s hand. Sharon and Kathleen had Veronica and Archie and Betty from the “Archie” comic books. The paper dolls were on the book’s cardboard cover, and first we cut out the dolls. The dresses needed to be colored with crayons, then cut exactly on the lines. The hardest part was the little tabs on the clothes that folded around the dolls. I sat in front of the electric heater because it was early December, and cold. Daddy was reading and Mama was in their bedroom, folding clothes. I jumped up to get the phone. I lifted it to my ear, and said, “hello.” A lady’s voice said, “Who is this?” “Eva,” I answered. “Eva, this is Aunt Rena. Let me talk to your mother.” I was sure she said, “mother.” “Just a minute,” I said. I put the receiver on the telephone books. “Mama!” I called. “It’s Aunt Rena!” Mama came out of the bedroom. She picked up the phone. “Hello, Rena,” she said. I gathered my paper dolls; put them in a brown envelope. I took the envelope to my room. I didn’t hear Mama talk. But when Mama put the phone down, she called in a crying voice, “Charles! Charles!” I ran from my room, and watched Daddy hold Mama by the waist and take her to their bedroom. My sisters heard the cry and came into the kitchen. “What’s going on?” Sharon asked… I was scared. “I don’t know,” I said. “Aunt Rena called, then Mama talked to her, then she started crying.” Kathleen shot me a dirty look. “Then Daddy took her in the bedroom,” I said. I sat on the pink loveseat with my hands folded over my chest. I tried to sit still. I kicked one foot in front of me, then the other. Across the room from the loveseat was a double window. It was dark outside, but the streetlight shined silver on the elm tree’s slivery branches. The bedroom door opened and closed. I heard Daddy talk to Kathleen and Sharon in the kitchen. I heard Sharon cry, “No, not Grandma! Not Aunt Doreen!” Daddy told Sharon to shush so Mama wouldn’t hear her. He talked some more in a quiet voice, but I couldn’t hear the words. He went back into the bedroom and closed the door. I heard him say, “Try to sleep for awhile, Florence.” I slid off the pink loveseat, and walked through the dining room into the kitchen. Sharon and Kathleen stared at me. “Grandma Gubler and Aunt Doreen died in a car wreck!” Sharon said. I twisted my face so I wouldn’t cry. “Why are you smiling?” Kathleen sneered. “You are dumb to smile. They’re DEAD!” “I’m not smiling!” I said. “I’m sad.” Kathleen looked at Sharon, then back at me. “You are so dumb!” Sharon touched her arm. “Shh…” Kathleen shrugged away. “Aunt Rena asked to talk to Daddy! She wanted to tell Daddy so Daddy could tell Mama. You weren’t supposed to call Mama.” “I thought she said she wanted to talk to Mama,” I said. “You weren’t supposed to call Mama to the phone,” Sharon said. “Why did you call Mama?” I thought Aunt Rena asked to speak to my mama. I remembered hearing “your mother.” My Grandma was dead. Daddy came out of the bedroom. He closed the door behind him. He called us into the living room. We would drive to Santa Clara, the day after next, he told us. The funeral would be the day after that. We would go to school tomorrow, as usual. He said that Doreen and Grandma had been driving the six miles between Santa Clara and St. George. It was foggy, especially on the high bridge over the Santa Clara River where their car went off the road into a ravine. Doreen, who was nineteen, had been driving. Grandma was still alive when they found them, Daddy told us, but she died in the hospital. Doreen died right away. “But why did the car go off the bridge?” Kathleen asked. “How could it get over the railing?” “I’m not sure,” Daddy said. He glanced toward the closed bedroom door. He lowered his voice. “Maybe Doreen had a seizure, and the car went out of control.” I went to school the next morning. At recess, I stood outside, in front of my classroom. Mrs. Johnson, the second-grade teacher, and Mrs. Conners, who taught third grade, looked at me. They whispered to each other. I knew they were talking about my Grandma being dead. I was glad they were paying attention to me—I was special that day. The next night, we stayed at Uncle Norman’s house, across the highway from Grandma and Grandpa’s old house on the side of the hill that sloped all the way to the Santa Clara River—really just a creek. On the day of the funeral, coffins were set up in Uncle Norman’s front room. They were closed. I heard my Daddy say that Grandma and Doreen’s faces were too torn up for people to view. I looked at the coffins. People came in, and talked to my mother and her sisters and brother. In the afternoon, the coffins were taken to the white Santa Clara Mormon Church at the edge of town where the creek made a wide turn. The bishop talked. I didn’t listen. I was thinking about what dead meant. It was the first time I knew anyone who was dead. Mama said good Mormons went to be with Heavenly Father and Jesus and Joseph Smith, where they would be gods and get to rule their own worlds, and do floods and turn people to salt if the people were bad, but I still didn’t understand dead. Why couldn’t they be with Jesus without something bad happening? The coffins were at the front of the church, below where the bishop talked. The church was crowded, and people cried. After the final prayer, we walked past the coffins. I wished I could see my Grandma, and see what dead looked like. We waited at the door for my uncles to carry the coffins out to the long cars. We stood in a cold wind at the cemetery on top of a hill. The cemetery was dirt. There was snow on the ground. Some of the men took off their coats to wrap around the women. They put the coffins in the ground. They said a prayer. We went back to Uncle Norman’s before the coffins were covered with dirt. At Uncle Norman’s house, it was like a party, with meat and rolls and yellow jello salad and cake, but everyone was sad. My aunts cried. My mother did not cry. My father talked to my uncles. Uncle Anthony stood away from everyone else in a corner of the room and stared at Daddy with a mean look. People from the town came in and out. The curtains were pulled against the dark. My cousins sat close together on a faded red couch. My mother sat in a brown overstuffed chair and stared into the air, while my sisters sat below her on the brown and pink flowered rug. People said to my grandfather, whose name was Caspar Gubler: “A tragedy.” “So young.” “We are so sorry, Caspar.” “We’ll miss them.” “Who’d have thought Esther would go this way?” An old lady wearing a brown-veiled hat whispered to a man in cowboy boots and a baggy black suit. “We had a hard time getting the sacred garments on Esther, but at least she had a new fig-leaf cummerbund, and the Cap of the Covenant went on easily enough.” “Bodies are pretty darn stiff after being in the morgue,” the man said. “Too bad about Doreen—that she was never endowed.” “No one thought she’d die before some man could take her to the Temple,” the old lady said. “She was only 19.” The lady adjusted her hat. “Esther just finished making that fig-leaf belt,” she said. “She told me it was the prettiest she’d ever had. She stitched those green satin fig leaves with delicate stitches, and filled them with the best cotton batting she could find.” “Musta been nice,” the man said. He pulled at his suit jacket. “She was so proud of it the day she took it to the Temple to have it consecrated. When she put it on in the women’s dressing room, she said, ‘Now Caspar can pull me through the Veil in style.’” “It’ll be a while before he’s pulling anybody through the Veil,” the man said. “Him not being even sixty.” He was quiet for a moment. “But nobody thought Esther would go this soon, either. You just never know…” The lady huffed through her mouth. “He’d better not think of taking Temple Endowments with another woman,” she said. “Esther’d have a fit if he showed up with a second wife.” She straightened the skirt of her brown dress, and checked the seams of her nylons. “Esther was always the best quilter,” she said. Aunt Rena and Aunt Nina and Aunt Mae went into the kitchen.They washed dishes, so the plates and forks could be used again. Aunt LaVaun, who was a Tobler, and married to Mama’s brother, Uncle Norman, was there, too. I stood by the door between the living room and the kitchen. I heard them talking. “Now this, after what Charles did to Doreen,” Aunt LaVaun said. Aunt Mae turned from the sink. She looked at Aunt LaVaun. “You don’t know what happened. He told Dad he never touched her.” Aunt LaVaun shrugged. “Why would she lie? She was 13 then, and didn’t know anything. She was just a little girl.” “We don’t know anything for sure,” Aunt Mae said. “And I don’t think this is the best time to be bringing it up again.” She wiped her hands on the cotton half-apron that covered her gray rayon dress. “You don’t want Florence to hear you talking this way. It nearly killed her when it all came out.” “I think he did it,” Aunt Nina said. “Doreen wouldn’t make something like that up. Mama made her describe what happened. Doreen wouldn’t even have known about those things.” “I’m glad it came out,” Aunt LaVaun said. “The bishop did a special blessing to give her purity back, and some man in the Celestial Kingdom could still choose to…” I leaned into the kitchen to hear them better. Aunt Nina jerked her head toward me. “Shh,” she said to the others. They turned away from me, eyes slanted downward. Aunt Mae put the dish towel on the towel rack. She took off her apron. She walked across the floor, black high heels clicking on the yellow tile, and crouched in front of me. “You must be tired, Eva Mae,” she said. “Come on. I’ll take you into the bedroom, and you can have a nap.” “I don’t want a nap, Aunt Mae,” I whined. “I’m not tired.” She took my hand, and tugged, the tiniest pull. “Come with Aunt Mae. It’s been a long, hard, day for a little girl.”
Posted on: Sat, 10 Aug 2013 16:37:39 +0000
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