CHAPTER 14
A KNOCK ON HER door disturbed Melissa. It was not the Prophet’s customary knock, but something subdued and tentative. She laid the Times aside, frowned, walked to the door, and opened it. Maggie Balsom, now Maggie Hansen, stood outside on the wooden veranda, hugging her shoulders and shivering.
“C-c-can I talk to you, sister Melissa? I know it’s early and…”
“Of course, Maggie. Come on in.”
“I’m sorry…”
“Maggie, please, don’t worry about it. You are welcome here. Is something wrong?” Melissa waved the young woman to a chair. “Sit down, Maggie.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“Call me Melissa.”
“OK. Sister Melissa. Thank you for seeing me.”
“Have you been crying?”
With that Maggie broke down and sobbed. She held her face in her hands. “I’m s-s-sorry,” she sobbed.
Melissa knelt by the young girl’s chair and put her arm around her shoulder, hugging her to herself. Maggie had a fragrant smell of green apples, probably from her shampoo. She turned and let herself be wrapped in Melissa’s arms.
“Thank you…I’m s-s-sorry. …”
“There, there, Maggie. There, there.”
Finally, as the sobbing abated, Melissa stood and walked to her small kitchenette, poured a glass of water from a pitcher in the refrigerator, returned and handed it to Maggie.
“Take a drink,” she said.
Melissa pulled a fuzzy, pink afghan off a loveseat and draped it around Maggie’s shoulders and handed her a tissue. Maggie smiled up at her, dabbed at her eyes, and then blew her nose.
“Just what has upset you, Maggie?”
“Oh, sister Melissa. Oh…” Now she was crying again.
Melissa steepled her fingers in front of her face. I don’t know if I can go through this with this child!
“Now, honey, does this have something to do with your recent marriage?”
Maggie nodded and commenced sobbing again. Melissa began to experience a familiar numbness. She felt herself shrinking inside herself. But she drew a deep breath and squared her shoulders.
“Maggie, I think I know what you are going through.”
“Do you? Do you really, sister? I don’t think so.” The words were spilling out. “I don’t think so at all. You chose this life. I didn’t!”
“I know, Maggie, I know. It has been forced on you. It has been forced on a lot of people.”
“I wish I was dead!
“Now, Maggie, that won’t help. You have to pull yourself together.”
“I have no options.”
“We all have options. They’re just not always pretty.” Melissa struggled to sound upbeat, but felt her own spirit sink. Watching Maggie was painful. “What exactly is troubling you at this moment?”
“Everything!”
“Has the Prophet been unkind to you?”
“Oh, no. Not unkind if you mean has he harmed me or said hurtful things. It’s just that…”
“It’s just that you didn’t want to be in this position?”
“What could I do?” She sobbed again.
“Perhaps nothing. But what can you do now?”
“Probably nothing!”
“Yes, probably nothing. But maybe. But let’s not start there. Let’s start with your biggest problem at the moment. What is making you the unhappiest? Is it sex with the Prophet?”
“Well, he’s old! It just isn’t right.”
“No, it isn’t.”
Maggie looked sharply at Melissa, obviously surprised by her remark.
“Do you mean that, sister Melissa?”
“Yes I do,” Melissa said evenly. Her eyes rested softly on the young girl. “It really isn’t right.”
“But…but, I mean…you are part of the system here. You are a believer in this whole insanity!”
“Am I? Maybe. Maybe I was, but no longer am.”
“Oh, Melissa! I was right to come here! I knew I was!”
“Well, sweetie, I’m not sure you were right at all. I’m not sure I can help you.”
“But at least you can help me try to understand the thing that is bothering me most.”
“The temple ceremony?”
“Yes! How did you know? Oh, I see. It bothers you too!”
“Very much so. And, truth be told, we are not the only ones the temple ceremony has bothered over the years. Some of those whom it bothered are no longer with us.”
“You mean they escaped?” Fear registered in Maggie’s eyes.
Melissa frowned. “Escaped? Yes, you could put it that way. Let’s just say they are no longer among us.”
Maggie began to sob again.
“Maggie, you are going to have to pull yourself together. If there is any hope for you at all, you will have to pull yourself together.”
“But what is that mumbo-jumbo in the temple? God, it was awful!”
“It is supposed to be awful, Maggie. It’s supposed to bind you to the Prophet and to the church. To bind you with fear.”
“I’m so afraid,” Maggie said. “It was so shocking. It was so…so…”
“So evil?”
Maggie stared at Melissa. Her mouth was open. She closed it and swallowed. Then she nodded. “What is it all about?” she cried. “What does it mean?”
“Well, Maggie, I can only tell you what they say it means.”
“I mean those women touched my body—all over!”
“The washing and anointing ceremony?”
“I guess that’s what they call it. And it was just the beginning of the really weird stuff.”
“Well, Maggie, they say they are washing you to make you pure from ‘the blood and sins of this generation,’ as they put it. And the anointing with oil on your face and breasts and abdomen and loins—that is to anoint your body for holiness.”
“Holiness? What’s so holy about what the Prophet did to me later that night? And why did I—do I—have to wear this weird underwear? These garments? Can’t I ever take them off?”
Melissa sighed. “Well, again Maggie, they say that is so you will continue to be reminded that you are special to God. And the garments are to protect you.”
“But they say I can never take them off. Only the Prophet, he took them off of me. I just don’t get it. Do you wear these things?”
“I did. For years.”
“But you don’t now? How do you get away with it?”
“Well, I have only gotten away with it so far. Time will tell if I get away with it much longer.” Melissa smiled grimly.
“Oh, sister Melissa! Oh, no!”
Melissa interrupted. “Let’s talk about you and your experience, Maggie.”
“Well, then all those stupid plays in the temple. Adam and Eve and the devil. The devil said some scary things. He said, ‘If you don’t remember and keep all the vows you make in this temple today, you will be in my power!’ And the devil, that was Sam Rapp in that disguise. I recognized him.”
“Yes, Sam plays the devil.”
“But the bloody oaths…I have a question about them.”
“Yes?”
“They said that if I reveal what goes on in the temple, I could…I could…” She stopped and shuddered.
“Go on, Maggie. Get it out. It’s part of dealing with what you have seen.”
Maggie was sobbing. Her face in her hands. Then she spoke quietly.
“They said if I revealed the silly handshakes they would cut my tongue out and slit my throat and rip my guts out…and…”
“Yes, Maggie, that’s what they said.”
“But they don’t really do those things do they?”
Melissa was silent. Maggie resumed sobbing. Finally, she spoke. “L-L-et me ask you a question. I don’t even know why I want to know this. B-b-but I do. Is this something that is unique to Prophet Hansen? Is our group the only one with this kind of temple ceremony? I mean, did Joseph Smith really teach this, like the Prophet told me? Or did Prophet Hansen think it up?”
Melissa smiled at that. “Oh, no. Prophet Hansen has a lot of gifts, but he isn’t particularly inventive. The temple ceremony came from Joseph Smith. Actually, he stole it from the Freemasons and said God gave it to him.”
“The Freemasons?” Maggie shook her head. “I don’t even know who they are. But, sister Melissa, what about other Mormons? Do they do these same things?”
“Well, yes and no. Prophet Hansen probably practices the temple ceremony in its purest form. By pure I mean in the form closest to the form that Joseph Smith and Brigham Young used. It is almost unchanged since Nauvoo. The mainline Utah church removed some of the grisly language in 1911. But they did not stop signifying the blood oaths, such as slitting the throat until 1990. Now they just give the handshakes, do the plays, take the vows. But they don’t draw their thumbs across their throats signifying the penalty for revealing the secrets. Not for more than ten years now.”
Maggie was sitting silently. To Melissa she looked washed-out, like her life had been drained out of her. Eventually, she asked one more question.
“I wondered about the veil of the temple and all that.”
“OK, honey. Well, the veil represents the entrance into the Celestial Kingdom. The holes in the veil are the same ones that are in your garments. The square, the compass, the little slit representing the mason’s rule. When you reach your hands through the veil and are embraced by the actor playing the part of the Lord, and when you say the long paragraph about ‘health in your navel and marrow in your bones,’ and when you give the Lord the secret handshakes, you are using what you learned in the temple—symbolically—to enter heaven. This is all practice, Brigham Young said, so we will know how to pass by angel sentries in order to get into heaven.”
“Stop it! Stop it, sister. I can’t hear any more.”
Maggie jumped up and hugged herself tightly. She stared at Melissa, tears streaming down her face. Her eyes were wide and streaked with red.
“Sister Melissa,” she said through lips tinged with foam, “what is to become of us?”
Melissa couldn’t think of an answer.