.02 Do you want to go to heaven when you die?
Do you want to go to heaven when you die?
That’s the question my dad asked when he walked me to school that day when I was about ten. I solemnly assured him that of course I did, even though I knew this to be a lie. If heaven was anything like the members of the 2x2s described it, I was certain.
I preferred hell.
My daughter wore a shirt the other day, from the most frivolous shop. In glittery pink letters it declared “Everybody loves a brave girl!”
I was so brave.1 What else can a kid be?
Still. I would’ve loved that store when I was small. It’s filled with kittens and fur, velvety pastels, go gettem’ girl slogans.
I avoided that store with my three daughters as long as I could, because sometimes things like that make me very sad, and it can be hard to climb up from the depths.
There wasn’t a manual for me to figure out what had happened when my dad started taking me to meetings in what members referred to as The Truth. No one told me the rules, either. Everything I learned was via observation (mine) or insinuation (theirs).
Not one single person ever told me 2x2 women were required to have long hair—preferably never cut—and after about fifteen, up in a bun. Yet within mere months of joining I understood a certain look to be non-negotiable. I grew out the bob my fashionable mother had encouraged, even as she kept hers and refused to leave the Lutheran church she cherished, capitulating eventually to Dad’s demands my brothers and I join him as 2x2s. I wore dresses every day and gradually accepted that running and jumping and playing were no longer for me because those dresses? They were not occasional, nor were they optional.
I put away the few small pieces of jewelry I’d been given by my grandmothers. A turquoise birthstone ring, a heart-shaped locket.
We sat down in the kitchen, Dad and I, and I tore out the pages of my choose-your-own-adventure books because choice, my friends, was not okay. As I tore, the pages fluttered to the depths of a white five gallon pail and then we took the bucket outside and I don’t remember who lit the match but I do remember the words burning in the bottom. I stared hard at the ice cubes in the lowball glasses advertising rum in magazines, searching for the faces Dad told me to find; see-sawing between disbelief I ever would, and fear my spirit wasn’t willing enough to see The Truth. I pretended myself into believing I had no desire to watch television or listen to music and that the lack of these things in my life was perfectly fine.
In fact, I cultivated a sense of desire for all of this, because what else do you do when you are a child, and you have no choice?
Cringey, right? I know it!
I love your writing style and your descriptors of the church and the mood and heaviness of everything l. I’m an ex 2x2, born and raised 5th generation. Some teens rebel with music, clothes, dating etc. I basically told a worker at 14 I’d take my chances (on going to hell) for no longer attending meetings. This was mid 90’s before social media or the concept of ‘deconstructing.’ I look forward to reading more… Admirably ~ Carisa
Whoa! That was some heavy programming for a child. How precious is the mind of a child, I'm just thinking! Beautiful capturing of the child's point of view as she realises she has no choice. I loved the last few lines:
'I pretended myself into believing...'
It made me think of a time at around the same age when I felt compelled to throw away into the tall long grass that grew around the gully close to our farmhouse, all the bits and pieces of chain store jewellery that I had accumulated. (Mum let us buy cheap charm bracelets as a reward for enduring painful dentist visits. She thought it was better to let us have some treasures as children, rather than yearning for something that was denied.) I felt so righteous as I watched the glittering silver links fly through the air into the grass. Afterwards I thought about them going rusty but I knew I could never find them again.