I ask for things I should not ask for,
If I pray for things selfishly,
If I ask for myself
And not for my neighbour,
Take this veil from off mine eye
And let me see.
When Thomas stopped playing I tried to talk to him and tell him about my life. I thought he had a right to know what kind of girl I really was. It wasn’t easy. I wanted to tell him about Stewart, my first love, and the lovechild I was forced to have aborted, and all the pain we had gone through. I wanted him to know about the enormous emptiness I had felt after the abortion. I wanted to tell him that, despite the abortion, I felt like I had become one with Stewart in spirit, a mysterious ‘oneness’ I had never experienced with anybody else. Stewart knew how to make me sing on the inside, make my spirit rise, expanded and elated in love.
Sitting on the river bank, I tried to tell this remote and mysterious stranger about the connection I had felt with my darling ‘Art’ (that was what I called Stewart). It was a union I could not deny. I was missing Stewart. I had hurt him so. But Thomas did not want to hear any of this.
I wanted to tell him that I had been raped, once by a man and once by a girl. I was used and abused, hurt and damaged. I desperately wanted to share these important things with him. Tell him of the experiences that had shaped me into the person that was sitting next to him, his future wife. But he refused to listen. ‘All things have passed away,’ he said repeatedly, cutting me short each time. ‘Just count it as dung. It’s a shame to even speak of those things done in private.’
How I wish he had listened. Wish I could have ‘taken the veil’ from his eyes. I often felt like he married an ideal, that he had this grand idea of who he thought I should be and was blind to the dust-smudged, broken butterfly girl I was.
Who was he? I started to question him. I found out he was from Texas. After dropping out of school he had joined the Church almost ten years before at the age of seventeen. He hadn’t seen his family in all that time. His dad painted houses. He had two sisters and a younger brother. He’d had two friends – Butch and Dexter – and, from what he told me, they had seemed like big bullies. Thomas had been involved in an armed robbery with them and been caught. He was on parole when he joined the Church and had seemed to get off quite lightly. As a boy, he had caught crayfish in the canal behind his home in El Paso. He didn’t talk about his mom. It seemed like the only thing we had in common was the scriptures.
After three days of killing time in the park and sleeping in the bushes at night, I felt grimy and my clothes were soiled. If I was to get married, I at least wanted to do it in clean clothes.
He found a warehouse along the river close to the park. Out of the wall of the warehouse was an overflow pipe, probably from a geyser, and from it flowed a remarkably constant trickle of warm water. What an awesome blessing! Running hot water! Thomas found a discarded hinged door and set up a little cubicle for me to take a shower. Another piece of wood served as a bath mat. It was all working out. At last I could wash my hair.
I had a four-sided, plastic, chemical container one of the sisters had recycled into a collapsible, fold-up bucket which I was able to use to catch the water. Thomas and I each had a turn showering and washing ourselves in the cubicle. Afterwards I washed all our dirty clothes in my collapsible bucket, draping them over some bushes to dry. At least I would be clean and have fresh clothes to wear should the marriage take place. Keep some dignity! I was still praying that God’s will be done. I don’t know what I was expecting God to do if it wasn’t His will … Things just carried on as Thomas had planned.
The next morning I awoke and put on my fresh, sun-dried clothes, combed my clear hair and brushed and flossed my teeth. I felt very small and my stomach was in a knot. I wanted to cry.
Fighting back the tears, I followed Thomas to the Greyhound bus station where we stashed our backpacks and almost-empty food bags in two lockers. Then we set off to the courthouse. No earthquake had swallowed me. Nobody had intervened and stopped us. It was happening.
When we arrived someone told us we needed two witnesses. We had none, so the judge found two men to join us as our attesters in the cold, inhospitable courtroom. He told me to put my right hand in Thomas’s right hand. That felt strange. Still no earthquake …
This was not a wedding. I did not feel bridal. There was no minister, no family and friends, no beautiful music, no flowers, no wedding dress, no blessing, and no, not even a kiss. It was a formal procedure without a scrap of romance.
Thomas had told the judge that he was not to use the words ‘solemnly swear’ or ‘promise.’ The scriptures say we are not to ‘swear at all, but let our yeah be yeah and our nay be nay’.
‘Do you agree to take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?’
‘I do,’ I found myself saying. Do you, do you, do you? I do. Only I didn’t. I actually had no idea what I was doing. How big it all really was. Although I was nineteen, I was still very much a youth. A rebellious, immature, damaged minor who was hopelessly out of her depth, acting without parental consent. No one had asked my mom. I was painfully aware I was disobeying her explicit exhortation. ‘Don’t get married, and don’t join a cult’ – her final words to me on the station platform.
Soon it was all over. The judge said, ‘You may kiss the bride,’ but Thomas refused. Leaving the courtroom, he started talking nonstop. He kept calling me ‘Sister Lesley’. I said, ‘I am not your sister anymore.’ We found a phone box so I could call my mom. It was two o’ clock in the morning in South Africa. I told her I was not coming home, that I had just got married. She started crying and told me I was killing her. It was awful. She had been through so many traumas already and now here I was adding to her pain. I hated myself. A strange emotion to feel on a ‘wedding day’.
10
We had a bus to catch. Thomas had decided we should head to New York to deal with immigration. He went off to buy some food for the journey (he had still not been able to find any) and I sat alone on the river bank, feeding the ducks our last few pieces of mouldy pita bread. Suddenly I heard a woman call my name. Looking up, there was Sister Daniella coming towards me. She had an amazed look on her face. The elder and three sisters had left Seattle in a Volkswagen Camper a new brother had brought to the Church. Their van was loaded up with delectable food. I had never eaten blueberries before – they were fresh, tart and plump.
Once again it seemed to me that God was in the detail. The elder had stopped in Spokane in the hope of finding one of the brothers there. He had sent the sisters out to scout around to try and find the brother. Instead they found us. I had needed cheering up so badly. Thomas and I boarded our bus that evening with full tummies and bags brimming with food. A married couple! It still felt unbelievable to me.
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS:
After an arduous day and a half on the bus we arrived in Chicago. I sat with our gear while Thomas went up to the bathrooms. He was washing his hands when he heard a voice greet him. There was one of our brothers at the basin next to him. Brother Shor! I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw the two brothers coming down the escalator towards me.
Brother Shor urged us to spend the night. He told us he had access to two houses in the city. He took us to the empty one and told us to look in the deep freeze. There was a present in it for us – it was full of white chocolate!
It was a strained and strange night
