CHAPTER TWO
There Is Beauty All Around....
I knew a little bit about Heaven and who lived up there. I hadn’t gone to Sunday school all those years for nothing, for heaven’s sake! I knew that God was the Father of everyone and that Jesus was His son. And now I knew that their home was an awfully swell place.
“Daddy,” I said, “I want to go to heaven.”
I thought that would please him. I expected Daddy to throw his arms around me and say, “Beth, I’m proud of you!”
Instead, he gazed at me and asked quite calmly, “What made you decide that?”
“Well....” I didn’t exactly know how to answer. “It was that talk last night, all about the gorgeousness — an’ everything.”
“The Celestial Kingdom will be very beautiful — but only those who really work to obtain it may go there. Remember, the Lord said, ‘In my Father’s house are many mansions’. We’ll get the kind of heaven we work for; and before we obtain the Celestial Kingdom, we must finish our lives here and then go to the spirit world.”
“Huh?”
“It’s often called Paradise,” Daddy explained patiently. “It’s where we go when we die, and where we wait for the resurrection.”
It sounded like a bus station.
Seeing my disappointed face, Daddy explained. “First, there is the spirit world where we lived before we came here; then, earth life; then, Paradise, or the world of spirits where we go after we leave this life; then the resurrection of our bodies; then, if we are worthy, we may live for a thousand years with our Savior; then comes the final judgment; and after that, if we have been judged worthy, we may enter into our Father’s house, which is the Celestial Kingdom.”
I was so disappointed at hearing about all the work still ahead of me, all I could do was whine, “How come so much?”
“Well, Beth, it’s somewhat like going through all the grades of school. You wouldn’t expect to walk up and get your high school diploma right now, would you?”
“I guess not,” I mumbled.
“From what I have heard,” Daddy went on, “each of these realms that we pass through is very beautiful.”
“Will Jesus be there?”
“I’m sure He’ll be watching over us every step of the way. But, whether he will be with us in the next life, I don’t know. Perhaps He’ll come around to visit.”
I wandered off to find Leatrice, pondering as I went. Jesus, it seemed, was going to be pretty busy — quite a lot like the president of the Church, Heber J. Grant. President Grant didn’t live near us — he was busy up in Salt Lake running the Church; but he came, now and then, to speak to us at stake conference. All the Saints in the valley would come to hear our prophet. Mamma and Daddy always tried to go early in order to get a good seat. It would probably be the same when Jesus came to visit. You’d have to be early to get a good seat.
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We often sang a hymn I liked, “Welcome, Welcome, Sabbath Morning.” I had no doubt the song had been written especially in honor of our Welcome, a town of about two thousand inhabitants — more when farmers and their wives came in on Saturday to shop. It sat near the middle of the state of Utah, nestled against the foothills of the Wasatch Mountains. The Welcome River flowed down from the hills into irrigation canals, which wandered through town and then threaded their way between grassy banks overarched with willows, out to the farms in the valley. There, rows of poplars, set as windbreaks, seemed stitched against the sky.
Streets in Welcome were broad. Brigham Young, that great settler and urban planner, had stated that in the various towns that went down the Utah territory like buttons on a coat, he wanted streets wide enough so that a wagon and double ox team could turn around without any difficulty. Now, in the age of the automobile, it went without saying — but was said anyway — that Brother Brigham had been inspired.
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Friday — the last day of school. As I awoke, the western mountains were rosy-hued, reflecting the rising sun. Out in the valley, a meadowlark was coaxing me outside. Down in the kitchen, Irene was eating a bowl of corn flakes. Daddy had already left for the high school, where he taught history and English. Mamma was in bed with a headache.
I made my favorite breakfast — a slice of bread and peanut butter sprinkled with sugar. As I savored it, leaning against the sink, Irene made one of her fifteen-year-old remarks.
“All that sugar will rot your teeth! Why don’t you eat something good for you, for heaven’s sake?”
I was patient with her. I didn’t sass her back. I simply smiled, my teeth all coated with peanut butter. She made a noise of disgust and left the room.
Until she turned fifteen, Irene had been pretty nice to me. She would tell me wonderful stories about a little turkey named Goblet, who was afraid he would be cooked and eaten for Thanksgiving. So he dug a hole in the ground to hide in. The stories were all about Goblet’s adventures underground.
I couldn’t understand what had gotten into Irene. Leatrice said her sister, Dorajean, was just as hard to live with. She wondered if it might be caused by Dorajean’s having red hair; but I pointed out that Irene had plain, brown hair, and she was just as ornery. They both liked to wear sweaters that made them boom out in front and skirts that made the rest of them all swervy.
In addition to everything else they heaped on us, they never let us forget that they had stuck to music lessons, and we had not. Dorajean was quite accomplished at the piano, and Irene was clever as all get-out on the violin. Once a week, Mamma drove her clear up to Provo for a music lesson. If I could have had my way, I’d have played the saxophone.
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We strolled along in the bright sunshine, Leatrice and I, on our way to the last day of school. The trees, I thought, looked surprised at finding their arms suddenly full of new, spring leaves.
I asked Leatrice, “When is God God, an’ when is He Heavenly Father?”
“Well,” she said, wrinkling her nose with the effort of thinking on so holy a subject, “I s’pose He’s Heavenly Father when He likes you an’ God when he’s mad at you.”
The bell rang as we entered the school grounds. We increased our pace and joined our classmates going in — classmates who had moved right along with us from first grade, and would continue to do so, marching from room to room and from class to class, smelling the same chalk dust, until we all graduated from high school. People seldom moved away from Welcome.
Candy Lillyfield was just ahead of us — Candy Lillyfield, too sweet and pretty for belief. Leatrice and I were such plain children, the eyes of adults tended to slide right by us as though we didn’t exist. Not so with Candy Lillyfield, who was always getting pats on her golden curls and hugs and kisses for her bluebell eyes — as though she had something to do with it. God sure played favorites sometimes.
Candy could tap dance, and she could sing “On The Good Ship, Lollipop,” but that’s all she could do. She was too much of a sissy to climb trees or to take her shoes off and wade in the canal. She screamed if she saw a bug. All of this gave us no consolation. We would have given a lot to look like Candy Lillyfield.
Coming up on our right was Meeow-Meeow Harris. Meeow-Meeow’s name was really Muriel; but in first grade, Billy Hoffman couldn’t pronounce it right, and it came out “Meeow-Meeow.” The name had stuck. Meeow-Meeow was a good-natured girl, who didn’t seem to mind the mangling of her name. She was a good sport, too, always ready to join us in undertakings that Candy Lillyfield cringed at. And Meeow-Meeow had a wonderful skill. She could touch her nose with her tongue.
Once, Meeow-Meeow brought a dollar bill to school. Her mother had given it to her to buy some knitting wool on the way home. At recess, Meeow-Meeow showed us how to fold the bill so George Washington looked like a mushroom. I hoped that some day I could have a dollar bill and do the mushroom trick.
Elaine Schimph and Doris Parkington, big girls for their age, were just ahead of us, giggling their heads off over — what else? Boys! Boys were
a million light years from what interested Leatrice and me.
We couldn’t see boys for sour apples. Boys were dirty and disgusting; they never combed their hair — unless their mothers made them; their hands were always grimy from knuckling down to play marbles; and they had warts. They did dreadful things to helpless insects. They would frazzle bees by holding a magnifying glass over them in the sun. They would make bets on who could crawl the fastest through a muddy culvert. And they dug tar from the road and chewed it. They would pester the life out of you by hitting you with snowballs or by putting indescribable things down your back.
If you complained to your mother, she would merely say. “Oh, he does it because he likes you.”
An untruth, if I ever heard one.
I decided that Daddy could never have been a boy. Heavenly Father must have let him skip a grade.
And there, to prove my point about the total trashiness of boys, went Norman Higpen, shoving his way through the door, heading for the back of the room where he could shoot spit wads at the girls.
Norman had pink hair and eyelashes so white it looked as though he didn’t have any at all. He played the accordion — somewhat — and he thought he knew everything about music. In church, he would try to warble with the tenors. All you could hear was Norman’s screeching.
And Norman liked to make rude and embarrassing remarks. If you bent over to tie your shoe, Norman would holler, “I see London, I see France!” And, worst of all, Norman cussed. I’d heard him say, “Holy smoke!” (Norman said it, I didn’t). Everybody knew that if you said a cuss word, you’d drop down dead on the spot. But Norman didn’t drop dead. I guessed the Lord didn’t want him. If anyone had told Leatrice and me that our attitude toward boys would change in a few years, we’d have hooted our heads off.
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Our teacher, Miss Biggs, gave us a final spelling test and promised that if we were good we could have a little party in the afternoon.
I loved Miss Biggs. She not only made learning fun, but she was a good sport, too. At recess time, we would be shooed outside to stand shivering in the winter cold, while the teachers stayed inside where it was warm and watched us through a window. But Miss Biggs would come out and help us make snowmen and play “Fox and Geese.”
The noon bell ran, and Leatrice and I took our lard-bucket lunch pails out under the cottonwood tree in the side yard. When we had finished our baloney and pickle sandwiches, our apples and cookies, we went over and sat down on the merry-go-round. Actually, it was a large wagon wheel with the axle imbedded in the ground. We sat straddling a couple of the spokes and talking about life and other things.
On the whole, we were quite well satisfied with our existence; but we decided that if we’d had anything to do with the Eternal Plan, we’d have made ourselves prettier and our sisters nicer.
As she had promised, Miss Biggs gave us a party in the afternoon, with cup cakes and punch. She handed out report cards. I was pleased to find that I had gotten almost all “A"s — except for spelling. I never could understand why a word wasn’t spelled the way it sounded.
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The final bell rang. I started to leave. Miss Biggs stopped me.
“Beth, would you do me a favor?”
Would I? You bet! I’d do just about anything for Miss Biggs, who wasn’t big at all, but little and cute.
“Would you take care of this plant for me, during the summer?”
She was holding the flowerpot that had stood on a table near the window all school year. It contained an African violet, the first one I had ever seen. I thought it was the prettiest flower ever, with its dark green, heart-shaped leaves and purple blooms.
Miss Biggs was going to Mexico for the summer and needed someone trustworthy to care for the plant until school began once more. And she had picked me. I stood dazzled by the honor, as Miss Biggs explained the care of an African violet: give it light, but not too much; water it from the bottom; give it plant food about once a month.
I walked home cradling the violet as carefully as though I carried the crown jewels. Leatrice kept glancing at me with what I suspected was a little bit of envy.
I marched importantly into the house; showed my report card to Mamma and Daddy. They said they were proud of me. I showed them the African violet.
Mamma said, “It’s beautiful. I’ve never seen one before.”
I carried the violet in its pretty, green pot up to my room and set it on my windowsill.
I was going to be so trustworthy that Miss Biggs — and Heavenly Father, too — would just be amazed.
We ended the evening by gathering around the piano while Mamma played and Irene accompanied on the violin. We all sang “Love At Home.” I liked that song. I wished we really did have love at home; and we could, too — if Irene would just shape up.
We knelt for family prayer, and Daddy prayed with great persuasion. He prayed for the sick, and those in need of comfort, and those in authority over us in the Church and in the nation. He prayed for the great, free land of America, and for the leaders of other nations, and for our missionaries both far and near, and for all the good people in Welcome, both believers and nonbelievers; and then he prayed for all those seeking to lead righteous lives.
I was kneeling next to Daddy, and I rubbed my cheek against his shirtsleeve appreciatively. There was an agreeable fragrance when I was near him, a combination of chalk dust on his clothes, a faint smell of hair tonic, and the odor of shoe polish.
I loved Daddy with all my heart. The fact that we both wore glasses made it not so hard to bear when the kids at school called me “four eyes.”
When Daddy had finished, and we had echoed our “Amens,” I said another “Amen” to myself, because being trustworthy was going to be a big job; and then I said a third “Amen” and resolved to be nicer to Irene — and heap coals of fire on her head.
I gave the violet a last look before climbing into bed. There seemed to be a happy smile on each little, purple face.