Longshot by Lance Allred Page B

with a Why do you choose to live? look on her face: “You’re more annoying when you do that. Just hurry up.”
    Even when Raph finally moved into an apartment, she still came home and studied in the kitchen during midterms and finals, hell-bent on making sure we couldn’t have any fun with or without her, needing us all to acknowledge the sacrifices she was making in order to get into medical school. We should all have to suffer right along with her. If she wasn’t having fun, she couldn’t suffer it alone in her apartment; nay, she needed to come home and exert herself to make sure none of us could have fun, either.
    One day, it all changed. Following her interview in pigtails, Raphael got a letter from the University of Utah telling her she had been accepted into the medical program. Suddenly, Raphael became a nice person. She had finally achieved her goal. After so many people had told her to stop wasting her time and everyone else’s and start a family, she now could allow herself some kindness and credit. Now, looking back, realizing the pressure that she placed on herself to be successful when so many from the Group told her not to try, or belittled her, or judged her as being selfish, or simply laughed at her, I understand why she was quite removed from us. She wasn’t at peace, as she wanted more; she didn’t want a life of confines. Knowing she could do more, she wanted more.
    In my seventh-grade year I didn’t fit in anywhere and wasn’t doing well in school. I was still not LDS, and I was no longer a “polyg” kid hanging out with my cousins, running in a clique. I had no friends other than Court. I still spent time with Levi, but the tension was there. Steven wasn’t talking to anybody, such was his mental state following his mother’s departure. My whole family just seemed to be coasting, waiting.
    At this time Mom finally approached Dad as he was playing solitaire in the kitchen one spring afternoon and said, “I think we need to join the LDS church.”
    Dad replied, “I was just thinking the same thing.”
    Raphael came in a few minutes later: “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m joining the LDS church. Anyone else who wants to join is welcome to come along.” *
    As a family we would soon begin taking missionary lessons at Grandma Ripplinger’s house in Salt Lake. She was Yaya’s stepmother, who raisedYaya and her four siblings after Yaya’s mother, Tannie, passed away from cancer. Grandma Rip and the rest of Yaya’s siblings were mainstream LDS. And though they vehemently disapproved of Yaya’s decision to up and join the Allred Group, they still loved her and always welcomed her. It says a lot about them, especially when you consider that one of Yaya’s younger brothers, Don Ripplinger, was a well-known figure in the LDS church as one of the Tabernacle Choir directors. They always let her come back and were never ashamed of her at family reunions. Uncle Don, whenever he was asked in church meetings if he knew or consorted with any who practiced plural marriage, would proudly answer without hesitation, “Yes. My sister is one. And I love her.”
    Yaya’s grandfather John Baptiste Ripplinger was one of the first homesteaders in Driggs, Idaho, in the Teton Valley. There was a family cabin on the property that her father, John Henry, farmed during the summer and harvest seasons. It had been built in the 1940s, no more than fifty square feet in size, on the edge of the 160 acres he harvested. It had two tiny rooms that encircled a tiny kitchen. The place smelled of sticky flytraps mixed with mice droppings and old paint chips. But it smelled great in the mornings with fresh eggs and pancakes grilling on the wood-fire stove.
    This place is a part of my heritage in a land I call “Wydaho,” right on the Idaho/Wyoming border, on the western side of the Grand Tetons. The cabin was