First Night in Fiji
Dreamed May 1980 by S--
In 1979, when I was still a Mormon and studying Humanities at BYU in Provo, Utah, I woke up from a dream hearing a voice in my head that said:
"You will meet your husband today."Most of the co-eds at BYU did find husbands in school, but this was a novel experience for me.
It was Sunday, and I was late for church services. They were held in the campus cafeteria. On Sunday the entire campus was turned into a place of worship as every nook and cranny was lined with folding chairs filled with devotees of the Mormon way. I was a convert and it was all new to me--all except the directives from my dreamworld, which I shared with no one. Even back then I knew I was a freak.
I rushed around the two-bedroom apartment that I shared with five other coeds, tried on every single outfit in my closet and some of theirs too, and finally settled on a burgundy suit.
I walked into the cafeteria and sat down in the very last row next to a stranger who was also dressed in a suit and who I assumed was a returned missionary. He had dark skin, black hair and nearly black eyes. We shared his holy books and sang the hymns just like any two Mormons would. It was easy. The dress code, the form of worship, the social cues were standard fare. And then, afterwards, as is the custom, there was small talk during which I learned that he was from the Fiji Islands.
Fast forward a year to Suva. I am in the guest bedroom of my soon to be sister in law and brother in law. I am fast asleep under a bug net that hangs from the ceiling and they are no doubt asleep as well. It is my first night on the island and in my suitcase I have a wedding dress, wedding shoes, wedding this and that, along with a lot of stuff that I will not find useful in the tiny village where I will live with my inlaws for nearly a year.
In my dream, a dream that I can remember like I just dreamed it a minute ago, I am a lion. I am in a cage and the cage door is open. I think I want to leave the cage but I also think that I cannot leave even though the door is open. The cage door is open and I am a lion and I don't belong in a cage. And, yet, in the cage I remain.Then, I am suddenly awake! I am screaming! I am all twisted up in the bug net and screaming and can't breathe and my soon-to-be inlaws are there in the room with me and the lights come on and I feel like a freak. I am not a lion trying to decide if I belong in a cage but a soon-to-be bride who is far, far from a home she has been trying to escape all her life, about to enter into a marriage with someone she hardly knows in a land where she knows no one.The next thing I know, inside the dream, the cage door slams shut and I roar!
Even then, I knew it was a bad idea, but I went ahead with the marriage and with the bearing of two children and almost immediately afterwards the divorce, during which I learned that I was not his first marriage but his third, all of them attempts to gain citizenship through marriage. The first two he paid for in cash.
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