Saints (56 page)

Dinah ached with the knowledge that the fault was so often hers. “You’re not with him, but he feels as though you were. He’s busy doing what the Lord has commanded him to do. He knows that’s what you want him to be doing.”

“I don’t. Not today, not these last weeks. I don’t want him to be Prophet anymore. I want him home with me, belonging to no one else but me—” And she wept outright.

Dinah held her tightly, though her knees ached in her uncomfortable position. I can endure some pain for you, my sister wife; you’ve endured pain for me.

“Sister Emma, you know it isn’t true. Whatever you think you wish for, if he even for a moment forgot his duty to the Lord
you
would send him back to his task again, and without wasting words, either.”

Emma giggled in the middle of crying. Like a little girl—it was such a strange sound, coming from her. “I would, too. I’d send him right back out. But once he was gone I’d curse myself for a fool.”

Dinah gripped her arms tightly and almost shook her. “He loves you, silly wife.”

“I know he does. I never doubted it. Really. I just needed you to remind me.”

They talked a few minutes more, to wind down, to become casual again. Then Emma left Dinah with a kiss on the cheek and a whispered thank-you in her ear. And Dinah closed the door behind her, already wishing for Emma’s husband to come to her, feeling like a traitor as she did.

It was well after dark when he reached her cabin. Dinah let him in quickly, with no light on, and closed the door. She would have lit a candle then, but he wouldn’t let her. In the darkness he led her to the bed and clung to her and said, over and over, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know, you should have told me, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

She did not ask him what it was she should have told him. There was only one secret between them, and he laid it to rest when he put his hand low on her belly and said, “Here. You had my child here. I had two babies die this summer, and I didn’t even know.”

“I didn’t want to grieve you.”

He kissed her hard, and held her so tightly that she could hardly breathe. “Don’t shield me from grief,” he whispered. “I’m not your son, I’m your husband.”

But she knew he was not angry.

“Comfort me tonight,” Joseph said. “For two children and a brother that the Lord took away from me before I could ever know them. And I’ll comfort you for three children that you lost.”

Later, as they held each other loosely in the bed, she said to him, “I wrote a poem for you. Harriette told me I shouldn’t let it be printed, because people would think you wrote it.”

“Anyone who can’t tell your poetry from mine deserves to be confused.”

“You may not even want to hear it. The title is ‘Why the Prophet Grieves.’”

She took his silence for
yes
, and recited it softly, speaking to his chest as he pressed his lips into her hair and tried to hear it without pitying himself.

Until the last couplet, it had been nothing but a sermon, one well told but commonplace. But at the last two lines the meaning of the poem changed, and his grief became more than he could hold. It didn’t spill over in silent tears as it had till now, it racked him with great gasping sobs so that for a long time Joseph was not in control of himself.

“I’m sorry,” he said at last.

She kissed him and whispered, “That’s what I wrote it for.”

Joseph left her only an hour before dawn. It was Saturday; Dinah would not be giving a reading class, so she had thought to sleep late. Instead she was wakened by a pounding on her door. For a terrible moment she thought it was them, the mob coming to take Joseph; they would find him in her bed and use her to destroy him. But then she remembered that he had left hours ago, before she slept, and she got up and stumbled to the door, pulling her nightgown over her head as she asked, “Who is it!”

“Vilate.”

Dinah fumbled with the latch, lifted it. The door burst open almost at once. Yet Vilate did not rush in. She came in timidly, holding a shawl tightly wrapped around her though it was the middle of August and the night had been far from cold. “What is it?”

“I’ve come to ask your forgiveness.”

Dinah searched the woman’s face, but knew that penitence was the least of her feelings, if she felt it at all right now. “You’ve done nothing that requires my forgiveness.”

Vilate looked at her with a face that spoke of agony. “I know where your child came from. Heber—explained.”

Dinah was too sleepy to realize that the last thing Vilate wanted from her was rejoicing. “Oh, Vilate! Oh, I’m so glad!” And she embraced her friend.

When there was no response from Vilate, Dinah realized her mistake. Vilate could not hear the Principle with any joy. She was not like Dinah, a plural wife, viewing the Principle as a way to have the husband who would have been denied to her without it. Vilate was the first wife. Heber would be taking others, and Vilate was not rejoicing.

“Vilate,” she said, “I know it’s not an easy time for you.” She meant to try to explain it to Vilate, to help her understand. But Vilate cut her off.

“It’s a black time,” Vilate cried, “a damned black time, with prophets fallen and husbands denied and the heavens sealed tight as the entrance of hell.”

Dinah was at a loss; she had never seen Vilate like this. Usually when she had a mood on her, a jest would ease it. “I always thought the entrance of hell was wide open. I thought it was the exit that was sealed.”

If Vilate knew it was a joke, she gave no sign. “Sealed up and I can’t get out, I can’t see any way out.” Suddenly she looked up at Dinah with terrible eyes. “I did what I came here to do, I cleaned the slate with you, good-bye.”

Dinah caught her before she reached the door. “Vilate, you mustn’t weep alone.”

“What should I do? Charge admission and hope for a crowd?”

“What prophets have fallen, Vilate? If it’s Joseph you mean, I know that he has not.”

“I
pray
that he has, that’s what I’m saying, I
pray
that he’s a liar and that God would never require this of me.” Dinah took her arm, led her from the door. Vilate did not seem to know she was walking, or that she sat when Dinah brought her to the edge of the bed. “I’ve loved Heber all my life. Doesn’t that count for anything?”

“It counts for everything.”

“Nothing. Who considers it at all? I never thought of another man but Heber. I can’t remember a time when I was so young I didn’t know that he was my husband and I belonged to him forever. I don’t look very pretty or young anymore, but it’s true. You don’t forget that sort of thing just because you get older and tireder. God took him away for two years. Did you ever hear me complain?”

“This isn’t unbearable either, Vilate.”

“For you. You hated your husband.”

“But I love my husband now. And knowing he loves another woman, too—I can bear that, for love of him.”

It was lame, Dinah knew it, and so did Vilate, shaking her head slowly, looking at the place where the wall sank down against the floor.

“What is it like,” Vilate asked at last, “being married to him like that?”

Dinah could not bear to tell it truthfully. She could not lie, but she could color it, she could make it sound like as a plural wife she meant less to Joseph than she really did. She could help Vilate believe that the first wife lost little, so that she wouldn’t be so jealous, so that she could bear to live the law. Dinah explained it as she wished for Emma to understand it. “He comes to me only rarely, months between, sometimes. He never pretends that he loves me more than any other—on the contrary, his heart is with his—his first. But I can bear that, because I think of myself as her handmaid, like Hagar—”

“Hagar was cast away by her husband, at Sarah’s demand. It’s not Hagar I fear. It’s Rachel. The younger sister, but the favored wife.”

“You can’t compare. It was Rachel that Jacob meant to marry from the first, he was only given Leah as a trick. Think instead of Bilhah and Zilpah, who never usurped their mistresses’ place, and yet served Jacob well, and bore him sons.”

“I’ve borne enough sons.”

“Don’t you know Heber?” Dinah said, gripping Vilate by the arm. “You’ll always have his love.”

Vilate’s only reaction was to shake her head and give one weak hiccoughing sob.

“Vilate, God will bless you for it. I promise you.”

Vilate turned to her abruptly, and clutched at Dinah’s hands and arms, scratching her as she tried to hold her hands. “Bless me, Dinah! Give me a blessing!”

If the words had been said to an elder or high priest, there would have been no doubt of their meaning. He would have put his hands out, touched the woman, and answered her petition with a declaration in the name of Christ and by the power of the holy priesthood after the order of Melchizedek. But to a woman, what meaning could the words have? Yet Vilate took Dinah’s hands and lifted them, placed them on her own head. “Bless me.”

“I can’t!”

“God can’t deny me, and no man can answer me! Bless me!”

“I’ll pray for you—”

Vilate’s answer was to hold Dinah’s hands more tightly, pressing them to her head; so Dinah prayed for Vilate to have strength, to overcome her fear; prayed that her husband would be wise and kind, so she would be reconciled to God’s will. When the prayer ended, Vilate stayed silent on the floor. Dinah leaned to her and kissed her on the lips, to give her courage; Vilate’s lips moved slightly to return the kiss, but the older woman gave no other sign of knowing Dinah was there. She looked so frail and old, though she was scarcely in her thirties. Dinah was sure she hadn’t eaten—no doubt she was fasting as she tried to bend herself to the will of God. It was too much, though, for her to fast; she was too weak. Dinah went to the fire, put the water pot over the coals so she could make a tea. But when she turned around from putting another few sticks on the fire, she saw the door closing; Vilate was gone, and Dinah had not helped her. It made Dinah afraid, to see a first wife react to the Principle this way. It seemed to tell her that Emma would be the same, that she would never bend, would never accept Dinah as her sister wife. If Emma knew, she would hate me: Dinah heard that thought in her heart and felt despair.

She went back to bed for a while and tried to sleep; got up at last and wrote in her journal, read the scriptures, tried anything she could to calm her fear. But she could not, and at last, as the afternoon waned, she put on her sunbonnet and went out into the hottest hour of the August day. She would go to Joseph. Not as a wife, but as any Saint could go to him, for counsel, for encouragement. She had never done it before; he would forgive her if she did it just this once.

Joseph was busy; she had to wait downstairs with Charlie. It was hard, for Charlie was almost laughing out loud every other moment with excitement over something. She asked him what it was, hoping that if he talked he’d not be so annoying as he was with his constant smiles and contented sighs. But he looked at her mysteriously and said, “I can’t tell you. Joseph said to keep it private for just now.”

So Dinah endured his unendurable good cheer until at last Joseph appeared at the foot of the stairs and said, in his formal voice, “Sister Handy? You wanted to see me?”

She went up the stairs decorously, keenly aware of her husband following behind. Emma was there in the hallway, holding a cloth that she was folding. Emma smiled and reached out her hand. “I’m glad to see you out of your house, Sister Dinah.”

Dinah took her hand, pretending to herself that someday soon it would be like this every day, Emma greeting her with love in Joseph’s home, not as a friend, but as a sister wife. But not yet. “Go on, Dinah,” Emma said. “It’s not good to keep Joseph waiting.”

Joseph stood at the door of the room where he gave and took counsel. He smiled at her. Or was he smiling at Emma? Not at me, Dinah decided; he’s surely angry at me for coming; he can’t be glad to have both these wives together in his house today. What surprised Dinah was the fact that she felt a little jealous that Joseph was smiling at Emma.
I
am the interloper, Dinah reminded herself. I have no right to resent his love for
her
.

Joseph closed the door behind him. Dinah turned to face him. He did not smile. “What have you come for, Sister Dinah?”

Of course, Dinah told herself. The walls are not made of stone. Yet can’t he so much as look glad to see me? Never mind. He’s afraid I’m here for pleasure, and I’m not. “I came because of Vilate Kimball.”

Joseph sighed.

“Heber taught the Principle to her, and she’s taking it desperately hard. Maybe if you talked to her—”

“How much did she explain to you?”

“Nothing. She only said that she knew now where my—burden had come from.”
Could
Emma be listening? “And she wanted me to forgive her. But the way she was acting, it wasn’t hard to guess.”

“You guessed wrong.”

That was impossible. All the talk of how she loved her husband, the way that Vilate asked about what it was like for her, being a plural wife—“She must know about the Principle.”

“Oh, she knows. But that’s not what’s bothering her.”

“What is it, then?” Dinah asked.

Joseph shook his head. “If
she
didn’t tell you, it’s hardly
my
place to do it.”

“She was talking of fallen prophets, Joseph.”

“
Brother
Joseph,” he whispered.

“Brother Joseph.”

“Many people talk of fallen prophets, Sister Dinah.”

“I’m afraid she may turn against the Church over this, whatever it is—”

“Perhaps she will.” He sounded harsh, but she knew his voice well enough to hear that he, too, was afraid. “Sister Dinah, when you stood on the ship in Liverpool harbor, and chose between your children and the Church, was it hard?” He did not wait for an answer. “When the Lord sets a test to try the faith of someone, don’t judge them harshly if they don’t keep perfect decorum through it all.”

“I wasn’t judging her.”

There was a knock at the door. Joseph was annoyed. “You shouldn’t be here for this.”

The door opened. Dinah saw such fear on Joseph’s face that she was relieved to see that it was only Heber—Heber Kimball, with Vilate behind him.

“You’ll have to excuse me, Sister Dinah,” Joseph said. “I have to see the Kimballs privately—they came more quickly than I expected.”

“No,” Vilate said quietly. She was hoarse, as if she had wept all day, but her face was calm now. “Please stay, Dinah. I want her to stay.”

Joseph and Heber looked at each other. They must have made a decision, for Joseph closed the door without making Dinah go through it first. He stood then with his back to the door, Heber and Vilate before him, facing him. “What did you choose?” Joseph asked.

Vilate whispered, “I’m the Lord’s to do with as he pleases.”

Then, to Dinah’s shock, Heber took Vilate’s hand and placed it in Joseph’s and said, “Wife, here is your husband.”

Of all things that Dinah might have thought of, this was the most impossible. Vilate, to
leave
Heber and become
Joseph’s
plural wife? It was impossible that God could ask for such a thing, it was a perversion of the Principle; and now Dinah remembered the things she had said to Vilate just this morning, encouraging her to accept. I would never have urged her on to
this
. Dinah wanted to cry out for them to stop. But she did not. For at that moment Joseph began to weep, and she could see the spirit of God come on him. He stared past the couple, as if he saw something transpiring behind them; his voice, though quiet, became more penetrating, almost like a song. “And Abraham stretched forth his hand,” said Joseph, “and took the knife to slay his son. And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, ‘Abraham, Abraham.’ And Abraham said, ‘Here am I.’” Joseph looked Heber in the eye and changed the rest of the scripture. “And the angel said, ‘Lay not your hand upon his wife. For now I know that he fears God, seeing that he has not withheld his wife, his beloved Vilate from the Lord.’”

It was a trial. Only a trial. God wouldn’t require them to go through with it. Dinah watched as they embraced each other in relief. Then Joseph joined their hands and sealed them together as husband and wife for eternity. “Even the angels can’t part you now,” he told them when it was done. They clung to each other as they left the room, until Vilate suddenly remembered Dinah was there and ran to her and embraced her and whispered in her ear, “Oh, Dinah, without you I’d never have found the strength to do it.” Then she was gone, and Dinah and Joseph were alone again.

To Dinah’s surprise, she was angry. As Vilate and Heber rejoiced, Dinah had felt rage grow like fire in her. And now she whispered savagely, “What kind of God requires such things of people!”

With one hand he held her, his fingers in the hair at the nape of her neck. “Why are you angry? How is it different from the test
you
were given, when you gave up your children?”

“Where was the angel at
my
test! Where was God then! Why didn’t someone put my children’s hands in mine and say, They’re yours forever, for time and eternity, nothing can part you—why doesn’t God love me as much as he loves
them
?”

She wept and he held her to him and whispered, “I don’t know.” And then he said, even more softly, with some of her own pain in his voice, “The God who left your children alive—where was he when so many of mine died?”