Saints (61 page)

Joseph waited a moment, as if he meant to say something else, but he either forgot or thought better of it. Instead he walked into the parlor. Only then did John notice Emma, who was sitting on a chair facing a window. Joseph took her by the hand, and she arose from the chair and let him escort her out of the room. She looked as grim as a condemned prisoner.

“What happened to
her?
” Charlie asked.

John shook his head. He cared nothing for the periphery of the picture, what lay beyond the frame. All he could think of was Bennett and Dinah and the Prophet’s baby. “I should have killed him,” he whispered. If I’d been ten years younger I’d have done it. Killed him as he stood there with his hands bloody, like a wolf howling in triumph over the gory kill—even God would have congratulated me for that.

The next day, Joseph took Charlie to the river’s edge where no one else could hear, and when the hour was over, had told him who the father of Dinah’s baby was and why the Principle was not spiritual wifery.

“It will break Sally’s heart,” Charlie whispered.

“Don’t be modest,” Joseph said. “It will break yours, too. And then make you both again, more perfect than you ever were before. Happier.”

“If I hadn’t been there yesterday, if I hadn’t known that Dinah was carrying a child, would you have taught me this doctrine?”

“Eventually. But the Lord chooses the time, not me. You’re in the hidden Kingdom now, Charlie, and I’m glad of it. You’re a man that should know my secrets, because I can trust you.” Joseph embraced him, kissed him on the cheek the way he kissed the Brethren, and left him there on the shore to think.

The inner Kingdom. Charlie could not even exult. For he had to go tell Sally what the Lord required now. Let it be yesterday, Charlie wished. Let it be a week ago, when I knew nothing, when I was a child. Let it be last winter in Washington, when I lived in dreams. Let it be last summer, when Don Carlos was still alive and I was still his friend. Let it be years ago, when I did not love Sally, and so did not have the power to break her heart.

Sally was scrubbing the floor when Charlie came in. Her face was flushed from the exertion, from hanging her head as she ground the wad of rags into the boards. She didn’t even hear him enter, and so he stood and watched her. It was scullery work, the way his mother had served in Hulme’s house. Sally’s arms were as strong as Anna’s, and younger, and the play of muscles under the skin had a delicate grace to it that answered the gross flexions and extensions of arms and back and chest. Her hair was done up in a bun and wound with a rag, except for a few strands pasted across her face with sweat. She huffed as she worked.

At that moment Charlie loved her more than he ever had before—not out of gratitude, for everyone had work to do in this place and it was no surprise when someone did it, but rather because he felt the movements of her body in his own arms and back and hips, felt the shape of the house the way she felt it, because in this year—no, in these months since he came home from Washington—they had become each other. People spoke to him as if he were only himself, but he knew that hidden from them was someone else entirely, the Charlie that Sally had created out of him. Eve was made from the rib of Adam, Charlie thought, watching her scrub, but Adam was also made from the womb of Eve.

Sally stopped, hung her head and caught her breath, then laboriously got up to move the bucket to another place. Charlie saw that she was so caught up in her work that she would not notice him even now, so before she could set to work again he called her name.

“Oh, Charlie!” she said. Her first response was one of pleasure. Then she looked crestfallen. “I hate it when you take me by surprise, I look like such a pig.” Charlie reached to embrace her. She refused. “I’m filthy all over, and I’d get a gallon of sweat on your coat.” But Charlie embraced her anyway, and pulled her close until her face rested on the deep blue cloth, and when he had held her longer than any greeting could require, she said, “What’s wrong, Charlie?”

He taught her the doctrine then. He was not one for breaking things gently to people, though he was not cruel about it either. He simply explained what the Principle was, how it was different from Bennett’s spiritual wifery. She was shaking in his arms, searching his face for reassurance. “Charlie, is it true?” Tell me not, her eyes said.

“If Joseph is a prophet, then yes, it is. He always taught us that all things would be restored, everything that God ever taught.”

“No one could live that way,” Sally said. “Not today, these are modern times.”

“There are many living it right now.”

Sally looked at him in wonder. “Not anyone
I
know, though—”

“Dinah.”

Sally’s eyes went wide. “Your sister!”

“Is Joseph’s wife.”

She gave a little cry, stepped back from him, put her hands to her cheeks and sat on a chair. “Oh, Charlie,” she said.

“The Lord has commanded us to do it, too.”

“I can’t.” Her voice was very small.

“Joseph told me, either you obey the Lord or you don’t.”

“So all our sacrifice is undone if we don’t obey in this one thing? Well, if you take another wife you still won’t be obeying the Principle, Charlie, because she’ll be your
only
wife.”

Charlie could not argue with her. There was no argument to make. “I love you,” he said, “and I don’t want another wife, and I’ll never choose between you and any other woman.” It wasn’t fair that Joseph should require him to measure his loyalty to God against his loyalty to Sally, and it wasn’t fair that Sally should make him choose between keeping her as his wife and living the gospel that Joseph taught. “I
am
your husband and
I am
a Saint, but I guess that I’m your husband
more
than I’m a Saint,” he whispered. He could hardly see her she was such a blur, and he knelt before her and buried his face in her dirty apron and clung to her and wept.

And as he held her, he felt the terrible rigidity of the muscles of her back and thighs give way, felt her slump gradually down into herself, and she began to stroke his hair. From a great distance he heard her speaking and tried to make out the words. “Your choice isn’t between me and another woman, is it?” asked her small, small voice.

“No,” he said.

“I’m making you choose between me and the Prophet. Between me and God.”

“Yes.”

Gently she pushed him from her lap, and stood. She looked around her, as if to find something, or decide what it was she had meant to do. Then she walked toward the door of the house. Without her hoops, in dirty clothes, looking like one of the river women, she was going out.

“Where are you going?”

“To see—to see Dinah, I think.”

Charlie got up from his knees and started toward her.

“No,” she said.

He stopped.

“I’m going alone. I—” She tried to smile. “I wonder if I can really make you choose between your woman and your God? I don’t even know which I’d rather you chose. Would I love you as much if you were the sort of man who loved a woman more than God? But I wonder something else, Charlie. I wonder if I’d rather lose you entirely, or stay with you and know that you saw her every day, and saw me every day, and knew every difference between us, and found me lacking. I wonder which of my possible lives I’d hate the most.”

She closed the door behind her. Charlie watched the door for some time, as if he expected it to move. Then he took a step toward it, turned, began to walk aimlessly around the room. He wasn’t thinking of anything at all, wasn’t even aware that he had no words at all going through his mind; all that was in his head was an endless column of figures—thousands, hundreds, tens, ones, tenths, hundredths, thousandths—and he added them and added them and added them. At last he reached a calculation and he could no longer remember the sum so far. That had never happened to him since he studied first with Hulme. He had never forgotten a sum. He looked around him and was surprised to see that the table was overturned, tilted half upside down against the wall; who would have thrown it so violently? He went to it and set it in its place again, laid the cloth on it, picked up the flowers and the fragments of the broken vase. Then he got the bucket from where Sally had left it, took off his coat and waistcoat, rolled up his sleeves and trousers, knelt on the floor and began to scrub, back and forth, back and forth, dipping into the bucket now and then, wringing the rags or changing them now and then, until the floor was clean from end to end.

Dinah lay in the bed in Joseph’s and Emma’s house, trying not to listen to the buzzes of conversation here and there, trying not to think of all she might do if she were able to get up and walk. As long as she held still, the pain in her abdomen wasn’t much, but when she moved she discovered exactly how much damage she had suffered in the fall down Emma’s stairs. And yet she dared not complain or ask for help. Not that Emma ever came into her room—that would be too much for either woman to endure, and Emma had more tact than to think of doing such a thing. Dinah knew, however, that every time she rang the bell beside her bed to ask for water or food, to ask for company for a few moments, whoever came had to leave a task that Emma had set for her, and Emma would see what a burden Dinah was on her house, and would remember either shame for having injured Dinah or anger at how Dinah had deceived and betrayed
her
.

She heard footsteps coming up the stairs, tried to ignore them, knowing that it was just one of the Lawrence girls about her business in the house, fearing that it might be Emma, and she might have to talk to her. The footsteps stopped outside her door, and someone knocked.

“Who is it?” Dinah asked.

“Sally.”

Family, of course, doing a dutiful visit. Dinah was not ungrateful; she was merely unused to being the recipient of kindness, and would rather have been the one being kind. But as Sally seated herself on the chair at the foot of the bed, Dinah saw that Sally was not coming to be kind to her at all. For she had never seen Sally look so distant, so upset, not even when she had brought the news of Bennett’s attempts at seduction. Dinah was almost relieved that Sally had come with a problem. Dinah was good at other people’s problems.

The conversation began as a duplicate of all the other courtesy visits: Are you feeling better? Much better thank you and how is Charlie? He’s doing quite well and so are my sisters and brothers and parents and everyone else we both know and can I bring you anything next time I come? No thank you I am doing quite well and is there any news in the city? Rumors of this and that and we certainly miss you at Relief Society, all the women miss you, we’ve needed you so much. Oh that’s kind of you but really I don’t think people could miss me much in just a few days. Oh no Sister Dinah, we depend on you more than you think.

Dinah could see that Sally wanted only a little prodding to unburden herself. So Dinah prodded. “You, Sally. Why would
you
depend on me?”

“I shouldn’t, I know. Ill as you are, you need no more worries—”

“Ill as I am, I desperately need someone else’s worries to take my mind off my own.”

Sally gave a wan smile, and then laid out her problem in a single sentence. “
Your
husband has commanded
mine
to marry another woman.”

At once she had explained it all, and Dinah understood her dilemma. “But Sally, I’m a plural wife, and my sympathies might be with Charlie’s second wife.”

Sally shook her head. “You love Charlie, and you love me, and you’re the wisest person that I know.”

I’m lying in bed without my baby or my womb after my husband’s wife struck me and an abortionist doctored me and you tell me you know no one wiser than me? You’re worse off than I thought, Sally. “Tell me then—do you believe it’s the Lord who has commanded, or Brother Joseph?”

“It makes no difference in the choice
I
make. Charlie believes it’s from the Lord, and he won’t be happy if he doesn’t obey. Does God hate me?”

“What do you plan to do?”

“I told Charlie that I’d leave him if he married someone else.”

“Will you do it?”

“No.” Sally was looking all over the room, at anything but Dinah’s eyes. “I can’t leave him just because he wants to obey the Lord.”

“But that isn’t why you’d leave him.”

“It was silly of me to come, it’s something I have to figure out on my own.”

“Why don’t you look at me and tell the truth?” Dinah said kindly.

It took visible effort, but Sally let their eyes meet. “Now tell me,” Dinah said, “what it is that you fear the most.”

Now that Sally couldn’t hide, her voice shook with the emotion she struggled to contain. “Losing Charlie.” She had a catch in her throat and tried to look away.

“Look at me,” Dinah commanded. Sally obeyed her. “And how would you lose Charlie?”

Sally’s face was all atremble for a moment, and then her composure broke entirely as she wept and said, “He won’t love
me
when he compares me to
her
.”

As Sally cried quietly, her hands covering her face, Dinah realized that here before her was Emma. Here was the first wife, the one who had the most to lose from the Principle, and the one who held the key to making the lives of the other wives endurable. If Dinah could help this one young woman to find a way to live with the Principle, if Dinah could help her to avoid the mistakes that had poisoned Joseph’s celestial family, she could prove that the Principle was good, that it could work. Dinah had no power now to change Emma, but she had power to change Sally.

“In twenty years,” Dinah said, “a generation of daughters will have grown up knowing that in God’s Kingdom no man is owned, nor any woman. They will enter into marriage, not caring who was first and who was second, not competing among the wives for mastery, but rather being sisters and upholding each other. I dream of a day when the first-married wife welcomes her new sister with joy, and watches with excitement to see what they all become together. Each wife will know her husband as if he were a different man for her, and the wives will know about each other the things no man can ever understand. You never knew, I think, how lonely I was married to Matthew, even when I saw him every day. Now I am often alone, but I know that when he comes to me he’ll make me glad. And Sally, if only Emma would accept me as her husband’s wife, if only she knew that his love for me robs nothing at all from his love for her, what friends we could be.”

“I thought you
were
friends.”

“Exactly. We were. But she forced her husband to choose between her and the Lord. The only way he could avoid such a vain and stupid choice was to lie to her. And because he had to hide his wives from her, he chose his wives without her. Tell me, Sally, do you think that Emma would ever have chosen
me
for her husband’s wife?”

Sally shook her head, almost laughing. “It’s hard enough that you’re Charlie’s sister, and to know he always compares me to you.”

“He doesn’t.”

“He dreams of being a gentleman. But I’m not a lady, like you, Dinah. He tried to send poems to me while he was in Washington, but Harriette had to explain them to me, and now he shows the poetry to
her
. I know that sometimes he wishes—he wishes he were married to a fine lady.”

“He is.”

Sally dabbed at her eyes with her apron. “No I’m not. I even dry my eyes with my apron.”

“Sally, a fine lady knows poetry and never has mussed hair. But a great lady is strong, and when her husband falters, he cannot fall because she’s part of him, and when her children are afraid, they’re comforted because she’s in their memory.”

“Like you.”

“I was thinking of Sister Emma.”

“I’d die for him, Dinah,” Sally said. “But what good is it to be strong? If you’re strong, God just makes you bear more suffering.” She violently bunched her apron. “Why am I fooling myself. I have no choice.”

“Oh, you have choices. You can run from it, Sally. Or you can bear it as a martyr all your life. Or you can let him marry her and then punish him for the next thirty years until he wishes he had died before he ever saw your face—there are wives who do that with far less excuse.”

“That’s a poor list of choices.”

“There’s another choice.”

“I decided not to kill myself on the way over here.”

Dinah could not help herself; she laughed at the thought of her actually doing such a melodramatic thing. “We’d have had to write a tragedy about you then.
Sally: The Martyred Mormon Woman of Nauvoo
.”

Sally laughed, too.

“The other choice for you is to obey, not grudgingly, but with your whole heart.”

“Oh, Dinah, tell me to do something
possible
.”

“With your whole heart. Take charge of the thing. Make it go the way you plan. Not by dictating, but by being more eager for it than Charlie is.”

“God would damn me sure if I lied and said I was glad.”

“Choose your sister wife, Sally. Not someone that Charlie could not possibly love, but someone that you
could
love, or that you already love.”

“I! Choose a wife for Charlie!”

“Why not? Let it be someone that you know that you can live with, and closely, too. Someone who loves Charlie with all her heart, and yet loves you at least as much, so that she wouldn’t try to pull him away from you, but instead would pull you together—”

“Dinah,” Sally said in wonderment. “Dinah, does Harriette love Charlie?”

“It’s been nearly two years since Harriette learned of the Principle. She has prayed for you and Charlie to learn of the law and let her in.”

“All this time she’s wanted my husband.”

“All this time she’s wanted to be a part of both of you. But she will wait until you want her. Until you invite her, Sally. If you’re going to obey the Principle, could there be a better sister wife for you than your sister?”

Sally laughed. “Poor Charlie! He’s scared to death of her half the time. He used to call her—”

“He doesn’t now. He knows her now.”

“If he marries Harriette,” Sally said, “I think that I can bear it. Charlie was the first thing I ever had that I didn’t share with Harriette.”

Dinah knew then that she had succeeded. Sally was no longer resisting; she was coming up with ideas herself why it would work. They talked on for half an hour, thinking of what must be done. How the first wife ought to make it easier for the second, who would be just as scared. Don’t try to rule her, or she’ll be your enemy. Don’t let her have her way in everything, or you’ll become a little child in your own home. Don’t ever ask your husband to compare you—he’ll either lie to you or hurt you. Or both. Dinah thought of all the things she wished that Emma could have done, all the things she had dreamed of in her empty nights, waiting for Joseph. All the things she had been jealous of, all the mistakes that she had made, and she watched Sally grow interested in how it could be done, to make such a family liveable. At last, tired, she lay back on the pillows, and Sally took it as a cue to leave, despite Dinah’s protests that she wanted her to stay.

Before she left, Sally kissed her hand, then sat on the edge of the bed and embraced her. “I still hate the thought of it,” she said, “but I think that I can do it and not hate Charlie or Harriette or Brother Joseph. Maybe I won’t even be angry at the Lord.”

“He’ll return the favor at the last day.”

“Dinah, how can I become like you?”

“Barren? With my children in England and no hope of having more?”

Sally silenced her with a touch. “Once, when I first heard the gospel, the first time that I came to church in Manchester, when Brother Parley spoke, I felt an ecstasy, as if I were made of air, as if I were soaring with the wind. It only happened the once, but when I remember it it still is beautiful. I’ve always thought it was the Holy Ghost coming to me, just that once. But you, Dinah—that’s what you feel like all the time, for the Lord is always with you.”

Dinah wanted to laugh or scream in frustration. After all that she had gone through, just these last few days, and her own sister-in-law could think that she was in constant rapture with the Spirit of God. But Dinah said nothing. That is what they think of me, these women who call me Prophetess. That is what I am to them, filled with light, as alive and powerful as the wind. Then let it be. Let them believe it, I’ll not tell them no. I’ll claim nothing for myself but what is true, yet if they choose to paint me in brighter colors than life, that is the gift of God to me. It gives me the power to teach them and be believed, and because of that I can help them to be glad in their suffering.

Sally opened the door to leave, and there stood Emma, across the hall, a statue of cold hatred with her eyes fixed on Dinah as if she had already been watching her through the door.

“Good day, Sister Emma,” Sally said. Emma did not answer. Sally looked back at Dinah as if to say, Would you like me to stay with you?

“Good-bye, Sally. Give my love to Charlie and to Harriette.”

As soon as Sally was gone, Emma walked briskly into the room and closed the door loudly behind her.

“Mrs. Handy,” Emma said. “I had no intention of speaking to you while you were in my house. But while you are here, I must insist that you refrain from teaching impressionable young girls to give their husbands up to sanctified adultery.”

Almost in answer to Emma’s words, the pain where Dinah’s womb had been erupted again, and she winced in spite of herself.

“Oh, does the truth hurt you?” Emma asked, not realizing Dinah’s pain was physical.

“The Prophet of God,” Dinah said softly, “is not an adulterer.”

Emma’s voice was loud enough to be heard throughout the house. “Don’t tell me what the Prophet is and what he isn’t! Where were you in the years when he had to leave me and the children living on the charity of people who did not want us in their home? Where were you when his babies died? Where were you when he was in jail under sentence of death and I tried to keep the Church alive with the so-called Brethren resisting every step of the way? Where were you when the mob came into our home and dragged him from my bed and took him out to try to make a steer of him?”

“It would have been no worse than what you did to me.”

It wasn’t even true, Dinah knew it; Emma had never meant her to fall, and it was Bennett who took her womanhood from her. But Emma had engaged the battle, and this time Dinah would cut as deep, and with any weapon she could use.

“I didn’t do that to you.” Emma’s voice was uncertain, for she felt responsible and was ashamed—that was part of her rage at Dinah, that she felt responsible for Dinah’s pain. “I was angry, I didn’t even know the stairs were there—”