Strange Children

by Sadie Hoagland

  Then he said, It’s strange, and I said What’s strange and he said, The all of it, and I knew then that he didn’t think there was a way it would work for us to be together but also I was just so sure then that there was a way and more importantly I knew then that I really could trust to him all the secret thoughts I had.

  I told him, it will be all right, and then he leaned to me and we started to kiss and we kept kissing and you can guess what happened but I want to tell you that this second time it was all slower. He kissed me on the mouth and put both my lips in his mouth and he was careful with my blue dress, lifting it up over my almost hips and kissing me on the forehead and shoulders. The whole thing was something pretty, like the song Annalue had been singing when she was washing my hair, and right then I remember thinking before he was done that while we were laying like that together, the leaves had turned to yellow and the air had begun to smell all red like fall, all while he was inside me. And now I know the shift was not seasonal but cosmic, and that God must a been adjusting his weight in his seat for the events about to unfold. But right then so caught were we in the way we were loving each other right then that we didn’t see my Pa standing at the edge of the field watching until we were fixing our clothing. Mary must have stuttered bad when she told him where we were but not so badly that he didn’t understand and I’ll never forget the fear I felt then, not knowing how long he’d been standing there. Jeremiah just brushed off his hands together and looked at me like I had just asked him a question he didn’t know the answer to. But then, brave as he was, he walked slow like to my Pa, still fixing buttons on his red shirt and he did not even flinch until my father knocked him straight to the ground. I couldn’t tell my legs to run until he’d already kicked Jeremiah twice and not even looked at me once because this was hardly about me but a thing between men, when one has taken something from the other.

  I ran back to the house then, snuck in away from my Mama, cleaned up, and waited to be told what would happen next. I felt sick with the idea that I would not be able to be with Jeremiah and I wandered about the room I shared with Annalue and I touched everything we had like I was checking for dust, wondering if I should run away and find Jeremiah, or maybe look for my Pa and try to explain, or to wait.

  It turned out neither would have done much good because my father came home and said that I would marry Josiah on Friday, even though it was already Wednesday night and that I should thank the Lord that he was even still taking me for a wife, soiled as I was and at such a young age I’d like to die in childbirth. I knew this last thing he said was just meant to scare me as a punishment since girls my age carry through all the time with their babies when the Prophet deems a younger marriage, so I wasn’t scared and anyway my heart was sunk down way too low to jump.

  I went to bed that night and the moon was bright in our room and some crickets had started up and I thought of how things had gone all wrong, but that it was okay because there would be lots to do before I left my Mama’s house for good and for always and at least I would see Jeremiah even more because I would be a part of his house and maybe we could sneak away and be with each other still sometimes. Yes I was naïve and I fell asleep happy with this idea I had of how it would be, how God would keep our souls together in spite of the false prophecy that had me marrying Josiah and I was happy even though I could hear Annalue sighing in her bed, creaking her mattress with her turning, missing me already.

  But it turns out God had a plan that wasn’t my plan then, because Jeremiah disappeared the night before I married Josiah, who did not look unlike his son but was not him. My Pa told me Jeremiah was gone as he was driving me to Josiah’s house where the Prophet waited to give the Blessing and where he would leave me as a wife and I didn’t know why he was driving me in the old skylark when it’s close enough for me to walk and I had never been driven to anyone’s house before this. But then the way he said this about Jeremiah and didn’t look at me when he talked, I knew that Jeremiah must have been run out a town by the priested and mainly the Prophet because the Prophet didn’t want any more trouble from Jeremiah or from any other unbetrothed boy and I understood why we were in the car instead of walking the short road to my future home.

  Other boys had been run out of town and usually we never heard anything from them again but I had hope because Josiah’s third wife Cadence and her ash white hair said that these boys sometimes get all the way to the city and are called Lost Boys by the Devil’s children and I did not know if she was truthing, or just trying to console my empty heart. But then three weeks later Josiah came into my bed for the first time, in the morning, and his face was twisted with something and I thought he was angry because he did what he had come to do with me, to make me his wife really, and he did it so it hurt with his hand pushed up against my jaw, but then when he was getting dressed again he turned to me and looked at me straight and said: The Prophet has told me that Jeremiah lies dead in the desert.

  And I could see his hands were shaking with the buttons on his shirt and my own chin began to tremble.

  I began to cry. Josiah also hung his head and was silent but I could see through my tears that his face was twisted up again and I knew he was not lying to me about Jeremiah.

  I also knew then the ground to be falling out from under me.

  My Pa came over the next week while I was working in the kitchen kneading dough and thinking of Jeremiah’s face left red for the birds, and he talked to me and he said that the heat and then the dogs must have got to Jeremiah but even then, before we knew what had really happened, I was sure I knew better. I was sure I knew because he was my soul’s husband, and he wouldn’t have given up that easy. I thought: No dogs would have kept him from me and anyway he had God’s light and love for my soul in his soul so no, Jeremiah wouldn’t let no sun keep him from saving me, and I was sure he was done away with by the Prophet’s men who are the rough servants of God as some act of merciful atonement, but I didn’t think then that that gave them the right to take one’s soul’s love away. I was so sure of this and thought that either way I would be with him in spirit someday since at that time I thought he must be with God and not even his father could take that eternal-after away from me no matter how he hard he tried to be my real husband.

  But even though I was sure like this, I know now it was not Love nor God that so lit my heart, but when I thought it was both I would sometimes get to feeling sorry for myself and when I did I had two comforts. The first being was I thought that Jeremiah and I were still God’s children because I knew God would see how we acted on his true light that we felt inside of us so I was sure he would understand about the things we did under the cottonwood tree and so I would see Jeremiah in the Celestial kingdom of God, I knew, and our souls would finally be wed for eternity together. The second comfort was that I missed my bloods and so knew there was something growing inside me and I thought it to be the child of my soul’s eternal love and I thought that this child would remind God of how Jeremiah and I, denied of our time together on earth, belonged together in His Kingdom and even though now I have quite revised my knowledge of that child’s paternity and I am more certain than ever of God’s real plan for me and the Prophet and His people, at that time this belief and that small appleseed inside of me were of great comfort and so I knew—even when Annalue said that it had to be Josiah’s because of the time and that anyway she should tell Levi to kick me in the belly with boots on just to save me from my own fool self—I knew what I needed to believe and sometimes that is different than the truth.

  Listen, Emma. Oh Emma. I tried to warn you.

  Now you will be lonely and it will grow on your face like a layer of moon-blue skin. You will be sad and I am going to tell you about it but for you to hear me I have to be dead and you have to come here to this quiet place, to be almost dead. So lie still in your new house, breathe hardly at all and if at all—slowly, imperceptibly. Listen.

  Listen. I am the ghost of a dead girl. I see things I can’t help bu
t see. Listen. My name is Haley.

  You are sad because you think that the only boy you’ll ever love has been killed out in the desert by either the dogs or your fathers and you lie awake wondering if it matters, if he was shot or eaten, if he was beaten to death by hands or teeth, or if his thirst killed him from the inside out.

  You are sad and this is only your beginning.

  Do you hear that? Your beginning.

  You can’t hear me, yet.

  But you will.

  Mary

  I have a wish that is burning a fire in my heart and that is that I wish to be the youngest wife of the Prophet who is the most pious man and God’s own voice for us. There was another Prophet when I was younger, just born, but this Prophet is his son and knows more ’bout the sins of even our hearts not just our bodies, mortal as fruit. This Prophet has gone now into the desert and there are those who say he won’t dare show his face again but I just know He is wandering, wandering and he will return for me and smite those among us who be less faithful.

  This Prophet knows to forbid the things that other kids play but I never did, not because they didn’t ask me to, but because I must have known, even before the Prophet said that basketball was unholy, that it was unholy. And also the Easter celebration too. He died for us, the Prophet says, Let us Not Forget, and I don’t forget and my heart flutters and buzzes like a fly in a jar but in my ribs when I hear his deep voice and his dark eyes glowing with the Spirit and I always want to say: I Would Die For You Prophet.

  But of course I do not say this partly because of my stutter but I keep on wishing that he will take me for his youngest and last wife soon as I turn twelve.

  I am only ten now, but I brush my golden hair everyday six times and even if it is vanity, I just want it to stay pretty for when I am the wife of almost God himself. I try to read the Book everyday even when the words swim around my eyes and smite me. I try and I like it especially when someone read it to me, like when my brother Jeremiah used to, he did the voices of Nephi but also of his sinning brother Laman and the Lamanites and I like it when someone is smited or smoted because they done bad against the true believers and very first prophets who lived in the time of Christ and then went to sleep till the Prophet Joseph Smith was born. And I don’t like when the believers are in the wilderness and their souls haveth sorrow.

  I, I want no sorrow.

  If I am the Prophet’s youngest wife I will help him serve God, and take off his socks when he is tired because that is what wives do. I have seen my Ma do it to my Pa though my mother not good ’nough for the Prophet, that is clear because if he liked her he would take her as a wife. He can have anyone because he is not like other men whose ears are deaf and dumb to the voice of God.

  And then I would wash those socks better than I ever washed any of the socks in our house now and I would rinse them in sage-soaked water so they smell like fresh night air all the time and make feet feel cool as they walk the righteous path that the Prophet lead.

  There is a reason I wish all this and it is not just because I am the most holy girl my age in the whole town. It is because when I was just a child a few years ago the Prophet came by our house one spring day and I was out hanging clothes and saw him and my Pa talking in the road and being curious I went to my Pa and hid behind his leg, hoping, hoping he might pull on my blonde braid like he do sometimes so that the Prophet would see me.

  My Pa didn’t pull my hair, so I peered my face out round his leg and leaned my ear into his thigh so that I could hear my Pa’s voice stuffed down through his own body, and then I dared look up at the Prophet who I had never seen so close.

  Now who is this? The Prophet said then and I will never forget that first time he look at me. Long, clean face turned down on me like a winter sun.

  Pa cleared his throat and said I was his oldest girl, he said it quiet like he was ashamed, like he didn’t want the Prophet of God to be noticing me.

  Pretty little thing, isn’t she? The Prophet said to me then and I smiled big because no one had ever said that to me before. Then my Pa did something I will never forgive him for even in the Celestial Kingdom when we get there. He said:

  Yes, but dumb as stone, that one, can’t read at all and can’t talk straight either. And then he unstuck me from his leg and gave me a push and said back to work without even saying my name for the Prophet to hear. And so my face went burning and I ran so fast away to the back corner of the pantry under the house where it is dark and I cried so hard I thought to break the jars and jars of big floating peaches and apricots that sat in their own syrup like big orange moons in water and I thought how I am not dumb and prayed to God to tell the Prophet that I am smart and to tell my Pa too that I am smart. And I cried till I thought more and more ’bout the Prophet thinking me pretty, and hearing him say that again and again in his wise voice and I fell asleep in the cool pantry dirt smelling the fruit in the jars above me and thinking of an older day when I would be the wife of the Prophet himself and the best Ma on earth and when that day comes I will not speak at all to my Pa or my Ma, Ma who smited me for my talking more than once in this rotting life and Pa whose own mouth I have heard profane the name of the Prophet, and even the Lord, so that it’s no wonder He gave him a child with a slow tongue.

  Annalue

  In all times, and not just the end times, we’re a people, as my Pa says and my Mama repeats, who take pride in helping one another and that’s all well and good for God’s country but it’s just we couldn’t help one another with what really mattered.

  Like when Holden Brown’s third wife, Adaleen—who would leave us and start all kinds a mess that ended with Holden in jail somewhere—showed up at House with a black eye and an arm tied up to her chest with a sling made out of an old bridle. It was not hard for anyone who knew Holden Brown and his foul temper to guess how that had come to pass, it was not. But in our world of God’s words there was no language for which to help her and to still praise God and his men at once. Just like there was no way for my Mama to save me from my own cruel fate, and no way to stop a man from taking what he wants if he takes it the right way, through the word of God or rather his Prophet who speaks in a voice that everyone can hear. Plain as day.

  No one can stop it unless you are the Prophet, or one of the men who hold power around here, and then if you are you can make someone disappear. Like Jeremiah, get him killed in the desert. And you can take Manti’s father—a rogue man who always was wild they say, and drove a truck for money not of the Prophet, and who they say saw fit to borrow one of the Prophet’s young wives—and you can make sure he is atoned for his sin, even if that leaves his wife Beth, who they say is crazy as a mad cow, alone with two small children she can’t take care of as anyone can see. The Prophet could do that. Not anyone else.

  But there are things we could do, us womenfolk. So every other Saturday is my day to take over a pot of casserole to Beth’s house so that the children don’t go hungry. And even though I didn’t want to leave the house after that August day, and my Mama let me be all of September, come October she said it’s the right thing to do, and doing right was what made things right. As if a crooked walk to the far edge of town and that dirty little house half falling apart would undo a day on the parlor floor of the Prophet’s house. If it did believe me I’d be limping there every day.

  I mostly felt sorry for those two children and having a limp as I do for me to say I feel sorry for someone is no small thing. There is nothing quite right about any one of them, and it’s not just the dirt, or the broken chairs in the corner, or the dishes all everywhere so that sometimes you just had to look around and try to find the dish you brought the last time, or another one, or three, and leave with them to soak for three days. Though even though I did feel sorry for them that was not to say I liked going there, for I did not. Like Alice Parley Smith, I did not want people to think I was different in their way too, did not want anyone to see me going to and from their house and think I was like them, part o
f my body already dead for all to see. And Sister Beth was the most not quite right, and she often just nodded and opened the door and went back to the couch to sleep. Most of the time she wasn’t dressed but in a blue nightgown, with her black storm of hair, and would mumble to herself or yell across the room as if she saw someone there though only the sunlight was there, rays filled with the dust of the house like snow. If Manti was out, the little girl would sit on her mother’s feet and suck her thumb as though all was right as rain.

  And if Manti was there when someone came, wild dark hair in his eyes, he usually hid the little girl in a kitchen cupboard afraid someone would try to take her and raise her up right, as we had when she was a younger baby, before we learned how much the other two would fight for her. Once, the Jens family did manage to take her home, but she howled all night like a wolf until suddenly she stopped and they went to check on her and she was gone, window open, Manti running across the back field with her in his arms, Beth waiting in the moonlight. So after that he would hide her and glare at you and you could hear the little girl muffled singing a little hymn to herself, once in a while calling Manti’s name. Once when she was in there and crying softly and I was putting the casserole down where I could find a bare spot on the table, she went quiet and Manti turned the color of the river clay.

  I said, Manti, let her out.

  He glared again.

  I said softer then, Manti let her out, what if she can’t breathe. Or she scart. And he glared more. I ain’t going to touch her Manti, I promise. I can’t take her from you, and I limped forward to remind him I couldn’t take anything from him even if I wanted. And he bit his lip but then bent down and opened the cupboard and pulled her out. She had fallen asleep and rubbed her eyes as he held her. Her almost half his size.