Dinah. Silent in meetings, her ministrations suddenly stopped for no reason he could figure out. She didn't tell him. Dinah had been carrying his baby, and lost it, and she hadn't told him, and he hadn't guessed.
"Did I do wrong?" Vilate asked.
"No, no. You did right, I think."
"Maybe." Vilate suddenly trembled, as if she had a chill. "Today Heber told me to read the beginning of the sixteenth chapter of Genesis. Where Sarah tells her Abraham to lie with her maid Hagar -- "
"I know the chapter."
"I read it, but I couldn't figure why Heber had insisted that I read it. And then my friend happened to call on me right at that time -- and she doesn't call on anyone much anymore, she stays to home, which is proper, I thought -- but her being there, I figured the Lord maybe sent her. Isn't that possible, that the Lord sent her?"
"The Lord sent her," Joseph said.
"So I broke my oath, and asked her to explain the scripture to me."
"And what did she say?"
"She wouldn't. She just said to ask my husband, and to believe everything he told me, because it was the most glorious -- glorious principle of the gospel. And when she said that, sitting there like an angel, I felt a thrill like the first time a new baby sucks, it hurts so strong and feels so good, and I knew it was the Spirit of God in her, and she was speaking to me as a prophetess. And so I said to her, Did you repent? Were you forgiven? And she said to me, Vilate, I will never repent of that baby, or how I got it." Vilate was crying now, but whether from grief or from memoiy of the Spirit Joseph couldn't tell. "Brother Joseph, how can the Lord dwell in such a rebellious woman's heart?"
"Sister Vilate," Joseph said, "your friend is as pure as snow. She has committed no sin before God, though she would be judged a sinner by the unbelieving."
It was almost funny how quickly Vilate was laughing and hugging him. "I knew it! I didn't know how it could be, but I just couldn't believe that she'd -- but Brother Joseph, how could it be? How can a woman do what she -- "
"Sister Vilate."
She fell silent again.
"Go home to your husband and tell him that giving you scriptures to read is not enough. Every moment that he delays is disobedience, and his soul is in danger of damnation."
Vilate was stunned. "Why! What has he done!"
"It's what he hasn't done. But once he obeys, you'll understand everything you didn't understand today. Don't ask me any more -- it's not for me to tell you, it's for your husband. Then both of you come to me here, tomorrow, and tell me what you choose to do."
She left, afraid of how serious this secret must be, but still eager to find out. It was a mark of godliness, Joseph knew, to be eager to know even what might hurt you. Those who were frightened of truth never amounted to much in the sight of God. Those who avoided truth weren't worthy to have it, and so they never did.
Joseph was frightened, too. Dinah couldn't know it, but it wasn't just the Principle that Heber was going to tell Vilate about. It was a far more terrible test than that, more terrible than Joseph would ever have thought of on his own, but the words just came to him as he was talking to Heber, teaching him about the Principle. Worse was knowing that no one could lightly pass this test, Heber and Vilate least of all. They had loved each other since they were children. They were the happiest, most utterly devoted couple he knew. Heber had been gone for more than two years, and they had only been together a few weeks since then. It was too much. They would fail. And Joseph didn't need to lose any of the few Saints he could utterly rely on. If anyone ever had reason to believe he was a false prophet, any reason to hate him and leave the Church, it was them, it was now.
It frightened Joseph, the way he could talk like a prophet without even meaning to. The way he could reach out and tear at people's lives, he had such power over them. Wasn't he supposed to heal them the way Christ did? He tried to remember if there was a time when Jesus ever caused anyone such pain. Why couldn't God let things go smoothly for a while? Let him have a whole month in which no one was tested, no one betrayed him, and no one died.
"Are you all right?"
Joseph almost cried out in shock, for it was Don Carlos's voice he heard. But it was only Charlie at the door of his office, carrying his ledger. Don Carlos's best friend. Charlie had sobbed out loud at the funeral. No one minded or thought it was unmanly -- someone had to, so the rest could bear to put that young man's body in the ground. Charlie was needed then.
But now Joseph couldn't see him without thinking of Don Carlos. Of the way Don Carlos romped with this English boy who had a knack for doing miracles with money. Of the way Don Carlos had pled with Joseph to let him be a clerk, Let me be close to you, Joseph, he had said, how can you take my friend and leave me, don't you know I'm dying to be part of your work, don't you know I'm dying -- and Joseph had sent him to the cellar to do a better job of the Times and Seasons, to prove that he was dependable. If anything killed Don Carlos, it was my trying to make him into Charlie Kirkham.
"Brother Joseph, what is it?" Charlie was staring at him in awe.
"It's tears, Brother Charlie." Joseph wiped his face on his coat hem.
"Is there something I can do, Brother Joseph?"
"Unless you can bring me my brother or my baby, no." He waved Charlie away, as if to say it was all right. "Go on, we'll go over the books tomorrow. I need to make a visit."
"Do you want me to go with you?"
"No." I'm busy, I have work to do, and having you with me would be like having a ghost walk beside me, blaming me. So today I'm going to try to think of a way to get you out of here for a while, out of my sight until I stop grieving every time I think of my brother. I can't just tell you to go away, that would break your heart. Mustn't break any hearts, must I? Or maybe that's the business I'm in. Getting power over people and breaking them, breaking all of them who don't try to break me first.
Long before Joseph could weave his way through the business of the afternoon and get to Dinah's house late in the summer night, Dinah had another visitor.
"Sister Emma," Dinah said.
Emma greeted her coolly, and Dinah dreaded some confrontation. But it was comfort Emma wanted today, which made her much more distant, for Emma did not like confessing need.
"I've come to see if you're not well," Emma said.
"Of course I'm well," Dinah said. "Your children came to school this morning for the summer reading class, didn't they? Didn't little Joseph recite the poem he learned?"
"I know you're well enough to teach the children, Sister Dinah. I only wondered why you seem to have forsaken the women of Nauvoo."
Dinah was used to questions like this, for the women she had once visited now came, in ones and twos and threes, to call on her, forcing Joseph to delay his visits later and later in the night, when he could come at all. And every woman who came asked the same question. Why don't you teach us anymore? Why don't you speak at meetings? Are you angry? Have I given some offense? Are you unwell? And always the same answer:
"I can only live as the Lord requires."
Emma's eyes narrowed. "They told me you'd say that."
Dinah smiled slightly. "I say it because it's true."
"I think it's cruel and selfish of you, and I've come to rebuke you." As always, Emma had to speak her affection in harsh words.
"Forgive me," Dinah whispered.
"Don't you know how much some sisters have needed you? There are sisters in Nauvoo who are in dire need of a friend, and can find none because the only friend who can help them stays hidden in her cabin like a hermit."
"But if a friend visits me, I greet her with the same love as always."
"Do you?"
Dinah walked to her, bent to where she sat, and pressed her cheek against Emma's. "Yes," she whispered. "The same love as always."
Dinah pulled away from the embrace, but Emma clung to her hand, so that Dinah had to kneel beside her on the rag rug that covered the earthen floor.
"Sister Dinah,
I'm afraid that I'm driving Joseph away from me."
Don't speak to me of Joseph, Dinah said silently. On that one subject I am not your friend.
"He's hardly home anymore. He travels constantly, four or five nights a week, or visits around the city so late that I'm long asleep before he comes home."
"To avoid his enemies. And to do his work."
"To avoid me." Emma whispered her dread: "He's punishing me."
"Why would he punish you? There's no wife in the world who's endured more than you, who's been more help to her husband than you -- "
"I'm a cold and sharp-tongued woman, and when I disagree with him I speak the truth as I see it. It makes him angry, and he stays away."
"I've never known Brother Joseph to flee from the truth."
Emma touched her cheeks with the tips of her fingers, as if to contain her emotions. "I know. It's because I won't let him -- because I won't bow to something that no wife could possibly endure, that no wife should ever be asked to do. He doesn't love me anymore."
There have been times, Dinah said silently, when I wished that it were true, when I wished that he didn't love you at all. But he does. "Sister Emma, if you think he could forget to love you, you don't know him. Part of him is you. All his past is tied up with you. His children are yours. Even the Church itself is so bound up in you that he hardly bothers to distinguish between what he's done with you, and what he's done without you. Have you heard him speak? We did this, he says, we lived above the store, we had a hard time of it in Kirtland, we were able to hold together after Missouri -- and no one knows, least of all himself, whether he means you and him or him and the Church or whether it makes any difference at all. You are so much a part of him now that whatever he does, he feels as though you were with him. You are with him."
"I'm not. I'm home, alone in bed, listening to the children breathing, wishing for my husband's breath in the night."
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.
If I desire the Saints to think me wise, Why should I weep when son or brother dies? God only weeps for one cast down to earth Like Lucifer, denied his mortal birth; God greets the righteous dead with arms held wide, With tears of joy, and seats them at his side. In death be merry, or the gospel lies: Grieve for those who fall, not those who rise. (I know 'tis true, yet still I cannot sleep: Not for Don Carlos but myself I weep.)
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."
36
Dinah Kirkham Smith Nauvoo, 1841
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?"
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