"You mean you haven't been home yet?"
"I came straight here, to report to Brother Joseph."
"I wouldn't have wished to be the one to tell you, Charlie." Clayton had the look of death in his face."
"Who is it! Mother? Sally?"
"No, Charlie. It's your baby. Little Alexandra. They buried her this morning. They couldn't wait any longer."
Charlie felt numb inside. Clayton reached out a hand to steady him.
"No, I'll be all right."
"There are others besides yours, Charlie. It's been a hard winter on the little ones."
"I didn't even know she was ill."
"It's quick, when it takes the babies. That's a mercy sometimes, Charlie."
Charlie held out his hands in front of him. All the time in Washington he had thought little of his daughter -- women hardly let fathers near the babies the first few months anyway. But he had never so much as touched her; the baby died without even a father's blessing, without ever hearing her father's voice. "I hardly knew she was alive."
"I didn't want to be the one to tell you. They won't be at the grave anymore by now. I'm sorry. I've lost little ones, too. You're not alone."
But he felt alone, and that made all the commiseration in the world worthless to him. He did not hurry -- there was little point in that. He walked steadily homeward, not caring that his trunk was at the station, that he had left his papers in a box at Joseph's house. If he had only known. If God had let the baby live even another day. He didn't even know what the child looked like.
He opened the door. Dinah and Mother and Father were there, and Harriette and Mother Clinton, all red-eyed from crying. All except Sally. She was like still water in the middle of the stream; all the movement, all the grief eddied around her, but somehow she was miraculously calm. They all saw him as soon as the door opened, but no one spoke. Charlie realized that they were wondering whether they had to break the news to him. "I already know," he said.
Sally stood up and took a step or two toward him. "I spent the money for a tombstone for her," she said. She was shy, she was uncertain, as if she wanted very much for him to approve what she had done. "It wasn't that much, and I didn't want her grave to disappear. So many babies' graves seem to disappear, as if their lives didn't matter."
"Sally," Mother Clinton said.
"Let her be, Mother," Harriette whispered.
Sally came another step toward Charlie. "She was a very happy baby. She ate all the time, she was so strong. I didn't leave her hungry, Charlie."
"I know you didn't, Sally."
"She even smiled when she was sick. Almost to the end, she'd stop crying suddenly and smile. Do you think that little babies can see God?"
Charlie didn't know.
"I did my best, Charlie, but you just came home too slow."
He put his arms around her, held her close. He felt her body quake.
"Thank God," Mother Clinton said. "I thought she'd never cry."
"Crying's good," Anna said. "Took me a week to cry myself out when my Alice died. It's easier with the later ones. But it isn't healthy not to cry."
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Sally said in a thin, high, whining voice, over and over.
"It's all right," Charlie said. It's God's fault, not yours. "It's no one's fault." It's my fault.
"She was a good baby," said Harriette. "You would have loved her."
John Kirkham stepped away from the wall, where he had been standing when Charlie arrived. He looked awkward, embarrassed, as if he knew Charlie wouldn't want to hear from him at a time like this. "Charlie, I, uh -- when it began to look bad for the little one, and we thought you might not come home, I sketched her. Three sketches, so you'd know how she looked. Later, when you want to."
"They're beautiful drawings, Charlie," Dinah said.
Charlie nodded, looking at his father, wondering why he felt so surprised. Ah, yes, now he knew. It was because he didn't hate his father. Not a shred of hatred left, none at all. Charlie had been away from home for the whole life of his first-born child. That was a match for any of his father's sins.
"No, Charlie," Dinah said, as if she could read his thoughts. She came to him and touched his hair the way she had when he was little and afraid, and she had comforted him. "It's just the way of things."
Charlie shook his head. Not because he disagreed, but because he didn't even want to think. He had known just what his homecoming would be like. Caught up at once in the bustle of Nauvoo life. Received back joyfully among his loving family. He wasn't prepared for this. He led Sally carefully to the bedroom. "Thank you all," he said to them all from the door, without looking back.
As he closed the door behind him, someone said, "We love you, Charlie." Either it was that or the closing of the door, or maybe both that made him cry. He and Sally wept together wordlessly for a long time. It was only later that he remembered that it was Harriette who had said it. Cold Harriette who had known what he needed to hear.
Father's sketches were beautiful. Charlie had them framed and hung them on the wall. He changed the order of the pictures many, many times in the next few months. He wasn't sure why, except that there had to be some way to arrange them that would give meaning to her story. The smiling child, the girl sleeping, Alexandra in profile, reaching upward. Some way to arrange the pictures that would let her move, let him hear her voice, let her hand reach out to him. He tried every combination of pictures, over and over, but none of them satisfied him longer than a day.
BOOK SEVEN
In which Providence at last reveals the truth to those who had illusions.
First Word
The rumors of polygamy were impossible to quell. People sworn to secrecy had a way of figuring they could tell one particular friend or relative; even when they didn't set out to tell, they often didn't know how to slip around a direct question without giving something away. Those few who really were discreet still took some pleasure from leaving hints that they knew something that others didn't know. Pride in having special knowledge is an all-too-common trait. The trouble was, it let the curious know there was a secret lying about. They started searching for it and the facts were findable, if you searched enough. So the rumors spread through Nauvoo, invariably doing harm. Some who heard them didn't believe that the Prophet would counsel such a law -- when they did find out the truth, they felt betrayed. Others believed in the Principle as soon as they heard of it, but didn't understand how rigidly Joseph meant it to be lived, and thought it gave license for promiscuity. Still others believed that Joseph Smith was teaching polygamy, but didn't believe that God had anything to do with it. And, slowly but surely, the enemies of the Principle became the enemies of the Church and, most particularly, the enemies of Joseph Smith. Polygamy, in the end, was in large part the cause of Joseph's death.
But the rumors seemed manageable at the time. Joseph Smith was most concerned about the select group of Saints who were commanded to live the Principle. Almost all of them came from a rigidly Puritan background, from old New England families whose ancestors had learned religion from John Winthrop and Increase Mather. They longed to be members of the original Church of Christ, the one they believed Jesus and the apostles formed at Jerusalem, the one revealed as much in the Old Testament as in the New. They had been weaned on the belief that the original church taught the only correct way to worship God. They accepted Joseph Smith's new church only because they believed it was old -- the very gospel God had taught to Adam, to Abraham, to Moses, to Peter. They did not accept polygamy out of lust or sexual repression -- that is the obsession of our post-Freudian times, and to interpret pre-Victorians in that light is to blind ourselves to who they really were. They had a deep-seated revulsion to adultery or anything that smacked of it. Brigham Young later said that when he learned the law of plural marriages it was the only time in his life that he ever envied the dead. Most of Joseph's followers lived polygamy either out of blind obedience or -- and for independent-minded Americans this i
s much more likely -- because it fit the pattern. If God had once given plural wives to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to David and Solomon, then at the restoration of all the ancient gospel it only made sense that he would give plural wives to Joseph, Brigham, and Heber. They received the law as a commandment of a demanding God. It is no accident that the women who entered into polygamy were likely to be, not the weakest-willed, but the strongest, most gifted women of the Latter-day Saints.
Emma Smith, however, was slow to accept the Principle, and after Joseph's death she pretended that he had never taught it, that it had been invented after his death by Brigham Young, whom she detested. Perhaps she was actually able to shut those nightmare years in Nauvoo from her mind and truly believe that her husband never practiced plural marriage. But the fact remains that after years of bitter resistance, Emma Smith did give in, at least momentarily, to the Principle of Celestial Marriage. It is not hard to understand her reluctance. What is hard to understand is why she ever accepted it. It was not a godlike Prophet who taught the law to her, it was her husband. She did not learn it all at once, unfolded as an orderly doctrine -- she learned it bit by bit, as rumors kept coming to her of her husband's apparent philandering. She could not hear another man command her husband to take another wife -- she had only her husband's word that it was God's law. Besides, even if she believed the law she didn't think it fair to require her to live it. She had already given up more than most women. She never had a normal home, she and her husband were constantly at the beck and call of the Saints, and even when he was home Joseph was distracted from his family by the concerns of the Church. What little she had of him, she had no wish to share. Surely God had already required enough of her.
But the pressure to live the Principle was more than she could withstand. Joseph supplied most of that insistence himself; it was not proper that, with other men's wives bending to the law, the Prophet's wife would not. As more men and women entered the Principle, they too put pressure on Emma, until at last, whatever the particular reasons were, she gave in. Even then, like grass springing back after it is crushed, she rejected the Principle again, then surrendered again; refused once more, and probably would have gone on for some time in this pattern of compliance and resistance if her husband had not died.
If this were Emma's book, I would chart these vicissitudes, weighing the probable reasons for each change. Instead I must leave that for her biographers. It is Dinah's life that I'm writing about; Emma's problems matter to me only because Dinah Kirkham's life was changed when by chance -- if you believe in chance -- she was with Emma at the first of the times when the Prophet's wife bowed, at least for a moment, to the Principle.
-- O. Kirkham, Salt Lake City, 1981
38
Dinah Kirkham Smith Nauvoo, 1842
Dinah gave up teaching school. She was pregnant again, and at five months it was beginning to show.
"Why are you quitting?" Emma asked. "The children love you."
"I love them, too," Dinah said.
"Julia cried all night. I think she wants to grow up to be just like you."
"She'll come to her senses in a few days."
Emma touched Dinah's arm. " I want her to grow up like you."
Dinah was touched -- and, as always, felt unworthy of Emma's love. "Your children are clever, Emma. They'll learn well with anyone."
Emma studied her, could find nothing to answer her questions. "How long have you been here, Dinah? And still you're a stranger. Not only do you refuse to be my counselor in the Relief Society, now you refuse to teach my children. Are you going into hiding again?"
In fact she was. Dinah didn't believe it was shameful for a pregnant woman to be seen in public, but a pregnant woman with no visible husband had to stay in deep seclusion. Yet, except for pregnancy, what possible excuse could Dinah give? She had lied too often to Emma. She did not want to lie again if she could avoid it.
"Isn't it enough that I say I have good reason?"
Emma walked to the schoolroom window. "Sister Dinah, are you going to have a baby?"
Dinah slowly sat down. It was the confrontation she had so long dreaded. "My husband Matthew is in England."
Emma pressed her hands against the window, as if she wanted to get out; yet her voice was still calm. "Perhaps you are aware that a righteous woman can marry a godly man for eternity."
She is not accusing me, Dinah realized. She is testing me about the Principle. She doesn't know for sure that I know. "I have heard of the Principle of plural marriage."
Emma turned around. "Did you think that something like this could be kept from the Prophet's wife forever? Vilate is my friend. She told me that Brother Heber has had plural wives for some time. You do not have to keep the secret from me anymore."
Dinah did not want to lie to her, but what if Emma chose to lie to herself? Let her believe my husband is Heber, and I don't have to hide from her any longer. "Emma, I'm so glad you know about the Principle."
Emma walked to her, smiling. But the smile still covered a great deal of pain. "I've known about the Principle for years," she said. "But I couldn't -- bring myself to let Joseph take another wife. I was -- weak. And Joseph was forced to command men to obey a law that I was keeping him from obeying. But Vilate's strength, and Hyrum's Mary -- I couldn't hold back any longer, when these sisters were obeying. They tell me it is -- bearable. So today, I'm going to -- going to give my husband his wives, so he can begin obeying the Lord."
Emma was in such obvious pain that Dinah could not show her joy. Emma was accepting the Principle. It would only be a matter of time before Emma was ready to know the whole truth. "Who will you give to your husband?"
"The Lawrence girls, Sarah and Maria. They're like my daughters, I've cared for them since they were orphaned years ago. It's someone I already -- love. And Eliza and Emily Partridge." Emma managed to smile again. "It would be -- easier for me, if you were there. At the ceremony today. So I can look at you and think, This is the sort of woman that my -- sister wives can become. You are my friend, and I know I can -- lean on you a little, for strength."
"Of course I will," Dinah said. She rose from her chair and embraced Emma. "I was no more joyful than you, when I first learned of the doctrine." As she said it, she knew it was not true, that even now she was lying to Emma again. Soon, though, soon the whole truth could be known. In a year, perhaps, when Dinah's child had been born, and Emma had already learned to love the baby. Then we can become true sisters, with all things in common as no women outside the Principle can possibly understand.
"Dinah," Emma whispered, "is it truly from the Lord?"
Surely that was not a question the Prophet's wife should be asking me, Dinah thought. "Yes," Dinah said. "As I live, it's true."
Much comforted, Emma took her leave. Dinah could hardly concentrate well enough to remove her personal effects from the schoolroom. Emma was going to accept the Principle. Dinah wanted to go into the Street and shout it. Instead she hurried to Charlie's house, to tell Harriette.
Harriette wasn't there. But Sally was, looking so distraught that Dinah at once set aside her own errand. "What's wrong, Sally?"
"Dinah, please come in. Please. Dorcas Paine was just here."
"The girl who's going to marry the Lipp boy?"
"I thought it was just the once, that he had only tried it with me, but he must do it constantly -- "
"What are you talking about?"
"Dinah, have you ever heard of the doctrine of spiritual wives?"
Dinah knew there were rumors reaching the gentiles about some such doctrine, but Sally wouldn't be so disturbed about a rumor. "Where did you hear about it?"
"John Bennett." Sally said the name with loathing. "He came to me the week before my wedding. He said he needed to speak to me alone, about spiritual matters. Mother took the children outside and he began to tell me that God had -- God had commanded me to be his spiritual wife."
Dinah felt herself go cold. She already knew the end of this
story, though she had never heard the tale before.
"He explained that I should go ahead and be married to Charlie, but that he and I would be husband and wife spiritually. He said it was a new and great commandment, that the men and women chosen of the Lord should be married in this way, so that the world would not realize that we were building great patriarchal familes like Abraham. It frightened me, and I turned away from him -- I couldn't believe that God would want me to be unfaithful to Charlie. And then he came up behind me and held my bosom, he held me there and started kissing my neck and cheek and telling me that he was already married to me by the power of the priesthood and -- "
"Sally, you can't mean that you let him -- "
"No!" Sally looked horrified at the thought. "I was wearing my boots, and I stamped on his foot as hard as I could, and he let go of me. He told me that I'd go to hell, but I told him I'd rather."
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