The 19th Wife

by David Ebershoff

  Each Sunday, invariably, Brigham’s sermon turned to the subject of Truth. Nothing winds Brigham up more than this, and he could spin out an hour’s worth on the notion without so much as coming up for breath. As he did so each week, I would stew in a juice of shame and worry. If Truth was the key to Glory, as Brigham proclaimed, what did this mean for me? I took a great disliking to myself during this time, and in my thoughts referred to myself as simply No. 19. There were many times I could not look my boys in the face.

  Finally, after months of ignominy, Brigham said he was ready to announce me as his 19th wife. “The first thing to do is establish you in a home suited to your position.” He drove me to a sad little cottage of uncoated plank where he hoped I would reside happily, always waiting for his call. It was furnished with left-overs—I recognized the worn parlor rug from the Lion House, the black-stained lamp from the theater’s dressing room, and the chipped crockery from Brigham’s bakery. (An acquaintance I made in Washington after my divorce advised me not to dwell on such household matters when recounting my tale. “They’re petty,” he said. “And you sound petty when you do so.” To this I told the esteemed gentleman, “You have, I’m quite certain, never attempted a compote in a leaky pan.”)

  Sensing my disappointment, my husband said, “You don’t like it?” The truth was, I was not upset about the house, if that is the correct word for such a lean-to. Walking about the tiny half-furnished parlor, hearing the echo of my step, I came to understand that I would lead a lonely existence here. True, I would have my boys, but I knew as the Prophet’s wife my activities would be monitored and restricted. I could no longer expect to visit with friends as I once did, or stroll down the street alone, or do any of the daily activities that bring a basic kind of enjoyment to the day. I was now a married woman, and would be expected to behave as such, yet unlike most wives I did not have a husband in any sense of the word. I was neither maiden, widow, nor even divorcee. I was a plural wife, and this little house, with the cheap runner on the stairs, represented my conjugal purgatory in such fine relief that I felt a piercing to my heart.

  To improve my spirits, Brigham moved my mother into the cottage with my boys. We tried to colonize it as best we could, but it had come with such few supplies that everything about our existence there would be best described as bare.

  As one of Brigham’s wives I was entitled to monthly rations to be collected at Brigham’s Family Store. The store sits behind the Beehive House, and when my mother and I went for the first time there was a long line of women and children running out the door and down the street. Many had brought empty pushcarts and miner’s sacks, and the children, proudly aware of their purpose, held hand-baskets with caution and care. A number of Indian women had also come to barter large lidded baskets and other weavings for soap and candles.

  At the counter I gave my name to an efficient, wide-bosomed woman who ran her finger down a list. “There you are,” she said, and disappeared into the storeroom. She was most likely one of my sister wives, yet our relationship was wholly transactional. She returned with a five-pound sack of beet sugar, ten pounds of smoked pork, a short pound of oily candles, a cake of lye soap, a spool of mending thread, and a small box of white-phosphorous matches.

  “What I really need is some cambric,” I said.

  “So do I, Sister. Anything else?”

  Now might be a good time to confess to my Dear Reader that which, at the time, I was unable to confess to myself. During the early stages of my marriage I had—I can see now—suppressed my skepticism. Despite the mounting evidence, I wanted to believe my marriage to Brigham Young, unorthodox as it was, had some measure of truth to it. I knew he did not love me as a young girl imagines a husband will love his wife. I knew I did not love him in any profound or cosmic way. Yet marriage has many purposes beyond the romantic, including the practical and the spiritual. I had hoped Brigham would be a surrogate father to my boys. I had hoped my mother’s move to my cottage would free her from her rivals. Perhaps most important, I had hoped my proximity to the Church would blow fresh winds into the sagging sails of my faith. I was still a daughter of Mormondom, and at night, when I was alone, and the wind tapped the almond branch against my pane, I continued to pray.

  After many months of marriage Brigham invited me to sup at the Lion House as his wife. “How will the others greet me?” I asked.

  “Frankly, I gave up trying to predict my wives long ago.”

  On the day of my debut, Brigham asked me to meet him in the gardens behind his house. Brigham’s gardens, it should be said, are like the estate of a king. Behind a nine-foot wall are acres and acres of flower beds and walking paths, as well as fruit and nut orchards, vegetable plots, racks of beehives, and a pigeon house. As I approached the garden at the time of my meeting with my husband, I saw ten paces before me Sister Amelia, whom I knew only by face—her youthful beauty cannot be denied—and reputation, which was so unpleasant, I willed myself not to think of it.

  When first planning this memoir, I had no intention of dipping into the histories of my fellow wives. For one, such digression would divert my reader for too many pages. For another, each arrived at Brigham’s bed in such a unique manner, through individual and sometimes mysterious circumstances, that I could not accurately represent all their paths. Yet in the case of Amelia Folsom, a diversion seems warranted. I hope my Reader will agree.

  She had become the Prophet’s 17th wife in 1863, taking, and holding quite firmly, the undisputed position of his favorite. He provided her a private carriage with her initials stenciled on the door in gold, although the other wives walked about the city in the dust. Amelia ordered her silk from France, while Brigham’s silkworms spun tirelessly for the rest of us. And most frustrating to her rival wives (I exclude myself from this jealous lot), she visited her husband whenever she desired. She was known to arrive at his office and expel his present guests so that she could be alone with her mate. Most scandalously, I have been told she once demanded a diamond necklace before she would allow Brigham to return to her boudoir. Although this particular anecdote is second-hand, I trust its source, for were you to greet Amelia today you very well might find the diamonds gleaming at the base of her throat.

  I also know that she intended to be Brigham’s final wife. It was a condition of their marriage. We must give Brigham some credit. He kept his word for two years.

  In 1865, not long before he began his campaign for me, Brigham broke his vow to Amelia to wed Mary Van Cott, a fair, strong-minded Saint from a devout family. Mary, who would become a friend, was always kind-hearted and selfless. She knew her presence would hurt Amelia and asked Brigham what she could do to assuage her. “Respect her,” Brigham advised. Upon arrival in the Lion House, Mary sent a kitten named Honey to Amelia’s room in a gesture of peace. Amelia set the poor creature loose in the city creek and returned the empty box to her rival’s door. Honey was never seen again.

  Mary was saddened by the cat’s loss, yet she could not bring herself to blame Amelia. “I understand her devastation even more,” she told Brigham, who later told me. (My detractors have often accused me of knowing things I could not possibly know. “She wasn’t there!” they shout. Oh, but this shows their naiveté about plural marriage. In the Saints’ troubled institution, a wife’s confession to her husband hops from one pillow to the next with the determination of a bed bug.)

  The standoff between Amelia and Mary continued until my arrival. They say nothing heals a wound better than time. In plural marriage, nothing dulls the pain of a new wife better than the next one after. There is a cruel logic in a polygamous household. A wife generally ignores the women who preceded her but loathes the first woman to follow. When that woman gets replaced herself, the previous wife takes an un-Christian pleasure in seeing her pained as she had been. This is not always the case. Many women are too noble in heart to nurture such feelings. But they are the exception. Amelia’s rage was the rule.

  Thus, my Reader, this is the house
hold I entered that day.

  As I went to enter Brigham’s gardens, I found the gate purposely locked by Amelia. Leggett, Brigham’s gardener, saw me fumbling to enter. “Be right there,” he said, hobbling over. “There you are, ma’am. Sister Amelia’s in quite a blow, isn’t she?”

  As much as I was tempted, I was not about to gossip about another wife.

  “It’s always a fine day around here, until she blows through,” the man continued. “I should hire a militia to protect my flowers. Look at her.” Indeed, Amelia was swiping a brush of cosmos with her parasol, destroying the blooms. But I would not take Leggett’s line, and commented on the beauty of his lavender rose.

  “I’m lucky to have it. Amelia took her shears to my butter rose the other day.”

  “Mr. Leggett,” I said, “please remember her business is not mine.”

  “Of course,” he said. “Until she makes it.”

  “I’m sorry she treats you so poorly.”

  “That’s nothing. You should see how she cuts through Brigham. I’ll tell you this much: it makes me love the man more. He stands up there on Sundays giving wisdom and all the such, and that’s all right and fine, but I never trust a man until I’ve seen him weak. That’s how I know he’s honest. Everyone has his chinks!”

  Later, at dinner, I made a point of sitting across from Amelia in an attempt to establish a rapport. She ignored me, spoke to no one, and never once touched her food. Each time another woman spoke to Brigham, Amelia pouted and fumed, and indulged in her unpleasant habit of picking at her face. I asked what was troubling her, but she chose not to answer. At the end of the meal, as the cake plate was passed, she shoved it under my nose. “You look like you enjoy your sweets,” she said, the famous diamonds sparkling. I must admit the precious stones only enhanced her enviable complexion—while making the rest of Brigham’s women, myself included, appear ordinary and plain. I took from the plate two slices of lemon cake, folded them into a cloth for my boys, and thanked Amelia for her kindness. Her lips twisted into a graceless smile. This would be the only time Amelia and I spoke in the five years we shared a husband. I once heard Brigham say that the most beautiful women are also angry, which must explain his unique devotion to Amelia.

  I never became a regular wife at the Lion House, and after a few months I stopped dining there altogether. I remember one afternoon Brigham was visiting me in the cottage. He thought to ask, “When did you stop supping with us?”

  “Months ago.”

  “Has it been that long? I miss seeing my wife.”

  “I’m not your wife,” I said.

  He rose from the bed and began to assemble himself, buttoning up and refastening his cuffs. He said nothing more, grunting incomprehensibly as he bent to pull on his boots. He left my room without another word, as if wounded and retreating to his lair. Yet the space where he had stood did not empty. It was as if he had left the spirit of himself behind, a black ghost, large and shaped to his form. This apparition watched me as I dressed. It penetrated my thoughts as I worried if I had somehow destroyed my soul’s redemption, and that of my boys. I do not believe in phantasmagorical events, but this presence was so formidable, and real, I must describe it as it seemed to me.

  On the stairs I heard Brigham greet my mother. I heard the door open and the Prophet’s heavy boots on the porch. I went to my window and watched him walk down the path. Outside the boys were throwing rocks at a lizard. “Lorenzo! James!” the Prophet called. “How would you like it if some great big thing was throwing stones at you?” Brigham lowered himself heavily to one knee and pried open the boys’ hands. He took their armament of rocks and gently set them upon the ground. He whispered something to the boys, who listened carefully, then smiled and laughed, throwing their arms around him. At the same time, the apparition up in my room spoke. Everything is for them. The voice was Brigham’s. Everything you do now is for your boys.

  THE 19TH WIFE

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Faith in Marriage

  On our first anniversary Brigham transferred me, along with my mother and my boys, to Forest Farm, his agricultural compound south of the city. “I know you don’t care much for your little cottage,” he said. “Many people say Forest Farm is one of the prettiest places in all of Utah. I think you’ll find the land good for the boys. As for you—I spent twenty-five thousand dollars on the house. It has two stories, not including the cellar. If this doesn’t suit, my goodness, I don’t know what will.” In this he was truthful: the house was a gabled, Gothic-style home laid out in the shape of a double cross. It sat upon a fine flat parcel of rich soil, with a black walnut orchard and open views to the mountains. It seemed as fine a place as any in Deseret to raise my boys.

  What I did not know, nor did Brigham inform me until my arrival, was that most of the farm’s operations were now my responsibility. Forest Farm served as Brigham’s larder. Each day it delivered fresh milk, eggs, butter, vegetables, and meats to his scores of wives and children throughout Salt Lake. Every day in the black of morning I rose to begin my chores in the barn, finishing long after the sun had set. My mother did the same, looking after the house and cooking for the thirty farm hands who tended Brigham’s field of beets and alfalfa, his cocoonery, and his thousand heads of registered cattle. When one chore was complete, five others waited. The end of each day simply brought the beginning of the next.

  “I’ve never worked so hard in my life,” I said to my mother.

  “You don’t know the meaning of the word.” My mother had the common outlook of the Pioneer—that the ordeal of the early Saints would never be surpassed. In terms of toil and hardship, I am certain she is right. Even so, the farm work wore away at my spirits. “Do you ever wonder why we’re doing all of this?” I asked my mother.

  My mother buttoned up her expression in a manner that meant, No point in asking about the will of God. My mother is an intelligent, experienced woman. She has known many kinds of men. When people ask me now, why is it that I continued to believe in the teachings of the Mormon Church for so long, I speak of her. Dear Reader, let me tell you this: Love and trust are Siamese twins, as conjoined as Chang and Eng. I loved my mother and trusted her judgment, even more than I trusted my own. Every time doubt formed hard in my heart, my mother broke it apart with her love.

  From time to time Brigham drove out to the farm to inspect his operation and visit with me. While engaged with my husband upstairs, I could hear the boys playing on the rope that hung from the locust tree. They played more loudly when Brigham was present, shouting in a way they never did when we were alone. As I lay with my husband, I imagined they were calling to me: Mother! I have not forgotten you! It was the thought I held to through Brigham’s visits. This was how I put him out of my mind, even while he was there.

  Each Sunday we rode into Salt Lake for services to renew our faith. Church lasted several hours, and with the afternoon meetings it took most of the day. For some it was also a social affair, with a few female Saints flaunting their garments as if they were sewn from the shrouds of Christ. Some men, though certainly not all, would boast of business transactions and successful crops and their latest wives. This kind of vanity is not exclusive to the Saints on Sunday, I know. Anywhere the devout gather to worship, there will always be a parade.

  During this period I began to form new questions. I thought of the men around the country, indeed across the Globe—from the high-hatted Pope in Rome to the turbaned Caliph among the Turks—who stood before their people and proclaimed, each in his own language, a set of infallible truths, many similar to those Brigham offered. How can so many men claim the key to Divine Truth? At the time, I could not articulate this question or others, not in the manner I have just now on the page. Yet they were forming, in the manner of the pearl, I suppose, grinding into a truth. It was an all but imperceptible feeling, but on Sundays I sensed it, rubbing against me, deep within. It would be years before I would fully recognize this gem.

  Above all, one sermo
n imprinted itself upon my mind. Many weeks had passed since I had received word from my husband. My daily life involved such a variety of tasks that many days would come and go without his name or image entering my mind. Over time Brigham became a distant figure, such as the men of Washington are distant to us. Certainly we know they exist, for we read of their declarations and pronouncements. Yet to many they do not feel alive, no more than a Roman statesman depicted in the History book feels alive to the student today. This was my benign opinion of my husband when one Sunday he opened up on the topic of his wives.

  Shall I tell you now the question most men and women concern themselves over? The truth most Brothers and Sisters seek? Shall I reveal to you the inquiry that most preoccupies your minds? I know this because often I meet you on the street, or you call upon me at the Beehive House, or when I travel round the Territory, driving to the most remote Stakes to greet the Faithful—no matter where this is, it is always the same question brought to me. And so now I shall share it with you. Brother Brigham—the sincere man or the sincere Sister, and even sometimes the sincere child; Brother Brigham, tell me how many Mrs. Youngs do you possess? How many women sleep at night in the Lion House? How many times have you been sealed? My goodness, is this your most profound question for me? You are at liberty to bring me all inquiries, any unsettling of the mind, and yet this is always the first off your tongues. How I wish you asked me something else. Brother Brigham—how do I know if I am living righteously? If I am serving the Kingdom? If I love my wife, if I love my husband, if I love my daughter or my son? Brother Brigham, what does our Heavenly Father want of me? How shall I know if I am His child? Brothers, Sisters, Saints everywhere—why not these questions, and many like them? Why not the enlightened questions about service and humility and devotion, and evil everywhere conquered by peace? Why no examinations of the Gospel? Of the Revelations? Why do I never hear the question—Brother Brigham, tell me how I can be a true Saint? Instead, always, tell me of your bed! Listen to your words—for in them are all truths of the spirit, and thus they shall be.