by Rosalyn Eves
Mama says, “I was a second wife. A husband would steady ye, give ye better things to think about than books.”
Words clot in my throat, and it is a moment before I can breathe.
I do not believe this is just about my waywardness. Mama wants to be rid of me. I can’t blame her, after Rachel.
But I cannot do what she wants.
I don’t know how to fit my beliefs together so they lie smoothly. I believe God calls prophets—imperfect though they be—and the prophets say God has instituted polygamy. I am myself a product of it. But I do not want it to be my choice, or my future. Yet how do I proceed when what I feel is right goes against what the prophets say? Am I right, and the prophets wrong? Are they right, and I am a heretic? Or could it be that God only announces general principles and leaves it up to us to work out the wrinkles as they apply to our lives?
Is it prideful to even ask such questions?
Mama is still waiting for me to answer. And because Rachel is sick and Mama has asked it of me, I say, “All right, Mama. I’ll go to church.”
I hold on to this small rebellion, though: I don’t promise anything about Brother Yergensen.
* * *
* * *
Hyrum and I walk the mile or more to church, the late-June sun hot on our backs. My sisters have stayed home to help Mama, and the boys are too unruly. The air is still and stagnant, curdled in the heat. We’ve had no rain in more than a month, and the dry air shimmers against the horizon. I try not to think of Rachel, chilled and limp back at the house, or my heart will fail me.
Hyrum doesn’t say much as we walk. He never does, weighing his words as carefully as gold.
“Are you all right?” I ask him. We haven’t talked since he went for Sister Larsen last night. His quiet refusal to pray hangs in the air between us.
“I’m well enough,” he says.
“But—?” I prompt.
His booted feet scuff the dust. They’re his old boots, split at the toe, as his good boots were ruined fetching Rachel from the creek. I shall have to save all the money I get from selling eggs to buy him new ones.
“Do you think—” Hyrum starts, then stops. He clears his throat. “Do you think God loves some of us better than others?”
“Of course not,” I say fiercely. I peer at him, but he won’t meet my eyes. “Has someone said something to you?” I’ve got some choice words for anyone who has dared.
“No. Only I’ve been thinking. Maybe if I were different, better, I could have helped Rachel more. I could have prayed with you.” He sighs. “Shouldn’t I be wanting a home of my own, a wife, more responsibilities in the church? I’m not an elder yet. And I like things as they are.”
I shrug a little helplessly. “How should I know? I don’t want a husband either.”
“But you might, someday? I’m not sure I’ll ever want a wife. I don’t feel about girls as I should, to marry one.”
“Feeling different from how other folks think you should doesn’t make you unworthy,” I say.
Hyrum spreads his hands wide. “At church we’re told the highest level of heaven is for husband and wife, sealed together. Will God still want me if I don’t want that?”
I don’t know the answers to everything he’s asking, spoken and unspoken, but something hot boils up inside me. “I don’t believe God loves you any less for being who He made you to be. Just like He loves Mama with her moods, and Emily with her fears, and Far with all his pride.”
Hyrum squeezes my hand tight. “And you.”
I smile back, but my heart aches. Maybe God loves us for what we cannot help, but surely my unruliness, my disobedience, are choices I have made. But if I can’t quite believe that acceptance extends to me, I have no doubt of Hyrum.
We don’t say anything more until we reach the rock-walled church house. Hyrum stays at the building for the morning meetings, while I walk on to the school, which the Presbyterians let us use for our Sunday school for the children. Because the day is fine, I gather my small class outside, beneath a cottonwood tree. We’ve just begun a story from the Book of Mormon, about a woman named Abish, when a man and a young girl approach us.
When they draw nearer, I see that it’s Brother Timican, one of the local Paiutes who was baptized into our church some years back. I don’t recognize the girl with him, who looks to be about ten, her black hair braided in a thick plait, her skin a warm, rich brown.
Brother Timican stops before me. “This is my daughter, Sarah.” He’s wearing a cotton shirt and trousers, instead of buckskin, and his daughter wears a blouse and skirt much like mine. She tugs at the skirt and pulls at the cuffs of her sleeves, as though they chafe.
I have never spoken with Brother Timican before, despite seeing him at church many times. He makes me nervous, though I don’t know why. The Indians who drove us out of the Little Green Valley during the Black Hawk War were mostly Utes, not Paiutes. Far says the Indians were angry because the cattle that the pioneers brought west destroyed the grasses and seeds they relied on for food and clothes, and the settlers took over the good land on the riverbanks where the tribes used to farm.
I’d be angry too if someone did that to my home.
Brother Timican says, “I want my daughter to learn to live among you, to learn your stories as well as our own.” Your stories, he says, as though the stories of scripture are not his.
Sarah ducks her head, and the quick, shy movement reminds me of Emily. I hold my hand out to the girl and smile at her. “If I tell you one of my stories, will you tell me one of yours?”
She nods, returning my smile.
The other children watch her curiously. Brother Timican whispers something to her, and Sarah relinquishes his hand. Dappled sunshine filters through the cottonwood to speckle us with light. Her fingers settle, gentle as a bird, in mine. My heart squeezes tight as I remember all the times Rachel has done the same. For a moment, I forget where I am, what I am doing. Please, God, let her live.
I show Sarah a place to sit beside the youngest of the Willard children, a round, friendly girl of twelve. Then I go back to my story, but I stumble over it. Abish was a Lamanite, the only one of her people to believe in our God. With Sarah’s dark eyes fixed on me, I wonder for the first time what it cost Abish to be different. What it costs Brother Timican and Sarah to be here. What it might cost me, someday, if I cannot conform as I ought.
* * *
* * *
Between Sunday school and the sacrament meeting, most folks head back to their homes for dinner. I want to go home, to check on Rachel, but Mama told me in no uncertain terms I was not to come back until after the second meeting. I don’t know if she is punishing me, or if she hopes church will cure me of my faults. Either way, it seems rather a lot to ask from one Sunday.
Hyrum joins me beside the cottonwood tree, to share the sandwiches I’ve prepared. Just as I’ve taken the first bite of my sandwich, the Willard family passes us: parents and five children behind them like ducklings—though they make strange ducklings, as only the youngest is still shorter than her mama.
Samuel catches my eye, smirking a little, and I choke on the dry bread, remembering that I insulted him the last time we met. Was that only yesterday?
Sister Willard, a round middle-aged woman with laugh lines creasing her cheeks, stops walking to look at me with sympathy. “I was that sorry to hear about your sister. We’ve been praying for her, for your family. I do hope she’ll make a full recovery.” Like Mama’s, Sister Willard’s English accent has been worn soft by her time in Utah.
“Thank you, Sister Willard,” I say, warmed by her concern.
The line between her eyebrows deepens. “You’re not planning to sit out in this sun, are you? Come along home with us. Least I can do to help your mama is feed you.”
There’s no graceful way to refuse an offer like that. I sto
w our sandwiches back in my bag and stand. Hyrum falls in between Samuel and his next youngest brother and says something to make them both laugh. I smile at them, pleased by their easy acceptance of Hyrum, whose soft-spoken gentleness doesn’t always draw people to him.
Vilate Ann, two years younger than me at fifteen, catches my smile and sidles up beside me. Her curly blond hair wages a mostly successful war to be free of the braids down her back. “Handsome boys, aren’t they?” She doesn’t wait for an answer before continuing. “Mama likes you, you know. You could marry any of my brothers with her blessing.”
Better Samuel than Brother Yergensen. The thought flits across my mind before I can remind myself that I am not interested in marriage. I grit my teeth, then say, perhaps louder than necessary, “I don’t mean to marry any of your brothers.”
Samuel turns, his teeth flashing white in a grin that pulls up the corners of his beard, his brown eyes crinkling at the corners. “I believe it’s customary to wait until you’re asked before refusing, Miss Elizabeth.”
I freeze for a moment, my face burning hot as a stove. Perhaps the earth will open beneath me and swallow me up. There have been tremors in the valley before. It’s not an impossible wish.
Thankfully, we soon reach the house Samuel’s father built—one of the first log houses in the valley, with planed square planks instead of the more usual round ones. Word is, when Sister Willard arrived in the valley, she refused to live in a sod house, saying she wouldn’t go into the ground until she was buried there. The interior is dark and cool, thanks to the thick walls, and Sister Willard and Vilate Ann bustle into activity, setting out fruit and bread on the table, ladling stew from a pot simmering on the corner stove. A heavy wood table dominates the center of the room, and a pull-down ladder in another corner indicates sleeping quarters in an attic upstairs.
The boys tease their sisters, who respond smartly and then laugh. The very ordinariness of the scene makes my throat tighten. This could have been any meal at my house, before yesterday.
After a prayer, the food is passed around the table. Hyrum tucks into the crispy bread and tart cider, but I can’t bring myself to eat much, thinking about Rachel. Sister Willard, sitting beside me, presses my hand instead of telling me to eat, and that motherly kindness nearly undoes me. I sniff, blinking back tears, and raise my eyes to find Samuel watching me from across the table. He makes a horrific face at me and I choke on a startled laugh. Oddly enough, it makes me feel better, though I would never give Samuel the satisfaction of knowing that.
After we eat, we return to the church house. The Willard family fills an entire pew and spills into the next. I miss the days when my family did the same. Now, mostly, it’s just me, sometimes Hyrum. Occasionally Mama comes with Emily and Mary or sends the littler boys to Sunday school.
I spy Brother Yergensen seated across the chapel with his family, and I pull Hyrum into a pew behind the Willards. Samuel swivels around in his seat to wink at me, and I pretend I do not see him.
Closing my eyes, I let the murmured voices swirl around me. Ours is no fine chapel, of carved stone and colored glass windows, that invites awe and reverence. But with my back against the cool wood, a hushed sensation rises in me, a stillness I sometimes name as the Holy Spirit. It’s the same sense I get lying on the ground beneath a star-studded sky, of being part of something much bigger than me. Here, in the curious anonymity one gets in a group, there’s a blessed pause where I don’t have to be anything other than who I am.
Sometimes going to church is like trying to study astronomy and stumbling up against gaps too big to fill with what I know. But other times the sky clears, and I catch glimpses of the infinite.
The bishop starts the meeting by talking of Rachel, asking the congregation to pray with him. As he begins, I peek at the bowed heads around me. Sister Larsen, who delivered Albert and blessed Rachel just last night. Brother Collings, who helped Mama run the mill the summer Far was struck with fever. Sister Aditi Tait, who married a Mormon missionary in India against her mother’s wishes and followed him to Utah, and who gave Mama a length of patterned silk the color of the sky at sunset, because she heard Mama was sad and thought the fabric would cheer her. Brother Hunt, who carried David Charles two miles home the time he broke his leg stealing apples from the Hunts’ orchard. All of them praying now for Rachel. For my family.
This is what my faith looks like in practice. The homely wonder of it makes my eyes prickle, and I close them in time to echo Amen.
* * *
* * *
After the meeting, folks cluster around us as we leave the building, asking about Rachel, offering to help. Sister Larsen agrees to go by the house to check on her, two other sisters promise to bring by food, and Brother Willard offers to take a shift at the mill to help Far. Beside me, Hyrum blinks and ducks his head, shy in the face of all this attention. But the tips of his ears are pink, so I know he doesn’t entirely dislike it.
I thank everyone as warmly as I can, trying not to notice Brother Yergensen hovering behind the crowd like an ill-omened bird.
At last the press disperses, and Brother Yergensen stands in front of me, twisting his hat in his hands. The sun glints off his scalp, visible beneath the thinning hair of his head. He is not an unkind man, but I scarcely know him. He is closer to my father’s age than mine.
“Sister Bertelsen, may I speak with you?” He glances uncomfortably at Hyrum.
Sister Yergensen stands some distance away, watching us with a toddler on her hip. She gives me a thin-lipped smile. What does she think of this strange courtship? I wish I dared ask her.
“I must get home,” I say, trying to put him off. “My sister—”
“We’ve been praying for her,” he says. “Perhaps I can come visit you, to see how she gets on? Maybe Tuesday night, after the Mutual Improvement Association meeting? I could walk you home.”
If I say no, Mama will never let me hear the end of it. And I promised God I would try harder to do as Mama asked. But if I say yes—
I remind myself this is not a marriage proposal. “All right,” I say, and the twisting of the hat stops as Brother Yergensen returns it to his head.
Someone brushes past me, jostling my shoulder, and I look up to see Samuel, his sister Vilate Ann just behind him. Samuel says nothing, not even an apology, though his eyes meet mine with a flattened expression that makes my heart pinch.
“Thank you,” Brother Yergensen says, nodding to me and turning back to his wife.
* * *
* * *
I watch the house warily as Hyrum and I approach. When no one rushes out to greet us with bad news, my shoulders relax a fraction.
I hesitate only a moment before following Hyrum inside, my desire to see Rachel outweighing my fear that Mama won’t want to see me.
Mama is beside Rachel, stroking her unmoving hand. Mary sits darning in the rocking chair, and Emily reads to Henry and John in the far corner. Sister Larsen is already there, examining Rachel.
“Her color’s better, and her breathing. It may be a bit before she wakes, but you’ll have your girl back, Hannah.”
Mama presses her hand to her lips. “God will it be so.”
I stoop to kneel beside Rachel, and Mama doesn’t stop me. I pluck up the small, pudgy hand and kiss it.
Rachel lets out a long breath like a sigh, and her eyes flicker open. “ ’Lizbeth,” she says, her voice dry and cracked.
Beside us, Mama sucks in a sharp breath.
“I’m here, my darling.” Relief makes my voice waver.
Rachel’s lips slide into a satisfied smile. Then, apparently exhausted by this exchange, she shuts her eyes again.
The others all crowd around us, talking at once: Hyrum and Mary and Emily and John and Henry. Sister Larsen says something about warming some broth to feed Rachel. But it’s Mama I watch: Mama, who kneels besi
de me to cup Rachel’s face in her hands; Mama, who turns, at last, to see me, her eyes wet with tears.
chapter four
Tuesday, July 2, 1878
Monroe, Utah
Twenty-seven days until eclipse
Tuesday morning dawns unfairly clear and bright. If Brother Yergensen truly intends to call upon me this evening, by rights the skies should be lowering and gray. I rival even Mary for snappishness, and Mama sends me out to gather the laundry from the line.
Sunlight beats against my head in an unrelenting assault. Unpinning clothes hanging limp in the heat, I resist the urge to run Henry’s clean shirt against the sweat dripping from my cheeks. I spy Hyrum coming up the road from the mill, waving a slip of paper. “Telegram for Mama!”
A telegram means something urgent.
Hyrum ducks into the house and I follow. The house is near as warm as the outside, but the dimmer light is not so brutal.
As I cross the sitting room, I check compulsively for Rachel. Her voice floats in from the bedroom, a singsong conversation with her dolly. My stiff shoulders relax a fraction. Though she still spends much of her day resting, each day marks new improvements.
Mama is in the kitchen, running a flat iron across the clothes I’ve already brought in from yesterday’s wash, using the kitchen table instead of a board. Mary and Emily sit darning nearby.
Setting the iron back on the stove to heat, Mama takes the telegram from Hyrum and reads it swiftly. She looks up, lips pursed. “Go fetch your father,” she tells Hyrum, and then refuses to say anything more until, one skirt and half a dress later, Far appears in the doorway. His eyes are wide in alarm, his chest heaving after his run. “Hyrum says there’s a telegram.”