by Webb, Betty
To my discomfort, Ermaline turned her attention to me again. I stepped back. If she raised her hand against me…
But she didn’t. “Well, Miss. I see Brother Saul picked himself a pretty lily of the field, all right, but you’re one lily who’s gonna learn how to toil and spin.”
A half hour later, with scant help from me, the first breakfast serving made it to the table. Or rather tables. Since the house had been built to house up to twenty wives and more than a hundred children, it boasted several living areas, dining rooms and kitchens. Sister Ermaline managed the largest kitchen because, as she explained to me, not only was she Prophet Solomon’s first wife, but she had also produced the largest number of children.
“Fifteen children!” she’d told me proudly, while lifting golden brown biscuits out of the oven. “All perfect, all thrivin’.”
And all terrified of her, I thought, but at least they ate well. I snatched at one of her biscuits as she slid them off the pan and onto a banquet-size serving dish for the next go-around. The biscuit weighed no more than a snowflake, and it dissolved in my mouth like one, too. Ermaline could instruct me all she wanted, but I doubted that I could ever learn to make a biscuit like that. Good cooking was an art form, and I had no talent.
As the wives cooked, they ate. They had a bite of egg here, a sausage patty there, and helped themselves to biscuit after biscuit as they emerged from the oven.
“Feedin’ all these kids don’t leave time for much else,” Sister Ermaline said, pointing out the obvious, as she whipped up another batch of biscuits. “But idle hands are the Devil’s work, and ever since Satan tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden, idle women been sinnin’.”
“That’s what they say,” said Jean, back from her sojourn at the trash heap. Somewhere in her thirties, with her pale red hair and Irish green eyes, she would have been easily the best-looking woman in the room except for the thin lines of discontent around her full-lipped mouth. Perhaps her swollen belly explained that.
Not that her advanced pregnancy cut her any slack with Ermaline. If anything, the elder woman tended to speak even more harshly to her than she did to anyone else in the kitchen, except for her own daughter. Some old quarrel perhaps?
Trying to stay out of everyone’s way, I kept folding pea-sized pieces of shortening into the biscuit dough like Ermaline had showed me. Within a few minutes my right hand began to cramp and I looked at it sorrowfully. First I’d banged it up in karate practice, and now this. Hopefully, the tendons would adapt.
Ermaline’s harsh voice interrupted my thoughts. “We’ll soon knock the idleness out of her, won’t we, Sister Jean?”
I hoped she spoke metaphorically, but I wasn’t sure.
Sister Jean’s face revealed nothing. “Oh, I’m sure you will.”
Had Ermaline also knocked the idleness out of Jean? The older woman could quote Scripture all she wanted, but I recognized a tyrant when I saw one. And I was pretty sure I knew the reason for Ermaline’s harshness. Maybe a woman’s jealousy was considered Original Sin on the compound, but human nature was human nature, especially in Purity, where the more attention from her “husband” a woman received, the more likely she was to become pregnant. The more children a woman had, the bigger her household would be and the more power she would wield in the family. Sister Ermaline might have walked ten paces behind her husband, but among the household’s women, she was top dog.
Until she stopped having children and they continued.
I wasn’t here to make enemies, so I gulped down the last of Sister Ermaline’s biscuit and gave her my brightest smile. “I know my past is cloudy, but I’m trying to be a good woman. Perhaps I can learn from your example, Sister Ermaline.”
Mollified, she smiled for the first time. “See that you do. The Lord loves an obedient woman.”
Oh, Saul, I’m going to kill you for this. Hoping to turn the conversation to less biblical matters, I asked Jean, “How many children do you have, Je…I mean, Sister Jean?”
“Three. This’ll be my fourth.”
Four children to Sister Ermaline’s fifteen. That put her way down in the polygamy pecking order. Why so few children? Had Jean fallen out of favor with Solomon for some reason?
As more biscuits emerged from the oven, I helped Cynthia, who had returned to the kitchen, take them to the tables. Cora, she told me, was no longer allowed to carry food because of her habit of dropping things. Instead, the little girl now made sure the salt and pepper containers were filled.
“You should have been here the day she dropped the green bean casserole,” Cynthia said, apparently recovered from the loss of her anatomy book. “Beans everywhere, even on the ceiling. Cora’s a sweetie, but she has her limits.”
With surprise, I saw Meade standing at the head of one of the tables, but when I said good morning to him, he hardly noticed. He was too busy holding a salt shaker steady so Cora could fill it. No matter where he positioned the shaker, the salt went elsewhere. To give the little tyrant his due, his voice expressed nothing but patience.
When Cora finally managed to fill the shaker, he made a fist and gave the table three sharp raps. The chatter in the room ceased.
“Brothers and sisters, it’s time for prayer.”
The mystery of his presence in his old home was solved. As a male, albeit an unmarried one, he was qualified to lead the family in prayer. Women weren’t. Since the gigantic family ate in shifts, did he also pray in shifts?
I bowed my head and ran through the alphabet several times before the long-winded Meade finally quit. But I’ll say this for him: he did manage to mention food a couple of times in between the Heavenly reminders of male superiority and female subservience. When we’d all muttered “Amen,” I walked with Cynthia back to the kitchen.
“Does he do that every morning?” I asked her.
“Every morning, lunch and dinner. Brother Meade is very devout. That’s why the Circle of Elders wanted to name him prophet, not Davis.”
I stopped in my tracks. “You’re kidding, right? A fourteen-year-old boy?”
She shrugged, stopping with me. “We believe a prophet is born, not made. After my father’s funeral, the Circle of Elders met all night and by morning, Brother Earl said he’d had a Revelation that the new prophet of Purity should be Brother Meade, but by then it was too late. The night before, Brother Davis had his own Revelation, and the other men in the compound, the ones that don’t like the Circle of Elders much, let him assume the title of prophet. Things were pretty ugly around here for a couple of days, but then they settled down. They always do.”
I’ll bet. A good old-fashioned power struggle, with everyone involved claiming to act for God. I wondered if the potshots taken at Prophet Davis from the canyon were signs that Earl Graff had organized a counter-revolution. Not that I cared what those fools did to each other. Cynthia’s information did create a new suspect in the murder of Solomon Royal.
“How did Brother Meade feel about getting edged out for the job of prophet?” Kids had killed before, for stranger reasons.
Cynthia laughed. “The idea of being named prophet scared him to death, but he didn’t want anyone to know that, especially not Brother Earl. After Brother Davis was anointed prophet, though, Meade looked like a thousand pounds had just slid off his back.” She fell silent for a second. “Just between you and me, I think Brother Earl wanted to be prophet himself, but knew he wasn’t popular enough.”
Like his half-sister, Meade was no dummy. He’d probably guessed that Earl would use him as a figurehead only, and didn’t want any part of it. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.
An hour later the last of the children had eaten and it was time for me to return home. “It’s seven o’clock,” I announced, slipping off the apron Jean had loaned me. “My husband must be starving.”
“Oh, and how is Brother Saul?” Sister Jean asked, straightening her own apron. “You two getting along okay?”
�
�Sure, other than his complaints about my cooking.”
She shoved a tinfoil-wrapped plate into my hands. “Here are some sausage, eggs and biscuits to take to Brother Saul, but by the end of the week you should be able to put together a decent breakfast for him.”
I doubted that.
Keeping a humble expression on my face, I hurried the plate back to Saul’s house so he could eat Ermaline’s biscuits while they were still warm.
Ruby snatched the plate from me as soon as I entered the house. “It’s about time,” she snapped. Her eyes were red from lack of sleep, reminding me of my noisy performance the previous night. “It’s a disgrace to make your husband wait so long for his breakfast.”
Amused, I trailed after her. As I entered the kitchen, which now seemed tiny compared to Ermaline’s, I saw Saul, freshly shaved, sitting at the table wolfing down a big bowl of Cheerios. An apple core and banana skin lay beside the bowl. I allowed myself a moment of housewifely pride. Maybe I couldn’t cook, but I could sure write a mean shopping list.
“I actually helped make a couple of those biscuits,” I said, as Ruby set the plate in front of him.
“The flat ones, probably,” she grumped.
“Ladies, ladies, don’t fight,” Saul said, shoving aside his Cheerios and popping a butter-drenched biscuit into his mouth. “Sister Lena, this flat little biscuit tastes like heaven on earth. I can’t wait to see what pleasures your lunch lesson will bring us.”
Ruby said nothing, but I noticed that she ate as many biscuits as Saul.
After breakfast was over, Saul and I left an infuriated Ruby to the washing up and strolled onto the porch and out of earshot.
“Do you think it’s going to work?” he said, as we sat down together in the porch swing.
“Learning how to cook or finding out more about Prophet Solomon’s death?”
“Lena.”
I grimaced. “Sorry. The stress of slaving over a hot stove must be getting to me. But in answer to your question, it’s too early to tell.” I gave him a brief rundown of the morning’s activities, going into detail about the book incident. “By the way, I didn’t know you were Purity’s official book-smuggler.”
“Oh, that. I’ve been doing it for years,” he said. “Once Cynthia gets through reading them, she gives them back to me and I take them to the Salvation Army in Zion City so nobody’ll spot things like War and Peace lying around on the dump. That Cynthia, she’s a real bright girl and I’d like to see her make something of herself. She was talking about being a doctor there for a while, and I think she could manage it, too.”
“She won’t if Ermaline has anything to do with it.”
He made a face. “Ermaline’s got an attitude, but she makes a fine biscuit.” He smacked his lips at the memory.
“Jean seems to look out for Cynthia.”
“Poor Jean. She’s never been happy up at that house. I think she used to be sweet on Davis Royal but then she had to marry his daddy.”
“Had to?” I raised my eyebrows.
He chuckled. “Get your mind out of the gutter, girl. Jean didn’t get pregnant out of wedlock or anything like that. That sort of thing doesn’t happen much in Purity because the girls are usually married off as soon as they start their monthlies. No, what I meant was that some kind of deal went down having to do with a tractor her father wanted but didn’t have the money to buy. But he got the tractor anyway and right after it was delivered, Solomon got Jean.”
“That’s terrible!”
“It was a nice tractor.”
I gave him a look.
“The point is, Jean never could stand Solomon, so I don’t think she was all that broken up over his death.”
“Interesting.”
“Don’t go getting ideas about Jean. She’s not the violent type.”
“Lizzie Borden’s neighbors used to say that about her, too.”
“Lena.”
“Sorry again.” I sat there in silence for a few minutes, listening to the compound’s children as they played on their way to school. They sounded like children anywhere.
“At least the kids seem happy,” I finally said.
“Sure. Purity is great for kids, one big summer camp with hundreds of playmates to choose from. And don’t forget, most of them have more or less intact families, weird as those families are. But when the kids grow up, things change.”
I watched a little blond girl about ten years old cross the dirt circle from the Utah side to the Arizona side, her long, patched dress no match for her budding beauty. I understood what he was saying. “And when the little girls grow up, those changes can get tough.”
“Yeah, somebody always needs a new tractor.”
At eleven I headed to Ermaline’s, first crossing over to the Utah side and the clinic. I’d planned to ask one of the midwives how Rosalinda was doing, but the groans I heard as I opened the door told me all I needed to know. I hurried to Ermaline’s house.
Within no time I found myself grating heads of cabbage the size and density of bowling balls, all grown in the compound’s massive kitchen garden, while Ermaline hovered over me, criticizing my every move. I worked until my hands cramped as I turned the stuff into coleslaw to be served with the luncheon menu’s main dish: Sloppy Joe sandwiches. As Ermaline told me exactly how much vinegar, pepper, and mayo to add to the slaw’s unholy mess, I edged toward my questioning.
“My heart was broken when I heard about Prophet Solomon’s death,” I lied. “I heard him speak at a library in Salt Lake City and he really turned my life around. It made me determined to come here, and so when I met Brother Saul, it was as if God himself had led me here.”
The harsh expression on Sister Ermaline’s face didn’t lighten. “Our Great Father is living in the highest level of Heaven, waiting for all of us there. As first wife, I’ll sit at his right hand, too.”
Personally, I doubted that the dirty old man’s waiting room was as comfortable as she believed, but I kept my cynicism to myself. Pulling a long face, I said, “Still, Sister Ermaline, it must be a great sorrow having someone you love so much taken away from you before his time.”
“Don’t be silly. In Purity we accept the blows life deals us. Add more vinegar to that. I don’t hold with sweet slaw.”
Our activities were interrupted once by a visit from Sister Hanna, who limped into the kitchen, eyes downcast, her pregnant belly looking almost painful.
“Sister Ermaline, I run out of flour.”
“Poor plannin’!” Ermaline snapped, but directed Jean to fetch some from the pantry. “You need to start making lists and keeping them updated. God hates a woman who don’t tend to business.”
“I know, Sister Ermaline,” Hanna said, almost cowering. “I’m trying. I just can’t seem to…”
“Try harder!”
With a gentle smile, Jean handed Hanna a bag of flour. Before I’d come to Purity, I would have thought it was enough to feed an army; now I knew it wouldn’t last beyond one meal.
“Thank you, Sister Jean,” Hanna said, then limped out the door.
Ermaline stared after her, contempt in her eyes. And, strangely, fear.
Why?
As the morning wore on, I decided that Ermaline’s entire interest in life began and ended with the kitchen. Unless she was a greater actress than I believed, she didn’t appear to miss her husband. All she cared about was her coleslaw.
It intrigued me enough to try something. “Sister Ermaline,” I began, “my sister died last year and even though I was a thousand miles away from her, I swear I knew the exact moment of her death. I was mopping the floor and suddenly I knew she was gone, just as surely as if I had been at her bedside. You’d been married to the Prophet for almost forty years and must have been close, so did you have a moment like that? A moment when you knew the Lord had taken him?”
Ermaline’s busy hands stilled, and for a second I thought I saw a glimmer of sadness in her eyes. �
��I never noticed a thing. Not even the next morning. The prophet wasn’t at the table, but I thought maybe he was still with one of my sister wives. Then after breakfast, when some of us was still in the kitchen cannin’ raspberry preserves, Brother Earl came in and he said…he said…”
Was that a tear on her cheek? Or perspiration?
“But the afternoon before, Sister Ermaline, when it must have happened? Maybe one of the other wives felt something?”
She sniffed and her hands busied themselves again. “Sister Jean was in here awhile, but then she ran off to do something else. Sister Martha, she was here, too, but she didn’t say anything about omens. Wait. I remember now. Martha wasn’t feeling good, she had one of them migraines of hers. Somebody made her a potato poultice and she went off to her room to lie down.”
Martha Royal, Meade’s mother, now married to the old goat in that tin trailer. I’d wondered why the Circle of Elders had been so quick to find her another husband, and obviously such an unsuitable one. Now I wondered even more.
So Jean had been out of the kitchen on an errand, Martha had been lying down in a dark room, and Ermaline had remained alone in the kitchen. The section of the canyon where Rebecca and I had stumbled across Prophet Solomon’s body was close enough to the compound that given enough time, a determined woman could have run down there, grabbed his shotgun and blasted both barrels at him, then get back to the kitchen before her absence was noticed.
As far as I was concerned, Ermaline was mean enough to kill anyone, but even mean people needed motives. No problem there. Ermaline had been effectively discarded in favor of younger wives, and although the wives of Purity professed to suffer no jealousy, I thought they all protested too much. But had Ermaline been alone long enough to actually do the deed?