Shattered Dreams

by Irene Spencer

  Then he raised up over me, gave me a light peck on the lips, and yawned. “Good night, Irene,” he murmured. “I’m so lucky to have you for a wife.”

  The smoldering volcano inside me suddenly erupted. “Your wife?” I yelled. “You’re treating me more like a concubine!”

  “Shhh,” he tried to silence me. “Please. Charlotte will hear us.”

  “Where do I fit in, Verlan? Where are my rights?” I fought to remove the hand with which he’d now covered my mouth. “No! You won’t shut me up! I didn’t run off and leave my family to come down here to the end of the earth so that you could roll over and not even make love to me!”

  “Shh, shh,” he begged almost desperately. “Hold still, pleeeease. You’re shaking the springs! She’ll think I am making love to you!”

  I pulled away, crying.

  “Please don’t cry, Irene. She’ll see your swollen face tomorrow morning, thinking I’ve mistreated you.”

  “I don’t care what she thinks. I’m sick and tired of being second fiddle,” I wailed.

  “Irene,” he whispered, trying to calm me. “Why would you ever say you’re second fiddle?”

  I sat up, gritting my teeth, and snapped, “Because you fiddle with me second!”

  I could feel Verlan’s despair. How would he ever handle two wives in the same house? Finally calming me, he persuaded me to lie back down next to him. He kissed me repeatedly, trying to dry my tears on his pajama sleeves. “Forgive me if I don’t make love to you,” he said. “Try to understand. I don’t want to hurt Charlotte. But look, since we have been apart so long, I’ll give you two nights in a row. What would you think of that?”

  “Big deal!” was what I thought. The tears welled back up. Would we never make love again for fear of hurting Charlotte? Could that really be how plural marriage was supposed to work? Surely not, if I was supposed to manufacture a child each year. The knot in my stomach got bigger and tighter. I couldn’t help but think how different things would be if this were Glen lying next to me.

  Verlan held me as he abruptly began praying. I tried to cry softly so as not to interrupt. “Thank you, Lord, for Irene’s safe arrival,” he said. “Give us strength to bear up under our trials and tribulations. Let Irene know she is needed and loved.” With a final “Amen,” he pulled me closer. “I do love you,” he whispered in my ear as he drifted off, apparently content that God had answered his prayer. Within a few minutes, Verlan’s rhythmic breathing told me he was sound asleep. I lay there wide awake, staring into nothingness, exhausted from the day’s shattering events.

  Soon I heard tiny squeaks, then odd rushing noises. I listened for a while but couldn’t figure out what this could be, so I shook Verlan awake. “What are those noises?” I asked nervously.

  “What noises?” he said groggily.

  We both listened. They came again. “Oh, that,” he said, patting my arm as he rolled over toward the wall. “You’ll get used to it. It’s just mice running up the walls.” Burying my face in the pillow, I turned my back to him and wondered how long it would be before I was climbing the walls.

  THE BAD THING ABOUT expectations is the huge thud that always seems to follow on their heels. I’d envisioned an idyllic, Utah-like hacienda where I’d have my own home far from Charlotte and live openly and proudly as Verlan’s wife. The reality so far was much more akin to what Mother and Richard predicted. This thud left me in a deep state of shock. If not for the promise I’d made to Uncle Rulon and the fact that I knew not one word of Spanish, I think I would have resolved in that moment to thumb my way right back to El Paso the next day.

  So far, I’d lived up to my side of this most difficult bargain. But for some reason, God wasn’t doing his part.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The next morning, Verlan decided he’d show me around the “ranch.” We’d already had a hectic morning chasing a large, evil-looking rat around the house before Charlotte and I managed to corner and kill it by bashing it with a cast-iron frying pan. I was somewhat shaken by that experience, but I would soon get used to rats, and all sorts of other vermin as well.

  After breakfast, Verlan and I had only walked about the distance of a city block before we met up with Ervil’s wife, Delfina. Delfina was a tall, light-skinned Mexican woman with short black hair and lively brown eyes. She appeared to be pregnant. After Verlan introduced us, she smiled and laughed as she spoke to me in Spanish. Verlan told me she’d said I was pretty, with my beautiful, honey-colored hair, and she hoped I’d be happy here.

  Next, Verlan led me to a ramshackle, two-room adobe hut situated behind three other homes where his brothers lived. “My sister Lucinda lives here. She’s been sick for years, but don’t be afraid. She’s harmless as long as she’s locked up.” He was apparently worried he’d gone too far in downplaying the situation, so he added, “The last time she was out, she went after Mother with a butcher knife, but luckily Delfina grabbed it away before anyone was harmed.”

  When Lucinda saw us approaching, she put her arms through the wooden, two-by-four bars across the window. “Who’s that girl?” she called out, waving to us.

  Verlan pushed me up to the hut near the window. From there I could see her sandy, reddish hair going every which way as she threw her head back, laughing at nothing. Her blouse gaped open, revealing a saggy breast, and her skinny arms were deeply freckled from the sun. I noticed then that one of the rooms to which she was confined had no roof. I thought she was probably in her early thirties.

  “This is my sister-in-law, Irene,” Verlan said.

  Lucinda was incoherent. She talked a blue streak, never finishing one sentence before trailing off into another, laughing without warning. She made no sense at all. I had never dealt with an insane person before. It scared and depressed me to see her caged like a wild animal. I turned almost immediately to leave.

  I was still trying to recover from this shock while walking back toward the house when a tall, lanky, sandy-haired man approached us. “I want you to meet my brother Alma,” Verlan said. Alma was the eldest LeBaron brother living on the Mexico ranch.

  Verlan and Alma shook hands, and I said hello. I stood close to Alma with my hands on my hips, waiting for him to say something, but he didn’t return the greeting. I could feel his judgmental eyes scanning me up and down.

  “Nice girls don’t put their hands on their hips,” he said, finally breaking his silence. Then he turned and sauntered off down the path. Verlan just shook his head, smiling at me apologetically.

  “How come I’ve never heard of him before?” I asked, thinking that a natural history museum probably wouldn’t have as many skeletons in its closet as the LeBarons did.

  “Well,” Verlan chuckled, “I thought maybe I’d scare you off if I told you all the family secrets at once.”

  Oh, my goodness, my mother was right. Alarmed, I stuttered, “Is . . . he crazy, too?”

  “Not really,” Verlan laughed. “They thought he was about three months ago, but only for a few days. You and I missed out on the action. Our cousin Owen, who was visiting from Canada, claimed that God was directing all his activities. He convinced his two wives and their children to parade nude around the ranch. Alma went along with them, climbing those hills over there across the main dirt road, and naked, they all waited for hours on their rooftop for flying saucers to arrive and take them up to the heavenly realms. But when the Mexican police showed up before the spaceships did, well, Alma figured he and Owen had somehow been deceived.”

  When Verlan saw my shocked expression, he added, “Don’t hold it against him, Irene! He’s repented!”

  Verlan was trying to make light of it, but I felt my depression quickly deepening. Maybe it was a good thing, after all, not to tell anyone I was Verlan’s second wife. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be that closely associated with these LeBarons.

  THAT EVENING, Ervil took Verlan aside. I couldn’t help overhearing him ask, “Say, who’s responsible for your sister-in-law?”

  “I
am,” Verlan answered. “She’s here to keep Charlotte company.”

  A broad, satisfied grin spread across Ervil’s chiseled features. “Well,” he announced proudly, “God gave me a revelation last night. Irene is to be my second wife!”

  Verlan’s shocked tone was not at all friendly when he shot back, “Leave her alone, Ervil. She’s already my wife!”

  The silly grin vanished. Blushing a deep red, Ervil now apologized, “Ah, I was just jokin’, Verlan, just jokin’.”

  By bedtime that night, I knew Verlan had some serious problems. Charlotte’s constant expression screamed displeasure. She’d been civil to me but had not tried to make any conversation. Verlan spent twenty minutes in her bedroom telling her good night. Then, he’d finally locked the kitchen door and crawled into bed with me. He surprised me then with his incredible powers of positive spin.

  “Things seem to be running pretty well, all considered,” he said. “I have two wives in the same house, and no major fights yet. Thank God both you and Charlotte were raised with the same fundamentalist Mormon principles. I know it’s hard on you, but you’re so lucky to be sisters. I’m sure you’ll get along fine together.”

  Yes, I did love Charlotte, I assured him. But the truth was I couldn’t feel free with both of us living under one roof. “In fact,” I said, “I want a house of my own, even if it’s just one room.”

  Verlan claimed disappointment that I could even entertain such thoughts. “You’ll never learn to overcome your faults and jealousies if you’re not faced with them on a daily basis,” he lectured. “You have to overcome your negative thoughts, purify yourself. Don’t put yourself in a position to jeopardize your salvation by indulging your sin.”

  Over the years, I discovered this to be the standard response of polygamous husbands whenever their disgruntled plural wives made the demand I had. Even that night, at the start of our marriage, I thought Verlan’s rebuke sounded awfully convenient.

  “Besides,” he said, getting to the crux of the matter, “I can’t afford another home. What money we make here is just enough for survival, not enough for selfish wants.”

  That said, Verlan quickly changed the subject. He told me about Ervil’s revelation, about how Ervil said he knew I was to be his wife and not just his sister-in-law.

  “Yes, I heard him,” I said. “I couldn’t help but laugh at his false revelation.” I wished Verlan would shut up long enough to know me like Adam knew Eve, in the biblical sense. After all, what about his duty as my husband?

  I playfully rubbed my toes against his bare foot, leaning against him as I stroked his neck, running my fingers through his hair. My youthful body ached with desire. Shivers ran down my spine. He didn’t respond in the least, rejecting all my advances. Finally, I asked fearfully, “Verlan, don’t you love me at all? What am I doing wrong?”

  “Of course I love you,” he whispered almost painfully. “Just because we don’t make love doesn’t mean I don’t love you! Sex shouldn’t be such a big deal in our lives. You know we want to reach for the highest goals. If we want godhood, we have to keep the law of purity.”

  I didn’t want to listen to any more of his explanations, but he continued with his sermon: “We have to learn to control our passions and use them only for procreation. We’ve already done it twice in the last few weeks. Let’s not overdo a sacred thing.”

  I turned my back to him, hoping to block his painful words. I couldn’t bear being rebuked for wanting love from my husband. I was screaming inside. Of course, I knew I’d brought some of this on by my hasty assent to the law of purity on the night we’d first consummated our marriage. After that first painful sexual experience, I’d have been willing to abstain altogether. Surely the Devil led the world astray with such a disgusting activity. I couldn’t imagine why God would allow it except when absolutely necessary, for procreation. At the time I agreed, I thought it would be easy for me to keep my vow.

  But all that was before the night Verlan spent with me at Aunt Beth’s. I’d never known such ecstasy before that. I felt like I’d ascended through glory after glory until I’d finally been thrown into seventh heaven. Why would God have invented something so wonderful and then put such harsh restrictions on it? It didn’t seem fair.

  I fell to thinking about my mother. How had she lived so many years without any physical love? As sorry as Horace was, I repented that I’d begrudged her the love of a man. Why hadn’t I listened to her wisdom, her warnings to me? Why hadn’t it ever occurred to me that God might have been speaking to me through her and Richard and even my father, rather than through Aunt Rhea and Donna and Uncle Rulon, that God might have been telling me to shun my childhood indoctrination into polygamy and accept his good gift of Glen? The Fifth Commandment says to honor thy father and mother, that thy days may be long upon the Earth. I hadn’t listened to my mother or father, so I guess I had all this coming to me. Now perhaps God would do me the favor of shortening my days upon the Earth.

  There in the dark, with Verlan snoring in one ear and the patter of tiny feet in the other, I knew I’d wandered into dangerous thought territory. To get back to a tolerable mind-set, I told myself Verlan was simply a man who loved God more than I did. I could honestly respect him for that. At least he wasn’t lustful, like other men. Not about certain things, anyway.

  His desire was to obtain at least seven wives—a quorum, he called it. He believed that would secure his eternal godhood. Meanwhile, I was to be patient and obedient; after all, we had an eternity to work out our problems as husband and wife. We’d been commanded by God to multiply and replenish the Earth so we could enlarge our heavenly glory. I would therefore have to be long-suffering.

  Still, we had to have sex in order to have all those children, didn’t we?

  I often lay sleepless, with Verlan softly snoring beside me, wondering if the problem was really me. Was something wrong with me? Did he find me offensive in some way? I knew I wasn’t a beauty, but then no one had ever said I was ugly, either. Many men already wanted me at sixteen. In fact, compared to other girls my age, I’d been led to believe I was fairly pretty. I had golden blonde hair down past my shoulders, with thick braids. I sometimes wore it parted in the center with a wave on each side. I was five foot six, with blue eyes, and I wasn’t overweight.

  My major shortcoming was never being serious. Life might be hard, but I had to unbend sometimes or I’d become an old prune. I was prone to find humor even in tragedy.

  I vowed to quit being so terrible so Verlan would love me. More than anything now, I wanted to become his favorite wife.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The following afternoon, Verlan and I headed for what he called the cheese house, where we found Ervil hard at work. Ever since Verlan told me they made cheese on their ranch, I’d been anxious to learn how to do it, but I was not prepared for what I saw. The right sleeve of Ervil’s dirty gray shirt was rolled all the way up to his armpit. I watched with fascination as the dark hairs on his long arms swished through the clabbered milk while he gently stirred, round and round, explaining how simple it was to make cheese.

  “It’s sure nice to have you guys here,” he said after a while. I was too busy looking around the incredibly filthy room to listen to what he was saying. Torn wire screens over the window frames kept more flies in than out. Sour whey lay in puddles on the rough cement floor, the smell sickening me. Grimy and flyspecked straining cloths, stiff with dried sour milk, lay on the table. It seemed like a thousand flies buzzed about the room. I was thankful neither Verlan nor Ervil could read my mind.

  I glanced at the mixing tub. Whey rose to the top with clots of scum. Ervil’s huge hands pressed the forming curds to the bottom of the large, galvanized tub. Then, with a small tin saucepan, he dipped the yellow whey from the tub and dumped it into five-gallon buckets. He stirred the cheese continually as he spoke. Finally, turning the tub on its side, he poured the remaining whey into a leaky bucket.

  “Give me the salt there in the windo
w,” he ordered. I grabbed the rusted Crisco can off the windowsill. The salt was coarse and dirty with dust that had blown in. There were also several mice turds in it. Noticing my grimace, Ervil told me not to be so squeamish. “Just pick them out,” he said.

  I handed the can to Ervil instead. After dumping the top part of the dirty salt into the bucket of whey, he salted the cheese. Then he and Verlan relaxed on the wooden table, snacking on some of the fresh curds Ervil had just made. It struck me as funny . . . two big men, like little Miss Muffet, with their feet propped on a bucket, eating their turds and whey.

  Verlan told Ervil he needed to know what he could plan on, now that his family was growing. The four brothers who lived on the ranch—Alma, Ervil, Floren, and Verlan (Joel lived up in the mountains with his Mexican wife, Magdalena, buying and selling corn)—had already decided to work together and divide everything equally. This was another example of the United Order the people at Short Creek had tried to live—a Mormon version of socialism first encouraged by Joseph Smith back in the nineteenth century. It required everyone’s full participation. All goods, work, costs, and profits were divided evenly, at least in theory. This was the LeBaron brothers’ plan.

  Ervil made it clear that our family would be obligated to take its turn making cheese. Then he added, “Your wives are no doubt used to higher living standards, but we’ll still have to split the money evenly four ways.”

  Ervil put cheesecloth down in the homemade metal press and dumped in the curds. Whey ran over onto the sticky floor. Looking at me as though his instruction was for me alone, he said, “Every cheese that turns out good will bring in a hundred pesos or more. That’s anywhere from eight to ten dollars. You need to make sure the milk buckets and tubs are washed in soapy water. They must be scalded every time they’re used. If they’re not kept clean, the cheese may go sour.”