She pushed my hand away. “What happened to Ann Marie she did to herself by trying to leave the bonds of a sacred marriage. Wade Barton is not to blame for reining in the wayward spirit of his wife, she is!”
“But Mama, I can’t imagine being a wife to him, he’s repulsive!”
My mother settled her hands on her hips and laughed. “And who are you to judge what makes a man, Alva Jane? Because Joseph John Hilliard won your heart with his boyish charm and his pretty ways? It’s a good thing he was expelled. He was getting to be too big for his britches, thinking he could win the affections of all the young girls. You are not the only one who set her eyes on him, my girl.”
Her words were meant to hurt me and they did. Still, I whispered back, “But I am the only one he loved.”
Then Mama crouched down in front of me, her eyes filled with more fear than anger. When she spoke, her voice had lost its hard edge. “Do you have any idea what it is to be a wife who is not the favorite? To live like Sisters Eulalia or Susannah or even worse, Sister Sherrie? Do you think all of your father’s children enjoy the same privileges as we do, living in the big house, with enough food to eat at each meal? Do you ever wonder why we only eat with the entire family on Sundays? Because there is not enough to go around, Alva Jane. Your father gives the lion’s share of his time, his money, and his love to us, even though I am a fourth wife. For the sake of your siblings and me, you must marry Wade Barton and please your father. As my daughter you are a reflection of me and after the trouble with your brother, we cannot afford to upset your daddy anymore.”
“But Daddy loves you, Mama. There’s nothing I can do that would change that. You’ll always be the favorite,” I said.
Mama laughed again. “With a new fifteen-year-old wife joining the family next week? You think it will be easy for me to maintain my place in his affections or to hold his interest? You have a lot to learn about life and about men, Alva Jane. Trust your mother. You will come to love Wade Barton and to see his good qualities. You must keep sweet and agree with a cheerful heart to marry him. You must please him and do what you can to win and keep his favor. Now go on downstairs and tell your daddy what he wants to hear.”
I sat stock-still, unable to move. I thought of my sisters Carlene and Liza, Laura Jean and Olive, my brothers and the babies. I didn’t want any of them to suffer on my account. But as much as I loved them, I could not bring myself to do what Mama asked. The words stuck in my throat like melted wax but I forced them out. “I can’t do it, Mama.”
My mother stood. When she spoke, her voice was deadly calm. “It is not a question of what you will or will not do, Alva. It has been decided. You will marry Wade Barton if I have to drag you to the temple and stand you up before the prophet myself. It is not your choice, understand that. It is God’s will for you. Reconcile yourself to it. You’re not to come down to the dinner table this evening.”
With that she turned and left the room.
My stomach growled. I hadn’t eaten anything since the previous day—since before the kiss, before the beating, before my life crumbled apart. I cracked open the door and tried to catch a whiff of the food downstairs. It smelled like pot roast, Sister Cora’s specialty when Daddy brought money home. I knew my mother had forbidden me to come to dinner in hopes of breaking my will, but it would take more than an empty stomach to make me marry Wade Barton. Just the thought of it took away my appetite.
Up in our room alone, I had time to think. And the more I thought, the more I realized that this nightmare was Sister Cora’s work. I thought back to the day I overheard her praising me to Sister Irene, Wade Barton’s first wife. I’d stupidly believed she’d had a change of heart toward me. Instead, she was laying the groundwork for my marriage to her brother. Surely, Wendy Callers’s gossip had not been idle, it had given Sister Cora a reason to keep an eye on me, to look for anything she could use against me and push me into her brother’s quorum of wives. And in meeting Joseph John at the barn, I had given her exactly what she’d wanted.
I imagined her high forehead and her white skin with those blue eyes, still and quiet like the surface of a lake, hiding the depth of evil and meanness that lived beneath in her heart. I hated her. In the deepest part of my heart I hated her and I didn’t care if God condemned me for it.
I went to the bedroom window, the one that faced the back part of our yard. I looked out at the three run-down trailers where Sisters Eulalia, Susannah, and Mona lived with their children. I had never thought much about their lives out there, I rarely went out to visit with them other than to round up the children for church or other family gatherings.
But now it was as if I was seeing them for the first time. Cardboard covered up broken windows and someone had stacked the empty propane tanks in a rusted heap in the yard. The shade canopy outside Sister Mona’s trailer was torn and falling down, propped up with two broomsticks tied together with wire. Sister Susannah’s trailer was messy; I’d seen that when I went to fetch her twins. Sister Eulalia’s was clean and neat, everything in its place, but it was crowded with all three boys inside. Sister Mona and her daughter, Cindy, had the smallest trailer, with just a double bed in the back corner and a countertop with a two-burner hot plate and a toaster oven. That was all I knew of how they lived out there.
My mother’s words echoed in my head. There is not enough to go around, Alva Jane.… I had never looked in their kitchen cupboards, never wondered what they did when the food stamps ran low at the end of the month.
I had enjoyed my father’s favor and his bounty as well. In my own comfort, it had never occurred to me that some of my brothers and sisters went hungry, not while Daddy drove a new car bought last year when Uncle Kenton gave him a bonus. But now I remembered the night last winter when I couldn’t sleep and I saw Sister Susannah looking in the trash cans behind the main house, well past midnight. She moved so quietly, taking off the lids and rooting around the garbage inside. At the time, I thought she was just crazy, but now I realized she had probably been looking for scraps of food that we had tossed out.
My head was dizzy with all of these thoughts and I felt like I was spinning with them, trying to hang on to something to keep myself grounded. My father was a righteous man who upheld the highest principles and standards in the Brotherhood. He had taken seven wives and vowed to protect, provide, and care for them. He was above reproach. But my mother’s voice kept coming back to me. There is not enough to go around.… You think I’ll be able to hold his interest with a new fifteen-year-old wife joining the family?
Mama’s fears were real; I could see it in her eyes and feel it in her voice. And if my mother could so easily be pushed aside for a young girl, then what was her place in our family built upon? If she had borne so many children and was still in jeopardy of losing her position and privileges, then what were her years of obedience and keeping the covenants worth?
I lay down on the bed, putting the pillow over my head to block out the smells of dinner downstairs and my own troubling thoughts. I willed myself to go to sleep but my mind would not stop, imagining the hell of being married to Wade Barton, thinking on Joseph John alone out in the desert. I would never see him again. To lose both him and Cliff was too much to bear. I pushed my face hard into the pillow to muffle the sound of my crying. It could not be true, this could not be my life, married to Wade Barton with Joseph John lost to me forever!
I heard the door creak open. It was Leigh Ann.
“Are you asleep yet, Alva?” she whispered.
“No, not yet. How was dinner?”
“Not so good,” Leigh Ann lied to make me feel better about missing it. She came in and sat on the edge of the bed.
“I’m supposed to be getting some yarn from my mom’s sewing room, but Sister Emily is reading from the Pearl of Great Price again so they won’t notice if I take an extra minute.” She laid her hand on my shoulder.
“I’m so sorry, Alva Jane. I can’t believe that Daddy and Sister Maureen are making you marry
Wade Barton.”
“I’m not going to marry him, no matter what they say.”
“How can you go against them? Daddy is our priesthood head. His word is law. And the prophet confirmed it!”
“I don’t know how, but I’m not going to do it.” I didn’t even know what I was saying, I just knew that I could not, would not, go along with marrying a monster. “You won’t tell about my cycle, will you? Please don’t tell them!” I begged.
“I won’t say anything, I promise. But now that they’re watching for it, you’ll have to come up with something before next month.”
She was right. I had to find a way out of this marriage before my next cycle began.
Leigh Ann took my hand and drew close to me. “Alva, you know that Brenda Norton and her husband, Jack. What does he seem like? I’ve only seen him coming and going from the temple. Is he nice? Is she?”
“She’s real nice, just new to the ways of the community. You’ll have to teach her to sew, I know that much. And he seems like a good man, according to what everyone says. At least he’s good looking!” I didn’t mention Jack’s crocodile smile or Brenda’s anxieties about plural marriage.
Leigh Ann giggled, covering her mouth. “I’ve got to go. I stole a biscuit for you,” she said, drawing a bun from the pocket of her dress. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep quiet about your cycle.”
She put out her pinkie finger and I hooked mine through it. We had been doing that since we were little girls, but I didn’t feel like a little girl any longer.
Leigh Ann slipped out the door to join the family downstairs and I could hear the voices of my mother and siblings talking and laughing. For the first time, I was excluded from the family circle. I was on the outside, forbidden to step into the warmth and comfort. I went back to the window to look out at the trailers again. In Sister Mona’s window, one dim lamp was lit.
She was out there alone with two-year-old Cindy. What was it like for them with no one else to talk to, to visit with? I stood for a long time, watching and wondering.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE NEXT WEEK WAS A MISERY. MAMA DID NOT MISS a chance to lecture me about my responsibilities to the prophet and to God, listing all the reasons I had to marry Wade Barton. And when I did not give in, she forbade my siblings to speak to me. I did my chores in silence, without any camaraderie or conversation. I did my best to apply salve to the welts on my back but it was near impossible to do by myself. I climbed into bed at night with no word of affection from the sisters who shared my room.
I learned that sometimes you feel more lonesome when you’re surrounded by people than when you’re all alone. I knew there was one thing that would restore me to their affections. But I could not do it; I could not agree to marry Wade Barton willingly. I hated being at odds with my mother, who had always been so loving to me. I hated the battle of wills that made the gulf between us bigger each day, but I knew that it was my life that hung in the balance.
If the days were long, the nights were worse. I dreamed of Joseph John, of walking together, of the final fateful meeting behind the barn. Every time, I awoke thinking that the dream was real and a great rush of relief poured over me until I realized that it was not. Everything I had hoped for was gone. The best I could fight for was to save myself from a hellish marriage.
I told myself that my parents would not force me to marry, that they would not be so cruel as to sacrifice me to appease the prophet. But in my heart I knew they would.
My father went to Arizona to help with the new community and planned to return the night before his marriage to Marcie Barton. Sister Cora began sewing Leigh Ann’s wedding dress, and Mama, not willing to be outdone, took me to the Pineridge store to buy white dotted swiss for mine. There would be no escaping my fate.
Walking down the streets of my town, I no longer felt at home. In the harsh desert sun, everything looked like a picture, two-dimensional, not real: the smiling faces of the women I passed, the goods in the window at Desert Pipe and Plumbing. Inside, I felt deadness, different and apart from everything and everyone. It was as if I were being swallowed up whole and each day I lost a little bit more of the will to struggle against it. But I had to struggle. I could not go along blindly like Leigh Ann, giggling as she modeled her wedding dress, finishing up a new quilt she would present to Jack Norton after they were sealed as man and wife. I had to find a way out of my marriage. I prayed for a miracle.
At home Mama worked feverishly on my wedding dress, forcing me to stand for the fitting, enlisting my sisters Olive and Carlene to boost my spirits.
“It sure is a lovely dress, Alva. You’re going to be the prettiest bride in Pineridge!” Olive crowed, too young to understand what marriage to Wade Barton would mean.
I looked at myself in the mirror and burst into tears. My mother pinched my thigh, hard. “You pull yourself together, Alva Jane. This is no way for a girl to be acting, chosen for marriage by the prophet’s brother no less! I’m going to have this dress ready and waiting, hanging in my closet for the day your cycle starts and you become a wife.”
My stomach did a somersault, wondering if Mama had any suspicion that my cycle had already come. But with a mouth full of straight pins, her hands working diligently, it seemed she did not know my secret. Time was running out. I had to do something soon.
A few days later, I sat in the temple sealing room, with its pale ivory carpet and big windows of cut glass. The light could come in but what went on inside remained secret, obscured to the outside world. My father and Marcie would take their vows first; Jack and Leigh Ann would follow. If they knew that my cycle had arrived, I would be standing there too, about to become Wade Barton’s wife.
The silk-covered chairs were lined up in rows facing the center altar where the bride and groom would take their vows. On either wall, huge gilt-framed mirrors hung. Jack and Leigh Ann, and Daddy and Marcie would see each other’s reflections multiplied endlessly, representing eternity. Above us loomed an enormous crystal chandelier. The beauty of the room was awesome; surely we were close to God in such a place. I prayed extra hard for mercy and deliverance from my marriage. And I avoided looking at Brother Wade, who stood with Sister Irene and Marcie as she prepared to take her vows as Daddy’s eighth wife.
Seated behind them were Wade Barton’s other four wives: Sisters LeNan, Carol, Betsy, and Ann Marie. Sister Ann Marie’s hand was still in a splint. The bruises on her face had faded to a putrid yellow. She sat stiffly and when she looked briefly at me across the room, her face stayed blank.
Our family’s sister wives filled the first two rows of seats on the other side of the altar. Daddy stood tall across from Marcie Barton in a white dress with a broad, square lace collar. There was something about her that made me feel unsettled, despite her prim dress and hair. Perhaps it was the intensity of her fixed devotion as she gazed up at Daddy. It was as if you could feel her breath, the way her breasts strained against the fabric of her dress. Maybe my mama was right and Marcie Barton had been hot to go for months.
Uncle Kenton began, “Do you, Brother Eldon Ray Merrill, take Sister Marcie Laurel Barton to be your lawful and wedded wife …?”
When Daddy and Marcie laid their hands atop one another, his seven sister wives rose and stood around them, each adding her own hand to show support. I stole a quick glance at the altar and found Wade Barton staring hard at me. He smiled ever so slightly and I looked away, sickened by his attention.
I will not marry him, no matter what my parents and the prophet say.
But in the next moment, I felt lost. To disobey the prophet meant damnation, it meant I had failed God and would never make it to the heavenly kingdom. Who was I if not a good daughter of the FLDS, if I did not live The Principle as God intended? The enormity of my disobedience weighed heavily upon my soul, especially in this sacred room where couples were sealed for all time. My parents knew I would feel this way in this sacred place. That is why they included me, why my mother’s hard gaze met mine as she s
tood in support of Daddy and Sister Marcie. I stood stock-still, but inside I was drowning in doubt of my faith, my family, and most importantly, of myself. Uncle Kenton finished the vows and I heard his voice, like a judgment from God, telling me what I, what all women, were to do:
“Now go forth in light and truth, raising many children in the family order of heaven.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
AFTER THE SEALING CEREMONIES, THERE WAS A CELEbration at our home since our household would be gaining Marcie as a wife and losing Leigh Ann as a daughter. As the families moved around the house drinking fruit punch and eating Sister Emily’s squash bread, I found Brenda alone on the back porch, staring at the trailers behind the house. “Congratulations, Brenda.”
She smiled distractedly at me and pointed to the trailers. “Who lives out there, Alva?”
“Some of my father’s wives. See that one with the new awning? It’s for Sister Marcie.”
There had been quite a bit of wrangling over Sister Marcie’s place in the last few days. Sister Cora had been trying to have her move into the main house. Imagine that! An eighth wife living in the main house! Mama put her foot down and Daddy had finally agreed that it would be too crowded. But I could see that Sister Cora was going to keep at it, trying to get Mama pushed into one of the trailers out back.
With my own troubles to think about, I had grown tired of the constant backbiting and competition between them, tired of hearing my mother’s complaints about Sister Cora. I knew she was evil made flesh but she wasn’t going to change any more than the desert would turn into the sea, so why bother fighting it?
Brenda sat with her long hem falling over her shoes. Someone had loaned her a good-fitting dress for the ceremony and her hair had grown out a bit to make it easier to style in our fashion. At least Leigh Ann could sew well and show her how to make the right clothes. After a long beat of silence Brenda said quietly, “You know Jack has decided that Leigh Ann and I will trade off. One night he’ll stay in her room, the next in mine. Her bedroom is right down the hall. I feel like a crazy person already, driving into work in these clothes and stopping outside of town to change into my work suit. I don’t know how long I can do it.… ” Her voice drifted off. I realized that with all the backslapping and congratulations going on inside, she and I were the only two who felt outside all the celebrating. When Jack and Leigh Ann had taken their vows, Brenda looked as if she had eaten a bowl full of glass and it was twisting and cutting her up inside. But she did her duty; she laid her hand atop her husband’s and his new bride’s. She stepped headlong into The Principle and no one could find fault with her. Only I knew how tormented she was. I felt closer to her now that I was experiencing my own kind of torment.
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