by JT Lawrence
“I won’t do anything to you,” he said.
The bartender is still watching him with an odd expression on his face.
“Would you like to get out of here?” K asked. “We can go for a walk.”
“Okay,” Julie said, threading a strand of long black hair behind her left ear. “I’d like that.”
He stood up and offered her his hand. It was deathly cold, as he’d expected. K’s watch had stopped half an hour ago, as soon as Julie Manchester had walked through the door.
12
In the Hands of God
We knew the new sister-wife would be trouble. Angus fell for her like a hammer at a circus tent, and we all felt in our hearts that something had shifted, and there'd be no going back. Ruth-Anne was blond and a little too beautiful, and after we met her for the first time, I saw the stars in my husband's eyes. He hardly ate any of Clara's lamb stew, even though she's the best cook in the family by far, and it had always been his favourite.
"Is this what he was like when he met me?" I asked Clara that night. Clara was the first wife—the legal wife—and matriarch. Angus thought he was the one who held the family together, but really, it was Clara. She was firm, loving, and steadfast. Sometimes my marriage to her felt more real, and more intimate, than my marriage to Angus. We had a bond that sister-wives in other plural families envied.
“Of course he was,” Clara said. “It was love at first sight with you, Hannah. You know that.”
I'm not sure I would have accepted Angus's marriage proposal if it weren't for Clara. She's the one who wooed me during the courting phase. After Angus had expressed his desire for me to join the family, the three of us got to know each other. After two seasons, I accepted.
“How will it work?” I asked.
“We’ll decide on that together,” said Clara.
Our plural marriage was successful because it was a true collaboration; we had a common goal, and all worked hard towards it. When I was having a stressful day with the children, I would wonder how non-plural families managed. Only one mother in a house seems a hard way to live. My parents were of the same faith, and they said it all the time: It takes a village to raise a family. Now I know why. Some days are just crammed too full of life, and you'd feel overwhelmed if you didn't have a sister to lean on. I thanked God for Clara every day. I'm not saying there was never jealousy, that would be dishonest, but Clara was always generous with Angus and me. Especially in the beginning, when I was getting used to the dynamics in the house. I was supposed to sleep in Angus's bed every second week, and I battled with that. Clara accommodated my insecurity by granting permission for me to spend any night of the month with him, even if she was the first wife, and it was her turn.
“Won’t you miss him?” I asked. I didn’t want to make trouble.
Clara laughed. “Angus and I have a solid relationship. He’s not going anywhere. Besides, I’d appreciate the time to myself. I’m behind on my reading.”
After a few weeks of borrowing Angus during Clara's turn, I realised I was no longer envious of their time together, and we went back to alternating beds every week. I picked a bunch of wildflowers for her, to say thank you, and she hugged me. I also came to realise how much I enjoyed my own company. On the nights I wasn't with Angus I felt liberated, and I appreciated the rare time on my own when I wasn't busy with the seven children in the house and the never-ending housework. I thought that I had conquered the problematic emotion of jealousy, but when Ruth-Anne arrived in our lives, I realised I had not.
We began the courting process, and I dreaded every encounter with Ruth-Anne. I found her superficial. She laughed too much, too loudly. And, yes, she was too beautiful. I pressed Clara for her opinion, but she was, as always, too gracious to concede that Ruth-Anne was anything but lovely. Eventually, at the risk of appearing unkind, I had to address it with Angus. I waited until he was in a good mood and then cautiously brought the conversation around to the impending engagement.
“I don’t think Ruth-Anne is a suitable match for our family,” I said. He looked alarmed. “I’m sorry,” I blurted. “I wish it was different. I know you really like her.”
“Like her?” he said. “I’m in love with her. And she’s agreed to marry us.”
His words cut through me like a ploughshare. I wanted to lie in bed and weep; instead, I stood there in our bedroom and stared at the carpet. I felt betrayed in the worst way. As a sister-wife, the only power you have is deciding who to accept into your family, and Angus was undermining that power.
“I was going to tell you and Clara tomorrow in our family meeting. I know it’s difficult for you,” Angus said. You’ve always been the jealous one, I imagined him thinking. You’re not emotionally mature enough to deal with another wife. This will be the lesson you need to overcome your inadequacies.
“Our family is perfect,” I said. “Are Clara and I not enough for you?” I loathed myself for saying it; loathed how panicky and vulnerable I felt. I wished I could have as generous a heart as Clara.
Angus looked unhappy. It wasn’t the first time I had disappointed him, and my cheeks burned with shame.
“Please remember who we are, and why we do this,” he said. “We are following the word of God.”
I respected Angus deeply, but I disliked it when he brought the Lord into our arguments. If God was on his side, who could argue?
“God didn’t choose Ruth-Anne,” I said. I felt the scorpion sting of my spite.
“Of course He did,” said Angus. “This is the Almighty’s plan. Why else would she be in our lives?”
My skin continued to burn, and my throat swelled with all the angry words I could not utter. I grabbed my pillow and stalked out. He can sleep alone tonight, I thought. Just him and his Almighty.
Clara was peeling carrots when I joined her in the kitchen. I washed my hands and got to work. There was a lot of chopping to do in a household of ten people. I thought, not for the first time, that soon we'd have to invest in some industrial-size food appliances. As it was, cutting onions would leave us half-blind with tears. My five-year-old said it made his eyes melt, which had given Clara and me a good chuckle. She rolled out the pie pastry dough on the counter and sprinkled it with flour. I don't know where she learnt to cook, but she was a natural. I had once told her that being a housewife was a waste of her talents. She had laughed and said real work happened at home, that no other job would have as much meaning or impact as being a wife and mother. I envied how she never seemed to long for more. I swept the vegetable peels into the compost bin and wiped down the counters. It's not that I didn't like cleaning; it was just that I felt I cleaned the same things a hundred times a day. I secretly looked forward to the time the children would fly the coop and the clean things would stay clean.
“Keep those bones,” Clara said, and I frowned at her, raw chicken bones in my hands. “Throw them into that pot on the stove. It’ll make a good broth.”
Clara’s chicken broth was famous in our four-hundred-strong gated community. Cooked with organic garden produce and seasoned with love, it was said to cure everything from head colds to depression.
“I wish I could cook like you,” I said.
“You have your talents,” Clara said. She winked at me and slammed the oven door shut.
“Do I? It doesn’t seem that way.”
Sometimes I felt like a cheap knockoff of Clara, a flawed copy.
“Angus proposed to Ruth-Anne,” I said. “She said yes.”
Clara froze for a moment, then took off her apron and folded it neatly away. “Yes. He told me.”
“Clara,” I said. “You know it’s not a suitable match.”
“I know that Angus loves her,” she said.
“It’s not up to Angus!” I said, then looked around and lowered my voice. “It’s supposed to be a family decision.”
“Angus is the head of the family,” she said. We stared at each other, and the broth boiled over on the stove.
While Angus
and Ruth-Anne said their vows, with Clara and I as matrons of honour and witnesses, I gazed at my husband, remembering our own wedding day. It had been a similar set-up: a small gathering in the local church, a simple white dress that my mother had sewn, and a gold ring on my finger. I loved him and Clara so much, I was sure I’d be happy. Standing there at the altar for the second time, I felt that happiness slipping away, and I was powerless to stop it.
I'd always been taught to forgive, to look for the good, to keep peace in the home, so when Angus insisted on marrying Ruth-Anne, I forced all my feelings down until they formed a permanent heaviness in my stomach. Had my sense of freedom been an illusion? I knew people not of our faith found it difficult to understand polygamy. Some even thought of us as brainwashed, being kept under control by our manipulative husbands, but this was not the case in our family. We were bound by true, selfless love. Even if something happened to Angus, I was sure Clara and I would stay together.
“We have to make it work,” said Clara, as we wilted at the modest wedding reception. We’d been cooking for hours the day before to have everything ready, and Clara had even made a cake.
I sighed into my empty cup. I’d had a sleepless night and the children’s excited play outside grated my ears. “It’s hopeless.”
“Nothing is hopeless in the eyes of God.”
I bit my tongue for what felt like the thousandth time. When Ruth-Anne spoke to me, I smiled and replied in a gracious way, and Angus looked on approvingly. I prayed for patience and grace, and I begged God to open my heart.
Ruth-Anne moved in, and so did her ego. In her mind, being the third wife was a superior position. She was new; she was shiny goods. She'd clog up the shower drain with her long blond hair and expect me to clean it. She delighted in scolding Smarticus, our beloved tabby cat. Ruth-Anne wasn't interested in the children and refused to do any kind of childcare, citing her inexperience as a possible danger. If there was an extra cupcake, she'd eat it.
We hadn't gained a sister-wife, I thought. We'd gained another child, and an ungrateful one, at that.
Angus was so blinded by her shininess that he didn't see the extra work Clara and I were doing. Every time I ironed Ruth-Anne's clothes, I had the urge to scorch them, especially her favourite top which, though modest, was extremely flattering. There were other practical considerations, too: we could no longer all fit around the massive dining room table. The top-loader decided it was being overworked and gave up the ghost. Clara's favourite cast-iron casserole pot was no longer large enough. When we bought another one, they couldn't both fit in the oven at the same time.
“We need a new oven,” I told Angus.
He looked surprised, perhaps at my business-like tone.
“We don’t have money for a new oven,” he said.
You should have thought of that before you decided to marry another wife, I thought. You should have thought of the implications.
"Make a plan," I replied. I knew I was being cheeky, but I didn't care. My resentment had hardened me, despite my prayers.
The next week, Clara was thrilled when Angus came home with a new oven that was twice the size of the old one. Later I found out the money had come from our allowances and I bit down hard on my rancour. Clara and I had been scrimping for months to afford a weekend away together, which was our annual tradition, but now the account was empty. When I confronted Angus about it, he shrugged. “I made a plan.”
I prayed very hard that night.
While Angus and Ruth-Anne's relationship bloomed, ours faltered. When I was in bed with my husband, I imagined he wished I was Ruth-Anne. I felt self-conscious about my body for the first time in years, pulling the comforter up to cover my stretched skin and sagging breasts. I no longer wanted to pleasure him because my heart was full of bitterness. It became a vicious circle and, after a while, we stopped making love. Sometimes I wished that it wasn't my turn with Angus, even though my bed was already empty two weeks out of three. Sometimes I wished he and Ruth-Anne would move out and live somewhere else, and leave us in peace. My resentment towards Ruth-Anne did not go unnoticed. Clara implored me to leave it in the hands of God, and Angus called a family meeting so we could discuss my behaviour.
“My behaviour?” I asked. “What about Ruth-Anne’s behaviour? What about the way she never helps around the house, never speaks to the children, never does a load of washing?”
“Ruth-Anne is still settling in,” said Angus. “It’s the honeymoon period. It was the same with you.”
I looked at Clara, who nodded. "It's the same with every new wife," she said gently. "I made concessions for you. I cooked for you. I gave you unlimited access to Angus."
I remembered. It was true.
“Give it time,” said Clara. “You’ll see, we’ll all be settled in soon enough.”
But for once, Clara was wrong. Anyone who expected Ruth-Anne to start chipping in was sorely disappointed. She'd leave dirty mugs all over the house, plates with crumbs, candy wrappers. She began to put on weight because she'd lie and watch TV all day while we worked to keep the machine of the household running. There was always more to do, but Ruth-Anne was on a permanent holiday. Once I vacuumed under her feet and accidentally rammed her just-painted toenail. I was getting so clumsy! I dropped her pancakes on the floor one morning—no-one was watching so I just loaded them back on the plate—and I did eventually scorch that flattering top of hers. No matter how hard I prayed, the clumsiness remained.
When Ruth-Anne complained to Angus, he replied that it was time she began to wash and iron her own clothes, and running a vacuum around the house now and then would not go amiss.
“Bless her heart,” Clara and I used to say to each other when we were annoyed with Ruth-Anne.
Ruth-Anne’s behaviour deteriorated. Her moods would swing wildly from manic to depressed, and she’d stay glued to the couch for a week. On one of these days, we ran a deep, salted bath for her, and let her soak. Clara washed Ruth-Anne’s hair, which she had impulsively cut short with the kitchen scissors a few days before. Her unpredictability unnerved me.
“She needs medication,” I said to Angus.
“Leave it in the hands of God,” he replied. He had been distracted lately. Work had been demanding, his second wife was no longer appreciative of his advances, and his third wife was proving difficult to manage. I scolded myself for the pleasure I felt in Ruth-Anne’s pain. Schadenfreude, they call it. I knew it wasn't virtuous, but I couldn't help that little stab of spiteful enjoyment I got from seeing the shininess erode to rust.
On a day she couldn’t keep still, Ruth-Anne left her couch and came to watch the children playing outside. Angus had built them a beautiful treehouse which they spent hours scaling the tree to reach, then squealed down the slide, or climbed down the knotted rope that hung from the timber beams. It was a cheerful scene until I saw Clara’s three-year-old daughter, a daring girl who enjoyed rough-and-tumble with her brothers, wrestling with my son at the entrance of the treehouse. They were arguing about whose turn it was to slide down.
“Stop!” I called as a raced over. “Mary! Jonathan! Stop!”
I didn't get there in time. My son, who at five was twice the size of Mary, pushed her aside, not realising she'd tumble off the side. She hit the ground with a thump and an eye-watering crack. Then there was silence. I gasped, glancing up at my son. Realising what he had done, his hands flew up to his mouth and his eyes filled with horror. As I reached Mary, she began to wail, and I thanked God that she was still alive. The silence had been terrifying. Jonathan rushed down the slide to join me as I picked the screaming child up.
"Call Clara!" I told him. "Tell her to bring the keys for the truck. We need to get Mary to the hospital."
Jonathan, white as new snow, turned to run inside, but Ruth-Anne caught him by the ear.
“You evil child,” she said. “Look at what you’ve done.”
Mary was screeching, so I wasn’t sure I’d heard correctly. “Ruth-Anne,” I said.
“Let him go.”
With her left hand, she let go of his ear, and with her right, she slapped my son so hard that he fell. The sound of the blow was louder than that of Mary's arm breaking, seconds earlier.
I wanted to scream. God help me; I wanted to hit Ruth-Anne back and see her lying on the ground. Instead, I stood rooted to the spot, pinned down by the trauma of the moment as my son sobbed into the grass. Clara ran out of the house, and when Mary saw her, she cried louder and started kicking.
“Hannah!” she cried, out of breath. “What has happened? You’re as pale as death!”
I hung on to the struggling toddler. “We need to get to the hospital,” I said.
In the family meeting, we discussed what had happened that day. Mary was sleeping in Clara's arms, a clean white cast over her broken arm. Jonathan sat next to me, his swollen face contrite. Angus looked disappointed in all of us, although I couldn't say why.
“It was an unfortunate incident,” he said, putting down his mug of coffee.
My angry words bubbled up; I couldn’t help it. Even prayer would not keep them down.
“Ruth-Anne needs to know that she can’t hit the children,” I said. It was the mildest way I could put it, and every word took effort.
“As a member of this family, Ruth-Anne is allowed to discipline the children,” said Angus. “In fact, it is expected of her.”
“Discipline?” I demanded. “That wasn’t discipline. That was abuse. Look at him! Look at my son’s face!”
Jonathan was about to start crying again, so I pulled him up onto my lap and hugged his little body to mine and kissed his hair. If my hand were cool, I would have put it on his swollen cheek, but my whole body was hot and bothered by the emotion eddying inside me.
Angus sighed. It was his way of asking us to calm down. I felt the opposite of calm. I wanted Ruth-Anne out of our house and out of my life.
“Your son broke Mary’s arm,” said Ruth-Anne. “He has to learn there are consequences.”