“The younger children are, yes. But Naomi, Aaron, and Joseph had already started high school by the time our family situation had changed such that it became expedient to keep more to ourselves,” Rebecca said.
She must have practiced many times talking about polygamy without talking about it, I thought.
“The older three petitioned to finish public school as they had begun, and Stephen negotiated with them to make sure that they didn’t neglect their other duties for schoolwork. Ruth moved to a hybrid model of homeschooling and public schooling.”
I’d heard Mormons talk about children needing to continue to do chores around the house when they were in high school, or contribute financially to the family, but Stephen Carter’s “negotiations” sounded like overkill.
“A hybrid model?” Kurt repeated. “What do you mean?”
“Stephen has the same rules for all of the children about how many hours a week they must spend helping at home,” Rebecca explained. “It increases with each year of age, to compensate for their food, clothing, and other expenses. For Ruth, it’s been easier if she comes home on weekends to manage those hours.”
I cringed. Counting hours of housework against family expenses? College girls who had to come home and do chores around the house? I wanted my children to have their own lives, not keep paying me back for raising them. Perhaps independence was not as valued for young women in a polygamous family, however.
“What about the boys?” Kurt asked. “Do they also come home to help around the house?”
“Not with housework. They have other ways of repaying Stephen. Helping tutor the younger children via Skype, for instance,” Rebecca said, smiling as if it all made perfect sense.
I wasn’t sure if I was angrier about the whole idea of how children owed their parents or the way that the boys seemed to get off easy. I changed the subject. “Are your older sons planning to live—like you do?” I asked, not sure if Naomi was an anomaly. This compound was big enough for one polygamous group, but it could easily get very crowded in another generation. And I hated to think about how much control over his children’s lives Stephen would exert if they all married and raised children right here, under his thumb.
But Rebecca shook her head emphatically. “No. Stephen is very insistent that living the Principle has to be an individual call from God. He doesn’t know why God called him, but he couldn’t turn away from it. He knows how hard the life is, though, and wouldn’t force it on any of his children.”
I felt relieved, but confused. Obviously, Stephen thought his lifestyle was more godly than monogamy. Why wouldn’t he want the highest law for his children?
Rebecca must have guessed that Kurt and I were trying hard to suppress our curiosity, because she added, “Stephen said that I was to answer any questions that you had about living the Principle while we’re waiting for him to return.”
I admit, I was there to help Talitha, but I was dying to ask questions.
“Go on, ask whatever you like,” Rebecca said, smiling faintly.
I wanted to ask about hand-me-downs and chore charts and how much it cost a day to feed this many people. I wanted to ask if anyone ever forgot how many children they had, or which ones were theirs or whose house Stephen went to each night for dinner. I wanted to ask if the wives fought over Stephen and what their sex lives were like. But Kurt got there first.
“Naomi said that Stephen didn’t talk about polygamy with you until some years after you were married,” Kurt said. “How did that happen?”
Rebecca leaned back on the couch, smoothing out her dress with overly intense concentration. “We’d been married ten years, actually.” She paused to take a deep breath. “Stephen had always studied church history very carefully. Then one day he took me to the Salt Lake Temple. He made sure we had time to stay in the celestial room afterward. He told me everything, holding my hand on the white couch, whispering directly into my ear. How he’d been called to the Principle—how we’d both been called. He begged me to accept it.” She sounded choked up about a precious memory.
I could see Kurt was rigid in shock at this. I felt much the same. Stephen had used the temple for this conversation? And the holiest of holy places, the celestial room? The celestial room was the place you were only allowed to enter after you had been through the sacred endowment ceremony, a place of pure peace and utter silence, so clean you would never see a piece of lint on the floor, and everything in it was perfectly white. And Stephen Carter had used that sacred space to tell his wife he wanted to marry other women?
“I see,” I murmured, trying to disguise my disgust.