“We’ve never been back to the temple since that day. Stephen was excommunicated not many months later,” said Rebecca, her tone mournful. “And though our bishop hasn’t excommunicated me, I haven’t been back. I think the bishop sees us as victims of a wayward man and keeps trying to help us in various ways.” She gave a brief, watery smile.
Kurt’s expression was pinched, but he managed to keep quiet. I suspected he, too, felt pity for the wives and children involved in this.
“Ten years after you were married,” I said aloud, thinking about what I had been like ten years after Kurt and I had married. All those young children in so few years—my body had been exhausted and flabby and I might not have always been pleasant to be around. “Did Stephen marry someone younger?” I hoped I wasn’t prying, but she had said to ask anything.
“Jennifer was a little younger, but age had nothing to do with it,” Rebecca said. “She was the person we were both led to by the Spirit to invite to join us in living the Principle for the first time.”
Kurt and I shared a look again, a real moment of communion. Led by the Spirit my ass, I thought.
“People from the outside always think it’s about the sex. That’s the last thing it has anything to do with it,” Rebecca went on, utterly sincere and straight-faced. “It’s a spiritual marriage first and foremost. Everything else is just figuring out what works best for whom.”
“What about your sister?” I asked. “When did she join the—uh—group?”
Rebecca looked down. “Sarah was the fourth wife, the third spiritual wife. She’s fifteen years younger than I am. She was just a child when I married Stephen.”
I couldn’t read Rebecca’s emotion here. Was she jealous of her sister, or sad for her? I didn’t have any sisters so I tried to imagine sharing a house with one of my brothers. No. We’d never survive.
“Have you ever considered joining one of the other polygamous groups?” I asked. I’d heard of various groups, like the Kingston clan and the Apostolic United Brethren in Utah County, and I thought there were some in Arizona, as well.
“No, no. Stephen thinks they’re all completely crazy. Or evil,” said Rebecca with a sad expression.
Kurt put a hand to his mouth at this, stifling a laugh, I think. I covered the gaffe by saying, “Why is that?”
“The way they treat their wives and children is scandalous. No education. Nearly enslaving them. No freedom to choose their own lives. It’s one of the reasons Joanna is here.”
“Joanna?” asked Kurt.
“She’s the youngest and newest of the wives, and she’s from the FLDS. She ran away when she was only sixteen years old and her daughter Grace was a baby. She had to seek legal emancipation from her parents before she could be assured she wouldn’t be sent back. Poor child.”
Which one, mother or daughter? Both, probably.
I didn’t disagree with Stephen’s assessment of the FLDS. Young girls in that community were often denied an education past the sixth grade, forced to provide childcare, cooking, cleaning, and other unpaid labor, and then married off by age thirteen or fourteen to begin a life of bearing a dozen or more children for an older, authoritarian man who had ten other wives and a hundred children. Many of the women never escaped because they were too caught up in mothering children they could not leave or care for financially without the help of the FLDS community. But this one girl had gotten free—only to join another polygamous life. Why? Was it just too hard for her to stop thinking of the world—or herself—in that way?
“A marriage with one other partner seems hard enough,” said Kurt. “With so many, it must magnify the problems exponentially.” The mathematical metaphor was very Kurt, and I tried not to wince at the implication that he thought marriage to me was difficult.
“It can go bad, I know that,” Rebecca said. “We all went in with our eyes open, though. I’ve seen the problems some people have with the Principle. But they are all human mistakes. Jealousy, gossip, greed, anger. What God grants is the capacity to overcome these. That is why the Principle is the way we must live. It’s the only way to really become godlike and reject all of our mortal flaws.”
The way she spoke about it seemed so devout. Of course, she was converted to it, but it wasn’t that she thought she was better than anyone else, just that this was one way she’d found to live the gospel’s command to be less selfish. Who couldn’t use more help in that quest? I certainly could, even if I couldn’t believe God expected me to do what Rebecca had done.
“Jealousy and gossip are certainly problems for everyone,” said Kurt, who was clearly less moved by Rebecca’s speech than I was.