I wished that Mormonism wasn’t synonymous to so many people with prejudice and backwardness and intolerance. I was sick at the idea that my church had turned to hate instead of love. And why?
Because we weren’t flexible enough. We waited around for a revelation to tell us how to love, instead of just moving forward with it. Joseph Smith had started the church with the insistence that everyone, even a teenage boy, had the right to ask God for an answer to prayer, but in the last decades, it seemed like the church had become very cautious about any personal revelation and had pushed a level of obedience that had never been part of the original church.
Of course Stephen Carter was the classic example of someone who had gone off the deep end with individual revelation. I wished I could blame him completely for it. But it seemed to me that if Stephen Carter had fallen down some dark tunnel of Mormonism, it was at least partly the fault of a church that was leaving those holes open and trying to ignore they were there rather than trying to fill them up. At this point, there were so many holes in Mormonism I was worried I was about to fall into one myself.
Chapter 13
I lay on the lower bunk bed and couldn’t sleep, my heart hurting. The sounds of the house had died down and I spent hours tossing and turning. Finally, I decided to get up and go to the bathroom for some water. This was the solution I had often offered to my sons when they were young and said they couldn’t sleep. I think the main trick in it was to turn off the part of the brain that was circling around the need to sleep and focus it on something else entirely.
While I was in the bathroom, I heard raised voices downstairs. I checked my watch. It was after midnight. Who was down there? Neither voice was deep enough to be Stephen’s.
I turned off the light in the bathroom and listened. I should have gone back to bed, I know. I was here for Talitha, not just to be nosy. That’s what I’d told Kurt I was staying for. But I could help Talitha and be nosy, too, couldn’t I? Anything I learned about the family might be relevant. At least, that was my excuse as I tiptoed downstairs.
Two women were in the hallway by the back door of the front room. Peeking around the corner, I got a quick glimpse of Sarah’s taut back, and Joanna, who must have left her children at home in bed. It was the first time I had seen her without them tugging on her. She looked as overdressed and FLDS as she had earlier, her unbound hair stringy on her back, a worn, long-sleeved flannel nightgown underneath. Sarah was still wearing the dark, modern dress she’d had on when she met us at the door.
Afraid they’d spot me and I’d miss all the interesting gossip, I tried to be very quiet and listened with all my might.
“I need to talk to Stephen,” Joanna insisted. Her face was contorted.
“I told you, Stephen will see you on your regular Monday next week. He had to change the chart this week because of the visitors,” Sarah said.
There was a chart? Really and truly, a written chart that determined which wife Stephen visited each night?
“I don’t see why he still has a night with Rebecca when she’s past her years anyway. She can’t give him any more children,” Joanna said.
My eyebrows rose at this. Was this a rule with polygamists? You didn’t have sex with your husband anymore if you couldn’t have children? Because it was a waste of sperm he could be using elsewhere?
“Well, he makes the rules here, doesn’t he?” Sarah said. “Not you.”
“He doesn’t even have seven wives. How will he ever become a god?” Joanna complained.
Seven wives? I’d never heard there was a specific number of wives that earned you godhood. So if you had only six, then you were out? And if that was true, then why did so many polygamous men have dozens and dozens of wives if they didn’t have to? Maybe because their older wives were out to pasture?
“All that nonsense is FLDS, you know. Stephen doesn’t believe any of it. And besides, he was punishing you anyway.”
Stephen punished her by not going to her bed? That was interesting.
“I haven’t done anything wrong,” Joanna said. “But this isn’t about that, anyway. He has a dark shadow over him.” Her eyes closed and she swayed a little. “You have to tell him.”
“That a dark shadow is over him? I don’t think I’m going to wake him up for that. I’m not going to be punished for one of your stupid prophecies,” Sarah said sourly.
Another reference to punishment. I’d seen Stephen with each of the wives and I’d seen no sign of physical abuse, but there were other ways to abuse and Stephen was smart enough to have found unique ones for each wife.
“Then get Rebecca,” Joanna begged. “She understands me.”
So Rebecca wasn’t just the mother of the children here. She acted like the mother of the wives, too. Or at least Joanna thought of her that way.