Chapter 12
The kitchen buzzed with activity. Flora snapped her fingers toward Prudence as we entered.
“You’ll need to peel those much quicker,” she instructed.
Sitting at the table with a pile of potatoes, Prudence pursed her lips together as I deposited the murky bucket onto the floor near the sink, the water sloshing to the sides.
“Still cleaning?” she asked.
“Yes, but a strange—”
Flora groaned. “And now you’ve spilled that disgusting mess on my clean kitchen floor.”
My heart skipped. “I’m so sorry.”
“Get the mop, Sister Hazel. You must anticipate these sorts of things without being asked. That’s what makes a helpful wife.” Flora made a show of stepping over the trickle of brown water on the floorboards to get to the sink. There was clearly no point in asking more about her moving the table.
As I cleaned up the mess, Abigail—Abby—pushed the back door open, her hands filled with carrots pulled fresh from the garden. In an instant, the air warmed around me. Flora stared down her nose at her.
“The children were supposed to do that, Sister Abby,” she said.
Abby deposited the small bounty into the sink and shrugged. “Oh, I suppose I didn’t hear you say that. Twice. I told them to go and play.”
“You’re spoiling them rotten!”
“They’ll be fine for one dinner,” Prudence said.
I only stood paralyzed with the mop, feeling more foolish each moment. But I couldn’t let go of the thought: Why would Flora move a table? It was complete nonsense. I must have lost track of where I put it, that’s all.
Flora snapped at me. “Are you done yet?”
“I—”
Abby scooped her arm through mine. “Never mind her. How are you doing, little Hazel?”
“Fine.”
I allowed myself to be swept away to the table, leaving Flora grumbling behind us.
“And were you fine last night?” Abby asked. “It seemed you had a bad dream.”
Guilt pulsed in my veins, certain that she could see straight through me. That she knew of my strange blood-soaked dream. I shifted back, more falling than sitting onto the bench.
“No, I only—that is, I have these—I’m fine.”
Abby raised an eyebrow. “I heard your screaming.”
“I … I didn’t mean to …”
“It’s quite all right, Sister Hazel. These things happen.” Prudence spoke quietly, like I was a spooked horse. “Whatever it was, it was only a dream.”
“There’s no such thing as only in this house,” Abby spat.
Prudence resumed her peeling. “Let’s talk of better things, Sisters.”
Abby’s hollow laugh rumbled through the kitchen as she flicked stray peels off the tabletop. “Oh yes, better things for the poor cleaning mouse.”
Prudence shot her a cautious look and the kitchen seemed to tighten with tension.
The problem was me; it had to be me. But perhaps she could assuage my sinful imagination.
“There’s nothing strange about this house, right, Sister Abigail? I mean, Abby.”
Abby stared over my shoulder at something behind me with a hard glare, then blinked out of her strange trance. “Oh yes, you should call me Abby.” Her tone was off, as if weighed with a specific sadness. But just as fast as I thought it, a smile sliced across her face once more.
Despite everyone’s insistence, calling her Abby felt wrong.
She’d called herself Abigail first, though maybe she was only being formal.
Still, the name Abby seemed too familiar, even as I craved a sense of closeness with her.
Abby was far above my own station in beauty, age, and family position.
And after that intrusive dream, it was probably best it continued that way.
But still, she was entrancing somehow. Why had I dreamed of her?
“Speaking of help and scrubbing, were you able to get the stains out of your sheets yet?”
I swallowed a gasp. The blood. She knew about the horrible gore from the dream.
“Sister Abby, I don’t think this is appropriate talk,” Prudence said.
“Why not? We all had the marks on our own sheets after our wedding nights.” Abby stabbed her knife through a potato.
A new mortification rose in my gut. She wasn’t talking about the dream at all, but something far more horrifying than childish nightmares or imaginations.
“I’ve taken care of it,” I said in a voice that barely sounded like my own. Why would she wish to discuss this, and in front of all the wives no less?
Abby laughed. “No need to look green about it, little Hazel. We’re all women and wives.
We can talk about it.” She dropped her knife and grabbed my hand before I could react, then picked up Prudence’s hand beside me and leaned in, giggling like we were a gaggle of schoolgirls sharing in a naughty secret.
“Let’s all share what our first nights with Jacob were like. ”
I tugged my hand back, but she held fast. Prudence squeaked. Abby’s face was light and friendly, endearing even, but her words cut through, straight to the heart of things unspoken. Plural marriage thrived on realities unuttered and truths unquestioned. What was she doing?
“You’re unbelievable, Abby,” Flora said, dropping the washed carrots on the table with a thud. “Marriage and its sacred duties are between God, a man, and a woman.”
“And a woman, and a woman, and a woman.”
Prudence rubbed her hand down her protruding belly. “Perhaps we should change the subject.”
I managed to retract my hand from Abby’s grip. “Yes, it looks like we’ll get some rain today.”
But Abby was undeterred. “Adam and Eve were naked in the garden and not ashamed, Sister Flora.”
“Oh yes, lots of rain, I imagine,” said Prudence, louder, as if to drown them out.
“Must you always be so vulgar against our Father in Heaven?” asked Flora.
“I wonder if tomorrow will be sunny then.” I kept my eyes on Prudence’s pained expression, which matched my own.
“Must all you women have come to this damned house?” said Abby.
Silence collapsed around us. The air boiled heavier. The walls of the room rippled, or perhaps it was only my fears distorting my vision.
When no one responded, Abby stormed out of the room, leaving a swirl of accusations both spoken and not behind her.
“Don’t worry about Abby,” Prudence said in a low voice as she prodded me to resume peeling. “She can get into these moods, but she doesn’t mean anything by it.”
Flora scoffed. “Believe me, she means everything she says, always trying to see how she can mix up trouble. It’s a good thing her parents passed on so they don’t have to see it.”
“That’s a hideous thing to say, Sister Flora,” Prudence said.
“Why? It’s the simple truth. Though perhaps they didn’t train her up right in the first place.” Flora began work on the carrots.
“Abby’s family is gone?” I asked.
“Her parents died crossing the plains when she was only a young girl,” Prudence explained in a reverent tone.
My heart tightened. Too many Saints laid buried in shallow graves along the trail to Utah, their loved ones forced to continue on to Zion without them after they’d been driven out by violence from the East.
Flora released a long breath that softened her face.
“I was raised for the sacrifices of the gospel. My parents learned from the feet of Joseph Smith in Nauvoo. When I came of age, I knew I would one day be a plural wife and I prepared myself for it, but not everyone was given the same learning. This is why I try so hard to instruct you two.”
Instruct me. I’d spent my entire life hunched over my scriptures until late at night, in stuffy Sunday school rooms memorizing lessons, on my knees in fervent prayer and fasting.
But nothing could’ve prepared me for this life.
My instinct was to give Flora a wide berth for fear of her disdain, but perhaps I shouldn’t.
Maybe I needed Flora’s steady guidance to survive.
And then there was Abby. Mercurial and alluring. Angry, happy, wicked, daring, lovely Abby.
The kitchen door swung open wide once more. Jacob grinned in at us.
“When is dinner, my lovely wives?”