Chapter 30
As the sun rose, I paced my room after a sleepless night.
Every time I grew close to sleep, the conversation with Abby would play again in my head, and all thoughts of exhaustion would flee.
It seemed the floorboards were deep with mud, for each length of the room my feet trudged slower, matching the paralyzed state of my mind.
I couldn’t go forward—I had no true answers. But I couldn’t stay put—I’d been deceived and was possibly in more danger than I realized.
I needed to find an outlet for these raging nerves.
Throwing on the first dress I could find, I didn’t bother to study my surely haggard reflection in the mirror. What did any of it matter, how I looked now that the truths of my world slipped away from me?
I marched into the hallway to find Prudence. Perhaps at least comforting her this morning would bring me purpose and distraction.
But Prudence was nowhere to be found.
I searched the house room by room but couldn’t find her.
When I checked in on the children, I found Edward with his siblings playing a game of jacks, but there was no sign of Prudence.
A sickness churned in the pit of my stomach at the memory of her melancholic wandering the night before.
My feet quickened to the kitchen as I prayed silently that her condition hadn’t overtaken her.
I pushed the door open with a loud clatter.
Abby sat silently at the table while Flora chided her about something.
I avoided her gaze as I shuffled in, the memory of her warning too fresh and painful in my mind.
The morning fire had long since extinguished in the hearth, but the taste of soot hung in the air.
“Does anyone know where Prudence is?” I asked.
Flora scoffed. “In bed, probably. This time of grieving needs to end. Her duties as a wife are being neglected and her idleness is sin.” She kneaded the mound of dough in front of her with extra vigor.
“I checked her bed. She’s not there or with the children, or anywhere else that I can find.”
“Maybe she went to town for one of her rowdy women’s meetings,” Flora said. “My son told me a horse was missing from the carriage house this morning.”
“Without telling us or asking for help? She shouldn’t be out in her state.”
Abby’s chair scraped across the floorboards. “I think we should be worried, Sister Flora. She has been strange of late. We must do what we can to find her.”
Worry hung in Abby’s expression. Was she also thinking of the missing second wife?
“I won’t waste more time on her deficiencies,” Flora replied, her tone so bitter I could almost taste it.
“Deficiencies?” I was no longer concerned one bit for her ire. “Your determination to earn your way into heaven isn’t much of a virtue when it lacks any bit of charity.”
Flora pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose with clear surprise. But my outburst felt good; too good to give into the immediate guilt that I should beg her pardon for rudeness. Maybe I didn’t want to beg anything of her anymore in this house built on falsehoods and terrors.
But before either of us could say more, Abby stepped between us in what appeared to be an unheard of act of peacemaking. This day was full of amazements.
“We don’t have time for this,” Abby said. “There are real problems here, Sister Flora. I insist you help us.”
Flora threw the ball of dough onto the table, sending up a spray of flour.
“Of course, you care for Prudence and her problems. But what of my problems, Sister Abby? I am the one with the most children, I am the one who runs this kitchen, I am feeling the absence of our husband most keenly, and you care nothing about what I’ve been saying to you all morning. ”
“You truly think you’ve suffered so greatly in this house? Being able to waltz around with unchecked superiority and zealotry?” Abby’s words were ice.
I froze, staring between the two of them.
“As the mother with the most children and the most righteous, I should run this household, not you. I have the faith and fortitude. I’ve proven that time and time again,” Flora said. “So help me, Abby, if you don’t take my needs seriously, I will leave, and you will starve.”
“No one needs to leave,” I said forcefully. “We don’t need to do anything drastic.”
Abby ignored me.
“Then do it, Sister Flora. Leave! Take your precious children and go. Nothing is stopping you but your own pride.” She extended her hand to the door, beckoning her to follow through on her threat.
I swallowed. I’d started this fight and now it was out of hand.
“We just need to find Prudence—”
Flora cut me off. “Fine. I will leave today. I will find a way to write to Jacob and tell him we are at my father’s farm, and I will demand my own household as is my right as his most important wife.”
Panic shattered in my chest. Everything was unraveling and I couldn’t take hold fast enough to keep it together.
“But what of Prudence?” I said.
For a single moment, Flora’s face softened. Then as fast as it happened, she hardened back into her usual demeanor.
“She probably went for a ride and will wander back in with her spirit of the Devil at lunch, demanding to be pitied. Your worries are wasted on her childish behavior, while you should be concerned with greater things. Have you listened to nothing I have taught you since you arrived? It is our faithful works that will save us, and this household has drained the last of mine.”
“How can you be so unfeeling?” I spit out each word. “How can you speak of us so coldly? Where is your care in all your lectures and demands?”
“Is that truly what you think of me, Hazel? That I’m cold?”
A slow beat passed between us, the air thickening with the current of a gathering lightning storm.
“Did you know that ever since the loss of her child I’ve come to her room every night to pray with her? That even when she wouldn’t permit my entrance, I would kneel down at her door in supplication for her soul?” Flora said.
I shrank back in shame.
“Did you ever think that striving to fortify her is loving?” Flora fixed her gaze on me.
“We’re all together in this refiner’s fire of plural marriage.
We’re all struggling and it’s by design.
This is all a test to prove our faithfulness.
God will separate the wheat from the chaff, Sister, and burn the unworthy with His mighty power. ”
She spoke with the passion of one of the Brethren delivering a Sunday sermon.
“If I didn’t love her, I wouldn’t bother with her at all.
I have been doing what I can to strengthen Prudence precisely because I care for her.
That’s why I refuse to coddle her, or you.
I care enough to cut you down, to aid you to work hard and to suffer for righteousness’ sake. I want the best for our family.
“And you,” she continued. “You’ve done nothing but skirt around the house with your head in a cloud and no more conviction than a leaf being blown in a new direction with every breeze. One day you will stand for judgment, and if you remain as you are now, you will be found wanting.”
Her words were a sword cutting straight into my core, through every layer I buried myself in day after day.
They struck exactly where I’d always been weakest, the horrible truth that simmered within my soul.
For as long as I could remember, I lived in constant fear of discovery that I wasn’t the flawless Mormon woman I should be.
But the truth I couldn’t escape was that I was seen in all my faults and shame.
My entire life I’d clung on to the rules and obedience because deep down I thought they would save me and make me acceptable.
Make me worthy of love. But in the end, I still hadn’t been enough.
I made no attempt to respond, only wrapped my arms around my waist to hold myself in. I was in danger of spilling out across the floor—every blight and wicked imagination spread out for all to see.
Abby slammed the table, breaking through the quiet.
“Get out, Sister Flora. Just go! Leave us to our sinful ways then in this burning hell. God knows I would leave it if I could. Take your children, take the food, take every damn thing you want. You’ve already taken my husband, the same as all the others.”
Her words brought my disordered thoughts to an abrupt stop. All the others—the missing second wife, Sariah, included. But Flora didn’t know; she might never know if she left. Was that a kindness or a deception? I couldn’t form the words to ask.
“And there will be more, mark my words, and they will only get younger. You think you’re important now, just wait, Sister. Plural marriage isn’t the refiner’s fire to press us into diamonds. It’s the hellish lie that crushes us into powder beneath men’s feet.”
I reached for Abby’s hand as she stalked to the door.
“Wait, please. Sister Abby, we can’t let her leave us,” I pleaded.
She glared at Flora over my shoulder, who appeared too stunned or angry to speak for once.
“And why not?”
Was it wise to confess Jacob’s letter now, with all the secrets Abby still held so close to her chest?
“Please, you alone know what Jacob’s capable of,” was all I could think of to say to beg her to say what she knew of Jacob’s true character and Sariah’s disappearance.
Instead, Abby tugged her hand from mine. “Indeed, I do, little Hazel.”
The door slammed as she left the room. A plate slipped from its precarious perch on the lopsided shelves and smashed to the floor. I held my breath, feeling as if I were the plate—shattered.
With a shake of her head, Flora undid her apron and tossed it to me. Then, without so much as a backward glance, she disappeared out the kitchen door. I heard her voice calling through the quiet halls for her children to pack their things.
Part of me wished to follow her, to reconcile, but my feet stayed planted in place. I’d failed. Like the tick of the clock in the parlor that pounded directly in my ears, I knew I was running out of time. Jacob would return and then I’d know true hell.