"It counts for everything."
"Nothing. Who considers it at all? I never thought of another man but Heber. I can't remember a time when I was so young I didn't know that he was my husband and I belonged to him forever. I don't look very pretty or young anymore, but it's true. You don't forget that sort of thing just because you get older and tireder. God took him away for two years. Did you ever hear me complain?"
"This isn't unbearable either, Vilate."
"For you. You hated your husband."
"But I love my husband now. And knowing he loves another woman, too -- I can bear that, for love of him."
It was lame, Dinah knew it, and so did Vilate, shaking her head slowly, looking at the place where the wall sank down against the floor.
"What is it like," Vilate asked at last, "being married to him like that?"
Dinah could not bear to tell it truthfully. She could not lie, but she could color it, she could make it sound like as a plural wife she meant less to Joseph than she really did. She could help Vilate believe that the first wife lost little, so that she wouldn't be so jealous, so that she could bear to live the law. Dinah explained it as she wished for Emma to understand it. "He comes to me only rarely, months between, sometimes. He never pretends that he loves me more than any other -- on the contrary, his heart is with his -- his first. But I can bear that, because I think of myself as her handmaid, like Hagar -- "
"Hagar was cast away by her husband, at Sarah's demand. It's not Hagar I fear. It's Rachel. The younger sister, but the favored wife."
"You can't compare. It was Rachel that Jacob meant to marry from the first, he was only given Leah as a trick. Think instead of Bilhah and Zilpah, who never usurped their mistresses' place, and yet served Jacob well, and bore him sons."
"I've borne enough sons."
"Don't you know Heber?" Dinah said, gripping Vilate by the arm. "You'll always have his love."
Vilate's only reaction was to shake her head and give one weak hiccoughing sob.
"Vilate, God will bless you for it. I promise you."
Vilate turned to her abruptly, and clutched at Dinah's hands and arms, scratching her as she tried to hold her hands. "Bless me, Dinah! Give me a blessing!"
If the words had been said to an elder or high priest, there would have been no doubt of their meaning. He would have put his hands out, touched the woman, and answered her petition with a declaration in the name of Christ and by the power of the holy priesthood after the order of Melchizedek. But to a woman, what meaning could the words have? Yet Vilate took Dinah's hands and lifted them, placed them on her own head. "Bless me."
"I can't!"
"God can't deny me, and no man can answer me! Bless me!"
"I'll pray for you -- "
Vilate's answer was to hold Dinah's hands more tightly, pressing them to her head; so Dinah prayed for Vilate to have strength, to overcome her fear; prayed that her husband would be wise and kind, so she would be reconciled to God's will. When the prayer ended, Vilate stayed silent on the floor. Dinah leaned to her and kissed her on the lips, to give her courage; Vilate's lips moved slightly to return the kiss, but the older woman gave no other sign of knowing Dinah was there. She looked so frail and old, though she was scarcely in her thirties. Dinah was sure she hadn't eaten -- no doubt she was fasting as she tried to bend herself to the will of God. It was too much, though, for her to fast; she was too weak. Dinah went to the fire, put the water pot over the coals so she could make a tea. But when she turned around from putting another few sticks on the fire, she saw the door closing; Vilate was gone, and Dinah had not helped her. It made Dinah afraid, to see a first wife react to the Principle this way. It seemed to tell her that Emma would be the same, that she would never bend, would never accept Dinah as her sister wife. If Emma knew, she would hate me: Dinah heard that thought in her heart and felt despair.
She went back to bed for a while and tried to sleep; got up at last and wrote in her journal, read the scriptures, tried anything she could to calm her fear. But she could not, and at last, as the afternoon waned, she put on her sunbonnet and went out into the hottest hour of the August day. She would go to Joseph. Not as a wife, but as any Saint could go to him, for counsel, for encouragement. She had never done it before; he would forgive her if she did it just this once.
Joseph was busy; she had to wait downstairs with Charlie. It was hard, for Charlie was almost laughing out loud every other moment with excitement over something. She asked him what it was, hoping that if he talked he'd not be so annoying as he was with his constant smiles and contented sighs. But he looked at her mysteriously and said, "I can't tell you. Joseph said to keep it private for just now."
So Dinah endured his unendurable good cheer until at last Joseph appeared at the foot of the stairs and said, in his formal voice, "Sister Handy? You wanted to see me?"
She went up the stairs decorously, keenly aware of her husband following behind. Emma was there in the hallway, holding a cloth that she was folding. Emma smiled and reached out her hand. "I'm glad to see you out of your house, Sister Dinah."
Dinah took her hand, pretending to herself that someday soon it would be like this every day, Emma greeting her with love in Joseph's home, not as a friend, but as a sister wife. But not yet. "Go on, Dinah," Emma said. "It's not good to keep Joseph waiting."
Joseph stood at the door of the room where he gave and took counsel. He smiled at her. Or was he smiling at Emma? Not at me, Dinah decided; he's surely angry at me for coming; he can't be glad to have both these wives together in his house today. What surprised Dinah was the fact that she felt a little jealous that Joseph was smiling at Emma. I am the interloper, Dinah reminded herself. I have no right to resent his love for her.
Joseph closed the door behind him. Dinah turned to face him. He did not smile. "What have you come for, Sister Dinah?"
Of course, Dinah told herself. The walls are not made of stone. Yet can't he so much as look glad to see me? Never mind. He's afraid I'm here for pleasure, and I'm not. "I came because of Vilate Kimball."
Joseph sighed.
"Heber taught the Principle to her, and she's taking it desperately hard. Maybe if you talked to her -- "
"How much did she explain to you?"
"Nothing. She only said that she knew now where my -- burden had come from." Could Emma be listening? "And she wanted me to forgive her. But the way she was acting, it wasn't hard to guess."
"You guessed wrong."
That was impossible. All the talk of how she loved her husband, the way that Vilate asked about what it was like for her, being a plural wife -- "She must know about the Principle."
"Oh, she knows. But that's not what's bothering her."
"What is it, then?" Dinah asked.
Joseph shook his head. "If she didn't tell you, it's hardly my place to do it."
"She was talking of fallen prophets, Joseph."
" Brother Joseph," he whispered.
"Brother Joseph."
"Many people talk of fallen prophets, Sister Dinah."
"I'm afraid she may turn against the Church over this, whatever it is -- "
"Perhaps she will." He sounded harsh, but she knew his voice well enough to hear that he, too, was afraid. "Sister Dinah, when you stood on the ship in Liverpool harbor, and chose between your children and the Church, was it hard?" He did not wait for an answer. "When the Lord sets a test to try the faith of someone, don't judge them harshly if they don't keep perfect decorum through it all."
"I wasn't judging her."
There was a knock at the door. Joseph was annoyed. "You shouldn't be here for this."
The door opened. Dinah saw such fear on Joseph's face that she was relieved to see that it was only Heber -- Heber Kimball, with Vilate behind him.
"You'll have to excuse me, Sister Dinah," Joseph said. "I have to see the Kimballs privately -- they came more quickly than I expected."
"No," Vilate said quietly. She was hoarse, as if she had wept all
day, but her face was calm now. "Please stay, Dinah. I want her to stay."
Joseph and Heber looked at each other. They must have made a decision, for Joseph closed the door without making Dinah go through it first. He stood then with his back to the door, Heber and Vilate before him, facing him. "What did you choose?" Joseph asked.
Vilate whispered, "I'm the Lord's to do with as he pleases."
Then, to Dinah's shock, Heber took Vilate's hand and placed it in Joseph's and said, "Wife, here is your husband."
Of all things that Dinah might have thought of, this was the most impossible. Vilate, to leave Heber and become Joseph's plural wife? It was impossible that God could ask for such a thing, it was a perversion of the Principle; and now Dinah remembered the things she had said to Vilate just this morning, encouraging her to accept. I would never have urged her on to this. Dinah wanted to cry out for them to stop. But she did not. For at that moment Joseph began to weep, and she could see the spirit of God come on him. He stared past the couple, as if he saw something transpiring behind them; his voice, though quiet, became more penetrating, almost like a song. "And Abraham stretched forth his hand," said Joseph, "and took the knife to slay his son. And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, 'Abraham, Abraham. And Abraham said, Here am I.'" Joseph looked Heber in the eye and changed the rest of the scripture. "And the angel said, 'Lay not your hand upon his wife. For now I know that he fears God, seeing that he has not withheld his wife, his beloved Vilate from the Lord.'"
It was a trial. Only a trial. God wouldn't require them to go through with it. Dinah watched as they embraced each other in relief. Then Joseph joined their hands and sealed them together as husband and wife for eternity. "Even the angels can't part you now," he told them when it was done. They clung to each other as they left the room, until Vilate suddenly remembered Dinah was there and ran to her and embraced her and whispered in her ear, "Oh, Dinah, without you I'd never have found the strength to do it." Then she was gone, and Dinah and Joseph were alone again.
To Dinah's surprise, she was angry. As Vilate and Heber rejoiced, Dinah had felt rage grow like fire in her. And now she whispered savagely, "What kind of God requires such things of people!"
With one hand he held her, his fingers in the hair at the nape of her neck. "Why are you angry? How is it different from the test you were given, when you gave up your children?"
"Where was the angel at my test! Where was God then! Why didn't someone put my children's hands in mine and say, They're yours forever, for time and eternity, nothing can part you -- why doesn't God love me as much as he loves them?"
She wept and he held her to him and whispered, "I don't know." And then he said, even more softly, with some of her own pain in his voice, "The God who left your children alive -- where was he when so many of mine died?"
Do you want me to be ashamed? "Do you want to compare the pain?"
"I'm not comparing," he said. "Father chooses for us what he knows we can bear, and what we need to go through to become what he wants us to be, if we have the faith for it. And not just once. Over and over again, that's what we're here for, that's all that life is, testing us again and again."
"Then the lucky ones are the ones who die before they're old enough to know."
"The lucky ones are the ones who know they have proved themselves in a wrestling match with the Lord."
"I surrender now," Dinah said. "I want no more tests. I have had enough."
Joseph laughed sadly and kissed her hair. "The one thing you'll never do, Sister Dinah, is surrender, to God or anyone."
Dinah was afraid of meeting Emma once she left the room; there was no way to hide the fact that she'd been crying, and Emma would want to know why, if not now, then later. But Emma was not upstairs, and when they got downstairs Charlie told them she had gone on an errand before Heber and Vilate came. Joseph didn't seem surprised. "These things work out," he said.
"Brother Joseph," Charlie said, "is it all right if I tell the news to Dinah?"
Joseph laughed. "It's not that big a secret, Charlie." Joseph turned to Dinah. "I'm sending Charlie to Washington. At his own expense, of course." Charlie was visibly proud that he was doing well enough that he needed to ask for nothing from the Church to pay his way. "I want him to work on winning support with Congress for our petition for redress of grievances from Missouri. At least restitution for the land that was stolen from us." Joseph slung his arm around Charlie's shoulders.
"Charlie's only just turning nineteen this week," Dinah said. "Even if he were a citizen, he couldn't vote in this country."
"Don't talk him out of it, Dinah," Charlie said. "I can do it."
"There isn't much that Charlie can't do," Joseph said. "A sister wouldn't know that, of course. My sisters never thought I'd amount to much, either."
Dinah smiled, but wasn't satisfied until Joseph playfully held Charlie at arm's length and said to him, "It's just the sort of mission I might've sent Don Carlos on."
Charlie soberly received the words as praise, as confidence, and Joseph meant them that way, at least in part. But Dinah knew as well that Joseph had found a way around the most painful of reminders of Don Carlos's death.
Charlie came to her and took her hands. "Dinah, are you glad?"
Impulsively she embraced him tightly. "Yes, I'm glad," she said. It startled the poor boy, but it felt good to her. He was the companion of her youth, and even though their marriages had drawn them apart, she still loved him as always, and when she was glad she needed to be glad with him, even if she couldn't tell him all the reasons. Couldn't tell him she was glad that there would soon be other families living the Principle. Couldn't tell him she was glad that the silence Vilate had imposed on her would end at last. Couldn't tell him she was glad that it would not be long before Harriette, too, would have the husband that she wanted. You, Charlie, if you only knew what God has in store for you.
37
Charles Kirkham Washington, D.C., 1842
There was a warm spell in January, and the First Lady, Mrs. Tyler, decided to pretend it was spring and have an orchestra perform on the White House lawn. Charlie was there, with writing paper and pencil so he could pretend to be using the time for correspondence, but in fact he was out to enjoy the weather and the company of other people, just like everyone else.
Charlie began a letter to Sally first, more out of duty than pleasure. He felt guilty whenever he had to think of her for long. He hadn't been there for the birth of little Alexandra in November. It was a much colder winter in Nauvoo. And the Prophet was in hiding much of the time, trying to evade arrest as the writs from Missouri came thick and fast. Charlie knew he should finish his business and come home, but the truth was, he wasn't that anxious to return. He missed Sally, and wanted to see his daughter, but he was in love with Washington. There were people here who loved poetry, men who loved poetry. Old John Quincy Adams himself had lent Charlie more than one book of poetry, but when he copied some out and sent them home to Sally, she didn't understand them unless Harriette explained them to her. Cold as a corpse Harriette, but she understood love poetry better than Sally, even though Sally was as hot between the sheets as a woman could possibly be.
Too hot. Not like the cool Washington ladies in their lawns and muslins, always so distant and reserved. They had mystery; there was no mystery about Sally. She said what she thought, and what she thought was so common, so unpoetic that Charlie sometimes felt quite afraid to go home, for life in Nauvoo was swallowing up the last vestiges of refinement in him, his last hope of being a gentleman. Charlie looked around him at the people beginning to gather on the lawn. There had never been such a gathering at Nauvoo. It was not just that people had money; it was the grace of conversation when they spoke, the depth of thought when they touched on topics that mattered. Nauvoo seemed so boorish in comparison. Charlie hated telling people he was just a clerk. He preferred to tell them that he owned a factory. He liked to leave the impression that he owned thr
ee, in fact, a chandlery, a soap manufactory, and a wagon-making firm. He meant to make wagons soon, anyway, and he did make wheels, and wheels were what made the difference between a wagon and a box. You're in business, and only nineteen? Do you have partners? Oh, that's impressive, I wish my son were so ambitious. Charles! Recite the one, that Wordsworth one, Lucy -- yes, it breaks my heart, you have to hear it recited by an Englishman. A pleasure to meet you; you have the soul of a poet, Mr. Kirkham. May I call you Charles? What are you doing out west? You aren't a pioneer, Charles. You're too civilized. Where you belong is New York. No, Boston -- don't listen to him, New Yorkers can't tell a waltz from a waffle iron. You should come to Charleston.
But Sally wouldn't hear of it. He dropped a hint once, about how nice it might be to live on the coast. Sally's next letter fairly burned as she informed Charlie that she had married a Latter-day Saint and intended her children to grow up with Latter-day Saints and she would not for a moment be willing to live in Babylon, the whore of the earth, as the scriptures called it. Are you praying every day, Charlie? Don't forget me. Don't forget our baby. Don't forget the Savior. Come home soon.