For Time and Eternity (24 page)

I believe, even in the midst of that sentence, she wished she could have stopped, but too late, she snapped her pretty mouth shut and stared down into her plate. I summoned up all my strength and reached across the table, resting my hand on hers.

“He always has a plan,” I said. “I believe that now more than ever.”

Later, after the table had been cleared and the dishes done, after Nathan read to us from
The Book of Mormon
and we had our first time of family prayer, I took the girls by their hands, saying, “I’ll get them ready for bed.” In fact, I brought them into my room and let them wash their faces in the pretty washbowl, and I let them look at themselves in the mirror above it as I brushed and plaited their hair.

“I wish I was as pretty as Aunt Amanda,” Melissa said, catching my eye in the glass.

“You’re as pretty as you.”

“But don’t you think she’s pretty?”

“I do, indeed.”

“I think
you’re
pretty, Mama.”

“Well, thank you, Lottie.” I turned around and, in light of the compliment, chose not to chastise her for bouncing on the bed.

“Yes,” Melissa said, “but you’re older.”

As she will be someday.

“Does it bother you that Papa married Aunt Amanda?”

I had to be honest. “It did at first, but I know God has a reason.”

“It’s his plan for our eternal family.” She winced a bit as I worked out a knot in her hair.

Nothing but the sound of bristles against my palm. How to explain? More importantly, how to explain in a way that would not send her to her father in protest. So I brushed and I prayed,
Father, forgive my silence,
before forcing a cheerful tone to my voice.

“You know, Kimana reminded me earlier that we haven’t been having our Bible time since your father came home. And since I have this whole room to myself now, maybe we can have a special time together, just the three of us, like it was last summer. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“More stories!” Lottie still bounced.

Melissa was less convinced. “Papa already read to us.”

I moved to sit on the edge of my bed and gently pulled Lottie into my lap, beckoning Melissa to my side. “I grew up reading the Bible. And it’s very important to me that you girls read it, too. Your father wants you to know what Joseph Smith said, but I want you to know what
God
says. Do you understand?”

“But I heard Brother Brigham telling somebody that some parts of the Bible are wrong.”

I clenched my fist and sweetened my voice. “Brother Brigham may say what he likes. Nothing in the Bible is
wrong
, but some parts are hard to understand. I know when I was a little girl, it seemed very difficult. So hop up.” I patted the mattress beside me.

While the girls settled in, I turned up the flame in my blue lamp and opened to the first book of Samuel.

“The very last days that I lived at home, this is the book I was reading. It begins with the story of a woman who very badly wants to have a child.”

“And does she?” Melissa asked, immediately intrigued.

“We’ll have to read and find out.” I climbed in between the girls and leaned against the headboard, thrilling at the feel of them snuggling against me. When we got to the end of the chapter, I felt as if God had worked a miracle. Maybe it was because I was older, maybe because I’d read so much over the summer, but I hardly stammered over any words—not even the names. Somehow they seemed larger, clearer, more familiar, and it warmed my heart to hear my daughters begging me to read just a little more.

I kissed the top of each head. “Not tonight, but tomorrow. And only if we keep this our secret.”

“From Papa?” Lottie asked.

“From everyone.”

Chapter 22

Oddly enough, I count the next months as some of the sweetest in my life. Just a year ago I’d been pregnant with my little son, and as much as I knew I would never hold him in my arms again, I knew that I might not have this time with my daughters forever. They would grow up; they would leave home just as I had. Every night, before I sent them off to bed, I put my arms around them and prayed, “Heavenly Father, thank you for leaving us such wonderful stories so we can know just how great and powerful you are.”

I thought back to my days with Rachel and allowed myself to exert some of the privileges of being a first wife. I asked Nathan to shoot as many of the migrating geese as he could, and while our neighbors enjoyed the plucked birds we shared with them, Melissa and Lottie and I enjoyed new, soft down pillows plumped up behind us as we read. In an effort to establish some friendship with Amanda, I asked her to show me some of the treasures she’d brought with her from England, one of which was a large, leather-bound Bible.

“May I take this?” I asked. “I like to read from the Scriptures in the evening.”

“Go on.” She put it right in my lap. “I don’t think Nathan will mind.”

“It can be our little secret. Wait here.” I took the Bible to my room, set it on my bedside table, and returned with the tiny blue book we’d been using. “Take this one. It was a wedding gift to me from Sister Ellen.”

“Well now,” she said, entranced, “isn’t that charming.”

“You’ll do better with it than I do. Your eyes are younger.”

“Oh, I’m not much for reading, I’m afraid.”

“Someday you might feel different. And when you do, it’ll be here.”

Apparently reading was just one of the things that Amanda wasn’t “much for.” As we prepared our home for winter, it was apparent that she also lacked skills in gardening, canning, cooking, and preserving. While she could charm every woman in our quilting circle with her stories of living in fashionable London, she herself was hopeless with a needle. When Nathan took her to the first wool carding party of the season, she came home with red, bloody fingertips from continuously misunderstanding the direction of the cards.

“My people would have thrown her out to the wolves,” Kimana muttered under her breath after taking the latest flat, rock-hard loaf of bread out of the oven. “And the wolves would have thrown her back.”

* * *

Gifted with an unseasonably warm day that made me think we were nearing the end of summer rather than fall, Nathan took us out for a picnic on the shores of the Great Salt Lake. On the drive, I sat in the wagon’s seat with Nathan while the girls kept Amanda and Kimana entertained in the bed acting out stories with their dolls, Lilly and Rose. Gradually, the land grew flat—no hint of a hill—and a vast expanse of gray water appeared on the horizon.

“There it is!” Melissa called out, prompting a clattering of activity as the girls stood to look over the side.

“Careful,” I cautioned. “It’s still a way off.”

Amanda was no less impressed than the little girls. “It’s like being at the edge of the world now, isn’t it?”

It was. We were the only family to venture out this day, giving an eerie feeling that we might just be the only family in existence. I pictured what we must look like to God—just six tiny dots on the face of his creation.

“That’s why it’s so important to have God inside our hearts,” I said, voicing my thoughts. “Otherwise, we’d be lost.”

My words themselves, however, were lost on my traveling companions as they commented on the color of the sky—violet—the expanse of the valley—vast—and smell of the air—vile.

“It’s sulfur,” Nathan explained. “You’ll get used to it.”

We drove on, bringing the wagon to a stop next to a shock of tall grasses. I asked Kimana to help the little ones take off their shoes and socks, assuming Amanda could fend for herself, and when all were down to their bare feet, the girls and Amanda jumped from the wagon. Kimana took a little more time. Nathan and I remained perched in our seat, watching them diminish before our eyes.

“Come on, Papa! Come on, Mama!” Lottie’s voice trailed behind her.

“In a minute!” Nathan called, but he made no sign of moving. Instead, he set the brake and sat back, lolling his head in my direction. “When’s the last time we were out here?”

“Right before Lottie turned three.” Right before I discovered I was pregnant.

Seconds passed.

“Do you remember the first time?”

“Of course.” I remembered nearly every moment we’d spent together. “I felt like Amanda did today. It was like looking out to the edge of the world.”

“I ran and ran and ran for the water. Felt like I was running for miles. Then I looked back, and you were—”

“Right there.” We spoke in unison and laughed.

“Like one of those dreams,” he continued, the reins loose in his hands. “Where you run and run and get nowhere.”

“Ugh. I couldn’t run anywhere, it was so hot.”

“You were fine once you took your shoes off.” He leaned over, bumping his shoulder against mine, and stayed there.

“Yes.” I felt my face growing as warm as it had that day.

“And your stockings, remember?”

The children were well out of earshot, but still, there was no mistaking the slight lascivious tone of his voice. Plus, I knew how the story ended. “Stop it.”

“And you lifted up your skirt to keep it from getting wet, then decided that was too much trouble.”

I put my hands to my face, both to hide from him my longing to return to that time, and to seal the memory within.

“Like we had the whole world to ourselves. Adam and Eve at creation.” I know I did not imagine the wistfulness in his voice. He was transported too.

“That was a long time ago, Nathan.”

“Not so long.” He touched my knee, and I’d loved him long enough to know what feelings lived behind that touch. It was the first gesture of its kind since before his marriage to Amanda. “I miss you, Mil.”

The back of my throat felt like I’d swallowed the salty water of the lake.

“Well,” I said, “you remember what happened to Adam and Eve?”

“Oh yes.” He squeezed. “They were exceedingly fruitful and multiplied.”

“No.” I pulled myself away from him and hopped down from the wagon, forcing as much of a teasing lilt into my voice as possible. “They sinned. And they were cast out of the garden.”

Later, our family sat spread out atop two moth-eaten blankets on the hard-packed, wet sand. Part of our lunch included two loaves of bread that we spread with honeyed butter, and we tossed bits of the crusty ends to the half-dozen gulls that hopped nearby.

“We could have saved the bread Amanda made,” Nathan said as a pair fought over the final piece.

“Then they might never fly again,” Kimana said, and we all laughed.

“It’s so vast out here,” Amanda said. “You’d think our voices would echo. But it seems like all the sound is swallowed up.”

“The mountains are too far away to echo,” Nathan explained. We all craned our heads, seeing the mountains rising up in the distance. Miles and miles away, they jutted from the ground, turning us into scraps in the middle of a great shallow dish.

“The old woman bids us to be quiet,” Kimana said.

“What old woman?” Melissa sat up, ever ready for a story.

“Long ago, before the white men came to the valley, there was no salt in the lake. An old woman was traveling with her grandson—they were very poor—and they came upon the people of the pueblos to beg for food.

“The people of the pueblos were very busy preparing for a feast, and nobody would bother to feed her. So she told her grandson, ‘Go out to the edge of the village and laugh and play.’

“He did, and soon the children of the pueblo, curious, followed the sound of his voice. When all the children had gathered, she took a magic stone out of her pouch—a solid white rock, white as snow—and blew across its surface.”

Kimana held such an imaginary stone in the palm of her hand and blew, causing Lottie to jump in fright.

“Her magic turned all the children into jabbering jaybirds, including her grandson. But her heart was so hard, she showed no mercy.

“She continued her journey alone until she came to this valley, where the people—my people—took pity on her and gave her food. But her heart was too heavy to eat.

“‘Just a taste,’ they begged her, ‘or you will die, and your spirit will be on our hands.’

“The old woman took her white stone, sharpened it to a blade, and shaved off a piece of her flesh to drop into the cooking pot.”

This, too, Kimana demonstrated, and we all shuddered with Lottie.

“Her flesh was full of the salt of her tears, and it flavored the stew, making it very delicious to everyone. When my people asked her how they could ever hope to have such delicious stew in the future, she said, ‘I will take myself to your water and die there in it. I will salt the water for your food, as payment for the kindness you have shown me.’

“When my people asked how they could ever pay her for such an eternal gift, she thought back to the rash decision she made when she turned the children into jaybirds and said, ‘I ask only this: that when you bring the children to play at the edge of the waters, you bid them be quiet, that I might rest in peace.’”

We all sat in silence following her story, until, in a small voice, Lottie asked, “Is that true?”

Kimana shrugged. “It is a legend; that is all.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s very nice,” Amanda said, “filling the children’s heads with a lot of pagan nonsense.”

I felt compelled to leap to Kimana’s defense, though her face remained placid. “There are stories far more dangerous than an old Indian legend.”

“But such a tale flies in the face of God.” Amanda’s voice remained sweet, but her narrow eyes took on a glint I’d never seen before.

“And the tales of Joseph Smith fly in the face of Scripture, but you don’t have any problem filling my children’s heads with those.”

Amanda looked from me to Nathan, and he did not disappoint her silent cry for support. “Yes, the stories of our heroes of the time when Jesus walked among them were not preserved in the usual way, but there is a difference, Camilla, between the inspired word given from Heavenly Father and a story passed down from fireside to fireside.”

“I like Bible stories,” Lottie piped up.

My heart seized. “Amanda does have a point,” I said, more to divert conversation away from our secret studies than to support putting faith in Mormon lore. “We must be very careful what we choose to believe. Some stories are just for fun—”

“Those are called myths,” Nathan said, indulging in the moment.

“They are for our children,” Kimana said, sounding far more dignified than any of the rest of us adults. “When I was a little girl, I did not have the stories of Jesus. My people did not know of him. You are lucky to hear stories of truth from your mother. And truth from your father when he tells you about the mountains.”

Neither Nathan nor Amanda realized the gravity of what Kimana just said, and if they did, then it was a miracle of God that their tongues remained still rather than leap to offer up what Kimana so graciously ignored. Melissa had been twisting her neck, bouncing from speaker to speaker throughout the argument, but now her eyes looked past us all, out to the far-off place where the water touched the sky. Oh, what I would have given to know her thoughts. To answer her questions. But God held me silent like he did the others as he worked upon her spirit.

Just then Lottie let out an enormous yawn. “I want to go home.”

Sobered by our conversation, all agreed, and we packed up what few dishes we had and loaded the wagon. I climbed into the back, followed by Kimana; Nathan handed both sleepy girls to us. Melissa settled in the crook of my arm; Lottie curled up in Kimana’s ample lap. The sun was beginning to set, bringing the chill of evening with it, so he beat as much of the sand out of the blankets as he could, and we snuggled underneath them.

The lake was still in sight when Lottie’s eyes closed in sleep, but I felt Melissa shift her weight against me.

“Mama?” She spoke in a whisper, her finger beckoning me closer; then she lifted the blanket and I slipped my head beneath it. A two-inch hole let in an odd square of light, but other than that we were bathed in green darkness. Our little makeshift tent smelled of wet sand and my sweet daughter’s breath. “Does Kimana believe in God?”

“Yes, dear. Very much so.”

“Has she been baptized?”

“No. But she did ask God to live in her heart. And he does.”

“Why doesn’t she go to church?”

“The church here doesn’t teach about God the way she believes.”

“You mean, she doesn’t believe the prophet?”

“That’s right.”

“Sometimes it seems like you don’t believe him either.”

It wasn’t a question, so I offered no answer.

“Why do we have to keep our Bible time a secret from Papa? Does he think the Bible is a myth?”