Authors: Win Blevins
Gracie Johnson Young led the way, Burton at the rear. He sighed in-audibly. He was more interested in the management of the harem than in flowers.
Sun Moon wanted very much to walk in the flower garden. She had looked and looked at it from the windows of her bedroom. Compared to her home country, the America she had seen was dry, hard, barren of life. The plains of Kham were a land of snowy mountains and verdant grasslands. Miles and miles of it were marsh, impassable to strangers. Summer was the season the convent permitted her and other young aspirants to go home and be with their families, and that was when the grasslands were a sea of wildflowers, vibrant reds, strong purples, rich yellows, delicate pinks and whites, an exuberance of color, Earth showing off her extravagant fecundity. Sun Moon felt homesick.
She had never seen a formal garden of flowers, though. She swallowed hard, and forbade herself to remember. At the monastery in Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan, just a week from her family’s summer camp, were celebrated flower gardens. So she had persuaded her parents …
No!
she told herself, and felt the iron band within her throat tighten.
She followed the Mormons into the garden, Sir Richard just behind. The August sun slapped her like a half-rough hand. It was harsh, this sun. This country seemed poor beside her home. Dry earth, dry skies. Barren plains surrounded by barren mountains. The Mormons had learned to grow flowers and vegetables by diverting the creeks through ditches along their streets and onto their gardens, which was admirable, but the land did not seem to want to be fruitful.
She reached out to a rose. The petals were so soft, the fragrance so full.
Compassion for all sentient beings
. All monks and nuns dedicated their lives to such compassion. She had always felt herself deficient in this feeling. However splendidly she mastered learning, her compassion stayed more a precept of the mind than an inclination of the heart.
She imagined the struggles of this flower, to break out of the hard shell of the seed, to lie still in the cold ground, to soften in water and expand, to form a slender stem, to accept the sunlight and convert it somehow into strength, to endure the drying, buffeting winds, to reach upward and upward and upward and finally to express the joy of living in a blossom.
She imagined all that, rehearsed it in her mind. Yet she knew she did not powerfully feel kinship with the flower, or other creatures, or other people, even herself. For the young girl who entered the convent, who spent long hours memorizing, who was often cold, who sometimes longed to be touched and never was, she felt impatience, intolerance of weakness. For the young woman who was abducted, drugged, shipped abroad, enslaved, she felt… the iron band.
She reached out stiffly and cupped the rose in her hands. She wondered what it was like to send out pollen, to receive pollen, to bring forth new creatures, to make seeds and send them out into the world, to germinate and grow. Her mind felt for her womb, her unused womb, but could not find it.
And I have no feelings about that
.
She looked at the two young Mormon women chatting with Sir Richard, girls really. They would marry soon, they would procreate, they would act as vessels for the journeys of souls back into this world. They would act as the instruments of life.
I will never find out how it feels
. Her vow of chastity was sufficient reason, one of the five first vows every monk or nun takes. Now she had another reason.
Mahakala, teach me that destruction is creation
.
She breathed in the essence of the rose. She noticed her breath, just as she did in meditation. With the same fine attention she noticed the scent. It felt not only sweet but moist, fruitful.
Fertile
.
Something in her belly pulsed.
“I am especially fond of roses,” said Gracie. I was alla-jump at getting to walk through the garden. Few Saints had ever been Gracie-ed with this privilege. Even when I’d been a sort-of Saint, I was a dirty
Injun, and dee-definitely not a candidate for a tour of Brother Young’s roses conducted personally by his daughters. Sun Moon wouldn’t have been one either, because she wasn’t any more white and delightsome than me. So we were up against white-folkism again. Sir Richard was white. British. A man of rank. Important with a capital I. They escorted him, they showed him, and we tagged along.
Gracie pointed out the highlights to us. I never paid half attention, stuff about blooms under two inches or over four inches or in between. All the different colors, red, pink, yellow, white, lavender, and how they were mixed together to delight the eye. The Youngs had roses that were shrubs or little trees, roses that climbed on trellises, roses that were hedges, every kind you can imagine and then some.
Gracie did tickle me. She set out to explain how hybrids are made, especially some called hybrid perpetuals, which were the latest item on the block. “You cross roses by taking two blossoms …” And here she got stumped. I couldn’t figure why until Harold pitched in.
“The gardener designates one as male and the other female, one male one female, it doesn’t matter which.” I could see by the wild light in Harold’s that the words “male” and “female” were just too indelicate for Gracie’s dainty lips. Harold was as tickled by this as me, and I recognized a kindred spirit. He went on. “Remove the petals and stamens from the female. When the male produces pollen, you transfer it by hand to the female. Result? Something new under the sun.” He said it like a new kind of rose was the finest thing you could imagine. But I had never eaten a flower (I’ve eat far stranger since, by your lights) and had no plans to try.
“Stamens?” asked Sun Moon. She didn’t usually speak up.
“The male part,” said Harold.
“In Sanskrit the
lingam,
” put in Sir Richard. I don’t think any of us knew what that meant. “In Tibetan the
dorje.
”
“Pollen?” Sun Moon went on, which was real inquisitive for her.
“What comes out that does the fertilizing,” said Harold. Now he was antsy.
And I was antsy. Not for the same reason. Gracie pointed off somewhere and said something gay to Sir Richard, I didn’t hear what. They started that way. I turned in front of Sun Moon and held her eye. I nodded my head sideways. We were beginning to get our signals down pretty well by then. She nodded yes, and we wandered off, looking for all the
world like we were just turning to another bush of flowers.
It was time
. Or so I thought.
“What do you think about that?” I asked, stalling. My legs had the willy-woollies. Those funny pains were saying, “No, no, don’t try it.”
Sun Moon smiled at me. God, I loved her smile. She didn’t mean to get drawn into small talk, which was part of what I loved about her. Right now that love was bothering me. My body was near panting. Maybe that talk about stamens and pollen and breeding had hotted me up. Near feverish, I blurted it out. “Sun Moon, I am powerful drawn to you.”
Something Jeehosaphat funny happened in her eyes. What she said was, “I am a nun.”
That put a foot in my chest, hard. “I, I…” I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. I stared at the ground in front of my feet where we were trundling along. I couldn’t help thinking,
You are a nun, but are you a virgin? Do you have experience of what Sir Richard calls
lingams?
Do you want to? Or do you want to shrivel and die an old maid?
I was and am ashamed of those thoughts.
I flicked my eyes sideways at her and right back down. I gave myself a lecture. Probably she didn’t want any experience of
lingams
. Sure bet she didn’t.
Maybe she special doesn’t like the idea of mine
. Which seemed natural enough. It’s a peculiar-looking thing. No reason to think it might please anyone besides me, and pleasing me was a secret.
“I just wanted you to know,” I said.
“I am going back to my home,” she said in a stiffish tone.
Somehow in those words I took a hint of hope. “I have feelings for you,” I said.
Now she just walked along silent. Silence was one of the things Sun Moon was best at. My eyes slithered sideways like filings will slide toward a magnet. Somehow I couldn’t turn hope all the way out of my mind. Which just goes to show how foolishness will persist.
At that moment the others came back for us. “Will you join us at dinner?” Gracie asked. “Harold is coming.”
Burton looked at Sun Moon and me. We nodded yes. “We’d be grateful,” he told Gracie.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Burton observed that “Us” consisted of Gracie’s mother, Corrine Johnson, and three sisters. Burton was seated on Mrs. Johnson Young’s left, next to Harold. Asie and Sun Moon sat on the other side of their hostess. Everyone was in place on time, perhaps forty in all. When Brother Young saw that all was to his satisfaction, he said grace.
While large platters of food were being served (Mrs. Twiss acted as housekeeper and another wife as her assistant, or servant), Mrs. Johnson Young held forth verbally like a gusty wind. “Darn nice today.” “The corn is fine this year.” (Indian corn, that is—Americans call corn “wheat.”) “Well, those Neilsons will…” (This with an affronted eye on the Johnson clan.) “Did you know Harold is being set up for West Point?” “That Oswald.” “Green beans again.” None of this was directed at Burton or her other guests, or her children, or anyone in particular. A wind does not care what sail it fills, or whether it fills any. She simply tossed out these remarks at large, and let the world receive them as it would, gazing inscrutably into the distance as she did so.
However, the captain pursued one comment. “West Point?” It was the American Sandhurst, so Harold must have come from an important family of Saints. “Is that so, Harold?”
He nodded. “The Governor is arranging it, I think.” So. The United
States in its wisdom had seen fit to replace Brother Young as Governor of Utah Territory, and had put its own, secular man in place of the ecclesiastical man. Then it took the politic course and offered the Saints one of the privileges reserved to rank, a place for a son of a leading family at the leading military academy. Burton noted for the sake of his government that Brigham Young was building bridges toward the U.S., not burning them.
“Do you want to be a soldier?”
“You bet,” said Harold.
Ah, the ubiquitous affirmation of the American West
.
“For the United States?”
Now he became slightly more guarded. “We Mormons respect authority. We know the necessity of self-defense. As long as I’m not called on to march against my own people …”
He helped himself to meat—there were beef and mutton—and set to eating in a hearty way.
Burton offered, “If there’s aught I can tell you, as an old soldier…”
From Burton’s Journal:
The rest of the repast consisted of baked potatoes, corn meal mush, the detested green beans, cheese, bread, and milk. The meals tended to be much the same. Each morning as family and guests walked downstairs to breakfast, Young children could be heard chanting, “Peach sauce, peach sauce,” in protest, because it was served every day. Brother Young, however, was reported to be indifferent or impatient with such complaints. If food nourishes the body, in his judgment, that is enough to ask. Teasing tongues in the family note that he himself does not eat the peach sauce for he takes his breakfast alone in Bee Hive House, a boiled
egg,
milk, cream, bread, and fruit. The
egg
out of duty, for Brother Young believes it increases fertility
.
The meal was overcooked, but no worse in this respect than what passes for good English cooking. As we were nearing the end of the main part, before dishes were cleared for dessert, came an untoward event. Suddenly in the room rose a hush loud as a roaring wind. One of the childless wives, a frail nothing of a woman of sour face and self-effacing demeanor, rose from her
seat and started toward the head table, plate in hand. Every eye in the room followed her
.
What does she want?
everyone wondered, meaning,
what delicacy from the head table that is withheld from us?
When she arrived, she dared not raise her eyes to her husband’s. His glare would have felled an elephant. She helped herself to some dish she coveted (I heard later it was rhubarb) and returned to her seat
.
The room waited. After a long interval of staring, the Prophet returned to his meal. The children broke into scandalized whispers. I overheard a wife to my left say, “I’ll bet he fixes her so she don’t do that again.” Mrs. Johnson Young looked like she would gladly do the fixing herself. After the prayer meeting Brother Young did summon the transgressor into his office. She came out later like a mouse scurrying for a hole
.
Dinner is followed by an hour of rest, then prayer meeting. First the family sings several hymns, of the low-church sort and with some infusion of Welsh spirit. Brother Young then reads prayers from the Bible. Though I know him to be utterly sincere, I did sometimes get the impression that he was not so much entreating the Divinity as talking things over, one great man to another. Sometimes he even seemed to give advice. After the prayer meeting the family lingers for an hour of domestic felicity. Having wearied of the company (I have endured my share of prayer and unction from English rectors), I retired to our rooms to write in this notebook
.
“Want to see something?” Harold had a hint of a crazy smile, and I knew he’d picked me out as a kindred spirit. Without any notion of what he had in mind, I said yes. He nodded toward some chairs, and we sat.
The family talk that came after the prayer meeting was breaking up, and wives and children were heading back to their rooms, or bedroom suites, as they were called (in those days I thought it was spelled sweets). Brother Young was just perching there in his big stuffed chair, answering
a question for this one or that, dispensing and withholding, male of the pride.
“Boobledy boo boo,” said Harold.
I gave him a queer look.
“Boobledy boobledy,” he said again, that glint in his eye.
“Heckahoy,” I answered.
He turned to a distant horizon, clicked his heels, and saluted smartly. “Ahoy, heck!”
“Heck?” says I, scrambling to my feet.
“Heck,” he confirmed, pointing.
“I fear the fires of heck, but I didn’t expect them this close.”
Both of us chuckled a bit, and looked around for some more fun.
Brother Young stood and looked around like a man who doesn’t know what to do with himself. He fished in a coat pocket for something and brought it out in a white handkerchief, all the while looking distracted, like he was really doing something else—you know how a man taking a pee will look around like he’s doing something else? Then he fidgeted for a minute and set out down one hall.
There were two halls, the left visible and the right out of sight. Brother Young headed down the one where we could see. “I thought so,” says Harold. “Watch this!” He sounded like it must be better than ice cream on a sultry day.
Brother Young wandered along the hall, that white handkerchief tucked up in one hand and one end dangling. There were doors on the right and the left, doors of main bedrooms where wives slept, sitting rooms, and kids’ rooms. A couple of times, when a door was open, Brother Young spoke softly to someone inside. Seemed like the words must have been kindly, but the way he stood was kind of cramped, like a man who’s uneasy with what he’s going to do. He went clear to the end door, looked in briefly, moved his lips, and came back our way.
Harold was tight as a fiddle string—you could have twanged him. But he kept on trying to sit relaxed and idle, like we were just two young fellas enjoying a social hour. At last Brother Young came back into the parlor and passed into the other hall. “Evening, Brother Young,” said Harold. The Lion of the Lord gave a flicker of an eyebrow as he walked by, but you couldn’t have said whether it was a greeting or not.
“Damn,” said Harold. “I thought he’d go for Mary.”
Not yet daring to guess what Harold meant, I just tried to keep the expression on my face from looking stupid.
“C’mon!”
He jumped up, but after two steps began to creep. I followed, tiptoeing along like a thief. We got up to a big urn at the corner of the hall.
You idjit, you spy on the man who gives you sanctuary?
That’s what I was screaming inside my head. Harold stationed himself close behind the urn and motioned me behind him.
He won’t just condemn you to heck, he’ll call Porter Rockwell to escort you!
I’d have run, but fear turned my legs to noodles.
“Know what that is in his hand?” whispers Harold.
I shook my head, though Harold couldn’t see it.
Brother Young ambled down the hall, hesitating now and then, cocking his head upward like he was checking out the sky straight through the ceiling.
“It’s chalk!”
I didn’t get it.
Brother Young acted for all the world like a man making some sort of big show or playacting.
But why?
“He’s picking out THE one. Of the night.”
Finally Brother Young kind of sidled over to one door, turned his back to it, looked about while acting like he wasn’t, turned toward the door again, and touched it with that handkerchief. I couldn’t see if it left a chalk mark. What I remembered later was what a whipped and hangdog air he had.
Harold whirled on me. His eyes were huge. For a second I thought he was going to pounce. “Alice!” he practically screamed in a whisper. And he ran off, going, “It’s A-a-alice!” and giggling like a maniac.
I ran right with him. I’d spent my life scooting away from Mormon churchmen, and Brigham Young was the churchiest of ’em all. But I wasn’t every bit as fast as I might have been. What Harold had said had given me carnal thoughts, and my thing was a little heavy there in front, wagging back and forth.
Sitting on his small daybed, Richard Burton continued his journal by candlelight.
Human curiosity is such that readers will want to know just how the conjugal aspects of Mormon polygamy are conducted.
As far as this observer can tell, every manner conceivable may be employed. The imagination of the gentiles, though, is much inflamed by speculation. This is the sort of anecdote some spread:
“
One Mormon husband and his three wives were obliged every night to sleep in the same room. The first wife required her husband to sleep with her in an upper bunk, the second and third being relegated to the lower. When the husband felt desire for the second or third wife, he simply said so. The wife gave her permission, as long as he returned to her bunk when finished. He performed the copulation and slept the rest of the night with wife number one
.”
This is manifestly nothing more than an example of the preoccupation of puritanical American culture with concupiscence. The crowing tone of the anecdote gives it away
.
First-hand observation indicates than the Lion of the Lord and other husbands in celestial marriages provide their plural wives with separate bedrooms or living suites, often with separate residences, sometimes with faraway residences. The matter of a wife’s husband’s intimacy with her “sister” seems to be dealt with decorously. My guess is that conflicts inspired by jealousy are few. In countries of Asia where polygamy is practiced they are uncommon
.
Asie and Harold came spinning up through the door, slammed it, and threw themselves on the floor, panting. “Sir Richard! Sir Richard!”
Burton couldn’t tell which lad was talking when, the way they babbled his name.
“We, we …,” said Harold breathlessly. The lads looked at each other merrily and burst into laughter.
Asie had the courage. “We watched the bull inspect the cows and
choose one.
” Gales of laughter.
As they told the story by turns, interrupting each other, Burton’s delight spiraled from his belly to his head. It was a good story, regardless of what Brother Young was really doing.
“Sweet gizzards,” exclaimed Asie when they’d blurted it all out.
Burton regarded them with a broad smile. “So. Concubine of the night,” said Burton.
“I wouldn’t say that,” mouthed Harold, and a hint of steel edged his youthful voice.
Stupid to put it so bluntly
. Harold Jackson might be an independent-minded Mormon, but he was no traitor.
Burton the man felt for Harold Jackson. Burton the writer knew an opportunity when he saw it. “When he goes to one of his wives, does he stay the night?”
How much are you willing to say, young lad?
Burton watched the mind hesitate. It flipped, flopped, and flipped over again. Harold came to disclosure. He shook his head. “Never.” A moment’s pause. “He sleeps alone in a bedroom next to his office in Bee Hive House.”
So why are you talking to an outsider? What do you want to say, o ye son of the great?
“I am a Saint, you know. Genuine.”
“Of course.”
“I wouldn’t want you to think I’m a jack Mormon.”
Burton nodded sagely. When you didn’t have a clue what to say, a sage nod was always a good trick.
“But I don’t want to have a plural marriage.” The young man reddened.
“Ah.”
The young man looked hard at the ground. Up at Burton. Back at the ground. “I believe God meant man and woman to feel
passion
for one another.”
Burton regarded the young man.
Yes, you are newly launched into the hot-blooded years.
“Your father and his wives …?”
Harold just hung his head.
“My observation,” Burton put in, “is that Brother Young’s house has a spirit not of passion but of piety and duty. It is cool, bloodless, diligent.”
“
Yes
. What the gentiles imagine …” The lad shrugged in frustration.
“Do you think …?”
Harold interrupted. “I shouldn’t be talking about this. At all.” He gave forth a veritable compendium of the body language of being ill at ease, head down, hands wringing, torso twisting, feet shuffling. “There is something I should mention to you, though. It’s about Porter Rockwell.”
“Is he here?” asked Sun Moon.
She stood in the doorway of her room. She seemed so vibrant I wondered how I had not felt her presence, even if I didn’t hear her open the door.
“No, Ma’am,” muttered Harold, “he’s not. It’s something else.” Harold looked from her at Sir Richard queerly. “Father opposes the Danites. Brother Young opposes the Danites.” He looked sidewise at me and Sun Moon. “He respects Porter Rockwell but opposes the Danites.”