Lena Jones 02 - Desert Wives

Saul, making me look down to hide my own grin. If nothing else, my presence in the compound had apparently made Ruby come alive. Nothing like a good case of jealousy to make a woman feel like a woman again.
    Lunch sat on the table, all right, but if it was possible to screw up chicken sandwiches, Ruby had discovered how. Rubbery pieces of chicken, skin and fat still attached, lurked between slices of stale, mayonnaise-drenched white bread. Like any true passive-aggressive, Ruby had found an innocent-looking way to punish us for making her “cook.”
    As before, Saul didn’t appear to understand what was really going on. I watched with disbelief as he picked up a particularly nasty-looking specimen and gnawed at it. The pained look on his face told me all I needed to know.
    I refused to eat the mess. “Um, I really appreciate this, Ruby, but I think I’ll just have a salad. After that big breakfast we had this morning, I’m not all that hungry.”
    I scurried to the refrigerator and found a yellowing head of iceberg lettuce and, hiding behind a soured container of milk, a generic bottle of Russian dressing. Yum, yum. Nasty as it was, the goop I organized looked tastier than Ruby’s sandwiches. Still, visions of savory Ramen noodles danced in my head. “You know, Brother Saul, I think a little grocery shopping might be in order,” I said, finally putting down my fork.
    “Might not be a bad idea. Tell you what, I’ve got a two o’clock appointment with my attorney in Zion City anyway, so why don’t you just drive in with me?”
    The idea of leaving the compound, even for a few hours, was appealing, but the thought of Esther sitting in her jail cell awaiting extradition weighed against it.
    “I’ll make up a shopping list.” I began writing. RAMEN CHINESE NOODLES, MICHELINA’S TV DINNERS, BLUE BUNNY BUTTER PECAN ICE CREAM …
    A few minutes later, Saul’s truck bumped down the dirt road, leaving me alone with a woman who hated my guts.
    “It’s so good to have you in the family, Sister Lena,” Ruby murmured, handing me a broom. “The housework has been such a burden.”
    While I glumly swept the kitchen twice in the same day, I wondered how often scenes such as these repeated themselves whenever a polygamist husband dragged home a new wife. A powerless woman was an angry woman, and an angry woman always found a way to exact her revenge.
    Ruby wasn’t through giving me a hard time. “Sister Lena, I am a light sleeper, and I noticed that you didn’t visit our husband last night. Chastity after marriage is not God’s will for a woman.”
    And here I thought I’d been so clever. I gripped the broom and tried to think of a suitable lie. It didn’t take my devious brain long to find one. With all the old Biblical rules and regulations running amok in Purity, surely intercourse during menstruation was verboten as hell.
    “It’s the curse, Ruby. My time of month. But I am certainly eager to take up my wifely duties as soon as I can. Uh, speaking of chastity after marriage, though, our husband told me that you two aren’t exactly burning up the sheets, either.”
    I thought her eyes would pop from shock.
    “I have a, a
medical
condition,” she stammered. “And anyway, unlike you I am past childbearing age. We in Purity never copulate for mere enjoyment.”
    Oh, sure. That’s why thirteen-year-old girls were so popular with sixty-year-old men!
    The subject needed changing, and fast. “Um, just how well did you know poor Prophet Solomon?” I asked, enveloping Ruby in a cloud of dust as I swept fiercely toward her. Two could play that old passive-aggressive game.
    She coughed, stepping out of my path. “I knew him as well as anyone, I guess. The prophet was a great man.”
    “That’s what Saul told me.”
    Ruby gave me an strange look. “Really? I thought our husband hated the prophet. You know, don’t you, that Prophet Solomon was the one who originally demanded that Saul leave the compound, not the Circle of Elders.”
    I nodded, and to keep her talking, swept a little less briskly. “I’m sure you know that you can admire someone while still disagreeing with them.”
    The concept of loyal opposition appeared to be new to Ruby, for her lumpy little face assumed a look of horror. “That’s impossible. To disagree with Solomon was to disagree with God. That’s not admiration, it’s blasphemy! I warned our husband about that many, many times, but you know how men are. They don’t listen