Lena Jones 02 - Desert Wives

life was God’s curse for the sins of Eve. Impregnation was a duty, not a pleasure.
    I watched several little girls playing hopscotch near the junked cars in Prophet’s Park, their long dresses billowing in the wind. Was it my imagination or were some of the oldest girls trying to keep out of the men’s line of sight? Maybe their own mothers had told them stories about God’s curse.
    “Ruby told me that she eventually figured out that her husband didn’t like skinny women, so she learned not to eat,” Saul continued. “She ate so little that she used to have fainting fits. He finally lost interest in her, but not before he’d soured her on sex forever.”
    Poor Ruby. No wonder she was a grump. I shivered again, but this time it had nothing to do with the lowering temperature.
    “If Ruby’s husband was so bad, and apparently the other wives thought he was, too, why didn’t anyone do anything about him? These are supposed to be God-fearing people. Surely not even polygamists condone sadism.”
    Saul looked at me as if I’d lost my mind. “You’re right. They’re not all sadists, not by a long shot. Some of the guys around here are fairly good to their families. But you’re forgetting that little human mind game called denial. People don’t see what they don’t want to see. But even if they did, there’s no battered women’s shelters in Purity.”
    “Battering? Is that common here, too?” I remembered Sister Hanna, the crying woman I’d seen limping from the Purity Clinic. Had she been beaten?
    “Battering’s as common as dirt in Prophet’s Park,” Saul answered. “It’s how a lot of these guys keep their families in line.”
    “Then why don’t the women leave?”
    “C’mon, Lena, think about it. The women who’ve been raised here, they believe it’s like this on the Outside, too, only worse. Remember, they don’t watch TV, listen to the radio, or read magazines, so all they know about marriage is what they see right here.”
    His voice rose, and the men by the Mercury turned toward us. I recognized Earl Graff. Putting my hand on Saul’s knee, I said quietly, “Husband, we have an audience.”
    When Saul spoke again, he’d lowered his voice but not lost his edge. “You have the same mind-set as most Outsiders. You think these women can just pick up and leave, but how can they do that? Most of them never learned to drive, and even if they did know how, their husbands hold the car keys. They have a bunch of kids, so what are they going to do? Carry a dozen kids twenty miles down that damned road to get help they don’t even know exists? If they did manage to do that, where would they get the money for a divorce? None of these women has a dime.
    “But let’s say some benefactor gives them enough money for a divorce. It’s happened. Groups like Tapestry Against Polygamy are always trying to help, but they’re like David up against Goliath. Not only does the Purity Fellowship Foundation have a big bankroll, but it has a slew of attorneys in Zion City and Salt Lake on retainer. Some of those attorneys grew up in polygamy compounds. Hell, Purity’s put six boys through law school. You think the women can compete with that? Oh, word gets around. The women are always hearing how the court took some jobless, homeless runaway’s children away from her and sent them back to the compounds and their ‘gainfully employed’ fathers. So you tell me, Lena, what woman is going to allow herself to be separated from her children?”
    I wanted to scream at him,
My own mother!
    But I didn’t. I remembered Esther and her fight for her child. I forced my voice not to catch on my own memories. “You’re right. Most women would die before they’d allow themselves to be separated from their children.”
    He nodded. “Until the authorities get off their butts and do something about these guys, the women’s situation is hopeless.”
    I finally understood why some of Purity’s women accepted polygamy even when they hated it. For a woman who still had some kind of normal feelings,
anything
was preferable to losing her children.
    But in his summing up of the situation, Saul had neglected something.
    “It’s not hopeless,” I said. “You’ve already helped two girls escape.”
    He looked glum. “Two unmarried girls with nothing to lose, not battered women with kids they couldn’t bear to leave behind.”
    Depressed, I watched the men by the Mercury watch us. While I knew they couldn’t