Lena Jones 02 - Desert Wives

wicked as they say? I can’t remember much about it from my days there in public school, before the Circle of Elders voted to pull us all out.”
    I took a sip of my juice. Unsweetened. “Sure. Some parts of it are as almost as wicked as Purity.”
    She looked at me for a moment, her face blank. Then she began to laugh. “You are definitely a refreshing change. Sometimes it’s a bit hard to believe that you thought marrying Brother Saul was a good idea. It seems to me that you’re much too independent to need marriage.”
    Uh oh. Jean was sharp. Those few years in public school, perhaps? Or had she been reading Cynthia’s books? I trotted out my lies again. “Well, I got myself into trouble, did some dumb things. Quite a lot of dumb things, actually.”
    She gave me a mischievous grin. “Dumb things with men, right?”
    “Oh, yeah. Very dumb things.”
    Her grin faded. “Well, at least you were free to make your own mistakes. That’s more than I can say for myself. Ever since I was a little girl, every move I made was dictated by others. I was told what to wear, what to say, how to pray, who to marry. If it’d been up to me, I would never have married Solomon. Never.”
    “But at least you got some wonderful children out of it, didn’t you?”
    She brightened again. “Oh, yes. I’d introduce you to them but they just left for school—or that hive of ignorance they call school around here. There’s Kevin and Kyle, who are eight and nine, and Jennifer, seven. Jennifer’s the bright one. She told me last week that she wants to be an attorney when she grows up.”
    I said nothing to that, and Jean noticed my silence.
    “While I was still in Zion City Public School, we held Career Day, and a woman lawyer from Salt Lake drove down to speak. Her life sounded fascinating, but not long after that, the Circle of Elders built Purity School and we had to go there, instead. Besides, you know how life goes for girls here in Purity. I married my husband when I was only fifteen, that was ten year ago. And then once I started having babies…”
    Ten years of marriage and only three children and her current pregnancy to show for it. I decided to ask her about it. “Why no more children? Or is it none of my business?”
    Her tone was bitter when she answered. “For a while my husband grew, how can I say this politely, uninterested in me. At first I thought it was my fault, but when I asked some of my sister wives, they told me the same thing happened with them. Solomon would come to our beds for the first few years of marriage and then stop.”
    I understood. “He needed new blood, right?”
    “An interesting way of putting it, but yes, that’s about right. It’s pretty true for most of the men in the compound, apparently. They get bored with their old wives and start looking for new ones. But new wives are hard to find nowadays, so they usually come back to our beds every once in a while.”
    That stumped me. “What do you mean, harder to find? Purity’s full of young girls.”
    She gave me an odd look. “Sister Lena, do the math. Every other baby born in Purity is a boy.”
    “So?”
    She laughed. “For a smart woman, you can be pretty dense, you know that? Look, in the Outside, the numbers work out okay. One man, one wife. But that’s not how it works in Purity. The older men, the more powerful men, they all have between ten and fifteen wives. That doesn’t leave much new blood, as you so delicately put it, for the younger men.”
    I frowned. “In other words…”
    “In other words, Sister Lena, there aren’t enough women to go around.”
    Well, duh. I shook my head in exasperation at my stupidity. “I guess it’s obvious once you really think about it.”
    “That’s why the men are so quick to recruit women from Outside. Even women who seem, well,
unsuitable
.” She winked and I laughed with her. “The problem has always been, though, convincing a woman that moving to Purity was a good idea.”
    “How many Outsiders wind up staying?”
    She shrugged. “It all depends on how quickly they have children. You’ve seen how tough it would be to leave here with kids.”
    “Prophet Solomon didn’t have to recruit. He had access to the cream of the crop.”
    “Oh, yes. But I understand that Rebecca didn’t want to marry him. She’d been raised Outside. There were other young girls, though, who thought it was an honor to marry the living word of God. They’re my sister wives