The Birth Place

Hope didn’t want to be thrust into that environment again, didn’t want to think about Superior and her days there, because doing so only revived old heartaches. Images and memories of Bonner sometimes hovered close enough as it was. He was so tied to thoughts of her baby…

Hope hit the garage-door opener and let the car idle in the driveway while she waited for the door to lift. So what if the man she’d loved had married her sister? It didn’t really change anything. It just created a jumble of emotions Hope hadn’t felt in a while—and something more. Something akin to…envy?

It wasn’t envy, she told herself. How could she envy Charity, who’d looked so pale? Sure, she had Bonner’s children, but Hope had control of her own life. Nothing was worth relinquishing that. What she felt now was the sting of her father’s betrayal. That he’d let Charity marry the man she’d begged him to let her marry spoke volumes about Jed and his lack of love for his ninth child. Had he given her and Bonner his blessing, they would’ve become husband and wife. She would’ve stayed in Superior and raised her child as part of the family.

But then she would have remained a member of the Everlasting Apostolic Church. Which wasn’t so good, she decided. Bonner had claimed he had no desire to take any other woman to his bed, ever. Yet he hadn’t been strong enough to make good on his words by leaving with her. And he’d gone on take three wives!

Maybe her father and Bonner had done her a favor. Hope knew she couldn’t have stood by and watched Bonner marry again and again, couldn’t have welcomed those other women into her home and into her husband’s bed. This way, she was out of Superior and the strictures of the church. She was living a normal life that promised far more than she would’ve had if she’d stayed. And now she had Faith.

She glanced at her sleeping sister as she parked in her small detached garage and cut the engine, recalling the times she’d read the Bible to her, or braided her hair, or curled up in the same bed on Christmas Eve because Faith was too excited to sleep. They never received much for Christmas—gifts detracted from the true meaning, according to her father. But they were filled with expectation all the same, if only for the little presents they gave each other.

Her last Christmas at home, Hope had earned extra money taking in ironing so she could give Faith the beautiful Barbie doll her little sister had seen in the store window and long admired. Her father had immediately condemned the gift as being too frivolous and expensive, but the joy on Faith’s face when she tore off that wrapping paper made Hope believe her money had been well spent. Later that night, she’d found Faith’s most prized possession on her pillow—a plastic journal with a small lock and key. The pages that had already been used had been torn out and replaced by some roughly cut scrap paper. A short note written in Faith’s childish scrawl told her she wanted her to keep the journal.

And here they were eleven years later. A lump swelled in Hope’s throat. Faith might have been overlooked by others, but she’d always been Hope’s favorite. More sensitive than the rest, she’d always soothed Hope.

“Faith, we’re home,” she said, gently shaking her shoulder.

Faith blinked and sat up. “I should have kept you company on the drive, Hope. I’m sorry.”

“No. It was better that you slept, better for the baby.”

Her sister’s gaze circled the garage. For a moment she looked completely bewildered. “This is your house?”

“Just the garage. And I don’t own it. I rent.”

Faith climbed out, following wordlessly as Hope led her around to the front of the house, where she nearly tripped over Oscar, a large gray cat, who screeched and ran for cover.

“What was that?” Faith asked as he slipped into the hedge separating her house from his owner’s and crouched to glare at them.

“That’s Oscar,” Hope said.

“Your cat?”

“He belongs to my neighbor, but I think he’s trying to move in with me. He comes over all the time.”

“Do you feed him?”

“Occasionally. Mr. Paris doesn’t mind. I guess we sort of share him. Oscar generally won’t let anyone but Mr. Paris touch him, anyway, so it doesn’t matter much. He just hangs out on his own.” A cat after her own heart, Hope added silently.

Bending, Faith held out her hand to coax him closer, but he was still put out by his close call. Whisking his tail in a show of irritation, he didn’t budge.

Hope unlocked the front door and swung it open. “He’s not very friendly, but I admire his independence.”

“I like cats.” Faith peeked into the house. “Do you live alone?”

“I’ve had roommates in the past, but ever since I started making enough to afford the rent, I’ve been living alone,” Hope said, holding the door.

Faith still hesitated at the threshold, glancing toward Oscar as though she’d rather hide out with him in the hedge. Probably the idea of moving in with Hope made a decision that had been somewhat impulsive now seem permanent. “So you’ve never been married or…or anything?”

“No. No husbands, no live-in lovers, no steady boyfriends.”

Faith finally stepped into the living room. “And you’re not seeing anyone?”

Hope thought of Jeff, her neighbor’s son from down the street, and the doctors, male nurses and other hospital staff who asked her out on occasion. She knew they talked about her, perceived her coolness as a challenge. But no one had managed to pique her interest. She wanted a husband and family eventually, but the moment whoever she was seeing began to push for commitment, she felt such a terrible panic she broke off the relationship. “Not really,” she said.

“But you’re so pretty.”

Hope chuckled. “I guess I’m a little jaded,” she said, nudging her sister farther inside.

The house smelled of the fresh flowers Hope routinely cut from her garden in back and kept in a small tin bucket on the kitchen table. She liked the contrast of fragile versus resilient, old versus new, delicate versus careworn.

Hope flipped on the light. “What a beautiful home,” Faith breathed, almost reverently.

Hope took a moment to see her surroundings through Faith’s eyes. The house was old. It still had its original hardwood floors and plaster walls, but had been remodeled so that the front room, which had once been a porch, was enclosed by a series of paned windows. The rooms were spacious, despite the fact that the house was only about a thousand square feet. The kitchen opened into the family room, both of which could be seen from the front entrance. An office, set off by double doors, opened to the left. The hall that led to both bedrooms branched off to the right.

“Did you decorate this place all by yourself?” Faith asked.

Hope nodded. “On weekends I search the classifieds looking for treasures, and I often pick up a piece of furniture for a fraction of its value. I fix and refinish wooden items in the garage, if I want the grain of the wood to shine through. Or I paint or stencil on various pieces I find, like that old church pew in the kitchen.”

“It’s lovely,” Faith said.

Hope dropped her keys on the counter. “An old widower down the street owns the house, but I take good care of it, so he pretty much lets me have free rein.”

Faith continued to walk through the main rooms before pausing in front of an arrangement of cross-stitch samplers on the kitchen wall. Large and elaborate, there was one for each season. “These are great,” she said.

“Thanks.” Hope liked to cross-stitch and collect odds and ends. Her dishes, silverware and linens were all mismatched antiques or one-of-a-kind items, like the Flow-blue plates and creamers from seventeenth-century England that adorned the white, built-in shelves on either side of the fireplace in the kitchen/living room.

“You must make a lot of money to live like this,” Faith said. “I’ve never seen anything more charming.”

“I don’t make a lot of money,” Hope said with a laugh, “but I grew up in the same household as you, remember? I know how to stretch a dollar.”

Faith cocked an eyebrow at her. “You’re better at it than I am.”

“Don’t be too hard on yourself. This is just my version of The Boxcar Children. Remember that book? I used to read it to you when you were little.”

“I do,” Faith said. “It was my favorite.”

“This might sound silly, but when things got really tough for me after I left Superior, I used to pretend I was one of those children, finding or making what I needed out of the things other people discarded.” She moved into the kitchen to check the answering machine on the breakfast bar. No calls. Not unusual.

“I can’t believe you’ve done all this.”

“It’s nothing.” Hope changed the subject because her sister’s praise made her feel guilty for having so much when her family had so little. “You said you were living with two of Arvin’s other wives. Which ones?”

Faith paused next to the black-iron baker’s rack where Hope stored her pasta and cereals in uniquely shaped jars. “Do you remember Ila Jane?”

“That old battle-ax?”

A smile flickered at the corners of Faith’s lips. “She’s the only one of us who ever dares put Arvin in his place. He likes her cooking but doesn’t bother her for anything else, and she’s happy that way. Being around her was actually the best part of being married to Arvin. She took me under her wing, like another daughter. Her oldest is close to my age, anyway. But I’m not fond of Charlene, Arvin’s second wife. She lives with us, too. Her children are especially difficult, like her, all except little Sarah. Sarah’s only seven, but Charlene ignores her, so she spends most of her day with me.”

“Is Charlene still pretty?”

“Pretty enough, I guess. She’s given Arvin ten kids, so she’s done well by him.”

Hope no longer agreed with using that kind of measuring stick for a woman’s success, but she knew it would take a while for Faith to understand and adjust, so she said nothing. “Does he spend much time with Ila Jane or Charlene?”

“No, or his children, either. When he moved me into that old house on Front Street—”

“Not the big yellow one,” Hope interrupted. “We always thought that house was haunted, remember? We’d dare each other to ring the bell, and then we’d run.”

“That was when the Andersons lived there, and old lady Bird, Sister Anderson’s mother, used to sit rocking in the window of the attic for hours.”

“I take it she’s passed away.”

“Oh, yes, and her son was excommunicated for stealing from the storehouse. That’s how Arvin got the house.”

“So that’s where you’ve been living?”

“For the past few months. When he moved me in with Ila Jane, I knew he was putting me on a shelf.”

Hope rummaged through a glass-fronted cupboard for two mugs. “And you think it’s because of the baby? You said something earlier about your condition being ‘unappealing’ to him.”

“He claims he’s trying to leave me in peace, since pregnancy can be so uncomfortable. But I know he’s not really interested in doing me any favors. Arvin doesn’t work that way.”

“No kidding,” Hope added.

“He’s probably just sidetracked for the time being, what with marrying Rachel and everything.” She sank onto a stool at the counter.

A million biting comments about Arvin rose to Hope’s lips, but she voiced none of them. Setting the cups on the counter, she said, “I thought maybe I’d make us some hot cocoa before bed.”

Faith shook her head. “None for me, thanks. I’m too tired. All I want to do is turn in.”

Hope put the cups away, secretly grateful Faith had refused her offer. She was almost ready to drop. “Your room’s just down the hall,” she said, her sandals clicking on the floor as she moved through the house turning on lights. Stopping at the first room on her right, which was decorated in Battenburg lace and pink with yellow accents, she waved Faith inside.

“Nice,” Faith said as she stood at the foot of the bed and gazed around.

“Make yourself comfortable while I get you a nightgown and a toothbrush,” Hope said at the door. “Tomorrow we’ll go shopping for clothes and toiletries.”

“You don’t have to go to work?”

“Not until evening. I’m a nurse, so my hours vary. Tomorrow I have the night shift.”

Her sister plucked at her skirt, reminding Hope of a nervous habit their mother used to have.

“I know this must feel strange, Faith,” Hope said, “but you’ll be comfortable here, I promise. We’ll buy everything you need tomorrow.”

“But isn’t it going to be expensive to replace everything I left behind?”

“It won’t be too bad. I’ve got the money.”

Faith still seemed ill at ease, so Hope tried to combat her insecurity with a confident smile. “Don’t worry about anything.”

“Okay.” She started to turn down the bed, and Hope moved toward her own room to get the promised articles, but her sister called her back.

“Hope?”

“Yeah?”

“What happens if you get sick of me? Or we run out of money, or…whatever?”

Hope’s heart twisted. How vividly she remembered what it was like to feel as though the ground beneath her feet might crumble at any moment. She was still protecting herself from that possibility, wasn’t she? That was why she worked so hard to make her house a home. So she’d feel safe and protected.

“I might get sick of you, and you might get sick of me. But that won’t change the fact that we’re sisters, Faith. You’ll always be welcome here. We’ll work together to build lives we’re both happy with, and we’ll help each other get through the tough times.”

“Why?” Faith asked suddenly. “It’s been eleven years, Hope. Why bother with me when you have all of this?”

All of this. By most people’s standards, Hope’s home wasn’t anything special. But Faith had known only overcrowded trailers and duplexes and old houses with bad plumbing, all of which had been filled to bursting with children, secondhand clothing and shabby furniture.

“I know this will probably sound crazy to you, because you feel you’re forsaking God by leaving Superior, Faith. But I believe He’s put me in the position of being able to help you for a reason. I want you here, and Charity and the others, too, if they ever want to come.”

Faith smiled, and on impulse Hope walked back and hugged her. “It’s good to be with you again,” she said. “Whatever the future holds, we’ll get through it together.”

“I don’t think it’s going to be easy,” Faith said, clinging to her.

“No,” Hope agreed. “It won’t be easy. But nothing worth having ever is.”

CHAPTER FOUR

HOPE AWOKE to the sounds of someone moving around in her house. At first, the noise made her go tense with fear. But then she remembered she now had her sister living with her.

Excitement poured through her veins and mingled with something more difficult to define—not dread exactly, but foreboding. Hope didn’t want to go back to the way she’d felt eleven years ago, didn’t want to relive the loneliness, the fear or the struggle, even vicariously. But her sister’s happiness was worth the sacrifice. What frightened Hope wasn’t the difficulty of what lay ahead so much as the possibility that, at any point, Faith could give up and return to Superior.

“Faith?” she called.

The hall floor creaked as her sister came to stand in her open doorway. She was fully dressed, had already scrubbed her face and fixed her hair and it was only—Hope glanced at the clock by her bed—seven-thirty.

“You anxious to go shopping or something?” she teased. “The stores don’t even open until ten.”

“I just…I’m used to getting up early. I usually have work to do, especially now that it’s planting season. You should see the big plot Ila Jane and I have been preparing for our garden. We’re going to grow tomatoes and zucchini and corn and—oh, you name it—everything, even our own pumpkins for Thanksgiving.” She seemed to realize what she was saying and finished weakly, “At least, we were.”

Hope shoved herself into a sitting position and motioned for Faith to join her on the bed. “I have a big garden in back,” she said. “I grow a lot of flowers, some that I import all the way from Denmark.”

“Really? Why in the world would anyone need to buy flowers from so far away?”

“They’re dahlias and they’re beautiful. Wait till you see them. I usually grow a vegetable garden, too. Maybe you’d be willing help me with it this year.”

Her sister’s face brightened at the mention of such familiar work. She’d probably been wondering what, exactly, she was going to do now that there wasn’t an army of children to care for. In a polygamist household, it wasn’t uncommon for the wives of one man to share responsibility for all his children, regardless of who belonged to whom. The camaraderie the women enjoyed sometimes offset the lack of attention they received from their husband—not that every household was able to achieve this type of peaceful cooperation. Catfights broke out all the time. Some of the wives banded together against others or treated certain children with marked prejudice. But in Hope’s little house, the silence alone was probably enough to make Faith feel as though she’d lost contact with the real world.

“I—I thought I’d read the scriptures,” Faith said, her voice a little tentative. “But of course I wasn’t able to bring mine, and…and I notice you don’t have any lying around.”

Scriptures. Hope barely refrained from wrinkling her nose. Before bringing Faith home, she’d purposely avoided any reminder of her past. There were times she wished she could be like the rest of the Christian world, or most of it, anyway, and think kindly on religion, but it had been eleven years since she’d sat through a sermon. The prospect of entering a church, any church, made her feel as though she couldn’t breathe. If she ever got married, it would be in Vegas.

“I’m sure I have some here somewhere. I’ll dig them up and you can keep them in your room and read them whenever you’d like,” she said, knowing it would be useless to explain her aversion to all things religious. Faith would only fear that she was the devil, as her father claimed. Even Hope didn’t understand the overwhelming anxiety she felt when faced with the Bible, a church, a clergyman or even an overzealous missionary type. Not all her memories of gospel-related things were bad. Once, when she was a child, her mother had taken her and her sisters to Salt Lake, where she encountered a vagrant for the first time. He was mostly blind, slightly deformed, definitely filthy and almost skeletal in appearance. A woman in a conservative black suit and high heels hurrying past them on the sidewalk clucked her tongue and muttered something under her breath about how pathetic he was. But her mother stopped and gave him the last of their money. When Hope asked why, she said, “Jesus loves him, and so must we.”

“But he’s so pathetic,” she’d replied, feeling old beyond her years as she mimicked the other, more sophisticated woman. Her mother had smiled gently and lifted her chin. “That’s only on the outside, little Hope. Jesus doesn’t care about that.”

Hope had felt humbled and loved then. If Jesus could love a beggar, surely He could love a little girl with flyaway brown hair and scabby knees, who often had her mouth washed out with soap for losing her temper and saying things she wasn’t supposed to say to her father’s second wife. But even the warmth of that memory wasn’t enough to send her back into a church. The Brethren and her father had poisoned that part of her during her teen years, when they’d grown more and more controlling. Or maybe she’d lost her faith when she’d given up her baby. After all, that was when she’d felt as though whatever light she’d been trying to shelter inside her had finally winked out.

“What would you like for breakfast?” she asked, getting out of bed and heading to her closet for a robe. She’d hoped to sleep in after the emotionally exhausting day and night they’d spent. Especially because she had to work later on. But she couldn’t leave Faith on her own.

“I need a favor,” Faith said.

“Anything. What?”

“Don’t treat me like a guest, okay?”

Hope blinked at her in surprise. “I wasn’t. I was just…”

“I know, and I appreciate it,” Faith replied. “But I won’t be able to make it if I don’t feel as though I’m carrying my own weight, or at least contributing in some way that’s valuable to you.”

“Are you kidding? You’re going to work your…” Hope had been about to say, “butt off.” She’d been living around Gentiles long enough to have incorporated their more popular expressions and speech patterns. But her sister had not and would be shocked, even by such mild vulgarity. So she finished, “…fingers to the bone in that garden I mentioned.”

“That’s fine,” Faith said, still perfectly serious. “That’s what I need. That’s what I want.”

“Great.” Hope’s smile was brighter than her mood warranted. This was going to be even more difficult than she’d thought. Until she and Faith became acquainted again and learned how to be comfortable around each other, things were going to be awkward. “Why don’t you make breakfast while I shower, then?”

“Okay.”

“I’ll have two fried eggs and toast. Everything’s in the kitchen. Just rummage around to find what you need, and if you get really stumped, holler.”

“I’ll be fine.”

Hope kept the smile on her face until her sister disappeared down the hall, then let her shoulders sag as she sank back onto the bed. What were they in for? Her life and Faith’s had taken completely opposite paths. Now they were so different that Hope wasn’t sure they’d ever be able to find common ground. What if taking Faith away from Superior had been a mistake they’d both live to regret?

She’d never know whether she could help Faith if she didn’t try, she decided. She just needed to take things one day at a time. And this day, they were going to buy clothes.

With a deep, bolstering breath, Hope got up and headed for the shower.

“FIND ANYTHING you like?” Hope asked, getting to her feet to take the stack of clothes Faith had carried into the dressing room several minutes earlier.

Faith bit her lip as she regarded the maternity jeans, T-shirts and jumpers Hope had selected for her to try on. “No, not really.”

“Why not?” Hope asked. “Nothing fit?”

The voices of people passing the store in the mall outside droned in the background. By the time Hope had shown Faith around the garden and the house, then taught her how to use the microwave, dishwasher, washing machine and dryer, it was nearly noon. Activity at the mall was just beginning to peak.

“Everything fit,” Faith said. “It’s just that…well, I thought maybe I’d rather sew a few items for myself.”

Hope nearly groaned. Not more of the dowdy dresses that would instantly mark her as belonging to a polygamist community. “Faith, what’s wrong with these clothes? They’re comfortable and practical and—”

“They’re too…stylish,” Faith replied. “I don’t want to be vain, Hope. It’s not right.” She spoke in a whisper because the saleswoman hovered close by—but not because she wanted to help them. The moment they’d entered the store, the woman had watched them with contempt and the kind of curiosity one typically felt when viewing something fascinating yet distasteful, like maggots on meat. No doubt Faith’s appearance had given them away. Colorado City and Hillsdale, a large polygamist community straddling the Arizona-Utah border, was less than an hour’s drive away. The people of St. George saw more than their share of polygamists, some of whom lived right in town. The women were especially easy to spot because they typically wore pants beneath the voluminous skirts of their dated dresses, along with a pair of old tennis shoes.

But familiarity didn’t necessarily breed acceptance.

“A little style never hurt anyone,” Hope insisted, and turned to challenge the saleswoman’s stare.

The saleswoman crossed her arms, as though she had a right to gawk at them.

“Maybe we should go somewhere else,” Faith said.