Dress Modestly Ch. 02: Chance Meeting

It began slowly. The modest clothing concealed the very earliest changes. But all the wives could hear her sickness every morning. She grew pale, and the color left her lips. Her long dresses could not disguise a certain thickening around her hips, and a tightening in her bust line - the telltale signs of a newly bred wife.

In spite of Anna's condition, the other sister wives continued to demand and assign as many household duties as any human could hope to accomplish. These resentful women, heavy and haggard after years of childbearing, were cold and unkind to the beautiful, newly-pregnant teen. They enjoyed seeing her struggle with heavy pails of water, or large bundles of laundry full of soiled cloth diapers. They liked to see Anna on hands and knees, scrubbing the floor. They thought it built character to give the nauseated girl the most nauseating tasks.

Jebediah knew these duties were appropriate for the newest wife, and that as she grew larger in motherhood Anna would be treated more kindly, and have lighter tasks. But for now it was all very hard work for Anna. She felt lonely and out-cast in a way that she had never experienced. She missed her siblings from back home, her family, and she had no friends to reach out to. She had never had such domestic responsibilities, or such hard critics for her every mistake. She prayed often and thought of the blessing of the new child. She knew she would all too soon have someone to love and return her love, and then another. And another. And another.

In her earliest days of pregnancy, it seemed like Anna was constantly in the bathroom, ill or nauseated. She was also constantly feeling the need to urinate.

This need announced itself one afternoon while she was outside cleaning slop buckets by the well a few dozen yards from the house. Anna was alone by herself outdoors while a few of the oldest children were inside doing their homeschooling. Jebediah had taken the other wives and young children to town in order to see the dentist and purchase supplies. Anna was not privileged enough to come on such trips as of yet, especially given the limited space in their family vehicles.

Still willowy and glowing with beauty in the late afternoon sun, Anna was scrubbing out a filthy pail when she felt the urgent call of nature. Eschewing modesty for convenience, she ducked behind a small scrubby tree, lifted her dress carefully and relieved herself. Gazing out from behind a branch, she noticed a form approaching on the road outside. A man was walking toward the compound.

Anna finished urinating, pulled her dress down quickly and was going to run inside - when the man caught sight of her. He was walking slowly down the dusty road, his form tall and dark, in black jeans and jacket, with long dark hair, walking alone through the open scrub land that surrounded the compound. The house was miles from a town. She wondered where he could possibly have come from.

"Excuse me," he called politely. A smile illuminated his swarthy face. Anna desired to flee, but was distracted by the plaintive tone in the man's voice, and his unusual - very handsome, muscular - appearance. She tripped backwards over some of the children's toys, and fell down into the red clay soil that surrounded the compound. The man approached more quickly now.

"Are you alright? Are you hurt?" he asked. He was a young man, very dark, with an equine nose and full lips. He had large dark eyes with long lashes. His long black hair was tied back from his face. He was dressed in black jeans and boots, his t-shirt scuffed with dirt. She could see a webwork of tattoos covering his arms. She could smell his deep masculine scent: a mixture of leather, sweat, cigarettes and the outdoors, wafting toward her sensitive nose as he approached her.

She was having difficulty lifting herself out of the dusty, and he offered his hand. She took it. Her strength sometimes failed her in her new condition.

"Are you alright?" he repeated. Anna was unsure whether to speak. She looked down shyly, dusting herself off. She nodded, shamefacedly. It wouldn't do to be caught talking to a stranger, a gentile - and a man who wasn't her husband!

The man seemed to understand her shyness. "I'm so sorry to trouble you," he offered apologetically. "My motorcycle broke down less than a mile away and I could see this house from the road. I thought I might be able to borrow a telephone and call for help."

Anna looked up now more confidently and met his eye briefly. "I..ahem," she cleared her throat, speaking softly, "I'm sorry to hear about your trouble. I can get you the cordless phone to use. Please wait right here." She glanced around, guardedly. "Maybe behind the tree. I'm not sure I can be seen speaking with you," she explained. The rules of the house were unfamiliar to her, since she had never been on her own with a stranger before. Would Jeb punish her if she were found to be disobedient?

Anna quickly returned with the cordless phone. The young man smiled appreciatively and dialed, speaking politely to first a directory service and then a towing company. He concluded his calls.

"I'm in luck, I can get a tow into town in just a few hours." He smiled. His dark eyes met hers, and she glanced away nervously. She had been gazing at his brown skin and wondering incredulously how he became so dark. Was he in the sun all day, every day? She had never seen such skin. Her idle thoughts had distracted her. The man seemed to be enjoying both her interest and her discomfiture.

"I should be going now," the man explained, "but before I do, is it possible to have a glass of water? Mine ran out on the walk here. I'm very thirsty and have to walk back and wait with my bike." He pulled his empty canteen into view by way of explanation. Anna nodded.

She could not refuse to show hospitality to a stranger. She glanced back at his tight jeans and firm, masculine rear - the likes of which she had never seen in person before. "Thereby some have entertained angels unaware," she thought, biting her lip.

She led him over to the somewhat primitive well. He stood watching her as she reached up and pumped vigorously. Liquid poured from the spout. He knelt down to drink directly from the opening, before filling his container. She gazed at him as he drank. His eyes were closed. He was very young, maybe not much older than she was. She could see his Adam's apple move as he took large gulps of water. He sat back and ran his hands through the water, closing his canteen, then through his hair, refreshing himself.

He looked up and his eyes met Anna's. He held her gaze.

Anna had never held sustained eye contact with an unfamiliar man. In the church, women were to be seen and not heard. She felt it was disrespectful to stare so aggressively at a male, and especially a stranger. But he was so very different and more interesting than any of the khaki-clad, wholesome, clean-shaven young men she had encountered back in her home town or at the temple. The stranger's beauty and his good, manly smell attracted her. She wanted only to stare at him, to drink him in. She held his gaze, and his eyes flickered. He formed a little half-smile. "What's your name?" he asked.

"Anna," she said, blushing. Her long blonde hair had come loose from the head scarf, and was blowing around her cheeks. She looked wild and beautiful to him, a golden desert animal. "What's yours?"

He stood and wiped his hand quickly, holding one out to shake. "Jake," he said, clasping her soft little hand in his. He held her fingers firmly, almost massaging them in his strong grasp. She could feel how large his hand was, how powerful. His skin was rough, dry and smooth. His fingers were still gently squeezing hers, a warm strength emanating from them and rooting her to the spot. Her mouth felt dry. She pulled her hand away reluctantly and looked away from him shyly. Something electric had passed between them, though she couldn't quite understand what.

"Is this your father's house?" he asked looking up at the enormous three-story compound. They could hear the children's voices faintly floating down from an upstairs window.

"No, my..." Anna hesitated, cleared her throat. She had not yet had cause to introduce herself in this way. "My...husband's," she said haltingly, with forced grandiosity. She felt embarrassed somehow. She looked up and met his eye. He had pulled his head back a little, eyeing her.

"Oh, of course," he said lightly. "I see. Are you, mm...is this a large household?" He seemed to be elaborately polite in his question. Anna didn't fully understand. She was unselfconscious in her response.

"I am the sixth wife in sacred alliance and plural matrimony to Jebediah Corbett," Anna said mechanically, as if repeating a kind of catechism. She looked around the grounds of the compound, dry and dusty, filled with children's toys and clotheslines and the occasional scrubby tree.

"I came here only a little while ago, well, two months now. I am new in my duties as a wife. I am still learning to fulfill my sacred task." She looked down sadly. It was very lonely for her here. She still had many chores to complete that afternoon before the other wives returned with Jeb. She wrenched her eyes away from the laundry and dusty ground, looking back into the inquiring and concerned face of this handsome stranger. Jake. She turned his name over in her mind. Jake. It's masculine simplicity enticed her.

He was contemplating her with a solicitous air. "Newly married? How old are you, if I may ask?"

His concern was a little unwelcome to her. "Eighteen the day before my wedding," she responded, sticking her chin out.

He coughed, sputtered and coughed some more. He stopped and drank the water from his canteen. She could see his muscular back rippling as he bent his head a little. He had turned around to regain his composure and she arched her head, drinking in the view of his strong, lanky form.

"Darling, you're awfully young to be married. You've hardly even gotten started. Is this really any kind of life for you?" He had stopped her in her tracks, stepping in front of her, and was facing her, speaking eye-to-eye. He held her hands now in his. He seemed to be pleading with her.

She felt a fury rising inside. "Whatever can you mean? Any kind of life?" She raised a hand to gesture to the household that stood before them.

"To become a wife and mother is woman's sacred duty. This is my salvation," she said with confidence, gesturing to the house that loomed nearby.

Even as she said it, her confidence faltered. She seemed suddenly to see it all as it must have been seen through Jake's eyes: the dusty ground, the large rambling, junky patchwork appearance of the old house. The broken toys and ragged laundry. The red, red earth and the endless sky. What kind of salvation was it, when every day she woke with a beaten, weary sad heart and endless duties, looking down into an endless well of such harried days and joyless nights? She felt, for the first time since embarking on the path of wifehood, a pang of doubt about the validity of her fate. She felt suddenly self-aware, and scared.

She looked back at Jake. She was afraid he was making fun of her, but he was only standing quietly at her side, one strong hand protectively on her delicate forearm, biting his lip pensively. She pulled a blonde lock behind her ear and waited for him to speak.

"Well, it certainly can be beautiful out here. Maybe all of this beauty and all this nature could be a...a kind of salvation."

He scratched the back of his neck and looked up into the yawning expanse of the heavens. "Do you ever come out at night and see the stars? I bet you can see all of them out here. Seems like you're at least fifty miles from anything like a town."

Anna looked up dumbly. She was rarely up past nightfall now. She had not thought about the stars with all of her new wifely duties. "I used to love looking at them in my old house," she admitted. "My sisters and I could see get to the roof from the attic and look at the sky. I do miss that. But that was closer to town, and there may be more of them here. It is as you say. We are very far from anywhere," she added sadly.

Jake jerked his head back to the road, to where his motorcycle was waiting.

"Anna, I've got to be getting back to my bike. I may be in town for a couple of days getting this fixed. I wonder if I come back, if you might talk to me a bit more. You seem very special, and - and lonely," he pointed out as she began to protest. "Perhaps you can show me the stars, and tell me more about your life."

Anna was staring at him, eyes wide. "I'm very interested in the choices you have made. I want to know about your future, Anna. It's a long life you face in this household." He looked like he smelled something bad as he said it.

She was confused by his interest in her - by her interest in him - but did not distrust him. He seemed kindly. She had not heard a sympathetic voice like his in many weeks. She did not know how long it would be before she heard one again. She yearned vaguely for him to look at her again, to hold her arm protectively the way he had. She couldn't understand this urge to be physically closer to him. It scared and overwhelmed her, but she didn't want to turn away from it. It was too exciting.

"Well..." she hesitated. "The household retires at 9 PM every evening. As the newest wife, I tend to my husband most frequently, and so have few evenings to myself." She could see Jake wince.

"By midnight, perhaps, I could find my solitude. You can return and speak to me?" she said abruptly, plaintively.

Jake drew closer to her and looked down into her sad eyes, her cheeks flushing, her perfect rose-petal lips softly parted in surprise. Midnight desert rides gave him the breath of life, but the motorcycle was loud. He would have to walk a distance to approach Anna's home without waking the household. But something in her voice communicated an appetite for human kindness such as he had never felt. He was terribly sorry for her. She was beautifully golden and fair, but seemed so sad, so helpless, so passive. He saw hers as a doomed and fragile fire, soon to be extinguished by the endless requirements of early marriage and parenthood.

"I'll come back, Anna," he said firmly, lips close to her ear, one strong hand gripping her delicate arm. "I'll come back tonight. Will you meet me here? Under the tree?" he indicated with his hand the distinctively gnarled trunk, which offered a modicum of privacy.

Her heart was beating hard. This meeting was clearly a step away from salvation. This was a violation of all the rules she had ever been taught to follow. Jake was clearly a gentile, possibly even a Navajo or one of the desert Indians she had read about, with his lustrous dark skin. She was already in sin to contemplate such a meeting. The heat of hell faced her as she felt the words form on her lips.

"Yes, I'll be here. Tonight."

"OK, beautiful. I will see you then." He held her hand softly, with a smile.

"Come at midnight," and she locked eyes with him again as his tall form retreated, turning to leave. "Please!"