I married Nathaniel Bitner in the Logan temple six days after I met him. I had no family present but Sister Hansen, who took me in after my parents died. “No crazy talking, now,” Sister Hansen told me. “He doesn’t know about you yet, and this might be my only, that is, your only chance.”
“Don’t worry,” I told her. “I won’t say a thing.” The temple spirits floated around, following the patrons and workers. I stared at them. So many spirits, and so busy. I said nothing, though, because talk of spirits was the crazy speech Sister Hansen had warned me against. So I held my tongue and smiled at her.
“That’s a good girl, Zina,” she said. “I want you to be happy.” And she did, in her own way. She witnessed our sealing and presented me with the tattered quilt I’d always slept under and a two-day-old loaf of bread. “You can keep them shoes I bought for you last spring, too,” she said.
Nathaniel and I began the ten days’ drive back to Star Valley, up through Montpelier and into Fairview, where he raised cattle. He brought back a winter’s worth of supplies in his wagon. And a wife. Me. It was good to be alone with him, to have him and me and no ghosts around. Few spirits were bound to the road, and the ones that were ignored me. I felt an unfamiliar peace, the quiet of my own thoughts and Nathaniel’s occasional conversation. I had spent my entire life listening to the spirits tied to Sister Hansen’s home: Clarence Hansen, her dead husband. Sean Grady, a traveling tinsmith who happened to die there. I had never known such calm in my life as the stillness of this road.
Nathaniel whispered to the horses as he rubbed them down at night. He cooked me breakfast in the mornings. He was kind with me, and gentle.
Our last day’s journey he drove the team one-handed, the other arm around my shoulders. The closer we drew to Star Valley, though, the more fidgety he became. “I should have told you this before,” he said finally. “It won’t make no difference, but I should have told you.”
“What is it?” I said. I moved my hand down from his leg to the bench. A splinter stung my palm.
“I was married before. Two times.”
I shrugged his arm away and stuck my splintered hand in my mouth. “You’re supposed to tell the next wife you’ve got others before you go courting,” I said.
“No, not like that,” said Nathaniel. “I’m not trying to live the Principle. Some do, but that’s not me. No, my wives both died. You’re the only wife I’ve got alive.”
“Where did they die?”
“At home. In Fairview.”
I never had worked out how the living world tethered its ghosts in one spot. Clarence Hansen died while buying store merchandise in Salt Lake. I knew he’d died before Sister Hansen found out, because I saw his ghost in the store, behind the counter, trying to dicker with a customer. But the tinsmith’s spirit stayed at the Hansen’s, where he had died, instead of returning home. Perhaps Nathaniel’s wives would be bound someplace else. I could hope.
I smiled, to make things seem right. “Well, they’re gone now,” I said. “So it’s just us.”
“That’s right,” he said. “Just us.”
We arrived at the hill entering Star Valley. The fields spread out all yellow, dotted with haystacks. “It’s beautiful,” I said. There were bound to be some surprises in marrying a man I’d known only six days. I would not let the dead wives, whose ghosts I might never even meet, taint the moment right now.
“They were good women, both of them,” Nathaniel continued. “Agnes and Grace. Agnes loved to cook, and everyone knew her by her bread and her pie crust. Grace saved every bit of fabric and sewed them all. She could make a stack of scraps into a perfect quilt top. They were both women to speak their minds.”
“Well, I am one to speak up too,” I said. “So it’s a good thing you’re used to that.” I laughed a little. “Did you notice those clouds all pillowed up over there?”
“You would have liked them.”
“I’m sure I would have,” I said finally, since he would not be distracted by the sky. I was determined not to regret marrying Nathaniel, in spite of his previous wives. If I hadn’t married him I would have been stuck another winter with the ghost of Clarence Hansen telling me every day I’d never be married. “Your ears stick out too much, your face is horsey, and you talk way too much for a woman,” he always said. “No one wants that in a first wife, and since the Manifesto’s done away with the Principle, no one will want you for a fifth wife either.” Clarence Hansen’s voice was the background to my day. No matter what lay ahead, how could I regret escaping that?
We arrived at the house. It was painted white, with a wide front porch, and settled at the base of a low hill. Two stories, with a front parlor and a piano, an iron cookstove in the kitchen, and three bedrooms upstairs. A big, empty house. I called “Hello?” when I entered, and the sound seemed to echo off the kitchen’s stone floor.
Nathaniel tended the horses, and I unpacked the winter supplies. I stepped down the stairs into the cellar, holding a fifty-pound bag of beans. It smelled like damp dirt, cold and musty. I had settled the beans into a corner when I saw Nathaniel’s wives standing next to some onions.
“I saw them drive up,” said the first one. “I think it’s best if we stay down for a while.” She was pretty, her nose pert and smooth, her eyes big.
“Agnes,” the other one said, “we don’t need to hide like this. It’s not like they know we’re here.” That must be Grace. They stood together. They talked as though they got along pretty well. That was a mercy. I hated listening to ghosts bicker.
I returned to the cellar with a bag of potatoes, settling it right through Agnes’s legs. Spirits hate that. She shuddered and moved. I puttered around, adjusting things, so I could listen.
“See?” Grace said. “She doesn’t even know we’re alive.”
“We’re not alive,” Agnes said. “But if we were, and Nathaniel went away and brought home a third wife, what would we do?”
“Not hide in the cellar.”
“True. But neither would we go out to welcome her right off. We’d give her some space, let her get adjusted. Stay low for a couple of weeks first. Be polite.”
“You do that. But I hate the cellar and I’m going where I please.”
“Grace. Think of when you first married Nathaniel. Would you have liked to think I was there the whole time, watching you?”
“I’ll stay down here tonight, but I’m coming up tomorrow, no matter what you say. I hate it down here. I can’t stand watching the spiders skitter around and not being able to shoo them away. And he’s been happy enough since I died. He doesn’t need another woman.”
I nearly shouted out, “Yes he does!” but held back just in time. So Grace would be snooping on me from the start, and Agnes would follow after a couple of weeks. I sighed.
Both of them started, and then laughed. “Just as if she heard us,” Agnes said.
In the dim light they saw mostly shadows, which saved me this time. I was used to ignoring Clarence Hansen’s repetitious rants, and I ought to be able to ignore Agnes and Grace too. But I also wanted to listen to them, find out who they were, these pretty women Nathaniel had married before me. It was hard to listen well while feigning deafness.
Nathaniel returned from the barn and we finished unloading the wagon together. He walked down to the cellar and passed right by Agnes and Grace. He didn’t shiver, or pause, or notice them at all. He had no idea they were close enough to breathe on. For all he knew, I was the only wife there.
We ate a late supper, bread and milk, in the kitchen by candlelight. The light flickered off the polished fittings on the cookstove. He kept the house clean, almost sterile.
“I like the house,” I said. “I didn’t know what to expect. It seems so spacious.”
Nathaniel laughed. “What you mean is it’s too big for a widower.”
“Maybe it is. But I like it all the same.”
“I meant to have a large family. I planned for a lot of children. There were supposed to be boys whittling by the firelight right now, and a little girl stitching on her first sampler. I came into an inheritance and I used it to build the house me and all my children would live in.”
“Life doesn’t always turn out the way you planned.”
“It’s big and empty. Just me and the voices in my head.” The window above the kitchen table was open, exposed to the cold night air. I stood and shut it, and moved my chair next to Nathaniel’s, so that we sat side by side.
“I’m here now,” I said, holding his hand. “And I’m staying here. So we can rattle around in this big house together.”
He smiled at me. “Welcome home, Zina,” he said.
*
I spent several days going about chores. Grace followed me, keeping up a running commentary. “Did you make that dress yourself? It’s a bit shabby. I’m surprised you don’t have better wedding clothes.”
I didn’t speak the answer, which was yes, I made it; yes, it’s shabby; and no, Sister Hansen didn’t want me to have better wedding clothes, so I didn’t. “Be grateful for what you’ve got,” she always told me. “You’re lucky I can afford to keep you.”
I went outside to chop wood, and Grace followed.
“Why on earth did he propose to you?” she said. “I thought he still pined away for me. It’s only been a year and a half since I died.”
I don’t know why he proposed, I thought. Why he’d single out a plain girl like me to marry. Bishop Fowler always said God knows our thoughts and hears our prayers, and maybe God looked down on me in mercy that day. Nothing I did or wore or said could have bewitched him. But I did have a little pride. I was about to turn him down, because it was too fast. Just six days from when he walked into the store till when he asked an astonished Sister Hansen for my hand. Then I heard a small voice tell me different. Marry him, the Holy Spirit whispered. You deserve some joy. So I did.
I had always heard the Holy Ghost clear enough, maybe a result of listening to spirits all my life. But the still small voice forgot to mention that if I married Nathaniel I’d only be trading one set of ghosts for another: Clarence Hansen for Grace and Agnes.
“You’re clumsy too,” Grace added, “you’re about to trip on that branch.”
I avoided the branch. But there was no way to avoid her. I spent several days listening to Grace’s prattle. It always baffled me how no one could hear the dead but me, because they seemed so loud.
I wanted Nathaniel to talk about his wives a little more, but he said nothing. His forbearance as he tried to eat my cooking impressed me, though. Sister Hansen had never taught me to cook much beyond pancakes.
I made rocklike beans for dinner one night, crunchy and half-burned. I was just serving them when Agnes decided to emerge from the cellar for the first time. Ghosts can’t smell, but there’s nothing wrong with their vision.
“They’re burned,” Agnes said. She sounded shocked, wounded on Nathaniel’s behalf.
“These beans, they have great flavor,” Nathaniel said, crunching down.
I wanted to say, You don’t have to lie about it, but I nodded instead. “Thanks.”
“Why didn’t he marry someone who knew how to cook?” Agnes said. “He’s hungry after a long day, he needs to eat. She’ll starve him!”
“Agnes, hush,” said Grace. “You know not everyone can cook as well as you.”
“I forgot to set them out to soak, and then I boiled them too hard,” I said. “But I won’t forget again.” I nearly directed this last bit at Agnes, and then remembered that I wasn’t supposed to be listening to her.
“Poor Nathaniel,” Agnes said. “Really, he ought to have done better. Her ears stick out so far, and her chin is so weak, that you’d think she would have developed some compensating skills.”
“She doesn’t sew well either,” Grace said. “Look at the muddled job she did with that tear in his shirt.”
I bit my tongue. Sister Hansen didn’t like me in the kitchen. I had other jobs to do. I kept our woodpile stocked, and I kept the store running. As for compensating skills in my marriage, the best ones were not something Agnes would ever be privy to. But I stood up and said, “I need some air. Feels stuffy in here.” I walked through Agnes on my way to the porch, and she yelped.
I sat on the porch swing holding my plate of beans. I picked at them with a fork. Worse than eating burned beans, and they were pretty bad, was knowing that both ghosts of my husband’s dead wives despised me.
Nathaniel followed me. I wasn’t sure I could bear his pity right now, and he didn’t know the half of it.
“Don’t cry,” he said. “It’s only beans. I’m not gonna die from some bad beans.”
I sat there and cried for a minute anyway. He took out his handkerchief and wiped my face off.
“Your other wives,” I said. “You said they knew how to cook well, especially that Agnes.”
“Now listen, Zina. You can’t go thinking about them every time this happens. I sure don’t.”
Agnes and Grace had followed him out. “Did you hear that?” Grace said. “He doesn’t think about us!”
“He doesn’t remember my cooking,” Agnes said. “How can he not remember my cooking when he eats that slop?” She went up to his ear and yelled, “I NEVER IN MY LIFE WOULD SERVE YOU BEANS LIKE THAT. YOU ATE ONLY THE BEST WITH ME.”
She kept yelling. I cried harder.
“Not that I didn’t love them,” Nathaniel went on, and Agnes hushed. “But you’re you and they were who they were, and you’ll learn. And maybe,” he hesitated, then went on, “maybe you can channel their talents somehow. Maybe the spirit of Agnes’s cooking lives on in the kitchen, and she’ll teach you things, without you even knowing.”
I didn’t want to tell him that Agnes’s ghost was already there, and I would never ask her for cooking lessons. “I don’t think I’ll ever get it,” I said. “We’ll starve this winter.”
“Come on,” he said. “You’re being silly. You’re all tired out. I’ll clean up, you go get ready for bed.”
He pulled me up towards him and let me cry more all down his shirt. I saw Agnes and Grace over his shoulder. Both of them looked hungry, like they wanted to be me. I settled into his arms a little more, and took one more glance at the longing ghost wives. They watched as Nathaniel kissed me. It felt good to be alive.
“Looks like they may need privacy,” Grace said.
“Men,” Agnes said.
“Don’t blame Nathaniel. That hussy’s got him wrapped around her little finger.”
“I’ll go clean the kitchen,” Nathaniel said finally.
“Just soak the bean pan. I’ll clean it tomorrow. There’s no way that will come clean without a good hour of scrubbing.”
I went upstairs to our room, which overlooked the back pasture. The moon peeked out from the hills. I washed my face, changed to my nightgown, and went for a hot brick to warm up the bed. When I returned I found Grace there.
“I know you can’t hear me,” she said. “But I wanted to tell you about this quilt. This piece, this green one here, that came from the dress I wore to Agnes’s funeral. She was going to have a baby, you see, and then she lost the baby, and she died. But I met Nathaniel that day. He looked so sad. He really loved her. He needed someone to take care of him after she died, and that was me.”
I sat down at the dressing table to ignore her, and let down my hair for brushing. A hundred strokes a night.
“And this piece is from one of Agnes’s dresses. Nathaniel saved them. I couldn’t bear to wear them, but I turned them into quilts. That was the dress she wore to the temple, when they drove to Logan and got sealed.”
Thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three. Not listening, not paying any attention.
Nathaniel came up. “You ready?” he said. I was ready. Thirty-six strokes was enough for me. We climbed in bed and blew out the candle.
But Grace didn’t leave. She stayed, still talking about the quilt. “This piece on the edge is from cloth I bought to make for my own baby clothes,” she said. “I had almost finished the quilt top, and there was a bit of space left.”
Nathaniel held me close and starting kissing my neck.
“You are sleeping,” Grace whispered, “under a quilt I made. You’re kissing him beneath scraps of the dress I wore on the day I met him. You might even be making babies right near the cloth of the baby blanket that I made. You are—”—”
There was no peace, even when I pretended not to see or hear. I could not abide it any longer.
“Nathaniel!” I said.
He started back. “What?”
“I am about to die of thirst. Could you go get me some water?”
“Water’s on the dresser,” he said, bending towards me again.
“But the cup’s all dirty. I’ll be right here when you return. Please?”
He sighed and went. As soon as I heard his footsteps creak on the last stair I turned to Grace.
“You leave right now,” I said. “Out!”
“You do see me,” she said. “I knew it. Agnes didn’t believe me, but I could tell you were different, so she said I should test you and be sure.”
“She put you up to this! I thought she was the one with more respect. Well, I see you and I want you out. If we were all three of us alive would you dare be in here? You leave and don’t you ever come into this room again.”
“How are you going to stop me? I could stay here all night, every night, if I chose.”
“I’ll tear this quilt,” I said. “I will rip it and all your memories. I’ll burn it if I have to. You leave me alone.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” said Grace. She went to grab the quilt but her hands passed right through it.
“Be still, now, Grace,” Agnes said, floating in. “Zina, I would have come and gotten her any second now.”
“Oh really?”
“But you should have told us,” Agnes said. “Weeks ago, when we first met.” She eyed me, and I wondered if she was thinking about my walking right through her and setting potatoes down through her legs.
“What was I supposed to say?” I said. “Surely you haven’t met anyone else who could see you all the time.”
“No,” Agnes said, as Nathaniel walked in, holding my glass of water. “But you should have let us know anyway.” She looked over at Nathaniel. “I’ll be going now,” she said, floating out the door. “Come, Grace.”
Grace followed. “Be careful with that quilt,” she said. I stuck out my tongue at her.
Nathaniel handed me the water. “It’s good water up here in Star Valley,” he said. “Spring water, not well.” The full moon shone through the window, and he looked bashful and maybe a little scared of me, this third wife who banished him from our bed to get her a glass of water.
I was grateful he wasn’t angry. I took a sip of the water and set the glass down. I folded the quilt over itself to the foot of our bed. “The water’s delicious,” I said. “And I believe that quilt was a little too warm. In fact, I feel generally overheated.” I loosened the tie around the neck of my nightgown. “Can you help me?” I asked.
He obliged.
*
“We haven’t been properly introduced,” Agnes said the next morning. I scrubbed the burned beans out of the pot. She and Grace stood beside me. “Last night doesn’t count. We’re both sorry, we really are, but it was the best way to tell if you could see us. I’m Agnes Bitner, Nathaniel’s first wife, and it’s a pleasure to meet you, Zina. I hope we’ll get on real well.“
Last night counted for plenty. I said nothing. The beans stuck to the pot like they’d been forged a part of it. I could be scrubbing all day long, and it would make no difference. But if I focused on the beans enough, maybe the ghosts would go away.
“I can teach you to make great beans,” Agnes tried again.
I scrubbed harder.
Grace said, “You can’t pretend you don’t see us anymore. You can’t stand there scrubbing like we’re not talking to you. It’s bad enough us being here without Nathaniel knowing.”
Still silent. I wished I’d never spoken up last night. Grace would have left eventually, if I had stayed quiet a little longer.
Agnes gave up and went someplace else, but Grace followed me around the entire morning, while I tidied and fed the chickens and chopped rhubarb. “Talk to me, talk to me, talk to me,” she said over and over until I had a headache. It was worse than the ghost of Clarence Hansen had ever been.
“Hush!” I told her, finally.
She smirked. “Knew I could get you to talk.”
“Let me be clear,” I said. “I hate ghosts, I hate seeing them when no one else does, I hate the way they try to interfere in my life. I don’t want to talk to you again, now or ever.”
Agnes overheard and floated over. “Are you sure about that, dearie?” she said. “We should get along. We can help you.”
“Let me figure this out on my own. I’ll learn how to cook eventually, I’ll take care of Nathaniel eventually. I don’t want you trying to relive your lives through me.”
Agnes sighed. “You realize, don’t you, that when you die you’ll be with us in spirit. We’ve all been sealed to Nathaniel, and we’re all going to be with him in the eternities.”
“We’ll learn then,” I said. “Not now.” I turned back to my rhubarb, letting the knife chop through the stems. The chopped bits fell all scattered, not the even lines I had hoped for. Behind me Agnes and Grace rustled. I waited longer. I did not turn around again until the kitchen felt empty and free.
I made a passable rhubarb pie for dinner that night. I had a hard time figuring out the trick of the stove, how hot to let the fire burn, when to move the pie around to the other side. But Nathaniel tasted it and praised me. “You make the best rhubarb pie I ever tasted,” he said. “This is amazing.”
I heard a ghostly sniff, and I didn’t care if Agnes was rolling her eyes behind my back. Nathaniel exaggerated, but it was something I needed to hear after the disaster of the beans.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Are you happy?” he said. “I want you to be happy here. I want to know you better, know all the things you’re good at.”
Bad at hiding my ghostsight from ghosts, I thought, but hoping to keep it from you. Good at jumping at offers of matrimony by kind random strangers. Good at keeping the woodpile stocked. “I don’t cook well, and I don’t sew well, but I work hard,” I said. “And I’m happy doing it.”
“Nothing else? No special talents, nothing you haven’t told me about?”
“Oh, no,” I said. “Except that rhubarb pie. That’s about it.” He smiled. Did he look disappointed? What else did he think I should do?
We spent three weeks in reasonable silence, Agnes, Grace, and I. I tried not to eavesdrop on their conversations. They seemed to leave me alone a good portion of the time, with the exception of meals, when they hovered over Nathaniel. “Nathaniel’s not eating enough,” Agnes said, glaring at me.
Grace inspected his clothes. “There’s a tear on his collar here,” she said loudly. I hated when they pretended to talk to each other but aimed all their comments at me.
“Does your shirt need mending?” I said to Nathaniel, pointing at the collar and the tiny tear.
He glanced down. “Hmm, maybe,” he said. “Grace would say— that is, if you want to. It might grow larger.”
Little slips like that reminded me that he hadn’t forgotten Agnes and Grace. I wondered if he could feel their presence, even if he couldn’t see them. Most irritating to me, they were still in love with him. They still wanted to care for him like a wife would.
Grace hovered around me one washday, as I boiled water, grated lye soap, and scrubbed. Washday was a good day to be a ghost, I thought, watching other people rub their hands till they bled, knowing you’d never have to do it again yourself. I worked stains out of our clothes. She followed me into the yard, as far as her house-binding would allow, as if daring me to talk to her. Finally I said, “What?”
“You shouldn’t be so rude. You ought to know what I’ve guessed already.”
“What is it?”
“Haven’t you noticed the laundry? Or have you not been counting the weeks? If I’m right, you’re with child.”
Ah.
She was right. And I had lost track of weeks. “You’re the first person to know,” I said. “I didn’t realize.” And then I scrubbed at the washboard and cried a little. She had stolen my good news from me.
Her glee at being right dissipated when she saw me crying. “I thought you’d be happy,” she said.
“I wanted to know myself,” I told her. “You should have guessed that. Or haven’t you been pregnant before?”
“I was, once,” she said. “But the baby came early, and died, and I died too. Didn’t Nathaniel tell you?”
I shook my head. “But that’s how Agnes died.”
Grace nodded.
“I’m sorry.”
“I had made all the clothes,” Grace said. “The little gowns, and the cloth hemmed for diapers, and tiny booties. Quilts, too. I’ll show you, if you want.”
“Let me finish the wash,” I said. She left me alone as I washed, wringing out the clothes in long twisted sticks, shaking the water out in a fine mist, hanging them on the line so the cold breeze would blow them dry. Sometimes I noticed the spirits watching me work, and I envied them their indolence, their clean, idle existence. Don’t wish away your work, the Holy Spirit told me. You don’t want their pale half-life.
Grace waited for me inside the door. “Upstairs,” she said. “In the left bedroom, beneath the bed, there’s a long flat box.” She followed me as I went up the stairs and into the bedroom, and pulled the box from beneath the bed. I opened it and it was as she said, only more so. Stacks of diapers, rows of gowns, two baby quilts. Each little gown embroidered with flowers. Baby quilts dotted with tiny, even stitches.
“I didn’t become pregnant for four years after we married,” she told me. “I had time to work. I worried that Nathaniel would give my things away, but he didn’t. He saved them.”
“To remember you? Or to give to his next child?”
“I don’t know.” She reached for a white gown, but her hand passed through it. “I’ll let you use them.”
“You will?” I could use her baby things without asking, but I wanted permission. These were too beautiful to poach.
“I’ll let you use them if you’ll talk to Nathaniel for me. Give him a message from me.”
Such a condition. “I can’t,” I said. “I can’t do that.”
“Of course you can. You can tell him that Grace loves him as much as she ever did. Or no, tell him this. Tell him that he’s got the best darned socks in the world.”
“What?”
“It was our joke, what he always used to say when I mended his things.”
“And am I supposed to run messages between the two of you?”
“Not lots of messages. Just this one. Please.”
I picked up a tiny bootie, knit out of white yarn. Five pairs of booties, each slightly larger than the one before. Careful anticipation for an arrival that came too early. “I’ll think about it,” I said.
I folded the baby clothes, stacking them in even rows, making them look as perfect and tidy as they had before. If Grace’s baby had survived, she would have spent many hours scrubbing these clothes, removing yeasty yellow stains, doing wash more than once a week to keep up. A living, crying, messy baby, ruining and redeeming every stitch.
*
There was no sense putting it off. “I’m going to have a baby,” I announced to Nathaniel the next morning at breakfast. I had grown proficient at boiling water and making mush, and this morning I even fried some sausage, in spite of the way its smell made me queasy.
“Congratulations!” Agnes said, and Grace managed a smile. “Grace told me, but I need to congratulate you myself. Don’t you worry, we’ll take good care of you.” She fluttered around me, muttering to herself about baby food and how I needed to eat for two.
But Nathaniel’s face went ashen. “Not yet,” he said. “It’s too soon.”
“We’ve been married three months now. That’s plenty of time.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“You mean you don’t want me to die like Agnes and Grace.” I guessed he would say that. It was hard for him to be risking his hopes for a family one more time.
“No, not before you—that is, no,” he said. He cut his sausage into small bits, half again and half again, without eating anything.
“You’re making a sausage mess.” There must be something else bothering him beyond the thought of my dying.
“Sorry.” He kept on with it, though, breaking all his food into pieces, not eating a thing. “Zina, can I ask you something?”
“Go ahead.”
“Zina, have you ever seen a ghost?”
My turn to look pale. He knew. He’d think I was crazy like the folks in Logan did. Or worse, he’d ask me to talk to his wives. And should I lie, and be relieved of the messenger burden, or tell the truth, and be stuck talking to his prettier wives for him?
“I never have,” I said.
“What?” Grace said. “Zina, you take that back right now. What am I?”
“Are you sure?” he said. “Because I married you after I heard talk about you speaking with spirits. And I, I could use some of that.”
“You want me to talk to your wives?”
“Zina, I—”
“That’s why you married me?” I said. “You heard about me and my crazy ghost talk, and you wanted to marry me because of it?” The news turned my fingers clumsy and my head dizzy. True, I married him for nothing more than being a man who wanted to marry me, but I had dreamed up all kinds of reasons why he asked. Maybe he had seen me working in the Hansen store and felt some kind of mystic pull. Maybe the Holy Ghost had whispered in his ear that I was the one for him, as it had whispered to me. I never dreamed he wanted to marry me for my ghostsight. Did you think he married you for your looks? said the voice of Clarence Hansen, with me still.
Nathaniel stared at his plate, picking the sausage into tinier pieces. “That’s right. I got things I need to say to them. Sometimes it feels like they’re still here, watching me, but I want to be sure.”
“And if I miscarry like Agnes and Grace, and I die before you can talk to them . . . “
“I’ll have three dead wives instead of two. And I won’t be able to talk to any of you.”
And that was his biggest concern. Not my health, not even the baby. Just whether I would be talking to Agnes and Grace for him. But he was too wrapped up in his past wives to focus on me. “Ghost wives are ghosts,” I said. “I’m real, I’m breathing in and out and growing a baby inside me. I’m here now, and you married me and brought me here to live.”
“They matter to me too. I want to be able to talk to them, and I thought I had a little hope of that with you here.” He stood up from his plate of sausage bits. “I can’t finish this,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
He went out to the fields, and I cleaned up breakfast. “You lied to him,” Grace said. “You told him you never saw a ghost when the truth is you’ve been seeing them your whole entire life.”
“You hush,” I said. “I’m the living wife, I’m the one he’s got now. I’m the one who cooks and cleans and sews now, and I won’t be a go-between for you. And besides, he lied to me too.” I scraped the plates outside and washed them, but the sausage grease was too much for me, and I threw up breakfast.
“Oh, honey,” said Agnes. “Honey, I am so sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” Grace said.
“Sorry that he married her just because he thought she could see us,” Agnes said. “That’s not fair, and you know it.”
“But we could talk to him again,” Grace answered. “Don’t you want to tell him things? Share old jokes? Hear what he has to say and have him know you heard?”
“I did,” Agnes said. “But not anymore. It wouldn’t be right. Zina, I’d bring you a cloth for your face and clean up the sausage if I could.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “You go on.” I almost let her pity me, she sounded so kind right then. But I did not want the ghost wives on my side. I wanted Nathaniel, and only him, and now I realized I’d never had him in the first place. He had only married me because of Grace and Agnes. He had only wanted me for the gift I resisted most.
*
Nathaniel and I took care with each other after that. Polite. How are you feeling today, he would ask, and I’m a bit tired, I would say. Agnes and Grace kept their distance. Grace was still angry, and Agnes just felt sorry for me. I felt sorry for myself. Why had God told me to get married? Would it be so terrible to return to the Hansens? Yes it would, said the Holy Ghost. You should stay. But that was all the comfort I got.
I felt off the next few days, like I saw the world sideways and backwards. I went about my chores in slow motion, a weight sagging in my belly. One morning I scrubbed the kitchen floor on hands and knees, removing grease splatters and crumbs. Something sharp twisted inside me and I began to bleed.
“Nathaniel!” I called him, even knowing he was out working and too far away to hear me. Agnes and Grace came instead. Blood gushed out when I tried to stand, so I lay down again. And I cried, because I wanted to have this baby. I wanted to present him to Nathaniel and say, I grew this child, and isn’t he beautiful. I did what your other wives couldn’t. And now my baby dreams spilled out, in hot waves of red.
I heard Agnes yell “Nathaniel! Nathaniel, you come right now,” and Grace joined her too. “Nathaniel! You get in here, you’re going to have another ghost wife if you don’t.”
“He can’t hear you,” I said, between sobs. “And you’re housebound, so you can’t leave past the fenced yard.”
“Sometimes if we both yell together, he hears a little echo,” Agnes said. They called and called. I stayed on the floor in front of the stove. It was the warmest place, even though the floor felt hard beneath me, and I bled and listened to the ghost sister wives call our husband. I should get up, I thought, but when I tried again my head swam and Agnes stopped me.
“You stop right now,” she said. “Don’t you go anywhere until Nathaniel gets here. That’s what I did when I died. I tried to clean myself up and keep moving and even make dinner, and instead I lost more and more blood.”
“She’s right,” Grace said. “And breathe deep. Crying so hard makes you even more lightheaded. Breathe, and breathe.”
For once I listened to both of them. I settled back to the ground, and I breathed.
“Nathaniel!” they called more, and their voices swirled around me and blood swirled out of me, and I fainted.
When I came to, Nathaniel was kneeling beside me.
“I lost you too,” he kept saying. “I couldn’t save Agnes, and I couldn’t save Grace, and now you too.” In his voice I heard fierce mourning for Agnes and Grace. He had a wide and strong heart, to love them both with so much grief.
“Zina, say something,” Grace told me. “He thinks you’re dead.”
“But I’m alive.”
“Zina?” Nathaniel said. “You’re alive, you’re alive?”
I nodded.
He looked at me as if he really saw me. Not Agnes, not Grace, but me, Zina. “Thank God.”
“The baby’s gone.” Those were hard words to say, and they nearly stayed inside me. “But I’m still living, and we can try again.”
“I know,” he said. “Zina, if you had died I would have wanted to talk to you too, just like them, and tell you something.”
“I’m listening,” I said. Agnes left the room and waved Grace out too, to give us some privacy.
“I did want to marry you because I thought you could talk to ghosts, and speak to Agnes and Grace. And maybe that was wrong of me. I thought you might want to be married, because you hadn’t had many offers, and maybe that was wrong too. And Zina, I am sorry.”
“Sorry you married me?”
“No,” he said. “Not at all sorry for that. I was selfish to bring you here, but even if you never see a ghost, I will not be sorry you’re here.”
He held me there on the kitchen floor, and if I cried more for my losses, and he cried more for his, it did not matter. We were together.
*
Everyone was kind to me as I recovered the next few weeks. I thought Agnes and Grace might be jealous of me, because I lived through what had killed them. But when Agnes warned me about my soup boiling too fast, and when Grace pointed out a tear on my dress, there was no triumph in their voices, only concern. Nathaniel did not ask about my ghostsight, but brought me bouquets of tiny spring crocuses. “Beautiful flowers for my beautiful wife,” he said.
One evening, when I felt well enough to sit up and mend, I said to Nathaniel, “Do you have any socks that need darning?”
“I think so.”
“Bring them down, and I’ll work on those a while.”
Nathaniel set down his whittling and went upstairs. “You’re going to do it?” Grace said. “Tell him about the sock? Give him a message?”
“Can I give him a message, too?” Agnes said.
“Just wait,” I said. “Be patient.”
Nathaniel returned, bringing me socks and a few other torn things. I darned a sock, and handed it to him.
“I’ll bet that’s the best darned sock you ever had,” I said.
Grace watched Nathaniel for a reaction.
He gave a little smile. “True,” he said. “Best darned sock ever.”
I darned on. I fixed all the holes in his socks, and moved on to a pair of britches.
“It’s late,” Nathaniel said. “You can’t mend it all tonight.”
“I can try,” I said. “Nathaniel, if I could see ghosts, and I saw your wives, what would you want me to tell them?”
He thought for a moment. Agnes and Grace stood right beside him.
“I would tell Agnes that her pie crust was so light and flaky you could melt away on it. I would tell Grace that when she mended a shirt it looked better than new.”
“Really, Nathaniel?” Grace said.
“I would tell them that I’m sorry I didn’t get a midwife in time, that I’m sorry the babies died and they died.” He was looking right at them, but through them and on into the kitchen. Even with all this talking, he still saw nothing. He was truly spirit blind.
The truth and power of my talent settled on me for the first time, gift instead of burden. This is something you can give to this man, said the Holy Ghost. He’s not perfect, but he is good.
I took Nathaniel’s hand. It was solid beneath mine. The calluses felt rough and he had dirt beneath his fingernails.
“I would tell them what I should tell you, too,” Nathaniel said. “I love you.”
“They know that, Nathaniel,” I said. “They are always with you. And I, I know it too.”
“But it’s nice to hear him say it,” Agnes whispered. Grace reached to touch his face and her fingers faded into his skin.
I held on tight to his hand. “Yes it is,” I said.
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Emily Milner is a long-time contributor to Segullah. “The Living Wife” first appeared in Monsters & Mormons in 2011 with an illustration by Steve Morrison. She still wonders how happy readers find this ending.
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