The Silent Tears of Polygamy

by Robin Johnson

  What could I have said? That, no, I was not okay. Because really, I was as far from okay as anyone could get. But there was nothing that she could do about it, and I didn’t want to burden her any further. “Yes. I am. I am okay, Kayla,” I said. We must have ended the conversation then, as I don’t know what, if anything else was said.

  The rest of the night, I can’t remember. I must have drifted off to sleep. All that I had been through in that short time line had drained me. The next thing I knew it was a new dawn. It was morning. Except it was not a morning like previous mornings. It was a morning that signified a new path on my journey. It was one that I wasn’t ready for, but nonetheless, it was here.

  So, now I knew Alec was going to have another wife. He and I were going to be a part of polygamy. That morning, Alec called to check in on me. He was driving and on his way to work. He said his stomach had been in knots and still was. I was kind of numb at that point. I didn’t have much to say, at least, nothing that I can remember.

  A day or so later, I was still denying what was happening in my life. I had somehow convinced myself that he couldn’t have meant what he said about marrying Carolyn. I couldn’t bring myself to believe that it was true. I had no idea of what I was going to do. Still wanting to deny all that I had learned about Alec and his intention to wed another, I said, “Are you really going to marry her?”

  He said, “Yes.” And as he looked at me, there was a certain look in his eyes that signified that I had asked him a silly question.

  He said, “Do you think I would kid about something like that?” Yes, I expect that he was kidding! This was a conversation that I never expected to have.

  Well, we were having it, and it seemed that Alec hadn’t been joking at all. I said, “When do you think you’ll marry her?” He said,

  “In January or February.” It would be in 2002, just a couple of months away.

  It seemed as though, for every day that passed, the impact of our current situation sank a little deeper into my head. I drew trajectories of causes and effects. It was all too much, all at the same time.

  It was on one of such days that I thought to ask Alec to give me more time, which I did. I said, “This is just too much happening too fast, too soon. I need time to adjust and digest it all.” I deserved more time to prepare for a change as huge as this. It was a drastic change.

  “No!” “To delay it would be like pulling a Band-Aid off of a wound,” he said. “It would be better to do it quickly and get it over with.”

  I stood in silence, as I was terribly shocked. Who was this man whom I was talking to? Could I have really been married to this person for five years? I know I’ve questioned if he’s Muslim or not. If he’s Muslim, where is the mercy that he should have? Where is the compassion?

  I was adamant in trying to convince him to give me more time to pull myself together before he marries another woman. It wasn’t as easy for me to come to terms with it. Alec apparently thought it should be easy for me. He clearly was only thinking of himself.

  In the many days that followed, I continued to ask Alec to give me more time and to not get married so quickly. I asked if he could wait until August or September (2002). That was a reasonable time, in my opinion. Not January or February. We were in November already, and both would be here too soon.

  I said to him again that I need more time to digest all that was happening to me and our marriage. Alec’s position stayed the same.

  He emphatically said, “No.”

  I continued to plead with him to give me more time.

  I was desperate, and I kept pleading. Alec remained steadfast on his decision and his ‘no’ was unchanged. I kept pleading and pleading with Alec until I realized that I was begging and humiliating myself.

  When did I become this woman who had only one subject on her mind? When did it happen that I’m now this weak and needy person? I’m mortified to see how I am now. But, it didn’t stop there. I said,

  “Am I going to meet her?”

  He said, “No!” He said, “You’ll probably do something to try to stop the marriage.” He was correct, but I didn’t tell him so. I stayed silent.

  Needless to say, I was crushed, dejected and broken. The only ray of hope that dispelled the clouds a bit was when I talked with Ali about it. He helped me feel better about the situation and admonished me not to worry, as only God knows if Alec would marry Carolyn or not.

  He said, “It’s not in your hands.” He said that I should let go of trying to manage the situation. The thought that there was a slim chance that the marriage would not happen eased my mind considerably. There was nothing I could do. I could only wait and see how everything would play out.

  Several days had passed.

  I had gone back to work. Although I still had my bad days, it was a lot better than it was at the beginning. More importantly, I needed to do productive things, and what better way to do it than to keep my mind and hands busy. It helped prevent my thoughts from straying too far, too often.

  One day, I received a call from Alec while I was at work. With excitement in his voice, he informed me that the wali for Carolyn said that she was ready, and the wedding could take place. Well, I thought that she had already taken the oath (Shahada) to become Muslim. Other than it, I didn’t know what being “ready” entailed.

  Alec went on to tell me that the date for the wedding was set for mid-December (2001). Things were going way too fast. I was not prepared at all for a wedding to take place let alone within a matter of weeks. I was not prepared for polygamy.

  What happened to the January or February tentative dates for 2002 that he had given me? Even those hadn’t gone down well with me, and now he was saying December of this year when we’re in November already? It meant the wedding would now take place only a few weeks after he had announced it to me. I simply listened and didn’t question Alec about it. We just ended the conversation.

  After Alec and I hung up, I telephoned my older sister Francine, who lives in Connecticut. I had already let her know what was happening with Alec and me, so she knew the situation.

  I let her know that Alec wouldn’t give me more time that I needed. I said, “I need more time to be able to cope with it better.” I said, “I can’t cope with it the way things are going.”

  Francine said, “He’s treating you like you’re a dog.” She said, “It’s as though he has given you a piece of steak and is making you swallow it without giving you a chance to chew.” She was right. No one could have given a better analogy as to what was happening to me. It helped me knowing that she was trying to understand what I was going through.

  Days later, after we had talked on the phone, Francine came to visit me. I showed her a picture that I had found of Alec and Carolyn not long after he and I had married. I said, “The other day, I asked Alec why he wanted to marry Carolyn.” And he said, “She comforts me.” After peering and staring closely at the picture, Francine said,

  “He must have been really sad to want to marry her.”

  To say that she was not a beauty queen by any standard would be an understatement. I recalled falling backwards into a chair that I was standing in front of when I first laid eyes on the picture of who he used to date. I was stunned, to say the least. It got me to thinking that I may have married beneath myself, if he had to stoop to the level of being with someone like that. I thought maybe I was too good for him and had settled.

  Francine and I had a nice visit. It was sweet of her to come and check on me. It was sad to see her leave. She said, “Call me anytime, day or night, if you need to talk about it or just want to talk about anything.” I said, “I will.”

  If I tried hard, I could get my mind off of everything for a while. More often than not, though, I couldn’t, and it was as though I was repeatedly asking myself what I should do. Polygamy was quickly becoming more real than I thought.

  My life seemed to compare to a train wreck with me trying to find my way out of the wreckage. I don’t know whe
re I’m going or what I’m doing. I’m just wobbling and stumbling about, unable to think straight, unable to focus. All my thoughts were on Alec going to marry Carolyn very soon. My whole world was spiraling out of control.

  I remembered how Alec had said before and after we got married that he had no interest in polygamy. I had believed him and never doubted him. Not wanting to be polygamous was the drawing card for me to marry him. I could have seen myself walking away from him had he expressed an interest in polygamy.

  Had I been fooled? Am I a fool? One hears about people being bamboozled all the time. He had assured me that he would not become polygamous. He went back on his word. How dare he? How could he?

  This was a man whom I had placed on a pedestal and defended him to my wali who was opposed to the marriage from the onset. He said Alec knew nothing about Islam and was a perpetrator. I was blinded by desires. I just couldn’t see. I was all about the traditional, and I let Islam take the backseat.

  Now, things had changed. Alec was going to marry Carolyn. To say the least, I was betrayed. We didn’t plan to live this way. My world was turned upside down, and Alec seemed not to care anything about me. It was as though he wasn’t listening. He wasn’t sympathetic toward me. And speaking of “comfort,” well, wasn’t he supposed to comfort me, or was it supposed to be one sided?

  I continued to speak to Alec from time to time about it. I thought maybe it would help for me to get his perspective, so I asked him questions.

  “Do you love her?”

  I didn’t want to ask. I really didn’t want to know the answer, but I had to.

  He said, “I care about her.”

  Bingo. There was my comfort. I’m glad he didn’t say that he loves her. I don’t think I would have been able to handle hearing him tell me that he actually loves her. Some men have been known to tell their wives that they love someone else. I think for Alec to have said it to me would have been more than I would have had the strength to bear. It would have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. Kudos to Alec. His words uplifted my spirit, if only for a mere moment.

  Alec gave me a number of reasons why he was going to marry Carolyn. A few of them were: she needs help; the only way he could help her and be around her was by marrying her; she has two young daughters whom she needs help with. He said that she was a kind person, but people took undue advantage of her. Furthermore, he said, “She wants sex.”

  He said, “I need to feel needed.”

  I have been a very independent person and asked Alec for nothing. I’d go to my wali for any real guidance because he knew Islam and Alec didn’t. There was nothing that I could say to Alec when he said that he needs to be needed. Apparently, he thought that I wasn’t there for him.

  There was no time for me to be there for Alec now. December was only weeks away. I was running out of time. I could only think, what am I going to do? How am I going to survive?

  Heightened Emotions

  I sometimes think that time works in the exact opposite of what we would prefer. All I know was that the weeks and days before the wedding was to take place came way too soon. Like an avalanche that needed an out, intense feelings were building inside of me.

  In the midst of feeling sad, embarrassed, depressed, and foolish, I was extremely angry that Alec was about to make polygamy a part of our lives.

  I think it was worse somehow because I didn’t choose this, and I most certainly didn’t want it. But had Alec asked me? No. He had just gone ahead and done what he wanted. He didn’t think my opinion or feelings mattered. I was beginning to see just how selfish the man that I married was.

  I needed an out for all the pressure that was building up inside of me. Every evening when Alec arrived home, I ranted and I raved. I yelled as loudly as I could, shouting obscenities at him. I said words and phrases that I dare not repeat. I’m sure anyone could only imagine what some of them were. I was a ticking time bomb.

  Sometimes when Alec was watching television or was on the computer, I’d rush in from another room and would explode on him. I’d leave the room again, but within minutes, I’d rush back towards him, and I’d shout the terrible words and phrases at him again.

  In my mind, nothing that I did was enough to agitate and annoy him. I wanted to do more. I was losing my mind. Who am I? I thought. I had never been a woman who was constantly ranting and raving, cursing and speaking these obscenities.

  I seemed to have lost my old self. Where did she go? I didn’t recognize myself. I don’t know how other people did either. I had made an incredible transformation without an effort.

  Of course, I did all my ranting and shouting from a distance to Alec. I dare not get too close to him. I didn’t get in his face. I had enough sense left to keep me far away from him during my fits of rage. No one knows how someone will react when cornered. I wasn’t about to take a chance to find out how he’d act.

  Although he exercised a great deal of patience, I didn’t know what would send him over the edge. I feared that if I got too close to him while acting crazy, he’d clobber me, and I’d end up laid out on the floor. While behaving the way I did, I was full of fear. Although, it wasn’t enough fear to make me back up off of him completely.

  Nonetheless, even in my red haze fit of fury, I was rational enough to fear how he’d react. I didn’t want to take my craziness too far and believe me when I say I was acting like one crazy woman. It was as though I had gone completely mad.

  I’m sure the neighbors could hear me. I shouted at the top of my voice, not that I cared at the moment that it was happening. Afterward, when I had calmed down somewhat, I was mortified by the way I had behaved.

  Surprisingly, Alec never responded to my outrage. My anger and shouting seemed not to get to him. He just continued to do whatever it was that he was doing at that particular time. He didn’t look at me or acknowledged that I was there in any way. He gave what he was doing his one hundred percent attention. I didn’t know how he did it. I still don’t. I mean, this went on throughout the night, for many nights. If anyone had the patience of a saint, Alec did.

  He never said a word to me, never raised a finger against me, and never replied to my accusations. He totally ignored me. My childish behavior knew no bounds. It was as though I had regressed and gone back into time–back to the time that I threw temper tantrums when I was a kid. He didn’t do anything to make me feel better, neither did he set out to make me feel any worse.

  The fact that he mostly ignored my drama didn’t stop me. In a way, it just fueled the flame of my anger. I went on and on in a tirade about how Carolyn only wanted him for his money and for sex. I said neither he nor Carolyn knew anything about Islam and their case was like that of the blind leading the blind. I said that he and Carolyn would be in the Hell Fire together.

  Not surprisingly, Alec coming together again with Carolyn made me feel closer to my Islamic family and further away from Alec. I knew there’d be consequences for Alec’s actions. I knew there was no Islam behind his decisions regarding Carolyn.

  I said to him that he was only going into polygamy to hurt me. He didn’t like that I was exceptionally close to my Islamic family. My Islamic family consists of my wali, his wife, and their children. As much as they and I tried to bring Alec into our Islamic fold and make him feel comfortable as part of our family, Alec didn’t want to be bothered with them and, so, a gap existed.

  Alec was jealous of the friendship that I had with Ali. I think Alec would have preferred that I not practice Islam and lived a worldly life outside of it. In that way he and I would have more in common.

  There were times when I was rational. I wasn’t crazy acting all the time. It took a lot of energy to act that way, and it was exhausting. It took a lot out of me. It’s still a source of surprise and wonder to me that I didn’t have an aneurysm or a heart attack, or I didn’t stroke out during one of my crazy fits. During my frenzied acts of rage, my face was beet red, and I could feel my blood pressure rise to the point that it was ab
out to go through the roof.

  In the course of my sane moments, Alec and I had dinner and watched television together, as though all was normal again. Although it wasn’t the same pre-polygamy talk era, we were civil to each other.

  While conscious of Carolyn, I was able to be in my marriage with Alec. I could compartmentalize my anger some times and wasn’t angry with him all the time. In fact, I was learning a lot about Alec for the first time. That might sound strange considering that we have been married for five years.

  Having been the self-centered, egotistical person that I was before now, I hadn’t paid much attention to Alec. My eyes opened wide now to see a person whom I had only known and seen superficially before.

  My intention was not all altruistic. I had an underlying motive. I was quite sure that Carolyn thought that she was very special right about now. I’m certain that she was busy, preparing to wed my husband. I imagine that she and Alec were getting ready for their steamy, hot, sexual encounters that they envision they would have. As painful as it was for me, the thoughts of the two of them engaged in such activities evaded my head as well. My thoughts overwhelmed me and I couldn’t get control of them.

  My thoughts said, it’s time to compete. I wasn’t going to take this lying down or maybe I was. Pun is intended. I needed to reignite the fire or, should I say, ignite it for Alec and me, sexually and passionately.

  Although Alec and I love and respect each other, I don’t think our fire had ever been fully lit. I was a woman on a mission. Suffice it to say, it was a mission accomplished. It was as though we traveled back in time, and Alec and I had a honeymoon all over again, but this time it was at home. It was more wild and passionate than it had ever been.

  I put my all and all into it, and there was no holding back. It was the ultimate mind blowing experience. I had read a lot of books in my days about sex and what it takes to please a man. So, I reached back into my bag of tricks, and I pulled them out to work for me. Alec was always ready and wanting more.