The Sound of Gravel: A Memoir

by Ruth Wariner

  “He had to bury’em,” Mom said when I asked. “One of the wires got exposed somehow and a horse nicked it with his hoof.” Later, I discovered that the horse had been electrocuted, its lifeless body discovered near the fence. Lane’s electrical skills were so awful, you almost wanted to laugh.

  “Matt’s here!” Micah and Elena yelled in unison as they ran excitedly to the driveway. My brother emerged from his truck and hugged both of them at the same time, one under each arm.

  “Matt! Matt! W-w-what’s in the bag,” stuttered Micah, seeing the large, black garbage bag his brother was carrying.

  “What’s inside, Matt?” Elena chirped in echo.

  “Not yet.” He laughed, giving me a sideways hug. “Mom has to help me wrap the presents first.”

  “Hello, everybody!” Matt boomed as we entered the quiet house, but a long while passed before we heard the shuffling of house slippers and Mom appeared in the living-room doorway. She looked small and weak, although she was smiling broadly. Matt looked alarmed as he approached her and wrapped her in a tight embrace.

  “That tree looks worse than Charlie Brown’s,” Matt said with a chuckle.

  “Oh, come on now.” Mom smiled and then winced. Her arm reached for her swollen belly as if she’d felt a sudden stomach pang. “Count your blessin’s. At least we have a tree this year.” She sat on the corner of the couch and let out a long breath.

  The sound of Micah and Elena laughing outside caught Matt’s attention, and he pulled out his Kodak 110 camera and went to the window. “Well, look at that,” he said. The two kids had built a couple of snowpeople in the front yard, a larger one that wore Elena’s pink scarf and a smaller one beside it. “It’s Mom with one of her kids.”

  “I don’t think so.” She laughed.

  “Look, Ruthie,” he said.

  I saw two figures covered in mud, twigs, and tiny rocks, snowpeople in name only, a pair of creatures who looked as if they were having one hell of a day. “That’s them all right.”

  By dinnertime, Mom had perked up a bit and was ready to hear about Matt’s love life. “How are things going with Maria?”

  I stared down at Leah, who was asleep in my lap.

  Matt chewed on his thumbnail. “Good. They’re going real good.”

  Mom was silent for a moment, as if she was thinking carefully. “Matt,” she finally said, waiting to continue till he looked at her. “If you marry Maria, you’re gonna have a hard time livin’ polygamy. She’s got a jealous streak just like her mother. She’ll give you hell when you try to take another wife.”

  Matt pretended he hadn’t heard Mom and reached inside his back pocket to pull out a Velcro wallet with a photo of him and Maria taken at someone’s wedding. “Isn’t she the most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen?”

  Mom reluctantly took the wallet and studied the photo a moment. “Maria has always been a striking girl, Matt. But you have to think about the rest of your life, the families you want to bring into this world.”

  I almost groaned. What about love and happiness? I wondered, as Mom handed me the wallet. I placed it gently on Leah’s sleeping body. In the photo, Maria was in a pink, puffy-sleeved, over-the-top, satin bridesmaid’s dress, her lipstick, eye shadow, and blush in the exact same shade. Matt was in suit and tie and had his arms around Maria. Her head rested against his chest. Their smiles looked goofy, but they obviously adored each other. I handed the wallet back to Matt and glanced at Mom briefly. I wondered how she felt seeing that loving embrace, seeing the two of them express the kind of affection I never saw between her and Lane.

  “She looks good,” I offered. “But then any girl would look good next to you, Matt.”

  Mom snickered.

  Matt smiled and shook his head. “Very funny.”

  “You are one ugly son of a gun.” I laughed. “You know that?”

  “It’s just ’cause I can’t wear all that makeup like you girls.” He slipped the wallet back in his pocket.

  I thought that humor might set the conversation on a different track. It didn’t.

  “Matt,” Mom went on, “I’m not sayin’ that you shouldn’t love Maria or that she’s not a good person. I just think you should think seriously about whether she’s gonna let you live by the laws your dad taught.”

  “I hear you, Mom.” Matt stood up. “I’m just not sure I want to live plural marriage.”

  “Why would you say that?” Mom seemed shocked. I couldn’t believe that it hadn’t occurred to her that her own experience with plural marriage might be the reason.

  “What?” Matt asked.

  “‘I might not want to live plural marriage,’” Mom mocked with a hint of disbelief and sarcasm. “Matt, what have you been taught your whole life?” She pushed her glasses back on her nose. “Polygamy is one of our Heavenly Father’s most important laws. If you don’t live His laws and build families in His name, your life on earth will be meaningless.”

  I looked around the room and back at Mom’s tired face, her hair still sticking up from the spot where her head had rested for so many hours. Didn’t she see what that life had done to her? I felt devastated for her. She was as trapped by her beliefs as I had been by Lane.

  Matt took in a deep breath and exhaled through his response. “Mom, we’re not planning on getting married yet. Who knows, she might not even want to marry me.” He looked at me.

  “That’s true,” I said, and we both tried to smile.

  Mom’s migraines finally subsided on Christmas Day, which was the best present she could have received, save one. While she appreciated the new robe, house slippers, and gift set of jellies and jams Matt gave her, her reaction to his card was what really struck me. She cried the first time she read it, then read it a second time aloud, breaking down again. In language simple and honest, Matt thanked her for having been a kind mother, saying that although he knew San Diego had been the right choice for him, he missed her very much and loved her very much, even if he never told her so. Mom’s tears that day were joyful, like the tears she cried when we sang “Happy Birthday” to her each year. I cried too, but only much later, when I realized how little she had asked of the world, and how even that had been too much for the world to give.

  35

  In mid-January, once again Mom went to the hospital in Casas, to deliver her tenth baby. She called a family meeting to discuss what we should name the child. Finding a name we liked that someone in our enormous family hadn’t already taken was so difficult that a group effort was required. Ever since I’d first seen the show when we lived in California, I had been a fan of General Hospital. Holly was one of my favorite characters so I suggested Mom name the new baby after her. Everyone agreed.

  Holly was born on January 20, 1987, twenty years after Mom gave birth to Audrey, her first child. Holly’s skin was a translucent white and as smooth as china, her lips a bright red, and her eyes blue, surrounded by long, dark lashes. Everyone agreed that Holly looked just like Meri, and for some weeks I was terrified that the resemblance might be too strong and Holly would be another sickly child. One day, however, while carrying her in my arms, I felt a warm sensation come over me, a feeling of hope. From that moment I knew she would be a healthy baby, and I was right.

  I didn’t feel that same sense of hope when I saw Mom. She returned home just one day after the birth and, once again, had lost a lot of blood during the delivery. She was weak and felt terrible. Over a few weeks her vigor returned and she agreed to let me travel to San Diego to work with Matt for a little while. He drove us around to different construction sites all over the city. I helped by mixing Spackle with water in five-gallon plastic paint buckets and smearing it with a six-inch putty knife on bare Sheetrock around plastic light sockets. It was hard work, and my body hurt when I woke up early every morning, but he paid me $25 a day, and I liked having the money to spend on the movies and going out for pizza.

  Matt lived in Imperial Beach, closer to Tijuana than San Diego. His home was a single-wide
in a small trailer park off a busy street. Even though it reminded me of living in El Paso, the place had its advantages. First, it was within walking distance to the beach. Second, it was parked hundreds of miles north of LeBaron. The third perk overshadowed the other two: living with Matt, I had access to a working telephone.

  The first people I wanted to call were Grandpa and Grandma. Mom hadn’t taken us to visit her sisters in years. They occasionally wrote her letters, which Mom would read with tears running down her cheeks. My aunts wrote that Mom was doing wrong by staying in polygamy and having so many kids she and Lane couldn’t afford to care for. Mom felt hurt by her sisters’ disapproval, but she was relieved that Grandma and Grandpa had given up trying to change her mind about her religion. We visited them and Audrey at least once a year, usually during the summer when my younger brothers weren’t in school. I hadn’t seen my grandparents or talked to them since the previous summer, so one of the first things I wanted to do from San Diego was to surprise them with a phone call. Hearing my voice usually made Grandma excited, but not that night. As soon as she picked up the phone, I knew something was wrong.

  “Grandpa passed away about two weeks ago,” she said in a quavering voice. “He was sick a long time.”

  I almost dropped the receiver. “Oh, Grandma, I’m so sorry. Why didn’t someone call and tell us?”

  “I didn’t want your mom to drive all the way up here, on all these icy roads, with all her kids.”

  “But—” was as far as I got. I had been at the point of saying the family was wrong not to tell us, that everyone had deserved a chance to say good-bye to Grandpa, especially Mom, but Grandma’s voice was so shaky and weak, I couldn’t.

  I hung up, and my heart was filled with sadness and longing for Grandpa. I felt so grateful for the months we’d spent in his home in Strathmore, which were some of the happiest of my life.

  Later that evening, I sat staring at Matt’s phone for some minutes before dialing Maudy’s in LeBaron and leaving a message for Mom to call me back right away. She called back collect. I accepted the charges and delivered the sad news. The phone went silent.

  “Mom, are you there?”

  “They didn’t want us to be there?” She sounded devastated, shocked. I reiterated what Grandma had said, that she’d been thinking of our safety, even though I knew it was a weak defense.

  “No one called me, Ruthie. No one called me to tell me about my daddy dying.”

  The tenor of her voice broke my heart. “I know, Mom. I’m sorry.”

  “Well, I should go,” she whispered. “This call is gonna cost Matt a lot. When are you comin’ home?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think Matt plans on coming down anytime soon.”

  “Then see if you can get a ride with someone else from the church. Or take the bus. I need your help at home.”

  Matt took me across the border to Tijuana the next morning; I took the bus back to LeBaron and arrived later that day. Mom and I hardly spoke when I got there, and for some reason she couldn’t look me in the eye. All I could think was that hearing the news about Grandpa’s death from me had somehow added insult to injury.

  I was angry and sad, not to mention exhausted from my travels. But that night, when I went to bed on the foldout sofa in the living room, a bright, harsh moonlight kept me up for some time. Our living-room window didn’t have curtains so I lay there tossing and turning in the glare. As I finally started to drift off, I felt a familiar sensation of being watched. Sure enough, I opened my eyes to a figure looming over my bed. I flinched and sprang back, certain that it was Lane. But it was Mom, holding her head in her hands and sobbing.

  I sat up and asked what was wrong. After a moment, she stopped sobbing, sniffled, and looked at me. I’d seen the same face all day, though in the moonlight it didn’t look as angry as it did desperate.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, breathless. “Are the kids okay?”

  “Ruthie…” I watched Mom bow her head as if she’d lost her nerve, then slowly raise it again. “Ruthie, I need to tell you … that I’m so sorry.” She began to cry hard now and the moonlight made her tears sparkle. “You help me so much with the kids, and I never appreciate it.”

  “It’s okay.” That’s all I could think to say. I did feel unappreciated, but I didn’t want Mom to feel so upset about it.

  She took off her glasses and wiped her eyes with a tissue. “And I’m sorry too for everything that you’ve gone through, for everything—everything—Lane has done to you.” She took a deep breath, desperate to calm herself. “I do feel like things have gotten better. Don’t you think so?”

  A thousand responses ran through my head, but none of them were right for the moment. “Well, yeah. At least I don’t have to see him anymore.”

  Mom took my hands in hers. “I didn’t know what to do.” She started crying heavily, making me wonder how long she’d been holding this in. “I know he is very sorry for what he did. He’s very, very sorry.” Was she repeating this on purpose? Once for my sake, once for hers?

  I felt my arms reach around the top of her shoulders and pull her to me so I could rest my head on her neck. But before I could, she lunged forward and laid her head on my shoulder.

  “I love you, Ruthie.”

  I hadn’t heard those words in a long, long time, if ever, and now I was crying too. I couldn’t be angry with her any longer. I felt sorry for her and I sensed her fragility. She wasn’t some monster, she was just another human being who’d gone looking for her life and somehow ended up on the wrong path.

  “I love you too.”

  Mom pulled away from me and smiled, patting my back and kissing my wet cheek before grasping the bed frame and pushing herself to her feet. She murmured, “Good night,” disappeared into the blackness, and left as mysteriously and abruptly as she’d come.

  But I didn’t mind. I had become used to the dark.

  36

  Later that spring, Matt and Maria announced that they would marry at the end of the summer. Mom clearly wasn’t thrilled by the match and continued to warn Matt that Maria would never accept living polygamy. The wedding plans rekindled my friendship with Maria, and the two of us spent many hours over the next few months clipping wedding ideas from magazines. Whenever Mom wasn’t around, we talked about her concerns.

  “You know that my mom wants Matt to be a polygamist, right?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I know. But he says it’s only a fifty-fifty chance that he’ll live it, and I’m willing to take that chance. Besides”—Maria winked—“I’m pretty sure I can convince him not to get another wife.”

  I didn’t want to think about the things Maria might do to convince my brother of this, so I changed the subject.

  With summer came the usual LeBaron brand of excitement—drinking and dancing in discothèques, cooling off in swimming holes and irrigation ditches, birthday and wedding parties, and anniversary celebrations. Added to the mix that summer were two additional blockbuster events: Matt and Maria’s wedding and a big party Alejandra was throwing at her parents’ house for her twin girls’ birthdays. She’d had a second set of twins after Alex and Junior were born and was celebrating their second birthdays.

  All of Lane’s wives and children were invited, but Mom was the only one who felt obligated to attend, seeing how her son was marrying Alejandra’s daughter. No matter how hard Lane had tried to win her back, Susan had stuck by her decision to leave him so she didn’t hesitate to decline the invitation. Marjory, Lane’s fourth wife, was out of town, visiting her family in the States.

  Even though Mom had been so upset when Lane married Marjory, I had come to like the last of her sister wives. Marjory thought it important that Lane’s wives be civil to one another, so not long after Holly was born Marjory visited our house to talk to Mom and to see the new baby. The moment she stepped through the door, she looked around wide-eyed.

  “With all the builders we have in this town, why are you livin’ in a place like this?” Marjor
y wondered aloud. She was the kind of person who would put her hands on her hips for dramatic effect and say, “Kathy, I’m gonna hire some of these young boys to fix this place up,” and then do exactly that. Not a week after her visit, Marjory had made brown-and-white-checkered curtains to hang in the windows in the kitchen, had its walls painted bright yellow, and hired a young man to construct a built-in closet out of Sheetrock that Lane had bought for some project long ago abandoned. Mom smiled for weeks every time she walked into her new kitchen. Even though people gossiped that Marjory’s kindness was payback for the pain she knew Lane’s latest marriage had caused Mom, I didn’t believe it. Generosity seemed second nature to Marjory. When she left to visit her family in the States, she promised to come back with more ideas on how to fix up our house.

  The day of Alejandra’s party, Mom was tweezing her eyebrows in the mirror when she confided that she had gone to the doctor the day before. She’d missed her period. I was stunned. She was thirty-eight. Holly was just five months old.

  “Mom, don’t you think you should wait until you stop nursing before you get pregnant again?” I said the words as gently as I could, but my irritation was obvious. “We can barely afford to feed everyone in the family now.”

  She put down the tweezers, gazed at me, and calmly and matter-of-factly said, “Ruthie, you just have to have faith.”

  No, you don’t, I thought. You also need money and a husband who’s not a deadbeat. But I didn’t say anything.

  “When you’re doing what God wants you to do, life will always work out for the best. Don’t worry. He will always take care of us.” She smiled warmly and turned back to her reflection.