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Show in my father's house/ 44 have to lie to people?" My mother flushed and stammered. "Well, of course you must always tell Mama and Daddy the truth. But some other people..." She glanced around as if searching for the answer among the dishes on the table. Then her eyes rested on my father. "Rulon, dear, will you explain it to her?" My father didn't look up from the trout he was fileting. "We must sometimes disobey a lesser law to keep a higher one." He said it like he was reading from a book. My forehead felt tight, and I didn't ask anymore questions. But Aunt Helga tucked her food into a corner of her mouth. "Brother Musser said so himself. Even the leaders of the Church had to lie to the authorities and break the law of the land to live the Principle. Now, can we get on with supper?" I still felt I had missed something. The Principle was the way we lived -- I couldn't change that. But telling the truth or not was a problem I faced every day. In the years ahead, the problem grew. The secrecy which separated our family from the rest of the world pressed us back on each other until we felt crowded and trapped. The mystery maintained within the family preserved an illusion of intimate space which made me feel stifled and cheated. As I grew older, I came to equate secrecy with lying, privacy with conspiracy. And I learned that it wasn't always easy to tell the truth -- even when it had nothing to do with the Principle of plural marriage. |
