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Show in my father's house/ 48 I said, clenching my fists. "No! Don't tell anyone. You'll get me in trouble." Her face was pinched and frightened. I watched her a moment. She was so small, I had trouble remembering she was older than I. I reached for her hand and pulled her to her feet. "C'mon," I said. "Let's go ask my mother for a cookie." Leora hung back. "Don't tell her. Aunt Gerda will kill me." I felt like crying. "Don't worry," I said. "I can keep a secret." When I first intuited the power associated with a first wife's status, I grieved over my mother's place far down the list as fourth of my father's plural wives. I knew, for instance, that a first wife went more places with her husband. Aunt Gerda accompanied my father to all his professional meetings, to her children's school programs and neighborhood gatherings. The other wives went to school programs alone or with sister-wives, and couldn't acknowledge my father if they saw him there. Occasionally, on birthdays or anniversaries, my father took his other wives out to a movie, but looking over his shoulder, fearing he'd run into someone who knew him. During the months of my father's parole from the Utah State Prison, Aunt Gerda, as the legal wife, was the only one allowed to live with him. They rented a small apartment behind a market |