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Show in my father's house/ 78 papers. From these, she took a newspaper clipping. I unfolded it carefully and studied the side-by-side photographs of my mother and Aunt Helga. Beneath pictures of Brother Musser and Brother Barlow, Aunt Helga faced the camera squarely, chin lifted, head high, and eyes smiling, as though proud to be jailed for the Principle; but my mother's head was bowed, her eyes dilated, and shame written on her features. An acutely painful awareness of being thought a criminal suffused her face. They were placed in a cell with a Negro woman sentenced for raising rents during the Second World War. The black woman, still indignant at the abrogation of her landlady's right to charge any rent she wished, had been listening to the radio all morning. The 'polygamist round-up' had become the talk of the town, with people calling the radio stations to express their vehement views for or against the action. When all the excitement suddenly descended on the little cell where she'd been isolated for three months, she could hardly contain herself. "Why, strike me pink!" she exclaimed, embracing my mother like an old friend. Throughout the morning, she read to them from her tattered Bible, giving scriptural proofs that they must be the Lord's chosen, "else they wouldn't treat you so shabby." "The Lord's people always got to be persecuted. See, here it is again, in Matthew: 'And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake; but he that endureth to the end shall be saved.' |
