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Show Sj-o and only the cold, shadowy side of the moon as scenery. "I'm going to bed," Brian said. "You coming?" I shook my head. "I wouldn't be able to sleep." I sat at the kitchen t a b l e u n t i l the night grew quiet. Then I began to write, almost unconsciously, with only the dog curled over my bare feet and a cup of tea before me to give me warmth in the c h i l l y house. When my hand grew t i r e d, I read what I had w r i t t e n. There were passages about monogamy and passages about polygamy, the two of them faced off on a compare/contrast spectrum, l i t t l e vrnettes of monogamous women waiting for their husbands to r e t u r n from bars and clandestine meetings with shadowy women and of polygamous women lying awake with their babies cuddled to them and thinking of t h e ir husband curved around women they knew and loved, sister-wives. The passages were conflicted with jealousy, but one was whole while one was dismembered in i t s r e s u l t . Yet there was an unavoidable message in my w r i t i n g s : That i t matters less what one believes than how one l i v e s that belief. To live monogamy in dedication, to l i v e polygamy in good f a i t h - indeed, to l i v e in constancy and f i d e l i t y , whatever the way of l i f e, seemed s i m i l a r l y challenging. I did not know how to meet that challenge because I d i d n ' t know what I believed. All I knew vas a diminishing f a i t h in the c e r t a i n t i e s of other people md the loss of my b i r t h r i g h t : that inheritance of self-righteousness ;hat had both marred and sustained my l i f e. My f a t h e r ' s family and group seemed always to assume that our position mque i*#e as God's chosen would automatically lead us TO a etter l i f e . Similarly, the Mormons of Zion seemed to feel that |