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Show io^\ control. Even when I lost my temper and told him to shape up or ship out, he did not change. He would apologize and make excuses and tell lies - but he did not change his behavior, not even though I was pregnant. Now this was going on, something so repulsively close to incest that I felt nauseous, my mouth suddenly full of dewfe fluid as I thought of it. How can this be happening? I asked myself. My brother's wife ~ I had wanted to think of her as a sister, despite her cold nature. Did she feel nothing for me, for my condition? I was a blimp,- round and vulnerable to her sharpnessA but I had endured them all. I had confided to her and to Danny that I feared for Brian's mental health, that I was afraid he was untrue to me. I had pleaded with them to befriend him and to provide him with some sense of stability that I seemed unable to transfuse to him, that he seemed unable to accept from me. But I had counted on them having some loyalty. I felt that he only pretended to think that I was beautiful. How could he think that my misshapen frame held anything sensual or lovely? I writhed with shame. He should have another wife, I was thinking -- that was the point of polygamy, to form an inclusive whole, a family, out of the objects of a man's desire. Then there would not be this random flirtation, this dangerous play at seduction. The great comfort of my mother's life had always been that when my father was gone, she knew that he was #with someone who loved h?>- - and h?f'% as well. Even with these new wives in the family, the family feeling endured, a sense of wholeness and loyalty to a single cause. It was this dedication to each other that kept my mother tethered to the family, despite her pain. But such singleness |