stopped running they had to walk an hour more along the grass-lined dirt road. The insects sounded menacing that night, like static on the radio, loud. The stars burned overhead, a few trash-can fires in the distance. The fires got larger and larger as the elders ascended the broad hill that marked the entrance to the neighborhood. At the top of the hill, a twine-tied banner spanned two telephone poles: WHERE’S OUR ASPHALT, TOWN HALL?
Elder McLeod felt a similar foreboding as he followed Josefina into her living room. Leandro had already left for work (“Well, ‘work,’ ” Josefina said, making air quotes. “Argentina plays today”) and the room felt that much bigger for his absence. She sat down on one side of the love seat—the side closest to the couch, McLeod noticed, the side Leandro usually sat on. She invited the elders to sit, too.
“Actually,” Elder Passos said, “could I use your bathroom?”
Josefina showed Passos to the doorway of the kitchen and pointed him to the right. McLeod sat down in the middle of the couch. When Josefina came back she took the same spot on the love seat, though McLeod thought she might have hesitated a second. She adjusted her skirt, her knees together, dully shining. She noticed McLeod noticing, or he worried that she had. He studied the rug underneath his shoes.
At length Josefina said, “Everything all right, Elder?”
“Great, great.” He looked up into her face, laughed a little. “The better question is how are you? How are you liking the lessons?”
“Well, I forgot to read in the Book of Mormon last night—”
“Oh, that’s okay, that’s okay. I didn’t mean to … I just wanted to make sure everything was all right with you two? Make sure you didn’t have any questions or concerns? Missionaries just get these feelings sometimes, and we figure better safe than sorry, you know?”
Josefina’s smile faded, slowly. Her face went flat. Her eyes widened.
“Josefina?” McLeod said.
“Who told you?” she said. “How did you … Our neighbor came by last night, our Pentecostal neighbor, and I guess she’d seen you guys coming here because she brought some literature about you. About the Mormons.”
“Oh.”
“I didn’t read the whole thing—it was mostly Leandro. But he said it said the Mormons had plural wives and that they—”
“
Had
plural wives. In the past.”
“That’s right, that’s right. I think it said that. But it said Joseph Smith had more than twenty wives. Is that true? Leandro just told me about it, I didn’t read it myself. I felt scared to, actually. For some reason I felt I shouldn’t read it.” She looked down. Elder McLeod searched for something to say. When the silence grew accusing, Josefina looked up in a sort of quiet panic that made McLeod want to reach out and touch her. “Look,” she said, “to be honest, in the beginning I wanted you guys to teach both of us, but mostly Leandro. I thought it would help him. And he
has
been drinking less, even with the championships. But last night when Leandro was telling me about the pamphlet, I wanted him to stop. I realized I was afraid he would ruin what you’ve taught us.” Another silence. “And I know that’s bad. Not about last night—I mean what I said about the beginning.”
McLeod gave a series of quick shallow nods. “I understand what you’re saying. But it’s not bad. Not bad at all. I think it’s probably very normal. We’re just grateful we’ve gotten to know you.” He paused. “And you don’t have to be afraid of anything. If what we’re saying is true, it’s true, and nothing will change that. And the fact is that, yes, Joseph Smith had plural wives, many of them. The church stopped the practice in the late eighteen hundreds, but yes, what Leandro said is true.”
Josefina held her face like a paper lantern, her eyebrows pinched, her look flickering, fragile. She started a sentence and stopped, prodding at an idea. “I guess,”
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