"I’m beginning to understand that I don’t even know what I know."
January 10, 2018 10:55 AM Subscribe
Daniel Wallace writes about his mother, Child Bride - "So, everyone knew about it. It was her great tale of youthful misadventure. She was an open book like this. She would tell you about anything, the more outrageous the better. If you had a scandalous story to tell, she would love to hear it, but she would have a better one, like this one, and yours would pale in comparison.
Married when I was 12 years old: Beat that.
But what I came to learn, 40 years after hearing the story for the first time, is that it wasn’t really true. It didn’t happen like this at all."
At that point could you actually get an annulment of a marriage that would have been considered consummated if there wasn't fraud or something of the sort?
posted by Sequence at 11:43 AM on January 10, 2018
posted by Sequence at 11:43 AM on January 10, 2018
Maybe this article says something about the state of Alabama, but I still think Roy Moore was a creep. This article is about the 1940s and between people who were only 3 years apart, whereas Roy Moore's alleged assaults were in the 1980s when he was in his 30s and the girls were half his age.
posted by olopua at 12:05 PM on January 10, 2018
posted by olopua at 12:05 PM on January 10, 2018
I had an aunt who was a Pedigo, born in Alabama (but not anywhere near Edgewood), so hey, maybe I am by marriage slightly related to these people.
posted by JanetLand at 12:06 PM on January 10, 2018
posted by JanetLand at 12:06 PM on January 10, 2018
The funniest part of this article for me was getting to the end and seeing that this guy also wrote Big Fish. Sounds like he grew up with a lot of tall tales, legends and storytellers around the house.
posted by cyphill at 12:11 PM on January 10, 2018 [8 favorites]
posted by cyphill at 12:11 PM on January 10, 2018 [8 favorites]
Count me in the camp of she was telling the truth to her son, who accepted her as she was, and not to people she knew full well would judge her. Source: a young kid who lied to her own parents all the time, and consistently (they were abusive, I didn't want them meddling in my friendships). I created a framework for stories I would tell them. Only people I considered true friends knew the true me.
From the OP: "There is always someone who knows what you want to know, but they’re dead, alas, and now no one knows what really happened. Without a witness it’s all hearsay, a story."
Witnesses aren't all they're cracked up to be either. My grandfather told me all sorts of stories about his childhood, and stories his mother (my great-grandmother) had told him. They seemed fantastical at the time – a farm on the edge of an island? that you could only reach in summer? trolls rolling rocks down the hills at unwitting children? I mean really, trolls?? Plus all the "witnesses", his own children, also found his stories silly. His only living brother would merely smile and nod. He didn't talk much. But for me, whether true or not, the real truth lay in his happiness in sharing a family heritage. "This was my childhood, this was your great-grandmother's childhood, and you are living yours now and will add to our stories," it said to me.
I finally got up to Norway this last summer. The family farm is on the edge of an island. You can only reach it from the rest of the island in summer. There is a big rock formation shaped like a troll's head, and in spring, when the ice starts to melt, the rocks at its base loosen from the expanding water and roll down the hill. "We tell children that the troll might try to roll rocks at them," my great-aunt told me. "Your great-grandmother's sister," her mother, "always told us that story so we would be careful in spring."
Everything about her story turns out to be true except (perhaps) her age. Maybe they met when she was 12. I feel uncomfortable whenever women who go against the grain are painted as unreliable.
posted by fraula at 12:18 PM on January 10, 2018 [25 favorites]
From the OP: "There is always someone who knows what you want to know, but they’re dead, alas, and now no one knows what really happened. Without a witness it’s all hearsay, a story."
Witnesses aren't all they're cracked up to be either. My grandfather told me all sorts of stories about his childhood, and stories his mother (my great-grandmother) had told him. They seemed fantastical at the time – a farm on the edge of an island? that you could only reach in summer? trolls rolling rocks down the hills at unwitting children? I mean really, trolls?? Plus all the "witnesses", his own children, also found his stories silly. His only living brother would merely smile and nod. He didn't talk much. But for me, whether true or not, the real truth lay in his happiness in sharing a family heritage. "This was my childhood, this was your great-grandmother's childhood, and you are living yours now and will add to our stories," it said to me.
I finally got up to Norway this last summer. The family farm is on the edge of an island. You can only reach it from the rest of the island in summer. There is a big rock formation shaped like a troll's head, and in spring, when the ice starts to melt, the rocks at its base loosen from the expanding water and roll down the hill. "We tell children that the troll might try to roll rocks at them," my great-aunt told me. "Your great-grandmother's sister," her mother, "always told us that story so we would be careful in spring."
Everything about her story turns out to be true except (perhaps) her age. Maybe they met when she was 12. I feel uncomfortable whenever women who go against the grain are painted as unreliable.
posted by fraula at 12:18 PM on January 10, 2018 [25 favorites]
A lot of what it says in the annulment decree is just annulment boilerplate. "It wasn't serious, they have never lived together as man and wife" is just what you had to say if you wanted an annulment.
posted by interplanetjanet at 1:06 PM on January 10, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by interplanetjanet at 1:06 PM on January 10, 2018 [4 favorites]
A lot of what it says in the annulment decree is just annulment boilerplate.
Gotta hit the checkmarks for the form. That is how organizations work.
Dear Catholic Church - Please annul my 1st 30 year marriage so I can get married again. You see, I was hooked on Marijuana for the 30 years. Yea, the wife *IS* the vice principle of the local school, thanks for asking.
A donation later - annulled. While standing next to his grow room of 2 bulbs and a few plants he'd tell the tale of the application and annulment. After his 2nd divorce.
posted by rough ashlar at 1:11 PM on January 10, 2018 [3 favorites]
Gotta hit the checkmarks for the form. That is how organizations work.
Dear Catholic Church - Please annul my 1st 30 year marriage so I can get married again. You see, I was hooked on Marijuana for the 30 years. Yea, the wife *IS* the vice principle of the local school, thanks for asking.
A donation later - annulled. While standing next to his grow room of 2 bulbs and a few plants he'd tell the tale of the application and annulment. After his 2nd divorce.
posted by rough ashlar at 1:11 PM on January 10, 2018 [3 favorites]
My grandmother (Toby) was a nice Orthodox Jewish girl in Chicago whose mother (Esther) had died of influenza and first (Fruma) and second (Tzarka) stepmothers had died of cancer and something else that I can't remember. That's when Bertha became stepmother number 3. Bertha had a son in Hungary, Istvan. Istvan was trying to get out of Europe, it being 1937 and not so good for the Jews. Istvan (now Stephen) eventually made it to Chicago in 1939 where he met the 26 year old Toby, his stepsister. Stephen was a handsome gentleman, having served in the French Foreign Legion and having gone through Havana on his way to Chicago. Bertha and Samuel (her father) did not approve of a match between Toby and Stephen, but they fell in love and decided to get married anyway. What their parents didn't know, however, is that they couldn't wait to have sex, so a full week before their Jewish ceremony, they went to the courthouse to get married in secret. I was the first person in my family to learn about this in 2000 when my 87 year old grandmother confessed to me after I returned from Vegas after eloping. And that's how my grandmother and grandfather (also step-siblings) got married, got into a car and hit Route 66 from Chicago directly to Los Angeles in 1940.
By the way, Bertha died a few years later and wife number 5 was Hattie.
posted by Sophie1 at 1:28 PM on January 10, 2018 [15 favorites]
By the way, Bertha died a few years later and wife number 5 was Hattie.
posted by Sophie1 at 1:28 PM on January 10, 2018 [15 favorites]
I've been on a genealogy streak lately and I've come across some... interesting things.
posted by elsietheeel at 1:38 PM on January 10, 2018 [5 favorites]
posted by elsietheeel at 1:38 PM on January 10, 2018 [5 favorites]
Oh, another thing. Tzarka was the widow of Esther's brother and apparently my great grandfather just married the next woman he saw coming around the corner. I know. It's crazy. My family tree is more like a briar patch than a tree.
posted by Sophie1 at 1:42 PM on January 10, 2018 [4 favorites]
posted by Sophie1 at 1:42 PM on January 10, 2018 [4 favorites]
I have a family mystery about as convoluted as this one-maybe more so-and in my effort to find out the truth (concerning was really my grandfather-the man who raised her -who was married to my greataunt-or the Greek man who my blood grandmother-sister to the greataunt-was married to very briefly) -I decided that AncestryDna would solve the problem.
I would take the dna test, if I was part Greek then Spiro Koken was the legal dad-if not then it would be the man who raised her-who was rumored to be carrying on with his much younger sister in law (at least that is the family gossip that another great aunt wrote down for my mother years later.)
So imagine my shock when the test came back-and instead of part Greek it was part European Jewish.
So either Spiro Koken lied about being Greek (which actually could be a possibility) or grandma was even wilder than we thought.
Long hours perusing Ancestry.Com have neither proved nor disproved theory number one while meanwhile I keep getting tantalized with hints of folks I may be related to who just did not feel like sharing family trees online or answering polite private queries (just one of those, a more close match than most.)
But I comfort myself with the knowledge that if I ever had to prove my Southernness I can check off the Crazy Family Story box at least.
Like the author of this piece, anyone who could tell me anything is either long dead or so old that they are past discussing things. And people either lie or misremember things all the time. But Spiro is buried here (he died when Mom was an infant) and the story I was always told about the Greeks kicking out a Greek for marrying a nongreek was what kept me from asking locals anything earlier.
So the moral of the story, boys and girls, is talk to your old relatives. Poke that bear.Bring up that family mystery. You never know what story your Great Aunt Myrtle will be taking to the grave if you do not.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 4:43 PM on January 10, 2018 [4 favorites]
I would take the dna test, if I was part Greek then Spiro Koken was the legal dad-if not then it would be the man who raised her-who was rumored to be carrying on with his much younger sister in law (at least that is the family gossip that another great aunt wrote down for my mother years later.)
So imagine my shock when the test came back-and instead of part Greek it was part European Jewish.
So either Spiro Koken lied about being Greek (which actually could be a possibility) or grandma was even wilder than we thought.
Long hours perusing Ancestry.Com have neither proved nor disproved theory number one while meanwhile I keep getting tantalized with hints of folks I may be related to who just did not feel like sharing family trees online or answering polite private queries (just one of those, a more close match than most.)
But I comfort myself with the knowledge that if I ever had to prove my Southernness I can check off the Crazy Family Story box at least.
Like the author of this piece, anyone who could tell me anything is either long dead or so old that they are past discussing things. And people either lie or misremember things all the time. But Spiro is buried here (he died when Mom was an infant) and the story I was always told about the Greeks kicking out a Greek for marrying a nongreek was what kept me from asking locals anything earlier.
So the moral of the story, boys and girls, is talk to your old relatives. Poke that bear.Bring up that family mystery. You never know what story your Great Aunt Myrtle will be taking to the grave if you do not.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 4:43 PM on January 10, 2018 [4 favorites]
And you might well ask, why do I even care? But that’s not the question. The question is, why did she care? Why did she lie about it the way she did?
no, that actually is the question. if you want to dictate to readers the questions they see fit to ask, you can do it, but you have to be a little more subtle than that.
the other question is why does he decide that the bonkers story about his grandfather building the teen couple a house in his back yard was automatically a lie, before ever getting evidence, and not only that, why does he decide that it was an open-and-shut case of his mother lying, rather than this other elderly woman lying (embroidering, embellishing, whatever you call it when you aren't invested in proving a storytelling old woman is a liar) and rather than this other elderly woman mis-recalling an old second-hand story she'd heard decades ago from his mother, or putting that story together with another story, maybe one from someone else, and coming up with an improbable combination. this does, would you believe, happen. not even only to the elderly.
and the third question is, does he really believe that he recalls events from his own life with perfect accuracy, if they happened more than 20 years ago? can there be such self-confidence in the world? Any story I tell about myself more than once, I'm 8 in one version, 12 in another, 6 in another. Usually I remember to add that I'm just making up a number because I have no idea, who remembers. Once I really tried hard to work how old I was in one story because the detail seemed important, and the best I could do was remember which coat I was wearing at the time, and try to figure out whether coats like that were in style in the late 80s or the early 90s. and yes, all kinds of people tell themselves as more precocious than they actually were. sometimes on purpose but actually, sometimes not.
trying to spin your family history into an interesting narrative for those outside the family without falsifying any of it is a fine art and difficult mental exercise, I respect his efforts in that direction. I personally can't do it without making up my mind that while lying about dead people is out of bounds, distortion and selective focus is just fine. so I don't know what exactly I can accuse this writer of. maybe nothing. but I feel like it ought to be something. it bugs me.
posted by queenofbithynia at 4:53 PM on January 10, 2018 [4 favorites]
no, that actually is the question. if you want to dictate to readers the questions they see fit to ask, you can do it, but you have to be a little more subtle than that.
the other question is why does he decide that the bonkers story about his grandfather building the teen couple a house in his back yard was automatically a lie, before ever getting evidence, and not only that, why does he decide that it was an open-and-shut case of his mother lying, rather than this other elderly woman lying (embroidering, embellishing, whatever you call it when you aren't invested in proving a storytelling old woman is a liar) and rather than this other elderly woman mis-recalling an old second-hand story she'd heard decades ago from his mother, or putting that story together with another story, maybe one from someone else, and coming up with an improbable combination. this does, would you believe, happen. not even only to the elderly.
and the third question is, does he really believe that he recalls events from his own life with perfect accuracy, if they happened more than 20 years ago? can there be such self-confidence in the world? Any story I tell about myself more than once, I'm 8 in one version, 12 in another, 6 in another. Usually I remember to add that I'm just making up a number because I have no idea, who remembers. Once I really tried hard to work how old I was in one story because the detail seemed important, and the best I could do was remember which coat I was wearing at the time, and try to figure out whether coats like that were in style in the late 80s or the early 90s. and yes, all kinds of people tell themselves as more precocious than they actually were. sometimes on purpose but actually, sometimes not.
trying to spin your family history into an interesting narrative for those outside the family without falsifying any of it is a fine art and difficult mental exercise, I respect his efforts in that direction. I personally can't do it without making up my mind that while lying about dead people is out of bounds, distortion and selective focus is just fine. so I don't know what exactly I can accuse this writer of. maybe nothing. but I feel like it ought to be something. it bugs me.
posted by queenofbithynia at 4:53 PM on January 10, 2018 [4 favorites]
I dunno, I think it's a little weird to tell everyone you got married at 12, when you really got married at 15. But his mom sounds like a character.
The story about the cabin in the woods doesn't jive with the other story, which is that the author's grandfather had the marriage annulled as soon as he found out about it. So maybe the author's disbelief is connected to what he knows, or thinks he knows, about how his grandfather would have reacted.
posted by subdee at 6:24 PM on January 10, 2018 [2 favorites]
The story about the cabin in the woods doesn't jive with the other story, which is that the author's grandfather had the marriage annulled as soon as he found out about it. So maybe the author's disbelief is connected to what he knows, or thinks he knows, about how his grandfather would have reacted.
posted by subdee at 6:24 PM on January 10, 2018 [2 favorites]
it reads to me like you're supposed to understand the story under the story is that his mom lied a lot and fucked around, from character more than circumstance. and also you're supposed to understand that this is where his zeal to convict comes from, his yearning to find a lie to pin on her. which is kind of wild because his mom's response to the bit about how her own mother would rather see her dead than know she'd had premarital sex was so instinctively honest in a literal and legalistic way: well, I'll just get married then! whereas the response of a born liar would be much simpler: OK, I'll make sure you never know about it. Stories that purport to illustrate one thing but actually illustrate another were my own mother's specialty, so they fascinate me.
one problem with this animating understory is that while sure there is a way of lying constantly that does make your children resent you or just have complicated feelings, fucking around isn't some kind of flaw on the same level or necessarily a flaw at all. the faulkner quote is so repulsive, in its own context as well as here. but I thought when I got to that part: That's the point, the unsavory prurient interest of his grandmother in her own daughter's libidinal essence, the watchful eye out for some intangible pheromone trail that only drifts out of naughty girls. this isn't a statement about his adolescent mother, this is a statement about the disgusting times she lived in, about women policing their own out of hypervigilance and legitimate fear, and about generational cycles of weird parenting. ok. fine. no trouble there.
but then My mother’s face is so sweet, seraphic, unblemished, like a girl who has only heard stories about what it might be like to be married, to be with a man. I don't like to be the idiot who only understands a certain understated archness of tone when it's coming out of my own mouth. and possibly I am that idiot. but this is like saying his palms were so smooth, so hairless, like a boy who has escaped knowing sin except I'm not sure it's a joke. it ought to be. but is it? that a girl just has a different vibe after she's fucked somebody (sour, blemished), even in posed photos? maybe this is a more knowing line than I give it credit for. it would be if I wrote it, and I do write sentences that are 100 percent smirks plus a verb, and I have no patience for people who need things spelled out. but even in spite of that, I think if you want to say some teenager looks like a virgin in the face, like that's a thing, you better have a point that isn't just "except she wasn't, get it?" I am not sure he does.
posted by queenofbithynia at 7:30 PM on January 10, 2018 [8 favorites]
one problem with this animating understory is that while sure there is a way of lying constantly that does make your children resent you or just have complicated feelings, fucking around isn't some kind of flaw on the same level or necessarily a flaw at all. the faulkner quote is so repulsive, in its own context as well as here. but I thought when I got to that part: That's the point, the unsavory prurient interest of his grandmother in her own daughter's libidinal essence, the watchful eye out for some intangible pheromone trail that only drifts out of naughty girls. this isn't a statement about his adolescent mother, this is a statement about the disgusting times she lived in, about women policing their own out of hypervigilance and legitimate fear, and about generational cycles of weird parenting. ok. fine. no trouble there.
but then My mother’s face is so sweet, seraphic, unblemished, like a girl who has only heard stories about what it might be like to be married, to be with a man. I don't like to be the idiot who only understands a certain understated archness of tone when it's coming out of my own mouth. and possibly I am that idiot. but this is like saying his palms were so smooth, so hairless, like a boy who has escaped knowing sin except I'm not sure it's a joke. it ought to be. but is it? that a girl just has a different vibe after she's fucked somebody (sour, blemished), even in posed photos? maybe this is a more knowing line than I give it credit for. it would be if I wrote it, and I do write sentences that are 100 percent smirks plus a verb, and I have no patience for people who need things spelled out. but even in spite of that, I think if you want to say some teenager looks like a virgin in the face, like that's a thing, you better have a point that isn't just "except she wasn't, get it?" I am not sure he does.
posted by queenofbithynia at 7:30 PM on January 10, 2018 [8 favorites]
I knew a guy who'd been married 13 times. Houston. Since you couldn't have sex unless you were married, well, they'd get married.
Also, why don't Baptists fuck standing up? Answer -- They just can't risk it, might be that somebody would see them and think they were dancing.
posted by dancestoblue at 4:22 AM on January 11, 2018
Also, why don't Baptists fuck standing up? Answer -- They just can't risk it, might be that somebody would see them and think they were dancing.
posted by dancestoblue at 4:22 AM on January 11, 2018
As for adjusting her age down from 15 to 12? Well, that just made it an even more scandalous story. Or maybe she really was a little fuzzy about the ages by the time she told that.
Or what if she wasn’t?
What if they had been seeing each other for longer, and her memory lapse was just when the actual legal wedding happened?
The craziest thing for me is the other woman saying “No, that never happened, we’ve been married for 60 years.” I don’t know that she was lying either. He may never have told her; it is not a story that reflects well upon him.
posted by corb at 6:17 AM on January 11, 2018
Or what if she wasn’t?
What if they had been seeing each other for longer, and her memory lapse was just when the actual legal wedding happened?
The craziest thing for me is the other woman saying “No, that never happened, we’ve been married for 60 years.” I don’t know that she was lying either. He may never have told her; it is not a story that reflects well upon him.
posted by corb at 6:17 AM on January 11, 2018
Corb, what you find crazy I just find Southern. In that here if we say something never happened then to us it did not, even if it did. That may have been her way of shutting down the conversation.
She may not have known. But more likely is she may have-or should have-suspected something and then decided it was not true, therefore it was not.
That is the same thing my mom does when presented with a fact that does not mesh with her beliefs.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 6:33 AM on January 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
She may not have known. But more likely is she may have-or should have-suspected something and then decided it was not true, therefore it was not.
That is the same thing my mom does when presented with a fact that does not mesh with her beliefs.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 6:33 AM on January 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
"I do write sentences that are 100 percent smirks plus a verb, "
queenofbithnia, I love you.
posted by corvikate at 8:31 AM on January 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
queenofbithnia, I love you.
posted by corvikate at 8:31 AM on January 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
A few Christmases ago, we discovered that the man my father and aunt thought was their bio grandfather was actually a step, and that their grandmother had been married before, to a Russian Jewish immigrant. (Fascinating!) I became *obsessed* with this, tearing my way through ancestry.com to figure out what the heck the deal was, and found all sorts of weird stuff in Census records that did not make a lick of sense with what I know of our family history. Also never-before-seen-by-us pictures of my grandfather and great-aunts in other peoples' family trees which was very cool but very weird. Now all these people are dead, and I don't feel like I have the memories or standing to ask these other people what they know about this. Neither my dad nor aunt wanted to reach out so until I decide that I care enough to get over my social anxiety it will remain a mystery other than having a bit of Ashkenazi Jewish DNA in my 23andme results. Mostly I want to know why this was a secret. Maybe this is my 21st century progressive mindset not bound by religion or tradition but a) who cares? and b) it's not like my grandfather and great-aunts were young enough to forget all of this. The great-aunts were at least tweens if not older.
posted by emkelley at 8:52 AM on January 11, 2018
posted by emkelley at 8:52 AM on January 11, 2018
I have just figured out from old censuses that one of my distant ancestors spent the last 20 years of his life saying he was a widower, when his wife was still alive and living in another state.
posted by interplanetjanet at 12:49 PM on January 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
posted by interplanetjanet at 12:49 PM on January 11, 2018 [1 favorite]
Oh I can beat that. In the 1930 census my great-grandmother (that's my awesome grandma's mother, BTW) said she was a widow when her ex was living a block away with his mother.
(Also Ancestry.com relative linking doesn't deal well with incest situations. And it also makes you feel like an asshole when it shows up in an AncestryDNA connection...I hope to God they knew about it before they found my public and annotated family tree - to be fair, as far as I knew, all branches of that tree had been dead for at least ten years.)
posted by elsietheeel at 3:08 PM on January 11, 2018 [2 favorites]
(Also Ancestry.com relative linking doesn't deal well with incest situations. And it also makes you feel like an asshole when it shows up in an AncestryDNA connection...I hope to God they knew about it before they found my public and annotated family tree - to be fair, as far as I knew, all branches of that tree had been dead for at least ten years.)
posted by elsietheeel at 3:08 PM on January 11, 2018 [2 favorites]
Oh sorry, it was the 1940 census and it was THREE blocks, not one block.
posted by elsietheeel at 9:24 AM on January 12, 2018 [2 favorites]
posted by elsietheeel at 9:24 AM on January 12, 2018 [2 favorites]
How in the hell are all y'all finding about secret former husbands on Ancestry.com when I can't even find the name of the town my Irish ancestor was from?*
* Just kidding, I know it's because he was a Famine immigrant and back then the entry guards were all just "whatever, there are a million of you, we'll just write down 'Ireland' and figure it out later"
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:10 AM on January 12, 2018 [1 favorite]
* Just kidding, I know it's because he was a Famine immigrant and back then the entry guards were all just "whatever, there are a million of you, we'll just write down 'Ireland' and figure it out later"
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:10 AM on January 12, 2018 [1 favorite]
(Hey EC, genealogy is my Thing. If you want help, MeMail me.)
posted by elsietheeel at 12:15 PM on January 12, 2018
posted by elsietheeel at 12:15 PM on January 12, 2018
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Nothing intimate in their relation at all? Well, I doubt that, because I believe my mother when she said they “did it” everywhere they could; she did it everywhere she could for the rest of her life.
And you might well ask, why do I even care? But that’s not the question. The question is, why did she care? Why did she lie about it the way she did?
Well, this seems pretty clear to me, actually - so long as you decide to expand your definition of when she lied.
Meaning:
In the annulment from when she was 15, his mother testified that she and her sweetheart had "nothing intimate in their relation at all". But when she was talking to her friends and kids after the fact, she says they had sex all the time. So - maybe Daniel's mother didn't lie to him - maybe she lied to the court at the time of the annulment, about whether she and John were intimate.
Especially if you consider that his grandparents were super-strict about any premarital sex. Even if it meant lying to the court when she was fifteen, I bet that she was more afraid of her parents finding out that she had had sex than she was of committing perjury. So I'm inclined to think that she did have sex with the first husband, but that when it came to the annulment, she lied to them to hide that fact from her parents. And then once her parents were dead, and she had kids of her own, and was able to be the impish naughty person she always wanted to be, then - out came the truth.
As for adjusting her age down from 15 to 12? Well, that just made it an even more scandalous story. Or maybe she really was a little fuzzy about the ages by the time she told that.
So the answer to "why did she lie" is "slut-shaming", if you consider that it was the court she was lying to, and not Daniel.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:09 AM on January 10, 2018 [16 favorites]