Escape

by Carolyn Jessop

  When we got off the bus I asked Linda what could have made Randi’s arm look so melted and raw. She seemed uncomfortable and said she didn’t know. Later we heard Mom telling the story to our dad, and he said that we were never to be allowed anywhere near that girl’s father because he’d heard some stories about the man.

  The girl with the melted arm had the longest braid I had ever seen. Her braid hung well below her knees. I had never seen anyone with thicker or more beautiful hair. Everyone who rode the bus admired her braid. But what I noticed about her was that she never looked happy. She didn’t have many friends and seemed to prefer to be by herself.

  One morning Randi got on the bus and was sobbing hysterically. Her face was red and flooded with tears. She was shaking and gasping for breath. Her sobs came like one big wave after another. When she turned around I realized her braid was gone. Her hair was neatly combed, but her braid had been chopped off into stubble. The chatter and noise on the bus stopped as everyone realized what had happened. All of us were shocked by the awful sight.

  The bus driver sat there chewing his gum. If he noticed the weeping child who had just gotten on his bus, he didn’t show it. The door closed and he pulled away from the curb as if nothing had happened. I felt sick to my stomach. I couldn’t even play on the playground that day. Everything went by in a blur.

  After school I was waiting in the bus line with Linda when I saw the school’s double doors fly open. The principal of the school came running out, chasing his mentally retarded son, Kendall, who was ten. Kendall was screaming and trying to run away from him. His pants were wet with urine. We could all see the wide circle of dampness. The principal caught up with him and grabbed him. He kicked him so hard that Kendall flew off the ground and landed in a heap on the sidewalk. He yelled at Kendall to get up. Kendall started running away again. The principal kept chasing and kicking him. I was so sickened by what had happened to Randi earlier that day that this overwhelmed me. I could not absorb what I was seeing. In the weeks and months ahead, I would see this again and again. Kendall would wet his pants and his father would beat him. Some of the other children on the playground made fun of Kendall for wetting his pants. Others stood still, shocked to witness a father’s brutality and terrified because he was the principal of the school.

  That day when the school bus pulled up with the same expressionless gum-chewing driver who scared me so much, I said to my sister that I was not getting on his bus, no way. Linda pulled my arm. “Carolyn, you have to get on this bus.” But she wasn’t strong enough to pull me past my determination not to ride home on the school bus. Linda gave up. I told her I would run home.

  It was about a mile. I thought if I ran fast enough, I could get home before the bus and then maybe Mama wouldn’t spank me. I looked at the bus driver again. I wasn’t riding on his bus, even if it meant getting spanked. I ran until I couldn’t run anymore and then walked until I caught my breath and could start running again.

  I dashed into the house just as the bus was dropping off my two sisters. Mother was in the kitchen. “I got home before the school bus, Mama,” I said. She said I was silly and asked why I didn’t ride home with Annette and Linda. But I never told her.

  By now I was in the second grade and I walked to school or ran home for the rest of the year. One day the gum-chewing bus driver hurt Laura’s little sister. When Laura got off the bus she said she hated him and stuck out her tongue. She stopped riding the bus after that and walked with me every day.

  First grade was the only year I didn’t have a violent teacher. It was not until I was in the upper grades that teachers stopped using violence. In the lower school it happened all the time, except in first grade. Most families controlled their children with scripture and a whip. This philosophy extended into the classrooms, too.

  I saw teachers beat students with yardsticks until they broke the yardstick. It wasn’t uncommon during a school assembly for the principal to kick and slap students around onstage for the entire school to witness. He did this to terrify students so that no one would ever want to be sent to the principal’s office. When he singled out a student, he chose one whose parents he knew wouldn’t complain. It was common practice at school to make an example of one student so others would comply.

  Whenever we walked in lines there would be an adult assigned to monitor us with a yardstick. Anyone who misbehaved in the slightest would be cracked on the head.

  Control mattered more than academics in the classroom. Brutality toward children was the norm within the community, but there were different levels of tolerance among families about the level of violence that was acceptable. But families would never judge one another. Even if a family knew there was severe abuse going on in another family, no one intervened. This was part of the religious doctrine that said no man had the right to interfere with another man’s family.

  We would hear stories about sexual and physical abuse in other families, but nothing was ever done to stop it. As a community, the feeling was that the outside world was our enemy. Its laws and rules did not apply to us in any way. There was no way that someone in the FLDS would report abuse that they’d witnessed or suspected to the authorities for investigation. Anyone who did that would have been seen as a traitor to the entire community.

  Many of the teachers at school were nonviolent and would never hit a child. But there were enough violent ones to make me always feel unsafe at school. But I did love learning. No matter how frightened I was by the possibility of what could happen, my fears never overrode my desire for knowledge.

  The school was a public school that was funded by the state, but it operated as a private school in fact. Virtually every student was a member of the FLDS community. Religion was taught openly in school, and if a subject contradicted our teachings, it was dropped. It was very common to get textbooks with entire chapters missing because they’d been cut out. We were taught things that were patently false—such as the “fact” that dinosaurs had never existed. In some classes, the teachers taught stories from the Book of Mormon. The school got away with this because everyone who worked there back then was part of the FLDS. The state had no reason to investigate because no one ever complained.

  I remember learning about sex on the playground when I was in the fourth grade. One of my classmates announced to the rest of us that her brother was teaching her how to have a baby. She had told him she didn’t want to learn, but he insisted. He wanted to show her, not just tell her.

  She said he pointed to the parts on his body and told her what he was going to do with them on hers. Then he did it. When it was over, he said this was how her husband would make babies with her. She said she hated it and hated him. We all felt repulsed by the story and said her brother was a big liar. We knew our parents would never do anything like that.

  But she said we were wrong. This was sex, S-E-X. When we went back into our classroom she got the dictionary and slammed it on a desk. She read us the definition of sex and we all felt uncomfortable. Just because it was in the dictionary didn’t mean it was true. We felt her brother was wicked, and we talked about this for months. Those with older siblings would come back with more information, so I finally had to conclude that it was true.

  We were never taught about sex in the FLDS. When we had health education in the fifth grade, the chapters about reproduction were cut out. Sex was something a husband was to teach his wife on their wedding night. There were women who married thinking babies came from kissing.

  One year Linda had a harrowing experience at school. Her teacher was a man with a reputation for not maintaining order well in his classroom. He’d promised Linda’s class that they could earn a paper airplane party as a reward for doing something well. Whatever it was, they managed to do it and earn the party.

  That afternoon the principal, Alvin Barlow, heard a ruckus coming from a sixth-grade classroom. He didn’t know that this was a planned party, nor did he ask. He stormed into the party and began slapping students across the
room and kicking them to the ground. The students in the row closest to the door were his first targets and got the worst of his wrath. Linda watched one girl get her head slammed into her desk.

  The principal was halfway down the second row of students before he asked the teacher if he’d given the students permission to misbehave. The teacher lied and said he had not. He feared what the principal would do to him if he knew the party was originally his idea.

  This increased Barlow’s rage. Linda was so terrified she could hardly move. The principal grabbed the hair of a girl sitting in the row next to hers and slapped her face so hard she hit her head on the desk and got a bloody nose. Somehow she managed to run out the door and down the hall to her mother’s second-grade classroom. Barlow suddenly stopped. Linda said that if he hadn’t, she would have been next.

  Then all the students were marched down to his office and forced to listen to his sermons for several hours. He went on and on about the Short Creek raid and how many had sacrificed so these students could learn the work of God. Linda said kids were shaking and crying and had a hard time sitting still. Many of the kids from that class went home with bruises all over their bodies and black eyes. My sister was so shaken that she could barely explain to Mama what had happened.

  Brutalizing nearly an entire classroom of students was going too far, even within the FLDS. By late that afternoon, the principal’s office was filled with angry fathers. One man said that if the principal touched his daughter again, he’d come and beat him. The school board called an emergency meeting, and the principal was put on notice that if he ever did something like this again, he’d be fired.

  He was never reported to the authorities, though. If he had been, the principal could have served time in jail for assault and battery. But in our closed society, he only received a warning. He was not only a member of the FLDS; he was the son of a former prophet and the stepson of Uncle Roy. Uncle Roy protected him and told parents in the community that they should support him in the good work he was doing with their children. The principal’s status was untouchable because of his ties to the prophet. Anyone who reported him would have been in serious trouble within the FLDS. (He remained in his job until two years ago, when he retired.)

  Children were seen as property, and physical violence toward them was not only permissible but a way of life. It was preached at church that if you didn’t put the fear of God into children from the time of their birth, they would grow up and leave the work of God. Abuse was necessary to save a child’s soul. The problem with what the principal did, in the eyes of the community, was that he went too far. But not far enough to get fired.

  What usually happened when a student was beaten was that the parent assumed the child had done something wrong. The child was then forced to apologize for what he or she had allegedly done. The teacher or authority figure was always backed in his or her claims.

  My mother was outraged by the principal’s behavior and told us that if anyone ever tried to hurt us in school, we were to come home at once. She didn’t make a connection between her abusive behavior toward us and the beatings that happened at school. Mother managed to think that she was beating us only because she loved us and was trying to make us live godly lives. She didn’t know that our small bodies were unable to distinguish between the two.

  For the most part, I was able to learn what was necessary for my daily survival. I had my operating instructions.

  I knew that the consequences were high for disobeying my mother. No meant no, and there was never an exception. Asking or questioning would only lead to more trouble. Sometimes my sisters would tattle on me to get me in trouble, and there was nothing I could do about that but get mad.

  I learned in school to walk with my arms folded and never hop up and down in line unless I wanted a very hard smack on top of my head with a yardstick. In the singing group in class, I knew that if I didn’t look straight ahead with my chin slightly up I risked getting whacked on the head.

  I knew never to ride the school bus because I would see things that would upset me.

  I ate all the food on my plate, even if I didn’t like it. If I complained, I’d just be forced to eat more of the food I hated.

  I knew never to tease or hit my little brother, Arthur, when he annoyed me because he was my mother’s favorite. I also learned to listen to my big sister, Linda. She tried hard to keep me out of trouble.

  New Wife, New Mother

  I was jumping rope outside our house with my sister Annette when Linda came to tell us our father was going to Salt Lake City to get a new wife. We were all very surprised but happy because we knew and liked the woman he had been assigned to marry. Rosie was our cousin and favorite babysitter. Mama and Rosie had been good friends for years. Rosie used to babysit for us before she started nursing school in Salt Lake. We used to look forward to her coming because she was lively and never mean to us. Rosie’s father was my mother’s brother, so Rosie was my mom’s niece.

  I was about ten at the time and ran into the house as soon as I heard the news. Mama seemed subdued.

  Most men in the community waited between ten and fifteen years before taking on a new wife. It was not uncommon for some men never to get another wife. But the men who got the most wives were the men who had the most power in the FLDS. If a man had more than three wives, it was a signal that he was the son of someone of major importance. It was not at all unusual for sisters to be married to the same husband, and it was certainly not unusual for a niece to share a husband with her aunt.

  Rose was pretty and popular in the community. She was a good cook and housekeeper and had a reputation as an extremely hard worker. We hadn’t seen her much since she started nursing school. It was rare for a woman in the FLDS to get any higher education while she was still unmarried, and highly unusual even after marriage. Rosie lucked out because one of her father’s wives wanted to go to nursing school and my uncle decided that Rosie could go, too, since she’d be under close supervision.

  I don’t know how my mother really felt about my father taking a second wife. All I’d ever heard her say about the possibility was that if my dad got a new wife, she hoped she would like her. I knew our lives would be changing, but I couldn’t imagine how.

  We stayed behind when my father and mother went to Salt Lake for the wedding. Oddly enough, they came home without Rosie. She remained in Salt Lake to finish classes and take tests. We thought she’d be back after that, but Dad bought her a house in Salt Lake so she could start working there.

  But Rosie came to Colorado City occasionally to visit. When she did, Linda had to move out of her bedroom and sleep with Annette and me so Rosie could have it. Linda seemed the most wary of Rosie and concerned about the situation. Her fear was that Rosie would steal Dad away from Mom. Linda became the watcher, making note of things that Dad did with Rosie that he didn’t do with Mom. He spent a lot of time with Rosie in Linda’s bedroom when she visited and certainly seemed happier when she was around.

  We all knew how tense my parents’ marriage had become. Mom seemed to get a lot quieter once Dad married Rosie. Dad had bought Mama a TV several years before he married Rosie, to placate her. She always complained about not being able to watch TV the way she had when we lived in Salt Lake. It was completely against our religion to have a television set, but my father ignored that and just bought one. The reception was terrible; there were only two channels that were even remotely viewable. But when Dad and Rosie went into Linda’s bedroom, we all sat with Mom in the front living room and watched TV.

  I remember going to visit Rosie when I went to Salt Lake with my parents. I was impressed that she had her own small house and car. She also had her nursing career. Her freedom and autonomy over her own life made an impact on me. Rosie had more independence than any woman I had ever known.

  But her freedom was short-lived. Rosie became pregnant shortly after she married my father, and she moved into Linda’s bedroom in our house in Colorado City a month before her b
aby was born. My mother’s sixth child, a boy, was born a few months before Rosie’s daughter.

  The dynamic in our family shifted. Rosie and my mother were competing for Dad’s attention. The two babies were compared to each other all the time. We all watched to see which baby Dad seemed to prefer or spend the most time with. My mother could see how happy Dad was with Rosie, so she worked hard to try to outdo her.

  If Rosie cooked a lovely dinner, Mom put twice the effort into the next meal she made. Mama had her ways of doing things in the house that she insisted Rosie follow. Sometimes I’d hear Mom saying to her friends that only she, not Rosie, really understood what Father wanted and how to please him. There would be times when my mother would accuse Rosie of being selfish and not working hard enough to please my dad.

  Rosie’s daughter was born on her birthday, so she named her Rose. We called her Little Rosie. When she was a few months old, Rosie took a job nearby in Cedar City, working in one of her father’s nursing homes. She would take one of us along to babysit, and more often than not it was me. I liked going to work with Rosie. My mother and I had never really gotten along well and it was always a relief to be out of her domain.

  Rosie was able to earn more money than almost any woman in the community because she had a nursing degree. I saw what an opportunity that was for her, especially in contrast to the rest of the FLDS women, who usually could hope for nothing better than a job in the community sewing plant.

  I was shaken by what I saw at the sewing center when our class visited. There were rows and rows and rows of women hunched over machines with endless piles of fabric in front of them. They were making uniforms that were sold to large companies. They looked and worked like slaves on big industrial sewing machines that sewed fast. None of them made much money, and I knew that many of them had more than ten children at home. They made the minimum wage, which was about three dollars an hour, and on top of that were paid for each piece. Any woman who failed to produce enough got fired. The work was deadening, the pressure tremendous, and what they earned was not even enough to buy groceries for their big families, let alone anything else.