Escape

by Carolyn Jessop

  Christopher, my six-year-old brother, did not seem as injured as the rest. One arm seemed to be broken, but despite that he had managed to pull his siblings out from under the truck with the other one. Christopher volunteered to go to town for help. “I will run there as fast as I can and tell someone what happened!”

  Annette wasn’t comfortable sending a six-year-old child on a five-mile run for help, but she and Bonnie had to stay with the injured. Christopher was a capable little boy, but he was still very little. Annette told him to watch out for cars and stop the first one he saw.

  Christopher ran most of the way. My father had a business at the edge of town where he built modular homes that were shipped to different housing projects. A man there spotted Christopher and listened to him blurt out his story. One of the other men on the job radioed for help, and the volunteer fire and ambulance crews headed down the road, unsure of what they’d find.

  Christopher told them that the truck had blown up and that Nurylon was dead. A radio call went out for another ambulance crew.

  While waiting for help to arrive, Annette saw four-year-old JR, who seemed to have a broken arm and collarbone, huddling over the body of his dead sister. He was trembling from pain and trauma, tears making tracks down his dust-covered cheeks. He was Nurylon’s full brother—a shy and introspective child who seemed to live for his little sister. From the moment she was born, she’d seemed to belong to him. He got her up every morning and wouldn’t eat unless she was next to him or sleep unless she was beside him. He taught her how to walk, and then to run.

  The first ambulance that came screaming down the road was from Hurricane. Someone had seen smoke in the distance and called for help. The ambulance crew was overwhelmed by what it found: fourteen injured and terrified children and the body of a little girl.

  The paramedics examined Nurylon first. When they realized there was nothing more that could be done, they covered her with a small blanket. The paramedics said her injuries were so massive she probably died instantly. The ambulance left with Nurylon’s body and the two most seriously injured children.

  The ambulance radioed ahead to the hospital about the number of children arriving. The hospital in St. George had a small ER and not enough doctors to treat fourteen kids with an array of injuries. Off-duty docs were called in to lend a hand.

  My father got to the hospital before my mother arrived. He was taken to see Nurylon’s body. The hospital had called the mortuary. My father refused to let anyone else take her there. My father insisted on doing it himself. The hospital staff helped him to his car and he put Nurylon in the backseat wrapped in a blanket. When my father carried her into the mortuary, his face was flooded in tears.

  My mother was told about the accident by someone from the volunteer fire department. She went immediately to the hospital.

  My mother held herself together at the hospital. She was in shock. Her daughter was dead and eight other children were injured, some of whom were hers and others who were Rosie’s. At one point when a doctor was working on Karen’s leg my mother made a comment about how hard this was, and the doctor exploded, “You think this is hard on you!” The stress of seeing so many injured children was overwhelming, and all of this had happened because they were riding in an open truck. Miraculously, no one needed to be hospitalized overnight. There were some broken bones, bad bruises, and cuts that needed stitches, but nothing that was more severe or life-threatening.

  That night Annette gave JR a bath. He was still shaking from trauma. He looked at her with his luminous brown eyes and said, “Why did you do it? Why did you kill Nurylon?”

  Annette fell apart. She had managed to make it through that hellish day by doing each next thing that needed to be done. JR’s question slayed her. She began to sob and could not stop. Her pain exploded with the guilt that all of this was her fault. Her sister was dead, her siblings were injured, and she was sure that she was the one who deserved the blame. No one would ever offer her any solace or commend her for staying calm and rescuing children from under the truck. No one would ever tell Annette and Bonnie that they’d saved lives by making the children move away from the truck before it exploded. Annette’s valor and determination in trying to save Nurylon with CPR would never be acknowledged. No one ever said that it was an accident—as random as a bolt of lightning across an evening sky.

  I was in one of my last classes when I saw that my cousin Valerie was standing outside the classroom. I couldn’t imagine why she’d come. Her sister Lee Ann was in the class with me and went out to the hallway first. Lee Ann turned away when she saw me approaching. Valerie just looked at me and said, “Carolyn, there has been an accident and your little sister Nurylon was killed.” Lee Ann was crying when she turned around. Six of her brothers and sisters had been in the accident.

  My mind went blank. I was shocked. I could not find words to assemble into sentences. My face asked the questions I could not.

  Valerie spoke calmly. She told me a few details of the accident and that all the children were safe except for Nurylon. “God was definitely there, protecting them. It was a miracle that Nurylon was the only one killed. Everyone else will make a full recovery.”

  The death of my beloved sister didn’t feel like a miracle to me. It was fortunate that the other children survived, but I was blindsided by the news that Nurylon was gone.

  Nurylon and I were far apart in years but indescribably close. Everyone said that she was a carbon copy of me. I found her death incomprehensible. No one close to me had ever died before. Nothing seemed crueler than the loss of a child.

  I went back to my apartment and packed a few things for the ride home. Someone volunteered to call my professors and explain that I would need to reschedule my exams.

  When I walked into Merril’s house, no one said anything to me, even though everyone knew about the accident. Rebecca had been married earlier that day and her sisters were sad that she was gone. I felt so alone. I didn’t belong in this family, and this family didn’t belong in my life. My loss seemed to widen and deepen the gulf between us.

  Merril and Barbara had gone to dinner to celebrate Rebecca’s wedding. Ruth, Rebecca’s mother, was left behind to fix dinner for the rest of the family. I didn’t offer to help her cook. I just wanted to go to my father’s house. I needed to feel his strength and his protection.

  When I walked into the house, my brothers and sisters came to greet me. Some had casts on their arms, others on their legs, and all had bruises in various shades of black and blue.

  That night a family arrived from the other side of the religious divide with loaves of freshly baked bread. I invited them in, and they hugged my mother and offered us all words of consolation. The communal pain we all shared transcended our religious differences.

  The outpouring of sympathy ran like a strong river. The next day our yard was filled with families raking, hoeing, and cleaning every corner of the yard. Windows were being washed, both inside and outside our house. The kitchen counters were laden with food. People brought soup, roast beef for sandwiches, and rolls for the freezer. It was touching to see how much people cared and how generous they were in reaching out to my family.

  I returned home that night to Merril’s house. He never said a word to me about my sister’s death. Never.

  We believed in the FLDS principle that death, like everything else, was God’s will. It was God’s will that Nurylon was taken and that the other children survived. There was no such thing as an untimely death. Sadness was acceptable during the immediate aftermath, but questioning God was not.

  God had the right to give and the right to take away. We believed that Nurylon was too pure for this world and that God had taken her back. She had known she would be with us for only a short time. For any of us to mourn in a prolonged way would be detrimental to her progress to celestial glory. We believed that the dead go to the spirit world, where they remain until they are resurrected. If our family held on to her in our grief, our attachment to
her spirit would hold her back because she would have too many ties to earth. I had been raised to believe that the death of a family member was actually a blessing because it gave our family a representative on the other side who would try to protect us. That, at least, was the theory, but it gave me no consolation. I wanted my baby sister back—not some special advocate in heaven.

  Hundreds came to Nurylon’s funeral. It was held in the schoolhouse auditorium, which we used for worship services. After the funeral we walked to the cemetery and, after the grave was blessed, saw Nurylon’s small casket lowered into a dark hole in the ground. We stopped talking about her after a week or two. Mourning for any length of time was considered inappropriate.

  JR’s broken bones healed and the bruises on his face faded. But he was changed forever. He became a reclusive child and didn’t interact with anyone in the family very much. He never seemed to bond to any other of his siblings.

  Several months later, we were at the cemetery again. My father stood next to another tiny casket with a wife on either side to bury Lehigh, Rosie’s infant son, next to Nurylon.

  Lehigh was a full-term baby but had been born dead a few days before. The doctors said the cause of death was starvation. I don’t know if the placenta failed or how much the trauma of the accident might have affected Rosie’s pregnancy. But we were staggering in sorrow once again. The dirt on Nurylon’s grave was still fresh.

  My mother had lost a daughter who would never see her third birthday. Rosie had lost a son who never took a breath of life. Fall was slowly surrendering to winter. I had never felt more alone as I stood there in the windswept cemetery.

  Annette’s face looked lifeless as she stood before Lehigh’s grave. I stared at her as our baby brother’s casket was blessed. I had no sense of how emotionally obliterated she was by the accident. But within a year, she fled the community for the party scene in nearby Mesquite, Nevada. Annette’s long blond hair and exquisite blue eyes made her look like a beauty queen, masking her despair and making her popular with those who were just out for a good time.

  She disappeared for a few years. It was the only way she felt she could cope with her overwhelming guilt. In time, Annette was able to remake her life and is a loving and excellent mother to four beautiful children.

  Cathleen and Tammy Marry Merril

  My semester ended in December and I arrived home late on Friday night. I was extremely tired and delighted to learn Merril would not be returning from Page until later Saturday. The next morning I learned that Merril and Barbara had come home during the night. When I saw them in Merril’s office that morning, they were drinking coffee and talking. Their suitcases were packed. They were heading to Salt Lake City.

  Merril’s wife Ruth was with them. It seemed odd that Merril would take Ruth, too. She and Barbara were sisters, but they had a tremendous rivalry. I was suspicious but didn’t ask questions. It was a relief to see their van pull out of the driveway and know that I had the weekend to myself—or, I should say, to myself and about fourteen children. Merril had thirty-three, but the rest were older or away for the weekend. I was in charge of everything, but that was still relaxing for me because there was no tension—at least not in the form of confrontations with adults. I knew Merril’s daughters would take advantage of his absence to ditch all their chores and hang out with boys on the volleyball court. They knew I wouldn’t report them.

  Faunita, the other wife who was left behind, was a total recluse. She had ten children, but five were grown and gone. She slept all day and stayed up all night watching television or some of the hundreds of movies she’d recorded on video. She loved Shirley Temple and John Wayne movies. Merril had long since lost interest in her. He never treated her like a wife and they never had sex anymore. She talked about that openly and to everybody.

  I spent much of the day doing laundry, which was slow going because we had an old-fashioned industrial-size washing machine. It didn’t rinse the clothes. I had to take each load out, rinse them, and spin them in a spinner. Then I hung them on the clothesline to dry. This was very labor-intensive. We had an automatic washer and dryer, but with the volume of clothes that had to be cleaned it was too time-consuming to do dozens of loads of laundry.

  Once the children’s laundry was on the line, I vacuumed the house, mopped the floors, and dusted. The toddlers tagged along behind me. I loved to cook and was looking forward to making a good dinner and baking cookies for the kids. During the week, when Merril’s daughters cooked, we’d eat only what could be thrown together in a few minutes—big bowls of pasta, or rice and raisins with cinnamon sugar and milk. We cooked with little meat. It was mostly used for flavoring sauces or gravies. Nutrition was abysmal. After dinner, I told the children we’d pop popcorn. I looked forward to getting to bed early.

  The phone rang just before I started dinner. Merril was tense and abrupt. I was startled because he never talked to me this way. He told me that as soon as he arrived in the city, the new prophet, Rulon Jeffs, sent him to pick up one of the former prophet’s wives, Cathleen, and marry her.

  Rulon Jeffs had succeeded the prophet Leroy Johnson, whom we called “Uncle Roy.” He’d died three weeks before, on November 25, 1986. He was beloved within the FLDS community, which he had led since 1954.

  The late prophet had about fourteen wives, and Cathleen was the youngest. She had dark hair and green eyes and was thin and attractive. I immediately thought that Merril would probably want to develop a relationship with her, which meant he might ignore me. Even though I hadn’t wanted to marry him and didn’t love him, let alone like him, I still believed in the FLDS doctrines and wanted to uphold them. I still believed Merril was the revelation the prophet had received for me. I was destined to bear his children and love and serve Merril Jessop without question until the day he died.

  Photo Insert

  Linda and I are sitting on the doorstep of our home in Colorado City. I’m on the right and about three years old. Linda is five.

  Here I am with my two sisters after we moved back to the community from Salt Lake City. I’m on the left, Linda’s in the middle, and Annette is to her right.

  This is my beloved sister Nurylon at two, a few months before she was killed in an auto accident.

  Here I am at fourteen.

  This is my high school graduation in 1985. I’m holding my newest brother, Carl.

  My college graduation in 1989, a proud day! I am also pregnant with my second child.

  This is my father with his two wives. Rosie is on his right and my mother, Nurylon, is on his left. I’m third from the left on the back row and pregnant. This was taken four years after I married Merril.

  My mother, Nurylon, is in the middle. My sister Linda is on the left. I’m pregnant with Betty.

  Here I am at twenty-two, feeding Betty.

  Arthur and I together when he was four years old.

  Harrison and I had just come home from the hospital with his feeding tube.

  Betty, LuAnne, and Merrilee at the motel in Caliente.

  My first child, Arthur, holds his baby brother, Bryson, my eighth child and my last.

  My karate crew after we escaped. From left to right: Andrew, Merrilee, Patrick, and LuAnne.

  Betty (on the left) and LuAnne skiing in Salt Lake City.

  Princess Merrilee’s first birthday party ever.

  Betty, at seventeen, on a hiking trip we took to Donut Falls.

  Here I am with Brian, the love of my life. This was taken during the intermission of Hairspray, the first Broadway musical I ever saw!

  I knew that the only way I could protect myself in my marriage was by remaining of value to Merril. Like every other polygamist wife, I had no say in whom I would marry and no way to divorce my husband if it did not work out. Sex was the only currency I had to spend in my marriage—every polygamist wife knows that. Once we are no longer sexually attractive to our husbands, we are doomed.

  A woman’s value is assigned in marriage, not earned. We all knew t
hat a woman who is in sexual favor with her husband has a higher value than his other wives. This has enormous significance because a woman’s sexual power determines how she will be treated by other wives and how she will be respected by her stepchildren. And because of this, our sex lives were not our own. People knew when you were in favor, and everyone spoke about who was and wasn’t sleeping with her husband.

  A woman who possesses high sexual status with her husband has more power over his other wives. This means he will listen to her complaints more seriously and will discipline wives she might be angry with. Knowing her husband will enact retribution for her is an enormous weapon for a wife to wield.

  Sexual power also will often exempt a wife from physical labor or other family responsibilities. She can make sure that the wives she dislikes or feels might be sexual competitors are assigned the worst jobs and made to work the hardest in the family.

  A woman who is no longer physically attractive to her husband is stranded on dangerous grounds. She often winds up as a slave to the dominant wife. She has no voice to report on any shortcomings or abuse in the family. The sexually favored wives will often recruit the children of the less powerful wives and reward them for turning on their biological mothers. It is nothing short of ruthless vengeance.

  Every member of a polygamous family knows which wives hold power. When a new wife enters a family, it is imperative for her to establish power with her husband sexually. While there are exceptions, most men routinely change their favorite wives and don’t remain loyal to any woman indefinitely.