Escape

by Carolyn Jessop

  At one point, Merril stopped at an ice cream stand and began buying cones. The children rushed to him like a flock of ducklings. Cathleen and I stopped and sat by the monkeys’ cage. I turned just in time to see one of the monkeys picking his nose and eating the mucus. I said to Cathleen, “Oh, gross, why did we have to sit here?” Cathleen said it was less gross than conditions on the bus. She didn’t understand how women such as Barbara, who had nine children, and Ruth, who had fourteen, could take no responsibility for them.

  We rode on a train that circled the zoo. We could see the larger animals from a distance in their natural habitats. Afterward we saw some of the big apes in their cages. One was carrying a small baby on his foot, and Merril said that was how he felt with his kids. The kids started calling each other “apes” and “baboons” as they slapped one another around.

  After a full day at the zoo, we herded the very tired but mostly happy children back to the hotel. We were due to start the two-day trip back to Colorado City in the morning. There was no talk about staying another day, although the kids would have loved it. One day was allotted for the zoo and four days for driving and that was that.

  Breakfast was simplified: there was no food. We’d run out. Merril sent his son Nathan out to buy fast food for the masses. None of the kids had any interest in eating the zillion bread sticks Cathleen and I had baked for the trip.

  As we were leaving San Diego, we became separated from the bus. Merril continued driving. This was in the days before cell phones, so for hours Merril would have no idea that the bus had broken down just outside San Diego. The younger children were tired and hungry from not having had enough to eat. The teenagers were cranky.

  Nathan left Cathleen and Faunita on the bus and went to find an auto shop. All he could do was call ahead to Merril’s construction company and leave a message about what had happened. A mechanic came and after a few hours, the bus was ready to roll again.

  The children were forced to eat bread sticks for their lunch and then for dinner. The small amounts of water and milk that remained were rationed.

  When Merril checked in with his construction company, he learned what had happened to the bus. He decided that we’d check into a hotel and wait for them. The place where we’d stayed on the trip west wouldn’t take us because of the way we’d trashed the rooms at breakfast.

  Merril found other lodging, but there were not enough rooms for his thirty-four children. He decreed that they would sleep in the bus. Merril left word at his construction company for Nathan when he checked in so he’d know where to find us.

  In the middle of the night, Merril brought Cathleen to my room. The bus had arrived. She recounted the day’s horrors and said how fortunate it was that we’d made so many bread sticks.

  The next day was grueling. The children ate fast food, but there was no food for snacks in between meals. We were all physically and emotionally drained.

  So much for a honeymoon. Cathleen had spent the night with Merril, but I didn’t know if they’d even had sex. I wondered if her first experience with him had been as crude as mine. Even Tammy, who had spent so much time and effort cozying up to Barbara, seemed discouraged.

  Ruth was medicated with a very strong tranquilizer as soon as we got home. After a few weeks, she began to recover. Faunita went back to sleeping all day and staying up all night.

  Cathleen and I spent several days doing laundry after the trip. I then returned to college, as thankful as I ever had been for the opportunity to be a student.

  I was so grateful not to be pregnant. I wanted children, but I was determined to get through school first. Maybe the family would stabilize by the time I had my degree. What I was experiencing seemed like an aberration. I wasn’t questioning my faith, but I was questioning Merril. If people knew what was really going on in our family, I thought, Merril would be condemned. We weren’t living in accordance with FLDS values.

  Accident

  Eleven months after my wedding, I became pregnant with my first child. I was violently ill for nine months; the morning sickness that some women complain of laid siege to me. I lost weight, looked pale, and felt weaker than I’d imagined possible. I knew that by marrying, I had lost control of my life. With my pregnancy, I lost control of my body as well. I had barely any prenatal care. Worse, my pregnancy created even more problems for me within Merril’s family.

  Within the FLDS, any personal problem is seen as the direct result of sin. Serious emotional or physical problems were considered a curse from God. It was also dangerous for a woman to show any incapacitation related to pregnancy because it was viewed within her family as a sign of rebellion—unless, of course, you were Barbara, for whom the double standard applied with regard to her crying bouts during pregnancy.

  The other wives would discuss whether or not they thought I was really suffering or just seeking attention. I was accused of putting on a show to gain more status for myself. Producing large numbers of faithful children was a way for a woman to gain favor not only with her husband but with God. It wasn’t uncommon for a woman in the community to have as many as sixteen children, and most had at least twelve.

  My worst enemies in Merril’s family were, more often than not, his other wives. They had no tolerance for a woman who did not fit the perfect little polygamist mold. A woman who does not accept her powerlessness and complete submission to her husband’s will is targeted by the other wives as a troublemaker. She’s treated with disdain, often verbally abused, and assigned the grunt work in the household.

  Even in the deeply repressed fundamentalist culture, sexual status determines class and power. A woman who refuses her husband sexually is seen as rebellious. Word gets around and the other wives treat her with scorn, but it can work the other way, too. If a husband spends a lot of time at night with one wife, the other wives become jealous because she’s now more powerful. Pregnancy is also a status symbol because it is a sign that your husband considers you worthy to father his children. It’s common in these plural marriages for a man to favor some wives to the exclusion of others. The rejected women are consigned to a life of emptiness and disgrace. The rejected wives also become an example to the others of what can happen if they displease their husband.

  Even though my pregnancy was making me miserable, I was determined to finish the two years I needed to graduate. I was majoring in education with a minor in business and reading. I had taken the summer off from school and just managed to finish the fall quarter before giving birth. Arthur was born on December 20, 1987, after only six hours of labor, which impressed the other wives. Aunt Lydia, the elderly midwife who had delivered both my mother and me, brought Arthur into the world.

  I fell in love with him the moment I saw him. He was a beautiful baby and gave my life a purpose it had never had before. I mattered because Arthur mattered. My future was important because he was now part of it; I wanted the best for him. I never felt alone again after Arthur was born. Marriage had separated me from my younger siblings, which filled me with acute loneliness and longing. My roots felt like they’d been yanked out of the ground. But with Arthur I forged a new connection to life. Merril drove back from Salt Lake City the day he was born and was excited when he first saw him.

  Three months after Arthur’s birth, I panicked when I began menstruating again. I knew my body couldn’t handle a pregnancy so soon, but I also knew I didn’t dare refuse sex. My world clearly centered around Arthur now, and I could tell Merril was feeling threatened. Merril would cut off my money if I stopped having sex with him. Money was a prime means of control for Merril, as it was for some men in the FLDS. Women who worked were required to turn over all their income to their husbands as well as any money gotten from welfare.

  Merril had plenty of money, but that didn’t mean we had enough food. Merril gave us $500 a week to feed at least thirty people every night and more than fifty on weekends, when relatives joined us for Sunday dinner. But Merril let his teenage daughters do the shopping. They would sq
uander the majority of the money on other things. Merril would be traveling many nights with Barbara, but those of us at home often would have nothing more than a bowl of soup or some beans. Some nights we’d have something like a few cans of cream of chicken soup mixed into a big pot of rice. (One of the reasons I had easy deliveries was because my babies were small.)

  Complaining was out of the question. While I could tell my mother that I was hungry and not getting enough food, if I became at all critical of Merril, she’d refuse to hear any more and would stop listening to me. A man has the absolute right to control his house in any way he chooses.

  I returned to college after Arthur was born and took him with me. I had a relative there whose husband was in school, and she watched Arthur while I went to classes for that first year. I didn’t want more children right away but was too intimidated to ask any of the women at school about birth control. I felt insecure among them. When I walked into a classroom everyone looked as though they were afraid I might sit next to them. In my long dresses, I stood out as strange, someone from a distant century, if not a different planet. No one made any effort to associate with me, and I lacked the confidence to try to connect with them.

  When Arthur was seven months old, Merril started pressuring me to get pregnant again. We were driving somewhere together and he said that Arthur was old enough for me to have another child and we should start trying to make that happen. I felt sickened at the thought because I was still so exhausted. But I knew most of Merril’s other wives became pregnant three months after giving birth. I was still nursing Arthur and weak when I conceived again in October, and I became violently ill. It felt like my body was allergic to being pregnant. My weight plummeted. I lost about twenty pounds and looked anorexic.

  Wives targeted one another constantly, but when I was so sick, it felt like I was in the bull’s-eye. They attacked my character and made fun of my illness. They didn’t understand why I hadn’t repented after Arthur’s pregnancy so I wouldn’t continue to have the same problems. Merril finally realized how sick I was and, to my amazement, bought me vitamins. He bought them because I didn’t have enough money of my own. I could charge things only where we had an account, so anything I bought came from the grocery store, which usually didn’t carry vitamins. After a few months, I began to feel myself getting slightly stronger. But I still had massive headaches and sometimes vomited nearly every hour. It was hard to keep anything down, but some days were better than others, and on those I might vomit only three times.

  Since I had not been able to find a babysitter for the whole week and I couldn’t bear being apart from Arthur for more than three days, on Wednesdays I would make the one-hour drive from Cedar back to Colorado City to pick him up and bring him back to school. If I didn’t have someone lined up at school to watch him, I’d bring one of Merril’s daughters back with me to help out.

  A light snow was falling when I got into the van to head back to Colorado City. In the three years I’d been at school, I’d traversed many snowstorms without a problem. I hadn’t been listening to the radio that day, but there was nothing unusual about the snow that was falling. But fifteen miles outside of Cedar on Black Ridge, I found myself in the middle of a whiteout. Even with the headlights on I could barely see more than a foot or two in front of the van. I slowed down to a crawl of just a few miles an hour. Because I was going so slowly and hugging the side of the road I felt reasonably safe. The van didn’t have snow tires because it was rare to have storm conditions like this in southern Utah. I thought this was a freak occurrence and that it would clear soon.

  I made it to the top of the ridge without skidding. Then I hit black ice. The van started spinning out of control. I could feel it moving in a clockwise direction. It hit something and then began spinning the opposite way. The steering wheel was spinning, too, and I grabbed it, thinking I could get some kind of control, but that was impossible. I could see the road coming up against me in the windshield and knew that the van was about to roll. I also knew there wasn’t enough protection to keep the van from rolling over the cliff and onto the northbound highway. Oh, I thought in slow motion, I will probably not survive. This is not the way I thought I would die. But then the van hit something and changed direction, spinning backward and out of control until it crashed into the opposite side of the road and the side of the mountain. The back end of the van absorbed most of the impact of the crash.

  When I opened my eyes, I could see snow, rocks, and dirt out the window on my side of the van. Every other window in the van was broken except mine. Frozen air rushed in. My teeth started chattering. I was not dead. I was freezing to death. The blurry image of the spinning van took hold in my mind. I tried to focus. The van was on its side. My book bag had come undone and books were everywhere. I thought I should gather up my books and make sure I had everything I needed for my classes. I maneuvered my way around inside the van and found all of my books. After neatly repacking my book bag, I realized I was trapped inside the van. By using the seat on the passenger’s side as a foothold, I boosted myself up and managed to open the door by pushing it straight out. I walked along the cliff I’d almost hurtled over, looked at the northbound highway below, and realized what I had been spared. But now what? The van was totaled, every side smashed in except the driver’s. I’d been driving Merril’s luxury van because the other car was in the shop being repaired. I was afraid Merril would be furious.

  But I had bigger fears than Merril’s wrath. I was trapped in a world of snow and deathly silence. I was wearing only a light jacket, and there were too many smashed windows in the van for it to provide me with any warmth. Now I would slowly freeze to death. And if I died, my baby would, too. I thought of walking down the highway, where a number of other cars that had been involved in accidents because of the weather had been abandoned, and seeing if I could crawl into any of the smashed cars for protection. But from what I could see in the distance, those cars were as wrecked as my own. And there was no active traffic—apparently the bad weather had led the authorities to close the highway, and there was no way of knowing how long until it reopened. All I knew was that I was stranded on the mountaintop until it did. I huddled against the side of the van that was closest to the mountain. I was protected from one side against the wind. But I knew I couldn’t survive that way for long. My feet were frozen, and I couldn’t feel the tips of my fingers. I knew I didn’t have any broken bones, but what about internal injuries? I was overwhelmed with grief. I had destroyed Merril’s van, killed my baby, and would now freeze to death before help arrived.

  Stop it. I couldn’t let myself think like that. Merril be damned. I couldn’t worry about the van. I wanted to stay alive. I started to jump up and down to generate a little warmth and keep my circulation going. The snow kept falling. The silence felt oppressive. I would jump up and down, then stop, then start again. But I was too tired. I wanted to crawl back into the driver’s side of the van and go to sleep. Maybe there would be help by morning. I leaned against the van. Maybe I wouldn’t sleep if I kept standing up. I could rest against the van, close my eyes just for a little bit…

  No! Awareness hit me with a slap. If I stopped moving, I would freeze to death. Arthur would never see me again. I would never see him again. Jump—I had to make myself jump up and down to stay warm. Five minutes on, five off. I did it and did it again. Five minutes. Then five minutes more and five minutes after that. I lost my sense of time. It felt like only an hour had elapsed since the accident, but I had no way of knowing.

  Suddenly, in the distance, I heard a noise. It had to be a snowplow! I saw the plow coming up the ridge with snow spitting in every direction. I ran across the road, jumping up and down to get the driver’s attention. I screamed and hollered but was drowned out by the snowplow’s grinding roar. The snowplow drove right past me. I ran down that road screaming and waving my arms. But it was no use. I was back in my frozen, silent crypt.

  As despair began closing in around me again, I heard so
mething else. It was coming from the northbound highway below me. Two people were standing next to a car, waving. “Hey, are you all right?”

  “Yes!” I answered as I started to maneuver toward them, cautiously making my way down that cliff and toward the two strangers.

  The two turned out to be college students from California who were traveling to Brigham Young University in Provo. One of them had rolled his car. His girlfriend, driving behind him, had stopped. Her car was packed with what seemed like everything they owned, but the driver’s seat was clear. The two of them took turns staying warm by trading places in the car. When they saw how frozen I looked, both of them told me to sit down and warm up. I didn’t argue. The car was cold, but it was a relief not to be battling the elements.

  While we waited, we talked about the damage we had done to our vehicles. I couldn’t tell them that I was burning up with the fear that I might have killed my baby.

  When another snowplow appeared on the highway, the three of us jumped up and down and got it to stop. He had a radio and called for help. I told him my van was on the southbound highway. He called the police and a patrol car met me at my van.

  The officer walked around the smashed van. “You were in that when it crashed?” he asked. I nodded. “And you’re still standing? That must have been one hell of a ride.”

  I sat in the warmth of the patrol car and tried to fill out an accident report. But my fingers were still too stiff, so I dictated and the officer wrote down what I said. The snowplows had made the roads passable, and while I was still in the patrol car, one of Merril’s friends stopped by the van. The officer said he looked like someone I probably knew because he was dressed in typical FLDS clothes. I realized the man was Merril’s brother. While the two men were talking, another man from the community arrived. He stopped, too. After a brief consultation, he decided to take me home, and my brother-in-law said he’d wait for the tow truck to arrive.