Escape

by Carolyn Jessop

  Merril listened to Tammy’s play-by-play account of the fight and said he’d take care of it. He called Cathleen and berated her. Why had she come on the trip if she couldn’t behave? After a barrage of Merril’s disparaging and humiliating remarks, Cathleen relented and let Tammy back into the room. Merril and I had sex. The snaps were unsnapped, but our long underwear stayed on.

  No one spoke at breakfast. Afterward we headed for the van and another day of sight-seeing. Even though Cathleen was only in the early stages of her pregnancy, she began wobbling like a woman on the verge of delivery. It was her way of trying to show what a sacrifice she was making for Merril—even though he mistreated her, she was hobbling along and carrying his child.

  Oddly enough, the day was relatively relaxed. The other couples went their separate ways. Tammy seemed to have accepted defeat, Cathleen was quiet, and I sat near a window in the van to try to keep from throwing up.

  During the afternoon drive, I did something I’d rarely done before: I told Merril that his teenage daughters were constantly abusive toward me and my children at home. When I’d complained about this in the past, he’d always said it was my fault. He felt his daughters were in complete harmony with him and said that if they were correcting me, I must be doing something wrong. Now I accused him of using his daughters to discipline me, and said I’d fight back to defend myself and my children.

  Tammy and Cathleen listened attentively. Merril’s daughters were actually more abusive to them than they were to me. Tammy would try to butter them up, even if it meant agreeing with the accusations they were making against her. Cathleen, who was nonconfrontational, would storm off and sulk in her room.

  I usually avoided talking to Merril about my feelings because he’d always explode at the mention of something being wrong. But the week in Hawaii had been so explosive that I think I’d lost my fear of violent outbursts. Merril told me to be quiet. I said I wouldn’t shut up.

  I brought up a recent episode between me and one of his daughters. Merril roared back in rage: “Carolyn, if you were willing to do what your husband wanted, then my daughter wouldn’t have any reason to treat you that way. You shouldn’t respond with anger to a correction from someone who is trying to do what I want; you should thank her for the correction and express sorrow that you are not more in harmony with me. I know you are in the wrong because you never came to talk to me about it.”

  This infuriated me. “I never talk to you about it because you refuse to listen. I am automatically in the wrong no matter how bizarre the abuse toward me is. I learned a long time ago that going to you would only get me more abuse, not justice.”

  Merril tried to silence me by saying, “If I am not home and a member of my family is aware of something that they know is in concurrence with my wishes, then you have no right to interfere in any way.”

  I insisted that I did. “If they say or do something abusive, I have every right as a human being to protect myself and use whatever it takes to defend my children. If you and your daughters want to wage war with me, you should know I will fight back.”

  To my complete surprise, Tammy chimed in at this point. “Merril, it’s wrong for you to use your daughters against your wives and encourage them to be hurtful and mean to us and your other children. If you have a problem with something we’re doing, why can’t you handle it directly and stop hiding behind your children for protection?”

  This angered Merril as much as anything I had said, if not more. He struck back. “If either of you was willing to be obedient to me, then there would be no need for this conversation. You and Carolyn are saying things that, I assure you both, you will be paying for and regret.”

  Merril’s threats drew Cathleen from her silence for the first time that day. “I think someone who encourages his children to act inappropriately like you do is sinning against God and the prophet,” she said. “A man is supposed to teach his children to love all of their mothers and to overlook their faults. Children should not judge or take action against one of their mothers. Your actions are destroying your family.” Once Cathleen got going, she revved up fast. “Tammy and Carolyn may pay for what they say to you today, but it doesn’t change the fact that what you’re doing is wrong.”

  I could not believe what I was hearing. The three of us were united against Merril. No one was backing down. He became quiet.

  What a change! For five days we’d been battling one another, and now we were standing up to our mutual husband. If Merril was upset, he didn’t show it. He was cornered and forced to listen. He didn’t like our accusations of abuse. Even though he had no intention of intervening to stop the abuse, I think he knew what was happening was wrong. But he also knew that ultimately our protests would lead nowhere.

  After dinner, one of the other couples took Tammy and me for a ride in their rented convertible. I loved feeling the wind against my face and skin. It was a freedom I’d never experienced before. The wind ripped my hair out from under layers of hair spray and whipped it around my face. I loved feeling that there was nothing separating me from the outside. It was sensual and elemental—an unusual but delightful feeling for me.

  We stopped at some tourist shops and I picked up presents for my children and the other wives at home. Tammy saw me pull out a hundred-dollar bill and freaked out when she realized Merril had given me additional money. I was finished with her bullying. She followed me around, complaining to the other women about my purchases. When we got back to the hotel she ran to Merril with her tattling tales, but he didn’t care.

  Merril was spending his last night with Cathleen. After Tammy finished berating me in her call to Merril, I said that maybe she had managed to interrupt him during sex with Cathleen. She screeched at me and said she hoped they were having sex. I said, “Tammy, that is so immoral. Do you really want your husband to commit those kinds of heathen sins?”

  “Yes, I do, because he commits those sins with you!”

  “You have no idea what he does with me,” I shot back. “And it’s none of your business.”

  “But you’re pregnant and I am not. I think we all know he is committing heathen sins with you.”

  Breakfast the next morning was tense and angry. Cathleen was still upset about her missing long underwear. Tammy attacked Cathleen for being too emotional. Then she told Merril about our fight and how rude I had been to her in the conversation about heathen sex. Tammy was relentless. Merril could have told her to knock it off, but he never did. I think he tried to ignore our bickering because he prided himself on being a martyr to his rebellious wives.

  When we left the restaurant we gathered up our piles of luggage and headed to the airport. None of us had had a good time. It had been six days of nearly relentless arguing broken up by long periods of tense silence.

  On the flight back, Cathleen sat by herself, so there was no competition about who got to sit next to Merril. We changed planes in Los Angeles. I almost missed the connection because I went to buy some water and Merril got on the plane with my boarding pass. When I didn’t show up, he realized what had happened and rushed off the plane to find me.

  After the short flight to Las Vegas, we piled into the van for the three-hour drive back to Colorado City. Cathleen and I sat in the back and didn’t speak. Tammy was up front with Merril and tried to engage him in conversation, but he wanted nothing to do with her. After a while, Tammy offered to drive and Merril let her.

  He put his seat back as far as it would go and asked me to rub his shoulders.

  I did. The car was quiet. I was exhausted. I’d survived my six days in paradise and, thankfully, only two nights with my husband.

  Giving Birth in the FLDS

  When I returned from Hawaii, I wasn’t as panicked about my third pregnancy. In part it was because I knew all I would ever have in my life that mattered to me would be my children.

  The intimacy and tenderness I felt in caring for Arthur and Betty was boundless and unparalleled by anything I had ever felt in my li
fe. My two children had shown me a depth of love that I never knew existed.

  Being pregnant, sick, and a second-grade teacher was not nearly as stressful as being pregnant, sick, and a college student. I spent much of the day running down the hall from my classroom to vomit in the bathroom. Sometimes I didn’t make it and I threw up in the nearest garbage can. The other teachers worried about me and urged me to go home and rest, but I was committed to my second graders.

  As it had in the past, pregnancy seemed to make me more desirable to Merril, although I was still so malnourished that I never looked very big. Even though it was supposed to be taboo in our culture, Merril continued to have sex with me while I was pregnant.

  Now that I had children, they had become fair game for the other wives when they wanted to create conflict for me. Arthur was targeted as a toddler because he was very cute and looked a lot like Merril. The other wives were threatened by this because they were afraid Arthur would be more favored than their own children. There wasn’t a move Arthur could make without being chastised for being a bad baby. They’d insist Arthur was full of rebellion and condemn me for being a bad mother.

  The pressure was unrelenting. Any wife could discipline another woman’s children. When a woman in the FLDS wanted to sabotage a rival wife, she’d attack her children by exaggerating or inventing bad behavior so they could be punished.

  Wives were endlessly jockeying to become the favorite wife and gain as much power as they could within the family. In our family I had some protection because the other wives knew Merril liked to have sex with me and they were slightly intimidated about attacking my children. I think they feared that Merril might side with me if I protested.

  They never dared hit my children when I was home. If anything happened, it was when I was out of the house or teaching school. I always retaliated when I heard about it by confronting the woman who did it. She would say the children were Merril’s, not mine, and that if I wasn’t willing to raise them correctly, she was obliged to step in.

  One of the few ways I could protect my children was to please Merril sexually. As long as I remained in Merril’s favor, the other women knew there was a good chance that he might side with me in any confrontation. So even though I never desired my husband, I trained myself to go through the motions that would satisfy him sexually. I knew if I quit having sex with him, the abuse toward my children would escalate. I learned to protect myself by studying and analyzing behaviors. I knew I was powerless in my environment. But I also knew I could gain some power by figuring out who was predatory and sadistic. I had concluded from my position as wife number four that Merril was a creature of habit. I paid close attention to what provoked his abuse. He attacked the same people repeatedly. In time, I learned to outsmart him by reading his facial movements and understanding his tone of voice. This was a survival skill I learned in childhood to survive my mother’s abuse.

  By May 1991, I was two months away from delivering my third child. The school year was ending and every moment I wasn’t teaching I spent working in the garden with Arthur and Betty tagging along behind me. The garden was a peaceful place for me, a time of deep quietude and escape from the chaos of Merril’s household. Often I would work in the garden until early evening and watch the sinking sun paint the sky in flaming colors. Arthur was three and a half and Betty nearly two. They played happily beside me, digging in the dirt and helping me pull up weeds and plants.

  One night we came back in from gardening and Merril and Barbara had arrived home unexpectedly from Page. I always tried to avoid Merril when he first came home because he was usually in a very bad mood. I grabbed Betty and Arthur and scooted them off to my room to give them a bath, get them ready for bed, and avoid any confrontation with Merril.

  Once they were tucked away, I came upstairs to the kitchen and found Tammy and Cathleen deep in discussion. I got a glass of water and sat down. Tammy seemed angry and Cathleen, very frustrated. I asked them what was going on.

  “We’re both tired of Merril and Barbara excluding us,” Tammy said. I looked puzzled. “From what?”

  Tammy explained that as soon as Merril and Barbara got home, they left again and that Barbara was carrying the small suitcase she took to the hospital with her whenever she gave birth. Barbara, Cathleen, and I were all pregnant, and our three due dates were all a month apart. Barbara was due in May; Cathleen, June; and I, July.

  Tammy and Cathleen were upset because they didn’t get to go with Barbara to watch her give birth to Samson, her twelfth child. It was a well-established tradition in the FLDS that sister wives were supposed to attend one another’s deliveries. It was believed that since all the wives were going to participate in raising the child, they should be at the birth to bond with the baby and support their sister wife. That was the belief; in practice it was something else entirely.

  I, like Barbara, loathed the idea of turning the birth of my baby into a communal event. Wives were competitive with one another and conniving. Those intense feelings and complicated relationships were not left outside the delivery room door.

  When I gave birth to Arthur, Ruth was the only one of Merril’s wives present. I hated it. It felt like an invasion of my privacy and she certainly didn’t treat me any better after Arthur was born. I’d had a relatively easy delivery, and afterward Ruth began telling everyone in the family that it would be good for the unmarried daughters to watch me give birth in the future.

  Women in the FLDS gave birth in the local clinic. Aunt Lydia, the midwife, delivered the babies. A doctor was never present, nor was pain medication ever used. Women were expected to be perfectly silent during childbirth. If a woman screamed or made loud noises she was criticized for being out of control. Sometimes she’d be reprimanded by her husband during her delivery.

  Tammy and Cathleen felt outright betrayal by being excluded from seeing Barbara give birth. They felt that all six wives should be present at the delivery and chastised me for holding a completely different view and rebelling against our traditions.

  “Carolyn, you don’t have a right to impose your selfishness onto your baby,” Tammy said. “If you’re excluding the family from the baby’s birth, it’s as if you’re trying to exclude them from the baby’s life.”

  Cathleen said that Barbara had insisted on being present when she gave birth to her first child and she didn’t understand why she insisted on privacy for her own deliveries.

  Tammy piped up that Barbara was still upset that I hadn’t allowed her to be present when I had Betty and Arthur.

  “I didn’t stop her from coming,” I said. “She just didn’t make it to the delivery room on time, so I see no reason for her to be angry.”

  When Arthur was born, everyone was out of town except Ruth and Barbara. Ruth came, but Barbara was sulking because I’d called my mother instead of her when I went into labor. She refused to come to the clinic at first, and when she did, Arthur had already been born. Betty was born so quickly that only Merril had been there.

  “I really don’t care if Barbara’s upset with me,” I said to Tammy. “If she wants privacy when her babies are born, she can allow me the same.”

  Little did I know I’d launched a war. Tammy went to see Barbara at the clinic the next morning. She told her I didn’t want any of my sister wives coming to the birth of my babies and that I felt none of them had the right to invade my privacy. Exactly.

  Barbara was furious. She said the only reason she had private births was that Merril felt it was required in her situation but not for any of his other wives. What right did I have to say who could be present when my babies were born? Tammy came back intending to continue the argument from the night before. She said Barbara felt I was in outright rebellion and needed to be disciplined. Barbara said that if I was uncomfortable with just a few people in the delivery room, then she would ensure that many people were there as punishment. Once Merril sanctioned this, she said I’d have no right to object.

  A month later I heard Tammy pagin
g me on the intercom. She said Cathleen, who was due to give birth any day, had gone to the clinic in Hildale. Merril wanted all the wives to come and visit her, but Tammy said she wasn’t going to give birth until the next day.

  When I got to the clinic I was surprised not to find anyone in the waiting room. One of the women who worked there approached me. “Oh, there you are. Everyone was wondering when you’d get here.” I didn’t understand what she meant at first. “They are back there in the delivery room.” Then it hit me. I’d been tricked.

  She led me back to a small room in the clinic. It was crammed with people staring at Cathleen, who was in anguished labor. Merril smiled when he saw the shock on my face. He offered me his chair, which was right next to Cathleen. I sat down because my head was spinning.

  I’d never witnessed another woman give birth and didn’t want to. I was eight months pregnant and terrified by what I was seeing. Cathleen was writhing in pain and grunting and groaning with each intense contraction. People looked at her with disdain. The small room was crammed with Merril and his six wives, plus five or six of his unmarried daughters. It was difficult for Aunt Lydia to move around because the room was so packed.

  I hated seeing Cathleen humiliated. This felt like a total freak show. We were part of a tradition that insisted on covering women’s bodies from head to toe when they were in public. But now the most intimate and vulnerable moment of a woman’s life was stripped of its dignity and privacy. Cathleen was wearing a nightgown with white leggings and her legs were spread apart in the stirrups. More than a dozen people were not only staring at her, but judging her. She was sweating profusely and seemed emotionally and physically exhausted. Merril was there but seemed nonchalant about the drama that was unfolding around him.

  Cathleen’s baby finally pushed his way into the world, wet, slimy and screaming. Aunt Lydia cut his umbilical cord and handed him to Cathleen, who immediately handed him to Merril. Merril didn’t want him and handed him to me. Everyone wanted to see this child born, but no one wanted to hold him! Johnson was a beautiful baby. I was so anxious and upset I was afraid I might drop him. I took some big breaths and tried to calm down by staring at this sweet and innocent child. After a few moments, Aunt Lydia came and said he needed to be put in the incubator before he got too cold. I got out of there as fast as I could.