Escape

by Carolyn Jessop

  I was still too upset at home to concentrate on any of the things I needed to do. I decided to find and confront Merril. I intended to make sure he knew that what had been done to Cathleen would never be done to me. I found him working in one of his alfalfa fields. Raising alfalfa was one of his hobbies.

  “Hello, Carolee, what can I do for you?” He knew by looking at my face that I was upset.

  “I want an explanation about what happened today.”

  Merril pretended he didn’t know what I was talking about. “What do you want your loving husband to explain?”

  “I thought what happened to Cathleen today was inexcusable. You need to understand that I will not be treated that way. You will show me respect when I have this baby.”

  “Cathleen and I were in perfect harmony about the birth today.”

  My silence demanded more and he knew it.

  “But of course I will show you respect. You will want the people at the delivery who I decide should be there.”

  “Merril, wake up. You’re dreaming if you think I’m going to make a freak show out of the birth of my baby. I won’t let you deny me my dignity.”

  Merril laughed the way he did when he wanted to sound superior. “What are you going to do to prevent it? Have your baby in a closet? If you have the baby in a facility that is in harmony with the prophet, then the family members I decide on will be there for the birth.”

  I looked at him with what felt like fire blazing from my eyes. “Don’t flatter yourself with all the abundance of your power. I don’t have to have this baby at Hildale. I may choose a more private place, like on a public highway, off to one side!”

  I turned and walked away. I would not be humiliated by him.

  My due date was a few weeks later. I decided I would tell no one when I went into labor. I knew that Rosie, my father’s second wife, knew how to deliver babies because she was a nurse. I asked her if she would be there when I gave birth, but explained nothing else. She agreed. My plan was to call her when I went into second stage later. She’d come and pick me up. I knew that even if I had the baby in her car, it would still be better than starring in one of Merril’s freak shows.

  Merril and I had not spoken about my delivery since that angry confrontation after Cathleen gave birth. As my due date drew near, he did not return to Page after the weekend as he usually did. I felt my labor was imminent but tried to will it away for a few more days so he’d have to return to Page. It worked.

  The night he left I knew I had my chance. I walked for several miles after dinner, willing my labor to begin. In the middle of the night, it did. I could feel the first of the contractions begin, but they were faint and far apart. It was July 24th, or Pioneer Day, our biggest Mormon holiday.

  It was the day the entire community turned out for a parade through town. As soon as our house emptied out, I called Rosie. I sent Betty and Arthur to the parade with the family and told them I didn’t feel up to going.

  Then I called Merril in Page and got the answering machine. What a miracle! Now I knew that I had time to have the baby in private.

  Rosie came right away and had already alerted Aunt Lydia to meet us at the clinic. She and one of her assistants were waiting for me in the delivery room. The other woman said, “We’re supposed to be on the float in the parade. If we deliver this baby, we’ll miss the parade.”

  Aunt Lydia told me to push and turned to her whining assistant. “We can deliver this baby and still be in the parade.”

  “Not unless she has the baby in the next ten minutes,” she said.

  “This baby is going to be here in ten minutes,” Aunt Lydia said. She was right.

  LuAnne was a screaming, beautiful baby with a thick mass of dark hair. I smiled when I looked at her exquisite features. She was a triumph, and her birth, for me, a small victory for me over Merril’s oppression.

  Marrying into the Jeffs’ Family

  Loretta was the first of Merril’s daughters to be married off to the prophet, but she was not the last. Paula was next. She was as beautiful as her sister, Loretta. They looked almost like twins. Her wedding gown was princess style, but for the former nuss, this was hardly a fairy-tale wedding. Uncle Rulon was at least sixty years older than she. Her still smile barely hid her despair. She was very disciplined and determined to keep her feelings in check.

  I kept thinking of that day in school when we joked about having to marry an old man who was a rest-home patient. Rulon Jeffs was sitting in a chair because he wasn’t strong enough to stand. He had a palsy, so when he took her hand in his patriarchal grip the shaking was visible from quite a distance. The marriage was grotesque to me. Merril, of course, had no reason to hide his feelings. He was proud and overjoyed. Merril’s status within the community was enhanced when he married off Loretta to the prophet. But his obsession with power would soon make him want more.

  Merril was now considered one of the most exalted men in the community since he had married two daughters to Uncle Rulon. I noticed how differently we, as Merril’s wives, were treated in the community. We rarely had to wait in line at the grocery store or at the fabric shop. It was considered a privilege by other families to associate with us. No one wanted to offend Merril or anyone in his family since he now had a firm and direct connection to the prophet.

  Most people in the community usually only ever saw Uncle Rulon at church. Those who were able to make an appointment to see him usually found the meetings were kept short. There was time to make a tithe, but not to exert any influence.

  Merril’s inroads into the Jeffs family did not stop with Uncle Rulon. Several of Rulon’s sons started marrying Merril’s daughters. The one who married the most was the favorite son among the prophet’s seventy children, Warren Jeffs. Warren was gaining influence in the community, and often spoke for his father in church when he was too weak to attend. He was on the verge of becoming a rising star with the potential to take over the FLDS when his father died. I think Merril saw it as a shrewd move to marry as many daughters as he could to Warren.

  Warren was now in his late thirties. His three wives were churning out children; there were now about fifteen. My opinion of Warren had never changed since I had first met him shortly after marrying Merril. I thought he looked like a big nobody but also felt there was something creepy about him.

  Warren was at least six feet tall, and seemed even taller because he was so thin. He had zero charisma, but was polite and well-mannered and chose his words carefully. Warren was the principal at the private school on his father’s property. What disturbed me most about him were the stories I heard about his brutality.

  Warren thrived on brutality and seemed to love hurting people. He’d pull some kids out of their classroom and beat them on an almost daily basis. Warren targeted the kids from bad homes whose parents wouldn’t make waves even if their kids told.

  Warren also taught brutality. One day he brought one of his wives into the auditorium, which was packed with boys. Annette had a long braid that fell past her knees. Warren grabbed the braid and twisted and twisted it until she was on her knees and he was ripping hair from her head. He told the boys that this was how obedient their wives had to be to them.

  This incident was widely reported in the community because so many of the boys went home and reported what they had seen. Uncle Rulon was also reported to have said that the only thing Warren had ever done to displease him was study books on Hitler. Stories like this were in wide circulation about Warren before he took control of the FLDS. Once he did, though, the stories stopped because people feared his wrath.

  After Merril’s daughter Paula was married off to Uncle Rulon, he sent her to teach in his school. Paula had a college degree and was a certified high school teacher. She told me that Warren saw her as “contaminated” by worldly education and insisted she bring all her college books to school and throw them in the dumpster. “If you’re going to teach in this school you cannot bring worldly contamination into the classroom.” Paula
complied because she had no other choice.

  The daughters Merril married to the prophet and Warren tended to be the ones he had used to spy on his wives and keep us in line. They eavesdropped outside our doorways and told their father everything they heard. Even after they married, they felt like we were still a threat to them. They’d call home and pump their younger siblings for information. But now they would tell the prophet, instead of Merril, what was going on in our home. This became a huge embarrassment for Merril because on several occasions, the prophet called him in to reprimand him for not having more control over his family.

  We routinely made the trip to Salt Lake City with Merril for the priesthood meeting on the third weekend of the month. Merril never missed a meeting because he got to drink in the personal time this gave him with Uncle Rulon.

  After the meeting was over, there would be a pizza party at the home of Rulon’s son, Leroy. Leroy was the one we thought had the greatest likelihood of becoming the next prophet after Uncle Rulon’s death. The first one I went to sent my head spinning.

  There was pizza, to be sure, but there was also fried chicken and lots of junk food. But people didn’t go for the food, they went for the alcohol. Men sat in the dining room around a large table and the women stayed in the living room.

  Vans of women would arrive about forty-five minutes before the men. These were the wives of the most respected men in the FLDS, those in the priesthood. Many came carrying babies in their arms. But that didn’t stop them from hitting the beer—not even the nursing mothers. I was disgusted watching women drinking beer and nursing their babies at the same time. They rarely ate because there was a rigid rule in the Jeffs family against becoming obese.

  When the men arrived, they sat down in the dining room and expected to be served food. I was taking orders for pizza or chicken and bringing them drinks. I went into the living room to see if any of the other wives would be willing to help me, but they were too drunk. After several bottles of beer, they were laughing and preaching the gospel about keeping sweet and loving your sister wives. When they arrived at the party they’d seemed nervous and irritable, but not now. I thought maybe that was why their husbands let them drink.

  After a few beers, the men’s mood changed, too. Now they started complaining about their wives. Even Uncle Rulon joined in. He started bitching about one of his wives who was obese after having sixteen kids, which he felt was a sign of pure rebellion toward him. The other men jumped in, ranting and raving about their fat wives, too.

  I was disgusted by what I was seeing. These were the elite in the FLDS. It shocked me to see those who were held in such high esteem within the community exalting in things they all knew were punishable by excommunication.

  This was something new to add to the list of ugly realities I had seen within the faith I once prized.

  Tammy’s Failed Rebellion

  Carolyn, I’m pregnant.”

  Tammy and I were in the kitchen. I was getting a quick cup of coffee before heading back to school.

  I was shocked by the news. Was this for real? Tammy had been trying to get pregnant for six years. Fertility drugs hadn’t worked. Her desperation had increased to the point that rarely a day went by that she didn’t say something to me about it. I knew she’d finally abandoned the Clomid and for the last few months had been taking an herbal tincture a friend recommended.

  “It’s true,” she said. “I am really going to have a baby and I hope it will be a girl.”

  I thought Tammy would be overjoyed, but she seemed subdued.

  “Maybe if it’s not a girl then you’ll get one next time.”

  “Barbara was the first person I told, then Merril. I’ve waited a few weeks before telling my sister wives.”

  “Tammy, I’m so happy for you,” I said.

  Tammy and I were not close at this point because I no longer felt I could trust her. She was always tattling on her sister wives to Barbara. We’d barely been on speaking terms, but this broke the ice between us.

  Conceiving was never a problem for me, which made Tammy envy me. But now we were on even ground again. A few months later I became pregnant for the fourth time and was vomiting daily from morning sickness.

  Tammy gave birth in January. She wanted her delivery to be a big production. Not only did she invite Merril’s six wives, but she also wanted all of her sister wives from her marriage to the late prophet, Uncle Roy, to come, too. There were at least a dozen people in the delivery room. Thankfully, I was too sick to attend—one of the only gifts morning sickness ever gave to me.

  But Tammy’s baby became stuck in the delivery canal during labor. She had to be moved into several different and awkward positions to try and free the baby. I was told later that the mood at the clinic was tense because Tammy’s baby was in real trouble.

  Merril left the delivery room at that point. He was uncomfortable with the situation and found a place at the clinic to take a nap. Barbara went with him and rubbed his head, neck, and shoulders trying to help him relax and sleep.

  Tammy seemed to have been abandoned and betrayed in her hour of need. She had been blindly loyal to Barbara and Merril and was very upset that they had not stayed by her side during the traumatic birth. Her newborn son started having seizures after birth. Merril wouldn’t let her take him to the hospital, but she was allowed to see a doctor.

  Merril named Tammy’s son, Parley, without consulting her. Tammy had another name picked out for her son, and she wanted to include her family at the naming ceremony. But for whatever reason, Merril prevented this from happening. We had a family Sunday school in the living room. Tammy was there with Parley. After Sunday school ended, Merril took Parley away from her and asked his sons to help him name him.

  I had never been able to choose any of my children’s names or even participate in a discussion with Merril about them. This was just the way we did things in the FLDS, and I was used to the idea.

  Parley seemed to outgrow his seizures by the time he was a few months old. I gave birth to Patrick, my second son and fourth child, on July 6, 1993. I was spared an audience because he came so quickly. Patrick was my healthiest baby, at 7 lbs., 15 ozs. Compared to my first three, he was jumbo-size. I was twenty-five.

  For the first time since I’d known her, Tammy was not resentful about my having a baby because she had one, too. Tammy was excited because she hoped our boys could grow up and be close brothers.

  But after giving birth Tammy seemed to become increasingly upset by the mean, hurtful things that Merril and Barbara had inflicted on her. For years, she’d been trying to repress her feelings by pasting on a perfect smile. But her façade cracked. I don’t know if she had postpartum depression or if she just was too exhausted to play games, but something snapped and she lashed out at Merril, which was completely out of character for her.

  This happened multiple times. Sometimes I was in Merril’s office and heard everything, other times Tammy recounted everything in great detail.

  At one climactic moment, Tammy took off her wedding ring and told Merril he wasn’t being a husband to her and she was finished pretending otherwise. This infuriated Barbara, who accused her of trying to stir up conflict in the family. Barbara demanded that Tammy be more discreet and warned her not to create a scandal for the family.

  Tammy’s behavior changed. She stopped acting as Barbara’s shadow and Merril’s spy. She no longer called Barbara every day at Page and reported every wrong move that anyone in the family had made in the past twenty-four hours.

  Tammy told me that Merril and Barbara had put her on notice. We were having coffee together one morning before school. Tammy taught seventh grade. “I am in big trouble with Barbara and Merril,” she said. “I didn’t spend any time with Barbara this weekend and I didn’t call and check in with her once last week.”

  This was so out of character for Tammy I was shocked.

  “Is it now your responsibility to report to Barbara?”

  “I have been calling
Barbara every day and reporting on the family for several years. Merril put me on notice this weekend that if I stopped doing it there would be consequences.”

  The change in Tammy had been so radical, I wondered if it would last. It didn’t. Tammy soon caved in to their pressure. After thirty years of never standing up for herself, I did not expect her to suddenly change. Once again, Tammy became Barbara’s loyal supplicant. I was sure her spirit had been quashed once and for all.

  But I was wrong.

  Tammy exploded a few months later and told me all about it the next morning when we were having our coffee.

  Tammy had waited up for Barbara and Merril, who came back from Page late on Fridays. Merril came into her room and asked her to massage his feet. He did this often, and would hint that maybe he’d spend the night with Tammy, but then decided to sleep with Barbara.

  Tammy had been massaging Merril’s feet for an hour when he got up and said he was going into Barbara’s room and also planned to take her to Salt Lake City in the morning.

  Tammy snapped.

  She accused Merril of being a “true monogamous” and said he had never lived plural marriage. Barbara was the only woman he treated as a wife and her children were the only children he cared about. Tammy told Merril that he treated the rest of us as his property or slaves.

  Tammy spoke the truth that none of us dared speak.

  Merril’s abuse was well-known among his wives. But none of us had ever found the courage to stand up to him because we were afraid of the consequences.