Quickly, I checked to make sure it was in tune. There were a few sour notes, and I twisted the tuning pegs until everything sounded just right.
And then I went back to the great room.
Abby saw me coming with the guitar.
I grinned at her.
“I think you should play something,” I told her.
She eyed the guitar, and I could see an eagerness in her expression. “I haven’t gotten to play since Gideon took all the musical instruments.”
“What?” said Renee.
Abby nodded. “Yeah, he said they were sinful, and that we needed to follow a higher, purer law for God.”
“That’s bullshit.”
Abby made a face at the expletive, but then she nodded. She laughed. “Yeah. Yeah, I think it was.”
I held out the guitar.
She took a deep breath, and then she reached for it.
Something came over her once she was holding the guitar. A peace and happiness that I hadn’t seen in her since back before this whole thing started with us. She seemed young and carefree as she plucked the strings experimentally.
“Play something,” I urged.
“Yeah,” said River. “Play something.”
“I only know songs from the community,” she said.
“Well, then that’s what we want to hear,” said Jack.
She smiled shyly. “You sure?”
“Play something,” said River.
And she did. Abby’s sweet voice mingled with the guitar, and I was entranced, the way I’d been right from the start. I watched her as she played. She closed her eyes and her fingers moved with the guitar as if it was an extension of her.
She was beautiful, and her voice was beautiful, and my heart swelled with love for her.
Later, as we lay twined together in my bed, my arms wrapped around her, feeling the warmth of her skin against mine, she turned and pressed her lips into my neck.
I sighed.
“Jesse?”
“Mmm?”
“We’re free, aren’t we?” she murmured.
I pulled her as close as I could get her. “Yes,” I said.
And I kissed her.
EPILOGUE
Abby
Living outside the community was strange and frightening at first. I think the hardest thing for me to get through was the lack of rules. I’d spent my whole life with someone telling me what to do, and at first, I looked to Jesse to fill that space for me. I wanted him to give me guidance.
One of the first things that was the toughest was to change my clothes. I knew that I’d never fit into the regular world in my community clothes, but I was afraid to wear anything else. I hadn’t been able to bring anything with me because we left so quickly.
The women on the ranch gave me things, but Jesse found me sitting on our bed, going through all the articles of clothing and rejecting them because they weren’t modest enough.
“You don’t have to follow those rules anymore, you know,” he said.
“Do you want me to dress like them?” I said, figuring I’d do whatever made him happy.
He shrugged. “I don’t care how you dress, Abby.”
That drove me insane. I wanted him to give me the answers, but he wouldn’t. When I got upset, he tried to explain to me that it didn’t matter what I was wearing. But all I knew was that I had no frame of reference to make decisions about things like this. I desperately wanted Jesse to give me some guidelines, to tell me how I was supposed to dress.
But he wouldn’t.
Desperate, I picked out the most scandalous outfit that I could find. I put on a tight, tight little shirt. It dipped low in the front, so low that it exposed a little bit of my cleavage. And then I paired it with a pair of jeans. They clung to my legs, and every curve on my body was in plain sight.
I expected Jesse to scold me for showing so much of my body to everyone else, but he simply took in my outfit, grinned, and said he liked it.
That terrified me. Did he want me to dress like a whore? Didn’t he want me to be modest, to keep back my body only for him? When I got angry and yelled that at him, though, he got very quiet.
“I get it now,” he said, taking hold of both of my hands. He rested his forehead against mine. “Abby, your body belongs to you, and only you. You’re the only person who has the right to decide what to do with it. It’s just not my decision. You have to decide this yourself.”
And finally, I understood. For the first time in my life, I realized that I had ownership of myself. Something belonged to me. My body was mine. It wasn’t my husband’s or my father’s. It wasn’t even God’s. It was mine.
I sat sobbing at the wonder of it, at the sheer freedom. I had never felt anything like that in my life. I had never felt worth enough to make a decision about anything, even about my own body.
And then…
Well, then I was angry, because I began to realize just how much the Life had stolen from me. They’d stolen my self. They’d taken my essence. Out here in the world, children were brought up believing in themselves. They were taught to think for themselves and to make their own decisions. I was taught that doubt was a sin. I was taught that acceptance was transcendence. I was thought that my own thoughts and feelings were evil.
Once I was able to realize that it was up to me to dress myself, and only me, and that I was worthy and capable of performing that task… well, then it got fun.
The other women on the ranch took me on a shopping spree, and I tried on armfuls of clothes—things I’d never thought I’d ever be able to wear. I began to discover my own tastes, to build my own ideas about my clothes. And I realized that it was an expression of myself.
And I realized that I could change that expression any time that I needed to.
Freedom was heady.
I decided—me—that I didn’t want to be exceedingly provocative in my dress, but that I also didn’t like to be covered up. I chose clothes that flattered me, but that weren’t outlandish.
The revelation that I was in control of my body also led me to another conclusion, but I was terrified to broach it at first. I knew that if Jesse and I continued to have sex, I could get pregnant again, and I…
Well, I didn’t want to.
I felt guilty about it, because I knew it was horribly selfish, and that I was supposed to want babies as a woman, but… I didn’t feel ready for it. It was too much trying to navigate the world without trying to have a baby on top of it.
When we first arrived at the ranch, I was still on my period, so I knew it didn’t matter (and I was rather pleasantly surprised to find that Jesse didn’t seem to care about that. Bob would never have relations with me if I was bleeding, which had been a relief, but I liked being with Jesse, and it was nice that he didn’t find it gross). But after my period was over, the next night, Jesse and I were in bed, and it had become a matter of course for us to make love before we went to sleep.
I stopped him.
He seemed a little surprised, but he backed off immediately. “Nothing you don’t want, Abby.”
“I…” I lay in the darkness and stared up at the ceiling, rallying my strength to tell him this. “I do want to do it, but I don’t think we should.”
He seemed confused. “Okay.”
It was my body, and I owned my body, right? So, if I could decide what to wear, then I could also decide whether or not to get pregnant. Right? “I don’t want to have a baby yet,” I blurted.
“Oh,” he said. “I guess I wasn’t thinking about that.”
I sat up in bed and glared at him. “How could you not think about it?”
“Uh… I don’t know.”
“Seriously?”
He laughed a little, sounding embarrassed. “I just… I’m sorry, Abby. No, you’re right, it’s not the right time for babies.”
I took a deep breath and lay back down. “Good. So, then, we just have to keep from doing it.”
He wriggled close to me. “Well, we won�
�t do it tonight. But that doesn’t mean we don’t do it ever again. We just need condoms.”
“What are condoms?”
He explained them to me. I thought they sounded very, very strange.
“I think there’s a pill or something,” he said. “I don’t really know about it. We should ask someone.”
I was mortified at the thought of doing that, and I wouldn’t let him.
At first, then, it was just condoms, and once we used them, they didn’t seem that weird at all.
Jesse and I spent six months living on the ranch, and during that time we worked for River and the others and were paid for our jobs.
The idea of getting money was so strange to me. Women in the Life never had money. As Bob’s wife, I’d been given a certain amount, but it had only been ostensibly for buying groceries and personal items. It wasn’t a lot, and I had to turn over all my receipts to Bob. He claimed it was for taxes, but it was also a way to make sure that he kept tabs on me.
Any money that I ever had was Bob’s money, and before I got married, any money I had was my father’s money.
Having money that belonged only to me was enough to nearly make my head explode, and I had a hard time spending it. Jesse and I got free room at the ranch, but we were required to help out with food and other important items. We contributed by making dinner once a week, and sometimes we were required to buy things like toilet paper or light bulbs.
(Electricity was another thing that fascinated me. All the plugs in the walls, never having to fill up lamps with oil, and never having to refuel a generator. It was almost magical to me.)
I spent my money on food, but precious little else.
It was both a good and bad thing. It was good because it meant that I saved up a lot of money, and I was able to use that when Jesse and I decided to move out and be on our own. But it was bad because once we were away from the ranch, living alone, I often got in fits of terror about having to spend money, and I wouldn’t want us to do anything except things that were necessary. Spending money seemed so strange to me that I often didn’t want to do it. I especially had problems buying little treats for myself. Going to the movies or splurging on a milkshake seemed wasteful to me.
It took a bit of time with the two of us out there, both working, before I started to loosen up.
Jesse and I got in the worst arguments about money.
He would tell me that it really wasn’t doing anyone any good to have all my money piled up in a bank somewhere. “Money’s not worth anything until you spend it, Abby.”
But I wanted to hoard it and keep it safe. I was terrified of losing it all.
Sometimes, when Jesse and I would argue, he’d get really red in the face, and he’d clench his fists.
When he got like that, he’d usually run out in the middle of the argument and go for a drive.
It was maddening, because I never felt like I got out half the things I wanted to say. But I knew that he didn’t trust himself when he was that angry, and that cooling off was the best thing for him. He’d confided in me that his deepest fear was turning into his father, and he said he’d rather die than hurt me.
I knew that Jesse could be scary when he was angry. I’d never forgotten the way he’d beaten Bob to a bloody pulp. Bob had deserved it, of course. He’d beaten me that way, and I didn’t feel sorry for him. But it did mean that I took Jesse seriously when he said he needed a break.
Honestly, it helped me too. By the time Jesse got back from his drive, I never felt quite as angry as I had before. Time helped to evaporate the force of the feelings.
And time stretched on, passing and moving us further and further from our lives in the community. I still thought of my family and my friends from time to time. Jesse would find me sobbing over the thought of my sisters married off to men like Bob.
I wrote letters to my mother, to Susannah, to my brother Thomas, to all of them.
No one ever answered them.
I don’t even know if anyone ever read them. But I hoped they did. I hoped they knew that I loved them, and that if they ever needed help and wanted to leave the community, that I would be there to help.
I spent a lot of time learning new songs on my guitar. The music in the outside world was so varied and bright and amazing. There was more of it than I ever could have imagined, and I wanted to absorb it all. I spent hours listening to songs, and then teaching myself to play them on the guitar, allowing my fingers to find the notes.
I’d always been able to do that. Once I heard something, it was just a matter of playing around a little bit, moving my fingers over the fret board until I could make the guitar mimic the sounds in my head.
But soon, I wasn’t just playing other people’s songs, I was allowing my fingers to crawl over the frets and skim over the strings to make my own songs. I wrote them with lyrics about the way I felt, giving all my emotion over to the lyrics and the music.
Jesse would sit across the room with his eyes closed. He loved the way I sang.
One night, he said he had a surprise for me, and he took me out to a bar in town. Though I was okay with drinking a little bit of alcohol, I still wasn’t crazy about bars, and I didn’t see how this was a surprise for me.
But there was a sign outside on a sandwich board. Open Mic Tonight!
I didn’t know what that meant, but I soon learned that anyone was allowed to play music for the entire bar. All I had to do was sign up. And Jesse had brought my guitar.
I was nervous as all hell, but I was also full of this giddy feeling. I knew I had to do it. I knew I had to sing in front of people. I’d always wanted to try.
When I started, my fingers shook and my voice wavered, and I was afraid that everyone would think I was terrible. But as I began to play, the music relaxed me, and I fell into the sounds, almost forgetting that anyone was watching.
Until I was done, and the entire bar erupted into applause.
I raised my head, looking around at all the people clapping. Clapping for me.
It was better than I thought it would be.
I was addicted. I barely missed an open mic night after that.
We celebrated a few holidays throughout the year. It was great fun to get dressed up at Halloween, which we never celebrated in the community.
Thanksgiving was bittersweet, as it was one of the holidays the community observed. I missed the crush of so many family members all gathered around the table to eat.
But it was interesting to eat the traditional turkey instead of the wheat gluten roast my mothers always made.
And then it was Christmas. In the community, we never celebrated Christmas, although we all knew about it, because it was preached that it was the height of sinfulness. To the elders, Christmas was a pagan holiday appropriated for Christian use. Jesus wasn’t even born at that time of year. And they thought things like Santa Claus and Christmas trees were akin to worshiping idols. Of course, there was no gift giving.
So for Jesse’s and my first Christmas, it was a very, very big deal.
We went and got a live Christmas tree and all the ornaments for it, and made a whole day out of decorating it. I was convinced that our tree was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen, and I was moved to tears several times a day when I’d walk past it.
The tree was a symbol to me of all the things that we’d left behind and of how far we’d come. We’d taken control of our life, and we’d decided what we would believe and what we wouldn’t.
Having a Christmas tree… it was something that I’d secretly dreamed of as a little girl, even though I knew it was wrong to want such worldly, sinful things. Now I had it, and it filled me up with joy somewhere deep inside.
On Christmas morning, Jesse and I both woke up as early as any starry-eyed little kid. It was still dark outside as we crept into our living room and gave each other the gifts we’d gotten for each other.
Jesse gave me a tiny box, wrapped in silver paper, and when I opened it, there was a diamond ring inside.
My breath caught in my throat. “Is this…?” In the Life, there were no such things as engagement rings, because they were signs of vanity.
He gave me a half-smile. “Thing is, Abby, I just don’t think I could make it without you. I don’t know if I care about what anyone else thinks about us. I know that we’re forever, even without doing some ceremony. But I guess I just thought that it might be nice to make it official, anyway?”
I ran a careful finger over the gleaming band.
“So what do you think?” he said. “You want to get married?”
I threw my arms around him. “Yes, you idiot, yes.”
He slid the ring onto my finger, and we both looked at it. I gazed up into his eyes, the same eyes that had tempted me to break the rules in the community. It had been a tough road, but I wouldn’t change it. I was free now, and it was worth more to me than I could explain.
Our lips met softly and slowly.
In front of us, our beautiful Christmas tree glittered and glowed.
My happiness felt like it was bubbling up inside me, like it was going to spill out.
I was reminded of a bible verse. My cup runneth over.
And, right then, it really did.
AFTERWORD
Though I probably know enough about the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints that I could have set this book in that system of beliefs, I chose not to do so for various reasons. One reason is that while I know a lot about the cult’s beliefs and about the beliefs of Mormons, I’ve never lived as either, and I knew that I wouldn’t be giving a completely accurate representation.
Another reason is that I wanted to write a story that was a bit more universal. I didn’t want to attack the FLDS and claim that they were evil or that the polygamous lifestyle was evil. Instead, what I wanted to focus on was fanatical religious beliefs. Fanaticism is nearly always dangerous, even if it never becomes violent or physically abusive. The psychological damage it causes is enough for me to condemn it completely.
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