Shattered Dreams

by Irene Spencer

  In the meantime, Verlan began working for his cousin’s painting business in Nevada. He’d be gone for two or three months, then come home and spend a little time with us before heading back north to his job. His affection and attention became ever rarer and more treasured by his wives.

  Verlan spent some extra time at the colony trying to get the farm back into shape. We hated to spend our money, but our tractor had broken down, so Verlan hired our neighbor, Grant, to come plow our fields, and I was asked to feed him.

  One morning, it was especially hot and windy. Poor Grant worked on in the inclement weather. I’d been extra busy all morning, as it was my turn to herd the cows in and out of the green alfalfa field so they wouldn’t bloat. I also had to feed two other hired hands, plus care for my little kids. I was so busy, I hardly had time to think.

  I ran into Grant walking toward my house. I was shocked to see his red hair so full of dust. On the other hand, his fair complexion was a bright red, and his lips, too, were blistered and swollen from the relentless sun. “Excuse me,” he said, “is there any place where I can lay down and rest for a few minutes? I’ve got a terrible headache.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Just go on in and lie on my bed and make yourself at home. I’ll call you when lunch is ready.”

  I continued to rush around from one thing to another. I had to feed the kids early, before the men came in to eat lunch. My baby wasn’t feeling well. I packed him in one arm and bounced him while I worked. He finally went to sleep. I fed Donna and then put them in their room for a nap. It would still be a while before the men came for lunch.

  I went into my bedroom to get something. To my pleasant surprise, there was Verlan, lying facedown on the bed. I wasn’t going to waste any time. We hadn’t made love for days. Here was a perfect chance.

  I quickly locked the bedroom door, kicked my panties under the bed, and threw myself down beside him, slapping him on the butt and running my fingers through his hair. “Hey, lover, wake up!” I said in my sexy voice.

  To my utter shock, a big, sunburned face that wasn’t Verlan’s looked up at me. “Huh?” Grant said.

  It scared me so bad, I started to cry. Embarrassed and bare-assed, I flew out of the room so fast, I almost went through the locked door.

  Verlan was just coming into my kitchen. Seeing me straightening my skirt and noticing my horror and streaming tears, he exclaimed, “What’s the matter?”

  “Oh, I could absolutely die! I’m so embarrassed.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Oh, Verlan, I just made the biggest mistake of my life.”

  “Well, what is it?”

  “You have on the same color shirt as Grant has on. It looked like you on my bed. I snuck in there and thought I’d”—I covered my face—“make love to you.”

  “You didn’t.” He shook his head in disbelief. “I wonder if marrying you so young has been to my advantage. I don’t think I’ll ever train you right!”

  I quickly set the table, putting the hot food out, ready to serve. I told Verlan he’d have to face the men. I didn’t want anybody to see me, so I got lost.

  Later Verlan demanded, “As soon as you get the chance, make sure you apologize to Grant.”

  I rehearsed apologies over and over in my mind. Nothing I came up with sounded right, so I never did apologize.

  IN MAY OF 1957, I dropped by Lucy’s house to ask her to keep an eye on my ten-month-old baby, André, while I went to see my girlfriend Betty Tippetts. Betty and her husband, Harold, were the first family to move down from Salt Lake City and join Joel’s church. “André’s on my bed and should sleep soundly for at least an hour,” I told Lucy.

  “He’ll be just fine,” Lucy said. “Don’t worry.”

  I took two-and-a-half-year-old Donna, and we cut through the corner of our lot (we’d divided up the upper fourth of the ranch to make room for settlers). I crawled through the fence first and then held the barbed wire up so Donna could duck under it. We walked on about a half block to Betty’s new cinderblock house—the first home in Colonia LeBaron that wasn’t adobe.

  Betty and I became inseparable. We’d felt a deep kinship from the first time we’d met. She was a very giving person and an accomplished seamstress. I’ll never forget the six beautiful dresses she gave me within a few days of her arrival. Our measurements were the same, except she was a couple of inches taller. She’d made all the dresses herself, and they were gorgeous. I’d never had anything so nice, even back in Utah before I got married.

  And she gave me more than just dresses. We always shared whatever we could—garden produce, canned fruit, and so forth. The bond between us was more than friendship; we felt like real sisters. And, since both of our husbands now worked in the States, we got to spend many wonderful times together.

  On this particular day, Betty and I settled down to make fudge. “Too bad we’re not rich enough to afford nuts,” she said regretfully. I watched as she poured the fudge onto a buttered plate. “Sit down,” she said. “Take the load off your feet. I don’t see how you can be on them so much when you’re four months pregnant.”

  We didn’t wait any longer than we had to before cutting the candy. I was on my third piece when Lucy walked in the door. She assured me André was fast asleep; she peeked in to make sure he was snoozing on the bed before she decided to join us.

  Betty shoved the plate of fudge toward Lucy. “You better dive in if you want your fair share.”

  After about fifteen minutes, right in the middle of Betty’s sentence, I jumped up screaming, “It’s André. Something is wrong with André!” I dashed out the door, racing in terror down the dusty road, tearing my dress as I crossed the barbed-wire fence.

  Lucy and Betty jogged along behind me with Donna, trying to calm me with their shouts. “He’s okay, Irene. He’s okay!”

  I dashed past the corner of Lucy’s house, certain I could hear frantic baby screams. Realizing instantly that André was in the irrigation ditch, I almost stumbled as I ran toward the ditch. The swift current was pulling him away about thirty yards in front of me. I raced along the bank, watching him appear, then disappear in the cold water.

  I jumped in, shoes and all, trying to grab him, but I missed as the current pulled him a few feet farther away. Again I lunged forward, and with every ounce of my strength I snatched his near-lifeless body out of the threatening water. I had no time to cry, thinking only of reviving him. He spit and sputtered as I laid him over my arm and pounded frantically on his back. His pudgy little body was blue from the cold water and lack of oxygen. I put his head down and shook him. He began vomiting up water, then hoarsely gasped for breath.

  Betty took him from my arms, and Lucy supported my trembling body while we thanked God for sparing his life. Sobbing with relief, I could hear the squish from the water in my shoes as we made our way to the house. Betty helped me into bed. I was chilled and soon went into shock.

  I vaguely remember wondering how I was ever going to handle eternity. In Heaven, I was supposed to have billions of kids to populate future worlds. Yet here on Earth, I could hardly cope with two.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  On October 4, 1958, my fourth child was born—a baby boy. I named him Steven. He was a lovely towhead baby. He should have made my life complete, but inside, I felt like I was dying. I was twenty-one, and I wanted more of a life than just work, work, work. I wanted things beyond the barest of necessities. Most of all, I yearned constantly to have a man of my own. I pled with God to forgive me and take away my selfish desires, but day after day they persisted.

  Cooking, scrubbing on the washboard, changing diapers, working in the fields—these things might have been tolerable if I’d ever had any sort of recreation to break up the wearying monotony of it all. Without a radio or record player, I had no music to brighten up the long, tedious days. Nor did I have a dime to spare on any sort of hobby. And my social world did not extend beyond Spencerville. The few times in four years we had visitors from the State
s had only been enough to whet my appetite for company. Like lots of American girls my age, I thought it might be exciting to go to school, get a job, and be independent.

  Verlan was good to me when he was home, but he was off working in the States a great deal, usually for three months at a time. And when he was around, I still only got a third of him. I wanted romance and some passion in my life I knew he’d never be able to give me. Frankly, although I loved Verlan, I’d never been in love with him—not the way I’d been in love with Glen. That one thing alone might have crippled any marriage, especially one cursed with our kind of poverty. But of course, the poverty resulted from the polygamy, and the polygamy added immeasurably to my heartache and oppression. I still yearned for Glen, but I thought I could even have been satisfied with Verlan if I could only have had him all to myself.

  God’s plan just didn’t seem to be the best one for me. I’d been promised that submission to his rules would be its own reward, that it would bring me a little joy, even in the here and now. But in reality, I was joyless, merely existing. My longing to be loved became an obsession.

  IN NOVEMBER, when Steven was six weeks old, Verlan employed a handsome, twenty-three-year-old Mexican as a hired hand. Oreliano was the man’s name. He slept away from the house in a wooden shed by my fruit room. Verlan arranged for me to wash his clothes and feed him his three meals a day. My husband was such an earnest and devout man, he never supposed any of his wives could be tempted into flagrant sin.

  Oreliano was different from any man I’d ever met. Not once did he allow me to carry the heavy, five-gallon buckets of water into the kitchen from the well. In the evenings, when I went to the woodpile to fill my arms with firewood, Oreliano would rush over and grab the load himself, insisting that this was not a chore for women. After supper, he’d play with the kids. More often than not, when the new baby cried, Oreliano would be the one to bounce him. And when we finished eating, he would automatically clear up the table because he saw I was overworked.

  I usually retired early on chilly fall nights, but Oreliano soon changed my habit. He brought in a set of dominos, inviting me to play with him.

  Soon, I found myself prettying up and waiting for him to appear for his evening meals. We’d hurry with the supper dishes, me washing and him drying, and then the dominos came out. It became our evening ritual. Often, my kerosene lamp burned into the late-night hours, sometimes past midnight.

  Oreliano thought me the most organized person on Earth. And he clearly loved my cooking and my company. For my part, I basked in his approval and devotion. One day I realized I was actually content.

  One night, Oreliano and I went to make sure the pasture gate was locked so the cows wouldn’t wander into the alfalfa and bloat. We walked back under a full moon; I could see quite well the way Oreliano’s dark eyes flashed. Grabbing me and imprisoning me in his arms, he surprised me with passionate, forbidden kisses.

  I say I was surprised, but I’d been waiting for this night with both thrill and trepidation. For over a month, I’d been pleading with God to douse my own raging desire for Oreliano. Unless God intervened, I knew I would succumb to him when the time came. Well, the time came, and God had not intervened.

  It felt so exhilarating being with Oreliano. He was incredibly sensual. The way his tongue explored my mouth when he kissed me was an entirely new sensation for me. No one had ever done that before. I adored it. At the same time, I was torn by loyalty to Verlan. When I was with Oreliano, even when I wasn’t with him but was busy thinking about him, guilt wracked my soul.

  We spent a week of secret bliss. My evenings in his arms were heaven, but the nights of sleepless guilt afterward were pure hell. Hoping God might understand, I searched the scriptures for solace, but I found only condemnation. This one in particular alarmed me: “But if one or either of the ten virgins, after she is espoused, shall be with another man, she has committed adultery, and shall be destroyed” (Doctrine and Covenants, 132:63). I’d heard that in some polygamist clans, especially in earlier times, this law was taken very seriously; a husband was duty-bound to destroy an adulterous wife. I didn’t believe God would destroy me (since, for one thing, we hadn’t actually committed adultery), but I wondered what Verlan would do if he found out how far I’d gone. I was plenty nervous.

  One evening, Oreliano begged me to run away with him, to take the kids and start a new life with him somewhere far away. More fervently, he pled for me to let him make love to me. He said I should give in so we could be one. Then together, we would fight whatever problems we’d have to face.

  I resisted, but I was sick and disgusted with myself because in my heart, I wanted to comply. Only the threat of destruction and the promise of a fiery Hell restrained me. I cried a torrent of tears when I refused his hot advances. That night, as I slept alone still wanting Oreliano, I sent fervent petitions to Heaven. What should I do? Now that he’d declared such serious intentions, I couldn’t play games with him anymore. I would not break another man’s heart the way I’d broken Glen’s.

  If I left with Oreliano, not only would I face eternal destruction, but Verlan would demand that I forfeit my children. (Plural wives were free to leave any time they wanted, but if they left, they went alone, with the clothes on their backs. That was another law of our fundamentalist faith. Polygamous husbands could always fall back on it to help control their disgruntled wives.) If I didn’t leave, my life would go on as it had, with the twin plagues of polygamy and poverty slowly and steadily breaking my spirit.

  Late Sunday evening after supper and after the kids were asleep, Oreliano went out and sat down on my back step. Seeing no lights on at Charlotte’s or Lucy’s, I quietly opened my screen door and sat beside him. He put his arms around me and pulled me close as I placed my head on his shoulder.

  Speaking to me in Spanish, he said, “Irene, I’m poor, but I can give you lots more than you have right now. I know how you feel, but you must take the risk with me, or you’ll never be happy. Don’t feel so bad. It’s not as though Verlan is losing all he has. He’ll still have two other wives.”

  For over an hour, I quietly wept in his arms as he consoled and tempted me. “Tomorrow let’s tell Verlan how we feel. I’ll stand by you. Let’s tell him the truth and face the consequences. No matter what he says, we’ll take the children with us. Don’t worry about that. I can’t offer you the world, Irene, but I beg of you to say yes, and I’ll fight like hell for you! I love you too much to see you with another man. If you won’t go with me, I’ll have to leave here without you. I mean it. It will hurt too much to stay.” We thought only the moon was watching as he passionately kissed me good night.

  Verlan had returned from the States a couple of days before, and the next morning it was my turn to serve him breakfast. He took his usual place across from Oreliano. Insisting on complete silence, he then blessed the food. I paid no attention to what he said. I wanted to hide from God. I imagined him watching me sit there, vacillating between the two men I loved. Couldn’t God see my dilemma? One man had my promises; the other had my heart.

  Later, when I was returning from the well with two large pails of water, I noticed my neighbor, Mauro, walking through the fields out to where Verlan and Oreliano were working. As I entered the house, a bolt of fear went through me. Setting the buckets on the counter, I peered out the window and saw Mauro and Verlan crouched down with their heads together. Mauro pointed his finger across the field at Oreliano, and I knew. He was tattling on me.

  I’d just finished nursing Steven, and I laid him on my bed for a nap next to my other sleeping children. Without warning, Verlan burst into the house with Oreliano right behind him. The anguish on Oreliano’s face told me we were in deep trouble.

  Verlan looked me dead in the eye. He spoke to me in Spanish for Oreliano’s benefit. “Tell me the truth.” He shoved Oreliano toward me accusingly. “Did you kiss him?”

  I may have been a traitor, but I couldn’t lie to him. “Yes, I did,” I said defiantly.
“But that’s all we did.”

  He could see the betrayal in my eyes. “Why the hell did you do it?” I stood in silent shame as Oreliano waited for me to defend him. “Answer me. Now!” Verlan thundered.

  I brushed my fear aside. Maybe if I told the truth, Verlan would throw me out. “I did it because I love him!” I declared.

  When Oreliano started to explain, Verlan shoved him angrily, pushing him out the door, commanding him to go pack his belongings. He’d pay him, but he wanted him on the bus that night. He was to stay away from me and never enter any of Verlan’s homes again. Perhaps wanting to cool off before he did something he’d regret, Verlan then stormed back out to the field.

  Oreliano reluctantly obeyed Verlan, but I didn’t. While he was packing, I went and knocked on the door of his sleeping quarters. He was shocked to find me there. He seemed afraid, but he let me in and enveloped me in his arms. Dismayed, he said, “Please, Irene, come with me now. Here’s your chance for freedom.”

  “I can’t,” I sobbed. “I’m afraid I’d crack up from guilt. You don’t understand our religion. I’d go to Hell for sure if I gave everything up for a Catholic.” I pulled away before he could kiss me again. I handed him my leather-tooled wallet as a good-bye gift. He opened it and saw my recent photo inside. “Look at me once in awhile,” I said, opening the door to leave. “Please don’t forget me.”

  “I don’t intend to forget you! I’ll get a job somewhere. I’ll send for you.”

  Crying, I turned my back. “It’ll never work out, Oreliano. My religion has to come first.”