This year, Donna paid my bus fare to Stockton, California, so I could visit with her and her husband, Marshall, for a week before the camp started. In the middle of this vacation, Verlan called and asked me to come immediately so we could be the first to pick pine nuts and therefore make more money.
I got to San Diego early in the morning and found Verlan all ready to go. He’d gotten a trailer to haul supplies and for the two of us to sleep in. It was already packed full of tents, food, and several hundred gunnysacks for the pine nuts. Also ready to go were seven of my children, plus eight of his other kids.
Shortly before we were to leave, Charlotte showed up, wanting to go with us. I asked Verlan in private if he’d forgotten his promise to me. He said, “Well, if you don’t want her to go, just tell her she can’t.”
“You promised if I worked in the fields, hoeing tomatoes eight to ten hours a day, I could go to the pine nuts for two weeks. You promised I could be your only wife there, and we could be alone. You never keep your promises. Tell Charlotte yourself she can’t go.” I wasn’t about to be the one to tell Charlotte.
At the appointed hour for our departure, instead of telling her not to come, Verlan merely asked her to drive my Datsun so I could spend the night driving with him. I hadn’t seen him for two weeks, and she’d just had a fourteen-hour trip with him from Mexico to San Diego. When Charlotte refused, he finally put his foot down. He made her stay in San Diego for a week and come later with her son Mark. So I looked forward to spending one week alone with him.
The previous year, we stored our ladders, camp stove, and other equipment on a ranch near Ione, Nevada. Verlan was going to drive over there before dark to pick it all up. He insisted I stay at the camp to help the kids, but I refused. All the young kids were doing just fine pitching their own tents and preparing to settle in for the night. I’d come to work, but I needed to spend some time with my husband. Baffled that he didn’t want me to go, I insisted he take me with him.
The truck was so weighted down with ladders, we had to drive slowly over the rough, rocky mountain roads. We had plenty of time to talk. I shouldn’t have even mentioned her name, but the last time we discussed Priscilla, Verlan promised me it was all over between them. My kids had been telling me something different, so I figured this would be a good time to ask about it. “How’s your little Miss Priss doin’?” I asked.
Verlan stared ahead at the road long and hard. Then he said, “You better make your mind up right now, because whether you fight me or not, I’ve promised I’d marry her.”
“If that’s the way it is, then I’m leaving you,” I said. “You don’t love me! If you did, you’d consider how I feel about it. Can you break my heart and still be exalted in the celestial kingdom, Verlan? For this hussy, you’d give up a good wife, like me, who has stood by you, who’s given you all these other wives? Can’t you see you’re hurting me by marrying another man’s widow when she won’t be with you in eternity anyway?” I started crying.
As soon as he saw my tears, he yelled, “I’m damn sick and tired of seeing you cry! That’s all you’ve ever done, and I’m sick and tired of it. So shape up!”
This time Verlan had lied to me outright. He’d never given Priscilla up at all. And now, the bitterness in his voice told me I didn’t matter to him. A new resolve took hold of me as I vowed, “The day will come when you’ll beg to see me cry. I’ll never shed another tear over you again!”
“I hope you’ll keep your word.”
I told him I was leaving in the morning. He figured I was bluffing because I’d always broken down before. Then I asked, “Would you please give me just enough money for gas to get to Vegas?”
“No. I don’t want to be held accountable before God for helping you leave.”
Enraged, I didn’t say another word. Glad when we finally arrived back at the camp, I went straight to Brent and Steven’s tent. They hadn’t gone to sleep yet but were snuggled down in their sleeping bags. I told them I was leaving their father. Between the two of them, they gave me $125 from the money they had earned as tapers working with drywall in San Diego. My boys knew for years of my heartache, but they also felt a strong loyalty to their father. I’d never carried out my threats before, and they didn’t expect me to now.
Verlan pretended to be asleep when I crawled into bed next to him. Throughout the long, sleepless night, we never spoke or touched. Then, early in morning before I left his trailer, he again assailed me, forbidding me to tell my kids I was leaving him. He insisted they all belonged to him. If I left him, he was going to make me do it alone and empty-handed, just as the laws of the fundamentalist Mormon faith authorized him to do.
I retorted, “Where were you when my kids were born? Where were you when they were sick at night? They’ve never had a father. This is preposterous!”
“Do you think you’ll take these kids from me? I want you to sign them over to me legally when we return home to Mexico,” he countered.
I hissed at him. “It will be over my dead body. You’ll have to kill me first!”
“Well, I’ll allow you to take the younger ones for now, but only because I’ve given my consent until we can settle this. Don’t upset them by telling them you’re thinking of divorcing me.”
Verlan kept Steven, Brent, Kaylen, and Barbara with him because he wouldn’t be able to make much money without their help with the pine nuts. He loaded up the truck with gunnysacks and ladders and left with a dozen or more of his children to start work for the day. I left shortly after with my three youngest nut pickers.
I drove with LaSalle, Margaret, and Lothair from Ione, Nevada, toward my sister Becky’s house in Las Vegas. I’d never driven by myself on the highways before. My car overheated when I was only an hour from Vegas. I pulled to the side of the road, waiting for someone to help me and concluding this was God’s punishment for leaving Verlan. But the highway patrol soon came to my rescue. The cop phoned Becky, told her where I was, and said she needed to call a tow truck for me. She showed up instead with a thick tow rope and informed me we were taking the freeway. I put the three kids in her car, praying I could safely steer the Honeybee at the end of the rope.
In Vegas, Becky’s husband, Garlin, let me borrow his car. He got a notarized statement allowing me to take the vehicle into Mexico. I left alone, feeling vulnerable and afraid as I drove fifteen hours back to Colonia LeBaron to pick up my other four young children. I went directly to Linda’s house.
“I thought you were in the pine nuts. What’re you doing back here?” she asked.
“I did it, Linda. I left him! I’m just here to get the children before any of the brethren try to stop me.”
“You’re serious? I figured it would eventually come to this. Boy, am I gonna miss you!”
My four children I left at home were overjoyed to see me and thrilled with the news that we were all moving to Las Vegas. As I sorted through my personal belongings, I opened a small blue suitcase filled with photographs that reminded me of the decades of poverty and suffering I was finally choosing to leave behind. I flung the suitcase, scattering the pictures in all directions. Verlan could pick up the memories when he came home. I took only one change of clothes, two of my best blankets, and the children.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
I saw Priscilla walk down the aisle of the church and kneel beside my husband at the altar. Loudly, I cried out to Verlan, hoping I could stop the ceremony. But it was too late. He kissed the bride as I ran hysterically outside and fell into Linda’s arms for comfort. My remorseful sobs woke me. It was only a dream, but I knew it was true.
Obsessed with this premonition, I was glad two days later, when Becky offered to take all seven of my kids to the park and let me stay home alone. Once they were gone, I turned on the radio to try and drown out my torment. Bonnie Tyler was belting out “It’s a Heartache.” “Love him till your arms break, then he lets you down . . .”
Didn’t Verlan realize he’d let me down? He hadn’t called or seen
us for five months. If he didn’t show up in Las Vegas soon, I’d be granted a divorce by the church. I wondered if he was just trying to punish me. How could he ignore his children for so long?
The music from the radio was loud enough that I didn’t hear his footsteps. I jumped in fear as someone sprawled on top of me. In my shock, I fought off his rapid kisses. Then Verlan rolled me over, pinning me beneath his large frame.
Yes, a part of me still wanted to respond to his advances and let him kiss away my fears. But I knew where it would end, and I fixated on that.
“How’s my little sweetheart doing?” he said.
I tried to push his body off mine. “Not as good as you!” I snapped. “You married Priscilla, didn’t you?”
Instantly, he fell to hedging. “Where did you get that idea?”
“Friday I dreamed you married her. I’ve cried for two days, hoping it wasn’t true, but it is . . . isn’t it?”
He buried his head on my shoulder. “Please don’t ask me that, Irene . . . please.” He clung to me as though he wanted to shut out the world. “I married her, but I’m here with you. Doesn’t that mean something?”
I went berserk. He tried holding me down, but I pulled myself from his grip. I ran out to the carport, just steps ahead of him, and jumped into the Honeybee. As I started up the motor, he forced himself into the passenger seat beside me.
“Get out! Out of my car! Out of my life!” I screamed.
He begged me to just listen to him, to try and understand why he’d done it. I didn’t need to listen. This time, I knew exactly why he’d done it. Wheels spinning, I backed the car out blindly, driving so fast, I skidded around the corner. “Please calm down, Irene,” Verlan whined. But I drove faster onto Marilyn Parkway. “Just stop somewhere before you kill us!” he demanded.
I came very close to giving into my rage and deadly impulses, to driving head-on into the semitruck coming toward us and thereby ending it for us both, forever. But I finally pulled into an abandoned gas station instead, too blinded by tears to drive any farther. Verlan turned off the car and tried to force me into his arms. I fought and screamed, pushing him away.
“Irene, I love you. You’ve got to understand. I love you!”
Hissing as I spoke, I gritted my teeth. “If this is love, for God’s sake, Verlan, don’t love me one minute longer!”
He let me rage at him for several minutes until I eventually wound down, exhausted. Then he told me, “I have your interest at heart, Irene. Believe me, I love you.”
I felt so numb. My head was throbbing like crazy as I sat in silence, collecting my thoughts. “Verlan, I’m going to tell you one final time how I feel. Don’t you say a word until I’m through. You’ve ruined my life. I married you, thinking you could exalt me. You promised if I obeyed you, I’d one day be a goddess. I’ve done everything you told me to, and look at me. I’ve become a devil!
“I was a beautiful green plant when you married me, but you neglected me! All I ever wanted, all I ever asked was to be watered with your love. I never asked you for money. I took whatever you gave me, but even that became less and less. The beautiful green plant wilted, withered, and finally dried up completely. Then one day, you happen to come along and see that there’s nothing left of the plant except for one small sprig. So you say, ‘Oh my, I’ve got to save it!’ ” My voice cracked then, but I shed no tears. I went on. “You say, ‘I’ll revive the plant.’ So you piss on it!
“That’s how it is, Verlan. It’s too late. I’ve been threatened with Hell for so many years, I’m not afraid anymore. No one can send me to Hell, because I’m already there.”
I paused, so he tried to kiss me. But I pushed him away.
“I knew things were bad, but not that bad,” he said. “Irene, what you’ve got is a broken heart. And I can fix that if you’ll give me another chance.”
“No, Verlan, it’s too late.”
“I can mend it, glue the pieces back together again—”
“There are no pieces.”
“Ah, come on! Not even little tiny ones?”
“No. Not even dust.”
VERLAN WENT TO GREAT LENGTHS to try and get me back into his fold. He even tricked me into going on a trip to Europe with him and my oldest son, André. I’d always wanted to see Europe, and I had a wonderful time on the trip. While we toured those sixteen countries and met so many kind and loving people, I kept remembering how Joel taught us that God would send them all to Hell. I wondered how it was that God favored only our small group in Mexico.
Throughout the trip, Verlan and I shared no intimacy, not even holding hands (although he tried many times). I slept alone each night while André shared a bed with his father. Verlan mourned the whole time about my hard-heartedness, especially since he was spending so much money to try and soften me up. I felt sorry for him, but not sorry enough to trust him again with my heart.
When we arrived in San Diego, all twelve of our other children came to meet us, and we took our first and last family photo. It was July 3, 1978, twenty-five years to the day after Charlotte, Verlan, and I hid under some trees in Memory Grove and she placed my hand in his “for time and all eternity.”
That evening, after our photo shoot, Verlan took us to a Mexican restaurant, where all fifteen of us sat at one long table. This was the only time we’d ever gone out to eat together as a complete family. It may have been the only time we all sat down to a meal together anywhere. I watched the people seated around us, smiling and staring at such a large family. I was proud, but at the same time sad. I knew what they didn’t: In many ways, this was just an illusion.
I SPENT THE NEXT THREE years out in the world—away from Verlan and his other wives, away from almost all polygamist influences. Becky and her husband, Garlin, tried to help me and my kids acclimate to life outside our little fundamentalist enclave. Becky was one of my mother’s children to have completely avoided polygamy. She was a free thinker who gave up on organized religion altogether, but she lived my nightmare as a child and knew from where and what I was coming. She had a great deal of compassion for me.
Since I was now free from Verlan and my children were all of school age, I suddenly had time for myself. Considering I’d only graduated ninth grade, I seldom gave my educational ambitions any serious thought. But now I felt compelled to get further schooling. I enrolled in several classes at the community college in Las Vegas. I loved the creative writing, public speaking, and self-awareness courses. As a result of these classes and the place in which I found myself in life, I began to wonder if I might have something important to say. It was the birth of a dream I would nurture for many years—to one day write and talk to people about my experiences living in plural marriage.
My hunger for knowledge led me to read avidly. I consumed four or five books a week in the areas of psychology, philosophy, biography, self-help, and world religions. And as my mind expanded, I experienced something I would never have expected: anger. As a fundamentalist Mormon woman, I’d been admonished not to “delve into the mysteries” or listen to others’ counsel. We were to believe and follow the narrow edicts of our husbands, our teachers, and our leaders—period. We weren’t to bother ourselves with anything else.
Heber C. Kimball, First Councilor to Brigham Young, once stated, “Learn to do as you are told, . . . if you are told by your leader to do a thing, do it. None of your business whether it is right or wrong.” (Journal of Discourses, Vol. 6) When I began to explore outside my faith, I saw why they’d gone to such lengths to keep us ignorant. There were so many other ways to think about things, some of them quite persuasive. A part of me wanted to find out about them all, as frightening as it was.
Eventually, though, the fear began to win out. Life on the outside proved to be just plain uncomfortable. I felt like a zoo animal let loose in the wild. I had no job skills, so we lived off welfare. When the children told Verlan how well we were eating and that we had food stamps and welfare, he was furious. He actually wrote a letter
to the welfare department telling them he was supporting me and I had no right to be in their system. He said he had always supported me and was willing to continue if I came back to the home I’d abandoned in Mexico. I trembled when they called me in to interrogate me and read me Verlan’s letter. They wanted an explanation, and I tearfully splattered polygamy all over the social worker’s desk. Seeing my hopeless plight, they decided I was more than qualified for their help.
There were many other vexations as well. A couple of men I met wanted to date me, but I turned them down because I was sure they’d lose interest as soon as they found out I had so many children, seven of whom still lived at home with me. Frankly, I think I was scared of going on a date at that point. It was just too contrary to my religious training and my past way of life.
Everything was different. The variety among the people and ideas I encountered was itself a huge shift from my prior life, in which everyone thought and acted the same way, and believed almost exactly the same things. And then there was my constant doubt and guilt over the choices I made to leave Verlan and the church. Overcoming forty-plus years of indoctrination is a monumental task, no matter how much the bottom seems to have dropped out of your belief system. To fuel the guilt, I could always fall back on that handy mind-bender with which our early prophets encouraged us: plural marriage is a high calling that damns more people than it saves. That is, fallible people fail polygamy, but polygamy itself is infallible.
As hard as all this was for me, it may have been even harder for my kids. I had at least lived in the United States before, but all my kids ever knew was life within our various church colonies down in Mexico and Central America. The culture and people they encountered in Las Vegas and later in McKinleyville, California (when we followed Becky and her husband there to live in a rental house they purchased), was totally foreign to them. This was highlighted for me when I enrolled them in American public schools for the first time.
Shattered Dreams Page 37
