My Story (18 page)

I begged and I begged. But Mitchell was having none of it. Both of us were going to stay up in the camp.

“No, Immanuel. I’m not. I’m not going to do it anymore!” Barzee shot back.

It took a lot more pushing, but eventually Mitchell was forced to give in.

Mitchell made me scrape off the nail polish that Mary Katherine had painted on my toes a few days before I had been captured. There wasn’t much left, but he didn’t want to take any chances. While I scraped the last of the blue polish off, he and Barzee worked together to sew veils that could be buttoned onto the sides of our headdresses. The veils were made of thick, white material and reached from just below our eyes to halfway down our necks, leaving very little of our faces exposed. After they were finished, Mitchell made me put the veil on so he could inspect me. Nodding in approval, he turned and started down the hill.

We made our way down the side of the mountain until we got to the trail, then turned west and started hiking down the canyon. Mitchell led the way, his two green sacks tied across his back. I followed immediately behind him. Barzee walked right behind me. My captors were never more than a few feet away. So close that I could smell them. So close that I could always hear them breathing. So close that, even if I had gathered up the courage, I could not have run away. It was hot, the sun beating through the branches on the trees. I felt like I was suffocating, the thick veil making it very hard to breathe. The heavy robe swished around my feet, kicking up dust that stuck to my clothes. The farther down we hiked, the clearer the trail became.

Crossing over two outcroppings of fractured rocks, Mitchell suddenly turned to the right. “Stay!” he commanded. Climbing to the top of a dirt embankment, he pushed a couple branches out of the way, revealing the “shoe tree.” Hidden in a hole in the tree was a pair of sandals for him and a pair for Barzee. (Prophets didn’t wander around in hiking boots, don’t you know. They had to wear sandals to match their robes.) He and Barzee put on their prophet shoes, then he gave me Barzee’s hiking boots and commanded me to put them on. Hiding his boots in the hollow tree, he covered the opening with the rotten sticks and we headed down again.

The canyon began to open up and the trail became well used and clear. Soon it intersected with the main path that ran along the foothills at the bottom of the canyon. This was Dry Creek, a very popular jogging and biking trail. We turned left and kept on walking. Parts of Salt Lake City came into view. My heart jumped in my throat. I was less than a mile from my home! Around a bend in the trail, a jogger emerged, running right toward me.
Look at me!
I was screaming in my mind.
Look at me! Don’t you recognize me? Don’t you know who I am?
Of course he didn’t. He could only see my eyes. To him, we were just a couple of odd ducks dressed in old gray robes and veils. Not the kind of thing one expected to see on the mountain trail, but the scene didn’t scream kidnapping! by any means.

The jogger drew closer. I stared at him, never taking my eyes off his face.
Look at me!
I kept praying in my head.
Think about what you’re seeing! How many times have you seen this? Two women walking on a trail in Salt Lake City, their faces covered with veils. Look at me. Think about this! Look into my eyes!

The jogger passed within a few feet of me then moved on, his attention always focused on the trail.

I felt myself deflate, the hope seeping out of my body.

A biker then emerged a little farther down the trail.
Look at me!
I screamed in my mind again. But he didn’t. He kept his head down. The only time he even seemed to notice me was when he glanced up to maneuver his bike around us as he passed. He was so close I could have touched him as he rode by. But of course he didn’t recognize me. I was nothing but a walking sheet and two eyes above a veil.

Up till that point, I’d had this fantasy that someone was going to see me and immediately scream out my name. Someone was going to rescue me. A cop was going to recognize me and come over and arrest Mitchell without me even saying anything. But I realized now that wasn’t going to happen. No one was going to recognize me. No one was going to stop and talk to me. I might as well have been chained up back at camp as walking around, hidden underneath the veil.

As I looked at my captors, it hit me. Our appearance—the robes, Mitchell’s wild beard, the veils—invited distance and mistrust. It demanded that we be given a wide berth. Everything about us begged to be ignored.

A little less than half a mile later, the trail broke into the open. The University of Utah campus lay before us. The hospitals and medical center were on our left. Downtown Salt Lake City was on our right. The Jewish Center was in front of us. We hiked through the center’s parking lot toward the bus stop, where we caught the first bus and rode it downtown to 400 South. Climbing off the bus, I felt ridiculous. People acted like we were radioactive, staying as far away from us as possible. I shook with frustration. I was back in the city! This was my home. Didn’t anyone recognize me? Didn’t anyone remember all the posters with my face?

Mitchell stopped and leaned toward me as the bus pulled away. “I will kill you,” he sneered as he stared into my eyes. “Remember that, Esther. I will kill your entire family! Your mom. Your dad. Your brothers and little sister. I will kill them all, slicing them with my knife. I will kill them if you try to get away.”

Barzee moved so she could whisper in my ear. “He will do it!” she hissed. “You can’t stop him. He is Immanuel.”

They waited for me to acknowledge them.

Mitchell leaned forward once again. “I will chain you up forever if you don’t do
everything
I say.”

I slowly nodded. The threat was very clear.

Mitchell stared at me, trying to decide if he believed me. Satisfied, he seemed to smile. “All right then,” he said. “The first thing we need to do is get some beer.”

He led us to a small grocery store. Walking in, he seemed to know exactly where to go. He walked up and down the aisles, pausing to shove food into his bags. Crackers. Blocks of cheese. Cans of tuna. Cookies and beef jerky. Then he went to the beer cooler and shoved in a couple six-packs of Heineken. His sacks were almost full. I was amazed at how brazen he was about it. My heart was racing—I had never shoplifted before—but clearly Mitchell was not afraid. Grabbing a head of lettuce and a bottle of pickles, he walked up to the checkout counter. Barzee and I followed, never saying anything.

The young man behind the counter seemed to recognize Mitchell. He was a sketchy-looking character. Dyed black-and-purple hair. White skin. Thin as a skeleton. He glanced at the stuffed bags. If he knew that Mitchell had just shoved a bunch of food into his sacks—and he had to have known—he didn’t say anything. In fact, he didn’t even run the bottle of pickles across the scanner. The head of lettuce was the only thing he rang up. So this is how it works, I thought. Later, he would be Mitchell’s source of marijuana—another step in my journey to descend below all things—but for now he was just a “generous” cashier who was willing to let Mitchell shove a lot of food into his bags. He and Mitchell exchanged some talk about a party that was going on that night and then we left.

Mitchell quickly led us toward a public restroom a block or so down the street. When we got there, he went in to make sure it was deserted, then pulled me inside. The restroom was dark and depressing, with black walls and a dark-green ceiling. It smelled of urine and rotting garbage—the perfect place to get me drunk. He forced me to drink a couple of beers. How can anyone drink this stuff for pleasure? I remember thinking as I forced the beer down. I almost gagged, coming very close to throwing up.

With a couple of beers inside us, it was time to get the real party going. Mitchell led us to the nearest liquor store. He went in while Barzee and I waited on the sidewalk. We must have looked ridiculous.
Nothing going on here, you know. Just the prophet’s women hanging outside the liquor store while he goes in to get some rum.

I screamed inside my mind at everyone who passed.
Look at me! Look at my eyes. Don’t any of you recognize me?
But everyone was more than happy to ignore us and walk by.

Still, part of me was elated at being in the city. I was away from the camp. I was out in public. Anything was better than being cabled to trees!

Mitchell came out with his purchases stuffed in a bag. “We’re heading down to Liberty Park,” he said. “Going to drink a little rum and Coke.”

We walked down to the park, where Mitchell began to survey his surroundings, looking for anyone he might know. While he checked things out, I sat on a nearby swing and started swaying gently back and forth. Mitchell moved closer to me. Barzee followed, moving to my other side. So there I swung, Barzee on one side and Mitchell on the other. I looked around at the children who were playing all around me. You are so lucky! I thought. A few of them seemed to glance at me. All of them were afraid.

Mitchell didn’t like being around the other people. “Follow me,” he said.

Walking toward the picnic tables, we crossed a small water park with spouting geysers of water coming out of the ground. I took off my shoes and started walking barefoot through the spouts of water, the cool spray upon my feet.

I am alive, but I’m not living, I remember thinking as I walked. I am the living dead. I am nothing but a shell.

I closed my eyes and imagined the water pulling me away, helping me to run away from Mitchell and Barzee forever. I felt the water running over my toes as it moved toward the drains. For a moment, I imagined it sucking the last of my spirit with it, washing my soul away. I wanted desperately to escape, to melt away with the rushing water, never to be seen again. I was a shell already. Why not let my spirit go? Why not let my soul escape into the nothingness that lay wherever the water went? Why not let my soul depart and leave my empty body to go through the motions of living in this world?

Mitchell and Barzee stood at the edge of the water park and watched me. I lifted my face toward the sky, wishing I could feel the sun upon my cheeks. I drifted back in time. I was with my family. I felt their love around me. I felt the peace of being in my home. I felt the comfort of an earlier day and time. Before Mitchell. Before the pain. Before everything that had left my empty body standing in the middle of the water park.

Thinking of my family, I resolved again:
Whatever it takes to survive this. Whatever it takes to live.

Mitchell pulled me back to this world. “Esther!” he called impatiently. “Come on over here!”

I immediately followed.

He led us toward the nearest picnic table. A family that was close by quickly gathered up their things and moved on. Mitchell took out the rum and Coke and three plastic red cups, pouring us all a drink. And that’s how we spent the afternoon. Pretty soon I thought I was going to be sick, and Mitchell finally quit pouring me any more. But he and Barzee kept on drinking, finishing the bottle off.

When the rum was gone, it was time to move on. We walked into the Hard Rock Café to use the lavatory. Because it was a public bathroom and people were all around, Mitchell couldn’t follow me into the women’s room. But Barzee could and she always stayed very close. Slipping into a stall, I had an idea. Part of my veil had been attached with a safety pin. Quickly, I unsnapped it and started scratching the word “help” into the paint on the door of my stall. My foolish hope was that someone would use the stall immediately after me, see the cry for help, realize it was me, and call the police.

It didn’t work out.

Mitchell decided it was time to head back to our camp. We started making our way east, toward the trails. Getting closer to the university, he remembered that Daniel, the generous grocery clerk, had told him about a party that was going on that night. Realizing we were close to the location of the party, he decided we would go. By now I was exhausted. It was late and already growing dark. I hadn’t eaten much of anything all day, and the rum was making me feel very drowsy and run-down. I could tell that Barzee didn’t want to go to the party either, but she didn’t object. She knew she was standing on thin ice and she was careful not to mess up Mitchell’s fun.

We found the party house. It was a small brick and stucco structure in an old part of the city, surrounded by huge trees and other small homes set back from the road. By then it was dark, but the house was well lit. And there were lots of people. I mean
lots
of people. Lots of music. Lots of red plastic Solo cups. Lots of beer.

We walked into the house. It was literally body-to-body. There were people everywhere. It was heat and smoke and sweat. Laughter and shouting. Drinking. Smoking. Kissing. And lots of other things I had never imagined before. Things I
couldn’t
have imagined. They were beyond my universe. It terrified me to see the underbelly of such a world. Then I had the most horrifying thought of all. Mitchell loved to be the big man, the man with all the answers and the power. What if he started passing me around? What if he shared me with the other men in the room? Maybe even the other women? I pressed against the wall, trying to make myself invisible. And for the first time, I was grateful to have my face covered with the veil.

Ever anxious to be the center of attention, Mitchell moved to the middle of the room and started preaching. Yes, he was a prophet, he told the people who were close enough to hear, but even God ate and drank among the sinners and he was happy to be among the lesser people of the world.

While Mitchell preached, I looked over to see the young man from the grocery store standing next to me. I reached up to lift my veil a little higher on my face. The young man studied me, then moved a little closer. “You have beautiful eyes,” he said.

I wanted to faint. No one had ever said anything like that to me before. I realized that he was—I couldn’t think of the phrase—coming on to me. I was shocked. For a moment, I wondered if he would have said what he did if he knew that I was only fourteen years old. Judging from some of the things that were going on around me, I don’t think he would have cared. I backed away from him, or at least I tried, but I was already pushed against the wall. He leaned in to me again and started to say something when Mitchell suddenly appeared at my side, anxious to keep me under his control.