My Story (9 page)

He was having none of it. “We’re man and wife. It’s an important part of the relationship. If you’re sick or something maybe we won’t do it, but otherwise, plan on it.”

Throughout all of these conversations, Barzee never intervened to save me. She never tried to soften the pain I endured in any way. I find that interesting. She is a very jealous person. She didn’t want to share her husband. But at the same time, she believed in him and allowed herself to be manipulated. Who was she to say that it was a bad idea to steal a fourteen-year-old girl from her bed, take her up to the mountains, cable her to a tree, and rape her every day? God had spoken. Her husband acted. Apparently, it sounded like a good plan to her.

Throughout the day, Mitchell talked. And talked. It seemed he never would shut up.

“You know, Shearjashub, you are a
very
lucky girl,” he would say. “I have taken you out of the world and saved you. God has chosen you. You are so blessed!”

I didn’t feel very lucky.

He went on (and on!) to explain.

The end of the world was coming. Maybe not that month, or that year, but it was coming soon. Maybe fifteen years, at the outside. (I guess he didn’t realize that I felt like my world had already come to an end.) In preparation for the end of the world, God had called him into the wilderness. God had purged and cleansed him. He was now a clean and holy vessel. (As I looked at his dirty clothes, stringy beard, and small black eyes, the words
clean
and
holy
didn’t come to mind.) As part of God’s plan, before the end of the world, the Lord had commanded him to take seven wives. All of them had to be young girls. All of them virgins (of course)! And yes, I was the lucky one. I was the first. But have no fear, the day would soon come when all of his new wives would truly love him. We would have children with him. We would be so happy. And when the time was right, all of us would go out and testify to the world that he was the Immanuel. We would tell of his greatness and holiness. We would testify that he was indeed the holy one, the chosen vessel from God. Then we would stand against the authorities and beg for Mitchell’s life. By then, the Antichrist (yeah, who else) would have come and conquered the world. The evil Antichrist would sit among the holy of holies in the temple. After taking the house of God, the Antichrist would claim it for his throne, sitting upon it as he ruled the world with blood and war and horror.

Having been called out of the wilderness with his seven wives and their children, Immanuel would stand before the world in all his glory, ready to reclaim the throne of righteousness for God.

Now, I was just a little girl, and not wise to the ways of the world, but all of this seemed unlikely to me.

Yet all day long he talked. And talked. And talked. Over the coming months, he would continue to talk and talk. Eventually, I’d heard it all so many times that even now I can remember it almost word for word. I can hear his voice in my mind, the structure of his phrases, his intonations and verbal tics. I can remember all of the scriptures that he quoted. His explanation of how God had taken him and made him clean by telling him and Barzee to get rid of their home and live in their RV, then to sell their RV and live in a small trailer, then to sell the trailer and everything else that they owned. Eventually, they ended up hitchhiking around the country with nothing but a handcart and the packs on their backs. Modern-day pioneers, Mitchell and Barzee and their god against the world.

Of course, I knew it was ridiculous. He was a dirty old man who wanted a bunch of young girls for his wives. That’s the only thing he cared about. Sex and drugs and alcohol. That was the only thing this was about. He could do all of the preaching that he wanted, but there was never any doubt in my mind. He was an evil man who had taken me and held me captive. He threatened to kill me. He raped me every day. He threatened to kill my family.

That seemed to take God out of the equation for me.

*

Sometime that afternoon, Mitchell explained that from the first time he had seen me, he knew I was the one. He had chosen me. God intended us to be together. He then explained how he had started his preparations to take me, how he had implemented a plan to talk to my parents. Get into my home. Gather up the needed supplies. Convince Barzee it was finally time for him to take a second wife. Prepare their camp way up on the mountain, where he could hide me. All of it was well planned. And certainly it was justified. He
had
to kidnap me to save me from all of the wickedness in the world. The wickedness of my church. He had to save me from it all. Everyone around me, the entire world, was carnal and sensual and devilish. Which was kind of ironic news, coming from a naked man standing in the middle of the forest with his “new wife” cabled to the trees.

Mostly, I just cried through it all. It was just so humiliating. So painful and so crazy.

I remember thinking my life was over. I’d never make it back home. I’d never see my family. I’d never grow up and go to high school. I’d never date or have a boyfriend. I’d never play my harp again. Never see any of my friends. No high school football games or prom. I’d never go to college. I’d never learn anything more than what I already knew. I’d never get married—really married—to someone I loved. I’d never be free or happy. I’d never know anything beyond the cable and the trees.

I don’t remember saying anything out loud, but I must have mumbled something and he heard me. “You’re worried about going to college,” he sneered. It obviously made him angry I wasn’t grateful. He seemed to grow a bit darker, a cloud passing in front of his face. “You’re in the Lord’s university now.” His voice was sharp and indignant. “He will teach you what you need to know. You will have a degree from God, a degree that is higher than any the world is going to give you.”

I knew all of it was brainless junk. But at that point, all I could do was nod. I was starting to grow a shell, the beginning of my defensive mechanism. Soon I would be like a hardboiled egg. On the outside, he could roll me whatever way he pleased, but I was only going through the motions. I was only being rolled. Nodding my head, I never argued.

Whatever it takes to survive, I thought.

Later on that afternoon, we sat in silence for a while. “Shearjashub is your name,” he said after a rare moment of silence.

I looked at him, dumbfounded. “What?” I answered. Then I remembered he had called me that a couple of times the day before.

“Your name is Shearjashub,” he said again. “He was the first son of Isaiah.”

I stared at him. “You’re giving me a man’s name?”

“It means
a remnant will return
.”

I didn’t care what it meant; I thought it was completely stupid. I was going to be called by a man’s name. Some unknown offspring of Isaiah. I wondered again if he even knew my real name. “My name is Elizabeth Smart,” I said.

“Your name is now Shearjashub.”

I thought for a while. This was terribly distressing. I realized it was nothing but another of his manipulations, another way to cut me off, another way to separate me from my previous life. I thought for a long time. “Can I choose a middle name?” I asked him.

Mitchell looked at me.

“You and Hephzibah have middle names,” I continued. “You’re Immanuel David Isaiah. She is Hephzibah Elladah Isaiah. I’m just Shearjashub Isaiah. I would like a middle name too.”

He hesitated. “All right,” he finally said. “You can choose a middle name.” He seemed kind of happy. Maybe I was starting to get it now.

I thought in silence. It was hot. My bare skin was dry and dirty. I heard a dull sound way above me—an airplane or something else? I turned back to look at him. “I want my middle name to be Elizabeth.”

His smile turned instantly into a frown. “No! Not Elizabeth. Nothing like that! Not Elizabeth. And not Ann…”

Ann! That was my
real
middle name. He
did
know who I was!

“You can choose your middle name, but it can’t be anything like your old name,” he instructed.

It was my turn to be disappointed. He watched me with suspicion as I thought. It seemed he could almost read my mind. “Your middle name has to be from the Old Testament,” he then added.

“Anna was a prophetess in the Bible.”

“It will not be Anna!” he commanded for the final time. He was getting angry with me now. Impatient. Hadn’t he been kind enough already? Did I really want to test him? His anger was always boiling, getting ready to burst through.

I knew that I had pressed as far as I could.

They had a Bible in the camp and I walked over to pick it up. Barzee watched me. She was curious to see what I would do.

Thumbing through the Bible, I kept considering. I wanted my new middle name to start with an “E.” I wanted it to have some connection, even if just a tiny one, to my real name. I let the pages slide through my fingers. One of my heroes in the Old Testament was a queen named Esther. She was strong. She was courageous. I thought about it for a moment. It was a big decision, after all, choosing a new name for my new life. Laying the Bible down, I said, “I want my middle name to be Esther.”

Mitchell seemed to scowl as he thought, trying to find a reason to disagree. He glanced toward Barzee, seeing if she had some kind of objection that he hadn’t thought about. If she did, she didn’t show it. “Okay,” he said.

“I want you to call me Esther. Not Shearjashub. Esther is a girl’s name. It’s from the Bible. Will you call me that now?”

He reluctantly agreed. And for a while they did. But after a few months, they went back to Shearjashub. I don’t know why. They just did.

But for a short time, I had a tiny victory. Did it make me feel any better? Not really. Did it bring me any hope that I might be able to manipulate my situation? Again, not really. It was a victory, but such a hollow one; it didn’t change a lot of how I felt.

My captors and I were sitting in the tarped area outside the tent. It was the third day since I’d been taken. The sun was starting to drop toward the horizon. Soon it would be cool. Barzee was standing near the containers with the food. In a few minutes, it would be time to eat. Food was the last thing that I wanted. My stomach was always tied in knots. The trees provided shade, but it was June, and the sun was burning through the leaves. There was no breeze. We had little water and I was thirsty. Mitchell was reading from the Book of Immanuel, the fascinating tome that he had written. I was learning more about his church, the Church of the First Born in the Last Days, and how he was the prophet of the world. Then he started reading scripture. When he talked of God, it was the creepiest thing you can imagine; the words of God coming from the face of the devil. It was the scariest thing I had ever seen.

I shifted on the bucket. It was early afternoon and the day was very calm. I was dressed in my robe. It was already filthy and only getting worse. Though it’d only been three days, it already seemed like years. I looked up at the sky as the sound of an airplane filtered through the trees. It seemed there were a lot of them now. I could hear them almost constantly. I searched for the aircraft through a break in the leaves but it was too high to be seen. Way too high to see me. A couple of times that morning some helicopters had flown over the ridge, but none of them had been very close. At least, I didn’t think they were, although it was hard to tell for certain as the sound of their rotors reverberated up and down the canyon walls. Although it was terribly disappointing that none of them came close enough to see me, at least I knew that they were out there looking.

I pulled against the steel cable that held me.
If I could just get free! If I could run into an opening! If I could signal them in some way!

The sun was high now, almost at its apex in the sky. Hot. Dry. I felt like I was going to die of thirst. We were getting very low on water. A few cups was all that remained in the plastic containers. I was sitting in my usual place, on the bucket by my tiny sapling, when I heard it. Far away. So far away. My heart instantly jumped into my throat.

Mitchell heard it too. He fell silent. His eyes grew wild in fear and anger, his face growing hard as stone. Barzee was sitting right beside him. She didn’t seem to hear. Mitchell reached out and grabbed her shoulder, commanding her to hold very still.

Elizabeth
…

The sound drifted through the trees.

Elizabeth
…

The voice was faint as a breeze, soft as a whisper in the night. I strained my ears to hear it, praying it would come again.

Nothing.

I held my breath.

Nothing.

Mitchell slowly stood.

I continued straining.

Elizabeth
…

It was drifting through the trees from the bottom of the canyon. It was so faint. So far away. I wondered if I had imagined it. But I know that it was real. And Mitchell knew it too.

I thought I had recognized my uncle’s voice. I wanted to scream! I wanted to cry! I wanted to jump up and down and wave my arms. I wanted to yell and shriek.

Mitchell moved toward me like an animal on the attack. He knelt down right beside me, his face just a few inches from my own. “I have my knife.” His breath was hot and foul. “One tiny peep, and you know what I will do.”

I stared at him in terror. Yes, I knew.

“If you make a sound, I’ll tape your mouth shut.”

I glanced in fear toward the bottom of the canyon, tears of frustration burning my eyes.

Elizabeth
…

The sound drifted through the trees again.

“If he comes into our camp, if he even gets close, I’m going to kill him,” Mitchell sneered. “Do you understand that? If you call him and he hears you, if he comes up here, I’m going to stick him with my knife! He’s alone. He won’t be ready. If you call out and he finds us, I will kill him right here and now. So you better pray he doesn’t find you unless you want him dead!”

I turned in terror toward the sound of the voice. I couldn’t hear it any longer. I listened, tilting my head to the side. Yes … yes … there it was again. Was it really my uncle David? I couldn’t tell for sure. I peered through the trees. The mountain oaks were thick with leaves. I found a gap in the branches and looked down the side of the canyon. It was much too steep and thick with trees to see more than a few yards. I could look across the canyon at the mountain on the other side, but I could not see anything when I looked down. None of us had set so much as a foot outside of the camp and I had no idea what was down there. I didn’t know how far down it was to the bottom. I didn’t know if there was a trail, a road, a stream?