Authors: Elissa Wall
One advantage of Kassandra’s position was that she had access to a car and finances, and we began escaping to St. George, a city forty miles away, on secret shopping trips. I felt grown-up as Kassandra and I wandered through stores and shared lunch at a restaurant. Many times we’d take Mother, Caleb, Sherrie, and Ally along. Of course, we knew we were defying the rules by not bringing along a priesthood man as our escort, but a tagalong would have spoiled the adventure. However, it was not all fun and games. We ran the risk of getting into serious trouble. All it would have taken was a suspicious member of the FLDS to tell on us for being out unescorted.
When trips to St. George were not possible, sometimes we would quietly borrow ATVs or horses from people we knew and spend time out in the vast expanses of open desert around Short Creek’s twin towns. In those fleeting moments, it felt like we were free to do whatever we wanted, like we were living on the edge and challenging the expected codes of conduct.
Though these jaunts from the twin towns were exciting, we had to be on the lookout for the police wherever we went. It was widely known that the local police squad was composed almost entirely of FLDS members, who many believed that in addition to purportedly enforcing state and local laws also used their authority to enforce the directives of the priesthood. Even though we were doing nothing to break the laws of the land, our behavior went against the laws of the church and we feared religious retribution far more than anything else.
While the local police didn’t often catch us on our excursions, my brother Caleb wasn’t so lucky. With Brad in Salt Lake, Uncle Fred and his family’s focus had turned to my twelve-year-old brother, who, like Brad, was having difficulties in the Jessop house. Already he’d been set up by some of Uncle Fred’s sons when they convinced him to return a video of a community play that they’d taken out of Fred’s office without permission. As a new kid in the home, Caleb accepted their instructions without a second thought, but when one of Uncle Fred’s wives saw him in the office returning the tape, she immediately assumed that Caleb was stealing money from Uncle Fred and called the police.
I was in the room when they arrived, handcuffed my twelve-year-old brother, and put him in the patrol car. I screamed at them to leave him alone, but they drove off in the direction of the town meeting hall. Uncle Fred was there attending one of the Friday-night socials he oversaw. My brother was dragged before the entire gathering by the police and placed before Uncle Fred. Outwardly annoyed that the officers had humiliated him by alerting the community to a private family issue, Fred instructed the officers to take Caleb home, where he would be dealt with later.
Incidents like this gave me the sinking feeling that Caleb would not last at the Jessop house for much longer. He had also started attending Uncle Fred’s private school that year and was not adjusting well. I could see that without his brothers, he felt completely alone, forced to cope with his questions about the church and its teachings on his own. Many of the older boys in Fred’s house took it upon themselves to try to keep him in line. He refused to be broken, and sure enough, about six months after Brad’s departure, Mom frantically woke me up in the middle of the night, saying, “I think I heard something downstairs. I think Caleb is leaving.”
“What?” I asked groggily, wiping the sleep from my eyes. “Caleb’s going where?”
“I think he’s trying to leave the house. You have to go and stop him.”
Instantly I leapt out of bed and ran downstairs. I had been left behind by all of my older brothers, but I couldn’t stand to lose a younger one. He was the only brother remaining in my life whom I was allowed to speak to. My heart pounded in my chest as I got to his room to find it empty. I sprinted outside, arriving at the driveway only to see a car speeding away from the house. Something in me knew it was Brad. He had come to rescue Caleb, but they had forgotten me.
In the darkness of the chilly night, I took off behind them, chasing after the car on foot until I couldn’t run anymore. Exhausted, I put my hands on my knees and stood there gasping for air. As I slowly returned to the house, my heart sank in my chest. I had drawn strength from my recent closeness with Brad and Caleb. Although Brad and Caleb were both young, I’d still felt a certain sense of protection with them in the house. They were my brothers and they cared about me. They helped me through things. I had become so isolated from the other family members that without their companionship, I couldn’t imagine how I could continue. I was all alone to help Mom with Sherrie and Ally.
Losing her two remaining sons proved incredibly difficult for Mom. Devastated, she talked to them both on the phone and pleaded with them to return. She told them that she needed them and that they’d abandoned her. But they felt abandoned too, and they begged her to come back to Salt Lake and take care of them. When she said she couldn’t, they accused her of choosing her religion over them. Her heart was torn in two, but the reality was apparent: her faith required that she choose the prophet and religion over everything else. It didn’t matter how much she loved us, missed us, or wanted us by her side. She could not forsake her duty to the prophet and priesthood.
I couldn’t understand how my mother could make such a choice. For me, it seemed clear that she should be with Dad and her children. In many ways the situation with Brad and Caleb mirrored what had happened with Justin and Jacob, and I was still upset with her for having left them in Salt Lake City with my father. But as time went on and I experienced the truth of life at Uncle Fred’s, I was glad they’d never had to endure it. Still, I missed them terribly.
As it turned out, things weren’t much easier for Justin and Jacob in Salt Lake. The crushing pain Dad suffered after having his family taken from him and given to another man had almost destroyed him. But instead of reaching out to the twins and trying to heal their pain together, it seemed like he became immersed in trying to understand why Warren and Uncle Rulon had removed us and in taking the steps they deemed necessary in order to repent.
Justin and Jacob still didn’t have the father we had grown up with, and they were sent again into reform, this time beginning in Idaho which was harder than before. For months they bounced around from one reform home to another, and in each they were subjected to harsh work and terrible living conditions and forced to fend for themselves. They were subjected to this to deepen their faith, but it only made them more resentful toward the priesthood. When it was clear that they would not conform, they were sent back to Dad’s house in Salt Lake.
Upon their return, the tension with Dad continued, and it didn’t take long for similar divides to open up between Dad, Brad, and Caleb. While I imagined all of them happy with Dad at home, they too struggled to put pieces of the family together and survive in a shattered household. Since Dad and Brad had left issues unresolved between them before our parting, their relationship remained strained. Being back at home in Salt Lake reopened the wounds of the past and ultimately resulted in Brad entering foster care. Much of the problem stemmed from the emotional toll that the last few years had taken on Dad. He must have been overwhelmed. Just a few days after we had been commanded to leave him, Mother Laura was removed from his home as well. She was nine months pregnant at the time and immediately became the fourth wife of Fred Lindsay of Hildale, giving birth to Dad’s son a few days following the wedding. Sadly, Dad’s new son would never have the chance to know his biological father. According to priesthood law, Laura and her sons now belonged to Fred Lindsay.
With Laura’s children as with us, Dad had no visitation rights. While rights could be awarded by the courts, the FLDS typically hold the courts and the laws of men in contempt. Going to court to address problems is seen as a clear betrayal of the priesthood, and court orders are routinely disobeyed. Like Sharon and Laura, Mother Audrey had also been directed to leave, but she bravely refused and remained in the home by my father’s side.
R
obbed of almost all my familial support, I receded even further into myself, taking refuge in my time with Kassandra, which thanks to Warren’s mandates for Rulon’s wives became less and less frequent. The weeks and months passed slowly until one day more than a year after my arrival at the Jessop house, when everything ground to a sudden halt. That was the day that changed everything for me—the day when Fred Jessop announced to the house that the prophet had a revelation that centered on me—a revelation about marriage.
In retrospect, I can see that Uncle Fred had been dropping hints for some time, but I was fourteen. I hadn’t understood the true implication of his words and brushed them off as simple signs of encouragement. It had started in the early spring of 2001, while Mom was in Canada visiting two of my sisters. She’d hitched a ride with another church member heading to the community up there, leaving me on my own to cook Friday’s lunch. Because of the amount of work it took to prepare a meal for fifty family members, I’d gotten up extra early to start cooking. People of the FLDS commonly believe that God is an early riser, so we had breakfast at 5:30
A.M
, and all of our meals were scheduled for a specific time each day. It was best to get to each meal for the blessing and in line early for the food so that you could eat before the tables were cleared and the dishes had to be done.
When the hour for lunch rolled around, I enthusiastically announced over the intercom that “lunch is served” and waited anxiously in the dining room for the family to start arriving. As people came in, I walked over to the enormous windows, which offered an impressive view of the town with a small patch of our garden in the foreground, and stood for a moment basking in the generous light of the day, feeling a sense of pride and accomplishment for having prepared such a large meal all on my own. At the age of fourteen, I had pulled off the task without complaining or asking for help.
As the mothers filed in, I could tell they were impressed, but never did I expect any overt recognition. Surprisingly, Mother Katherine told me how pleased she was and that I had done an “amazing job.” She was one of the few other mothers who was nice to me, and I’d grown fond of her during my time at Uncle Fred’s house, enjoying her kindness and authenticity, qualities I’d always admired in my sister Michelle.
As we began eating, I overheard Mother Katherine telling Uncle Fred that I had prepared and served the beautiful meal on my own. While her intention was to call Uncle Fred’s attention to my accomplishment, I quickly sensed the undercurrent of annoyance among the other girls at the table. Their displeasure grew when Mother Katherine expressed her wish that the other girls in the house would take some responsibility like I did.
“You are going to make a man very happy someday,” Uncle Fred declared, his tone full of pride. “You will make a good wife for someone.”
It felt nice to have Fred’s approval instead of a reprimand. Even though I was only fourteen, I knew that this was the best compliment a girl could get. Becoming a wife was the ultimate goal and dream of all FLDS girls. Not certain how to respond, I giggled and continued eating my lunch. As usual, Uncle Fred’s words would invite more scorn toward me from my stepsisters, but I didn’t care. I was pleased with what I had done, and even when my annoying cousin Allen Steed showed up to grab a bite, it didn’t break my mood.
Over the past six months I’d begun to see a lot of Allen. He was a frequent volunteer at Fred’s house, taking care of the zoo, helping with odd jobs, and lending a hand where it was needed. His family lived just a few streets away, but he had begun sticking around to join the large Jessop crew for meals. It seemed that he was mainly interested in watching the many daughters. It gave me the creeps. Although I still loathed my cousin, the feeling was different now. When we had lived together at the Steed ranch, Allen had been lanky and awkward but a bully. Now he had grown stockier and his oddness made me uncomfortable.
At nineteen, he could no longer treat my siblings and me the way he had in the past. Nonetheless, there was something that just didn’t seem right about him. The other girls and I talked behind his back about how strange he was. Whenever he would come around, we would giggle and talk about how he stared at the pretty girls who flitted about the house taking care of babies or helping their mothers prepare dinner. When he spoke to me, he tried to make it seem as though he had lost his meanness, but I knew the real Allen. The truth about him might have been masked behind a bigger frame, but he was very much the same person who left me fallen in the snow, laughing loudly as he drove off to go ice-skating. In the evenings, I was always happy when some of the mothers would tell him that it was time for him to be on his way. He never seemed to pick up on the subtle and not-so-subtle cues that he’d overstayed his welcome. But as irritating as he was, Uncle Fred seemed to like him and continued to find things for him to do.
After that Friday lunch, Uncle Fred began to pay more attention to me. During the time I’d been living in his home I’d had little interaction with him aside from regular corrections, but suddenly he seemed to want to talk to me. It was just a few days after my solo debut in the kitchen that I crossed paths with him in the hallway and he stopped for a moment to chat.
“How old are you?” he asked in his usual friendly tone.
“Well,” I said, smiling, “I just had my fourteenth birthday.”
“Ah, you’re joking with me, right?”
“No, I’m fourteen,” I replied, unsure why we were having the conversation. But my confusion quickly passed when Uncle Fred chuckled, and I joined in.
A few weeks later, Mom and I were preparing another Friday lunch. Together we were running around, washing and cutting everything in the kitchen. I was standing at the sink when Uncle Fred came up behind me and put his arm around my shoulder. “Very soon, you are going to make a good wife to a man,” he said softly into my ear.