Authors: Elissa Wall
If I didn’t marry him, I’d be left with no other options. For a fourteen-year-old girl with no family and no place to live, it might as well be a death sentence. I had always been an optimistic person, but as I stared the possibility of this bleak future in the face, I realized that even I was unwilling to push the limits of hope that far. I couldn’t go to the local police; I feared they would just bring me back to Fred and report me to Warren. I contemplated going outside the community, but my fear of that evil world was overpowering. I thought back to all my mother’s stories about law-enforcement officials chasing her in the middle of the night, trying to throw her father in jail. Who knew what the evil forces on the outside might do to me if I came to them with this story?
“Do you have a wedding dress made?” Uncle Fred asked, breaking the discomfiting sound of my quiet sobs.
“No!” I announced, rising to my feet. “Even if I was getting married, I would never wear a wedding dress. And I’m not going to get married, so I don’t need a wedding dress.”
When I returned to my mother’s room, I found a draft of a letter that my mother had composed. In it, she’d begged her new husband, my new father, to be sensitive to my situation and realize that this was hard for me. She asked for a delay of two years and made it clear that if I married now, it would just create problems in the future. She’d even raised issues about Allen, explaining that he seemed to be a very immature person who didn’t appear ready for a wife and reiterating that Allen and I were first cousins.
The letter surprised me. I’d been pleading with her do something to prevent the marriage, and all along she’d seemed so sure that the situation would somehow work itself out on its own. Now finally she was trying to lobby on my behalf, but as a woman, Mom had no sway with Uncle Fred or the prophet. Still, it made me love my mother even more to know that she was listening to me when it seemed no one else was.
I collapsed into bed that night but couldn’t fall asleep. I searched for reasons why Warren would contradict the words of the prophet. He’d been pushing the marriage as though the prophet had decided it for me, but I had heard the opposite from Uncle Rulon’s mouth. I didn’t know if this was truly the will of God.
On one hand it felt like I was being given to Allen for all the work he’d done for Uncle Fred, but on the other hand, it felt like there was a much larger reason, I just didn’t know what it was. Uncle Fred could have asked the prophet to reward Allen with any of his daughters, but he’d chosen me, the young girl from the problem family, the girl whose brothers had all abandoned the priesthood. It was no secret that I had been close to my brothers, especially after the move to Uncle Fred’s. Perhaps Uncle Fred and Warren felt the risk that I’d follow in their footsteps was too great. Whereas the church was perfectly willing to let boys go, I can now see that the prospect of losing a girl was too much for them. If I left, I might bring other girls along, or get them to start questioning things. I know now that I was confident and I wasn’t afraid to ask my questions. In short, I was a problem, and if they didn’t solve it, they’d end up paying for it later.
The next day proved even more difficult. By the time I arrived at church that Sunday, deep melancholy had taken over my mind. Bouncing between prayer, sadness, hope, and fear over the past days had finally taken its toll on me. Choosing a seat in one of the rows, I tried to steady myself for the sermon. That was when I felt Allen’s body next to mine. He was just a few inches away from me, and he didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. I knew it was him.
“What in the hell are you doing?” I snapped at him.
Allen stumbled awkwardly over the words. “Uncle Fred told me to come sit by you.”
My sadness turned to anger, and I sat seething. I couldn’t believe Uncle Fred would do this to me in front of the entire community. My private struggle was now on display for all to see. Uncle Fred was taking advantage of me by having Allen sit there. Up until this point, few knew that I had been placed with Allen Steed for marriage, but seating us together in church served as a “silent” public announcement. Just having him this close to me felt like an attack.
Stepping out of the meetinghouse that Sunday, I was besieged by the gentle teasing of well-wishers calling me “Mrs. Steed.” Now that the whole congregation knew that Uncle Rulon had had a revelation of marriage for me, any further attempts to get out of it would be publicly viewed as defying the word of the prophet. I could barely contain my fury at Uncle Fred’s carefully crafted act. He’d effectively erased the privacy of my situation and foiled any remaining hope I had for a release from the marriage.
I stared past the happy crowd assembled around me at the majestic red mountains and thought about jumping off one of the sheer faces of rock. It wouldn’t be hard to climb up there, and I was sure it was high enough that the jump would kill me. As hard as it was for me to accept, at fourteen, I was actually contemplating suicide.
It was in that moment that I should have realized that the priesthood made it impossible for a woman to make decisions about her life—even if she knew what was right for her. Marriage wasn’t about God, or the prophet, or any of that. It was about controlling women, trapping them into believing that they didn’t have any other options and the only way out was a leap into the arms of the Lord from hundreds of feet in the air. Yet, I still believed.
I hadn’t spoken to my dad since I’d been removed from his home nearly two years before, but after church that day, my every moment was consumed by a vision of being rescued by Dad, Brad, and Caleb. They would come by in the middle of the night, and we would all escape under the cover of darkness. The only clues we’d leave behind would be our footsteps in the house and our tire tracks in the gravel. In the morning, people would wake up and gasp. I’d be condemned as a sinner and cursed by Warren and Fred. My mother and sisters would be devastated that I’d left them, but at least I would be alive. It made more sense to leave them alive than to die where I was. All I needed was for someone to save me, someone to give me a place to go.
But all this was just a fantasy. I had no way to contact Dad, Brad, and Caleb, and they didn’t know about my impending marriage.
Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, after arriving back home that afternoon, Uncle Fred directed me to go on a walk with Allen. There were people lingering nearby, and it was impossible for me to decline without appearing defiant to my priesthood father. Mom shot me a look. Earlier she had instructed me to be kind to Allen no matter what I was feeling inside, and with that passing glance she told me to remember those words.
The walk would be considered our “first date.” While Lily and Nancy had had the luxury of a private afternoon drive with their spouses-to-be, I was being sent off walking into the mountains with every eye in the family watching.
Allen moved awkwardly beside me in his black suit. To some other girl in some other situation, Allen’s sandy blond hair and blue eyes might have been attractive. He had a strong jaw and nice teeth, and there was nothing ugly or unkempt about him. Still, his face and his graceless demeanor made my skin crawl.
Hesitantly, we headed toward the mountains, where we were to go on a short hike. Allen was kind to me, but I couldn’t return his attitude. I knew that I was being horrible, but I just couldn’t convince myself to do anything differently. He kept trying to hold my hand, but I would brush his hand away every time.
I let out an exasperated sigh and declared, “I don’t want you to touch me.” At this point, a few tears pushed at the corners of his eyes.
“Why do you hate me so bad?” he asked, his strong masculine face looking momentarily boyish and lost.
“I’m sorry, but I just don’t like you, and I cannot imagine an eternity with you.”
He looked stunned by my response. Somehow not deterred, he gently nodded and said what any good priesthood man would: “God will change your feelings as long as you stay faithful. In time, you will feel differently.”
I knew that would never happen, but I said nothing.
We remained mostly quiet for the rest of our “date,” with me thinking over and over that I just couldn’t wait for this hour to be over. A part of me wanted to give him a better explanation of how I felt, but my feelings couldn’t be expressed in words. It was just an innate sense that God puts in each of us to see the difference between right and wrong. That inner voice was telling me that he was wrong for me on so many levels. Even before the marriage began, I was repulsed by him. He hadn’t even held my hand, but he had already taken my innocence.
There’s no force in this Celestial law. The prophet doesn’t force you to heaven. And when you enter into marriage, you never have the right to think you have been forced into a situation. You know better. Even my saying it to you, you know it will be your choice when you say, “I do” or “yes” to the prophet.
—
WARREN JEFFS
T
he flowered clock on the wall read 4:30
A.M.
as I stood in front of the mirror in Mom’s room blankly looking at my reflection. The face that stared back was foreign to me. In place of the young, spirited fourteen-year-old there stood an empty-looking body with eyes that were swollen and irritated from hours of crying.
“So, this is what death is like,” I whispered to myself.
I barely flinched as Mom straightened my shoulders, which were rounded and heavy from the burden of the past week. She was trying to correct my posture so that my sister Kassandra could get an accurate measurement for the hem of my wedding dress.
The night had been long and exhausting. After my terrible “first date” with Allen I had escaped to the comfort of my own room, where my mother had found me. I had sensed her hesitation even before she uttered a word.
“Lesie, maybe this is the right thing to do,” she gently prodded. “This must be the will of God and the prophet.”
“Mom, I just can’t do this,” I replied in desperation.
“Everyone expects you to,” Mom stated matter-of-factly. She had watched as I’d gone back and forth between Uncle Fred and Uncle Warren in my attempts to halt the marriage or at least gain more time. But time and again, she’d found me crying in our room, frustrated over my inability to convince the powers that be that this was not my time.
“You have to do this,” Mom admitted. “You have no other choice.”
It was hard hearing those words from her. Her support from the previous week seemed to evaporate that night, and suddenly I felt hurt that she was giving in. I didn’t understand what had caused the shift, and I was crushed to have the most important person in my life surrendering to Uncles Warren and Fred. At that moment, I felt angry at the whole world. What I didn’t know then was that Mom had been secretly pulled aside and told that it was her responsibility to make sure that the marriage took place, as the prophet had directed. She’d been instructed to make it happen “or else.”
So many people find it difficult to understand why I am no longer angry with my mother. It is hard for outsiders to comprehend the mind-set that came with our culture. We were taught that the priesthood and the prophet come before anything else, and Mom had already been forced to make this choice with six of her own children. It’s hard to explain why she just didn’t pack me up and take me away, but in her mind making that step would have damned us both. She was already a part God’s chosen people and she didn’t want to give up the utopia she believed she was already in.
To her, the outside world was like stepping into hell and nothing was worth trading that for. Because Fred and Warren were holding her accountable, if I failed to follow through with the marriage I would not only condemn myself, I would condemn her, too. Not only would she be risking eternal life, she would also be forced to choose a loss of home and community, and a relationship with the older and younger daughters she still had in the FLDS. As such, her feelings were rooted in a concern not just for my salvation, but for her own and for the safety of her two youngest daughters. Like so many FLDS members, Mom was a true follower. She’d been taught to strictly conform to the priesthood. Knowing the strength of my mother’s belief, I guess it never crossed her mind to question whether this church, this life, was right if it forced her fourteen-year-old daughter into marriage. If she did question that, she would have to face many other decisions she had made in her painful past.
Even then, I knew she had no “real” choice. The church was her home. It was all she’d ever known, and she, like thousands of others, couldn’t leave or risk giving up her and her children’s place among the faithful.
Ultimately, while it hurt to have her join the chorus of voices pushing me, I knew Fred and Warren were behind it; when I heard her say those words, it was as though they themselves were speaking. They were simply using her to get to me. And I knew that I had no choice but to listen to them.
I sat on Mom’s bed for hours that night, silently watching as she and Kassandra hurriedly designed and pieced together the wedding dress. Mom had given up on getting the fabric at the store downtown and had finally purchased some material at a small shop in Hildale. Perhaps she, too, had put off the inevitable in hopes of a miracle reprieve, but here we were just hours away from the actual ceremony and rushing to make an acceptable dress.
“How do you want the dress?” Kassandra asked, trying hard to elicit some input from me.
“I don’t care,” I told my sister. “Just make it simple.” I didn’t want anything fancy; there was nothing fanciful about what lay ahead for me.
“Elissa, I need you to hold still or I’m going to poke you with the pins,” Kassandra announced, as sobs racked my body. These were tears of desperation and I could do nothing to keep them dammed up.