Authors: Elissa Wall
Because they were nineteen, Justin and Jacob were able to find a place of their own, but they struggled to make ends meet, since neither of them had a high school education. Brad again had to find a place to live, and finally a friend offered him a room to rent. Brad worked hard to keep a full-time job and stay in school so that he could complete the twelfth grade. In the months to come, we’d learn that he had become deathly ill and was hospitalized. Though he recovered, his illness put him out of a job and kept him from graduating high school. Soon he was homeless, living out of his car and barely able to buy food. Eventually he began to call Mom. Although she was upset, there was nothing she would do to help him since she was entwined in the FLDS culture and frame of mind.
As for Caleb, the prospect of leaving him behind was not as simple. He was in seventh grade at the public school, nowhere near an age where he could take care of himself, and it was obvious that Dad felt obligated to figure out a more responsible plan for him. The answer came from a former FLDS couple named Ron and Jamie Barlow, who lived in Hurricane, about twenty minutes outside St. George. Dad agreed to pay them to take care of Caleb. The Barlows were eager to return to the religion and had been repenting at the prophet’s directive to regain their standing in the church. They had not yet been given permission to move back to the community, but they hoped that taking care of Caleb would show their loyalty and faith.
It was a couple of months before I learned that my father was in Colorado City. When I finally saw him, our brief reunion was filled with mixed emotions. He and Audrey were living in a little camper on someone’s front lawn. The move had taken them from a spacious, beautiful home to almost no home at all. Dad wanted to build something, but as the owner of all the land in Short Creek, the church said he couldn’t because time was too short.
Seeing Dad was a joyful moment but it was also painful. Knowing that the priesthood wouldn’t allow me to view him as my father made our meeting awkward and I didn’t know how to react, other than with a hug. Our past was filled with so much hurt that it was hard for me when the conversation turned in that direction. He told me he’d only recently learned of my marriage to Allen and expressed his frustration at having not been there to try to stop it even though it probably wouldn’t have done any good. When he asked me how I was, I simply said I was fine. It was inappropriate to complain, and I was doing my best to keep sweet.
In the end, I was so caught up with what was going on in my own life that I didn’t have the time or energy to be angry with my father. I had larger issues to confront. In early 2002, I began to suspect that I was pregnant. Terrified, I purchased four pregnancy tests during a shopping trip to St. George with my mother. I was still afraid to tell her what was happening in my marriage and hid them from her by having her wait in the car while I went inside to buy the groceries. As soon as I got home, I locked myself in the bathroom to learn my fate. Carefully, I read the instructions over and over. Each test was slightly different, and I was getting myself very confused. When the first one revealed a positive result, I moved on to the next, horrified to see a plus sign pop up again on the applicator’s screen. Unconvinced, I used all four tests and was momentarily heartened when one seemed to come up with a negative result. But upon rereading the directions, I realized that I had made a mistake and a sinking feeling took root in my stomach.
I sat frozen for a long time, staring at the four tests lined up along the linoleum of the bathroom floor. Two months earlier, one of the mothers in Fred’s home had shown a video to Lily and me explaining the facts of life and what happens to a woman’s body when she is pregnant. Now that video was my life. My fate had been decided for me again.
Disposing of the four tests, I kept the results to myself and went about my routine, never telling Allen that he was going to be a father. For weeks I kept my secret, contemplating how I was going to overcome this new hurdle and frightened by how it would affect my life. One night in the spring, I was awakened by a horrible pain in my abdomen and raced to the bathroom to vomit. I barely made it down the hall before I started throwing up, and I realized that blood was running down my leg. I honestly thought I was dying, that God was killing me for my disobedience to the prophet and Allen. The only place I could think to go was to my mother’s room, where she was asleep. I wanted desperately to wake her, but I was too scared I’d get her into trouble. She’d been warned to stay out of my business, and I knew that she’d need to abide by that directive.
I sat in the bathtub for nearly four hours, bleeding and cramping. I couldn’t bring myself to go to my mother—I couldn’t burden her. Finally, when the pain began to subside, I took a shower to clean myself up and figured out that I had lost the baby. My first thought was to call Kassandra and tell her what had happened, but I blamed myself for the miscarriage. At the time, I believed that miscarriages happened because God believed the mother was unworthy. I was sure that I had been punished for being wicked, and I didn’t want anyone else to know.
For the next four days, I could barely gather the strength to get out of bed, and I refused to mention a word to anyone about what had happened. All I wanted was to sleep forever. Kassandra stopped by several times and finally got fed up with my apparent laziness because I was in bed with no excuse. Despite her pleas to explain what was wrong, I couldn’t summon the words. All I could do was lie there in silence.
T
hat winter, Uncle Fred eagerly informed Allen and me that we would be moving to a new home on church land, a two-bedroom trailer in a small trailer park across the state line in Colorado City, just next door to one of Audrey’s sons. The trailer would be Uncle Fred’s gift to us, and we could decorate it however we wanted.
Young elders in the FLDS often received property during one of the many priesthood meetings held throughout the year or during a private meeting with the bishop. Young men who had been deemed worthy participated in a lottery in which a hat containing the addresses of available plots of land in the community was literally passed around. Whichever plot a man picked was where he was allowed to build his home. The twin towns were a self-contained community where we would barter services amongst ourselves. Usually homes were built using this barter system, and labor was often donated as part of the church’s Saturday work projects.
Allen was electrified over the prospect of having his own space, but I couldn’t stand the thought of moving away from my mother. Worse was the idea of being alone with Allen in a trailer every night. Although the trailer was little, it had a decent-sized living room, dining room, and kitchen combo: and the two bedrooms were separated by a bathroom. Luckily for me, it wasn’t ready to be lived in yet, and Allen enthusiastically took to the project of refinishing the inside. Whenever he wasn’t working at his job, he spent time fixing up the trailer. I was glad to have him so preoccupied, as it gave me a break from him and allowed me to spend more time with my mom and sisters. Having a goal seemed to take some of Allen’s focus off of me for once, and I was grateful that the project went very slowly.
Though I was not looking forward to moving in with him, I focused on enjoying the little things about life. For many months, I suppressed my feelings as best I could and tried to make the situation livable. Almost daily, I tried to convince myself that this was going to work out and that someday I would feel different about him, but I was still hesitant and extremely uncomfortable about having man-wife relations with him.
Early that spring, some of Allen’s family helped us work on the trailer. We spent the evening roasting marshmallows and hot dogs over an open fire in the yard. When they left for home and I waved good-bye, I thought how pleasant the day had been. But like everything with Allen, this good moment would become tainted.
I was just finishing cleaning up when he came behind me whispering in my ear that we should stay the night and christen the trailer by making it ours.
“You’re crazy,” I replied, not wanting to sleep with him at all, let alone in an empty trailer with no power, no furniture, and no heat. I was still dealing with the emotional fallout from my miscarriage and was not interested in doing anything intimate. But he insisted.
“It’ll be fun,” he coaxed.
Shaking my head, I looked at the sparse surroundings and the still-wet paint on the walls. This was not a home yet, and the space seemed awkward and cold. We were standing in the bedroom, where he had blown up an air mattress and thrown a sleeping bag over it. Even the sight of the makeshift bed was too much for me, and as I turned to leave, I felt Allen’s firm grip on my arm. I protested, and he pulled me back into the room. The sexual encounters between Allen and me were often overpowering, with him in control, but on this night I felt absolutely helpless. Even though during this period I was trying to set my feelings aside and submit to him, he would still disrespect me and force me even when I said no.
I struggled to get away, but he pulled me close and pushed me down on the mattress. I rolled off onto the floor, telling him, “I don’t want to have anything to do with you tonight.” Relentless, he grabbed at my clothes and pressed me back on the bed. I was trapped—not just physically but mentally. Allen was on top of me, ignoring my pleas to stop. The smell of fresh paint enveloped me as I started to count in my head; soon it would be over.
W
ith our one-year anniversary approaching, I started sewing a special dress in my favorite shade of pink to try and get excited for the day. On the morning of April 23, I was taking extra time to perfect my hairstyle and get ready. All of a sudden, one of the mothers called upstairs to me, informing me that Uncle Fred wanted to see me at once.
I didn’t even have my shoes on when I raced downstairs to find a uniformed Colorado City police officer standing next to Uncle Fred. He was Rodney Holm, the same officer who’d plagued my brothers and taken Caleb from Fred’s house after the mix-up about Fred’s tapes.
“I want you to go get some shoes on and go with this officer,” Uncle Fred instructed. Momentarily shocked I felt my heart race as I tried to figure out what I had done wrong, but no one would give me an answer.
“Rodney, can you please tell me why I’m going with you?” I asked. When he didn’t respond, I grew frustrated and told him that he didn’t have a right to take me without an explanation. But Uncle Fred insisted I get my shoes and go with him.
My fear and frustration turned to tears as I ran to my room. Nobody seemed to care what was happening, and Mom wasn’t at home. She’d been working for a local woman, caring for her handicapped infant, and was out of the house during the day. I called Kassandra in desperation. She was with Mom at the babysitting job, and the two were frantic when I told them what was going on, but there was nothing they could do to help me.
As soon as I went back downstairs, I was handcuffed and escorted to the police car that waited outside as the entire Jessop family looked on. By the time we pulled up to the station I was in hysterics. Rodney left me in the car while he went inside, and after a few minutes he emerged and told me he had to take me to the Mark Twain, a restaurant in town. I had no idea why. When we got there, Rodney paraded me inside, still in handcuffs, and that was when I saw Allen. I felt myself being handcuffed to him and heard laughter. I turned to see Uncle Fred with two of his wives, and Lily and Nancy and their husbands. All I could do was stand there embarrassed with tear-stained cheeks in the dress that I had worked so hard to sew.
Everyone had been in on the joke. While I smiled during the party, inside I was seething. I was humilated and deeply hurt. Allen knew how I felt about the local police, after the way they’d treated my brothers and me. But he just didn’t get it. After the lunch, he was grinning as he helped me into his car. “Do you like what I did for you?” he asked.
I exploded. “Do you know what that was like for me?” I shouted in his face. “You take me to my mother’s work right now! I hate your guts.”
Later, I was able to see that Allen had intended it to be a funny surprise for me, but the fact that he would have me arrested as a joke only proved that he was completely out of touch with me and my feelings. When he saw how upset I was, he showed up with a handful of roses, but I couldn’t get past it. Included in the bouquet was a handwritten note: “Dear Elissa, you are the flower of my life. Love, Al.” But there was no apology.
Even though I knew the card was motivated by good intentions, I didn’t believe his words. In his attempt to live up to his priesthood responsibilities to teach and train me to be a “better” wife, he’d repeatedly hurt me physically and emotionally to the core of my soul. In a loving marriage, actions such as this note should have been special and warmed my heart, but instead it felt like Allen was trying to make me forget the past. While he’d said he was sorry for countless things during our marriage, he never said it for the reason that mattered most. I resented the way he made me feel like he had a right to my body just because I had been given to him as a wife. For this he never asked forgiveness, or seemed the least bit sorry.
Our first anniversary marked a turning point for me. After that moment when Rodney handcuffed me to Allen, I wondered if I had the energy to try to make the marriage function anymore. Any illusion that I had used to convince myself that it was going to work out was shattered, and all the bottled-up heartache that I’d been trying to ignore came rushing to the surface.
Allen still seemed to allow himself to believe that things were going okay. He continued to send me notes and letters. “Carry this card with you always to remind you just how special you are to me,” read one of the pre-printed greetings. “Knowing you are a part of my life makes me smile at the craziest times. I would rather spend time with you than anyone else. You are the love of my life and this card will remind you about how much I’ll always care about you. Love, Allen G. Steed.”