Читать книгу Stolen Innocence: My story of growing up in a polygamous sect, becoming a teenage bride, and breaking free - Elissa Wall - Страница 13

The prophet can do no wrong.

—WARREN JEFFS

After all the struggles in our home, I longed for my mother’s pain to subside and for peace to be restored. That previous August I’d returned to Alta Academy a fifth-grader. While I wasn’t in an upper classroom yet, I was now in my second year with the big kids in the meeting hall for Devotional.

In addition to being our principal, Warren also taught a number of our classes. One of them was a class in priesthood history, which occurred every day and was considered the most important lesson in school. Uncle Warren would teach us everything about our religion’s history, starting from biblical lessons to the Book of Mormon and going through the life of Joseph Smith as well as the more recent developments in the FLDS. Uncle Warren would always use priesthood-approved scriptures to teach the lesson, and then he would explain them using his own words.

Part of the curriculum for older girls was to study In Light and Truth, an FLDS publication. The book was a collection of condensed sermons and teachings by Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, Uncle Rulon, and many others. Warren would read the various lessons to the girls, applying his own spin. He would even read the words of his own sermons in such a way as to make us believe that the words were coming directly from God.

We were encouraged to listen to tapes of Uncle Warren’s important sermons as frequently as we could. Often in school we would hear these tapes wafting out of the loudspeakers as we went about our day. We also listened to them at home the way other families would listen to music, and as I grew older, I took to listening to them on my own. I was dedicated to being a good student, even if I didn’t entirely understand every aspect of my religion. I searched for answers in the tapes and in my school lessons, rarely asking for help when I felt confused. If I didn’t understand something, it was better not to say it aloud than appear to be questioning priesthood principles.

Ever since the age of eight or nine, I had been taking a home- economics course along with the rest of the girls in which we learned the basics of running a house hold. Taking these courses brought us closer to our ultimate goal—becoming perfect priesthood wives. Kitchen abilities were an extremely important element of our lessons. Our individual teachers would separate us from the boys and lead us to the huge industrial kitchen just off the meeting hall. There, we learned basic cooking and cleaning skills that would ready us for the large families that would someday be ours. There were also classes in sewing. We all needed to be able to stitch our special church undergarments and the ankle-length prairie dresses that were a staple in our wardrobes, and some day our own wedding dresses. Most of my dresses were hand-me- downs from my older sisters. On special occasions, like my birthday, Mom would sew one just for me, and I looked forward to doing such things for my own daughters someday.

One afternoon in early December, it became clear that God was continuing to test my family. I was at school and had just finished enjoying my lunch of a tuna sandwich and an apple when Uncle Warren’s assistant, Elizabeth, poked her head into my classroom and summoned me to the principal’s office.

My legs shook as I followed Elizabeth down the hallway. I’d made this journey several times, and it had usually been for a “correction.” Turning the corner, I found myself holding my breath as I approached Uncle Warren’s office. I pushed open the door and nervously exhaled when I saw five of my siblings along with my mother sitting in Warren’s office. Uncle Warren was seated at his desk, as always. Mom’s brown eyes looked as if she’d been crying, and I knew something serious was going on. I quickly sat down in a chair facing Warren’s desk. No one was speaking, which made me even more scared. I could see the confusion and fear on everyone’s faces, and my heart began to race. Uncle Warren’s low voice cut the silence.

“I’m delivering a message from the prophet,” Warren began in an icy tone. “The prophet has lost confidence in your father. He is no longer worthy to hold the priesthood or have a family.”

Shocked and confused, one of my brothers asked for an explanation. “How can that be?”

After a momentary pause, Uncle Warren glared down at him, his irritation visible from behind his thick eyeglasses. “Are you questioning the prophet and his will?”

No one—especially not a child—could argue with that. Still, we Wall kids had trouble accepting things when they didn’t seem fair. Just like my brother Craig, we all looked for the truth in any given situation.

My brother Brad spoke next. “Where will we go?” he asked timidly.

“It’s up to the prophet to decide,” Warren told him. “You will no longer be attending school.”

The silence was deafening as he told us to return to our classrooms and gather our things. Looking at my mother, I saw pain and sadness on her face. We would not be returning to our home or to school. Confusion took over my mind. In a daze my brothers and I filed quietly out of the room, leaving my mother and my older sister Teressa behind with Warren.

I felt so ashamed knowing that my classmates were watching me as I collected my belongings. We hadn’t been given a clear explanation as to why Dad had lost the priesthood or what had led to this life-altering declaration. We were just to follow the prophet’s direction. I was still gaining an understanding of the world I was raised in and the workings of the priesthood. Even though we had always lived to please the prophet and do his will, everything still felt so wrong. How could our father just be taken away from us? Why were they breaking up our family? What about Mother Audrey, Mother Laura, and their kids? Would Dad lose them as well? The questions burning in my mind would go unanswered, and I kept my mouth shut out of fear.

Once we gathered our things from our classrooms, we went to the meeting room on the main floor and were unceremoniously escorted across the blacktop driveway and through the gate that led to the prophet’s home. We were told that we would spend the night there and that in the morning we would leave for southern Utah, where my mother had grown up. Staying overnight at the home of the prophet made me feel safe and comforted, if only for the moment. I had always dearly loved my visits there. Many of Uncle Rulon’s wives had been kind to me, and I loved and looked up to my elder sisters.

The drive down to southern Utah the next morning was a blur, and I remember it now more as a collection of images and feelings than actual events. The crunch of the tires on freshly fallen snow as we left. The thought that my brothers and I should have been making snowmen in our backyard instead of being packed into the back of a van. Wiping the fog off the inside of the van’s window and watching our school disappear around the corner. Even if we had been scrambling to get to school on time in our traditional morning rush, I would have felt infinitely happier. None of us knew if we were ever coming back or going to see my dad again. I was a child faced with unspeakable loss, completely confused, with no one giving any answers.

Rachel and Kassandra had joined us in two of Uncle Rulon’s family vans for the four-hour drive to the prophet’s other home in Hildale. They were there to help pass the time and keep the younger kids entertained. I didn’t know then, but Rachel had played a role in Mom’s decision to involve the prophet in our domestic problems. Over time, I learned that both Rachel and Mom believed that our home had become a battleground, with innocent children caught in the crossfire. For some time, Mom had been confiding in Rachel her fears about losing more of her sons and had sought her help drafting a letter to the prophet. Meanwhile, Rachel had independently gone to Uncle Rulon for advice. She and Kassandra knew that the previous morning Mom had gone to see Warren, who’d been acting for his father. To ease the severity of our situation, it had been arranged that my two sisters would accompany us on the long drive south. They tried to play games with us to lighten the mood, but I was too old and too aware to be distracted.

During the ride I searched my mother’s face for answers, but not surprisingly, it offered none. I knew I wasn’t to question the prophet— or God—but I was desperate. “Will we ever see Dad again?” I asked Mom.

“I don’t know, Lesie,” she replied, using the nickname, pronounced “Lee-see,” that I’d had since I was very young. “Put it on a shelf and pray about it.”

This was Mom’s and the FLDS’s standard response to questions that had no easy answers. Between Craig’s departure and the troubles at home, my shelf was already full. Now I worried it would tip over.

At the time I was so focused on my own experience that I didn’t stop to think about how that day affected my father, and it was not until years later that we had a chance to talk about it. In the hours before we were gathered in Uncle Warren’s office, Dad had been summoned to see the prophet at his home in Salt Lake. He was immediately shown to the prophet’s private office, where he found Uncle Rulon and his son Warren. As had become the case in recent years, Warren was there to speak on behalf of his father. Although Uncle Rulon was still officially the prophet, he was in his mid-eighties and not as active as he once had been. Warren had taken on many of the traditional responsibilities of the prophet. A year earlier, it had been Warren who performed Dad’s marriage ceremony to Mother Laura, and here he was, once again, delivering his father’s directives. Taking a seat across from the men on one of the chairs, my father didn’t know what to expect as he adjusted himself and waited to be addressed. Warren did not waste any time getting to the point.

“The prophet has lost confidence in you as a priesthood man and is taking Sharon and her children away,” he blurted out.

The words were an assault and Dad was too overcome by emotion to respond. It seemed like only yesterday that he had been honored with the addition of a third wife. Now, as Warren had bluntly put it, Dad was losing Sharon and all of her children. He sat there listening to Warren speak, and the reality of the situation began to sink in: Dad had been stripped of his priesthood duties as they pertained to Mother Sharon and her children, but Mothers Audrey and Laura would remain under his control. As he sat listening, he wondered how everything could have slipped through his fingers so quickly. Rising to leave, he was too besieged by emotion to speak and left in bewilderment. My father later explained that he’d felt as if he’d become detached from his body as he heard the prophet’s revelation that day. The words had been spoken, but Dad just couldn’t make them feel real inside.

When he returned home, he found the belongings of Mother Sharon and her children had already been taken away. Mothers Audrey and Laura were shocked by the news. They too had been unhappy, but they’d never thought it would come to this. In the weeks ahead, Mother Audrey felt a devastating loss. While things had not been working in the house for quite some time, losing Mother Sharon and her children was much more upsetting than she ever imagined.

When our two vans arrived at the prophet’s Hildale home, my mother’s brother Robert was waiting for us. He’d been instructed to take us to the Steed family ranch, some 150 miles outside of Short Creek near Widtsoe, Utah. My heart was momentarily warmed as I watched his hug seem to give my mother strength. It had been a long time since she’d lived there, but I sensed that she felt a certain relief to be going home.

Since Grandpa Newel’s death at the age of eighty-six, many of his sons had cared for the ranch where he had raised his large family. Uncle Robert and his family lived in the main house and had started a home school for their children on the sprawling grounds. The ranch had been in the Steed family for about eighty years, ever since Grandpa Newel settled it in 1916 at the tender age of fourteen. Despite his youth, Grandpa Newel had traveled alone with sixty head of cattle to the remote and barren land in southern Utah that his father had homesteaded, and it was there that he made good on his promise to his father that he would establish a fully functioning ranch. He spent hours alone caring for the stock, milking the cows, and churning fresh butter, barely making it through that first long, hard winter. But even as the isolating snow and ice cut through the valley, Newel Steed endured it all in the name of his dream: living a life where he could practice Mormonism as it was originally envisioned by Joseph Smith, a life where he was free to practice plural marriage.

Grandpa Newel’s belief in the principle of plural marriage first took root when, at the age of ten, he accompanied his father to a clandestine meeting of men still in the Mormon Church who continued to embrace the practice in secret. This was in the early days of “The Work,” decades before it was known as the FLDS Church. In time, Grandpa Newel was not only free to practice his religion, he also became one of the most respected members of the FLDS in southern Utah. When the Steed family arrived at a community event, all eyes were on their perfectly styled hair and their attractive homemade clothes. The Steeds were known for their taste in fabrics and their unique, trendsetting interpretation of the church-mandated dress code.

Although there was this rich tapestry of family history at the ranch, I had not spent much time with Uncle Robert and his family. Still, he seemed genuinely happy to see us. I will never forget riding in the back of his white truck with the camper shell on it. The drive to Widtsoe seemed to take forever, and a little bud of excitement formed inside of me. I had rarely had the opportunity to visit the Steed ranch since my grandfather Newel’s passing in 1988, and despite the acute sadness and confusion I had experienced over the past couple of days, I couldn’t deny my eagerness to get there.

When we arrived, the house looked cozy, the snow-covered ground and the white picket fence that surrounded the historic wood residence giving it a homey feel. After such a long, emotional journey, it felt good to be received with love by Uncle Robert’s many wives and children. Mom’s brother was a faithful follower and he and his family did all that they could to move aside and open a place for us to stay in their home.

We were moved by their generosity, but the accommodations were difficult for a family that had been used to more modern living. This was the original home that my mother had grown up in and it had not been updated. There was no power or central heat. The home was run on a generator and heated by an old wood-burning stove. Uncle Robert had cleared a bedroom for my mother, sisters, and me, but my brothers had to bunk with some of Uncle Robert’s sons. Uncle Rulon had allowed my sister Kassandra to stay with us full-time, and Rachel traveled to see us when she could. At various points, there were as many as seven children in some of the rooms.

My mother’s spirits seemed to lift immediately upon our arrival at the ranch. I sensed her relief and joy at being back in her childhood home. Having her and my older sisters close helped us get through this scary and trying period. But there were moments when I longed for my home in Salt Lake and to hear my father’s soothing voice leading the family in evening prayer.

Even though everyone was willing to adopt us into the family, life was still not easy—especially for Teressa and my brothers. I was young enough not to understand everything that was going on, but they were fully aware of our situation’s harsh realities. As we tried to process complex emotions, we couldn’t help but feel that Dad had been unjustly dealt with. While those outside our family may have thought that the prophet and Warren were saving us from a father who could not control his family, I never saw it that way. Things were not perfect at home and something did need to change, but breaking the family apart would not solve the problem. It was just another wound from which our family would never recover.

We’d been at the ranch for a few weeks when Mom suddenly went away, leaving us in the care of Kassandra and Teressa. While I trusted my older sisters, I was worried about my mother’s unexpected and secretive departure. We were told only that she’d gone to Hildale to see the prophet. During her absence, I became so ill I nearly collapsed. Perhaps it was the change of climate or the stress of losing my dad that had me fighting off constant colds and spells of the flu. I’d never really gotten over the Lyme disease I’d contracted the previous summer during our camping trip to the mountains, and I often felt weak and tired. Fevers plagued me during repeated bouts of illness, and as the snow and cold of winter set in, I found it impossible to get warm. I walked around much of the time with inflamed tonsils and a general feeling of ill health.

Kassandra and Teressa took care of me as best they could, but the homeopathic remedies of cayenne pepper, garlic, and echinacea could not prevent my deterioration. There were moments when my throat seemed to almost completely close up, and my tonsils became severely infected. Even if my mother had been there to take care of me, with no health insurance and no doctors nearby, there was not much more she could have done to help. Nevertheless, I longed for her comfort and presence at my side.

At the ranch, we were expected to share in the workload. Our names were placed on the job chart and we worked alongside everyone else, but because I was so sick, it was difficult for me to do my share. We were also required to attend morning lessons with our family members, where we would listen to the taped sermons and teachings of Warren Jeffs. There were days when I felt well enough to ice-skate and sled, and I was able to enjoy the big New Year’s Eve party when we made homemade candy and played games with our many young cousins.

In addition to Uncle Robert’s family, my uncle Lee and his wife, Debbie, were living at the ranch in a smaller home. Some of my older male cousins shared a “bunkhouse” just behind the main house, where they had been sent from Hildale by their fathers to help care for the ranch. One of these was my fifteen-year-old first cousin Allen Glade Steed.

From our first contact that winter, I didn’t like Allen one bit. He was gangly and awkward, but that didn’t stop him from teasing my younger siblings and me because we didn’t have a father. Though he probably knew that his words stung, he would remind us with a gleeful smile that we didn’t have a “priesthood father.” We were quick to defend Dad’s honor, and it led to many arguments. As a ten-year-old girl, I was very self-conscious and insecure. For most of my childhood, I had kept some baby fat, and even though Allen seemed to know it scorched my feelings, he took to calling me “Tubba-Tubba.”

He seemed to enjoy embarrassing me. One day, I had been ecstatic about going ice-skating because illnesses had kept me from many other skating trips. The reservoir on the Steed ranch was too far from the house to walk, so we would usually drive over. I waited patiently for my brothers and sisters to get ready, and we all rushed outside to pile into the trailer attached to Allen’s four-wheeler. They got in one by one as I waited for my turn to hop on. Just as I stepped toward the trailer, Allen let out a loud, cruel laugh and sped away, throwing me off balance and causing me to hit my head. Tears stung my eyes, but rather than act like a baby, I stood back up and shouted “Stop!” and asked him to please return for me. He simply went on laughing, not even hearing my words as he left me behind in the snow.

Although he was particularly mean to me, I wasn’t Allen’s only target. My younger brother Caleb and I were in the milk shed one day watching a few of the Steed siblings milk the cows. I was feeling shaky after another bout of illness, and the bitter-cold winter air was hard to ignore. Allen, with a menacing smile, started to spray us with the hose he was using and continued until our clothes were soaked. I begged him to stop, but he wouldn’t. Caleb was bolder than I, and picking up a nearby shovel, he threw some manure at Allen. Allen left in a rage, telling Robert that Caleb had tossed manure at him while he was working and claiming that the attack had been unprovoked.

I couldn’t even stand seeing Allen at the dinner table in the evenings. The Steeds ran their home much like a business, with meals served at set times and in shifts; those who found a seat at one of the two dining tables in the kitchen ate first. When the rations ran out, there was often nothing more to eat. Unlike Salt Lake and even Short Creek, Widstoe was a kind of ghost town, with no grocery stores in close proximity. The town and the surrounding area had long been abandoned due to a lack of water. Our nearest neighbor was about fifteen miles away. Much of the food was harvested from the big vegetable garden on the property and pickled and stored for use throughout the winter. Sometimes we would go to bed hungry.

The run-ins with Allen were not the only problems between the Steed kids and the Wall children. After Mom had been gone for a while, a dispute broke out between my brothers and some of Uncle Robert’s sons. Despite the fact that both families belonged to the same religion, our father had raised us differently than Uncle Robert raised his family, and these disparities became a point of contention. With Mom temporarily out of the picture, some of Uncle Robert’s older sons took it upon themselves to impose their more rigid form of FLDS observance on my brothers. They were constantly proclaiming their faith in the prophet and quickly became impatient with my brothers’ apparent lack of conviction. The Wall boys resented the perpetual, uninvited tutorials, and Kassandra and Teressa were forced to step in to mediate.

By January of 1997, the benefits of the arrangement had begun to erode. Personalities were conflicting and the harsh winter in such a remote place was becoming problematic. While there had been some fun and lasting memories during my short stay at the Steed ranch, I was ready to go home.

Just as we started to wither in these frustrations, news came that changed everything: Uncle Rulon had decided that Dad had acknowledged his shortcomings and repented so that his priesthood could be fully restored. The thought of a warm hug from the man whom I had missed so dearly filled me with hope. At last, it felt as though my family was being glued back together. Home had never been perfect, but it was the only place I wanted to be.