Carolyn Jessop; Laura Palmer (6 page)

Then all the students were marched down to his office and forced to listen to his sermons for several hours. He went on and on about the Short Creek raid and how many had sacrificed so these students could learn the work of God. Linda said kids were shaking and crying and had a hard time sitting still. Many of the kids from that class went home with bruises all over their bodies and black eyes. My sister was so shaken that she could barely explain to Mama what had happened.

Brutalizing nearly an entire classroom of students was going too far, even within the FLDS. By late that afternoon, the principal’s office was filled with angry fathers. One man said that if the principal touched his daughter again, he’d come and beat him. The school board called an emergency meeting, and the principal was put on notice that if he ever did something like this again, he’d be fired.

He was never reported to the authorities, though. If he had been, the principal could have served time in jail for assault and battery. But in our closed society, he only received a warning. He was not only a member of the FLDS; he was the son of a former prophet and the stepson of Uncle Roy. Uncle Roy protected him and told parents in the community that they should support him in the good work he was doing with their children. The principal’s status was untouchable because of his ties to the prophet. Anyone who reported him would have been in serious trouble within the FLDS. (He remained in his job until two years ago, when he retired.)

Children were seen as property, and physical violence toward them was not only permissible but a way of life. It was preached at church that if you didn’t put the fear of God into children from the time of their birth, they would grow up and leave the work of God. Abuse was necessary to save a child’s soul. The problem with what the principal did, in the eyes of the community, was that he went too far. But not far enough to get fired.

What usually happened when a student was beaten was that the parent assumed the child had done something wrong. The child was then forced to apologize for what he or she had allegedly done. The teacher or authority figure was always backed in his or her claims.

My mother was outraged by the principal’s behavior and told us that if anyone ever tried to hurt us in school, we were to come home at once. She didn’t make a connection between her abusive behavior toward us and the beatings that happened at school. Mother managed to think that she was beating us only because she loved us and was trying to make us live godly lives. She didn’t know that our small bodies were unable to distinguish between the two.

For the most part, I was able to learn what was necessary for my daily survival. I had my operating instructions.

I knew that the consequences were high for disobeying my mother. No meant no, and there was never an exception. Asking or questioning would only lead to more trouble. Sometimes my sisters would tattle on me to get me in trouble, and there was nothing I could do about that but get mad.

I learned in school to walk with my arms folded and never hop up and down in line unless I wanted a very hard smack on top of my head with a yardstick. In the singing group in class, I knew that if I didn’t look straight ahead with my chin slightly up I risked getting whacked on the head.

I knew never to ride the school bus because I would see things that would upset me.

I ate all the food on my plate, even if I didn’t like it. If I complained, I’d just be forced to eat more of the food I hated.

I knew never to tease or hit my little brother, Arthur, when he annoyed me because he was my mother’s favorite. I also learned to listen to my big sister, Linda. She tried hard to keep me out of trouble.

New Wife, New Mother

I
was jumping rope outside our house with my sister Annette when Linda came to tell us our father was going to Salt Lake City to get a new wife. We were all very surprised but happy because we knew and liked the woman he had been assigned to marry. Rosie was our cousin and favorite babysitter. Mama and Rosie had been good friends for years. Rosie used to babysit for us before she started nursing school in Salt Lake. We used to look forward to her coming because she was lively and never mean to us. Rosie’s father was my mother’s brother, so Rosie was my mom’s niece.

I was about ten at the time and ran into the house as soon as I heard the news. Mama seemed subdued.

Most men in the community waited between ten and fifteen years before taking on a new wife. It was not uncommon for some men never to get another wife. But the men who got the most wives were the men who had the most power in the FLDS. If a man had more than three wives, it was a signal that he was the son of someone of major importance. It was not at all unusual for sisters to be married to the same husband, and it was certainly not unusual for a niece to share a husband with her aunt.

Rose was pretty and popular in the community. She was a good cook and housekeeper and had a reputation as an extremely hard worker. We hadn’t seen her much since she started nursing school. It was rare for a woman in the FLDS to get any higher education while she was still unmarried, and highly unusual even after marriage. Rosie lucked out because one of her father’s wives wanted to go to nursing school and my uncle decided that Rosie could go, too, since she’d be under close supervision.

I don’t know how my mother really felt about my father taking a second wife. All I’d ever heard her say about the possibility was that if my dad got a new wife, she hoped she would like her. I knew our lives would be changing, but I couldn’t imagine how.

We stayed behind when my father and mother went to Salt Lake for the wedding. Oddly enough, they came home without Rosie. She remained in Salt Lake to finish classes and take tests. We thought she’d be back after that, but Dad bought her a house in Salt Lake so she could start working there.

But Rosie came to Colorado City occasionally to visit. When she did, Linda had to move out of her bedroom and sleep with Annette and me so Rosie could have it. Linda seemed the most wary of Rosie and concerned about the situation. Her fear was that Rosie would steal Dad away from Mom. Linda became the watcher, making note of things that Dad did with Rosie that he didn’t do with Mom. He spent a lot of time with Rosie in Linda’s bedroom when she visited and certainly seemed happier when she was around.

We all knew how tense my parents’ marriage had become. Mom seemed to get a lot quieter once Dad married Rosie. Dad had bought Mama a TV several years before he married Rosie, to placate her. She always complained about not being able to watch TV the way she had when we lived in Salt Lake. It was completely against our religion to have a television set, but my father ignored that and just bought one. The reception was terrible; there were only two channels that were even remotely viewable. But when Dad and Rosie went into Linda’s bedroom, we all sat with Mom in the front living room and watched TV.

I remember going to visit Rosie when I went to Salt Lake with my parents. I was impressed that she had her own small house and car. She also had her nursing career. Her freedom and autonomy over her own life made an impact on me. Rosie had more independence than any woman I had ever known.

But her freedom was short-lived. Rosie became pregnant shortly after she married my father, and she moved into Linda’s bedroom in our house in Colorado City a month before her baby was born. My mother’s sixth child, a boy, was born a few months before Rosie’s daughter.

The dynamic in our family shifted. Rosie and my mother were competing for Dad’s attention. The two babies were compared to each other all the time. We all watched to see which baby Dad seemed to prefer or spend the most time with. My mother could see how happy Dad was with Rosie, so she worked hard to try to outdo her.

If Rosie cooked a lovely dinner, Mom put twice the effort into the next meal she made. Mama had her ways of doing things in the house that she insisted Rosie follow. Sometimes I’d hear Mom saying to her friends that only she, not Rosie, really understood what Father wanted and how to please him. There would be times when my mother would accuse Rosie of being selfish and not working hard enough to please my dad.

Rosie’s daughter was born on her birthday, so she named her Rose. We called her Little Rosie. When she was a few months old, Rosie took a job nearby in Cedar City, working in one of her father’s nursing homes. She would take one of us along to babysit, and more often than not it was me. I liked going to work with Rosie. My mother and I had never really gotten along well and it was always a relief to be out of her domain.

Rosie was able to earn more money than almost any woman in the community because she had a nursing degree. I saw what an opportunity that was for her, especially in contrast to the rest of the FLDS women, who usually could hope for nothing better than a job in the community sewing plant.

I was shaken by what I saw at the sewing center when our class visited. There were rows and rows and rows of women hunched over machines with endless piles of fabric in front of them. They were making uniforms that were sold to large companies. They looked and worked like slaves on big industrial sewing machines that sewed fast. None of them made much money, and I knew that many of them had more than ten children at home. They made the minimum wage, which was about three dollars an hour, and on top of that were paid for each piece. Any woman who failed to produce enough got fired. The work was deadening, the pressure tremendous, and what they earned was not even enough to buy groceries for their big families, let alone anything else.

I made a vow to myself that I was never going to end up behind one of those sewing machines. No matter what it took, I was going to get an education like Rosie’s. I became determined to go to college.

The time I spent with Rosie protected me from my mother’s instability. Rosie treated me well and appreciated how much I helped her with her baby. I loved my mother but always had the conflicting feelings of fearing her anger and abuse. Rosie was different. Her stability enabled me to grow. Rosie was deeply religious and believed in plural marriage. She felt that sharing my father with my mother was her only way to God.

I believed in plural marriage then, too. At nine, I believed what everyone else did—that a man learned to love his wives more with each new wife he was given. My mother and Rosie minimized the deep conflicts that arose between them. We saw little signs of the underlying tension, so I had no reason to believe that plural marriage was anything other than something great. My friends talked about how their mothers had screaming fights with each other and threw things. I never saw that at my home. One day I heard my mother say how much better my father was treating her since he married Rosie.

This made me feel good, even though I could tell my father was happier with Rosie than he ever was with Mom. Being so in love with Rosie made it easier for him to be nicer to my mother. Maybe he did even love my mother more now. I didn’t know, but it certainly fit in nicely with what I wanted to believe.

The power struggle in my own family paled in comparison to what was happening within the FLDS. A power struggle that had been brewing for several years broke out into the open in 1978, when I was in the fifth grade. By the time I was in the seventh grade, families were choosing sides and the community was so deeply polarized that we were not allowed to play with our friends if their parents were on the opposing side.

“Are you on the side of Uncle Roy or are you on the side of the brethren?” That was the question, and what was at stake was who would rule the community when Uncle Roy died. It was a power struggle, pure and simple.

My father was on the side that believed that only the prophet should have ultimate power in the FLDS. In a nutshell, it was called the “one-man rule.”

Uncle Roy had several stepsons who were the children of the former prophet, John Y. Barlow. Their power was underscored by the fact that they were the nephews of Uncle Fred Jessop, who, as bishop, was in charge of daily life in the community. Because of their ties to the two men at the top, the stepsons had usurped some of the power and authority of the apostles in the FLDS.

Apostles were men chosen by God and ordained by the prophet. At one time in the FLDS apostles as well as the prophet had the power to arrange marriages. They were deeply involved in formulating community policy and were seen as worthy to receive revelations from God, just as the prophet did. The prophet was more powerful—he was the de facto god over the community—but he shared some of his power with the apostles.

If the stepsons could consolidate all power around Uncle Roy, then the apostles would be nearly stripped of their power in the community. Since Uncle Roy had become sick and bedridden, there was jockeying among those who wanted to succeed him.

The rupture was so severe in the community that my mother stopped speaking to her sister because she was married to one of the apostles. I was cut off from my friends, which upset me. Otherwise, I believed what I was told, that the brethren were trying to destroy Uncle Roy and take away all of his power.

It was a time of tremendous accusations. People on the Uncle Roy side started telling stories about the apostles and all the horrible things they had done. Church services became so argumentative that we began to look forward to being entertained by the fights. The theatrics were far more galvanizing than learning the word of God.

It was a strange time. Even though there were people we were forbidden to talk to or associate with, we dropped all those boundaries for holidays. We always celebrated the Fourth of July, as well as July 24. The twenty-fourth was the day when Brigham Young had brought the Latter-Day Saints into the valley and said, “This is the place.” It was one of our biggest holidays and we went all out with parades, food, dances, and fireworks.

My family was growing rapidly because Mother and Rosie were both having babies nearly every year and a half. Rosie had a full-time job, so my mother was left in charge of all the children. She depended on Linda, Annette, and me to help take care of our siblings. It seemed like we were babysitting all the time.

But one Saturday night when Linda and I were about thirteen and fourteen, we were given permission to go to a community dance. Neither Mother nor Rosie could go with us, so we were just dropped off at school. At the east of the auditorium was a section for the young unmarried ladies. We always sat there because it was next to the unmarried boys’ section.

Linda and I were walking around toward the back of the school, which was the entrance closest to the girls’ section. Just as we approached, the doors flew open, unleashing a stampede of girls. “Run for your lives!” they screamed. I did not need convincing and started running with them until the stampede stopped near the south auditorium entrance.

“Oh, yuck,” I heard someone say. “He got Laura.” Another voice chimed in: “She wasn’t paying attention when the signal was given, so she was the only one left in our section for him to pick.” Laura, my redheaded friend since childhood! I felt sad for her. We were still close friends. Her father had not chosen sides over the split, so there was no reason we couldn’t continue our friendship.

I listened to the girls explain how an elderly man who was looking for an additional wife kept coming to the young ladies’ section to shop around. None of the young girls ever wanted to dance with an old man.

It was frowned upon for a girl to dance more than one dance with a young boy. She also could refuse to dance with a young man if she had no interest. But a girl could
never
refuse the attentions of an older or even elderly man. This was considered to be one of the most disrespectful things one of us could do.

These were the rules of engagement. But there was no rule against a stampede. So when someone saw an elderly man heading toward our section, she gave a signal and all the girls ran out the door. If a girl was distracted or not paying attention, she could find herself left behind. That was what happened to Laura. We all felt so sorry for her, but thankfully, she didn’t have to marry that old man.

We streamed back into the dance hall once we knew the threat had passed. The young boys would be waiting near the door and we’d usually be asked to dance right away. The music that was played was the same music that the saints danced to when they first came to Salt Lake in the nineteenth century. We danced to waltzes and other slow music. Dances were one of the most exciting nights in the community for us. This was the only time we were ever allowed to be near boys our own age. We were closely watched and monitored and would get into trouble if we danced too much with the same person. We had to dress appropriately, which meant modest and simple clothes. Girls could wear some makeup and dresses, but only ones that were not too tight and didn’t have necklines that were too low. Shiny fabrics and loud colors were unacceptable. Boys wore ties, dress shirts, and slacks. Jeans were not allowed.

The dances were also another time when the bitter split that had divided the community was ignored. We were free to dance with anyone. I was beginning to notice boys and realize that there were some I liked so much more than others. Boys were noticing me, too. Linda had always been very popular. I became more so in the eighth grade when I got a big part in a school play.

I think the dances made it possible for us to talk about our feelings in a way we might not have been able to otherwise. One day in eighth grade, several of the girls were talking about the danger we faced in the future. One of my closest friends said, “As soon as you graduate from high school, you are going to be assigned to an old man and you will have to marry him.” Another girl said, “Every one of us is doomed! We are all going to have to marry an old man who is so ancient that we’ll be forced to take care of him.”