Carolyn Jessop; Laura Palmer (7 page)

I thought of the rest home where Rosie worked and the old men I had seen slumped in their wheelchairs and staring blankly into space. I froze in shock.

“The very thought of marrying an old man is enough to make me throw up,” said another friend. For the first time I was confronting a fate I knew I didn’t want.

“But wait,” I said. “Several girls in the community have married young boys.”

The girl who’d started this conversation said that happened only because a young girl and a young boy both went to the prophet and insisted that they be married. “So the only way you are not going to have sex with an old man is if you can get a young boy to fall in love with you. Then you have to insist that he is the only man you are willing to marry. That’s the only chance you ever have of marrying someone who’s in love with you.”

“How do you get someone to fall in love with you?” I asked. We all knew how much trouble we could get in for just talking to a boy. That made the falling-in-love part hard.

This prompted a revelation from one of the other girls in our group. Her sister had been allowed to marry the boy she was in love with because they had sneaked out of theology class together. They’d done it for an entire year without ever being caught.

Suddenly we could see a strategy begin to emerge. We decided to start going to Sunday night theology classes, which were held three times a month. This was something else we could share, regardless of which side we stood on because of the religious divide. We signed up for a class with a teacher on the
opposite
side of the divide from our parents because it was to our advantage to have a teacher who was not on speaking terms with them.

We started going to the classes on Sunday nights to get our parents used to the idea. After a few weeks, one of us let some of the boys in on our scheme. They leaped at the idea of using the theology class as a chance to sneak out to the reservoir.

The plan worked flawlessly. There was a general meeting before we broke up into our smaller classes. The big meeting never lasted very long—someone gave a short speech and a prayer. By the time it was over, our parents had already left. We girls made a beeline for the bathroom.

One girl stood watch at the door, ready to give a signal if someone was coming toward the bathroom who was not part of the scheme. When the coast was clear, we’d line up next to the window, climb up, and jump out. Once we were all outside, we ran to the reservoir, protected by the darkness of the early evening. The boys did exactly the same thing from their bathroom.

Once we were all at the reservoir, we were home free. This was the first time ever in our lives that we could socialize with the opposite sex in an unsupervised way. It was so much fun to be able to relax and get to know one another without any pressure. For the most part, we hung out as a group and just talked. No one tried to have a romantic relationship. Someone always kept a close eye on the time. We knew when class was supposed to end, so we’d run back to the parking lot and stand next to the car of the person who’d brought us. They always assumed our class had gotten out ahead of theirs and were never suspicious.

This worked so well that more girls wanted to join our intrepid group. Boys did, too. Linda and several of her friends were pulled into our newfound freedom. Mother did begin to become suspicious because we were always determined never to miss theology. She had a hard time believing we were that hungry for the gospel because we’d never wanted to go to church to hear the sermons.

Mother told our father that she thought something was up. He brushed her off. Dad was proud that we were so committed to learning how to be more like God.

After the first few months of our unique “theology,” some of us had a boy whom we were attracted to and wanted to see more than three times a month. There was someone I liked at the time, but he’s still in the FLDS, so the less said the better.

But a year into our ruse, one of the teachers from school was outside the building and saw us jumping out of the windows and making a mad dash for the reservoir when we were supposed to be in class. He went to my father. Another teacher spotted the boys following us. Everyone was scandalized by our behavior. Some were punished severely by their families. My father seemed both furious and brokenhearted.

Fortunately for Linda, he never learned that she hadn’t been studying “theology,” too. He learned the name of the boy I liked and went to see him to tell him he was forbidden ever to speak to me again. My father gave me the same edict, too. I did not want to get the boy in any more trouble, so we did stop seeing each other. I was more concerned about what might happen to him than to me.

My freedom was not all that was coming to an end. I feared my education was, too. I graduated from eighth grade that spring. The only high school in the community was a private high school that was run by those on the other side of the religious divide from my father. Uncle Roy would not allow us to attend that school. I was devastated. I thrived on school, and all of my closest friends would be going on to high school because their families were on the opposing side of the divide.

Since we had been together since grade school, our friendships had continued despite the controversy. But high school was a dividing line. I wasn’t supposed to associate with them anymore. It felt like my happiness was sliding away. Without an education, I was doomed. The thought of losing my friends made me despair.

The only alternative I had was to take a correspondence course. It felt good that there was some recourse for me, but I still hated the thought of being separated from my friends. What made me slightly more hopeful was learning that several girls who were older than me had gone on to community college after finishing the correspondence course. I dug into my courses with a vengeance.

My father had given me a job answering phones at his construction company. I didn’t like it, but I was glad to get out of the house and do something other than babysit. When I wasn’t working, I stayed in my bedroom and studied. I finished three grades in my correspondence classes in less than a year.

Then the miracle: Uncle Roy decided to let some committed students go to the private high school, despite the split. He wanted us to report back to our parents about what was going on in the school. My father was shocked when the prophet told him to send Linda and me to the private school. Linda started as a senior, and I entered as a sophomore because I wanted to be with my friends.

Everyone welcomed me back with open arms. I had a lifeline back into a world that I loved, and I was overjoyed.

But as I was so often forced to learn, happiness was not something I could hold on to. I had to leave the private high school with my friends after only a year. Uncle Roy started a small public high school for his followers, and I was forced to go. Once more I had to say goodbye to my friends and sever myself from what mattered to me most.

My life felt like it was moving in the wrong direction, but I felt powerless to stop it. But my sister Linda’s life had become desperate.

Linda’s Flight to Freedom

L
inda had a sense that someone was watching her. He was an old man in the community who was about three times older than she was at seventeen. My father would come home and start asking Linda questions. Why was she wearing a skirt that was too short? Why was she walking down the street in heels that were too high? Why had she combed her hair a certain way before? Dad told Linda who had seen her doing these things.

Linda realized that this man was spying on her and reporting back to my father. When my mother got wind of this she was very upset and told my father that she didn’t trust this man. This was highly out of order, and my father ignored her. A woman had no right to speak out like this, even if the goal was protecting her daughter. Linda and I both could see that even when Mother wanted to protect us she had no power to do so. Mother’s fear was that he was angling to marry Linda.

Linda feared the same thing. She knew he was a man of power and influence within the community who, if he went to the prophet, could have nearly any woman he wanted. Once he locked onto Linda, there would be no escape. Linda also knew that Mother would drop her concerns about the marriage if the prophet decreed that she should become this man’s fifth wife.

These marriages were like live-animal traps. Linda knew her only hope was to flee before the trap snapped shut and there was no escape. She would be eighteen in the fall, which would give her a measure of legal protection.

Linda had a childhood friend in the community who was also desperate to escape. Claudel was terrified that she was going to be forced to marry her stepfather. Claudel had been living with her mother in Salt Lake City for several years. Her mother, who was no longer married to Claudel’s biological father, treated her like an indentured servant, forcing her to do all the cooking, cleaning, and babysitting. Claudel feared that if she was forced to marry her stepfather, she would become her mother’s slave for life and resigned to a life of bitterness—a living death.

Linda and Claudel began making plans to escape after they turned eighteen. Claudel had made a friend in Salt Lake City who was not in the FLDS and knew about her despair. Having one friend on the outside, one number to call, was huge, especially since Claudel had returned to Colorado City to live.

I had been working at my father’s construction company that summer and was being paid $1.25 an hour. But I was saving every dime I made. Mama had gone on a business trip with my father, and Rosie was taking care of the family. Linda had been acting strange for several days, which baffled me.

Elaine, one of Linda’s best friends, had come over, ostensibly to help Linda clean out her room. Linda was giving a lot of her things away, which didn’t strike me as odd until I realized that she was unpacking her hope chest. Most of us started hope chests in our early teens. Hope chests were status symbols in the community. We filled them with things we’d need in our marriages: pots, pans, linens, and blankets. Some girls made quilts for their hope chests. I did not. But often at birthdays we’d give one another things for our hope chests.

I asked Linda why she was giving away the treasured items she was saving for her marriage and many of her clothes. “I’m sick of everything, so I’ve given it to Elaine. I don’t want to wear these clothes anymore. I’ll just make some more.”

She wasn’t very convincing; her behavior was like jagged pieces of a puzzle that I couldn’t put together.

Linda knocked on my door at nine o’clock that night. I was getting ready for bed and was surprised to see her fully dressed at bedtime. Her face was pale. She clutched a large garbage bag of things she hadn’t given away.

In a whisper, she said to me, “Carolyn, I am leaving. Some of my friends are taking me to a neighboring community. From there I’m going to disappear. Some people are going to help me escape.”

I was stunned. Never, ever would I have guessed that Linda was running away with total strangers. I started to tremble.

“Why are you doing that? How can you trust people you don’t even know?”

Linda shrugged again. “Even if they are bad people, I don’t have anything to lose. If I stay here, my life is over. I’m not going to do that. Carolyn, do you think I can borrow twenty dollars from you?”

I was numb. I didn’t want to lose my sister. I walked over to the dresser drawer where I kept my summer money and handed her the envelope. “Take all of it, Linda—you’re going to need it.”

Linda resisted. “I only need twenty dollars—that’s enough. I can’t take all your money.”

I refused to take the envelope back. I couldn’t bear to look her in the eye. “Take it. You don’t know where you are going or even who you are going with. Take the money. Please. It will help me feel better about what you are doing.”

Linda grabbed me and we hugged. “Thank you, Carolyn, thank you.” She could barely whisper.

Our bedrooms were in the basement, next to the outside door. Linda went into her room to gather her things. Rosie heard her when she opened the outside door and came to see what was happening. When she saw Linda with the black garbage bag she asked her where she was headed.

Linda’s voice was as strong as the unshakable will behind it. “Rosie, I am leaving, and there is nothing you can do to stop me because I’m eighteen now.”

“Yes, I can,” said Rosie. “You are not going to leave.”

Linda did not flinch.

“I’m done with this religion! I’m not going to live this way anymore. I am going and nobody can do anything about it.” Linda bolted through the door. I watched her run until she was swallowed up by the night.

Rosie was yelling, “Linda, you get back here. You’re not going to get away with this. I’m calling your father right now.” Rosie soon realized that the more she yelled, the more time she was giving Linda to escape. She quit and ran to the phone.

Rosie raced upstairs and called my father at the hotel where he was staying. Minutes later men appeared at our house. They planned to restrain Linda until my father got home. But she was already gone.

The mayor of the community came and questioned me. Linda had protected me by not telling me of her plans. I told the mayor the truth: I didn’t know she had been planning to escape, nor did I know where she was headed.

My father and mother drove all night to get home. As soon as Father arrived, he teamed up with Claudel’s stepfather. Claudel and Linda had fled together. Her stepfather had brought about twenty men with him to hunt the girls down. They looked tall and ominous.

My father was tired from driving all night, but I could feel the deeper sadness behind his fatigue and stress. Linda’s dash for freedom was a complete disgrace to my father, mother, and entire family. We had lost our status in the community as a completely faithful family. The image my father had nurtured for a lifetime was in smithereens.

I could hear him crying in my mother’s bedroom. It was then that I felt the weight of his sadness and the brokenness of his heart. When my father came into the kitchen for breakfast he couldn’t eat. He stared at his plate and then asked me if I would ever do something like this and hurt him in the same way.

“Never!”

My fate was sealed.

I loved my father; his love for me was the ballast of my life. It upset me to see how much he was suffering. Both of my parents were worried about Linda’s safety. They knew how vulnerable she was, how unsophisticated in the ways of the world.

My mother was crushed that her image of a faithful mother of God was now in ruins. She knew she would never again be complimented within the community for her obedient children. Overnight she had become a mother who’d raised an apostate—someone who had turned against God and the prophet. There was nothing worse a person could become. As an apostate, Linda was now condemned to spend the afterlife in the lowest realm of hell, a place of such torment that it was beyond human comprehension.

Even if Linda was found, we knew she would be out of our lives forever. We would never be allowed to associate with her because she had abandoned the work of God. My father could not risk contaminating his other children by letting them have contact with Linda. Linda’s escape was worse than death. She would never be part of our lives on earth again, nor would we see her in the afterlife. I hated the thought of letting her go, but as I watched her disappear into the night, secretly I envied her. What worried me was that I knew Linda didn’t have any kind of survival skills. But I certainly didn’t think she should be forced to wed someone she didn’t want to marry. I said this to Rosie at one point and she said there was no way Linda would be coerced into a marriage; she could always say no. But this was a joke. People said that all the time, but the pressure that was applied to a woman who tried to resist an assigned marriage was crushing.

After several days, my father and several uncles of Linda’s friend tracked the two girls to a town not far from Salt Lake City. The posse of men surrounded the house, refusing to leave until the girls talked to them.

Linda and Claudel refused.

The woman who was sheltering them asked the men to leave, but they would not, so she called the police. When the officers arrived, the woman explained that she was protecting two runaways from Colorado City. When the police realized the girls were eighteen, they told the men to leave. The police told them they did not have the power to make the girls return. Nor had Linda and Claudel broken any laws.

My father said he would leave, but he wanted to talk to Linda first. He needed to know that she was all right, and he asked an officer to tell her he was very upset. Linda still wouldn’t speak to him. Then my dad said that if Linda would talk to him, he would agree to leave her alone and let her do what she wanted.

Linda relented.

When he finally had the chance, my father asked her why she had done this. Linda said she was finished with the religion and nothing he could say would make her change her mind. Dad tried to talk her into coming back, but she refused. He finally left with the other men.

Linda and her friend knew they had to flee that house before the men came back for them. Someone smuggled them into Salt Lake City. The hunt for them soon became an obsession within the community. It took several weeks, but Linda was finally spotted.

Alma, a boy who had fallen in love with Linda at school, headed to Salt Lake to try to find her because it was the most logical place for her to hide. He was on the opposite side of the religious split and there was no way they ever would have been allowed to marry. By this point, the split had completely severed the community in two. All association between one group and the other was unacceptable. Uncle Roy had kicked three apostles out of the FLDS, and they had established their own church. We no longer went to the same dances or celebrated community holidays together.

After Linda escaped, Alma left the community, too. His father had a house in Salt Lake City, so he moved there to look for her. One day he saw her working in J.B.’s, a chain restaurant, and so he got a job there, too. Alma helped Linda get her sea legs in Salt Lake. She didn’t know how to use the city bus system, so Alma taught her how to find her way around town and bought her a bus pass. Though Linda was not in love with Alma or even attracted to him, they spent nearly every moment together because she was so lonely and so fearful of being on her own.

Word somehow reached my father that Linda had been found in Salt Lake City. Dad got in touch with Alma and then showed up at J.B.’s to talk with Linda. She realized she would have to deal with him. There was no way she could spend the rest of her life running from her father.

Dad had one demand: he wanted Linda to speak with the prophet. He promised her that after she talked to Uncle Roy, he would leave her alone. Linda agreed.

When they met, Uncle Roy told Linda that although she had fallen away, she could redeem herself by marrying “a good man.” Linda said thanks but no thanks.

The prophet exploded and berated her.

Since Linda had no intention of being saved, Uncle Roy turned to my father and asked if he had any suggestions.

Dad said that there was a young man in Salt Lake who had taken an interest in her. My father said he worried about Linda’s safety in the big city and thought it might be a good idea for Alma to marry Linda.

In the prophet’s eyes, Linda was now useless to him. But Alma was on the other side of the religious split. If Linda married this boy and managed to convert him to Uncle Roy’s side, it could be worthwhile. There had been several marriages already where women were given to men on the other side of the split in hopes of converting the men. If one of the women converted instead, her family condemned her and considered her as dead. But the door was always open to her return. She could renounce her marriage and win back her salvation if she came home and let the prophet assign her to another man.

The boy and his father were subsequently called into Uncle Roy’s office. The prophet told Alma he wanted him to marry Linda. The boy’s father refused because his son was seventeen and had yet to finish high school. But Alma did not want to lose the prophet’s blessing. (I think he realized that Linda could think for herself and that he risked losing her by waiting.)

Linda had fled the community to avoid marriage, and now she was being forced to marry someone to remain free. Poor Linda was exhausted. There was monumental pressure on her to marry Alma. It wasn’t what she wanted to do, but it would put an end to the crisis. The hunt would be called off. She could maintain a relationship with our family, but she would not have to move back to Colorado City. It felt like the best of bad options.

Even though she agreed to do what the prophet asked of her, Linda’s marriage was still viewed as a marriage of rebellion. She had thwarted the prophet’s will by not marrying “the good man” he wanted to choose for her. Linda and Alma would have to have a civil marriage, and then a year later they would be eligible for a priesthood marriage by Uncle Roy.

Dad told me I could go to Salt Lake City and be part of Linda’s wedding. This was the first time I had seen her since her escape. We had no time alone and were never able to talk. Linda looked like she’d been run over and was too tired to keep fighting. I thought she looked scared. It was hard for me to see that there had been anything positive for her in the escape. I didn’t know how she would survive in the outside world.