My Story (28 page)

At this time, religious discrimination was an especially touchy subject because of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Yet Mitchell had even been able to turn that to his advantage. People were afraid of offending anyone, especially someone dressed in veils and robes, and Mitchell had been able to extract a lot of sympathy because of that. He had convinced a police officer not to even look at my face back in the library, all in the name of religion.

I knew it was wrong to try to manipulate people. As a young girl, the only manipulating I had ever done was when I tried to get Mary Katherine to brush my hair, or tickle my back, or make me a grilled cheese sandwich. Even then, it hardly ever worked. I was not good at manipulation. And I knew that it was much worse to use religion to manipulate people. But as I sat there thinking about it, I started to develop a plan.

But first I had to get things right with God.

I wondered if God would give me a one-time exception when it came to manipulation. Considering the situation I was in, I thought maybe He would help me out.

While Mitchell and Barzee were talking about all of the places they could drag me off to, I knelt down and started praying. I begged God to let this plan work just this once. I begged Him to help me, and if He did, I promised never to try to manipulate anyone ever again.

Once I had finished my prayer, I sat up and turned to my captors. “I know this sounds crazy, but I keep having this feeling like maybe we should go back to Salt Lake City,” I said. “I know that doesn’t make any sense. And I know that God would never talk to me about this feeling, but it just won’t leave me alone.” I turned my eyes on Mitchell, my voice soft and sincere. “Do you think you could ask God if we should go back to Salt Lake? I know He will answer you! I know He will! You are His prophet! You are His seer. You are practically His best friend!”

I guess I stroked his ego just right, because Mitchell didn’t immediately reject my suggestion. And I could see what he was thinking: Maybe my little Shearjashub is finally getting it. Maybe she’s finally acknowledging that I really am the prophet.

So he agreed to pray about it. Then, just like Moses, he stood up and went up on the mountain to talk to God.

Sometime later he came back. “I think you are right, Shearjashub,” he announced. “The Lord is beginning to work with you. That makes me very happy. We should go back to Salt Lake.

“Now we just have to find a way to get back to Utah. We could beg for money to ride the bus. We could buy a cheap car. We could take a train. We can’t fly, though, That takes too much money, and we don’t have any ID.…”

He muttered on, wondering about the best way to get back to Salt Lake.

I had an idea for that, too.

“You and Hephzibah always talk about your trek across the country,” I said. “You talk all the time about how you used to hitchhike everywhere.”

Mitchell stopped and stared at me with a look of surprise.

“I think we should hitchhike back to Utah,” I said. “You and Hephzibah have hitchhiked all over the country. I never have hitchhiked in my life! My parents always dropped me off and picked me up! I think it’s essential for me to experience that as well. I think it’s an important part of descending below all things that I may rise above them all.”

Mitchell’s face changed from surprise to shock. Barzee seemed to squint, as if she was suspicious.

But I knew I had him. He was caught with his own artillery.

I didn’t want to hitchhike all the way back to Utah, of course. But what I did want was to be in close contact with other people. Real people, not Mitchell and Barzee. If I could get close enough to other people, maybe there’d be a situation where I could be rescued or find a way to escape.

But Mitchell shook his head. He didn’t like the idea at all. “Far too risky,” he said.

He and Barzee started to discuss it. Surprisingly, Barzee agreed with me. It
was
something I needed to experience.

Mitchell finally gave in. But I could tell that he was suspicious of the idea.

*

I was so eager to get back to Utah! It was the only thing I could think about. I wanted to leave right away.

But there was a lot to do before we could be ready to go.

We had to get some money for the journey. That was going to take some time. We had to sort through all of our belongings, packing up those things that we intended to take with us. I had been through that before. I knew it was a lot of work. Mitchell said we also needed to plan an appropriate route back to Salt Lake City. We couldn’t just stand on the side of the road holding a sign that read
SALT LAKE CITY
. We had to plan a route that took us from one small town to the next, eventually working our way back to Utah.

Which left us with one big problem.

Mitchell knew that people wouldn’t pick us up if we were dressed in our strange-looking robes. Which meant we had to get some street clothes. But that included great risk, for people would certainly recognize me if they could see my face and hair. I would have to be well disguised or Mitchell would never go through with the plan.

Mitchell didn’t know what to do. He said he’d have to think about it.

Still, I felt a wave of hope and excitement wash over me. After nearly nine months of being enslaved, I had shown that I was more than a bystander in my own life, more than just a puppet in his hands.

After months of grueling training and conditioning, I felt like I had finally kicked a goal.

Surprisingly, it only took us three days to get ready to hitchhike back to SLC. We spent the first couple of days sorting through all of our belongings, throwing some stuff away and deciding what things we would take with us on our journey. I was surprised at how much junk we had accumulated, most of it dug out of Dumpsters or from other homeless camps. We sorted and decided, trying to keep our sacks light, a goal in which we failed miserably. But it was no easy thing for three people to do, hitchhike for eight hundred miles while dragging along literally everything we owned.

After we had organized our things, Mitchell spent a little time ministering in the city to get some money. I never knew how much he collected—he certainly never shared that kind of information with Barzee or me—but I knew it wasn’t much.

That afternoon, he sat and stared at me. “We need to cut your hair,” he said. “Cut it really short and dye it too. That’s the only way no one is going to recognize you.”

I shook my head defiantly. I wasn’t going to let him. He’d have to hold me down to cut my hair.

“Yeah, we’re going to have to cut and dye it,” he went on. “And you know what else?” He ran his fingers through his own hair. “I might have to dye my hair as well.”

That didn’t make any sense. He wasn’t a fugitive. He hadn’t had his picture pasted all over the country. No one was going to recognize him. But it made him feel important to think that someone might be looking for him too.

He turned and smiled at me. “Shearjashub, how do you think I would look as a blond?”

That one was easy. He’d look like an old man with dyed hair. He already looked like a cross between Rasputin and Osama bin Laden and I didn’t think a little blond hair was going to change that.

Barzee jumped in. “I don’t think you should make her cut her hair,” she said.

I looked at her in surprise. In the nine months since she and her husband had kidnapped me, this was the only time she had ever interjected to protect me.

“A woman’s hair is her crown,” she went on. “It wouldn’t be right to make her cut it. You need to find another way.”

Looking at her stringy gray hair, I realized that all of this talk about cutting and dyeing our hair had bothered her. At the end of the day, she’d be left with a head of gray hair and she didn’t want to be left out. Still, I was glad that she had said what she did.

Mitchell thought for a couple of minutes, unwilling to announce his decision. Then his face lit up like a lightbulb. “I’ve got it! We won’t dye or cut her hair. We’ll make her wear a wig instead.” Relieved to keep my hair, I nodded eagerly. But it wasn’t as if it was a stroke of genius. Wasn’t getting me a wig an obvious answer anyway?

The next day, Mitchell took Barzee and me into El Cajon. We walked to one of the local strip malls and went into the dollar store. Of course! I thought sarcastically. The perfect place to buy a quality wig!

I stood quietly beside Mitchell while he and Barzee tried to find the right hairpiece, a decision that soon devolved into an argument. Looking at the selection, I had to cringe. The best way to describe them was “old-lady gray hair bubble.” I rummaged around the rack, looking for one that was just a little less gray than all the others, finally picking out one that seemed to have a few more strands of brown. Turning it over, I read the style name:
Tiger Lily.
The irony was rich.

We selected that wig, then spent a whopping $1.29 on an equally stylish pair of sunglasses and walked out of the store.

After we had made our way back to camp, Mitchell made me put on my disguise. Then he looked at me and smiled. He was as proud as he could be. It was like,
voilà
! I didn’t look like me anymore. But I knew the truth. I looked ridiculous. The shoddy wig hardly fit me and I constantly had to adjust it to keep from showing tufts of blond hair at the front of my head. The sunglasses were tinted green. We had found my pants alongside the road and my shirt had been taken from a homeless camp.

I looked down at my clothes and adjusted my wig, shaking my head in disbelief.
Really!
I thought. I was a fifteen-year-old girl in a gray wig and sunglasses so cheap they didn’t even sit straight on my face.
Do you really think this is going to work
?
Who in their right mind is going to think it’s normal for a young girl to be wearing a gray wig
? Not to mention the fact that it was already falling apart. If it couldn’t even make it through a day, how was it going to look in a week?

But even though I knew I looked ridiculous, I felt like a princess compared to how I felt in the robe and veil that I’d been wearing for almost nine months.

The next day we woke up early. Our nasty green bags were packed and ready to go. I considered our belongings as we hoisted them on our backs. We had a small purple tent—and I do mean small; it was barely big enough for two small adults, let alone large enough to get abused in every night—a couple of blankets, Mitchell’s collection of holy books, and a few kitchen items. A little food. A little water. Some of Barzee’s clothes and personal belongings. A few of Mitchell’s prized possessions, including his knife. Though it didn’t look like much, it seemed to weigh a ton!

Slinging the heavy bags over our shoulders, we made our way out to the highway.

And so started a miserable, exhausting, and convoluted journey back to Salt Lake City.

*

It took us a long time to get a ride. The first people to pick us up were a kind man and his son who took us twenty or thirty miles down the road, then dropped us off at a campground, paid our camp fees, and even brought us some groceries.

The next day a young woman with two male friends picked us up. She spent a lot of time asking me questions, trying to figure out why I was wearing a gray wig and why I was with two misfits like Mitchell and Barzee. But Mitchell never let me talk. Whenever she asked me anything, he’d jump in before I had a chance to answer. Which was a relief. I could hardly even look at her, let alone answer any of her questions. I was so used to being alone, so afraid of making Mitchell angry, and so intimidated by human contact that it terrified me to be peppered with her questions. After nine months of constant threats and manipulation, it was impossible for me to talk to anyone besides Mitchell and his angry wife. So though we rode with these people a long way, I never said a word.

We spent that night on a hillside that ran beside the highway. All of our food and water was gone and I was hungry and exhausted. Cars were rushing by like crazy. Mitchell didn’t want anyone to see us, but the hill was barren and there was nowhere for us to hide, so we got up very early in the morning, broke camp, and started walking before the sun came up.

We walked almost the entire day. It was hot and exhausting. I thought I was going to die from the lack of water and the heat.

Over the next several days, there were times when I felt like we were going to walk all the way to Utah. We got occasional rides, but many of them were only for a few miles and then we’d have to walk again. Miles and miles went by as we trudged along, the green bags slung across our backs. We hardly ate. We suffered without water. Wanting to stay away from the Highway Patrol, we kept to the back roads and little towns. Pretty soon, we found ourselves out in the California desert. It was a stupid thing to do, trying to hitchhike across the desert without anything to eat or drink.

At one point we were standing at a lonely intersection in an unknown town. There was a pie restaurant on the corner and a kind stranger took us in and bought each of us a slice of pie. I’ve never eaten anything so delicious in my life! After we had eaten the pie, Mitchell snuck around to the back of the store where they sold the pies in boxes to ship around the country. He bought a whole pie and ate almost the entire thing himself, leaving Barzee and me only a sliver of a piece to share.

With that little bit of nutrition in my belly, Mitchell herded us out again, heading north. My pack was so heavy, I was so tired, and the footing on the side of the road was so poor that I stumbled constantly. I’m not sure how far we walked but it felt like an eternity before we finally came to a barren intersection with a sign that pointed toward Borrego Springs. Once again, I didn’t have any idea where we were. Mitchell was the navigator. I was the pack mule.

A woman in a station wagon pulling a small trailer stopped to give us a ride. As we climbed in, she said that she had never picked up hitchhikers before but for some reason she had the feeling that she should give us a ride. I was so grateful! I was tired, hot, and hungry. To me she was a saint. As we drove, she tried to tell us about her recent move to Borrego Springs, but Mitchell kept interrupting, telling her his story, how he was a servant of the Lord who had been chosen to preach repentance to the world. On and on he went. I started feeling sorry for her, having to listen to him for so long. She finally dropped us off at a small Mexican restaurant in another unknown town.