Authors: Elissa Wall
Stolen Innocence (37 page)
Directing his gaze at me, Uncle Warren told me how I was failing in my mission, “because you are not being obedient.” It was always the woman’s fault. If the marriage wasn’t working, it was because she wasn’t faithful enough. “I have given you so many opportunities to change your actions and allow yourself to accept what you have chosen to do. You need to remember your vows. You still need to give yourself over to Allen, mind, body, and soul. You need not to question him.”
Warren’s words seemed so hypocritical. He was saying that I had chosen this when I really had had no choice at all. It was nothing I hadn’t heard from him before. I couldn’t see how this marriage was going to improve. But I sat silently with my hands folded in my lap, listening to Warren’s directives.
“Your problem is that you are questioning Allen and the priesthood itself,” he declared. “And when you question the priesthood and your priesthood head, you are questioning God.”
Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, Warren asked me again about my relationship with my mother. And when I answered, he reminded me that I needed to change my loyalties to my husband. “You need to make sure you are at home in the trailer, under your husband’s roof, at night,” he instructed. Clearly he intended to go to Uncle Fred about my absences at night. “You need to be very careful about what you do because you will lose your faith,” he warned. It was Warren’s way of telling me that my disobedience was leading me to apostasy. “You, like some of your family members, are a little spirited,” he admonished, locking eyes with me.
Turning toward Allen, he told him to have a “strong, firm hand” with me and remember he was a priesthood man. “Allen, you need to live up to your priesthood commitments, and you need to be careful how you conduct yourself.”
Upon hearing this, my ears perked up for the first time in the meeting. The significance of Warren’s warning Allen was not lost on either of us. From now on, any complaining that Allen did to Warren or Fred about me would be seen not just as my failure to obey but also as Allen’s failure to control me. If Allen could not enforce his authority over me, he might not be worthy to hold the priesthood.
Rising to his feet, Warren imparted his final words of encouragement. “You both need to remember to keep sweet and keep the spirit of God about you. This is both of your missions and your callings, and you need to do this so that you can grow in love and have a life together.”
E
arly that summer, in my attempts to gain more space from Allen, I accepted a job as a waitress at Mark Twain’s, the family-style FLDS restaurant just off the highway at the entrance to town. Mark Twain’s would supplement my already busy schedule working for Saladmaster and doing some part-time child care, and I started immediately. My niece Meg soon joined me there as a cook.
With Kassandra gone, in the months before I’d left for Canada I’d grown exceptionally close to Meg, who was the daughter of one of Mother Audrey’s daughters. Even though I was technically her aunt, I was only eighteen days older than she and we’d known each other our whole lives. We’d strengthened our friendship the months before I’d left for Bountiful, and we’d stayed in touch by phone during my visit with Teressa and her family. Meg knew how unhappy I was in my marriage. It was hard for her to imagine what it was like to have a husband at our age, but of all the teenagers I knew, she was one of the few who didn’t treat me like an outcast because I was married. Though she couldn’t understand what I was going through, she was there for me as a friend and confidante. My friendship with Meg was deep because we were the same age and curious about many of the same things. I was secretly envious of her lack of restrictions. She was free to enjoy her teenage years without the responsibility of a husband, a home, and bills, while I was struggling to make my way in this very adult world.
From the start I enjoyed the Mark Twain, and the clientele quickly came to like me. This job also allowed me to interact with a lot more kids my own age and encouraged me to participate in normal teenage activities that both the church and Allen would have forbidden if they had known. Some nights after work, I secretly joined Meg and some of the other employees in “the Sticks” area of the desert. There we would build a fire, turn on music, drink beer, and basically act like typical teenagers. In our culture this was terribly taboo and we were running the risk of a severe reprimand. We’d usually gather near the huge pale limestone boulders that, through some miracle of nature, had risen up from the red clay in various parts of the landscape. We’d sit for hours on those piles of rock talking and watching the sun set over the desert. I had never done anything like this before, and just being around kids my own age was a huge relief.
Sometimes Meg snuck out of her parents’ house at night, and she and I just drove around for hours, cruising along the back roads of the Arizona strip with the forbidden car radio blasting. For those few hours every week, it was like we were totally free, as close to normal teenagers as we’d ever get. Our favorite bands were Bon Jovi and the Backstreet Boys, and I even started to buy some banned CDs during my shopping trips into St. George. Sometimes we’d drive into Hurricane in the evenings, even though everything was closed. Other times, we’d sneak into town and see a movie. One of our first was
Pirates of the Caribbean
. I hadn’t been to the movies since childhood. We were so scared we couldn’t even eat our popcorn, but we loved every minute of it. I’d never had an experience like that, and it was a big moment for me.
Allen knew that I wasn’t sleeping at home much and that bothered him, but he had little clue about what I was doing. He probably just assumed I was spending time with my mother. I went to great lengths to hide my rule-breaking from him for fear of what he would do if he found out. My goal wasn’t to confront him with my disobedience; it was to keep it as quiet as possible so that he couldn’t take my freedom away.
In the end, my time with Meg was less about rebelling against Allen or the church and more about me. It was about enjoying my life and starting to live on my terms. Being married, I was literally supposed to be an adult. I’d never been able to be a teenager before, to break the rules and do the kind of things that teenagers do. What we considered breaking the rules was actually pretty tame, but it made me feel liberated. With the truck winding down the darkened roads and the music playing at full volume, I was no longer Allen’s wife, I was myself.
But I couldn’t drive around forever. Eventually I had to go home. The second I would walk through the trailer door, the person I was with Meg suddenly disappeared, and once again, I was miserable.
According to your faith, so shall it be.
—
WARREN JEFFS
A
ugust began with yet another devastating blow from Warren that brought the morale in Short Creek to new lows. This time it was a community event that sparked Uncle Warren’s wrath.
It had begun a few months earlier when Shirley Barlow, a former wife of our prophet Leroy Johnson, began assembling a slide show to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the 1953 raid on Short Creek. As Shirley collected various photographs and artifacts from that time, many other community members become involved. So much material was gathered that the slide show evolved into a three-part film. The first of these was scheduled to be shown during our annual celebration of Uncle Roy’s birthday in June, and the last installment was to be aired on the eve of the raid’s anniversary.
Then Warren announced that this year we would not be celebrating Uncle Roy’s birthday. Though Uncle Roy had begun this tradition himself, and it had been carried on for years, Warren declared that the event was not what Uncle Roy would have wanted. This came as a huge shock to the community, who looked forward to the event as the beginning of our summer celebrations.
For much of July, Warren was away. He was gone for days at a time and would not tell the people where he was or when he would be back. Still, he found time to put an end to our July 4 festivities as well as our Pioneer Day celebration. July 4 he took away because he said it was celebrating the government, which was against us, but there was no real reason given for ending Pioneer Day. Though it was a tradition that went back decades, Warren didn’t attempt to justify himself; as the prophet he needed no explanation.
At first Warren allowed the anniversary slide show to move forward as scheduled, even attending the first viewing himself. The community proceeded to honor the fiftieth anniversary of the raid in his absence. Believing that he would be pleased and that we had his approval, we went ahead and aired the final installment on the night of July 24. A section of the library in Colorado City was cleared for the display of all the pictures, since it was on that spot that authorities had first found the people congregated in prayer that fateful day. There were also artifacts such as baby blankets and shoes that had been left by the children who’d been taken from their mothers.
At the center of town, some of the church elders erected a monument to Uncle Roy and the raid, and the unveiling was held on July 26, with Mayor Dan Barlow leading us in the dedication. Some of the local craftsmen had engraved the monument with these special words: “The Prophet Leroy S. Johnson stood on this site with the people and met the raiding police officers. He later declared the deliverance of the people in 1953 was one of the greatest miracles of all time.”
On the day of the dedication, Warren was away on one of his mysterious trips, but when he returned in early August and learned what had been done in his absence, he was livid. On Sunday, August 10, he stood up in church and chastised the people of Short Creek, accusing us of being like the people in Moses’ day, worshipping the golden calf as he was receiving the Ten Commandments from God. He told us that he’d received a revelation from God and commanded the destruction of the monument. “Verily I say unto you my servant Warren, my people have sinned a very grievous sin before me, in that they have raised up monuments to man and have not glorified me,” Warren related to us the terrifying revelation. Never before had he dictated a revelation directly to the people, and hearing how angry the Lord was with us for partaking in “idolatry” struck fear into our hearts.
Warren accused the people of being unworthy of future blessings and declared there would be no more meetings held, neither priesthood nor Sunday meetings. He also commanded that there would be no more marriages, baptisms, or confirmations. But he said the people would continue to pay tithing to him and support the FLDS storehouse.
Raising his hand in the air, our prophet told us that the land of Short Creek would now be “cursed.”
“I want that monument plowed to the ground, broken into pieces, and scattered in the hills where no one can find them,” he commanded, “and all the pictures and stories put in the church archives and forgotten.”
Terrified, several church elders jumped to their feet and raced out of the meetinghouse to follow his directive, bulldozing the monument that very afternoon. As time went on, we would see that Warren’s tirade had been prompted by jealousy. The monument and slide show had honored another time and another prophet. There was little mention of either Jeffs.
That day, Uncle Warren officially put an end to what had become a way of life for the people of the FLDS. He delivered a message from God, informing us that because of what we had done there would be no more socials, no more school, and no Harvest Fest. He had effectively ended Short Creek social life. We were to repent and pray privately that the Lord would forgive us.
For many, losing the right to marry was the severest punishment. It was unclear how long the ban would be in effect or if it would ever be lifted. Those men with fewer than three wives worried that they would never attain eternal salvation, while unmarried women feared that they would not gain entrance to heaven unless they were placed beside a man.
It was the harshest punishment Warren had ever issued, and it set off a frenzy of anxiety. Our salvation was at stake, and it was looking less and less likely that we would all be saved together. If Warren’s words held true, some of us would be saved, but most of us would not.
O
n August 31 my mom and I decided to quietly phone Kassandra to wish her a happy birthday. When I called, Ryan picked up the phone, and after I asked to speak with Kassandra, he informed me that she was in labor. I was shocked. I didn’t know she was pregnant. When Kassandra finally phoned us back, we learned that she and Ryan were living together, and they now had a newborn son. As Kassandra shared her exciting news, I began to understand things that had been confusing me for months: the mysterious whispers with Teressa when we dropped off Justin; Kassandra’s hesitance toward me. These were because of the coming baby, and understandably she hadn’t wanted me to know about it.
With the baby safely delivered, Kassandra began to open up more about her situation. She was living in Oregon near my brother Craig, who by then had taken both Justin and later Caleb under his wing. In a follow-up call in September, Kassandra expressed an interest in becoming a sales representative for Saladmaster because she needed money and knew how lucrative the business had been for me. When I spoke to my boss in Colorado City about bringing Kassandra on board, she saw a company benefit, and even though she was FLDS, she was eager for me to fly out and sign Kassandra on. She would receive a commission from Kassandra’s sales, and she provided me with the pots and pans that Kassandra would need to get started.
The only problem was Allen. Since our meeting with Warren, little in our routine had changed. I continued to split my nights between Uncle Fred’s and our trailer, but the nights out with Meg had led me to find a new bedroom: my truck. It had begun during the warm nights of the summer, when it made sense to sleep in my truck rather than going home to Allen. But as the season moved into fall, I was not eager to give up my new refuge and I was still spending a couple of nights there.