Carolyn Jessop; Laura Palmer (13 page)

I shot back, “If those are the conditions of living here, then maybe I will have to leave this house. I am not willing to live this way.”

Merril showed no emotion. The last thing he could do would be to act as though I had any impact on him. “You are to do what I say. If you are doing the things I want you to do, then there should be no problems with other family members going through your things because there will be nothing to find.”

I turned and went into my bedroom. I decided to go through my belongings and give everything that might create conflict with Merril to my friends. He hated turtleneck sweaters because they showed the shape of my bust, so I never wore them around him, but I’d kept them. I also had several sheer blouses that I never dared wear around him. But rather than risk having them confiscated, I gave them away to friends. I also began to lock my bedroom door.

This was like adding kerosene to a smoldering fire. Soon there were flames. Merril asked me why I was locking my bedroom door. “Your daughters need to respect me enough to give me some privacy.”

Merril said he’d given his daughters permission to pick the lock on my door. “No one in my family has the right to hide things from me,” he said.

I told him there was nothing in my room to find. But invading my privacy was abusive. Merril accused me of not being in harmony with him. I surely was not, but I kept my mouth shut.

The following weekend when I came back from college, I found that some of my personal items were missing from my room. They were nowhere to be found. I went to Merril and said they’d been stolen. “Carolyn, saying things have been stolen is a strong accusation. There is nothing that you have that doesn’t belong to me. If someone in my family needs something, you should not begrudge their taking it.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He was giving his daughters a free pass to rob me blind. I left Merril’s home that morning and spent the entire weekend at my father’s house. I returned to Merril’s to sleep, but nothing else. I refused to go to church with Merril’s family, and late Sunday told Lenore I was going back to school. She could come with me that night or make other plans. She stomped off.

Merril called me that night in Cedar and asked where I’d been all weekend. He complained that I hadn’t checked in with him before going back to school. I made light of his concerns and told him that I’d gone back early to study for exams.

After that first weekend, I made it a habit to leave on Sunday night for college. I spent as much time away from Merril’s family as I could. I stopped cooking on weekends. I stopped coming home and trying to help Ruth clean house. I continued to lock my bedroom door. It improved my life immensely. I was out of Barbara’s line of fire, which reduced the pressure on me. If I was doing something in the house, she would find any reason to correct me. “Father wants the chairs put up on the table before the floor is swept.” “Father wants you to improve X.” “Father likes it when you do Y this way.” It was all about power and domination. I opted out, which was seen as outright rebellion. Now Barbara could go to Merril with further proof of my unworthiness as a wife. For her it was a win no matter what I did. When I realized that, I just did what was going to be best for me.

What Audrey had told me on our first bike ride to the reservoir was true. Barbara would do anything she could to undermine me. Ruth eventually came to me and asked me why I wasn’t helping her more on weekends with the cleaning. I told her it was because I had a lot of studying to do. She said I should do it during the week and help the family when I was home. Her complaints were soon echoed by Merril’s daughters. I was purposely not studying during the week at Cedar to avoid helping out around the house on weekends.

Merril’s daughters retaliated with one of the few weapons they had left: wash time. It might not sound like much to someone on the outside of our world, but in a large family, wash time was sacrosanct. When I would go to use a machine at my allotted time, I’d find one of Merril’s daughters doing her laundry. There would be a lame excuse—she’d missed her time and had no clothes. I knew if I complained, Merril would side with his daughters, so I didn’t.

Audrey came to my rescue. She was coming home to wash her clothes, and she shared whatever time she had with me. By stepping in and protecting me, she made the other girls disdainful. They began making fun of her and said it was no wonder God had cursed her. She had been a disobedient daughter, and that was why she’d been given to a man of no importance. Audrey had never participated with the other girls in abusing me and or hurting others. But for her to actually
protect
me was seen by them as an outright betrayal.

One Saturday morning Merril called everyone for morning prayers. When I didn’t show up, he sent one of his daughters to find me. My bed was empty because I’d gone for an early morning bike ride. But she lied and told Merril I was still in bed and refused to come to prayers.

Merril said it was obvious that I had no interest in doing what my husband wanted, and he berated me in front of his family.

After prayers, he walked out of the house to go to breakfast with some other men. He saw me ride my bike into the yard. When I went to put it away, he approached me. He began laughing. “I was told this morning you were sleeping and refusing to get up. I just told the entire family you were a lazy pig with no interest in doing what your husband wants.”

I didn’t know why he was telling me this. Was he trying to intimidate me? He’d smeared me to his family and now was making it into a big joke.

I told him it was too bad he felt this way toward me.

I walked toward the house without turning back. I was beyond disgusted with Merril and his family. I had figured out, though, that if I wanted to be able to smart off to him, I had to start right from the beginning of the marriage. I’d never get away with it if I waited and started later.

I knew that when Merril attacked me, it was like dumping blood and chum in the water and that the sharks would soon swim around. But how much worse could it really get?

I was in my bedroom for a few minutes when I heard a knock on the door. It was one of Barbara’s daughters asking me to come to the kitchen to meet with her. I told the child I’d be there in a moment. Two minutes later she was back. “Mother wants to invite you to help her and all of the girls in cleaning the kitchen.” I told her I had a few things to finish first.

I locked my door and climbed out my bedroom window and went to my father’s house, where I remained for the rest of the day. I knew there would be repercussions for my misbehavior, but it was better than being the family scapegoat. My family knew how unhappy I was in my marriage but offered little consolation. My parents didn’t like to see me upset, but they also believed that my marriage was a revelation from God.

When I came home that night Merril stormed into my room while I was getting ready for bed. He began hounding me about why I’d refused to help Barbara with cleaning the kitchen. I said I hadn’t refused. I had explained I had a few things to finish before I could help. Merril tried to provoke me into an argument with him. But I kept thinking of Audrey’s stories of how he’d attacked Faunita, and I resisted getting drawn into any confrontations. He finally left, and I closed my bedroom door, relieved that he hadn’t slapped me.

Thankfully, he didn’t stay with me that weekend or visit me in Cedar after the weekend. I was relieved by the absence of stress. The next weekend, he came and spent a night with me, but never again would we spend Saturday and Sunday nights together as we usually had. There were times when he would sneak into my room in the middle of the night and have sex with me while Barbara was asleep. He returned to her room right away and she never even knew.

But even though Merril was spending less time with me, it didn’t decrease the pressure on me or the abuse directed toward me from everyone else in the house except the children.

Tragedy

F
our months after my marriage I was finishing up my final summer classes at Cedar and feeling reasonably grounded. While Merril’s family seemed dark, strange, and complicated, I knew that if I could stay in college and carve out a place for myself in the world, it would offset the other realities I had to deal with as wife number four.

In the middle of my final week, Lenore got a phone call from home with the news that the prophet had decided her sister Rebecca would marry Rulon, a young man in the community who was in his early twenties.

Rebecca, at nineteen, was a year older than I, and now that she had been assigned in marriage, all of Merril’s remaining unmarried daughters were my age or younger. Lenore got permission from Merril to go home for Rebecca’s marriage, which was taking place the next day. I stayed at school to keep studying, relieved that I didn’t have to change my final exams again as I had to do when I married.

Even though I wasn’t there, the stories reached me about Rulon and Rebecca. He hadn’t met her before he found out she’d been assigned to him. When he went over to Merril’s house for the first time, all of Merril’s daughters waited in the office. Rulon arrived, not knowing which daughter was to be his bride.

Rulon, who was shy and apparently almost stuttering, said, “Is Rebecca here?” One of the girls said, “Yes, she is, and she is right there.” She then pointed to the youngest sister in the room. That girl quickly exclaimed, “It’s not me, it’s her!” before pointing to someone else who looked way too young for marriage, even in the FLDS. Rulon looked red and embarrassed when he realized the game that was being played at his expense. Finally Rebecca stood up laughing and said, “Yes, I am here. I’m the one you have come for.”

Rebecca was one of Merril’s and Ruth’s most beautiful daughters. She had long black hair and green eyes. She had a vibrant and engaging personality. But she was stunned by her arranged marriage, I later learned. She simply told Rulon that her sisters were heartbroken that she was leaving the family and couldn’t resist giving him a hard time. They were married the next day.

I went home, eager to settle into the few quiet days of August that remained. When I had free time I would try to go over to my father’s home and help out with the children. Ever since my marriage, it had been difficult for my mother to adjust to having less help around the house. There were still nine small children at home.

One slow, sultry day in August, my sixteen-year-old sister, Annette, offered to take the children on a picnic to a place we called Indian Bathtubs. It was about five miles from town where big rocks with holes in them caught the rainwater. It was peaceful and safe, the perfect place for a picnic with a lot of little children. My cousin Bonnie brought six of her siblings and Annette brought nine of hers. All fifteen children were loaded in the back of my father’s pickup truck and left for the day.

The kids loved riding in the truck, even though the hot, dusty wind that blew across the desert plateau we lived on kicked up sand that stung their eyes and made a mess of their hair. Annette was driving, and Bonnie kept her eye on the children through the open window that faced the back of the truck.

Suddenly the truck came over a crest on the road and hit a bump. Even though it wasn’t going too fast, the truck flipped when it hit an embankment of sand and landed with an enormous thud on top of several children.

The children trapped under the truck were panicked and those who had been thrown from it were screaming in terror. The truck was smoking. Annette told me later she knew it was going to explode.

She and Bonnie ran to the truck and lifted it so the other children could pull their siblings out. Some of the children were injured themselves but nevertheless tried to do what they could to extricate their siblings from the wreckage. Most of the children were under six but still tried with all their might to do what they could.

Annette thought she had everyone out from under the truck when she saw Nurylon’s lifeless body. Nurylon was my two-year-old sister and my mother’s namesake. We looked like identical twins, even though we were sixteen years apart. Annette grabbed Nurylon and took her to the side of the road, away from the truck, and frantically began doing CPR, trying to breathe oxygen and life back into her body. She heard a gurgling in her lungs and thought it might be a sign of life, so she breathed even harder into the limp child.

The truck exploded. The children screamed in terror. The heat from the blast radiated back toward the injured. The fourteen children watched as flames consumed the truck and as Annette kept up her desperate efforts to save Nurylon. She finally quit when she realized she was having no impact. Nurylon’s limp body held no signs of life.

Annette and Bonnie had to get help for the fourteen surviving children. Some seemed to have serious injuries, even though they were breathing. But what to do? No one had cell phones in those days, and they were also no longer on the main road. Help would come only if someone ran for it.

Christopher, my six-year-old brother, did not seem as injured as the rest. One arm seemed to be broken, but despite that he had managed to pull his siblings out from under the truck with the other one. Christopher volunteered to go to town for help. “I will run there as fast as I can and tell someone what happened!”

Annette wasn’t comfortable sending a six-year-old child on a five-mile run for help, but she and Bonnie had to stay with the injured. Christopher was a capable little boy, but he was still very little. Annette told him to watch out for cars and stop the first one he saw.

Christopher ran most of the way. My father had a business at the edge of town where he built modular homes that were shipped to different housing projects. A man there spotted Christopher and listened to him blurt out his story. One of the other men on the job radioed for help, and the volunteer fire and ambulance crews headed down the road, unsure of what they’d find.

Christopher told them that the truck had blown up and that Nurylon was dead. A radio call went out for another ambulance crew.

While waiting for help to arrive, Annette saw four-year-old JR, who seemed to have a broken arm and collarbone, huddling over the body of his dead sister. He was trembling from pain and trauma, tears making tracks down his dust-covered cheeks. He was Nurylon’s full brother—a shy and introspective child who seemed to live for his little sister. From the moment she was born, she’d seemed to belong to him. He got her up every morning and wouldn’t eat unless she was next to him or sleep unless she was beside him. He taught her how to walk, and then to run.

The first ambulance that came screaming down the road was from Hurricane. Someone had seen smoke in the distance and called for help. The ambulance crew was overwhelmed by what it found: fourteen injured and terrified children and the body of a little girl.

The paramedics examined Nurylon first. When they realized there was nothing more that could be done, they covered her with a small blanket. The paramedics said her injuries were so massive she probably died instantly. The ambulance left with Nurylon’s body and the two most seriously injured children.

The ambulance radioed ahead to the hospital about the number of children arriving. The hospital in St. George had a small ER and not enough doctors to treat fourteen kids with an array of injuries. Off-duty docs were called in to lend a hand.

My father got to the hospital before my mother arrived. He was taken to see Nurylon’s body. The hospital had called the mortuary. My father refused to let anyone else take her there. My father insisted on doing it himself. The hospital staff helped him to his car and he put Nurylon in the backseat wrapped in a blanket. When my father carried her into the mortuary, his face was flooded in tears.

My mother was told about the accident by someone from the volunteer fire department. She went immediately to the hospital.

My mother held herself together at the hospital. She was in shock. Her daughter was dead and eight other children were injured, some of whom were hers and others who were Rosie’s. At one point when a doctor was working on Karen’s leg my mother made a comment about how hard this was, and the doctor exploded, “You think this is hard on you!” The stress of seeing so many injured children was overwhelming, and all of this had happened because they were riding in an open truck. Miraculously, no one needed to be hospitalized overnight. There were some broken bones, bad bruises, and cuts that needed stitches, but nothing that was more severe or life-threatening.

That night Annette gave JR a bath. He was still shaking from trauma. He looked at her with his luminous brown eyes and said, “Why did you do it? Why did you kill Nurylon?”

Annette fell apart. She had managed to make it through that hellish day by doing each next thing that needed to be done. JR’s question slayed her. She began to sob and could not stop. Her pain exploded with the guilt that all of this was her fault. Her sister was dead, her siblings were injured, and she was sure that she was the one who deserved the blame. No one would ever offer her any solace or commend her for staying calm and rescuing children from under the truck. No one would ever tell Annette and Bonnie that they’d saved lives by making the children move away from the truck before it exploded. Annette’s valor and determination in trying to save Nurylon with CPR would never be acknowledged. No one ever said that it was an accident—as random as a bolt of lightning across an evening sky.

I was in one of my last classes when I saw that my cousin Valerie was standing outside the classroom. I couldn’t imagine why she’d come. Her sister Lee Ann was in the class with me and went out to the hallway first. Lee Ann turned away when she saw me approaching. Valerie just looked at me and said, “Carolyn, there has been an accident and your little sister Nurylon was killed.” Lee Ann was crying when she turned around. Six of her brothers and sisters had been in the accident.

My mind went blank. I was shocked. I could not find words to assemble into sentences. My face asked the questions I could not.

Valerie spoke calmly. She told me a few details of the accident and that all the children were safe except for Nurylon. “God was definitely there, protecting them. It was a miracle that Nurylon was the only one killed. Everyone else will make a full recovery.”

The death of my beloved sister didn’t feel like a miracle to me. It was fortunate that the other children survived, but I was blindsided by the news that Nurylon was gone.

Nurylon and I were far apart in years but indescribably close. Everyone said that she was a carbon copy of me. I found her death incomprehensible. No one close to me had ever died before. Nothing seemed crueler than the loss of a child.

I went back to my apartment and packed a few things for the ride home. Someone volunteered to call my professors and explain that I would need to reschedule my exams.

When I walked into Merril’s house, no one said anything to me, even though everyone knew about the accident. Rebecca had been married earlier that day and her sisters were sad that she was gone. I felt so alone. I didn’t belong in this family, and this family didn’t belong in my life. My loss seemed to widen and deepen the gulf between us.

Merril and Barbara had gone to dinner to celebrate Rebecca’s wedding. Ruth, Rebecca’s mother, was left behind to fix dinner for the rest of the family. I didn’t offer to help her cook. I just wanted to go to my father’s house. I needed to feel his strength and his protection.

When I walked into the house, my brothers and sisters came to greet me. Some had casts on their arms, others on their legs, and all had bruises in various shades of black and blue.

That night a family arrived from the other side of the religious divide with loaves of freshly baked bread. I invited them in, and they hugged my mother and offered us all words of consolation. The communal pain we all shared transcended our religious differences.

The outpouring of sympathy ran like a strong river. The next day our yard was filled with families raking, hoeing, and cleaning every corner of the yard. Windows were being washed, both inside and outside our house. The kitchen counters were laden with food. People brought soup, roast beef for sandwiches, and rolls for the freezer. It was touching to see how much people cared and how generous they were in reaching out to my family.

I returned home that night to Merril’s house. He never said a word to me about my sister’s death. Never.

We believed in the FLDS principle that death, like everything else, was God’s will. It was God’s will that Nurylon was taken and that the other children survived. There was no such thing as an untimely death. Sadness was acceptable during the immediate aftermath, but questioning God was not.

God had the right to give and the right to take away. We believed that Nurylon was too pure for this world and that God had taken her back. She had known she would be with us for only a short time. For any of us to mourn in a prolonged way would be detrimental to her progress to celestial glory. We believed that the dead go to the spirit world, where they remain until they are resurrected. If our family held on to her in our grief, our attachment to her spirit would hold her back because she would have too many ties to earth. I had been raised to believe that the death of a family member was actually a blessing because it gave our family a representative on the other side who would try to protect us. That, at least, was the theory, but it gave me no consolation. I wanted my baby sister back—not some special advocate in heaven.

Hundreds came to Nurylon’s funeral. It was held in the schoolhouse auditorium, which we used for worship services. After the funeral we walked to the cemetery and, after the grave was blessed, saw Nurylon’s small casket lowered into a dark hole in the ground. We stopped talking about her after a week or two. Mourning for any length of time was considered inappropriate.

JR’s broken bones healed and the bruises on his face faded. But he was changed forever. He became a reclusive child and didn’t interact with anyone in the family very much. He never seemed to bond to any other of his siblings.