LITMIR.BIZ

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teachings, the coursework at Colorado City School District #14 conformed more to state mandates. Those who were not FLDS were from the surrounding area, including members of the Centennial Group. Being able to mix with kids outside of the FLDS religion was a wonderful change. I quickly found friendship with a girl from the Centennial Group named Lea, but the long-standing feud between the two sects prevented me from socializing with her outside of school. By church declaration the members of the Centennial Group were apostates, and I was not to associate with them.

      As I became more accustomed to life in Short Creek, I was lucky to find a very dear friend who was also an FLDS member. Her name was Natalie, and she was one of the most enjoyable people I’d ever met. She was the first young person in Hildale who seemed to accept me as I was—something that I’d been unable to find in Uncle Fred’s home. For the first time since I’d arrived, I felt I could trust someone, and I finally started to come out of my protective shell and blossom.

      Friends weren’t the only thing that I liked about school. Public school opened my eyes to a varied curriculum that gave me a thirst for learning. Given the focus on religious learning at Alta Academy, I had missed out on several important subjects. And had to struggle to catch up to my grade level. With so many distractions at home, at first I had a hard time with the rigors of public school, but with the help of my science teacher, David Bateman, I felt my eyes open up to a whole new academic world. I had never really studied science at school, and Mr. Bateman challenged me to come up to par, and even spent extra time helping me to discover science at work in the world around me. We had our fair share of difficulties and teacher-student arguments, but I loved his class and he became my favorite teacher. I also developed a love of writing and history and found that I was good at both. I finally started to adjust to my new school life, although I found it impossible to adapt to my new home. Since arriving at Fred’s house, I’d endured weeks of backstabbing and name-calling from the other girls in the home. My near-fatal reaction to the anesthetic during my “attempted” tonsillectomy had resulted in a number of lingering effects. One was the retention of water, and that, coupled with the baby fat I’d always had, had contributed to the little bit of pudge I’d put on over the months. Being a bit heavier had placed me at the center of cruel taunts, as some of Uncle Fred’s daughters looked to cut me down. With fifteen girls between the ages of twelve and seventeen living in the home, it had become like a dormitory with various cliques forming and relentless teasing everywhere. I was already very self-conscious about my appearance, and their comments only made it worse. I was so hurt and humiliated that I began starving myself to lose weight.

      Had it not been for Mom’s intervention, the situation could have turned far more serious. She’d noticed that I wasn’t eating my meals and immediately took steps to correct the problem. Mom recognized how this was hurting my spirit and lovingly assured me that no matter what anyone else was saying, I was special and beautiful and didn’t need to be ashamed of myself. I was just a normal young teenager struggling to find my place in a house full of teenage girls.

      The problems didn’t end with my weight. Every time I spoke about my father, the other girls in the house teased me, apparently deriving pleasure from informing me that he wasn’t my father anymore. I’d been involved in several heated arguments over the weeks and had simply refused to abandon Dad or agree that he was a wicked man.

      “You just watch,” they’d say in rebuttal. “Your mom’s going to marry Fred.”

      I should have realized that they were speaking from experience, as it had already happened to them and their mothers. Nevertheless, I refused to let go of my hope that somehow we’d all be reunited.

      Finally came the day when the idle gossip became real. After helping some of the other Jessop girls pick corn from the community garden, we all had just arrived back at the house when one of Fred’s daughters approached me.

      “Your mom’s going to marry Father,” she said in a know-it-all tone.

      “No she’s not,” I quickly retorted, trying my best to sound sure of myself. “We’re going to go home someday.”

      I was not going to give up on my dad. If Mom really did become Uncle Fred’s wife, it would mean that all of her children would then belong to Uncle Fred, and from the day of their wedding forward we would have to address him as Father. As far as the church was concerned, the man who had raised me, the man I had loved and called Dad for thirteen years, would no longer be my father. We could no longer even think of him in that way. In fact, we could no longer think of him at all. If Mom and Uncle Fred married, we’d literally belong to Fred Jessop and be expected to immediately transfer our love and loyalty to him.

      It would also mean we would have to drop our proud family name of Wall and take on the last name Jessop. When a woman and her children were passed from one man to another—regardless of the reason—they were forced to forsake the legacy of the father, as though he had never existed. Warren preached that when a family remarried to another man, God changed their blood and DNA to match that of the priesthood man they now belonged to. If we did not have worthy blood running through our veins, we could not gain entrance into the kingdom of heaven.

      But I didn’t want a new name or new DNA, and I most certainly didn’t want a new dad. I wanted my old dad, and the thought of these things taking place was incomprehensible. And I wasn’t going to allow it.

      Upset after yet another confrontation with the girls of the house, I ran upstairs to see Mom. Pushing open the bedroom door, I found her standing before a mirror trying on what appeared to be an unfinished wedding dress as my sister Kassandra altered it. I was stunned and completely speechless. In one moment the realization that she was indeed going to marry Fred hit me. For weeks, my relationship with my mother had been a bit strained, and the fact that I was entering my teens only fractured our already weakened mother-daughter bond. It was too much for me to come to grips with the fact that Mom would give up on Dad, but there she was standing in front of me, preparing to marry someone else as though my father no longer existed. As I stared at her, all my hopes were shattered. There was a familiar sparkle in her soft brown eyes that had been missing for quite a while, a sparkle that contained hope and said that everything was going to be okay. Those were emotions that I hadn’t felt in myself for a long time.

      Too devastated to say a word, I raced onto the house’s large balcony, where I found solace in a wicker porch swing. When I calmed down, Mom explained that Uncle Rulon had directed her to marry Uncle Fred, but I was livid. She hadn’t even taken the time to tell me. Hearing it from the house rumor mill had made it that much more difficult to swallow. The news was even worse for my two brothers Brad and Caleb. Life in Short Creek was very hard for them, and without the twins, they had banded together to survive. Brad and Caleb shared my feelings about Mom being married, and the idea of becoming another man’s children was something they could not accept.

      Not long after my discovery, Rachel joined Kassandra at the Jessop house to help us make dresses for the ceremony. In the days that followed, everyone in the house hold was nice to us. While I hated to admit it, it felt good to be noticed and included in things for a change. Mom’s marriage to Uncle Fred would elevate our status in the home to actual children of the church bishop as opposed to “refugees.”

      I was heartbroken as I stood in the living room of Uncle Rulon’s house that September 2, 1999, and watched my mother passed on to another man. On the outside, I was the picture of a beautiful priesthood child. My sisters had sewn my special pink gown with a three- inch lace sash at the waist, and my hair had been styled for the occasion by Felita, the well-known “Hair Queen of Hildale.” But inside I was falling apart. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t stop the tears from stinging my eyes. When the ceremony began, I beat myself up for having harbored angry feelings toward my father over things that had happened. Standing there, staring at my mother, I suddenly forgot any problems our family had ever had. All I could think was that we would never be reunited, and I deeply regretted not having cherished every moment we’d spent together. Had I known this was going to happen, I would have savored my times with Dad, and the whole family.

      Uncle Fred looked old standing next to my mother, who was elegant in the delicate white lace gown my sisters had sewn for the occasion. It didn’t make

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