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and admired it. “Are you aware of the restrictions on what the priesthood people can wear?”

      I had no idea, and didn’t immediately answer. Now I was intimidated and worried, not knowing how to respond.

      “This jewelry is quite nice,” he continued.

      I began to exhale a sigh of relief.

      He told me that it was wrong to adorn our bodies with worldly possessions. “Now, I want you to walk over to the garbage can and throw them away.”

      I was devastated and embarrassed, but there was nothing I could do. Lowering my eyes, I obediently dropped the jewelry into the can, losing them forever.

      I cried as I related my terrible experience with Uncle Warren to my mother that afternoon. She was sympathetic but firm. She told me that from that day forth I should not wear unacceptable items to school. I had to obey what Warren said. I was too afraid to tell my father, feeling ashamed to have lost something that he had given me, so I kept the incident to myself, oftentimes sulking in private when I thought about how my precious gift had become Uncle Warren’s trash.

      The summer following second grade, I was officially baptized into the priesthood in the sacred “baptismal vault” in the basement of Alta Academy. I knew about the room, but I’d never actually been inside it until I had come of age. Descending the stairs to the basement in my pretty white full-length dress, I felt a rush of apprehension. I was excited to be participating in the sacred rite of passage, but also a bit scared. It was the way I felt about all of our rituals: it was good to know that my time had come, but there was always mystery surrounding the observance. Still, the thought that my father would be waiting for me in the waist-deep water calmed me down.

      My mom and some of my siblings were standing just outside the door as I took off my white lace socks and white shoes and prepared to enter the room. I walked through the door of the sacred space slowly and descended the white tile steps that led into the enormous tub that took up much of the room, my clothing growing heavier with each step.

      Three church elders had to be present for the ceremony; one was my dad, who was already in the water waiting for me to join him. The water was deep, just about up to my shoulders when I reached the section were Dad stood. For the ritual to be performed properly, every part of the body had to be completely submersed. My father had to submerge me three times because my foot kept popping out of the water.

      Climbing back out of the tub, I was met by the other two elders standing just inside the doorway. They were there to perform a laying on of hands and anoint me with the special olive oil that had been blessed by three church elders for the occasion. I should have been freezing because the water in the font was so cold, but I was too overwhelmed to care.

      I was officially a member of the church now and responsible for all my actions. It was an important moment in my life as an FLDS believer. The baptism signified that I was now accountable for my choices. All my childhood sins were instantly wiped away and I was given a “clean slate” to begin my life as an official member of the priesthood. From here on out, making the wrong choices could result in a permanent “black mark” on my slate that would remain until I was judged in heaven.

      The moment I exited the cold tub of water I began to think carefully about how I behaved. I was in the church now, and I had to obey all the rules. If I didn’t, there would be consequences.

       CHAPTER THREE

       GOOD PRIESTHOOD CHILDREN

      Your family must be united.

      —RULON JEFFS

      In the weeks immediately following Mother Laura’s arrival in October 1995, the tension in the house had, for the most part, subsided. We’d cleared one of my sisters’ bedrooms on the lower level to make room for our new mother, and at the start we were all on our best behavior.

      Mother Laura’s entry into our lives came at a time when many things in the Wall house were changing. In the span of a few months, my sisters Kassandra, Sabrina, and Michelle were all married according to the prophet’s revelation. Kassandra, at nineteen years old, joined Rachel as one of the many wives of Rulon Jeffs, who by that point was eighty-three, while Sabrina was married to a member of the FLDS community in Canada. Michelle stayed closer to home, marrying Uncle Rulon’s son Seth. All of my sisters had been over the age of eighteen at the time of their marriages, and Dad had been chastised for keeping them in the home so long. But my father just wanted to give his girls the opportunity to grow up.

      Of these departures, Michelle’s hit me the hardest. She had the gentlest soul of anyone in my family and had always looked out for me—comforting me when I was sick, making sure that my hair was combed, and that I was dressed neatly and appropriately. There were so many children in the Wall house hold, and as the nineteenth, I sometimes fell through the cracks. But Michelle made every effort to ensure that didn’t happen; she was like a second mother to me. For the eldest sisters in the home to help with the care of the little ones was a common practice for families of the FLDS. Mom had thirteen children of her own still living in the home, and with Audrey up and out early to teach at Alta Academy, leaving most of the domestic duties falling on Mom’s shoulders, she’d needed to have Michelle, Kassandra, and Sabrina around to provide us extra attention. Of course, nothing compared to Mom’s healing touch, but in many ways Michelle had become another anchor for me. Losing her was unthinkable. I cried right up until the day of the wedding, begging her not to go away.

      With all these changes in the family, it was beginning to feel like our house had a revolving door with people constantly coming in and going out. However, though we lost many of my older sisters that year, we had gained a mother and there was hope in that new relationship. I looked to Mom for advice on how to welcome Mother Laura. She had grown up knowing and wanting this lifestyle, but I now understand that our years of turmoil had made many of us skeptical about what her arrival would do to the already touchy atmosphere in our house hold.

      Mom had endured years of compromising as she’d tried to pattern this home after the one she’d grown up in. I know that she had obeyed her priesthood head as she was directed, but over the years she’d grown increasingly disheartened at the way her relationship with her sister wife and husband had affected her children.

      Mom’s firm religious convictions reminded her to hold her tongue and keep sweet. I admired how she welcomed Mother Laura with open arms. Seeing her embrace our new mother made me hopeful that this new element in the equation would balance our home out. Because Laura’s age was close to that of my older sisters, I felt optimistic about the prospect of forming a bond with her like the one that I shared with them. At first this seemed possible. Mother Laura and I had lots of fun, playing games with some of my other siblings. Her presence helped to alleviate some of the emptiness I’d felt since my sisters’ departures. But I watched helplessly as it soon became worse than before. Mom’s gentle personality and unwavering commitment to her faith were no match for the others in the home. It distressed me to see the lonely look in her eyes as she tried to keep the pieces together and shield her younger children from a repeat of the past.

      But by the end of that first month, the newness of having Mother Laura in the house had begun to wear off. It was quickly becoming clear that Dad’s third wife had her own unique set of expectations and would present certain challenges. She was yet another person who wanted things done her way. We’d seen glimmers of that stubborn side during family get-togethers, but her desire to take charge held a different significance now that she was part of our house hold.

      While Laura’s presence was problematic in itself, it served to aggravate another long-simmering tension in the family, involving my twenty- one-year-old brother, Craig. As he came of age, my oldest brother from my mother had finally been able to quiet some of the tension between the mothers and the children in our home. But adding Laura to the family had again made the equation unbalanced. It was not long after she arrived that old feuds were rekindled.

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