Breaking Free, page 12
My first thought was, Sorry, Gloria, we have as much right to him as you do. I did understand how she felt, though I struggled with the fact that she shared a room with our husband. None of the other ladies had ever gotten to share a room with Rich full-time.
I went to my husband with a different way of thinking than I’d had before my time away from him. I would always be kind and receptive to him when he called for me, but I was done letting his decisions run my emotions. Just as I had decided not to fight with my sister wives anymore to save my own sanity, I now resolved that I would not fight for Rich’s attention—I would not seek him out as I had in the past. From now on, he would have to be the one to come to me; he would have to make the effort to win my love.
I was going to be a lot more careful about what I said to Rich, as well. Before Vegas, I had treated him like my best friend and closest confidant, openly expressing how I felt, whether I was angry or jealous or upset about something one of my sister wives had done. Looking back on it, I realized that had always gotten me into trouble. It is what got us all sent away. It took me a long time to learn that lesson, but that year in Vegas had matured me. I wouldn’t indulge those feelings anymore, but if I did have them, I sure wasn’t going to tell him.
Still, it was hard to quell the jealousy that reared up in my heart when Rich slept with another wife. It was hard to get past the sense of betrayal. How could a man profess his love for one wife, then happily take another into his bed the next day? I had to remind myself that none of us chose this situation. Rich did not choose his wives, and we did not choose him. All I could do instead was try to appreciate the fact that Rich loved all of his family.
Within a month we had moved into the duplex again, having a full apartment for our family, and when Trish and Susan returned to South Dakota a few months after we did, the family was finally whole again. The ladies were so happy to see their children, and the children were delighted to have their mothers back. We all seemed to get along better since our experience in Vegas. We all shared everything: our home, our food, and our children. Rich made a family schedule every week, with the wives taking turns making meals, cleaning the house, and tending the children. This equal division of labor had the added benefit of making the children less selfish and more sociable because they dealt with so many people on a continual basis.
As a result, the next few years were the happiest of my married life.
“Who wants to help me feed the cows?” Rich asked the children after breakfast. He was an extremely kind and loving father, and made an effort to do things with them whenever he could.
“I do!” the children said in unison.
“Hurry and help do the breakfast dishes, then you can come with me.” The children rushed around clearing off the tables, wiping down high chairs, and sweeping floors while Rich hooked the trailer to the four-wheeler.
When the children finished their chores, they ran outside to join their father. Rich had made benches for the trailer for them to sit on. I was pregnant again, so I stayed behind to look after Rich and Gloria’s baby, Shirley, so that Gloria could go along to help tend the children.
After Rich had finished the animal chores with the children, he brought Martha down to my room for her nap. He lay on my bed next to her and asked her to sing a song to him. She launched into the hymn “Angry Words,” but she didn’t know all the words—“from the tongue unbridled slip” is a mouthful for a toddler—and her effort to sing the song was the cutest thing ever.
“Come here, Mother Rachel,” Rich said, patting the bed next to them. I went over and sat down. Rich took Martha’s little hand and placed it on my growing tummy. “Do you feel that, Martha? Mother is going to have a new little baby.” Martha laughed in delight as the baby’s foot kicked her little hand. Barbie, who had been lying on her own bed, came over to feel it too. The girls could not wait to meet their new sibling.
I spent the last few months of 2007 getting bigger and composing music for everyone to sing on Rich’s birthday in January. It had been a hit with Rich last year, and this year we would be in the same place with Rich, so we could sing it to him in person. The sister wives had agreed to make all the girl children matching green dresses for the birthday program, and we shared the sewing workload among us.
Susan taught school for all of the older children in a small shed outside our house; I taught preschool and kindergarten. During recess, I gathered all the children together to rehearse our birthday songs. I think the children enjoyed this special time we shared as much as I did.
Father was kinder that year, as well. Maybe being locked up in the Purgatory Correctional Facility (yes, it’s really called that), thirty miles northwest of Short Creek in southern Utah, had chastened him or softened his heart. Father still sent the people messages from prison, passed along through phone calls or letters, and the people still followed his word. He sent several messages for “my handmaid Rachel,” asking for my forgiveness again. Other times he sent stern messages of correction, but he was generally less strict than he had been. He may have been somewhat distracted by the preparations for his trial on charges of rape as an accomplice, which began on September 10, 2007.
The star witness was Elissa Wall, who had been married at the age of fourteen to Allen Steed—Steed was her first cousin, and nineteen years old at the time. Father had performed the wedding at the same motel in Caliente where I was married. Making a perfect snapshot of what living in the church was like, Allen Steed testified in Father’s defense. When Steed was asked by the prosecutor, “If you were told by the Prophet to disobey the laws of man, would you do it?” he said, “I would.” Steed was later charged with felony rape, but a plea deal resulted in a lesser charge of “solemnizing a prohibited marriage” and just a month in jail.
Father was convicted on both counts, and two months later the judge sentenced him to two consecutive sentences of five years to life in prison. He still faced charges in Arizona as well as federal charges of unlawful flight.
Being a convicted felon did nothing to lessen Father’s position as leader of the church—in fact, he was still controlling every aspect of the people’s lives.
In January he sent a message that he wanted me to go to the land of refuge in Texas to stay with his family while I waited to have my baby, since there was a midwife there. I was due February 29, although I had already decided I wasn’t giving birth on Leap Day, because I wanted my child to have a real birthday.
Rich drove me down and returned to the family in the Black Hills of South Dakota, but I didn’t mind that he had to go back, I was so happy to see my brothers and sisters again. I hadn’t seen them since the summer of 2005. There had been a lot of construction since the last time I was there, with many new homes, and the new temple was now finished.
That night I lay on my sister Angela’s bed with her while she told me what had been happening during the last couple of years, since I had not been allowed any contact with them. Father had ordered that there be no communication between the different lands of refuge, since everything at all times was a secret. You could only know what happened on any particular land of refuge if you lived there, which is why I had gotten in trouble for telling my little sister that we had cows in South Dakota.
Angela and I stayed up all night. She told me that before Father was caught by the authorities, he had married off our sister Teresa the day after she turned fifteen to Angela’s husband, Raymond Jessop, who was also married to my sister Maryanne, as well as two of my cousins, two of my aunts, and two Musser girls, Mary and Marie. So Teresa had to negotiate life as a plural wife—Ray’s ninth—at such a young age. At first I was surprised, since Father had allowed his other daughters to wait until they were eighteen, or at least very close to eighteen. But it made more sense when I remembered those little girls Father had married himself.
Then, three months after Father was arrested, he had Raymond Jessop sent away from his family, which meant my sisters had no husband, so Father had all three move back in with his family. Angela had to have her baby without her husband, and the stress of that caused complications during the birth at home. She ended up having a C-section in the hospital to save her life and the baby’s.
“I’m really sad that all this happened to you,” I said. “But I’m glad I get to spend some time with you now.”
We both told stories of our sister-wife struggles, and Angela told me how hard her married life had been. Like me, she had been on the receiving end of her sister wives’ jealousy, because they thought their husband, Ray, loved her the most. Despite how hard it was to hear certain things, it was also fun and comforting to be able to pour my heart out to Angela and share the thoughts and feelings I’d kept hidden deep within me all this time.
The next few weeks were happy ones for me; I spent lots of time with my other sisters, and gossiped and laughed late into the night. Mother Annette came into our room one night, acting like she was sleepwalking. She held her hands out in front of her and walked in an unstable, crazy manner, just to make the girls scream. Then she laughed and said, “You girls go to bed!”
One day I was taking a walk with Angela when we ran into Tina Steed, an old friend of mine, on a dirt road. Tina showed off her two beautiful children, a boy around two years old and a baby daughter. She told me that when her son was just a few weeks old, Father had told her she was unworthy and made her leave the lands of refuge to repent, leaving her baby behind. How could he separate a tiny, helpless baby from his mother like that? Father had let her return after her son was a year old.
All of Father’s family took time out of their days to come see me. I had missed them all so much. I spent most of my time sewing with Teresa and Josie. Josie had kept most of Mother’s belongings, so we went through it all together. Josie wanted me to take a lot of it, but the memory of Mother was still hard on me because of all that she’d gone through with her illness and being separated from her children. It hurt too much to think about it, so I didn’t want to take anything that would remind me.
Even though Teresa was married, once she went back to live in Father’s house, everyone treated her like a child. She wasn’t allowed to make her own choices or be responsible for herself. Both she and Angela still loved Ray, and they missed him. Maryanne missed him some, but had had a lot of struggles with jealousy and didn’t know if she wanted to go back to him. In fact, her struggle with jealousy over Ray’s spending time with his other wives was the reason Father had sent him away. It was all a big mess.
I got to spend time with my brothers during their mealtimes too. They were required to eat downstairs, away from Father’s wives and daughters, so that they would not be tempted to look at or like the girls. The boys shared bedrooms down one hall, and the girls down another, and each group was prohibited from entering the other’s area. Married sisters were allowed to talk to the brothers as long as we didn’t get caught doing it too often.
Rich came down to Texas to be with me a week before my due date, bringing my two little girls with him. Father’s family were so happy to see them, and everyone was intent on spoiling them every chance they got. I was glad to have my husband and daughters with me.
I had asked the midwife if there was any way to induce labor before February 29. She gave me Cytotec and several other drugs, but nothing worked. And then, wouldn’t you know, at four o’clock in the morning on Leap Day, I had my first contraction. God was reminding me that He was in charge, not me.
“I guess what I want doesn’t really matter, because we’re having a Leap baby,” I said to Rich.
I figured that if this baby was like the first two, it wouldn’t come out until I was almost dead from pushing. In the end, the labor was a little easier than it had been with Martha, but even so I was very glad when it was all over. My new baby son weighed eight and a half pounds, and he was perfect.
Father had sent a message with instructions what to name the baby. I had really hoped I’d be able to name this child, especially since Father was in prison, but Rich was as loyal to Father as ever. Rulon it was.
All of Father’s large family wanted to meet the new baby. There had been some bad viruses going around that winter, so the midwife did her darnedest to keep the sick children away from the baby, but with so many people and little ones coming and going, she wasn’t entirely successful.
Rich wanted us to head back to South Dakota a few days after the birth. Before we left, I went looking for my sister Angela in her room.
“I’m going to keep your phone number, just in case I need it,” I told her. “And you keep mine, just in case you need it.” It was a direct violation of Father’s orders, but I think we’d both been through enough at Father’s hands, being separated from our families, that we were willing to risk it.
“Okay, let’s,” Angela said. “But we can’t let anyone know.”
“At least text me some, okay?”
“Okay, if I dare.”
We were back home for less than a week when baby Rulon developed pneumonia.
A nurse on the land had some medical supplies, including an oximeter to measure the baby’s blood oxygen levels, which hovered in the mid- to upper seventies as he struggled to breathe. The nurse kept him on oxygen in an effort to raise the saturation closer to 100, where it should be. She also managed to get her hands on ceftriaxone, an antibiotic, which she injected into his leg. It was wrenching to see my newborn suffer so. As the days passed, his condition deteriorated and his weight dropped.
“Please, can we take him to the hospital?” I asked Rich several times. “He needs a doctor.”
“Rachel, you know that we have been instructed to give the children a blessing and do all we can at home. Let’s keep working with him here.”
The antibiotic didn’t seem to be helping, which made me think it may have expired. The nurse agreed, and stopped giving him the injections. I would have to rely on my own knowledge of natural healing to help him. I breastfed him as much as possible, kept him near a humidifier at all times, placed warm onion packs on his chest, and gave him drops of garlic oil. Over the next two weeks, baby Rulon slowly improved. My spirits soared when I knew that my son would be okay.
And then on the evening of April 3, I heard the family phone beep as I was walking through the living room. It was a text from my brother Ammon. I nearly dropped the phone when I saw the photos he’d sent.
I wrapped Rulon in a warm blanket and ran to the watchtower to find Rich.
15
The Raid
“Hey, you! Good morning!” Rich pulled me onto his lap and kissed my cheek. “Let me see my little man.” Rich uncovered baby Rulon’s face and started cooing at him.
I dug the phone out of my pocket and held it up. “Look at this. It’s from Ammon.”
Rich took the phone and scrolled through the photos of police cars and men in SWAT gear and camouflage, their weapons out, at the gate to R17.
“This looks bad,” Rich said, and immediately dialed Merril Jessop, the bishop there. “Is everything okay?” Rich asked.
“We are surrounded by police and Texas Rangers,” Merril said. “We’re trying to find out what they want.” Merril got off the phone quickly.
“That’s it?” I said.
“He has his hands full, sounds like. I’ll find out more as soon as I can.”
“Rich . . . my family.”
“There’s nothing we can do from here, Rachel. They’ll need our prayers,” Rich said. “Go tell the family to pray for the people in Texas.”
My heart hurt as I thought of all my family members. I loved them all so much. I walked back to the house to tell the others what was happening.
All day we waited for word, but nobody called. Around 10:00 p.m., I took the family phone down to my room and secretly texted my sister Angela. I couldn’t bear not knowing what was going on.
“Are you okay?”
“We are all in a big cement building with hundreds of cots, trying to get the children to sleep,” Angela wrote.
“Why are they doing this?”
“I don’t know, but I can’t let them know I have this phone. I’ll call you when I get a chance.”
A few minutes later, Ammon called. “I’m hiding in a shower stall,” he said in a muffled tone.
“I’m so glad you called! I’ve been so worried about everyone.”
“They said that they got a call from an underage girl named Sarah Jessop Barlow, saying she was married and had a baby,” Ammon said. “But there is no Sarah Jessop Barlow on the land, so we know they aren’t telling us the truth. I’m sure it was just an excuse to get on the land and find out what we are doing here.”
By the time the investigation found the caller and discovered it was a hoax—perpetrated by a thirty-three-year-old woman named Rozita Swinton in Colorado—the wheels of so-called justice had already been set in motion. The person who had taken the call passed it to the county sheriff’s office, which in turn led to a judge signing a warrant for Sarah Jessop Barlow and her husband, her alleged abuser. That’s what brought the law to the doors of R17. Merril told the officers there was no such person as Sarah Jessop Barlow there. Nonetheless, he had no choice but to let Child Protective Services (CPS) caseworkers interview some of the girls.
Ammon told me the CPS workers had first gathered up all the high-school-age girls at the school and questioned them each individually. Father had been so strict in teaching the people to keep our lives on the lands of refuge secret, some of the girls wouldn’t reveal how old they were or even their last names, but most of them did, and proved it with their birth certificates. The authorities were suspicious, so they decided to immediately remove some of the girls from the land, which they referred to as the YFZ Ranch.
