50 Years in Polygamy: Big Secrets and Little White Lies Read online

  Still, in my ignorance I reminded Mark again what Mom always told me: “It’s not the gospel that’s wrong; it’s the people and their sins that make it look bad. No matter what others do or don’t do, we should still live the gospel of Jesus Christ to the best of our ability.”

  Mark snarled, “The gospel according to you! If I don’t do things exactly the way you, your dad, or your mom think it should be done, you’re mad at me and sulk for days!”

  I was quiet for a few minutes while I fought the usual hot tears of defeat. Then Mark threw in another one of his grievances. “It’s your fault Carla decided not to marry me!”

  Already angry and hurt, I got defensive. “Oh yes? How is that?” I grouched back at him.

  “She said you let her know in so many words she wasn’t welcome in our family.”

  “Well, I guess she could be right. It was obvious from the get-go she didn’t want me in our family. All she wanted was you. When she asked me questions about us, I was honest with her. So if she didn’t like what she heard and took it as rejection; it’s the way it’s meant to be.”

  *****

  In the fall of 1976, I had our table beautifully set for Mark, Amy, her husband, and our children. Our house was spotless, and the aroma of pot roast and onions filled the air. I’d spent the day anxiously preparing for the evening, and was so grateful we were finally getting together again.

  As our guests and our family were seated around the table, Mark, who was sitting straight across from me, griped about something. It hurt my feelings, so I ignored him. When I suggested we start passing the food to the left, he passed it to the right. A couple of minutes later, I asked him to please pass me the pitcher of ice water. He picked up his own glass of ice water, leaned across the table, and hurled it all over me. “Have some ice water!” he raged. “Do you have enough or can I get you some more?” The silence was deafening as everyone stared in shock. I kept my face down. No one knew what to do or say. By the time Amy got up to get a towel, I was on my way downstairs.

  “He’s either an angel or a devil,” I cried to Francine, while we sat on her bed. “It seems he either deeply loves me or he intensely hates me!”

  “What was he so mad about, Sophia?” she asked.

  “I have no idea. Tonight it could be he thought I was being bossy. Maybe I sounded that way. He could have been mad because he had a bad day or I didn’t do something he asked me to do. I’m so embarrassed I could die, but I’ve got to pull myself together and get back upstairs.”

  After I thought everyone would be done with supper, I tiptoed through the kitchen, hoping to sneak into my bedroom and change clothes without being seen. My uncontrollable tears came from emotional pain, but even more, they were tears of anger. I was so disappointed and furious at myself for caring what everyone else was thinking. How could I fix this mess? What kind of an excuse could I make this time for Mark’s nasty conduct? My own need to make things appear all right made me completely sick to my stomach, yet I didn’t know what else to do. I’d always done things this way.

  When I came out of my room with dry clothes on and swollen eyes, nearly everyone was in the front room. It was obvious they didn’t know what to do either. Acting as if nothing had happened, I sat next to Amy and fed her some lame excuse for Mark’s bad behavior, hoping she’d believe I was as happy in my marriage as I assumed she was in hers.

  I slept with my back to Mark all night long. Most of the time, when we were mad and hurt; neither one of us talked about anything but the weather. He hoped I’d pass those kinds of things off and forget anything ever happened, but I felt sick to my stomach because of his evasiveness.

  A few days later, he finally told me he was sorry for throwing the ice water all over me. “It’s because you had been such a nag all evening,” he said.

  My guts were in knots. A request, an expectation—sometimes even a question for Mark felt like I was stepping into a minefield. You’d think I would have learned by that point in our marriage when to—and when not to—do any one of those things. The problem was there never was a “right” time. Like most women, I wanted my husband to see my needs and desires and to provide answers out of respect for me. Sometimes it was like that, but I couldn’t for the life of me understand how he could call my desperate requests for help “nagging.” No matter what his excuses were, my dejection lingered.

  In those days and weeks, I wished Mark had a whole bunch of wives. He needed a real nag who constantly pouted and held deep grudges, so he’d know what a nagging and unforgiving wife was really like. He should have a wife who ragged on him when she was stressed or had a bad day, just like he did to me and his kids. Then it would be nice if he had a wife who would ignore him after she raged and cussed about everything. When or if he felt devastated because of her insensitive behavior, she would tell him he was pouting over nothing. Mark must also have a wife who wanted nothing more than to be my personal assistant and nanny so I, like Mark, could hibernate with a good book, get in the car and just drive around to de-stress without fretting over the care of the kids. Even better, Mark should stay home with our children day and night while I go about discussing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness with my prospective husbands. Maybe then he’d feel the bitter sting of this insane lifestyle.

  *****

  On our way to sacrament meetings each Sunday for the past few months, members of The Group had noticed several police cars parked on the side of Redwood Road near the turnoff to our meetinghouse. We were told police were checking license plate numbers to verify the names of church attendees, as opposed to those who might be assailants. Some of us felt as nervous about having the police know exactly who was going to our church, as we were about Ervil LeBaron’s threats.

  His delusions of grandeur were in full force. He was still making death threats to anyone who wouldn’t do his bidding. Because of the recent murders he had ordered, authorities were taking seriously Ervil’s promises to “spill blood.”

  On the afternoon of June 10, 1977, Mom called in tears.

  “Your Uncle Rulon has been shot! He is dead!”

  For everyone in The Group, time seemed to stop. Everyone knew where he or she was standing when they heard the terrible news about President Kennedy’s assassination. It would be the same for Uncle Rulon’s contract killing, forever etched in our minds and hearts.

  For days we watched the television broadcasts and heard the gruesome details of his murder. We watched the paramedics carry his dead body on a gurney from his office. More tears were shed when we saw his uncovered feet and knew they’d no longer carry him to and from his numerous labors of love. Why hadn’t we taken Ervil’s murderous intimidations more seriously?

  Our usual Relief Society meeting on Wednesday evening turned into a general meeting where we assembled for strength and support. We wanted to hear the word of God from my father, to whom everyone looked up to as our new leader. Between his words of encouragement, Dad would stop to gather his composure. Few of us could control our tears as he told us of Aunt Melba’s anguish. He described how she witnessed her husband being gunned down right in front of her eyes, and had no recourse.

  Two armed women, dressed as men, had entered Uncle Rulon’s office and quietly sat in the waiting room until they saw him appear. “Rulon Allred?” they asked. When he replied, “Yes,” they filled his head and body with bullets from both guns.

  Many church members sitting in general meeting were trembling in fear. Who will Ervil kill next—and when? Were any of our leaders safe? The hard, metal chairs I’d sat on hundreds of times before felt like crude, cold concrete grinding me further into conformity. My father’s audience was riveted to every word he spoke. To us, Uncle Rulon was a martyr! Just like Joseph Smith, he died for his cause. Father admonished all of us to remain strong and become even more humble and vigilant in building God’s kingdom.

  “At least he got his wish. He got to die standing up doing the work of the Lord.” Those words became our foundation of
comfort and fortitude; we heard them and reiterated them for days, weeks, and years afterward.

  Many people in The Group felt there would be no justice in his assassination. We were also angry about the media hype from reporters who continued to publicize, over and over again, Dr. Allred’s death was the result of “rival polygamists” fighting over power. There was never a dispute between Rulon Allred and Ervil LeBaron over authority. He had nothing to fight about. Our leaders weren’t trying to make Ervil’s clan follow their regime. The Allredites were hardly protecting themselves, let alone planning to retaliate or fight for power. The murder was about Ervil’s power-hungry insanity, using the old LDS “blood atonement” doctrine to perpetuate his own mafia like power.

  On June 14, 1977, over twenty-five hundred people attended Uncle Rulon’s funeral at Bingham High School. We were told a multitude of law enforcement officers we noticed everywhere had been strategically placed to deter Ervil’s disciples who’d vowed to exterminate Verlan LeBaron, another of Ervil’s brothers, and turn this scene into a blood bath.

  About six weeks after Uncle Rulon’s death, I was driving up our street with all the windows down and the radio on. Suddenly, I heard a loud pop and then felt an intense burning on my left cheek just below my eye. I slammed on the brakes and pulled over. Two young boys ran from a neighbor’s back yard and charged into the house.

  In the visor mirror, I could barely see the pellet embedded in my face, but I could feel it with my fingers and against my throbbing cheekbone.

  I quickly drove around the corner and knocked on the door of the house the boys had entered. I rang the doorbell and pounded on the door some more. After quite some time I opened it and yelled at the teens to come out so we could talk. “So I won’t have to call the police!” I hollered at them. Even after five minutes, they didn’t show their faces.

  I went back to my car and sat there waiting, wondering what to do next. I was angry, hurt, and embarrassed. Those two neighborhood boys had actually pointed their pumped-up pellet gun at me or my car and pulled the trigger! Fear came only after I pried the shell out of my cheek. Blood shot from the hole in my face and onto the steering wheel for three or four seconds, before it pulsated down my face onto my shirt and pants.

  When I got back to my house, I pressed a cold, wet, cloth on my wound and dialed the Police Department. I explained I’d been shot with a pellet gun and asked if they would please come out and talk to the boys.

  Within minutes, a loudspeaker warning bellowed throughout the neighborhood. Police cars seemed to have fallen from the sky. They barricaded the opposite ends of our street and the front of our home. Lights flashed across the house and through the windows. I was so embarrassed I wanted to hide in my closet and ignore the pounding on our front door. I never wanted to be seen on the streets ever again.

  “Are you all right, lady?” one of the three police officers asked when I reluctantly opened the door.

  “Of course I am,” I told them. “What’s this big scene all about?”

  “We had a call saying someone has been shot,” he said. “We weren’t sure what to expect.”

  The exasperated posse was called off after I explained again.

  A couple of the policemen found the boys, after they decided to present themselves. An hour later the LDS bishop’s wife, a neighbor who had never spoken a word to me in all the years we’d lived there (and not one word since), came down with her son and his buddy to apologize. As the policemen suggested, our neighbors offered to pay for an X-ray, if I would get one.

  I told the two boys I was never allowed, and neither were my boys, to point even their play guns at people or animals, pretending to shoot or kill. It was my belief, that no one should touch a gun unless they’ve learned a great deal of appreciation for its proper use. “Most of all,” l said, “I am hurt by your disrespect for me as a human being—even if, as you said, your intent was only to shoot at my car. If the pellet had hit my face one inch higher, your carelessness could have blinded me!”

  A few days later the neighborhood gossip queen, who lived catty-corner from us, knocked on my front door. She had always been nice to us, at least to our faces, and she wanted to know what I had to say about “the entire ruckus.” Then she told me everyone in her LDS Church ward knew I was Owen Allred’s daughter; so she figured Ervil LeBaron’s clan was out to get me also.

  “Oh no, not li’l ol’ me,” I drawled. “I’m just a li’l ol’ piss ant, not one tiny bit worth their efforts. I’ll only die if I am among the crowd when their bomb explodes.”

  Then she admitted when she heard the gunshot on the street, right in front of her house, she called the police. “I thought they might be going after all of you polygamists,” she said apologetically.

  I knew she meant well. Even so, my embarrassment, shame, and notoriety chipped away at my ego. I despised the disparaging reputation that went along with our sect’s belief system. I always took it personally.

  *****

  For the rest of the summer, Mark and I had to swallow our pride so we could take little Sky to watch Jake’s and Alan’s T-ball games at the park. We would try to go out to eat at least once a week. At night, while I was still cleaning, doing dishes, or ironing, Mark would make up more exciting chapters to the already-existing Journey of Little Eagle stories. He got the boys to help create the words, new characters, and animals. They laughed when they interjected their own juicy morsels into Mark’s action-packed chronicles. I was elated when I heard their innocent giggles and voices, and I dreamed of a billion more of these pleasant father-and-son connections.

  In the fall, Mark and I made another trip to Marysvale, Utah, where his dad had a mining claim in the beautiful mountains.

  Down the hill, fifty feet or so from the huge cabin, I sat cross-legged on the cool earth and held two-year-old Schuyler in my arms. His soft blond hair pressed against my cheek while I watched Jake and Alan laugh and scream in excitement. Mark’s younger brothers had strung a twenty-foot rope swing across a shallow ravine. It would carry the boys across and then back up the hill again. I embraced the wonderful panorama and mused over the romantic escapades, meaningful conversations, playful laughter, and precious times Mark and I had experienced there, off and on, for the past six summers. Those were some of the happiest days, feeling life was worth living!

  CHAPTER 22

  Courtship and a Sister-Wife

  1977–1978

  Kenneth told Mark, Diane and her almost two-year-old little girl had moved back to her mother’s house. Dad’s concerns had been accurate. Diane’s soon-to-be ex-husband’s first wife was openly favored as his soul mate, while Diane was relegated to concubine. In her short marriage, she had to ask her sister-wife for any privilege: for food items, personal needs, and apparel. She had to get permission to sleep with her husband and to visit her family. Often, the first wife refused Diane’s requests.

  When Mark told me about the situation, I was dejected. “If you would have noticed and cared for Diane a few years ago, when she was crazy about you, she wouldn’t have gone through all that grief.”

  Mark warily agreed. Shortly after Diane’s priesthood release, a divorce granted only under certain circumstances, Mark asked Diane’s father if we could court her.

  Up to that point, the heartache of courting another woman was caused by my imagination. Now it was haunting. For nearly four months, Mark spent every other night at Diane’s mother’s house with Diane. Often he wouldn’t return until after one or two o’clock in the morning.

  Though I dearly loved Diane and believed she belonged in our family, I fought off “the devil’s” constant torments by keeping extremely busy. I was scared to death of what would happen if I let my imagination haunt me even more.

  Now and then I had no control over my thoughts. I envisioned Mark and Diane kissing and fondling each other the way Norma had described what she and her married fiancé had done. No! I screamed at myself. Stop it! Don’t allow yourself to believe for one seco
nd either of them will let things get out of hand. To retain my sanity, I accomplished a dozen more things, and crossed them off my never-ending to-do list.

  When things got to be too much, and I was already feeling like an insane plural wife, I timidly complained to Mark I thought it was wrong for him to spend so much time—especially alone time with Diane before they were married, even if it was at her parents’ home. He, of course, disagreed.

  “She needs me there to reassure her. After the rejection she felt from me, and her ex-husband’s crap, she needs to feel secure.”

  How could I dispute that?

  One evening in the fall, I was finally invited to dinner by Diane’s mother. After an absolutely delicious meal with Diane’s parents; Mark, Diane, and I retreated to the basement family room to watch a movie. Mark claimed the huge reclining chair, while Diane and I sat on a nearby sofa.

  It felt like a bolt of electricity pierced through my heart when I returned from a bathroom break and saw Diane, like a bear cub, snuggled up in Mark’s lap, wrapped in his arms and kissing his neck.

  I thought I might blackout from the horrendous pain imbuing me from head to toe. All my worries and concerns were warranted. Like a caged lioness, my grief wanted to be set free, as if aggression might be the only way I could stay alive. Instead I slumped down on the sofa behind them while my whole body quaked inside. Images of everything I believed they’d been doing for months on end filled my head. I wanted to shove the reclining chair they were sitting in over backwards. I wanted to have the strength to make Mark so angry he would pummel me senseless, to make me forget my heartache.

  Silently, I commanded my heart to stop thrashing around in my chest and swore I wouldn’t shed a single tear.

  I wasn’t supposed to feel like this. Not one plural wife ever warned me about this brutal pain. I had no idea such torment existed. The two lovebirds were totally oblivious to anything but the movie in front of them, and themselves, while I was dying.