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

  *****

  Mark started calling more often. We would have some great phone conversations, and the family sent letters back and forth quite often. We missed him, but things were looking up. We didn’t have a dad or a husband around, but we were able to get off food stamps and not go back to dumpster diving. What a great source of pride for us.

  Mark told me Diane was always anxious to get the mail so she could make sure each of our letters from him weighed the same and were the same thickness.

  Every time we received a check from Mark, Diane and I would go through our long list of expenses and try to budget the money. There was still not enough. Often our conversations would get heated as we’d disagree on which bills must be paid, which ones would have to wait, and how we should divide a few personal dollars for our “sanity.”

  Diane felt any extra money should be divided fifty-fifty. Of course I couldn’t see that as fair at all. She had three young children, and I had four older kids and another baby on the way.

  “Dammit!” Mark said when I told him about the disagreement. “I don’t know what in the hell either of you are thinking, but I’ve decided the way it will be. You two should pay all the bills first. If you can squeeze any money out for anything else, split it into tenths. You take six tenths and she can take four.”

  “Okay, sounds good. I can deal with that, and I think it will be all right with her as well,” I told him.

  “Well it damn well better be,” Mark shouted. “If not, that’s just tough. I’m sick of hearing you two gripe and whine about everything. I can’t ever do anything for you without feeling obligated to do the same for her. If I want to buy you something I have to get Diane something. If I write you a ten-page letter, I’d have to write her a ten-page letter—”

  “But that’s how Diane understands fairness and equality,” I said.

  Still, her perception of fair never worked for me. When Mark bought Diane her rings that looked too much like mine, it wasn’t fair to me. Just one year after they were married, Mark, in trying to be fair, bought us identical heart lockets for Valentines’ Day (their engagement anniversary). I didn’t see that as fair. But Mark had done his best. He got gifts he liked and wanted to give to each of us. If they had been different, he worried one of us would feel the other piece of jewelry was more elegant or expensive. So he was sure if he got us the same or nearly the same things he couldn’t be faulted.

  A year later I had to tell Mark the truth when he asked. “Why don’t you wear the heart pendant I bought you?”

  I tried to explain it. “Apparently Diane likes to have and do the same things you do with or for me. When I got contact lenses, she wanted some. When I started fixing up my kitchen, she needed to fix hers. If you take me to see a show, she wants to see the same show. If we go to Lava Hot Springs, you have to take Diane to Lava Hot Springs. You just watch! When I buy a personalized license plate, she will have to get one also.

  “On the contrary, Mark, if you take Diane to a Jazz game, I don’t want you to take me to one. If you take her to the zoo, I don’t want you to take me to the zoo! If she deep-cleans her house on Monday, I have to do mine another day. I am me. I need and want my autonomy. I don’t want to be like anyone else. I don’t want you to buy me the same things you buy her. I don’t want you to take me to the same movies, restaurants, or hotels, either.”

  The Oak Ridge Boys’ lyrics “Trying to love two women is like a ball and chain” seemed fitting for Mark. I felt sorry for him and for any polygamist men who really tried to be fair. It seemed they could not win, no matter what they did or didn’t do.

  CHAPTER 28

  Guilt and Punishment

  1982

  My mother finally got to retire from nursing in 1981. She was sixty-six years old, and had more time to spend with her family and grandchildren. Dad and his sons finished another huge fourplex, on his property in Bluffdale, Utah. Mom got to move from her tiny home in Murray, that she’d been sharing with a sister-wife. What a treat it was to watch her choose all of the colors she wanted for her upstairs apartment. She was feeling like the Queen of Sheba in her new house.

  Not long after she moved in, she told me she was going to move downstairs, because one of her new sister-wives wanted to live upstairs instead of in the basement.

  “Why?” I snapped at Mom. “You love this house! It is yours. You chose all of the colors and carpet and paint you like. You’re settled in and deserve this beautiful home, Mom. Don’t allow them to do this to you. Ora can move downstairs!”

  Her eyes were wet with tears as she said sorrowfully, “It doesn’t really matter much to me, Sophia, I need to do whatever your dad wants me to do.”

  I knew it did matter to her. She’d only been in her home for six months and she was already being asked to move—booted out.

  “It’s always what Owen wants—what Owen needs, which really means what Aunt Eleanor or his other wives want or need! I exclaimed. “What about what you want for once in your life?”

  I desperately wanted to shake some sense into my mother. I wanted to scream at Dad for his lack of sensitivity toward her dreams, needs, and wishes. Anyone could take advantage of Mom’s goodness, since they knew she would give in to anyone at any time. I wanted to smack Dad and his new wife clear to the moon for their injustice. But nothing I did or said would matter one iota.

  She moved out of her lovely home, the one she finally didn’t have to share, after all these years, into the basement.

  *****

  My sister Francine had become a certified midwife, and I was seeing her for my regular checkups. She assured me everything was going as well as could be expected, other than the constant discomfort and pain in my lower abdomen.

  By the end of January I’d already gone into labor several times, just as I’d done with Schuyler. But this time my contractions were stronger and harder, so I called Mark and begged him to fly home. He dropped everything and got home in plenty of time. In fact, he had more than two weeks to spare.

  One day, I went through six or seven hours of hard labor before it completely quit again. I was ready and willing to have this baby by C-section. If we could have afforded it, I’d have pled with a doctor to just cut her out of my miserable, huge body. My emotions were raw in every sense of the word.

  Mark waited during the whole fourteen days his boss had given him off, before he had to leave again. During the nights he slept with Diane, my heart ached with jealousy. What would life be like if I could have a husband of my own, and not have to feel this kind of abandonment? Feeling ripped into pieces, was by far more unbearable than my pregnancy.

  The night before Mark went back to California, we held each other, cried, talked, and laughed for hours. I tried to explain how difficult it was to have to share the two or three days he is home after he’d been gone for weeks on end. I was certain Diane felt the same way. But for this time, being so pregnant and feeling so vulnerable, this sharing was unbearable. Mark assured me it was hard for him to be home for only a few days and have to leave again, too.

  We reminisced like we’d never done before. We laughed about the good, wild, crazy, happy times, and lamented over the many things that had not gone as we had planned or dreamed. Neither of us mentioned the innumerable fights and disagreements in the years gone by. Right then we wanted each other, and knew we’d do our best to make a go of things.

  By the time we got to the airport, I wanted to lock the car doors and make Diane stay there and wait while I told my husband goodbye alone, in privacy, the way it should be.

  I wished with all my heart I’d never encouraged Mark to marry her. What in God’s name was I thinking? My huge, pregnant belly felt so tight I feared my horrendous grief would start me into labor. But there was nothing I could do; not one thing, except try to hide my agony and behave myself like a good, sweet, honorable sister-wife should do.

  Diane, her kids, and my kids all stared at Mark’s plane until it flew out of sight. I knew he wouldn’t be able t
o come back for our daughter’s birth. I knew he wasn’t abandoning me—it just felt like he was. The throbbing pain pierced through my whole body. I was weak and sick all over. Even in my embarrassment, I couldn’t hide my anguish this time around.

  I couldn’t move. From a bench next to the huge window, I watched Diane and our kids walk away. In a few minutes Alan returned to see what was going on. He looked so sad when he saw me.

  “Go ahead and walk with Aunt Diane,” I told him. “I need to be alone. I’ll follow you to the car. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”

  *****

  Early one morning during the second week of February, I woke up to a gush of warm, thick liquid pouring onto the bed between my legs. I’d never felt this sensation before, but remembered other women talking about the amniotic sac breaking and spilling the fluid even before labor began, so I stayed calm.

  I wanted to call Mark, yet I didn’t want to. No matter; he had already told me he couldn’t come back so soon after his last long visit. I was angry, but not because I felt it was his fault. I was annoyed over the whole situation—especially as the labor began and progressed. I wanted him to know I was in labor so he could be part of it, at least in his heart. No, he should know so he could worry about me. It’s the least the father of my baby could do. Then again, maybe he shouldn’t even have the privilege of knowing his daughter would soon be born.

  After my emotional battle, I decided not to ruin his day by telling him about a situation he had no control over. I’d wait and call him after the baby was born.

  I finally got Jake up and had him go downstairs to tell Diane I’d soon be leaving to go to Aunt Amelia’s, and would she please look after my boys as we had arranged. When she came up to see what was going on, I told her not to tell Mark anything, one way or the other. It was my right to keep him posted or not.

  Aunt Amelia and Dad came to get me. All the way to her house, I still felt angry and abandoned. I couldn’t quit sobbing.

  Francine and Aunt Amelia made up the bed with sterile sheets and pads, and then put the blankets back on. As quickly as possible, I climbed under the blankets, lay in a fetal position, and cried some more. Francine and Aunt Amelia rubbed my back and talked me through each pain as well as they could. They tried to soothe my fears and anxieties by reassuring me everything would go well, even without Mark there.

  My labor progressed rapidly. The contractions were excruciatingly brutal when compared to my previous deliveries. With every intensifying pain, I wondered if we’d make it this time around. At the transitional stage, I became so emotional I could hardly hold myself together.

  I heard Mom and Auntie whispering, and then I saw their worried faces. Francine told them, “Go get Dad, now!”

  In a short time, a brother-in-law and Dad came in and administered to me. Dad put a drop or two of consecrated olive oil on the crown of my head. With their hands placed on the top of my head, Dad pronounced a blessing for my unborn infant and me, saying we would make it through this ordeal perfectly whole and healthy.

  For hours the labor pains continued without any progress. I’d never screamed during childbirth before, but I couldn’t help but shriek with this intolerable suffering. I was scared!

  Finally Francine told me my baby was presenting face first. Her cranial bones weren’t able to compress, as would normally happen. She was caught between my pelvic bone and my tailbone. I had two choices. They could call an ambulance and admit me into the hospital for an emergency C-section, or we could continue to try at home, but risk one or both of us dying.

  “I can’t go to the hospital! We don’t have time!” I told her. “We’ve got to get her out now, before we both die!”

  Francine’s hands, like forceps, gently tugged on the baby’s chin with each contraction, still to no avail.

  “I’ve got to push her out soon, or we won’t make it!” I screamed.

  For some reason, in nature’s amazing and divine order, I knew what to do. “Help me get up! I’ve got to get up on my knees!” I told them. With Auntie on one side and my mother on the other, I grasped their arms tightly and bore down, long, hard, steady pushes, one after another.

  “Push, keep pushing!” Francine and Mom said. “It’s working,” Francine shouted. “Keep going, Sophia, you can do it! Keep pushing! I can feel her forehead now! I just about have her chin out from under your pelvic bone! Come on honey, you can do it. Don’t give up.”

  I screamed and cursed some more. I pushed until I thought my whole insides would come out with my baby. I knew it was a matter of life or death.

  “Now, gentle, steady pushes,” Francine coached me. “It won’t be long and you’ll have your baby in your arms!”

  When Karleen was finally born, I fell backwards like a rag doll and sobbed. Francine got Karleen breathing and handed her to me, but my muscles wouldn’t work enough to reach for her. I didn’t have the strength to hold her eight-pound four-ounce body in my arms, or even to lift my own head up. My mother positioned Karleen on her side right next to me so I could stare at her.

  I couldn’t contain my gratitude for our lives, yet I couldn’t let go of my guilt. In our religion, there was always something more to feel ashamed and guilty about. Again, I felt responsible for everything that had gone awry during the delivery. God, I was sure, not only punished me, but my infant child for my sins. Exodus 20:5 says, “For the sins of the parents are visited on the third and fourth generations.”

  If only I were a better person. If I hadn’t encouraged Chad’s flirting and attention a couple of years ago, God wouldn’t have punished my infant. There wouldn’t be bruises on her face and body. Her eyes wouldn’t be so swollen she couldn’t open them. She’d have a strong, healthy cry instead of her lethargic, barely audible whimper. I could hardly hear or see her breathing.

  When she was at last able to open one little eye a tiny bit and look at me, I was sure she knew her suffering was my fault. Karleen should have been thriving and rooting about for my breasts, as any strong, healthy baby would have been by then.

  Tears rolled down my cheeks onto the sheets. I asked God to forgive me for hurting an innocent child.

  In an instant, I was full of resentment toward God. “It’s not her fault.” I said under my breath. “It’s mine, not hers! How could you do this to my innocent baby girl?”

  I slept for a few hours and then called Mark to tell him about his amazing daughter. He said he already heard about her and was grateful we were both doing okay now.

  I pushed my anger toward Diane deeper inside. She should have let me tell Karleen’s dad about her first. I also knew it wasn’t Mark’s fault he couldn’t be there; but in spite of everything, I was resentful, and knew it would take me a long time to feel settled.

  *****

  Not long after Karleen was born, Diane and I agreed I should watch her three children while she worked as a secretary. We needed and wanted the extra income. Since she had typing and shorthand skills, she could earn more income than I could, and I was happy I didn’t have to leave my young children with a babysitter.

  Things were going pretty well for a while. Diane and I were becoming “as thick as thieves,” as the saying goes. We wanted to and we had to, since we were now sharing the same broken-down car and making all of the household decisions. With no husband at home to be concerned about or to share in the family evenings, we spent more time visiting with each other and our children.

  As canning season approached, Jake and Alan helped me with seven-month-old Karleen, the usual household jobs, and the care of the other kids. During this time, we put twenty-five bushels of peaches, apricots, and pears in jars and processed them. Over the next few months, we picked twelve huge boxes of tomatoes from a neighbor’s field and turned them into sauce, juice, and salsa. We picked ten 5-gallon buckets of Concord grapes from Swede’s vines and processed them into grape juice and jelly.

  On another of those inhumane, tiring days, Diane came home from work, gathered her kids, and disappea
red into the basement as she had done nearly every day since canning season began. I sent Jake downstairs to tell her I needed to talk to her, and would she please come upstairs. Diane came up and leaned over the black wrought-iron stair railing.

  “Jake said you wanted to talk to me?”

  I continued to slip the skins off the boiled tomatoes before I cut and dropped them into jars. “I’m hoping you will help me get the rest of this canning done, so I can get some rest too.”

  “Well, maybe I can,” Diane said, “but I am pretty tired from working all day.”

  My stomach started to ache. Even the slightest confrontation scared me. “I am tired too, Diane. My days never end. When you get home from work, you gather your kids and disappear into your house, sit in front of your television, and enjoy your kids.”

  “But you’re home all day with your kids,” she replied, “and you can take a break whenever you want to and—”

  “There are no breaks, Diane!” I snapped back. “When can I take a break while taking care of eight kids all day and trying to keep up with the house, laundry, diapers, meals, dishes, and all the past months of canning and yard work that still needs to be done?”

  Diane yelled back, “But I give you half the money I earn, and that’s not fair! I have to leave my kids and work all day, and you reap the benefits!”

  “I do more work in a day than you’ve ever thought of doing, Diane! You wouldn’t have a job or any money at all if I weren’t caring for your kids. Who would watch, feed, bathe, and love them like I do, for anything less? While you’re at work in your quiet office all day long, my hectic, noisy days never end. When you’re watching TV, I’m still working, doing everything I didn’t get done while I tended your kids! If you can find someone else, maybe you should, and then I won’t feel like a crazy maniac all day long, every day!”