50 Years in Polygamy: Big Secrets and Little White Lies Page 37

  While I spent my days and nights searching for her, more pangs of anger and resentment toward me and God filled my heart. The whole time I had planned and visualized the children’s college, I begged the God I still held a tiny residue of hope and belief in, to let my dreams fade away. “Please do anything it takes to halt this thing. Don’t let it survive in my heart if it isn’t meant to be,” I’d pray. But as in the past, to add to all of His previous, villainous, traitorous deeds, God had also allowed Karleen’s wayward insurrections. My dreams were gone, and my precious Karleen was on the streets.

  I carried a few pictures of Karleen. At some of the homes where I believe she’d been hiding out, people told me they didn’t know who she was. Those who did admit she’d been there would tell me, she must have just ditched me again. With the help of other drug-using kids or adults, she was long gone and in another hideout by the time I arrived. After a week of searching without any luck, I reported her missing as a runaway.

  I kept in daily contact with the Salt Lake and Sandy City Police departments to give pertinent information or to receive any news. Three or four times, the police picked up Karleen and her friends for truancy and dropped them off at Youth Services. Then I’d pick her up from there. She would stay home in her room for a day or two while she slept off another crystal-methamphetamine-induced stupor, and then she’d be gone again.

  With each disappearance she was gone for longer durations and called me less and less. I searched her drawers for numbers and addresses. A few lucky times when I got a mother or another person to put Karleen on the phone, she’d rage at me.

  “You’re a crazy, insane, mother! Just leave me the hell alone and let me have my own life!”

  “I won't let you stop me from finding her and getting her back!” I screamed at the God who’d prodded His way back into my life. My determination to save Karleen, and God’s resolve to punish us yet another time became the ultimate dispute between me and the deity of my childhood. “I will win!” I told myself before I made several more calls. I’d buckle Anne and Keith into the car, drive all over, and hit the streets again.

  During all of this, my business partners, Mark, and I sold literally everything in the day care to make our monthly $1,500 payments until the building sold. All of us tried to not freak out too much about the possibility of losing our homes.

  For a few more months I walked more neighborhoods from one side of the valley to the other. I asked everyone for leads, and left pictures of Karleen with our phone number. At the homes where she’d been hiding out, I was either shunned or revered as I continued to warn her alleged friends, their siblings, and parents not to harbor my underage daughter or I would press charges.

  Mark’s and my relationship was full of disaffection. His fury toward Karleen and her ongoing absence was more than I could stand.

  As unsuccessful days turned into weeks, then another month, I continued to castigate myself for the derelict mother I believed I’d been. In the videotapes playing in my mind, I regretted the fights between Karleen and me, regretted not spending more time in laughter and play, regretted not standing in between her and her dad’s fights and the malicious words he often directed at her. A million of my shortcomings haunted me.

  On many of those long, miserable hours and days of worry, my eyes would again be so swollen from tears I could hardly see where I was driving. My only solace was my precious children who were home with me, and available to love and enjoy. I would never give up on Karleen! No earthly acquisition would ever be worth more to me than my children. I’d give up everything for them if I had to.

  CHAPTER 39

  Court-Appointed Recovery

  1997–2001

  One evening in the fall, after months of not hearing from Karleen, she called to tell me she was alive and okay. Actually, she’d called again to insist I stop looking for her. “I don’t need you or Dad in my life right now!” she insisted. “Just leave me alone and stop bothering my friends and their parents!” She told me she loved me before she hung up. Even though she was probably under the influence of drugs and only said it to get me to back off, it still sounded great.

  I picked up the wall phone and dialed *69—the best service the phone company ever came up with. I’d tried it several times before when Karleen had called, but she always blocked the numbers. This time, I swooned with joy when the operator gave me the number Karleen called from and told me pay-phone numbers couldn’t be blocked.

  With my heart nearly jumping out of my chest, I waited twenty minutes before I called, hoping Karleen wouldn’t answer. The phone rang about fifteen times before I finally heard a young man say hello.

  “Hi. Is Anthony there?” I said in the sexiest voice I could muster.

  “No, ma’am,” he said. “This is a pay phone. Ain’t no An-tony here.”

  “Well, where are you at?” I asked. “You sound like a nice guy. Maybe you and I can meet up and gab for a while.”

  We chatted a few more minutes, and then with excited anticipation of meeting up with me, the young man gave me the address to the 7-Eleven store where he said he’d wait for me.

  The next morning as I drove nearly twenty-five minutes from our home, I was more hopeful than I had been in a long time. I smiled when I thought of the young man whom I’d intentionally stood up, and wondered what he must have been thinking. I hoped, if he knew Karleen, he’d waited for a long, long time after I told him to “give me ten minutes to get there,” and I’d ticked him off royally.

  At the 7-Eleven, I handed a kind-looking clerk a picture of Karleen, explained who I was, and asked if she’d seen my daughter. She told me she saw her at least every other day, and she came into the store quite often. I started to cry.

  “The next time I see her, I’ll ask her a few questions and watch to see where she goes when she leaves. Then I’ll let you know,” the clerk promised.

  I waited on pins and needles. It was hard to leave the house even for a few minutes, fearing I’d miss the clerk’s call. She sounded so sincere. I hoped with all my heart she wouldn’t let me down. A few days later, the clerk called to tell me Karleen walked to and from a nearby trailer park, “sometimes with the kids she’s tending.”

  The manager I talked to at the trailer park was just as affable as the clerk at the 7-Eleven. When I got home, I called the police to let them know how close I was to finding Karleen, and I’d soon need their help. I was full of hope and gratitude while I waited endlessly for another call from the park manager to let me know Karleen was for sure there, and which trailer she’d gone to.

  Again, as I had a million times over the years, I contemplated how perfect it would if I had a phone I could take with me in my car. When would someone ever get them invented? I wondered. But of course, how could I ever afford one anyway?

  Three days later the manager called to report she’d seen Karleen return to the trailer park. She knew exactly which trailer she went to. The police dispatcher took down the address I gave her, and I waited a tortuous three more hours while my imagination went berserk. Finally a policeman let me know they’d picked up Karleen, and I could get her from Youth Services again. “God,” I shouted, “what will you do this time? Will she be home and be gone again in a flash, just as before? No! Something different will happen this time! I know it will!”

  When I arrived at Youth Services, they sent me to the Juvenile Detention Center close by. There, I saw Karleen for the first time in nearly four months. She was pathetically thin and gaunt—she must have only weighed ninety pounds. She didn’t want to hug me, but for the policemen’s and guards’ sake, she did.

  A police officer told me the couple who lived in the trailer where Karleen was picked up had several outstanding warrants for their arrest. They were giving drugs to my daughter in exchange for her tending their children.

  When the police dropped Karleen off at Youth Services, she was stripped and searched. They went through her clothes and everything she had in her backpack. Between the foil w
rappers of a cigarette carton, they found some crack. She was booked in jail for possession. Karleen insisted the drugs weren’t hers, that she grabbed the pack of smokes off of the entertainment center as she was leaving the trailer house. It didn’t matter to me or the law.

  “Yes!” I screamed inside. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, goddess of our souls!”

  Nothing we’d ever done or tried to do to discipline Karleen had made one bit of difference to her. In the past six months, I’d waded through piles of shit. My heart was scalded from the terror a mother experiences while searching for her missing, possibly tortured and murdered daughter.

  She had always known how to flash her beautiful, blue eyes, parade her bright smile, and sweet-talk her way out of the consequences of her wrongful actions. Though it hurt me as if I were being whipped with a willow when I recommended the judge come down as hard as possible on Karleen, it was also as cathartic as a debriefing from a bloody war zone. My last hope was there’d be consequences tough enough to get my daughter’s attention.

  After spending eleven days in juvenile detention, Karleen was released early on good behavior. The judge also sentenced her to six months of house arrest, and random drug testing. The best gift was he also ordered twelve weeks of therapy—for both of us.

  While I attended Karleen’s first court-ordered counseling session with Dr. Kris Branson, she was mean, tough, cold, and bitter. Some of the things Karleen revealed to us in those sessions seized my breath and doubled me over in agony. But as the drugs wore off and Karleen listened and talked to Kris and me. Our gorgeous, kindhearted, sixteen-year-old Karleen began to show up for life again. We got to experience and appreciate her divine soul more than ever before. When her court-assigned therapy sessions came to a close, she eagerly took leave as a stronger, more secure person.

  Dr. Branson kept Karleen’s file open so she could return if she wanted to; and so she and I could delve into my lifestyle, guilt, and shame that were still halting my progress. As time passed I knew the judge’s soul had been directed to include me in those services. We had no health insurance of any kind, and no money for therapy. Dr. Branson’s guidance was a bequest that would have otherwise been impossible.

  The fact that my therapist, Dr. Branson, never encouraged me to divorce Mark was appreciated. She felt my desperation for someone genuine and consistent to help me process the constant turbulence in my head and my heart. Nothing there was new. The big questions were: Can I ever live a fully productive life without Mark and the love he so ardently claims to have for me, and can I fully commit to and be satisfied with half or less of his love, time and energy while we live polygamy?

  Every hour I spent with Kris gradually offered me more life, and a fighting chance at living the rest of it to the fullest. She astutely took my side and Mark’s side, listened to me, and sometimes cried with me. Until I heard or saw evidence of another client, I always forgot I wasn’t her only one.

  By fall, the day-care center still hadn’t sold. Mark had already put his business on the line and borrowed more money. By November, that loan had maxed out. Our homes and everything we had were going into foreclosure. Just in the nick-of-time the God of love found us a good realtor who found us a buyer, and we were saved by the seat of our pants—at least to a minimal degree. After being ripped off via the buyer’s bankruptcy the following summer, and false promises, we ended up starting all over again. Instead of the payoff on our home being $16,000, it ended up being $98,000.

  In abundant gratitude, I thanked my interim God, Buddha, our partners’ homes were free of liens, back where they were before my turbulent adventure.

  Even though Mark was gone more than usual, things also seemed better at home. He reminded me I shouldn’t count on him—not his presence, his time, his undivided love, attention, or his life. His life was his, not ours! Therefore, my time and life had to become my own, as well. Most of the time, as newly developing individuals, we were able to bring our uniqueness together and stay good at loving and caring, but my struggles with the same-old familiar resentment, suspicions, and envy made me desperately want to ask Mark, “Where have you been? What took you two or three extra hours to come home? Who have you been hanging out with?”

  Sometimes those squelched words made their way clear to the tip of my tongue. I’d gulp them back down and soldier on. I reminded myself not to delve into anyone’s business but my own.

  To really love Mark while we lived polygamy felt more impossible by the day, so I continued to keep really busy. I made new friends, hung out with my kids (kidults) and grandchildren, and enjoyed my new job as a Head Start Teacher and Home Educator in the Granite School District. But the best thing about staying busy was it kept my mind distracted from Mark’s other lives. While those were rebuilding, as well as staying techniques for me, Mark saw them as me avoiding and withdrawing from him.

  Several times a day, I mentally reviewed the reasons to stay and the reasons to go. Should I stay with Mark and Diane and our kids and try to graciously accept the things I can’t change? Or should I try to find a man and a life of my own and leave Diane in bliss with her own husband? On secure days I thought I would be okay with the latter, but on insecure days that thought made me envious.

  “I won’t live plural marriage without you, Sophia,” Mark tenderly reminded me once again as we sat across a cafe table. “You and my kids are the reasons I lived plural marriage in the first place! I love you more than anyone ever can. Don’t you know that? Please don’t leave. I can’t and I won’t do it without you.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense, Mark. You and I both know it was only our ingrained testimony of plural marriage that started all this pain in the first place. You know you don’t have to have me in order to stay with Diane.”

  Mark and I, and even Diane—though she wasn’t aware of the extent of it—were facing the crossroads of our lives. None of us had any clue which way we’d go. Maybe he was right when he said, “Yes, our family is dysfunctional, but why trade this craziness for another one? At least we are crazy about each other in all of this.”

  I’ll make us work I decided. “For better or for worse,” I reassured myself.

  CHAPTER 40

  Test Angst and College

  2000

  “It’s better to have tried and failed than to have failed to try, Sophia,” my dear friends encouraged. “You’ll be forty-nine even if you don’t get a bachelor’s degree, so you might as well be forty-nine with one.”

  In the summer of 2000, I studied for the Praxis Test until I was sure my brains would fall out. At Southern Utah University (SUU) in Cedar City, after hours and hours of the most grueling, terrifying test I’d ever taken, I sat in my car and sobbed. I was sure I failed. All those young brains testing with me looked brilliant, lighthearted, and full of self-confidence.

  Before the test I had already told the SUU Education Department’s student adviser, “Please don’t bother calling to tell me I failed the test—it will be embarrassing. When I don’t hear from you, I’ll know for sure.”

  “We’ll call you either way, Sophia,” she said. “You’ll know in a few weeks.”

  Since I didn’t trust in my abilities, I was sure I didn’t pass. Aside from the sections I felt confident about, I guessed the answers on too many of them, and didn’t have time to finish the history and math sections.

  *****

  On the other end of my phone, the student advisor’s voice was monotone. “Sophia, this is Tammy. As I promised, I’m calling to tell you—”

  “I already know, Tammy,” I interrupted. “At least I tried. I’ve been telling myself it’s all okay.”

  “Well, I’m sorry too,” she said sadly. “If you hadn’t missed so many questions, maybe you’d have gotten one hundred percent, rather than eighty-eight percent!”

  I wasn’t sure exactly what she meant. I guessed, just like the last Praxis test I took a few years previous, I’d missed the grade by a few points. “I’m okay Tammy. I wasn’t
sure I would make it. Now I’ll have more time at home with my kids.”

  “But you did, Sophia,” she said excitedly. “You got eighty-eight percent! You passed. You’re in!”

  Our phone receiver flew clear across the kitchen before the cord stopped it. It sounded like our floor would cave in from my jumping up and down. I screamed and pounded on the countertop. “I did it! I did it! I’m in! I’m actually in!” I chanted.

  When I remembered Tammy might still be waiting, I found the phone and thanked her profusely.

  For the rest of the summer, I had to do double time to get ready to go to SUU for a year. I was determined to finish the basement I’d started pounding down, gutting, and hauling out clear last spring. I wanted to finish things so I could come back to something complete, comfortable, and beautiful. To remodel our basement was a dream Mark and I’d held onto ever since Diane moved out.

  Aside from the remodeling, I kept busy with friends and family. I hiked in our foothills nearly every day with my dear friend and neighbor, Racine. She, unlike most of our neighbors, always treated me with kindness and respect.

  The past several years, though difficult in many ways, had also been beautiful and full of joy. Amid my pandemonium and sorrows, my decision to stay with the man I loved and wanted to spend my life with had been worth it all. In the summer of 1999, Mark and I flew to Oregon and drove to Mt. Shasta for a second round. We rented a car and drove up the coast to Astoria and back down Interstate 5 where we spent a few amazingly romantic nights at a beach house. We were still doing great, so I felt really secure about leaving 255 miles south of home, for more education.