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

  On one of those annoying occasions, Link said I should check out how terrible his scars looked. He took my hand and put it on his thick, grotesque scars where his legs had been cut off. I cringed.

  “Now feel this,” he said as he moved my hand onto his swelling penis. I gasped, pulled away and ran for the door.

  “Stop, Sophia, please stop,” he yelled.

  Because of my stupid, childish worry for him, I froze. I was sorely tempted by his bribe of five dollars if I promised not to tell anyone. That would be twenty-five bucks nowadays, but for me, back then, like having a hundred. I walked out of the room without saying a word to him. All I could think about for the next little while was what I could have bought with five whole dollars.

  In spite of everything, a tiny part of my heart felt bad for ratting on him. Until Lincoln had another place to go, Mom forbade me to go near him ever again. “Stay clear away from that evil man!” she said. “I was stupid to let him stay here in the first place.” Maybe I shouldn’t have told Mom what happened and just stayed away from him, but Lincoln was not my brother, family, or anyone I was afraid of or believed I had to protect.

  Most of the time, I had no idea to whom I was accountable or who was responsible for my well-being while Mom was gone. After school I played outside until it got dark and cold. Sometimes I’d hang out at Aunt Beth’s house until she’d send me home. I’d wander down our long driveway toward home—to nothing, to no one. I’d dangle my legs over the side of the bridge and stare at torrents of white water bouncing across the boulders, dancing in my direction. They’d smash against the concrete portals on either side of the conduit and then, in one deep surge, disappear under our bridge.

  Why doesn’t Aunt Beth know how lonely I feel? I asked myself. If she really loved me and cared, she’d let me live with her and treat me like one of her own children. Maybe she’d adopt me, but doesn’t want to hurt my mom’s feelings.

  Whenever I’m at Uncle Marvin’s home, he always had a hug and a smile for me, but I never feel welcome by any of his wives.

  Mom’s words popped into my head: “Be grateful for your blessings when you feel sad. Don’t ever feel sorry for yourself!”

  “I am okay!” I heard my voice say out loud. The words startled me back to the reality of the entrancing ditch water. Chills ran across my arms. “I’m glad Aunt Beth lets me stay as long as she does,” I said repeatedly. I smiled the rest of the way down our long driveway.

  Every night in my dreams, I walked to the top end of the south field near our home. Though the ditch was wide and swift at the high point, I’d tromp into the middle of it, lie down on my back, and float peacefully all the way down and under our bridge. As I’d float under it I’d see splotches of black and green moss, along with innumerable cobwebs and spiders, covering the rock-and-concrete walls. I’d glide on the water as it wound its way between our yard and Uncle Marvin’s. As I approached his bridge, I would sweat with anxiety. There was no stopping, and I knew once I floated under his bridge, I’d get stuck and drown. Until I could wake myself up, it felt like I was really dying.

  Over and over again, night after night, I woke up crying from those dreams. I didn’t dare play in the ditch during the day, nor did I want to fall asleep at night. One night when I could no longer resist sleep, I decided I’d let myself drown under the bridge. No one would miss me anyway. My lungs hurt like there’d be no tomorrow, but the nightmares never returned again.

  Near the end of that long, hot summer, I stood in our enormous yard full of dirt and rocks, spun around three times, and wished summer would hurry and end. I wanted to be in third grade.

  CHAPTER 7

  Bad and Stupid Sophia

  1961–1962

  Every summer my brother James and I, and sometimes other siblings, would take the long, hot trek with Mom and Dad to Short Creek, Arizona—today the FLDS community is called Colorado City/Hildale. We never got to know my sister Lucinda. Our occasional, brief trips couldn’t reconcile the umpteen years we’d missed together after the groups split. For many years after she went back to her husband, mom said she wasn’t allowed to come two-hundred-fifty miles to Murray to see us, but we were invited to go down there.

  We would see hundreds of Barlow and Cooke nieces, nephews, and cousins, plus our grandmothers—Grandpa Cooke’s wives—and Grandpa Cooke himself. Other than those once-or-twice-a year trips down south, those relatives hardly existed in our lives.

  My brothers and I made sure we stayed as far away from Grandpa Cooke as possible. None of my siblings liked him. Every time we visited him, he would lecture, rant, and swear at us. By this time I was nearly nine years old and James was eleven. We weren’t about to let him hit us again—ever.

  On the other hand, our mother believed, to “honor” her father meant she was obliged to sit and let him verbally abuse her. She called it “visiting.” Grandpa would tell her she should make her children come sit down and listen to his sermons so we wouldn’t go to hell with her and Dad. But as soon as he’d start his preaching, we were out of there.

  He lectured Mom on everything. It was either those evil Allred men who were acting on behalf of the devil, or what a terrible, dishonorable daughter she was to not be following the “true” prophet, Leroy Johnson.

  “How can ya follow Rulon Allred?” Grandpa Cooke would yell. “He has an evil spirit ta be doin’ what he’s doin’, and what he’s done!”

  If Mom tried to defend herself or her opinions, Grandpa’s belligerent voice just got louder. Soon he’d be swearing at her. Finally, when she couldn’t take any more of his madness, she’d storm out of the room in tears. But each year, she’d go back for more of his “honorable” cruelty.

  On Grandpa’s front lawn we played the same games we played at home. Many aunts and uncles at Grandpa’s house were close to my age or younger, and all of them seemed to have a cute southern drawl I’d subconsciously mimic, as if to guarantee I was “fer sure thar gen-u-ine next of kin.”

  When Mom’s younger sisters and I tried to bathe at night, Grandpa Cooke would tell us we couldn’t shut the door, even when we dressed and undressed. Aunt Maggie, Mom’s sister who was four years my senior, told me he’d always had that rule. He just wants to “make sure we aren’t gonna do things we shouldn’t be doin’,” she’d say.

  “Alright then,” I told her, “I won’t be taking a bath at all!”

  As I went back upstairs to the girls’ bedroom, Grandpa hollered, “Sophia, git yer arss back in that thar bathroom and take yer bath right now befur I have ta come after ya!”

  But he was too old to come after me. “Just try, Grandpa,” I’d say under my breath while I kept climbing the stairs as if I hadn’t heard him.

  The next morning when I tiptoed barefoot down the stairs to get to the bathroom, I was startled to see Grandpa sitting on the sofa, wide-awake.

  “Sophia!” he barked just as I saw his face. “Git back up them stairs and cover yer damn ankles!”

  He was the only living grandparent we had, and he treated us like trash.

  *****

  Even when I was only nine years old, it irked me, all of the women and girls in Colorado City looked like clones, with their hair all done up in buns or braids with the same identical and distinct “Short Creek waves” swooped up and down, then draped across the sides of their foreheads.

  When we stayed over at Lucinda’s house, I asked my nieces and their half-sisters why every girl in town wore the exact same hairstyle every single day.

  One of the older girls explained, “A long, long time ago, before I was born, one of our priesthood leaders told all the women they should dress and look like Sister . . . uh, I don’t know her name. Anyway, he told everyone, she kept her hair done up nicely and looked very becoming, so all of us should exemplify her.”

  “So all of you have to wear your hair exactly like hers all the time?” I asked.

  The four or five young girls in the room questioned each other with their eyes. “Well, I guess
so,” one of them answered. “We like it like this. Our hair has been fixed like this since we were little, and we don’t know how to fix it any other way.”

  I told them they could look “well-kept and becoming” by fixing their hair a lot of different ways, but they just plain didn’t buy it. I was the weird one, the minority who felt way out of place.

  My nieces had already been scrutinizing my blond hair. It was parted in the middle, and had grown near the middle of my back. “Do you ever fix your hair any other way?” my nieces wanted to know.

  “I fix it different all the time,” I announced, putting my big foot in my mouth.

  My nieces promptly asked if they could do my hair just like theirs. “So you’ll look beautiful,” they told me.

  I caved in. When they finished styling my hair, they stood behind me, their big smiles beaming in the mirror as I stared at myself in shock.

  “Oh, Sophia, you should wear your hair like this all the time. You look so sweet!”

  There was no doubt their feelings would be hurt if I let them know how I really felt about the waves above my forehead and the enormous, football-shaped bun on top of my head. I forced a smile. For their sake, I suffered through “The Look” all day long, but gave them an emphatic no the next morning when they wanted to style my hair again.

  Before my brother-in-law (the town’s mayor), began building onto Lucinda’s and his other wives’ already huge house, they had to use an outhouse like my sister Francine’s. Now they had a new bathroom inside. His huge family washed their clothes in an old wringer washer and rinsed them in a galvanized tub before they hung them on the clothesline to dry, just as we had always done. It would take my sister Lucinda two or three days to finish the laundry, one day less than it took Mom and me, by the time we got it all gathered, sorted, washed, rinsed, hung on the lines, gathered in again, folded, and put away.

  But winters back in Murray, Utah, were quite different. After we washed fifteen batches of clothes in our old wringer washer, Mom had no choice but to spend her precious dollars on coin-operated dryers at the local laundromat. While we’d wait for each batch of clothing to dry, Mom read to herself and munched on a chocolate candy bar, while I ate mine. When we folded what seemed like a billion pieces of clothing, towels, sheets, socks, and everything else everyone had soiled for the past two weeks, Mom talked about the “good books” she’d been reading.

  “I’ve read the Book of Mormon at least ten times,” she would proudly announce. “Every time I read it, I find new information, as if it wasn’t there before. There is a promise in the beginning of the book. When you read it and pray about it, you will gain a testimony of its truth, and the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” Mom would tell me again and again how important it was to pray three times a day, dress modestly, and to stay virtuous so I could marry the right man—the one and only man God had in store for me so we could bring righteous children into this world. As I promised her I would try my best, I shuddered to think of how wicked I already was.

  *****

  At the beginning of the year, every third-grade student was asked to write the alphabet as well as he or she could on a piece of paper. Each of us put our name on the back before our work was posted in the hallways to be reviewed by the judges who would decide the winners of the Best Handwriting Contest.

  The day after my teacher took them down, she announced the third-, second- and first-place winners. I was both giddy and mortified when she called my name last. It meant I won the blue ribbon for first place. I was sure there had been a mistake. My handwriting was very nice, but I was never recognized for anything.

  All of the students’ eyes were on me when the teacher called my name again and made my classmates clap for me. In front of them, I felt shy and embarrassed, but after school was out I proudly marched across the playground toward home. I was anxious to show Mom the beautiful blue-and-white certificate that proclaimed in big bold letters across the image of an American flag: “This certificate is awarded to Sophia Allred, for Best Handwriting.”

  I was unaware that anyone was behind me, when Trevor suddenly snatched my papers from my hands. He threw all of them but my certificate on the ground, while Chad watched. Then with both hands against my back, Chad shoved me forward across the blacktop.

  “You stupid girl!” Trevor scoffed as he got down on the ground in front of me and shook my certificate in my face. “You only got this because the teacher feels sorry for you!” Then he shredded it into tiny pieces and showered them over my head.

  Snot and tears soaked the front of my white blouse. My shoes, socks, legs, torn jumper, and the cold, wet cloth I used to scrape tiny rocks from the lesions on my knees—all were blood red.

  Why did I even think of telling Mom about this? I wondered. I didn’t want to hear what she had to say! What I really wanted her to do was tell me that I am a good girl because I am a good girl—not because I’m being persecuted! I wanted her to hold me, cry with me, and stick up for me. I wanted her to lash out and want to punch those boys! She should have yelled, “Tell me who those little creeps are so I can go beat the living daylights out of them! They’d better keep their disgusting hands off my beautiful little girl or I’ll—” But, of course that’s not at all what she said. I could hear the same preaching words I’d heard a zillion times over again, tormenting my ears: “Blessed are the persecuted for righteousness sake. God is . . .”

  “God is mean and dishonest,” I wanted to scream at her. “He never keeps His promises! He didn’t let me walk on water when I had the faith He promised. He made me stupid. He takes all my friends away, and He makes you sad! He lets Aunt Eleanor and her kids have everything they want! He didn’t stop Maryann from pounding on my brothers, and He let the doctor and Rick . . .” But I could never go there.

  I screamed out a thousand sorrows as loud as I could—all inside my head—so I couldn’t hear my mother preach to me anymore.

  She must’ve heard me wheezing and gasping for air, felt my body shaking next to hers. She saw my swollen, wretched face, but she couldn’t see me.

  With her arm around me, Mom thought she was comforting me as she sermonized, “And those who endure to the end for righteousness sake shall inherit the kingdom of God. You see Sophia; He loves you because you are such a good girl. He just wants to—”

  I wanted to push my hand over her mouth to make her shut up. Can’t you hear me, Mom? I was pleading inside. I don’t want to hear what God wants anymore. Not now, not ever!

  Of course, I didn’t touch her mouth or shout at her. I’d never do that. I never did tell her what I wanted, what I didn’t want, what I needed, or who I was. And she never asked.

  *****

  One day after school, while we were waiting for everyone to gather for a game of Five Step on the soccer field, my cousin told me about a girl who believed the same way we did and lived in the subdivision behind Aunt Beth’s house.

  The petite blond could have passed for my sister if I hadn’t been so much taller than her. Ann was very nice and invited my cousin and me into her house. When she opened the front door, my cousin followed her right through the front room and into the kitchen. But I couldn’t move. The door handle seemed glued to my hand. I was frozen with fear while five or six pairs of male eyes focused on my blushing face.

  Ann finally came back to see what happened to me, and introduced me to several of her handsome brothers. She fixed us each a jam sandwich. Then we went downstairs to find something to do.

  Ann asked her thin, dark-haired, nearly eighteen-year-old brother Mark if we could borrow his Monopoly game.

  “No way!” he teased. “I don’t loan my games to ugly little girls like you.” Then he smiled. “Of course you can. You can use my games anytime you want.”

  I thought Mark was one of the nicest guys I’d ever met. Who would have known then we’d spend more than thirty-three years of our lives together?

  By the middle of third grade, I discovered the extent of our polygamou
s notoriety. Unless the kids in our elementary, middle, and high schools were totally aloof, or brand new to the area, they knew who the plyg kids were and where we lived. There were well over a hundred of us. At least twelve families on our block practiced plural marriage. We referred to our half-brothers and half-sisters as cousins. If the children’s mother wasn’t the first and legal wife, most carried their mother’s maiden names.

  The kids outside of polygamy already knew, or were rapidly realizing from others, just which plyg kids they could tease and ridicule, whom they’d accept (or pretend to), and which ones they shouldn’t mess with.

  Though I couldn’t wait to be in third grade the previous summer, by midyear I hated school. Still, I showed up just in time every day. My teacher demanded I pay more attention and stop daydreaming. I didn’t fit in at all.

  One day when I didn’t know the answers again, the kids started making sarcastic comments. My teacher didn’t even attempt to stop them from ridiculing me for my mistakes, my clothes, and my too-big, ugly, black, masculine-looking shoes Dad insisted “are the best shoes ever made and will last until next year, before you grow out of them.”

  All around me, the kids in my class taunted, “Plyg, plyg, plyg!”

  I was always hungry, tired, and worried, especially at school, where I had to hold still. I felt all alone in an unsafe world. There was always one thing or another to be anxious about: Mom’s unhappiness, my loneliness, self-hate, and Rick haunting me again.

  I worried almost constantly my family might have to leave and go into hiding again. Will I be ready, standing in holy places when the earth comes to an end? My whole family will probably be chosen and called to be saved, but not me. I’ll be left behind. I feared every day would be the day God (according to my parents and our ancestors) destroyed the wicked with fire and earthquakes, and only the righteous people would be saved or lifted up.