I begged to stay at the house to help, but I was told it was too dangerous. We were gathered up and carted over to Uncle Woodruff Steed’s home, an immense structure several miles away in Sandy. It housed Uncle Woodruff’s many wives and children and, in the upper rooms, the Salt Lake City wives of the Prophet. When we walked in, Uncle Woodruff’s wives greeted us with great tenderness and sympathy. Aunt Daisy, her name aptly reflected in her blonde hair and sunny disposition, asked me to come and help her in the kitchen while we talked about my experience that day. Her attention and affection made me feel warm and safe for the first time since I’d heard the news. Uncle Woodruff joined us for the evening meal, and he, too, was extremely gracious. The meal was delicious and took a bit more of the sting out of the day.
After dinner, we settled into the enormous room Mom had been given for all of us. Between the bedding lent by the Steeds and donations from our neighbors, we made ourselves at home, and I was amazed to think that so many people had shifted their lives around to make room for nineteen more of us. I already loved the Steed family and, of course, the Prophet’s wives, but my heart was filled with gratitude.
Several of us ran outside with the Steed children to play evening games. We’d been out for over an hour when one of Uncle Woodruff’s wives came to the back porch.
“Children!” she called out urgently. “Come inside now!” Stricken, we looked at one another and rushed indoors, wondering what more could possibly have happened. We fell silent as we looked around the living room at our extended family members hunched together in shock, their faces filled with tears. I looked at my cousin Lisa, who was a dear friend at school, Uncle Woodruff’s daughter, and one of Uncle Roy’s granddaughters.
“Grandpa is dead,” Lisa said simply.
“Don’t say that!” I blurted. There had to be a mistake. The Prophet couldn’t be dead.
I couldn’t process it, and somehow I couldn’t cry. I was overwhelmed by everything that had happened that day, and my body shut down. I loved my Prophet like a grandfather and revered him as our spiritual leader. He was the closest to Heavenly Father I would ever get, and now he was gone. A deep, black hole of fear opened inside of me.
The Prophet of all of our people was dead. He was our shepherd. How would God speak to us now? How would we know what to do?
“We’ll wait for answers from Uncle Rulon,” said Uncle Woodruff, as if reading my thoughts. Uncle Allen Steed echoed his words, and the adults around the room nodded. I hadn’t realized I was holding my breath. I let it out.
All was not lost. Uncle Rulon would have answers from God.
It didn’t take long to realize that things would be different at the Steed home for the Wall children. At our home the Steed name and legacy were stomped on, but here we were treated with the greatest of respect, because we were Steeds, too. When any of our half siblings tried to bully us, they’d be swiftly put in line by the older Steed boys. Despite my sadness over the loss of our house, I was feeling more at home here than I ever had anywhere. While Dad made us aware that he paid Uncle Woodruff handsomely from the insurance, as he wanted to instill in us the principle of self-reliance, we also recognized the many ways that the Steeds went out of their way to welcome and accommodate us.
Things were different with Irene, too. Here, she did not dare to raise a hand or her voice to us. She and her children were far away on the bottom floor, where she tended to hibernate. Though Irene was treated with equal respect, it was the first time she could not manipulate my father, which seemed to breed even greater resentment inside her. We didn’t question it; we reveled in our newfound freedom and emotional stability.
While I knew my father had a lot on his plate trying to rebuild our house, he never said one word to acknowledge Cole’s interrupted birthday. I couldn’t help but be impressed by the Steed boys, who took up the mantle. In January, Roy Steed and his brothers said, “We gotta get that boy spruced up!” and over the next few days took him out and spent their own money to buy him a suit for his ordination, as well as a special combination of scriptures—the Holy Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price—to call his own. They included Cole as one of their own, and I saw his face glow with gratitude and a new confidence.
On the third Sunday in January 1987, Cole was ordained to the Aaronic Priesthood of God. As a female, I wasn’t allowed to attend, but I was very proud of him, and my older sisters were as well. The Steed boys congratulated him warmly, but my father was strangely distant. The older Cole grew, the more difficult it seemed for Dad to connect with him, especially when Cole excelled at church and school.
I did notice, however, that Dad seemed to have a new appreciation for Mom and her family ties, as well as for the peace we felt at the Steeds’. But something else seemed to be troubling Dad, too.
Overhearing snippets of conversations between him and my mother, I picked up on the fact that the change in Prophets held devastating consequences. Dad had been waiting for Uncle Roy to make a big announcement about his major advancement into the top rungs of leadership, but with Uncle Roy’s death came the demise of his bid for Priesthood leadership. Everything he had built with Uncle Roy would no longer be honored. Dad threw himself into remodeling our burned-out house, but it was obvious that his morale was greatly lowered.
Five months later, in April 1987, we moved back into our newly renovated home. The quick rebuilding was a testament to FLDS workmanship and the teams of young builders. Even though my siblings and I had helped a great deal during the process, we were filled with a mixture of awe, joy, and a bit of trepidation as we entered the house. It looked and felt brand-new. Gone was the ’60s Formica, tile, and carpeting, the dark brown paint, and the paneling. The kitchen boasted beautiful blonde oak cabinets, Corian countertops, and cream-colored walls. The doors all matched, and our furniture had been either refinished or scrubbed until not a hint of smoke was left and everything shone brightly.
Irene continued to spend much of her time in her room. Most of her kids would join her, watching VHS recordings, doing homework, or reading. There were several times we had the run of the house, which was new and frankly enjoyable. However, when Dad would take Mom on dates, Irene’s jealous temper would rage like in the old days. In reaction, we hunkered down together, usually in Mom’s room, which now had a lock on the door.
One night early that summer after Mom and Dad had left on one such date, my siblings and I were waiting for Irene’s storm to pass, knowing it might be a while, as our parents were having a special overnighter. Christine often read us stories when we were holed up in Mom’s room, and we wanted her to read from the new library book we had started that week. However, it was down in the living room, and none of us dared pass Irene’s room to retrieve it. The younger ones were restless and bored, and I knew they would soon be out of control. That was dangerous for all of us.
I motioned to Christine and listened at the door. Apparently, Irene had grown tired of her rage.
“I think I should go get that book,” I whispered to Christine. A look of trepidation came into her eyes. Christine had finally graduated that year, but Irene still terrified her as much as she did me.
“Can you sneak past without getting caught?”
“Yes, I think so.” I wasn’t as sure as I sounded.
Silently, we opened the door to peek down the darkened hallway. Irene was crying, but it was a snuffling, defeated sound. A crack of light from her room spilled out into the hallway. Why hadn’t she shut her door? Heart pounding, I slipped from Mom’s room, tiptoed past Irene’s, and made it down into the living room, where I seized the book.
I returned to the hallway, thinking that if I shot past Irene’s room quickly enough, I would be safely ensconced in Mom’s room before anyone knew what had happened. Christine beckoned furiously at me from Mom’s doorway. I took a deep breath when suddenly Irene’s door flew open.
“You little whore!” she screamed. “What do you think you’re
doing?”
I stood, frozen in fear, as memories of past beatings came over me.
“You illegitimate bastard!” She grabbed my shoulder, her fingers sinking into me like talons. “You are a little whore… just like your mother.”
I had heard it all before, but the moment Irene said that about my mother, something within me snapped. I hinged back with my right arm and punched her square in the eye!
In slow motion I witnessed my stepmother tumbling backward, as much from surprise as from the force of my little hand, and I fled before she or her kids could react. I reached Christine, who slammed and locked the door behind me. We sat in silence, holding our breath and one another as I shook uncontrollably. Strangely, nothing and no one emerged from Irene’s room.
My rush of adrenaline did not subside, even after everyone else settled in to listen to Christine read. As I tried to concentrate on the story, I couldn’t help but think of the coming destructions. I had just hit my mother! Though she was not my blood mother, I was supposed to treat her as such, and I would never have hit my own mother. Surely God would punish me.
Finally I started to calm down, and I realized that I was tired—tired of Irene’s foul mouth and hurtful hands, of being on alert for a beating every second. Those thoughts ignited a familiar fire.
Let the destructions take me, then, I thought.
Though most of my siblings slept peacefully in Mom’s room, I kept waiting for a vengeful crash of something against the door. I felt like a caged animal, and in the early hours of morning, I snuck out of the house the back way and into the yard. Quickly, I climbed twenty-five feet or so up the tree I had claimed as a nest of safety many times before, and I waited. And waited.
Three hours later, I was still in the tree when Dad’s Buick came into view. Certain I was in for a beating, I didn’t get down. My mother came outside.
“You can come down now, Becky,” she said. Slowly I descended, prepared to meet Dad and his belt at the door. Though I babbled apologies to my parents, I was astonished not to receive any formal punishment. Irene was nowhere in sight.
A few days after the incident when she came into the main room, I tried not to gasp. She was sporting the most richly colorful black eye I had ever seen.
“Do you like your handiwork?” she snapped. While she gave me a horrible look, there were no consequences… at least not immediate ones.
We had spent only five months with the Steeds, and yet something else had been “remodeled” in our home, far more extensive than plush carpet and pretty new wood cabinets. Oliver Wendell Holmes once wrote, “Every now and then a man’s mind is stretched by a new idea or sensation, and never shrinks back to its former dimensions.” My siblings and I had learned that we were perfectly worthy of being treated decently and that we were not second-class citizens. On a deeper level, we gained something we’d never had before: self-respect.
That summer and the next, Mom sent Cole and me to spend most of our school vacation in Canada—something that the adults understood to be an exile, but an exciting trip for the two of us. Cole still seemed unable to please Dad, who would not listen to him or protect him from Irene. Though she never said a word, I sensed that Mom was sending us both away to keep us safe from Irene’s increasing abuse, however much it broke her heart to do it.
For those in Utah, Canada was the most logical place to send “wayward” FLDS youth. Boys provided cheap labor, and work kept them away from the girls. While Cole slaved away at the logging camps, I stayed on my uncle Jason Blackmore’s large property in Bountiful. Though I enjoyed all the breathtaking beauty that British Columbia offered, the material comforts there were few and far between. Jason’s wives, including two of my mother’s sisters, and his daughters were responsible for massive amounts of cooking, cleaning, sewing, and working the wild and rugged land.
While in Canada, I was introduced to Uncle Jason’s brother Winston Blackmore, the bishop of our FLDS community there. He was a jovial yet callous man, a product of his environment and his beliefs. I laughed at some of his jokes but cringed at how harshly he treated his wives. Even at the pulpit, he would couch unkind remarks in humor. “Like Brigham Young, I don’t like whiny women! Just like him, I tell ’em, ‘Leave! I’ll replace you in an instant with another wife, and she will serve me the way a woman should serve her Priesthood Head.’ ” On the walk home from church, I would glance around at the wilderness. Where would a woman go to survive alone out here if she left the FLDS? We didn’t know that divorce was easy in the early church, because it certainly wasn’t now. Leaving meant being cut off from all family and all support—physical, financial, emotional, and spiritual. With nowhere to go, women rarely left.
I enjoyed letters and an occasional call from home, learning that there was much excitement in our community about Alta Academy building a new high school. Our members were constantly fulfilling the commandment to reproduce, and there were far too many school-age children to fit comfortably in the lower level of the Jeffses’ home. Things had felt bleak since Uncle Roy’s death, but the construction project poured renewed hope into our hearts. Surely our new Prophet wouldn’t have us build a high school if the end of the world was coming so soon.
My father utilized his engineering skills to aid in the design of a new building that would safely hold a large number of students. Sometimes FLDS builders would cut corners regarding safety and compliance, but my dad was adamant about every detail, especially where children were involved.
When Dad filled me in on the phone, it seemed to me that he saw this as a way to prove to Uncle Rulon what a ready and loyal member he was, worthy of another wife and of the leadership so recently snatched from his fingertips at Uncle Roy’s death. Dad had sold HydraPak at Uncle Roy’s urging and Uncle Rulon’s insistence and was now working as a geological consultant. He hoped that the new Prophet would be aware of him and all of his sacrifices for the church. Dad saw that the building would be a daily reminder of his prowess as an engineer—and something Warren could not do.
Although Dad didn’t openly share details, my siblings and I were aware of tension between him and our principal. So while Dad was unable to do anything inside of the school to shine, the outside of the impressive building would be hard to ignore. He also had Mom bake a hundred loaves of bread each week for sandwiches needed for the swarms of FLDS craftsmen who had come up from Short Creek to work at the construction site.
One day, after the foundation was laid and the framing begun, Uncle Rulon came by to take a look at the progress. He glanced around appreciatively at the expansive and handsome new building.
“Maybe I’ll just use this for my home,” he said. There was a split second of shocked silence, and then everyone chimed in, “Oh yes, this should be your home!” and “Yes, a new home for the Prophet!” When I learned about this a little later, I was really disappointed, as were most of the students. If my father felt the same way, he didn’t voice it, but set to work to redesign the interior as a residence.
That fall we returned to school in Uncle Rulon’s old thirty-thousand-square-foot house, which Alta took over entirely. The building had been retrofitted to include the high school students now as well. We discovered that rules had become stricter, the schedule more extreme, and the homework more arduous.
In the beginning, Mr. Jeffs’s homework tapes had been limited to the elite members of the church whose children attended Alta. Eventually he leveraged their air of exclusivity to create high demand in every FLDS home, to the point where any home without the tapes was somehow seen as suspect. It was almost as if listening to Mr. Jeffs’s monotone sermons was the only way to ensure salvation and avoid destruction.
At Alta Academy, he was often heard speaking on behalf of the Prophet. “Father says we must…” was a phrase that would haunt not only the great hall but every classroom. Mr. Jeffs ended every sermon, talk, and class, and nearly every conversation, with “I’m just the humble servant of my father.”
After another ard
uous year at Alta, the summer offered the relief of time to think—to hear my own voice in my head, and not just that of Mr. Jeffs. Tapes still played continuously in our home, but I could go outside and hear the sounds of nature. The summer of 1990, just before my eighth-grade year, I found myself in the awkward stage where I was no longer a child and not yet a teenager. My body was beginning to change, and where I had been chunky before, I was beginning to slim down and fill out. Becoming a woman was confusing, and I noticed that people, especially males, treated me differently. No one explained it to me; I was left alone with my chaotic feelings.
Dad had begun acting rather protective of his daughters. Ever since Uncle Rulon himself had married my mother’s little sister Ora, over fifty years his junior, it seemed that our uncles and other older men in the FLDS were beginning to see possibilities for young brides among several of us who were no longer considered children but “options.” So when Christine and I raised the question of going back up to Canada the next summer, Dad said, “Absolutely not!” He had always had some reservations about Uncle Jason, who had flirted with my mother even though he had already married her older sister.
I was disappointed by my father’s refusal, but I determined to continue my study of music. I utilized that time well. In June, the local Suzuki Music Camp invited some of the greatest violinists in the world to instruct us. Brian Lewis was the first chair at Juilliard, the famous music conservatory in New York, and I had the privilege to be coached by him on one occasion.
That day, he asked me to play a technical passage several times. Although I did fairly well, my trained ear knew it sounded muddy. I had been a bit of a virtuoso as a child, but I had reached a wall that was keeping me from a higher level of proficiency. I was already nervous to begin with, so when he cried out, “Stop!” I nearly fell to my knees.
I looked up in shock to see the teddy bear of a man holding his violin out to me. We had just been told that Brian’s precious Fisher Stradivarius had been insured at $1.8 million. He looked at me patiently, and although I was frightened, I held out my hands. I cradled the violin in my arms with the same mixture of wonder and awe with which I’d held my very first instrument. The Strad’s proportions were perfect, and I found myself playing the passage impeccably, my fingers like dancers on the strings. After playing it through twice, I discovered I could replicate it on my own violin! I glanced up to see the rapture I was feeling mirrored on Brian’s face. Not only was my barrier shattered, but something within me bloomed into being.
The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice Page 5