The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice

by Musser, Rebecca

  CHAPTER 13

  The Kiss That Broke the Spell

  I awoke in the predawn hours with voices in my head, fighting among themselves:

  Voice One: (brightly) You can get married. You can do this!

  Voice Two: (darkly) You can never get married again. You’re disgusted by men and their carnal desires.

  Voice One: Sure you can do this! Look at Emma. She’s delightfully happy, married to LeRoy. They look blissful together, the way you’ve pictured “love”… someone holding your hand, putting their arms around you just to hold you; to love you just for you…

  Voice Three: (frankly) How can you do to other wives what’s been done to you? You’ll never be a first wife at your age, and that means stealing the attention and affections away from the other wives. You’ve seen it—the loneliness and anguish in their eyes. The longing to be loved… Think of Emma. Could you really do that to her? Or any of the women in the community you love? You can never be a naïve, happy newlywed—YOU KNOW BETTER!

  That was my voice. Actually, I had to admit, they were all my voices—the fragmented pieces and parts of my heart pulled relentlessly in multiple directions. God and the Prophet do right. Remember the Golden Windows. Sacrifice your feelings and do right. Put it on the shelf for now. As in every other aspect of my life, there was no room for me and my authentic thoughts and wishes. Each day I was afraid to go to Good Words. Which of my sister-wives would have been added to Warren’s entourage? Those were our sister-wives! We’d worked together, cooked together, laughed together, played together, composed music together, fasted and mourned Rulon’s death together. We were as close as blood sisters now. He couldn’t just take them away!

  That night, several of us ended up in the kitchen, informally migrating in for a restless, late-night snack. We looked around the table at one another, at first afraid to speak.

  “Are you married?” Charlotte asked me.

  “No,” I breathed. “Are you?” She shook her head. We turned to Virginia and Leona, who said no, and took a long breath. Then we sat for a while in silence as we ate. Rulon had died with sixty-four wives. Fifty-six of them were between the ages of seventeen and thirty-four. One by one, our numbers were dwindling.

  For days, it was all I could do to put a little food in my body and not throw it back up. The months of fasting had extracted a painful toll on my health, and I felt sapped of all strength, though it was the emotional strain that was the hardest now. I felt the familiar itch to claim some semblance of freedom, if only for a few hours.

  I thought of visiting Mom, but each of the two times I had slipped out to see her, Uncle Fred’s wives and daughters harangued me for the latest news. “Who got married today? Who do you think will be gone tomorrow?” I knew I had to go someplace where I could be alone with my thoughts.

  El Capitan, the mysterious red-rock mountain backdrop of Hildale, suddenly felt oddly inviting. At an acceptable hour of the morning when I wouldn’t get in too much trouble for leaving, Nephi kindly let me borrow a minivan to drive to my sister Elissa’s house. Elissa in turn let me borrow her four-wheel-drive truck to drive to the mountains. On the way I rolled the windows down, gulping in the crisp air as if it might save my life. It was already a stunning fall day, the kind southern Utah is famous for. The October sun felt warm, energizing, and healing, and as I began my hike, I was grateful to feel energy instead of lethargy for the first time in months. Each step I took was deliberate, and I talked to God the entire way up, like I never had before. I had been taught to pray on my knees, arms folded, eyes closed, but this was a pouring out of my soul onto the crimson dirt. I rarely stopped to catch my breath, and my shoes and socks were laced with sweat and soil. Less than two hours later, I dropped to the ground, breathless and exhausted.

  As I looked down on Hildale, I couldn’t help but think of what was waiting for me when I got back, and I had the sudden and reckless urge to throw myself off the cliff face. One had to be stark raving mad to throw away eternal salvation—and yet here I was.

  A sudden breeze caught my skirts and my hair and soothed my sweat-stained brow, almost like someone had touched my forehead in a loving caress. For several long moments, I kept still and listened, and that was when I heard a strange yet familiar voice. It was outside of me and yet seemed to come from my very soul.

  Your life is like a tapestry in the making, woven like fine silk in brilliant, dynamic colors… yet with a pattern you cannot yet see. Trust that your life is just beginning, Becky. Trust that many more colorful threads are about to be added, and patterns you’ve never dreamed of.

  An intense peace filled my body and began to wash over me as I felt an emotion I hadn’t experienced in years. It was hope.

  On my way down the steep mountainside, I thought of all the connections I had among my people. Whom did I feel safe with? My mom, my little sisters, and Samantha were the only ones I could trust. Then my thoughts turned to Ben Musser, who had kept my confidence when he could have ratted me out. We had talked a few times since then, when he did things for my mother, and a couple of times he had been allowed to fix a few things for me as well. We had kept our distance, and everything was strictly platonic, but he had made it clear he was a safe, listening ear. He was refreshingly conscious of me. Not my looks. Not my title. Me as a person. I realized that the element of connection that I felt with him was in fact safety. Never had I felt that way with any man in the FLDS, not even my own father.

  I had started to sense a shift in the community, one that made me feel like I was on display along with my sister-wives. When Mother Emma married LeRoy, it opened us up as possibilities for men other than Warren. Even Seth and Isaac had changed their attitudes toward me, using a much warmer tone. My cousin David Allred had done the same.

  I was finishing up the last of the projects that Rulon had given me his blessing on before he died. Nicole, a friend I had made in the FLDS musical community, had tried to warn me.

  “Becky, be careful. There are many men who would love to have you.”

  “What? No. No, no, no! No one is getting me,” I said vehemently.

  “Becky, even Harold is acting differently about you.” I was shocked. Harold was her beloved husband. People I had always seen as “safe” were suddenly eyeing my sister-wives and me as an opportunity to gain status with Warren and with God.

  I found myself wishing I could marry someone like Ben—or at least someone like him who was a friend to me, but I knew that simply wasn’t an option. Warren would never permit it. Of course, I didn’t wish a marriage like that for Ben, because I was seven years older. Surely a marriage to “Grandmother Becky” didn’t sound appealing to him in any way.

  Several months previous, I had been shopping with my sisters in St. George when I saw a cool snowboard bag on clearance. It was red and black, and as a seamstress with an eye for fit, I knew instinctively that it would fit Ben’s snowboard perfectly. I had put it away for a while during the warm weather and planned to give it to him at Mom’s as a thank-you gift before the snow fell.

  However, now I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Most of the young wives had been whisked away to Warren or other waiting men. I had the sense that my few remaining personal freedoms were about to disappear, through marriage to Warren or someone else. Christine wanted badly to marry Warren, so he withheld his affections from her. Because I didn’t want to, he continued to pursue me. Warren always knew everyone’s hot buttons, and boy oh boy, did he know how to play them. El Capitan had given me hope, but I’d still been too many days without sleep, without proper food, and under incredible stress.

  Anxious to give Ben his gift before it was too late, I quietly gave him a quick call from the phone in my room, and we decided to meet at the narrows in the canyon—far from the prying eyes of Warren and his minions. I drove up the beautiful red-rock canyon narrows, my heart beating wildly. It wasn’t wise for me to meet Ben. I just wanted to give him the bag, thank him, and get out of there. Suddenly I saw his car.
No one else was in sight, so I took a deep breath and pulled up about fifteen feet away from his vehicle. We got out of our driver’s seats at the same time, and I watched him as we met in the middle between the two vehicles. He grinned widely as he greeted me with one arm and hugged me around my shoulder. As it was rather unusual to receive a hug from a man, I stepped away quickly, grabbing the gift from under my other arm to hide my discomfort.

  “I found this for you,” I said, smiling genuinely at him. “I hope you like it.” Ben looked at the bag in astonishment.

  “Wow, can I pay you for this?” he asked.

  “No, no!” I cried. “I just wanted to thank you for everything you’ve done for my mom.”

  “She’s a great lady.”

  “Yes, she is.”

  “What I want to know is, how are you doing?” He peered into my eyes when I didn’t dare to answer, and I noticed a stubbornness within him I hadn’t seen before. “Don’t let anyone force you into doing anything you don’t want to do, Becky.”

  I started to tear up. “I don’t know what I’m going to do!”

  “I’m sure sorry you have to go through this,” he said. I closed my eyes against the pain and Ben gave me another hug as I quietly wept. Then suddenly I felt a strange feeling upon my lips. Ben was kissing me! His lips were soft and tender. It was a young man’s gentle, questioning kiss.

  Before I knew it, I was kissing him back. Within seconds, something had changed dramatically between us. We pulled apart and looked at each other like two little kids who had been caught with their hands in the candy jar.

  “I’d better go!” I cried. He nodded, and I ran to my car. I jumped in, did a U-turn like a madwoman, and flew down the road. I looked in my rearview mirror and saw Ben waiting—a wise move, as it would not be good for both of us to emerge from the canyon at the same time. I sucked in a deep breath.

  He had kissed me! And I had kissed him back!

  What did it mean? Why would he do it? Kissing the Prophet’s widow risked Ben’s status and his very salvation. His salvation!

  It hit me. The angels had seen us! Rulon, wherever he was, had seen it, too! I felt so very guilty. Here I’d spent my entire life avoiding any compromising situation, only to blow it like this. I spent the car ride home talking to Rulon in my mind.

  You can be mad at me if you want, but Warren is doing the same thing—but with many of your wives! If anyone else was doing what Warren is doing, they would be slammed, hard. You know my heart, Father. You know I’ve never done anything like this before. Why can’t I just marry someone like Ben? He might not be the holiest, with little or no standing in the church, but I would be happy. I don’t care if I attain a lesser glory.

  I started in toward town, passing people and feeling a sense of shame. What would they think of me if they knew what I had done? I had broken a rule, but much more important, I was feeling untrue to myself.

  When I arrived home, I went straight to my room, avoiding everyone. I was actually expecting lightning to strike, for Father to come back from the dead and cut me down. But there was no lightning, and no knock on my door. I took a breath and said a little prayer: God, if you let me off this time, I will never do that again.

  Before dark I went to my mom’s for a short visit. We were both very concerned about Elissa and her time away from Allen. She had been spending nights in her truck to keep away from him. Mom and I knew that Warren was aware of it and was trying to force her home. Mom was giving me whatever bits of news she had on my brothers when the pager in my pocket suddenly went off.

  It was Christine’s number, next to a “911.” That meant, Call home now!

  Immediately after, Mom’s phone started ringing. Mom mouthed to me, Should I tell her you’re here? I shook my head no.

  It was almost a relief to know that I’d been caught. I had never been a good liar, and I didn’t want this hanging over my head any longer.

  My mother’s eyes got bigger and bigger as she listened to Christine, and my heart fell. Still, I wondered, how had they found out? Then I remembered that Uncle Wendell’s company, Western Precision, had been having their annual company outing that day, and there must have been some people hiking around. It wasn’t like Ben and I had hidden behind trees. We hadn’t gone up there to hide anything—until the kiss. She put down the receiver slowly, and looked at me.

  “Did Ben Musser kiss you?”

  “Yes, he did. It’s true.”

  “Oh, Becky!” She started to cry. “I never should have let him come around. I’m so sorry for any part I played in this!”

  “Mom, it’s not what you think!”

  I tried to explain to her that it had been a simple kiss and that I had left immediately after. That it meant nothing. But in my heart I knew I meant something by it. And I knew he did, too. Part of me felt justified, and part of me felt relieved. The test was over, and I had failed. But at least it was over. My sister-wives and I were all being auctioned off anyway. What did it matter? I had based my whole life on God’s directive, only to discover it was actually man’s opinion being labeled as God’s will.

  Mom couldn’t hear a word I said. Rarely had I seen her so distraught. I left, knowing what was awaiting me at home. But it wasn’t me I was worried about.

  My pager buzzed with a message from Ben, written in the numerical “textese” that people in Short Creek used with pagers. I deciphered the message. Dad knows.

  My head got hotter as I drove. If Ben had kissed anyone else, he might have gotten spanked. But because it was me, the repercussions would be extreme. Warren had once made a flippant comment and the words burned into my brain: You don’t know what you do to men when you smile at them, do you?

  I arrived home with my head still hot and I slipped down to my room. I had never meant for this to happen. Taking a breath to steady myself, I placed my keys on my bedside table and dialed 600 on my room phone.

  “This is Mother Becky.”

  “Come see me right now.” Warren’s voice was very grave.

  “All right.” I hung the phone up slowly and walked down the hall. It was only just after eight p.m., and yet the house seemed so dark and deathly quiet. I felt as though the whole world was listening to my footsteps. How many of my sister-wives already knew?

  I began to ascend the salmon-colored carpet on the staircase toward Rulon’s old office, in which Warren had ensconced himself shortly after his father’s first stroke, when it had become apparent Rulon could no longer take appointments. It had remained his to run the church from.

  The moment I stepped into the office, Warren started firing questions at me: “Did Ben Musser massage you? Did he lay on you? Did you lay on him? Did he fondle your breasts? Did you touch his genitals?”

  “No!” I recoiled. I hated how he could take something pure and make it so dirty. “No, nothing like that! It was just a kiss.”

  As I looked at him, I couldn’t help but think of the huge number of my sister-wives Warren had kissed in front of all of us in the last few weeks alone.

  “Well, you didn’t break your marriage covenant,” he said nonchalantly. That meant I had not committed adultery. I exhaled softly as Warren continued. “But you cost this young man his salvation because he was willing to do this. He will no longer be trusted by the Priesthood. I am gravely concerned that you are comfortable around the spirit that will lead to apostasy. I detect the seeds of apostasy in you, Mother Becky. I am giving you one week to be married. Next Monday night, you will come and tell me who you are going to marry.”

  He let that sink in.

  “Choose wisely,” Warren said, stabbing his finger at me. Then his face softened behind his glasses and he shrugged his shoulders like a little boy. “And it doesn’t even have to be me…”

  I wanted to vomit. Is this what he had done with my sister-wives to manipulate their choices? I had seen the Jeffses’ behaviors as husbands. I would not marry a Jeffs, and certainly not Warren.

  “Please,” I begged, tears in my e
yes, “please do not do this to me.” Warren knew—he knew I struggled with marital relations! And still he was forcing me.

  Suddenly the fire that I was known for welled up inside of me, and I could not stop it. My head pounded with the heat.

  “I will not say yes to something I don’t agree with, Warren.”

  “You’ll be blessed if you do,” he said flippantly, shrugging. Then he turned to look at some papers on the side of his desk as if he had become bored by the discussion.

  “I’ve heard that before!” I snapped, my tone insinuating many things. I couldn’t believe my audacity, but there it was before me. My father and mother. Uncle Fred and my mother. My marriage to Rulon. Elissa’s situation. The list of supposed blessings went on and on and led only to heartbreak and denial.

  Finally, Warren looked up. “You know that this is what God and Father want,” he said.

  “No, I do not. I do not know that this is what God and Father want for me.”

  Warren’s eyes turned to steel, filled with cold malice.

  “I. Will. Break. You,” he said, with deliberate pronunciation on each word. “And I will train you to be a good wife. You have had too much freedom for too long, Becky. No matter who you marry, I will always have jurisdiction over you.”

  The reality of his words sank in. I was enslaved to Warren Jeffs, who had just claimed my life, my marriage, my body, and my soul. The buffer of Rulon was gone; any rights had disappeared just as surely as if I were bound, hands and feet. I thought of all the times I had disobeyed Warren. He would show no mercy now.

  When I rose to leave, he stopped me.

  “I want to know where you are at all times, Mother Becky,” he declared. “I want to know who you are talking to. If I don’t know, do not go.”

  “Please, do not do this to me, Warren,” I beseeched one last time. “I’m begging you.” He looked up at me for a less than a second.

  “You will be remarried. One week from today.”