Knowing the three of us were so close in age, I was shocked to learn what drastically different lives we’d led. But of everything they hadn’t done, school was the one experience they were most curious about.
“What is school like, Alysia?” Kiani asked. “I mean, it seems like it would be fun to have friends and boyfriends.”
“It is fun,” I said, looking compassionately at my twenty-seven-year-old roommate. “You would have really liked high school, especially.”
“Oh yeah? Did you have dances and things like you see in the movies?”
That question prompted an entire night of stories—and more questions—about my high school adventures, from the prom and corsages to homecoming, pep rallies, football games, teachers, and final exams. They were rapt as I described how I used to stay out past curfew and sneak out my bedroom window to hang out with friends after my parents went to sleep.
Learning about their sheltered existence shook me to the core and altered nearly every paradigm I held true. My views on religion had previously been pretty neutral, but that all changed after I’d witnessed the result of the Wessons’ restrictive rules, constant prayer, and Bible study. Also, I had always been the person in my group of friends who defended the police and the government, but now I was the one questioning them.
The more I heard about the Wessons’ life, the angrier I became. Where was Child Protective Services while the Wessons were being abused and molested by their father? Where were the police? Where was everyone? How could something like this happen in the twenty-first century?
When I asked the girls some of these questions, they reminded me that the family did their best to hide, not just from the authorities but from their neighbors, too.
“We didn’t trust anyone,” Elizabeth said. “We still don’t. Marcus made sure of that.”
Just when I was about to celebrate the first acknowledgment of her husband’s faults, Elizabeth finished her thought. “Alysia, you would be surprised at how many bad people there are in the government.”
Again, I held back my biting response, choosing to focus on the positive. Rather than tear down Marcus with words, I wanted to give the girls healthy new experiences to illustrate how wrong he’d been.
Marcus hadn’t allowed any of his children to drive, to limit their independence and maintain his hold over them. Taking on one project at a time, I figured that helping the girls get their learners’ permits was a good place to start bringing them into their own.
Kiani liked the idea, but I could tell she wasn’t ready to take on the challenge quite yet. Rosie, on the other hand, was eager to learn. So Elizabeth took Rosie to the closest Department of Motor Vehicles office to get a driver’s ed handbook, and she began reading it on the way home. She was studying it each day when I left for work and still had her nose in it when I got home each night. I’d never seen someone so determined.
Then it dawned on me—this would be the first real test she’d ever taken. Of course, “real” was a subjective term. Marcus had constantly tested her faith, her will, and her devotion, and she’d always given him the answers he wanted.
At twenty-two, Rosie passed the written test and proudly walked out of the DMV with her permit in hand. Now she just needed some time behind the wheel.
“Have you ever driven before?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she said confidently, then paused. “Well, not really, I guess.”
“What does that mean?”
“Marcus let me drive sometimes at night,” Rosie said. “When we would drive back to Fresno from Marshall, he would teach me.”
“Really?” I asked, surprised. Marcus didn’t strike me as a patient, understanding teacher. “So, would you say you’re comfortable behind the wheel then or …
I saw Kiani behind Rosie, waving her hands and mouthing the word “no.” I couldn’t help but chuckle, which prompted Rosie to turn around and catch Kiani in the act.
“Stop being ignorant,” Rosie said, trying to keep a straight face. “I can drive, Alysia. Don’t listen to her.”
“Okay, whatever you say. Let’s find out. Here,” I said, handing her my keys. “Elizabeth, Kiani? Sure you don’t want to come with us?”
Hearing no takers, Rosie and I walked out the door and headed for my car. After a few steps, I noticed her shoes and stopped walking.
“Uh, Rosie?” I said. “The high heels? I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
“But…,” she said, beginning to protest.
“I know you don’t have any flat shoes. You can wear mine.”
Although my tennis shoes were a couple of sizes too big for Rosie, I still felt they would be safer than the heels. I had never been more terrified than when she climbed into the driver’s seat and I took the passenger’s.
Sporting a huge grin, Rosie adjusted the mirrors, stuck the key in the ignition, then looked over at me.
“Go ahead,” I said.
She turned the key, pushed down the brake pedal with my red-and-white tennis shoe, and pulled the gear stick into reverse. We inched back ever so slightly as she cranked the wheel to the right. Everything seemed to be going in slow motion, but that was likely because she was driving so slowly.
Once we got onto the main street, where the speed limit was forty miles an hour, she still crept along at twenty. That was good, though, because she didn’t brake around corners. I envied driving instructors who had the special cars with the additional brakes on the passenger side. I found myself pushing an imaginary pedal at each turn and stoplight, but I tried not to let Rosie see my fear.
“Good job,” I said reassuringly whenever I could catch my breath.
“Who taught you how to drive?” she asked.
“I’ll tell you when we get back,” I said.
I had purposely turned off the radio so Rosie could concentrate on the road, and I didn’t want to begin a conversation to distract her now. Plus, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to tell her the truth. I had gone to a private driving school where we learned to drive in new Mustangs. It was half as long as the free course at the high school, and they didn’t plaster those embarrassing Student Driver signs all over the car.
After five trips around the square-mile block, Rosie and I pulled safely into my parking spot at the apartment complex. I patted her on the back; she blushed and smiled.
“Did I do okay, Alysia?”
“You were great,” I said. “Do you want to hear a funny story?”
I told her about the time I decided to take my parents’ white Pontiac Grand Prix out for a joyride. I was still two years away from driving legally, but my parents had let me drive a few times on dirt roads, so I knew the basics.
I was rounding the corner when I saw my parents unloading shopping bags in the driveway. I panicked, spun the wheel to the left, and hit the gas. The Pontiac flew over the curb of my next-door neighbor’s house, crushing their mailbox, and stopped on the front lawn just shy of their living room. My parents just stood there, watching the damage unfold.
As Rosie listened to the story, her eyes were huge and her mouth was open. “What did they do?” she asked, horrified.
“They tried to yell at me,” I said, “but they were so shocked by my stupidity that they laughed in utter disbelief.”
I could tell she couldn’t comprehend their reaction. “Did you get in trouble?” she asked.
“They tried to ground me, but it didn’t stick. I did have to use my allowance to buy a new mailbox for the neighbor, though.”
Although we were laughing, I knew Rosie was thinking about the beating she would have gotten for pulling such a stunt. I felt good knowing Marcus could never lay a hand on them again.
“Let’s go upstairs and tell them how well you did, Rosie.”
AS IT WAS becoming painfully clear to me how much life the girls had missed, they were apparently having some parallel thoughts about my woeful inadequacies, which were stacking up, too. Until recently, their definition of a successful woman had hing
ed on her domestic talents and strong religious convictions. I came up short in both departments.
“I can’t believe you don’t know how to cook, Alysia,” Kiani said, her tone tinged with a mix of disbelief and pity.
I smiled before speaking up in my defense. “That’s not true, I can kind of cook. I just never have time.”
“Don’t you cook for your boyfriend?”
I bit my lip and lowered my eyebrows in mock shame. A wave of guilt swept through me as I developed a sudden urge to fly to Michigan to do Juan’s laundry, clean his house, and cook him a hearty meal of meat and potatoes. And then I was over it.
“It’s okay, Alysia,” Kiani said comfortingly. “I’ll teach you how.”
She walked into the kitchen and pulled out the flour the girls had asked me to buy them. “Let’s start with tortillas,” she said.
And so began my first formal cooking lesson.
Twenty minutes later, I was wrist deep in dough and being highly entertained by Kiani’s stories of preparing meals for her large family. Her tales of cooking from scratch over an open fire reminded me of the time I went to an Amish camp for a week when I was nine: getting up before dawn to milk cows, clean horse stalls, and fetch eggs from the chicken coop, with no electricity, no TV, and no phone. I could hardly wait to get home. It wasn’t for me, but Kiani seemed to romanticize the minimalist lifestyle, which her family had lived for a time.
I looked down at her perfect flat circle of dough and then over at my sad attempt, which was a lopsided mess. Kiani tried to contain her amusement, but she was soon doubled over, laughing hysterically, with tears flowing down her cheeks.
“It looks like Texas,” she gasped in between breaths. “It’s okay, Alysia. We used to make tortillas that looked like states, too.”
“I give up,” I said, walking into the living room, shaking my head.
“You did a good job,” Kiani said, offering her sincere encouragement. “I like Texas.”
After that, I left the cooking to the Wessons.
Nine
Elizabeth could tell that something wasn’t quite right with her son Dorian. He had started talking earlier than some children do and was speaking in complete sentences by the time he was two. But about six months later, he stopped talking altogether, choosing instead to cry and point at things he wanted, and screaming when he didn’t get them. Marcus got upset with Elizabeth for giving Dorian things when he wouldn’t use words to ask for them and told her to ignore his pleas until Dorian asked properly. But nothing seemed to work.
One afternoon in the spring of 1978, Elizabeth heard three-year-old Dorian start to cry while Marcus was combing the boy’s hair in the kitchen.
“Quit moving!” Marcus snapped.
Hearing the child’s cries turn to screams, Elizabeth rushed into the kitchen to see what was wrong.
“What happened?” she asked Marcus. “What did you do?”
Elizabeth could see four bleeding puncture wounds on the outside of Dorian’s left knee, a pattern that matched the long metal prongs on the cake slicer Marcus had been using to get the knots out of Dorian’s hair.
“Bee, I didn’t mean to do it, but he moved and I hit him,” Marcus said.
Elizabeth didn’t have a regular pediatrician for her children, so she insisted that they take Dorian to the emergency room for treatment. During the two hours Dorian had to wait to be seen, bacteria from the comb had seeped deep into the wounds, causing his knee to become red and swollen.
“What happened to him?” the nurse asked.
Marcus didn’t say anything, so Elizabeth did all the talking. “I don’t know,” she lied. “He was just playing and he got hurt.”
The nurse must have recognized that the injury was suspicious because she called in the doctor to take a look.
“How did he get hurt?” he asked.
“I really don’t know,” Elizabeth repeated. “Is it bad?”
“Yes, it’s infected,” the doctor said. “We’ll have to drain it and keep him here for a while.”
Pregnant with Sebhrenah, Elizabeth had her two other toddlers, one-and-a-half-year-old Adrian and one-year-old Kiani, in tow. Elizabeth didn’t want to tell the truth because she was scared they would take all her children away from her. She was even more scared when she overheard the doctor telling the nurse that they should call Social Services.
They told her they were going to admit Dorian to the hospital for a few days, and she didn’t argue when they wouldn’t let her stay by his side overnight.
As much as Marcus hated hospitals, he ended up being admitted to the same facility a day or two later. Marcus, who loved eating cheesecake and Häagen-Dazs ice cream, had been fasting for the past month—a common practice when his weight reached two hundred pounds. The only substances he’d been ingesting were grape and apple juice—one half cup of each, three times a day.
Problems arose when some friends came over with a bag of potato chips and Marcus broke his diet. He doubled over in pain as his digestive system cramped up with the shock of the greasy chips, so his friends took him to the hospital, where he was hooked up to an intravenous line and his system slowly reoriented to solid food.
Dorian was released a day or so before Marcus, and the doctor warned Elizabeth that someone from Social Services would be coming to their house to talk to them.
About a week later, a social worker knocked on their door, but Marcus wouldn’t let her come inside to check on Dorian and the rest of the children. Marcus calmly informed her that she couldn’t enter the house without a search warrant, so she left and came back with two police officers.
Marcus remained calm and rational as he discussed the situation with the officers at his front door.
“What are you trying to hide?” one of the officers asked.
Marcus said he didn’t want them violating his rights by barging in without a warrant. Elizabeth hid behind Marcus like a child listening to the adults’ conversation. She feared what would happen if they didn’t cooperate with the authorities. She didn’t want to lose her children.
“Marcus,” she pleaded. “Just let them in.”
Marcus finally relented and stepped aside to allow the social worker and the two officers to search the house. After checking the bedrooms and bathroom, the officers seemed satisfied that the kids were playing happily, with no visible signs of abuse or neglect.
Bruises didn’t really show up on the Wessons’ light brown skin. Besides, Marcus was always careful to hit them on their bottoms. He said they couldn’t get hurt by spankings there but, conveniently, any bruises he left there couldn’t be seen.
Afterward, the officers chatted with Marcus in a much less confrontational manner. One said they needed to ensure that none of the children was chained to the toilet as they’d found in one home they’d searched.
“We just have to do our job,” the social worker said.
“I understand,” Marcus replied. “We have nothing to hide.”
For the next six months, the social worker came back every two weeks, chatting with Marcus before she left.
Dorian still wasn’t talking, so the social worker took him and Elizabeth to a special clinic for some tests. The diagnosis, which came back when Dorian was almost four years old, was a mild case of autism. The county placed him in a school for children with special needs, sending a bus to pick him up and bring him home each day.
The social worker’s visits finally came to an end. Charmed by Marcus, she figured the children were in good hands.
Marcus pulled Dorian out of the classroom a few months later. Dorian was the first, but not the last, Wesson child to be kept out of public school. Marcus had different plans for his children. He would teach them his way.
MARCUS, A SURVIVALIST who believed the world was going to end, also spent most of the family’s welfare checks his way—on buses he converted into motor homes and, later, the boats on which the family lived at various times. And because he controlled the household finance
s, Elizabeth was often left scrambling to find ways to buy—or to beg relatives for—the real necessities: food, gas, diapers, shampoo, and medication.
They were down to their last seven dollars, with two whole weeks before the next government check would arrive, but Marcus didn’t seem the least bit worried about it as they made their habitual weekend jaunt to the flea market. Elizabeth knew they couldn’t afford to buy anything there, so she assumed her usual spot at the picnic table out front to wait for Marcus to finish browsing and mingling with the vendors.
About an hour later, she saw him lugging an oddly shaped dark gray chunk of metal toward her.
“What is that?” she asked, hoping he hadn’t bought it.
“It’s an antique book press,” Marcus said enthusiastically.
“But why did you… We can’t afford… Marcus, how much was it?”
“Seven dollars.”
Elizabeth began to cry. She had no idea what a book press was, only that he’d spent their final cent on it. The last thing they needed was another piece of junk to clutter up their small house.
“Bee, it’s a good investment,” Marcus said, shoving the press into the car.
“But we needed that money for food.”
“The Lord will provide for us.”
Elizabeth didn’t even know how to respond. She couldn’t believe he thought this oversize toy was more important than feeding his family.
Once they got home, Elizabeth remained visibly upset as Marcus disappeared out the front door.
Half an hour later, he came back with a sly grin. “This is for you,” he said, grabbing her hand and placing a dainty object into her palm. “I love you.”
Elizabeth looked down to see a beautiful cream, gold, and orange seashell, no more than an inch big, its coils shiny and opalescent. She had no idea where he’d gotten it—the ocean was at least half an hour away—but she knew it had to have been free. Elizabeth was so touched by the gesture that she didn’t much care.
“Thank you, oh, thank you,” she cooed. “I love it.”
Marcus didn’t believe in celebrating birthdays or anniversaries, so other than her wedding band, this was the only gift he’d ever given her. She would treasure the spiral shell for the rest of her life.
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