I found Theron unconscious, bound with cords at his feet and wrists, tied securely to an iron cot. I felt relieved to see that he wasn’t all black and blue and swollen like other car accident victims I’d seen. I knew that before long, Theron would wake up, and I’d be able to take him home.
He thrashed around, almost expelling the needle that was inserted into the vein in his wrist. I stroked his hands, hoping to calm him as I watched the glucose slowly drip down the tube into his arm.
Nobody worked harder or was more on the go than Theron. I didn’t think he ever got enough sleep. Knowing he was unconscious and couldn’t hear me, I said, “Theron, you’re finally going to get the rest you deserve.”
Seven other men were in cots in the same ward. To the left of me was a man burned so badly, I was unable to guess his age. He constantly moaned and cried out in pain. I struck up a conversation with him in Spanish, but then a chubby nurse approached his bed with gauze and bottles of medicine. She asked me to please step out of the room while she treated his burns.
I patted Theron’s cold feet and walked out reluctantly, not wanting to leave him alone. I sent Lane to phone Theron’s son Terry in Las Vegas to inform him about the accident. We also needed money to bail Theron’s sixteen-year-old son, Dale, out of jail. In Mexico, the driver in any serious car accident automatically goes to jail, and he’d been driving. Theron’s daughter Debby was also in the accident and was in the woman’s ward with a badly gashed foot.
I knew Theron had health insurance, and I wanted to send him by ambulance to San Diego, where he could receive quality care. I talked to Dr. Martinez about it, but he wouldn’t even entertain the idea. “He’s too badly injured to be moved anywhere. If you’ll be the responsible party, we’ll take X-rays now and do everything we can for him here.”
I signed the release forms. Then we stepped out into the hall as Dr. Martinez started explaining the next procedures. The banging of a gurney drew our attention as two nurses wheeled it out of the men’s ward and off down the hall. A sheet concealed a body on the gurney.
“Someone just died,” sighed Dr. Martinez. I hoped it wasn’t the poor man with all the burns.
We returned to the men’s ward, hoping to take Theron for X-rays immediately. To our astonishment, Theron’s cot was empty. Turning to the burned man, I asked, “Where did they take him?”
“He died moments after you left,” he said.
I ran into the hall, unable to comprehend such a disaster. We needed Theron. The church needed him. How could God take such a vital man? I pounded the wall, weeping as I prayed, No, God, no! Please don’t let it be true!
Dr. Martinez put his arm around me. “He’s gone. Get a hold of yourself. He’s now at peace.”
My head was spinning. I had to go look for Lane. I waited on the curb in front of the hospital, hoping for Lane’s immediate return. Brown-skinned strangers passed by, nodding to me respectfully and saying in Spanish, “Happy Mother’s Day.”
I choked with emotion. Poor Helen! I dreaded sending her the tragic news of her husband’s death, especially on Mother’s Day.
I didn’t notice Lane until he was right beside me. I threw myself into his arms and wept, “He’s dead! Theron’s dead!” Lane stood there like a statue. “Lane, you’ve got to be the one to call Terry back,” I said. “Tell him that his father is dead, because I can’t bear to do it.”
He shook his head. “I can’t either! I just called and told him Theron would be okay and that we had things under control. I’m not calling back. You’ll have to.”
Theron’s daughter Sherry answered the phone, surprised we’d call back so soon. “Sherry,” I began, “I have bad news . . .” I’ll never forget her sobs. I joined her. I was sick that I was dumping my emotions on her, but I loved Theron as family. I, too, was devastated.
Lane got his father-in-law to drive the three hours to Los Molinos to inform Helen and the rest of her children of the sad news. I rushed home to clean house, cook food, and prepare beds for the mourners, who would arrive shortly from the States for the funeral the next day.
That evening, I returned to the hospital to tell Debby her father died. While I was there, Verlan arrived home for the weekend. Our daughter Donna told him the sickening news, and he came and found me at the hospital. Immediately, he insisted I go with him to the mortuary. “I don’t think he’s dead,” he said hopefully. “God needs him too badly here. There must be some mistake.”
Verlan cringed when he saw Theron’s naked body. He shook his head in disbelief, then said with finality, “He’s dead all right. He’s dead for sure.”
Outside the morgue, we sat in Verlan’s car, and he let his tears flow freely. “Theron was the best friend I ever had,” he lamented. “He was just too perfect to live. Oh, how I’m going to miss him!”
ON SEPTEMBER 2, 1969, I returned home to the Big Brown House with a renewed spirit. Verlan had taken me to a movie, then out to eat Mexican food. It was a rare occasion when we could celebrate like this alone. For once, I wasn’t pregnant. I felt like I was being courted. Verlan was most attentive. We held hands during the movie, just enjoying being together again. His thoughtfulness eased my burdens. I felt for the first time in years that our relationship might improve, in spite of all the problems.
He kissed me before we got out of his truck. Then he hugged me and said, “I could never keep going without you, Irene. I really love you for all you do for this family.”
The next morning, Verlan unloaded a large cardboard box from the camper of his truck. It contained thirty or more pairs of used shoes he had purchased from Veteran’s Thrift. His throng of excited children grabbed frantically for a couple of pair each as he dumped them onto the living room floor.
Verlan left my $50 weekly allowance (which he’d finally raised from $20 because of the numerous children), then bid us farewell early Sunday evening. He was rushed because he wanted to drop by Charlotte’s home in Tijuana and visit with her and her kids before he crossed over into San Diego.
Four hours later, he unexpectedly returned. I knew when I saw him that he was a bearer of bad news. “Who is it, Verlan? Who died?”
“Your mother. She died of a heart attack in Montana.”
“No, not my mother. How could it be? She’s only fifty-nine!”
“When I arrived at Charlotte’s, she told me the news. Your brothers are on their way to Montana now to bring your mother’s body back to Salt Lake, where she’ll be buried.” Verlan hugged me. “I’m so sorry, but I don’t think you need to go. They’ll probably just have a graveside funeral anyway.”
“What do you mean I don’t need to go? She’s my mother! You won’t keep me from going!”
“I can’t have Lucy quit work just to tend your kids.”
“Well, you can tend them then. They’re your kids, and I’m going!” I cried, convulsing between sobs. “You’ve always gotten to live around your family, have your mother constantly nearby. Why didn’t you let me go see mine this summer like I wanted to? Now she’s dead!”
Verlan got up to answer the door. Two of Joel’s wives, Gaye and Priscilla, were at the door. “Where’s Irene?” Gaye asked.
“She’s too embarrassed to come out. Her mother died, and she’s crying because she can’t go to the funeral.”
“What do you mean she can’t go? Are you crazy?” Gaye asked.
“Well, she’s got responsibilities. There’s no one else to tend these kids.”
Both women rushed in to console me. In a matter of minutes, it was decided. They would both stay and care for my kids until I returned.
Within twenty minutes, Verlan and I were out the door. As we drove to Tijuana, I begged him to accompany me to Salt Lake so we could attend the funeral together. My family was bitter toward the LeBarons, and I wanted him to go with me so I could walk proudly at his side and make a statement to all my relatives that they’d better accept him.
“I can’t go; you know I have to work. I’ll put you on a Greyhound b
us in San Diego. From there you can go to Las Vegas and then ride with your sister Becky and her husband.”
We stopped at Charlotte’s just long enough for her to try and find me something decent enough to wear to the funeral. She donated a navy blue and white plaid sack dress that was a size too large for her. She also gave me a pair of nylons and a purse and loaned me a pair of her shoes.
When I arrived in Salt Lake, my older brother Richard informed me that Verlan had called. He’d made arrangements to attend the funeral after all, and he was en route to Salt Lake with my daughter Donna and Verlan Jr.
My heart was in my throat as Becky, Richard, and I drove to the funeral home. We tiptoed into the viewing room. Our three other siblings—Douglas, Roger, and Erma—were already locked arm in arm in front of Mother’s casket. For the first time since we were children, we were reunited, and it had to be at Mother’s funeral. As we viewed her body together, I felt a great wave of homesickness for them.
I was shocked by how pale and old our mother looked. She’d been such a beautiful woman in her youth. I hoped to attain her wisdom and strength one day. Now I wanted to cry out to her, ask her for forgiveness for being so stubborn and make her understand the things life had taught me. I wanted to tell her I knew she suffered alone all those years. In my inadequate way, I wanted to tell her I loved her, but it was too late.
Life seared me with the realities Mother couldn’t get across to me back when I wasn’t in the mood to listen to her. She gave me a legacy of knowledge and courage. Her wisdom and beauty would stay with me through the years, reminding me of the debt I owed her.
I still choke up whenever I sing her favorite song, “Painting the Clouds with Sunshine.” I often hear her lovely voice singing a song I heard no other person sing: “When I pretend I’m gay, I never feel that way. I’m only painting the clouds with sunshine.” It was Mother who taught me to laugh at life. And throughout the years, I’ve had the opportunity to paint countless dark clouds.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I ’m sure Verlan loved us all in a way, but he absolutely flipped over Susan. He didn’t have to tell any of us he favored her. He was intensely in love with her, and it showed. She needed him, and he thrived on her attentions. I believe he felt young and virile again with such a young, pretty woman at his side. She was an absolute doll. Any man would have been proud to be seen with her.
Susan experienced the polygamous society while growing up in Colonia LeBaron. Her father had two wives, so in theory it probably seemed like something she should be able to do. But actually practicing it, with five older wives and dozens of children already in the picture, was more than most girls born under the covenant would have been able to endure.
We became friends. Over time, we even began to confide in each other about many things we couldn’t share with anyone else. We discussed our desires and our doubts, admitting to each other that the glorious Principle around which our fundamentalist faith was centered wasn’t in fact satisfying to either of us. We both wanted a man of our own and a normal life, but God seemed to have other plans.
JOEL’S STEPDAUGHTER, Lillie, was destined to become Verlan’s seventh wife, though it took God a while to work it out. Two years before his marriage to Susan, when Lillie was seventeen, she and Verlan were engaged to be married, but she suddenly changed her mind. Time passed, and Lillie was now a beautiful, willowy blond. Still just nineteen, she was under pressure to marry before she became an old maid (in the eyes of our society). To complicate matters, she was in love with a handsome young man her own age, but the brethren counseled her to marry someone with experience instead—someone who could exalt her right now rather than a man who wouldn’t exalt her unless and until he leapt into the Principle for himself by adding other wives down the road. Everyone agreed that that someone was Verlan.
With six wives and thirty-three kids already part of his burgeoning heavenly kingdom, Verlan believed he was well positioned to exalt another wife. He certainly wanted to try, especially since Lillie would thereby round out his quorum of seven wives. According to our faith, this would practically guarantee him godhood if he did nothing to mess things up.
I was surprised when Lillie decided to marry him, especially since she knew full well the poverty and loneliness we experienced. I was even more surprised when Verlan told me Lillie preferred that I not attend their wedding. He said she wanted it small and private, meaning I wasn’t welcome. I couldn’t understand it. When Lillie spent a year going to school in Ensenada with us, I’d been like a mother to her, always looking out for her needs. Why, I’d bought her first bra. She was my daughter Donna’s best friend. I was especially crushed when I discovered she invited some of Verlan’s other wives.
I finally found out that Lillie’s problem with me was jealousy. She told Verlan I was too often the life of the party, and she didn’t want me around on her special day to take away her limelight. I was hurt that Verlan allowed Lillie’s jealousy to keep me away, but I was more hurt by her rude snub. Now she’d have to contend not only with Susan, who was the youngest and prettiest of Verlan’s wives, but with me as well.
Lillie made her own white satin wedding gown. She and Verlan married in San Diego on January 15, 1971, surrounded by her family and friends. The ceremony drew a larger crowd than any of Verlan’s previous weddings. Everyone knew that by marrying Lillie, Verlan was securing his heavenly position.
I tried not to dwell on the fact that I’d had such a simple, secretive wedding—under a tree with no guests and no gifts, wearing a borrowed suit of Charlotte’s. My only consolation now was that Verlan had finally fulfilled his dream. With his (and our) salvation now secure, Verlan could stop his mad dash to add more wives. Now all he had to do was father seventeen more children, and he’d have accomplished everything in life he’d set out to.
AFTER LILLIE’S WEDDING, Verlan’s family multiplied faster than ever. Those were such trying times, I quite resented it when Verlan came home and announced that he felt he had to go on another mission for the Lord. I begged him to stay home. It was bad enough sharing him with six other wives, but if I had to share him with God, too, I’d never make it. Verlan insisted that his God came before any woman or other mere earthly duties.
I knew it was against church rules for a woman to go on a mission trip. A woman’s mission was to stay home and indoctrinate the children. Still, while Verlan packed to leave, I teased him just to give him a hard time. I clung playfully to him as he tried to leave. “Please, let me go on this mission with you.”
“No,” he said, trying to pull away. “You know my companion has to be a man.”
“I have more qualifications than any man,” I said, throwing out my chest. “See, I could go and be your bosom companion.” He laughed, but my qualifications didn’t get me anywhere, and he left.
While Verlan was still off doing his duty preaching and trying to bring in new members to the church, I wrote to him: “Lover, if you’d come home and be with your seven wives, we could produce more members than you could ever convert.”
THE BAPTIST WORLD MISSION set up a small clinic just twenty miles south of us in San Quintin. I was back in my house in Los Molinos, pregnant with my twelfth child. I was glad for the new Baptist doctors. EL BUEN PASTOR (The Good Shepherd) was written on the Quonset hut in which the clinic was housed. The small new facility had only three beds, one of which was the delivery table.
It was November 3, 1971, my due date, but since my previous labor lasted all of twenty-five minutes, I decided to go to the clinic before I actually had any pains this time. When I arrived, the doctor didn’t have a place to examine me. All the beds were already occupied by women who had just had their babies. Dr. Cano had his assistant drive one of the women to her home, freeing up the delivery table.
The nurse helped lift me onto the table and then prepped me for delivery. Before they proceeded, the doctor and nurse prayed over me for God to guide their hands. Then Dr. Cano dripped a solution into the vein in my
arm to induce labor. In exactly forty-five minutes from beginning to end, I gave birth to Seth Michael, who weighed in at nine and a half pounds. Having such a big baby so fast required me to get my first stitches ever.
“Hold still. It’ll be over in a few minutes,” Dr. Cano said. “I only need to put in three or four stitches.” Still groggy from the anesthetic, yet never too drugged for humor, I said, “Doctor, let’s really surprise my husband. Just sew the whole thing up.”
After Seth’s arrival, I was sick in bed for several weeks. I had blood clots in my leg and was in danger of having further complications. My friend Betty took me to her home to care for me. She bought me my first new nightgown and bathrobe since the nightgown Charlotte gave me for my honeymoon. I was elated about the turquoise satin robe.
After I recovered, I went on a two-day trip with Verlan to San Diego. While we were gone, fourteen-year-old André had an attack of appendicitis. Donna rushed him to the Baptist Clinic, where they operated on him. That was a miracle in itself. Only one day a month, doctors flew in from the States to donate their time and perform various operations. It just so happened that André arrived in pain on the designated day. When they saw him doubled over, they took him ahead of the scheduled patients and operated on him immediately.
WHEN SETH WAS ONLY four months old, he was sick for several days with a fever and an earache. It was foggy and cold out—the middle of February. Our only source of heat in the whole house was a gas heater in my bedroom. I rocked my crying baby until I could no longer stay awake.
It was just growing light outside when I crawled into bed between my daughters, Donna and two-year-old Verlana. I needed to snatch at least a few minutes of sleep before it was time to get the kids up for school.
As if in a far-off dream, I heard little Verlana fall off the bed onto the cold cement floor. I was so out of it, I couldn’t think of what to do, couldn’t figure out that I needed to pick her up and put her back in bed beside me. She didn’t cry or try to get up. I seemed to be in a deep sleep when a voice spoke to me: “Irene, get up immediately, or it will be too late.” I tried to move, but I couldn’t make my body function. Again the voice warned me, “Get up right now!”
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