In her last trimester with the twins, Mom’s belly seemed gigantic, and exhaustion was etched into her beautiful face. Aunt Lydia, the midwife in Hildale, told Mom to take it easy so that she wouldn’t deliver prematurely. Mom felt it necessary to continue at HydraPak as long as she could—to please my father and support our growing family.
Everyone seemed eager for the twins to arrive, except Irene. Their birth would mean that Mom and Irene would have an equal number of children, so Irene could no longer hold that over my mother’s head. In addition, Irene had stopped bearing children, while our mother, who was much younger, wasn’t slowing down. I did not know how my father treated Irene behind closed doors, but he continued to stay with her on her allotted nights. Nevertheless, jealousy seemed to well within her like a deadly sickness.
Mom didn’t work every day after Amelia was born, but on the days she left for HydraPak, the preventions we put into place just weren’t enough. One day, Irene caught Cole alone. I found out much later she had almost beat him to death, rupturing one kidney and causing massive internal bleeding. He had gone to school the next day but began urinating blood. Mom and Dad rushed him to the emergency room, and that night, Irene invited the rest of my siblings upstairs for dinner. We slowly emerged from the basement stairwell, anxious and disoriented by our stepmother’s unfamiliar sweetness. Once we were seated, she told us that Cole had gotten very sick and had to be hospitalized from drinking too much water.
I pushed my glass away as if it were poison. Our people rarely went to doctors. We distrusted the medical industry—their meticulous, damning records and connections to the government. Once I had to get stitches in my forehead, and I was more afraid of the Gentile doctor than of the stitches themselves. I was relieved to have my father remove them ten days later. Not long after that, I had been playing on the porch on a hand-me-down bicycle. It had no seat and a rusted-out frame and was way too tall for me. When I went over a step and lost control, I gouged myself in my privates and felt the most painful burning sensation before passing out. Mom and Grandma Wall found me and carried me into the house. When I awoke, despite the severe bleeding, my mother doctored me up at home, using a baby medicine dropper to remove blood, and cutting some loose membrane with scissors. We knew that if our parents had taken Cole to see a doctor—especially to the hospital, it could only be for something exceptionally serious. As I glanced around the table I noticed not one of us touched our water.
Irene’s behavior remained sickly sweet for several days, but it didn’t last. Less than a month after Cole’s hospitalization, rumors made their way to our father that Uncle Roy was attending church that Sunday. The Prophet had been in poor health, and we hadn’t seen much of him lately. Dad decided it was important to make a showing—and that our mother should finally accompany him. Christine and Savannah were old enough to stay home to watch Trevor and Amelia, so the rest of us kids could go. Our family piled into the backseat of Dad’s brown Buick, while Mom sat next to him in the passenger seat, radiant with appreciation for her husband. Irene was conspicuously absent, having thrown a loud tantrum all morning.
Just as he took his foot off the brake, Irene dashed out of the house brandishing a heavy iron frying pan. Her voice shattered the air as she shrieked, “I will kill those little shits!” The ugly snarl on her face suddenly contorted in surprise as Dad stared at her and, with great deliberation, put the car in reverse. He backed slowly out of the short driveway and whipped the car forward up Cascade Way, where we could still hear her threats. He did not slow until he got to the corner, where I noticed him hesitate, checking his rearview mirror. I glanced back to see Irene on the edge of the drive, still brandishing her weapon.
Would the victim be Trevor, who needed constant attention for illnesses, or tiny, towheaded Amelia, still a toddler? Neither of them was a match for a lunatic with a frying pan. Still, I was most afraid for tender, nurturing Savannah. Six years older than me, Savannah was almost ethereally beautiful, and she seemed to incite Irene’s foulest abuse—more so than Samuel and Cole combined. Dad turned on the blinker, ready to round the corner. He hesitated again and glanced at my mother.
“I’m afraid she’ll really do it this time, Sharon.” He breathed in defeat, as he turned the car around. I felt a great sense of relief until I looked at my mom’s crestfallen face. Once again, my father caved in to his first wife’s manipulations.
As Mom got nearer to her term, my siblings and I prepared to visit Short Creek, where we would go whenever she was ready to deliver a new baby or when there was a special celebration taking place among our people. Short Creek, or the Creek (pronounced “Crick”) as it was known by locals, was nestled among the stunning, crimson-faced cliffs and vistas of southern Utah. Short Creek’s dusty, red-dirt streets in the twin cities of Hildale and Colorado City allowed us to walk freely among hundreds of our own kind without hiding. Our family was shown great deference by the locals. Even though Steed blood was relatively “fresh” among the people, Grandfather’s very large family meant we were related to almost every single person in the town and outlying areas, if not by blood, then by marriage. Grandfather Steed was a well-respected polygamist who had survived the raids with both his family and his pride intact.
Most often we stayed at Grandpa Steed’s Short Creek residence, a unique building that had been added onto a bit at a time as the family flourished and grew. While the rusty, dirt-stained stucco home wasn’t even remotely dazzling by worldly standards, it was beautiful to me. I loved all of Grandfather Steed’s wives, and most of them treated us with great affection. I hadn’t always known that Mama Alice was my mother’s mother—they all treated her as one of their own. There was always a loving lap to sit on and a delicious smell coming from the large kitchen.
The twins, Joshua Roy Wall and Jordan Roy Wall, were born on the Prophet’s birthday, June 12, 1982. With the naming, Uncle Roy was being doubly honored on his birthday. Their birth was an occasion for a glorious celebration among the whole community. Aunt Lydia, the midwife, happened to be a wife of Hildale’s bishop, Fred Jessop. While she had never gone to medical school or had babies of her own, Aunt Lydia had a special gift for delivering them. She had exceptional skills that local doctors and nurses respected—and we could keep the births hidden from the government.
Joshua and Jordan were beautiful baby boys, and I felt such sweet tenderness anytime I looked at them. When one of them cried, a fiercely protective, mothering instinct overcame me. Their lives deserved to be absolutely perfect, and we were all a little distraught at leaving the security of Hildale for our Salt Lake home.
“Mom,” Christine said, courageously raising the question that was on all of our minds. “How are we going to protect the babies?”
My mother threw up her hands in frustration. “I never had to face anything like this when I was growing up!” she said. “There was always peace in our home.” Christine and I looked at each other, our eyes wide. This was the first time we’d ever heard Mom speak openly about our situation.
I thought about my grandmothers. Eliza and Vilate had already passed, but I dearly loved Mama Olive, Mama Kloe, Mama Alice, Mama Cynthia, and Mama Ida, all of whom were here to support their daughter. Mom’s siblings were her dearest friends, especially her sister Martha Steed Allred, who lived in Salt Lake. Aunt Martha and her sister-wife treated each other kindly, and their relationship showed me a genuine closeness and respect that was missing within my father’s family. Uncle Jim Allred was a patient man with a great sense of humor. Through them I glimpsed that plurality might be not only endured but even enjoyed.
Our last night at Grandfather’s, I went to bed exhausted from playing. Dad had come to take us all home. I usually slept soundly, but that night I tossed and turned. When I heard quiet voices in the kitchen, I snuck upstairs to cajole a snack from an indulgent grandmother. Suddenly I stopped still, recognizing Grandfather Steed’s voice. I loved him, but he was no-nonsense. He would send me straight back to bed. I had almost turned to go back downstairs when I heard my mother’s trembling voice. Curiosity piqued, I snuck around the other way to the kitchen and slipped silently under the table.
“Daddy, you don’t understand how hard it is!” my mother cried. “If I leave the house for any reason, to go to work or go out with my husband, I have no idea if my children will even be alive when I get home. How can I take these two new precious souls back to that?”
“She’s telling the truth!” I wanted to shout. A wellspring of hope rose inside of me. Grandfather Steed could surely help us! He was powerful in the family and in our community—as revered as any FLDS leader besides the Prophet. He could do anything, couldn’t he?
When Grandfather’s voice thundered, I almost jumped and hit my head in fright.
“You stop that crying right now, Sharon!” he bellowed. “Go home, and obey your husband!”
After we arrived back in Salt Lake with two little ones in tow, our chore list grew ever longer. My favorite tasks involved anything having to do with the twins, though I wasn’t yet allowed to pick them up or carry them. How I longed to be as big as Christine and Savannah!
That fall I received the most glorious news. My beloved Mrs. Garrett, my kindergarten teacher at Eastwood Elementary, would be teaching my first-grade class! She didn’t mind my incessant questions or voracious appetite for knowledge. She put my bubbly energy to good use by letting me explore, experiment, and read. Her gentle nurturing made facing the bullies who pulled my braids and made fun of our long clothing bearable.
That year our class studied dinosaurs and the ecosystems of early earth life. I was fascinated, but that wonder was about to be superseded by a visit from an astronaut, now a Utah politician, who told us about his flight into space. He showed us his space suit and let us taste the dehydrated ice cream the astronauts ate.
Mrs. Garrett took advantage of our enthusiasm over our guest to teach us the solar system. Each day I would soak in as much as my six-year-old brain could handle, then run home as fast as I could. Completing my chores and homework in record time, I’d anxiously await the arrival of my father. He had to divide his time among a lot of children, but given his background in the space industry, I loved being able to discuss what I was learning with him.
When the school year ended, I said good-bye to Mrs. Garrett. The promise of summer thrilled me, though no one in our family sat idle—especially the girls. At nearly twelve, Christine was in charge of all eight of us younger siblings, and there was never-ending laundry, cleaning, and enormous meals to prepare.
That summer began a series of extraordinary events that would forever alter our lives. Mom stayed home full-time and even became pregnant again after the twins turned one. The promise of another baby meant a longer refuge from Irene. It was glorious to feel Mom’s warmth, cheerfully singing as she went about her duties.
Music had always been a part of the Steed legacy. Grandfather’s family was still often requested to provide musical entertainment in the community on every possible occasion. The early Mormons had been great purveyors, contributors, and patrons of the arts. Among our own people, we had carried on that tradition with operettas, plays, parades, and musicals. With Mom at home full-time, music made a grand entrance into our lives. There I discovered a place of exquisite peace and rest; it awakened my creativity and was a safe haven from a harsh world.
Christine began playing the viola and later switched to the violin. When I heard the stringed music, I was in Heaven! I hung on every note and hovered around her as she played. I could tell when she was on note or not—something had awakened within me, probably due to my mother’s sweet singing voice. I had a natural ear for pitch, tone, and tempo. When Christine practiced, I played on wooden spoons beside her.
The next summer, I turned eight and was presented with a miniature violin for my birthday. It was the loveliest thing I had ever seen, and I cradled it, watched over it, and protected it like my baby brothers. It was unusual for one among my siblings to receive such an expensive possession, especially with Mom no longer working. The birth of baby Zach marked my mom’s tenth child and my father’s nineteenth. I did not take it for granted.
The day of my birthday celebration, which I shared with my brother Trevor, we were each presented with a beautiful homemade cake of our own. I was wearing a pretty, hand-me-down, gunnysack-style dress, and when Trevor and I posed for our picture, my sleeve caught fire on the birthday candles. Someone snuffed it out quickly, but the plastic from the material melted into my skin. I showed up to my first violin lesson dressed in bandages with huge, painful blisters down my arm, but I didn’t care. No one could pry the violin away from me, and I played it night and day, even sneaking it into the bed I shared with Brittany—until she put a stop to it.
I became proficient quickly, with the help of Mrs. Guertler, a Mormon woman who taught violin to students of different backgrounds. Even though she didn’t practice plurality, Dad allowed us to go to her lessons. He began to call me a virtuoso and loved to show me off whenever a guest from the FLDS came over.
“Play something, Sis!” he would say, grinning broadly. I would pick a hard piece I had practiced well, and it usually stunned the listener to hear intricate music from such a tiny person. I loved to shine for Dad, and I drank in the praise he gave me. Sometimes my siblings called me a show-off.
Months later Mom got a sleek new Yamaha piano, and she would occasionally sneak a few precious moments to play with me. My love affair expanded to the piano, and I practiced that for hours, too. Irene would inevitably scream down the stairs, “Can you make Becky stop?” I’m sure my siblings felt the same way. But the magic of the music seemed to fill my life with light. It also opened unexpected doors.
Anxiously awaiting my turn at Mrs. Guertler’s rock house on Millcreek Way, I consumed her Reader’s Digest and other magazines. Reading Guideposts (a Christian publication) and the Ensign (published by the LDS church) shocked me. Each issue showcased at least one story where a life was spared and hope provided. How could God’s hand extend to Gentile Christians who knew not the truth, and apostate Mormons who had turned away from it?
I pondered these questions and many others, though I learned very early never to ask them aloud. My parents had made a momentous decision as to our FLDS education, one whose ramifications would affect our entire household. The previous fall, my siblings and I had been “blessed” with the opportunity to attend Alta Academy, an elite educational facility for children of families who strictly observed all of the principles of the FLDS. Housed inside Uncle Rulon Jeffs’s enormous white mansion within his large estate at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon, it was considered the “Yale” of the FLDS, even though it originally went only to eighth grade, later expanding to the twelfth grade. I was eager to enroll, as Uncle Rulon’s estate was a place where we didn’t have to worry about what the outside world thought. As part of the throngs of children in prairie dresses and long sleeves playing in the courtyard, we could be ourselves without ridicule. And for the first time, all of Dad’s children could be the “Walls,” instead of some of us having to carry the seemingly shameful name of “Wilson.”
We had attended church on the property for our entire lives, as it was the only FLDS building in Salt Lake that could hold our large congregation for Sunday services. My father had designed the home and said it was the largest single-family dwelling in the state of Utah when it was built. Before now, I had been familiar only with the vast meeting hall areas and a couple of nearby bathrooms on the first floor. As a student, I got to explore the rest of the building, including the third floor, which housed the principal’s office and eventually the home economics rooms and tool shops. The house also had forty-four bedrooms, twenty baths, two full kitchens, two half kitchens, and two laundry rooms. Upstairs, the Jeffses did their best to maintain a household and raise their families, despite the hundreds of children below. There was also an area reserved for birthing rooms. Women from the Jeffs families, especially second and third wives and so on, were often instructed to deliver their babies here, so as not to arouse the suspicions of outsiders. It was not uncommon to be headed to class and hear the eerie reverberations of a mother in labor, or the cry of a newborn.
As good Priesthood children, we had to make a lot of changes in order to live up to the standards being set at Alta Academy for the rest of our community. We also now had to wear long underwear, once reserved for adults, which I helped Mom and my aunts to sew. It was vital that we follow each and every rule to the letter.
These standards were strictly enforced by our principal, Warren Jeffs, known to us as “Mr. Jeffs.” The son of Rulon Jeffs, who was in the First Presidency with our Prophet, Uncle Roy, Warren had become Alta’s principal within a few years of graduating from Jordan High in 1973, despite having no college education. Mr. Jeffs was strange, but his position demanded respect. He had a gangly, lean frame and wore glasses that made his dark brown eyes look beady. Around his father he was obliging, seeming to hang on his every word. In the halls of Alta Academy, however, he was in charge. While he often had a goofy smile plastered to his face, everyone knew when he was serious. His expression would grow somber while his soft, almost hypnotic voice would get a sudden, deadly edge.
Every morning in the great meeting hall, an expansive area with a low, flat ceiling, we had devotionals or Morning Class. There we gathered together as a student body to hear Mr. Jeffs, joined on rare occasions by another FLDS leader or the Prophet, to speak on church doctrine. Then we would go to our classes for age-appropriate Priesthood subjects. Finally upon our return home, we had large amounts of homework on the same—usually accompanied by sets of tapes of Mr. Jeffs speaking on each subject. We were quizzed each day on that content, and we had to get the answers right or listen to the tape again until we did. A low-grade test score meant you had a low-grade testimony of God.
I was at the school for only two days when I first heard Mr. Jeffs soberly address appropriate behavior between boys and girls. He seemed obsessed with ensuring we were keeping ourselves pure.
“To warn you,” he said, “your boy-girl relationships here, young people, are being closely watched, as you are quite aware. As our Prophet, President Leroy Johnson, has taught the young people, the boys particularly, ‘Treat the girls in your acquaintance as though they were snakes. Hands off!’ And the girls should treat the boys the same way until they are placed by the Prophet.” I was determined to be a good Priesthood girl and please Uncle Roy, my Prophet, as were my sisters and friends, so we started treating males as if they were, indeed, foreign, scaly, and reptilian in nature. We avoided even our brothers and cousins. We ran from them, refused to sit by them, and were careful not to converse with them, especially near our principal.
Mr. Jeffs paid strict attention to the styles of women and girls. I was learning to sew, which was hard work! I carefully considered acceptable styles, looking for attractive fashions that were still considered “pure.” One friend’s mother made her a princess dress, an elegant style with a modest bodice designed to make the waistline look slim. My friend was delighted until Mr. Jeffs sent her home in tears, after raving that the V-waistline pointed down “there—that place of a girl’s body where the mind should not go” and was therefore a wicked, evil design. Her own mother, in her innocence, could not explain to her daughter why Mr. Jeffs considered it evil. Still, she was never allowed to wear it again.
Every child at Alta tried to stay on his or her best behavior. With nearly everyone related, any misstep was bound to get back to our families and cause them considerable shame. My siblings and I avoided being called into Mr. Jeffs’s office as if our lives depended on it. We dreaded hearing any of our own called in over the PA system that was present in every one of the seventy rooms on the property. We also quickly learned to keep our mouths shut in the classroom, as Mr. Jeffs seemed to enjoy making an example of a student in front of his or her own classmates.
Unfortunately, the Walls, especially my mother’s children, seemed to be a little more curious and stubborn. I focused on my studies and my homework and did my best to keep out of trouble. But once in a while, my Wall traits emerged, especially when I knew I was right about something.
I crossed swords with Mr. Jeffs several times during my first two years at Alta. On the first occasion, even though I had seen dinosaur bones and been able to touch and study them, Mr. Jeffs forced me to say that dinosaurs did not exist, had never existed, and were a lie made up by my worldly teacher! Deep down, I knew Mrs. Garrett would not have taught me anything that was a lie. But, greatly humiliated, I mumbled the words and sat down, with a red face and hot tears of defiance leaking from the corners of my eyes.
The second time, Mr. Jeffs was called to our classroom by my teacher to reiterate that astronauts had never landed on the moon.
“But, Mr. Jeffs,” I exclaimed, “I met an astronaut in real life! I touched his space suit! He even signed his autograph!” I went on, ignoring his contorted expression. “He flew in space, and he told us about it! He told us all about Russian astronauts going up into space first, but U.S. astronauts raced ahead to be the first ones to land on the moon!”
“The government is crafty, Miss Wall,” he snarled, and I jumped, recognizing that edge in his voice. Mr. Jeffs cocked his head condescendingly, as if I had been totally led astray. “They have made films and erected lies to make the public think they have landed on the moon.”
“But—”
“Your teacher was a Gentile.” He spat the word as if it was poison. “Never speak of these things again!” He stared hard at me, and I returned his gaze for a moment before putting my head down on my desk in defeat. Mrs. Garrett was not evil. My dad was selling stuff to Morton Thiokol for their solid rocket boosters for the space shuttle! There was such a thing as men landing on the moon! But I was too smart to say another word. A boy I knew had been forced to drop his trousers to his knees and was whipped by Mr. Jeffs with a yardstick in front of the entire class until it broke. It had been horrifying to all of us to hear the boy’s cries of pain echoing down the hallway. I didn’t want to be the next example.
When I finally dared to lift my head, Mr. Jeffs was gone. I was sad now for my cousins and friends who would never know about dinosaurs or men on the moon. I felt a burning defiance, but just like at home, my survival meant knowing when to keep my mouth shut.
At Alta, we studied Priesthood History, Priesthood Math, and Priesthood English and Science—just enough for the girls to read recipes and work safely in kitchens, factories, or businesses run by Priesthood men, and the boys to become excellent carpenters and builders. In Home Economics, Mr. Jeffs seemed particularly obsessed with imparting certain principles to us young ladies. It seemed very important to him that our age group of girls have “proper teachings”—more than boys and adults combined. He would often bring up subjects that made me feel uncomfortable, with daily reminders of morality and purity. Each time he said the word “body,” I felt sick to my stomach.
Alta Academy did have some benefits, like the small library in the basement. Books were a sweeter treat for me than candy. Between chores and homework, I had little time to read but was allowed Encyclopedia Brown. In the series, author Donald J. Sobol presented the most incredible thing: choice! I could choose where the story would take me, and I could choose the ending. Since my choices in everyday life were strictly limited, I relished being able to select a variety of outcomes. The best part? No matter what I chose, it wasn’t wrong.
One day I walked into the musty library planning to exchange my stack. I politely greeted Mrs. Dutson, the librarian, as I set my stack down and walked over to select some more volumes. Mrs. Dutson glared at me.
“Don’t you even think of checking out those books!” Tears stung my eyes, and I hung my head and walked away.
Later that day, word got around that they were removing most of the books from the library for the good of the students. Going to see for myself, I went down to the basement and turned the corner, dismayed to find the shelves empty. The only items remaining included Priesthood-approved materials—similar in content to our homework. Encyclopedia Brown was gone, and I grieved as if I had lost a best friend.
The library was just the first level of cleansing. Mr. Jeffs and the teachers began to closely monitor and eliminate any information we received from the outside world. The teachers removed any cartoons, caricatures of animals or people different from us, from our textbooks, warning that the outside world had planted “alligator eggs,” things that were seemingly innocuous but that would grow to kill us. Every textbook became riddled with large, gaping holes. Eventually, texts were replaced by materials written just for us. In the classes and hallways, decorations were ripped from the walls. The only pictures in any classroom were pictures of the Prophets, from Joseph Smith down to Uncle Roy.
At home, fortunately, Mom allowed us to read some outside books and stories as long as she had read them first and considered them “faith-promoting.” Little House on the Prairie and Anne of Green Gables were on the short list of titles that were acceptable—or at least not publicly unacceptable.
One book popular in our community was The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom, about a family of Christians living before, during, and after the Nazi occupation of Holland. Gathering us together before bedtime, Mom read to us about how Corrie’s family hid several Jews in her room behind a secret wall before being discovered by authorities and taken to the federal prison of Scheveningen and then Vught. She tied in the ten Booms’ experience with stories of the ’53 raid, reinforcing our faithfulness to the Priesthood and our terror of government. It struck a fearful and familiar chord within us: armies were dangerous, government control was evil, and families could be torn apart by them.
The book raised deep philosophical and religious questions for me. I was astounded that Corrie’s sister considered being eaten by fleas as a miracle, since they kept the guards away so the prisoners would not be killed for studying the Bible. Could there be miracles in even the hardest of situations? My mother’s stories seemed to validate that idea. But I couldn’t wrap my head around the contradiction that the Jews didn’t practice plurality, and therefore couldn’t be God’s chosen people. Worse than that, they had killed Jesus Christ! So why would God show up miraculously in the midst of the Holocaust? Or, if he was a merciful God, as Corrie’s sister suggested, then why would he allow such achingly horrific suffering in the first place? My mind roiled with these questions.
I also drew personal connections between the experiences of the women in the book and my own life. The women in the camp shared one bottle of vitamin drops, which miraculously never ran out. The Mormon pioneers had hundreds of similar stories, ones I’d been told all my life. But I had to ask myself, Would I have shared my vitamins under those circumstances? I hoped I would, but I wasn’t sure. I made up my mind to grow to be the kind of person who would consider others’ needs even when the consequences were life-and-death. Otherwise, what was the point of life?
When Irene got a new color television set, Dad gave Mom her fuzzy black-and-white one. Most often the TV had a towel or laundry draped over it, but occasionally we would watch an “appropriate” program after school. Uncle Roy had admonished families in church many times:
Shame on you parents, for allowing these evils of immorality to be in the lives of your children right in your own homes! One of the tools parents have allowed into the home that creates this immorality is the television.… If you just flood them with evil, and let them see all the nakedness and corruption, and they’re not prepared to resist it, they will naturally lean toward it.
Little House on the Prairie and Disney Sunday Movie were safe. Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and Sesame Street were on the list, too, until the Prophet deemed them worldly and idolatrous because puppets, like cartoons, were an imitation of God’s creation.
The television helped my mother control her restless natives, especially with the baby getting into things, the twins’ never-ending energy, and her eleventh child on the way. Aunt Irene created a lending library that included Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Heidi, Anchors Away, and Brigadoon—generally older films, and always G-rated. A few full-length Disney features snuck by for a while, even though they were cartoons. I loved Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with all the passion my young heart could muster. Of course, these stories affected my psyche, like any other young girl’s.
In the hidden recesses of my mind, I dreamed that a handsome prince would sweep me off my feet, rescue me from Irene’s clutches, and carry me away to live happily ever after! However, our teachings stated clearly that the Prophet would be inspired with the knowledge of which man would be my perfect husband, the one to whom I would always defer and keep sweet. It was everything an FLDS girl was supposed to dream of.
I knew that I wasn’t likely to marry a young man whose kiss would make me swoon, like in the movies—no matter how much I longed for it. The most romantic thing an FLDS girl could secretly hope for was to be a first wife and enjoy a few precious moments of one-on-one time before additional wives and myriad children arrived. We never dared speak of that hope. As with the vitamin drops in Corrie ten Boom’s story, it would be morally wrong not to share.