During the next few years, my only refuge was my music. I was allowed to go to Suzuki camp again and continue my lessons. Although I had been classically trained in violin, I began to adore the energy and adventure of fiddling, as well as the unique sense of belonging when a group of us fiddled anything from Irish reels to “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,” a song that would have been strictly forbidden at church or school. At home, everything except the monotony of homework seemed to change rapidly. In 1991, Savannah graduated from Alta Academy, followed the next year by Brittany. It seemed impossible to me that my babies Joshua and Jordan had now begun second grade, Zach was already in first, and Elissa was no longer toddling around. Sometimes I cried quietly at how quickly my siblings were growing. However, Mom had had another sweet baby girl, Sherrie, who had come on the heels of Levi, so there wasn’t much time to miss diapers and bottles.
As we adjusted to an ever-changing household, it became apparent that something was dreadfully wrong with Christine. No one was able to pinpoint the cause of her mysterious suffering, but she had difficulty breathing, suffered from headaches and intense pain in her chest, and couldn’t seem to rest. We didn’t dare take her to a doctor, so she became the subject of many experimental treatments. Our mother, aunts, and concerned friends tried multiple homegrown and home-tested remedies—everything from fasting to colon cleanses to ice baths. She chopped raw onions and pressed them onto a paper towel, which she laid upon her chest and abdomen every night for a year.
Sometimes when I went to visit her room to brush the hair back from her dark and sunken eyes, I listened to the sounds of the house and wondered if she was suffering a physical manifestation of the hopelessness of her eventual fate. She was now twenty, hardly a spring chicken in the eyes of the FLDS.
When Rulon Jeffs had become our new Prophet, he had halted the practice of quickly marrying off women as soon as they turned eighteen, desiring “to get to know his people” first. Only recently had the aging Prophet begun performing marriages again, so there was hope of a marriage and family for Christine soon. But daily my sister saw the ugly reminders that while marriage could be a way out, it could also give entry into a graver situation than ours. Certainly there were healthier families, but we knew some who were much worse off. What would it mean to be shackled here and in the eternities to an undeserving Priesthood holder? Or a sister-wife who beat our children?
Whatever the case, at school when the girls separated from the boys in Home Economics, we received constant training from Mr. Jeffs about exactly what kind of obedient wife we should turn out to be. Spouting the words of the Prophets, he said we must keep sweet, never complain, and always, always, defer to our husbands in every important decision. Women were not to try to lead their husbands.
Boys, on the other hand, were taught never to let a woman get the best of them, or be seen by the Lord as weak and undeserving of his Heavenly kingdom. Having to be manly in word and deed, they especially studied building and craftsmanship.
Cole used those skills and went to work for Warren’s brother Lyle, who owned a construction company. Occasionally I would go to visit him or bring him lunch on Lyle’s construction sites. When lookouts warned of oncoming OSHA inspectors, boys as young as eight would hide out, lying on the floors of pickup trucks with tinted windows until the inspectors drove away. Then they went back to work in pits, up on scaffolding, framing, and rooftops. Lyle took advantage of his young labor crew, often refusing to pay by saying proceeds were going to support the Prophet and the church. Cole finally quit, but Lyle didn’t care; he had an endless supply of young labor.
By 1992, my sophomore year at Alta Academy, doing my best at school kept me out of much trouble for a sixteen-year-old. Not all of my classmates were of the same mind-set. Some were secretly cutting a class or two, even hitting the slopes with members of the opposite sex—an unpardonable sin in our society—especially among the “illustrious” elite at Alta Academy!
Mr. Jeffs began catching wind of some of these clandestine meetings. “If you know of this happening, you are as guilty as they are!” he would say sternly. Those who were trying to toe the line were getting the short end of the salvation stick—none of the fun and all of the damnation!
My half brother Timothy often cut class, then came home to brag to me and Cole about his snowboarding adventures. One day in spring when the weather was exceptionally pleasant, several students were missing from Geometry, a class taught by Mr. Jeffs. It was painfully obvious they weren’t all sick or at work, as the alibis usually went. When Mr. Jeffs couldn’t get answers from anyone else, he turned to me.
“Rebecca Wall,” Mr. Jeffs said sternly, “is Timothy home sick today?” I’m sure I looked like a deer in the headlights. I had never ratted anyone out! But I had warned Timothy that I would not lie for him.
“No,” I answered, feeling equally relieved and terrified at the same time. Within a few minutes, several students were in serious trouble. By the following day, the fallout was unbearable for me. Most of my classmates were cold, and the ones who had gotten caught were mean and bitter. They began making snide comments whenever a teacher left the room. While I had been somewhat popular in my circle of friends, I now felt like a total outcast. Only my best friend Sandra Keate and a handful of others remained kind, but even then they were somewhat withdrawn, given the way I was being treated.
Toward the end of the school year, I waited in Big Blue one afternoon for my older sisters. I expected Irene to be cranky because they were late, but she seemed to be in an exceptionally good mood.
“Are you going to the baseball game tonight?” she asked. Among the Northern Utah FLDS, ball games were the only times we met for recreation.
“I don’t think so,” I said glumly. “Even though it’s Friday, I have a lot of homework. I’m going to need the whole weekend to get it done!”
“Oh, but it’s such a beautiful day! We’ll find a way to get you there, if you want to go.”
I stared at her, a bit dumbfounded. The games were held far south of town in Riverton, and she was never that generous to me. Irene then suggested I run in and grab the girls, which I did. We all jumped back into Big Blue and were making our way home when Timothy asked me to help him with some slivers in his hand he had gotten from woodworking. I rummaged through my large Home Ec sewing kit and found him a needle—but also discovered something else in the box.
It was a note: a typed note signed by Carl Keate, asking me to meet him during the ball game. Carl was Sandra’s brother. He was a quiet, shy, “good” Priesthood boy; I had never known him to break the rules, but there it was in black and white! What on earth was so important that he would dare to write a note? This could get us both in huge trouble. No boy had tried to talk to me alone before, and certainly not Carl. A terrible knot rose in the pit of my stomach.
Nervously I arrived at the ball field that evening. I looked for Carl and saw him pacing the pavilion in the distance. Quietly, I made my way through the crowd toward him. He turned and looked at me.
“What the hell is this?” I asked, pulling his note from my pocket. I didn’t normally speak this way, but I was furious. Carl’s own face, which had been masked in anger, changed to a look of surprise.
“What do you mean? I got one just like that, except it’s signed from you!” We looked at each other, realizing we had been set up. But by whom?
We looked over at the crowd but didn’t see anyone watching us. Together we agreed we wouldn’t fall for any more notes. “I’m sorry for the trouble,” we both murmured, and quickly went in separate directions.
That night I confided in Christine, who suggested I tell Dad. My adrenaline still pumping, I decided she was right. Fortunately Dad believed me. He said not to worry about it. Still shaking, I went to bed, only to toss and turn. Who would do this, when our reputation was all we had?
The following Monday after school, I was in the computer room with several other students working on our papers. Carl Keate was in there, but to my relief he didn’t acknowledge me. Several minutes later, Mr. Jeffs poked his head in the door.
“Carl Keate, go home right now!” We all looked at Carl in surprise. For the first time, he glanced in my direction, grabbed his stuff, and headed out the door. Our principal went back to his office, and the moment he left, I ran and called my mother.
“Mom, what’s going on?” I asked breathlessly.
“Sis, Mr. Jeffs called us. Someone took a video of you and Carl Keate together.”
Suddenly the principal’s voice boomed over the intercom, calling me to 310—the dreaded office.
“I want you to see something,” he said when I entered, and handed me a video. “Put this in.”
Even though my mother had warned me, I still trembled as the screen clearly showed me walking out to meet Carl Keate at the pavilion at the ball field.
“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on here?”
“Exactly what you see,” I blurted. “I found a note in my sewing box. I was so upset at him—thinking he was getting us into trouble. We found out we each had a typewritten note and someone else signed our names.” Warren asked me several more questions regarding the video. I was grateful that we hadn’t touched, not even elbows or fingertips. The video showed no signs of anything improper.
“Do you know who took the video?”
I shook my head.
“Well, let me tell you how I came to find out. Someone set this against the door to my office.” He showed me a manila envelope, and a note in block writing:
To whom it may concern:
Rebecca Wall has been sneaking around, engaging in multiple encounters with Carl Keate. They’re always making eyes at each other. We just happened to have a video camera handy to prove it because no one would believe it.
Signed,
A concerned individual.
“Do you recognize the handwriting?”
“Yes, sir. It looks like Devon Johnson’s.” Most of us knew each other’s writing as we had been in small classes together since grade school.
“I was ready to expel you. Your saving grace was that you already talked to your father.”
I trembled, knowing what the outcome would have been if Warren Jeffs had thought I had been lying. He pressed further anyway.
“Did he say or do anything inappropriate to you? Did he touch you? Are you having any boy problems with him?”
“No! I’m too busy to have boy problems! I have too much homework.”
“Good,” he said. “We’ll get to the bottom of this. The one who points the finger is the one who is guilty of this themselves. Don’t speak of this to anyone.”
I took a small measure of comfort in his words, but my mind was spinning.
The very next morning, Mr. Jeffs had all the high school stay for a Morning Class test.
“Now I want to talk to each and every one and you. ‘The words of the wicked lie in wait for blood, but the speech of the upright rescues them.’ Last week, there was an attack on two of our student body. We have a good idea of who was involved. If you do not come forth and confess and apologize, you will be expelled for the rest of your years in school.” The classes held their breath, but no one spoke. A few days later, Nancy Jeffs and Stefanie Fischer apologized to me. Nancy was the one who’d signed my name. She said the boys had come to them, and because of Devon’s handwriting, I had sort of figured it had to be them. I realized my half brother Timothy must have been involved, but what she said next was shocking.
“Mrs. Wall helped them to write the note. Becky, it was her idea.”
Irene? That hit me hard, at the pit of my stomach.
That night, I told my father. He became very upset and stayed away from his first wife for two or three nights, but she never apologized. While her plan had fortunately backfired, the dagger remained in my heart, made worse by the fact that Carl Keate was sent to Canada for the summer by his strict and angry father, and Sandra was told never to speak to me again. She was pulled out of Alta “to care for her grandmothers,” and although she had never taken her education for granted, she was not allowed to return to graduate.
From that point on I lost my heart for school, a place where I had no friends and many tormentors. Devon Johnson and Gregory Jeffs were very cruel. Every time I walked into a room, they gagged and dry-heaved. When Devon corrected my paper, he scratched out my name and wrote “Rectal Wall.” I didn’t even know what that meant. With only twenty students in our class, I had to see them every day, and they made it a living hell. My one reprieve was when the girls had Home Economics and the boys had Woodworking.
Mr. Jeffs forced me to be in Math, where both Gregory and Daniel were my classmates, so I started staying home. I got all my classwork done, but I didn’t have to put up with their hurtful behavior. I felt like Christine, with no hope for the future. I would not have returned to school had Mr. Jeffs not called my home and ordered me back.
That year our principal turned up the heat on our Priesthood lessons. He seemed obsessed with Armageddon, and he quoted the Prophet as saying it would happen at any moment. We had to be prepared. Our thoughts and actions had to be of the utmost purity so that we could inherit the earth.
We did not know our Priesthood History was vastly different from the world history and American history taught in other schools. Ours was dictated by lessons from the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and our modern-day Prophets. Beginning with Adam and Eve, then Aaron and Melchizedek, as they were both instrumental in the special Priesthoods of the church, we then skipped to the Romans and Jews in Christ’s time. Touching somewhat on Christ’s ministry, his crucifixion, and his resurrection, we studied the principle of plural marriage. Even Jesus Christ engaged in plurality, at least as far as the history taught by Mr. Jeffs. Not only had Jesus been married, but he first appeared to his wives when he rose from the dead, as explained in the Bible, even before his beloved disciples.
Following Christ’s resurrection, the Great Apostasy covered the earth in ignorance and blackness, including the ensuing “Dark Ages.” Mr. Jeffs’s lessons included many terrible details of the Spanish Inquisition and the methods of torture contrived as well as the total corruption of churches and governments. Skipping several centuries deemed unimportant, we studied Columbus coming to America for the purpose of a New World where the gospel of Jesus Christ would finally be brought back in its fullness. We were taught that the United States was the Promised Land as foretold in the Book of Mormon, and that in 1820, God and Christ visited fourteen-year-old Joseph Smith in a sacred grove of trees, with a message of the truthfulness of the gospel. This visitation would begin the restoration of the gospel on the earth.
Later Joseph received a visitation from John the Baptist, who conferred upon him the authority to baptize; and one from Peter, James, and John, who conferred upon him the authority to organize the Church in 1830. In the early 1830s, Joseph quietly instituted the principle of polygamy, although it would not be publicly discussed and upheld until 1852. After Joseph and his brother were martyred in Carthage Jail in Carthage, Illinois, all authorities and keys were granted to Brigham Young, who was succeeded by John Taylor. In 1890, the document that denounced plural marriage precipitated our falling out with the mainstream Mormon Church.
Mr. Jeffs reiterated the words of our Prophets that the Mormons had sold out to the federal government by not adhering to God’s commandment of plurality. That was when our people followed the true order of God and obeyed our own Prophets: after John Taylor, there were John W. Woolley, Lorin C. Woolley, John Y. Barlow, Leroy S. Johnson, and finally Rulon T. Jeffs.
In fact, said Mr. Jeffs, the entire history of the world had led to this one point—to Rulon T. Jeffs becoming the Prophet of the church! This was why, Mr. Jeffs explained, it was so vital to listen to the Prophet. Fathers and husbands must choose to obey him and none else. Wives must obey their husbands who were faithful to the Prophet and none else. This was the correct order of the family. In this way, we could not go wrong.
“You only get to Heaven through the living Prophet in your time. Because of this great power our living Prophet holds, he is everything to us.”
While teaching this period of Priesthood History in the Americas, Mr. Jeffs focused primarily on the corruption of government. For example, during the United States Civil War, Mr. Jeffs emphasized how it had not only been improper but immoral for Lincoln to have fought for the rights of slaves. Mr. Jeffs had a particular dislike for blacks and considered them lower than whites. In his view, the result of the Civil War was a major loss for mankind.
Just as I observed in my classmates, there was some haughty, arrogant part of me that wanted to believe that we retained some kind of mental and spiritual superiority over others. But a deeper part of me cringed every time my principal ridiculed others. I couldn’t help but think of The Hiding Place, and how the Nazis referred to the Jews as disposable.
That book was at the front of my mind as our class began to focus on the World Wars and the atrocities one people could commit upon another—even within their own ranks. As we reached World War II, Mr. Jeffs made us pay particular attention to Hitler and the Holocaust. With great fervor, he spoke in detail of the events surrounding this colossal period in history, and forced us to watch films portraying the thousands who died of malnutrition, starvation, and exhaustion. It served as a warning to us that governments regularly lied, terrorized, and exterminated people like us. Although I had always been fascinated by history and geography, Priesthood History quickly became my least favorite class.
It was about to become much worse.
On the twenty-eighth of February, 1993, the United States Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms waged a siege on the Branch Davidian ranch near Waco, Texas. Officials had attempted to serve a search warrant, but a ferocious gun battle erupted, resulting in the deaths of four ATF agents and six Branch Davidians. The people barricaded themselves inside the ranch, and a standoff between authorities and the Davidians began.
Rarely had I seen our principal as animated as he was by this siege. Mr. Jeffs brought a big-screen television into our eleventh-grade classroom, and every day we would watch news coverage of the fifty-one-day siege. Pacing back and forth in front of the television, pointing out teams of ATF agents in intimidating SWAT gear with long-range rifles, Mr. Jeffs made sure we understood the gravity of what was taking place. He said that this surely was the sign of Armageddon that our Prophets had been warning us of.
Every morning when we gathered for Morning Class during the siege, Mr. Jeffs waved the headlines in front of the whole student body, describing what was happening to the Davidians, blow by blow. One morning I remember him being particularly theatrical.
“See how the government seeks to destroy these people because of their beliefs?” he ranted, still pacing. Then he stopped and, with great dramatic flair, looked slowly over the students, holding up the paper. “Beware! Because we are next!”
I saw the frightened looks upon the faces of the tiniest children, and knew they were reflected in my own. Everyone looked afraid, even the teachers. Principal Jeffs made us stand repeatedly, and pledge to stand by Christ, the Work, and the Prophet, “even if our hearts are to be ripped from our bodies!”
It was my heart that felt so sick for those people. For nearly two months we watched in trepidation and fear, praying for a peaceful ending and deliverance. Mostly we prayed for ourselves, while we listened for the sounds of helicopters overhead and men with assault rifles climbing the fence onto Uncle Rulon’s estate. The tension at the school kept us at a breaking point. After listening to so much news commentary and the taped sermons of their leader, David Koresh, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something eerily familiar about their leader, whom I found creepy and terrifying.
Fifty-one days after the standoff began, a second assault was finally launched, during which a disastrous fire broke out and destroyed the compound. Seventy-five of the Branch Davidians died in the fire. Accompanying the announcement was footage of the charred and smoking bodies of twenty children and two pregnant women. I couldn’t help it—I ran out into the hall and retched.
Though I tried to block it out, the voice of Warren Jeffs echoed in the room behind me.
“This is just a test case! What they will do to us will be much, much worse.”