Once I’d settled into the Hildale house, I turned my attention back to Alta Academy, where I continued to help out as an assistant teacher, flying back and forth weekly in the Learjet with Rulon. I was still considered a Hildale overflow wife, since I had to share a room in Salt Lake when I came up to teach.
All too soon, my next turn on duty with Rulon arrived, which provided a crash course of a different sort. That evening, after getting Rulon settled into bed, I climbed in, and again he demanded that I lie right beside him. This time he tried to reach his hand down my nightgown, which I had sewn very carefully and modestly in accordance with church teachings. He became angry that the neckline allowed access only above the top bra line, but I was relieved until he began to fondle and pinch me through the fabric. Not only was it painful; I was embarrassed and felt dirty again. The next morning after I went off duty, I took the longest shower I had ever taken in my life. I went about my day as a zombie, pitching in where I could and wanting the buzzing in my head to stop.
The following morning I woke up late and lay for a long time in my own bed, the pillow covering my face. Throughout my life, despite all of the trauma and abuse I’d faced, I had never felt without hope. Not until now.
An hour later I looked at the clock. It was almost noon and I was still in bed. And yet there was no reason to rise. I was not on duty with Rulon. I was not on kitchen duty or expected at school. In fact, if I died right there in that bed, I thought, no one except Christine would even think to come looking for me. I knew I was being overdramatic, but it didn’t ease the loneliness.
Finally, I made a decision. I realized that whether my life was going to matter to anyone, anywhere, it was up to me. Somehow, somewhere, I would give meaning to others.
For the next several months, I threw myself into teaching as a measure of sanity. I was trying to decipher my purpose in the Jeffs family, especially what role I had to play with my husband. Every time I was on duty, he took more and more liberties, demanding I do as he asked. I could not wait for each shift to be over, and to be able to breathe for a week or two.
Seeming to appreciate my decorum at church and in meetings, Rulon frequently asked me to accompany him in public. I was happy to please him in this safe capacity, and when we were in the midst of the people, I loved being able to interact with them. It was about this time, however, that I discovered a deeper, darker truth about the Jeffs family and the hierarchy of the Priesthood leadership.
One of these telling episodes occurred in 1996, the week after all our people gathered together for our annual April Conference in Short Creek. The sermons from the pulpit with Rulon and the other leaders were just what I had expected: we were admonished to be a God-like people. Every one of the talks contained calls for repentance and continued morality, and the day was generally concluded with exhortations to be the caliber of people that would please the Lord—and the stern warnings of what would happen if we were not.
Before the leaders scattered back to their homes, I accompanied the Prophet to a luncheon for our leaders at his favorite Chinese restaurant, located near 8600 South and 1300 East in Sandy. The proprietors of the restaurant called him “Grandpa” and scurried about to cater to his needs. Rulon; LeRoy Jeffs; Warren Jeffs; Winston Blackmore; another well-known Priesthood leader, Ron Rohbock; and my sister-wife Naomi and I were ushered over to a private table in an isolated corner of the restaurant. As soon as we sat down, our waitress rushed to fill our water glasses and take our order. She was wearing bright red lipstick, which was doubly banned in our religion because it was makeup and it was red. She was also extremely well-endowed, which was clear from her tightly fitted shirt. To make matters worse, as she bent over to talk to Rulon, who was hard of hearing, her cleavage was on display.
Our orders taken, she rushed to the kitchen, and Warren and LeRoy were suddenly at it, saying things like “Did you see how big her boobs are?” and “Did you see those things in my face?” I was shocked. Warren Jeffs, who for all of these years had been piously telling my cousins, brothers, and friends never to look at any part of a woman’s body or allow lascivious thoughts to enter their minds, was speaking in a way I had never heard before.
Ten minutes later, every one of these “holy, God-like men” was still on the same topic.
“My wife’s boobs are so big,” chuckled LeRoy, “she says she has to buy an over-the-shoulder boulder-holder.” Everyone, including Rulon, joined in the laughter.
“Make mine a pebble holder,” giggled Naomi. The Prophet, still laughing, turned to me.
“Hers are pretty good!” he said, and proceeded to grab my breasts and begin fondling them. I pushed his hands away, trembling with shame and embarrassment, as everyone else at the table erupted in laughter.
Weren’t these the same men who in conference on Sunday had been condemning people for their immoral desires? And yet my husband, the great “man of God,” had publicly humiliated me. I was sickened by the double standard the powerful benefited from. Had they caught a group of young men talking like that at Alta Academy, those boys would have been expelled immediately—not just from school, but from the church and society, too.
The men continued, now talking about the bodies of other FLDS men’s wives, many of them women I was related to by blood or friendship. I sat there silently fuming until the waitress brought the food and they finally shut up. What do they say about me when I’m not here? I wondered.
From that point on, I busied myself with teaching school so I always had a reason not to accompany the Prophet to any more meetings. And whenever possible, I slipped out of being on duty with my husband.
When I didn’t have to deal with Priesthood leadership or Rulon in the bedroom, I found that I could enjoy much of life as the Prophet’s wife. I started teaching with Mother Paula, my sister-wife, and I could tell we were having an impact on the schoolchildren we worked with. Paula, my first cousin and Uncle Merrill Jessop’s daughter, confided stories to me of her early life. Her father married four women, and Paula and I had both seen ugly ramifications of sister-wife jealousy and vicious infighting. Sometimes, like in the case of Merrill, men used these jealousies to gain further control over their wives and children. Paula once stood up to her father, calling him out on his treatment of her mother, Ruth. While this altercation didn’t change the dynamics of her home, it had changed something inside of her. She carried a level of self-respect that most FLDS women did not.
I think having come from similar circumstances, we had great compassion for the children in our classroom who reminded us of our siblings. Together we sought to love, validate, and strengthen all the children in whatever way we could.
In the Prophet’s home, I was becoming much closer with my sister-wives. I discovered there was a strict if unofficial pecking order that I’d only had a glimpse of before I married into the Jeffs family: a hierarchy among the older wives, who had borne Rulon children, and a hierarchy among the younger wives as well.
Ora had been the first of Rulon’s newer, younger wives. She had enjoyed only several months with him before he married again. Naomi, however, had enjoyed over a year as the Prophet’s newest darling before he married Mary Fischer and Marjorie Fischer. That had seemed unfair to the others, especially since Rulon seemed to want Naomi by his side wherever he went. I soon discovered there was much more to it than her sweet manners.
When Mother Ruth had to be moved to the bottom level because climbing stairs had become too strenuous, Naomi was moved into her old room across the hall from Rulon—to the chagrin of several wives, particularly Mother Ora. But in the Prophet’s household, wives were not allowed to have disagreements, so animosity manifested itself in unusual ways.
Earlier that year, before I had joined the Jeffs household, Ora had designed and sewn two matching dresses. They were quite stylish and daring for our people, with low-waisted bodices that looked like jackets over short (three inches below the knee!) green pleated skirts. Ora had presented one as a gift to our sister-wife Cecilia, whom I adored. Cecilia, also a newer and younger wife, was thrilled. She was lean but had womanly curves and often couldn’t quite fit in the dress.
“Just ’cause you can button it up,” Cecilia had said, winking at me, “doesn’t mean you should wear it. I can only wear it on a skinny, skinny day!” Recently she had given it away to stick-thin Naomi, and Ora had come unglued.
“If you’re not going to wear it, give it back!” she spat. Cecilia had been horrified, her tender heart never meaning to offend. She quickly realized the rivalry between Ora and Naomi, and her story had been a friendly warning for me to tread lightly.
All in all, the wives got along amazingly well, bonded together in their strong desire to please the Prophet and be an example to the community. I had come to realize that Rulon was not always easy to satisfy, with his superstrict schedules and high expectations. On a deeper level, Rulon had never gotten over the loss of his first wife. At the urging of his young wives, he would tell us about Zola, the daughter of a high-ranking official in the Mormon Church.
“I remember walking her up the stairs when I took her home the first time,” Rulon would relate. “When she turned to say good night, I gave her a peck, and ran down the stairs, knocking over a garbage can on the way out!” We’d laugh and laugh, but we couldn’t help but notice the longing look in his eyes. His face and his voice never reflected such yearning in speaking about his other wives, even Mother Marilyn, Warren’s mother. Zola and her father had a strong testimony of the mainstream Mormon Church, which had shunned polygamy and extremism. She divorced him, refusing to join Rulon in the Work. He never saw his first wife again.
One Saturday afternoon when work meeting had ended and it had finally grown quiet on the Prophet’s estate, Naomi asked me to go for a walk. Young, with strawberry-blonde hair and lovely features, Naomi was also rail thin, probably only ninety-eight pounds in her layers of clothes. I knew little about her, except that in the Jeffs hierarchy of wives, Naomi was definitely near the very top.
“I don’t know why Uncle Rulon favors me,” Naomi said, as we made laps around the property. Her voice was very sweet, but her eyes told a different story. I had seen that she was passive-aggressive, not letting anyone tread on her territory as a favored wife. Naomi shared some stories from her point of view, and like Cecilia, I began to realize there were more undercurrents of jealousy than I had thought.
“One time Mother Julia came to me, after Uncle Rulon and I had only been married for a few months,” explained Naomi, sounding innocent. “She asked me, ‘What do you do with Father, specifically?’ I said, ‘Well, I just do whatever he wants me to.’ But Mother Julia insisted, ‘I need to know exactly, because I want to keep him alive and happy.’ So… I told her exactly what I did… and guess what? She got kind of mad at me! ‘You do that?’ she cried, and I responded ‘Well, he is my husband, Lord, and Master.’ ”
She looked at me, waiting for me to respond, but I couldn’t meet her eyes. I did not want to know the specifics. I suddenly understood the term “sugar wife” and realized what Naomi was. She did whatever it took to please Rulon in the bedroom. I shivered, also realizing that I had no desire to earn that title with the Prophet, not after what I had already experienced.
“Mother Julia may have been mad at me that day,” Naomi continued, “but later on, she came back and confided something in me.” Her voice got really low, and she glanced to make sure we couldn’t be overheard. “You know that she only had two children with Rulon?”
I nodded.
“Well, Mother Julia said, ‘Do not ever, ever tell Father no. I did once, and he has never come to me again!’ ”
I was shocked. How could he withhold his affections, as well as the prospect of more children, from someone like Mother Julia, who adored him and their children, just because she had said no just once? It was simply cruel.
Naomi shrugged it off, saying that she would never tell the Prophet no. As we made another lap around the yard, I began to realize that Naomi had come with an agenda for our walk. Her first goal seemed to have been sorting out what kind of competition I was in the bedroom. Now that she realized I was not in the running for Rulon’s sexual affection, I think she decided to take me on as a pet project, to teach me to be more satisfying to the Prophet in the bedroom.
That was confusing to me, but I guessed that by making the Prophet happier, she would maintain her spot on the top rung. If she could train me to do things Rulon wanted, he would be pleased, and her influence inside and outside the bedroom would be magnified. Not just one of many wives, Naomi seemed determined to have influence even when she was off duty. I was not happy about where this conversation was going, but Naomi persisted.
“You know how very important it is to please Father!” she began. “We must do everything we can to make sure he stays virile and healthy!” Her tone was instructional at first but became slower and more sensual. “Now, he really likes you to rub his chest. Fondle his nipples. Then make your way down his tummy, and slowly move in. He likes you to stroke…” I blocked out the rest of what she said. I hated the feel of Rulon’s hands on me; I hated when he shoved his tongue down my throat, or tried to stuff himself inside me. I couldn’t imagine doing what she was describing. Though my mind was far away, I got the gist of it: I was supposed to be more aggressive in bed, though I was admonished not to be too aggressive, as that was also frowned upon.
What I was not prepared for, however, was to discover shortly afterward that it wasn’t only Rulon’s edicts to me in the bedroom I was going to have to handle. Just as Naomi wanted to nose her way into our intimate relationship, so did Rulon’s son Warren.