Once back in Coos Bay, we began to explore the gorgeous scenery of the Northwest. The area was full of windy, scenic byways, with breathtaking ridges of pines, slick rock, sand, and sea. The first time I crossed the massively tall bridge and saw enormous piles of clamshells dumped from barges, I was smitten. Chilly air still bit into my bones, but now it felt cleansing. I knew instinctively that it was going to take a lot to heal from my past, and the ocean quickly became my greatest ally. I could get used to the chill, and live each day among the lush foliage and under the sky, which was deep turquoise until the fog rolled in late in the afternoon, muting the colors and details of shops, houses, and even people.
When I wasn’t at the beach or in the forest, though, I was paralyzed in fear of the outside world. I had no idea how to do my hair, how to dress, and what customs, holidays, or social rituals to follow. I was still wearing long dresses, the only clothes I owned, and poufing my hair, so Cole decided to take me shopping.
“Buy whatever you want,” he said. With literally no idea what to choose, I ended up with a jogging suit and a shirt in the shocking and once-forbidden shade of red. Afterward, Cole brought me to a hair salon. I was terrified: I had never cut my hair, except to carefully trim the ends. I wasn’t facing the mirror, but I blanched as I saw yards and yards of my rich brown hair hit the ground. The stylist did some things with a blow-dryer before turning me around.
I gasped. My hair had been chopped to my shoulders, but it was the way she had styled it that took my breath away. When I got home, I shyly walked through the door. I saw appreciation shining in Ben’s eyes. Even though it felt so foreign and naked, I thought perhaps I could live with short hair.
However, the only product I had ever used was hair spray—and lots of it! The next day, I woke up and brushed my hair, and it didn’t look anything like it had the day before.
“I don’t have any idea how to do my hair!” I cried to Cole. “Everything I do looks wrong.”
“Tell you what,” he said, winking at me. “Whatever feels right to you—do the exact opposite. Then you’ll be fine!” He turned away, laughing, but I shut the door on him and silently sobbed. Men didn’t understand that a woman’s hair was considered her glory. Not only was mine gone; it now looked ugly and made me feel that way inside. For days, I cried in private, feeling homesick and missing my mother and sisters and friends desperately.
In the meantime, our thoughts were consumed with survival. Ben and I couldn’t allow ourselves to wear out our welcome with Cole, and we needed to start earning money immediately. We went looking for jobs around Coos Bay and adjacent North Bend. Two weeks and countless applications later, I finally got a job offer from Elizabeth’s, a fine-dining establishment off Highway 101, and Ben was hired by a downtown restaurant called the Cedar Grill.
November went by in a whirlwind. Everything was new, exciting, thrilling, and sobering to me. I began reading voraciously, following Cole’s recommendations. I was fascinated by the philosophies of successful people like Stephen Covey, Joe Vitale, and Deepak Chopra. Excitedly, I sat on Cole’s front porch and called my mother for the first time, anxious to share with her what I was learning in life and through books. While she was glad to know I was safe and relieved I had reconnected with Cole, she was negative about everything else, telling me I was trading my salvation for material goods.
“Honey,” she said, “you’re talking about stuff—only stuff. Do you know what you are trading for stuff?” She was more closed off than I had ever heard her. Warren’s warnings had clearly affected her. I knew she had been ordered not to talk to me, and that I was supposed to be “dead” to her. She risked her FLDS membership and salvation by the very act of communicating with her apostate children. People had been kicked out for less.
I watched a little television, surprised and often scandalized by how different it was from when we were kids. One night Cole and Ben and I watched an R-rated movie in which a man and a woman had sex, and I became alarmed when they started making noises—loud ones! I didn’t know people did that when they made love. Did everyone in the outside world do that?
I did take comfort in something familiar when I discovered that Coos Bay was actually a very musical area. Ben caught me dancing across the kitchen one night in pure joy because I had discovered a local teacher who taught the harp—an instrument I had always wanted to play! I began taking lessons and took to it as naturally as I had the violin. It soothed my soul to play such a graceful, ethereal instrument, especially on rainy days—since I had moved from the state with the least amount of rainfall per year to one with nearly the highest. When dull, gray days would begin to drive me insane, throwing myself into my music seemed to magically make life balance out again.
As November morphed into December, the weather worsened, but my love for Ben only grew. When the two of us talked about life, he used the word us, which was comforting. Cole had noticed that Ben and I were getting closer and was emphatic that Ben was welcome to stay as long as there was nothing sexual between us. Unfortunately, it was a tough promise to keep. We both wished to honor Cole’s request, but we felt magnetically drawn to each other.
Meanwhile, still weakened, Cole spent his time sleeping, reading, and watching movies. One particularly blustery day, he insisted that I watch a movie called The Truman Show.
The main character, Truman Burbank, is adopted as a baby by a television studio. As he grows, every important person in his life is simply an actor; every part of his life is a set—but he doesn’t know it. Whenever he wants something the production team can’t provide, he’s told that it’s just not available. “Why would you want that?” different characters ask him. “Your life is so perfect the way it is.” When he has inklings things just aren’t right, he finally faces his dread fear of water, and sets off in a boat for the horizon. Barely surviving a violent and horrendous storm manufactured by the producers, Truman discovers the horizon is actually a painted backdrop. Only then does he realize that his entire life has been a complete lie—set up for the camera and the benefit of strangers, the viewers. Full of that realization and the bitter disappointment of his false relationships, he walks off the set and into his new life.
As the credits rolled, I sat dumbfounded. Within a few moments, though, I rose from the couch and began pacing furiously, not just upset but enraged! The movie was a mirror of my own life. Before every decision I’d ever made, I’d asked myself, What would the Prophet have me say? What would the Prophet have me do? For every question, there had been an appropriate, programmed answer. I was never allowed my own opinion; I had never developed the ability to choose.
All of my people were like that, too. How had our belief system become so screwed up? I gave myself permission to look deeply at polygamy in a way I never, ever had before. All of a sudden, nothing seemed holy about the structure that must be in place for polygamy to work. Why would God put a roughly equal number of males and females on the earth if he wanted a polygamous society? This structure meant that women didn’t get the time, affection, and validation they so crave. And because only a select number of male leaders are righteous enough to receive multiple wives, not only do an extraordinarily high number of young men get kicked out, but the marriageable ages of girls becomes increasingly younger as demand intensifies.
Throw all of these factors into a climate in which the leaders make the people feel as if they can never question those leaders because that means questioning God himself, and then one has a recipe for spiritual abuse. Those who admitted the truth of it were labeled as “darkened,” “taken over,” or “possessed.” How many times had I heard “They can’t see the truth because they’ve turned away from it”? The leaders made it shameful and dangerous for us to question polygamy, out loud or in our hearts.
Every way that I examined it, polygamy was neither healthy nor holy. Why could no one see it? Because they would not—unless like me, they were denied the good graces of Warren Jeffs and experienced a rude awakening!
For days I was furious, and all I knew was that I did not want that perverse dictator Warren directing my show from his self-righteous pulpit. I felt intense shame and self-hatred for what I had allowed, especially Elissa’s wedding and the nightmare of her Priesthood-dictated honeymoon. Now more than ever, it felt like a cocklebur in my heart.