Stolen Innocence - Lisa Pulitzer [120]
Sometimes Meg snuck out of her parents’ house at night, and she and I just drove around for hours, cruising along the back roads of the Arizona strip with the forbidden car radio blasting. For those few hours every week, it was like we were totally free, as close to normal teenagers as we’d ever get. Our favorite bands were Bon Jovi and the Backstreet Boys, and I even started to buy some banned CDs during my shopping trips into St. George. Sometimes we’d drive into Hurricane in the evenings, even though everything was closed. Other times, we’d sneak into town and see a movie. One of our first was Pirates of the Caribbean. I hadn’t been to the movies since childhood. We were so scared we couldn’t even eat our popcorn, but we loved every minute of it. I’d never had an experience like that, and it was a big moment for me.
Allen knew that I wasn’t sleeping at home much and that bothered him, but he had little clue about what I was doing. He probably just assumed I was spending time with my mother. I went to great lengths to hide my rule-breaking from him for fear of what he would do if he found out. My goal wasn’t to confront him with my disobedience; it was to keep it as quiet as possible so that he couldn’t take my freedom away.
In the end, my time with Meg was less about rebelling against Allen or the church and more about me. It was about enjoying my life and starting to live on my terms. Being married, I was literally supposed to be an adult. I’d never been able to be a teenager before, to break the rules and do the kind of things that teenagers do. What we considered breaking the rules was actually pretty tame, but it made me feel liberated. With the truck winding down the darkened roads and the music playing at full volume, I was no longer Allen’s wife, I was myself.
But I couldn’t drive around forever. Eventually I had to go home. The second I would walk through the trailer door, the person I was with Meg suddenly disappeared, and once again, I was miserable.
CHAPTER TWENTY
A PAIR OF HEADLIGHTS
According to your faith, so shall it be.
—WARREN JEFFS
August began with yet another devastating blow from Warren that brought the morale in Short Creek to new lows. This time it was a community event that sparked Uncle Warren’s wrath.
It had begun a few months earlier when Shirley Barlow, a former wife of our prophet Leroy Johnson, began assembling a slide show to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the 1953 raid on Short Creek. As Shirley collected various photographs and artifacts from that time, many other community members become involved. So much material was gathered that the slide show evolved into a three-part film. The first of these was scheduled to be shown during our annual celebration of Uncle Roy’s birthday in June, and the last installment was to be aired on the eve of the raid’s anniversary.
Then Warren announced that this year we would not be celebrating Uncle Roy’s birthday. Though Uncle Roy had begun this tradition himself, and it had been carried on for years, Warren declared that the event was not what Uncle Roy would have wanted. This came as a huge shock to the community, who looked forward to the event as the beginning of our summer celebrations.
For much of July, Warren was away. He was gone for days at a time and would not tell the people where he was or when he would be back. Still, he found time to put an end to our July 4 festivities as well as our Pioneer Day celebration. July 4 he took away because he said it was celebrating the government, which was against us, but there was no real reason given for ending Pioneer Day. Though it was a tradition that went back decades, Warren didn’t attempt to justify himself; as the prophet he needed no explanation.
At first Warren allowed the anniversary slide show to move forward as scheduled, even attending the first viewing himself. The community proceeded to honor the fiftieth anniversary of the raid in his absence. Believing that he would be pleased and that we had his approval, we went ahead and aired the final installment