Stolen Innocence - Lisa Pulitzer [18]
—RULON JEFFS
In the weeks immediately following Mother Laura’s arrival in October 1995, the tension in the house had, for the most part, subsided. We’d cleared one of my sisters’ bedrooms on the lower level to make room for our new mother, and at the start we were all on our best behavior.
Mother Laura’s entry into our lives came at a time when many things in the Wall house were changing. In the span of a few months, my sisters Kassandra, Sabrina, and Michelle were all married according to the prophet’s revelation. Kassandra, at nineteen years old, joined Rachel as one of the many wives of Rulon Jeffs, who by that point was eighty-three, while Sabrina was married to a member of the FLDS community in Canada. Michelle stayed closer to home, marrying Uncle Rulon’s son Seth. All of my sisters had been over the age of eighteen at the time of their marriages, and Dad had been chastised for keeping them in the home so long. But my father just wanted to give his girls the opportunity to grow up.
Of these departures, Michelle’s hit me the hardest. She had the gentlest soul of anyone in my family and had always looked out for me—comforting me when I was sick, making sure that my hair was combed, and that I was dressed neatly and appropriately. There were so many children in the Wall household, and as the nineteenth, I sometimes fell through the cracks. But Michelle made every effort to ensure that didn’t happen; she was like a second mother to me. For the eldest sisters in the home to help with the care of the little ones was a common practice for families of the FLDS. Mom had thirteen children of her own still living in the home, and with Audrey up and out early to teach at Alta Academy, leaving most of the domestic duties falling on Mom’s shoulders, she’d needed to have Michelle, Kassandra, and Sabrina around to provide us extra attention. Of course, nothing compared to Mom’s healing touch, but in many ways Michelle had become another anchor for me. Losing her was unthinkable. I cried right up until the day of the wedding, begging her not to go away.
With all these changes in the family, it was beginning to feel like our house had a revolving door with people constantly coming in and going out. However, though we lost many of my older sisters that year, we had gained a mother and there was hope in that new relationship. I looked to Mom for advice on how to welcome Mother Laura. She had grown up knowing and wanting this lifestyle, but I now understand that our years of turmoil had made many of us skeptical about what her arrival would do to the already touchy atmosphere in our household.
Mom had endured years of compromising as she’d tried to pattern this home after the one she’d grown up in. I know that she had obeyed her priesthood head as she was directed, but over the years she’d grown increasingly disheartened at the way her relationship with her sister wife and husband had affected her children.
Mom’s firm religious convictions reminded her to hold her tongue and keep sweet. I admired how she welcomed Mother Laura with open arms. Seeing her embrace our new mother made me hopeful that this new element in the equation would balance our home out. Because Laura’s age was close to that of my older sisters, I felt optimistic about the prospect of forming a bond with her like the one that I shared with them. At first this seemed possible. Mother Laura and I had lots of fun, playing games with some of my other siblings. Her presence helped to alleviate some of the emptiness I’d felt since my sisters’ departures. But I watched helplessly as it soon became worse than before. Mom’s gentle personality and unwavering commitment to her faith were no match for the others in the home. It distressed me to see the lonely look in her eyes as she tried to keep the pieces together and shield her younger children from a repeat of the past.
But by the end of that first month, the newness of having Mother Laura in the house had begun to wear off. It was quickly becoming clear that Dad’s third wife had her own unique set of expectations