Stolen Innocence - Lisa Pulitzer [45]
The breadth of our experiences was quite different from what most people in Hildale had grown up with. For my siblings and me, life in the closed community of Short Creek gave us something of a culture shock. Until we moved, I’d never realized just how isolated the people who lived there really were. Complicating matters was the fact that there was a trace of skepticism about us because we were from Salt Lake. Growing up, I’d always sensed an undercurrent of competition between the communities of Salt Lake City and Hildale/Colorado City, and as the days turned to weeks, that silent rivalry I’d felt as a visitor seemed to take root in Fred Jessop’s home.
It seemed that almost from the very first day, the other mothers living in the house kept close tabs on all of us, including Mom. My brothers and I were often singled out and humiliated for the kind of small incidents that would be ignored when they involved other members of the household. Uncle Fred had no qualms about shining a spotlight on us during prayer services when he felt we’d done something wrong. It felt to us like the people in Fred’s home were trying to break our spirits in order to make us conform more strictly to the FLDS religion as they knew it. Even so, I held on to my belief that the spunk which had gotten us into trouble so many times in the past was also what would help us to stay strong and true to ourselves.
Several days after we’d settled in, I began the eighth grade at the public junior high school in Colorado City. It was so exciting to join the public school, and from the moment I first arrived, I loved my time there because it kept my mind off my family situation. Every day, I rode to and from school in one of Fred Jessop’s family vans with other kids from his family because Uncle Fred’s house was so far up the hill that there was no bus stop nearby. At the end of the day, Mom would pick us up from school. Those trips home were just about the only moments when we were all together with no one from the Jessop family around, and we cherished that time. On the days when she couldn’t come, sometimes I would walk the couple of miles back home after school, taking the opportunity to enjoy time by myself before returning to the bustle of Uncle Fred’s house.
Almost all of our school’s administration and teachers and most of my classmates were FLDS members, but unlike the curriculum at Alta Academy, which was rooted in our religious teachings, the coursework at Colorado City School District #14 conformed more to state mandates. Those who were not FLDS were from the surrounding area, including members of the Centennial Group. Being able to mix with kids outside of the FLDS religion was a wonderful change. I quickly found friendship with a girl from the Centennial Group named Lea, but the long-standing feud between the two sects prevented me from socializing with her outside of school. By church declaration the members of the Centennial Group were apostates, and I was not to associate with them.
As I became more accustomed to life in Short Creek, I was lucky to find a very dear friend who was also an FLDS member. Her name was Natalie, and she was one of the most enjoyable people I’d ever met. She was the first young person in Hildale who seemed to accept me as I was—something that I’d been unable to find in Uncle Fred’s home. For the first time since I’d arrived, I felt I could trust someone, and I finally started to come out of my protective shell and blossom.
Friends weren’t the only thing that I liked about school. Public school opened my eyes to a varied curriculum that gave me a thirst for learning. Given the focus on religious learning at Alta Academy, I had missed out on several important subjects. And had to struggle to catch up to my grade level. With so many distractions at home, at first I had a hard time with the rigors of public