Stolen Innocence - Lisa Pulitzer [84]
That night, I returned to my room to find Allen waiting up for me.
“It’s time for you to be a wife and do your duty,” he told me as I walked through the door.
“No,” I said, breaking down in tears. “Please don’t make me do anything. I don’t want to have that kind of thing with you.”
“Why?” Allen asked me.
“Because I don’t like you,” I said, unable to hold my feelings back. I could see that my words hurt him, and he looked upset. “It’s just that the last thing I want to do is spend the rest of my life with you.”
Allen’s face grew red with anger. He grabbed me and, without saying another word, undressed both of us. I was frozen with fear and again asked him to please let me be. He pulled me over to the bed and pushed me down. With tears pouring out of my eyes, I tried to block it all out. My entire body was shaking and I was crying as he got on top of me.
“Please stop, I don’t know what you’re doing. I can’t do this,” I begged.
“It’s okay,” Allen told me as he touched me all over my body. “You’re going to learn that this is what’s supposed to happen…”
And then it finally did happen. I just lay there in shock. It hurt so bad, and I thought, “God, please, let me die.” As he put himself inside me, I wanted to scream for help, but there was no one to help me. I had nowhere to hide. My mother’s room, my little sister’s embrace, Uncle Fred, Uncle Warren, nothing and no one would save me, and so I lay there silently, staring at the cracks in the ceiling, watching a part of me die.
When it was all over, I curled into a ball and continued to cry. Allen rolled over and fell asleep, and I lay there feeling like I’d been left for dead. Rising from the bed, I went into the bathroom to clean up. I didn’t want to go to my mom. I felt dirty and used, and I was worried that she would think I was a disgusting, evil person. Nothing could cleanse the soiled feeling I had inside. I felt sick and my thoughts turned to death. Rummaging through the medicine cabinet, I found a half-bottle of Tylenol. I poured the tablets into my palm and swallowed them. Convinced that they wouldn’t be enough to kill me, I then grabbed a bottle of ibuprofen and swallowed what was left of those too. I collapsed in a heap next to the tub. I just wanted to die and not deal with Allen, Uncle Warren, or Uncle Fred again. I felt so hurt and betrayed by them all, including my mother.
Mom found me early the next morning on the floor of the bathroom, my head in the toilet, vomiting. Alarmed, she gathered me up and held me in her arms.
“What’s wrong? Lesie,” she cried as she brought me to her room. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her what had happened with Allen or that I’d taken two bottles of pills in an attempt to escape from my life, only to have a sudden change of heart. I made myself throw up minutes after I’d taken the pills and had spent the last several hours desperately trying to purge them. As bad as my life had become, I had pulled myself back from the brink of self-destruction.
I had no idea how I was going to get out of this marriage or out of my life, but that night, I had realized that killing myself was not the answer. From then on, my goal was simple: to survive. I needed to survive in this marriage until I could figure out my next step. That morning, with my stomach weak from heaving all night and my body exhausted from sleep deprivation, I made a resolution. Somehow I would get through this; somehow I would survive.
PART TWO
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
SURVIVAL BEGINS
Give yourself mind, body, and soul.
—WARREN JEFFS
The second week in May, I traveled with Allen to the community in Canada to visit my sisters Teressa and Sabrina. We caught a ride to Bountiful, British Columbia, with one of Allen’s brothers, who lived in Idaho just across the border. Teressa and her husband, Roy Blackmore, lived with Roy’s father, Dwayne, and his family. Sabrina was married to Dwayne, which made her one of Teressa’s mothers-in-law and