Stolen Innocence - Lisa Pulitzer [88]
“Well, can you at least talk to Allen?” I asked.
Rising from his chair, Warren crossed the room to the bookshelf just behind me. Removing a volume of In Light and Truth, he sat back down by the desk. Skimming the pages, he marked a few that he felt were relevant to my situation. I knew the book well; it was the one that he had used to teach us at Alta Academy.
“I want you to go home and read the marriage covenant every day. And I want you to remember the covenants you have made to God and yourself,” he instructed, handing me the book. He also made it clear that I needed to stop confiding in my mother or anyone else about what was going on in my marriage.
“Can I come back and see you and let you know how things are going and maybe just get some words of comfort from you?”
“Well, you need to set that up through your husband,” Uncle Warren said, rising from his chair to show me out. “He needs to be here when you come in. And I don’t want you to come in here without him.”
Any hope for a release faded away as I heard Uncle Warren’s instructions. Not only had he denied me a release, he was sending me home to repent and submit my mind, body, and soul. Stepping out into the hot afternoon sun, I felt hollow and frozen, believing myself to be a very wicked person. What I was doing with Allen felt wrong, and I felt unclean for being part of it. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t stop my tears.
“What happened?” Kassandra asked me when I emerged from the prophet’s home that afternoon. She’d seen me go in to speak with Warren and had been watching from the kitchen window, waiting for me to come out. As soon as she saw me leave, she dashed over to meet me.
“Kassandra, I can’t talk to you,” I said, trying to hide my tears. “I’m not supposed to talk to any of my sisters or anyone about it. I’m supposed to go home and obey my husband.”
Allen was upset when he learned that I’d gone to Uncle Warren, but it didn’t stop him from continuing to touch me and force himself on me. He justified his actions by saying that this was what needed to happen for us to have a baby; it was what the prophet had intended for us. Each night that we had relations, he held my salvation hostage. What made it even harder was that he’d make me watch him touch himself, and left me feeling even more embarrassed and impure. Worse, he’d taken to manipulating me and my ignorance about sex, telling me that a man could become very ill if he didn’t have relations at least every few days.
I found it almost impossible to be obedient and do what Uncle Warren had directed. I couldn’t just submit to the will of my husband, but my resistance left me feeling like I was failing in the eyes of God. When I resisted Allen’s advances, he would condemn me for not obeying the prophet. When I gave in to him, as soon as he was done, he’d tell me that I was wicked for giving in to my mortal desires. Either way I was evil, and these mind games confused me terribly. Later I sensed that after he’d gotten what he wanted, he felt guilty, knowing that he’d violated me not just for the purpose of conceiving children. He absolved himself by passing his guilt on to me.
Somehow, I had gotten to the point where I could survive the abuse, but now I also had to deal with these mental games. Allen would continually use my emotions to free himself of his wrongdoing. While he was extremely soft-spoken and meek in public, behind closed doors I saw another side of him. Privately, he was calculating and controlling. Sometimes he would lose his temper.
As time wore on, Allen confided some of his fantasies and I was so turned off, I would shut my eyes and plug my ears. In addition, I came to see that he routinely painted his fingernails with clear polish, which was the only color that FLDS girls dared use. He told me that he liked his nails to look neat and clean, but the behavior struck me as very offputting in a man.
After a while, I just