A woman without any sexual currency to spend may find it difficult to have children. This undermines her future completely. Without children—or with even just a few—a woman has little long-term value to her husband or status within his family. Children are a woman’s insurance policy. Even if her husband takes a new and younger wife, a woman who has produced a bevy of beautiful children for him will have respect and status within the family.
The news that Merril was marrying Cathleen made me fear I’d never become a mother. Merril had been having frequent sex with me in the seven months we’d been married and I’d not become pregnant. There was no chemistry between us. Sex between us was always cold and devoid of feeling. Merril never removed his long underwear when we had sex. Mine stayed on, too. The bedroom was completely dark. In my seventeen years of marriage, Merril only saw me naked a few times. I never saw him completely unclothed.
He would come to my room late at night after I was asleep and climb on top of me. The sex was perfunctory—without either passion or intimacy. I thought the problem was that Merril was not attracted to me. The news that he was marrying Cathleen so soon after our wedding only confirmed my undesirability.
When the phone call with Merril ended, I sat down on the steps and stared blankly at the wall. I felt as shocked and powerless as I had when I was pulled out of bed at 2 A.M. to hear my father tell me I was going to marry Merril. It felt like my life was at another dead end. Children were the only happiness I could count on.
I knew Merril was lying when he said he hadn’t known about the marriage before he went to Salt Lake City. He’d known. Now I understood why Barbara had been so nervous and upset before they left that morning. She must have known about the upcoming nuptials and hated the thought that her husband was marrying again. She had great power with Merril, but not enough to stop him from pursuing his plans. Ruth was too unstable to be suspicious or register what was going on.
It was customary in the FLDS to have a man’s wives witness his other weddings. This was called the Law of Sarah, after Abraham’s wife, who gave her slave, Hagar, to her husband after she failed to conceive. The presence of the other wives is a way of demonstrating—or pretending—that they are willing to give their husband to another woman.
There is tremendous prestige in marrying a former prophet’s wife. It demonstrates to the community that after his death, the prophet sent a divine revelation about whom his wife should marry. For a prophet of God—even a deceased one—to have enough confidence and love for a man to give him one of his wives indicates a man of exceptional character.
In fact, what was beginning to play out was the power grab between Merril and his cousin Truman Barlow. They knew they could enhance their prestige and status within the FLDS by quickly marrying several of Uncle Roy’s wives after his death.
Uncle Roy had led the community for thirty-two years. His stepsons preached that he would never die. According to them, he would be at the Second Coming of Christ, when he’d turn over the keys to the priesthood. Uncle Roy had a better grasp on reality and had told my father that he would die and that all men had to as part of the earthly process. Uncle Roy proved to be correct. After his death, Rulon Jeffs took over the sect. He was, at that time, the only one who could do so. He was the only living apostle who had not been excommunicated. The mantle of leadership could go only to him.
Merril and Truman were no fools. A quick marriage to several of Uncle Roy’s widows could catapult them into leadership roles in the FLDS hierarchy by signaling that these were the men Uncle Roy loved and trusted most. If they acted fast, his wives would still be in shock and not have a chance to think of whom they might like to marry. As if their wishes mattered!
A prophet’s widow generally is not allowed to remarry below the status of her husband. She’s usually married off to the new prophet. This tradition goes all the way back to Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon Church. When he died he left an abundance of young wives. Those who were willing to do the will of God were remarried to the new prophet, Brigham Young.
Uncle Roy was adamantly opposed to a son marrying one of his father’s wives. If his son had taken over the sect, Merril and Truman would have been legally entitled to marry Uncle Roy’s wives. But his successor, Rulon Jeffs, was no relation to Uncle Roy. Jeffs was so new that he’d not yet focused on his predecessor’s widows. Merril, who’d been Uncle Roy’s nephew, and Truman, his stepson, were violating FLDS tradition and practice when they made their move.
As I would soon learn, when Merril and Truman arrived in Salt Lake City, where Uncle Roy had been living, they gathered up the widows they planned to marry and took them to the new prophet, Uncle Rulon. They said the widows wanted to marry them, which was not true. Truman had been the late prophet’s right-hand man and insisted he wanted these marriages to happen. Truman had so much credibility because of his close connection to Uncle Roy that Rulon Jeffs sanctioned the marriages.
Merril insisted on the phone that I come to Salt Lake City the next day. He said he’d already made arrangements for my father to drive me there. I balked and said I didn’t want to go.
He exploded and said I had no right to challenge him, the man who was my priesthood head. “Do you want to have your way or do you want to be in harmony with your husband? I would think you would want to do the will of the one you belong to! I won’t allow you to insist on something else. It will cost you heavily if you do. Falling out of favor with me is not something you want to have happen.” When he calmed down he pretended that it was a compliment from my loving husband to include me in the celebration of his newest marriage. He said that as an obedient wife I surely would want to come and please him. I felt like he was tightening the chains around me. I also realized that if I didn’t go to Salt Lake City, it would appear that I was angry that my husband had married another woman. One of the worst sins a woman can commit in the FLDS is to resist the will of the prophet in giving her husband another wife. Even appearing to be unhappy about the new wife could reflect badly on me.
After Merril’s explosion on the phone, I didn’t want anything to do with him ever again. I could not have imagined that we would have eight children together. Not then.
The peace of the day was shattered. The relaxing evening at home that I’d looked forward to was ripped apart.
Merril’s daughters came home just as I was sitting down to dinner with the small children. We were having soup and rolls that I’d baked. Sheets of unbaked cookies were ready to go in the oven. They noticed the shining house and the children’s clothes and bedding hanging on the line. Several of them said God must have inspired me and something wonderful was about to happen.
When they heard that their father had taken a fifth wife they were thrilled. The world had just rotated in their direction. The girls had hoped that their father would marry again. They couldn’t stand being dominated by Barbara, and now her reign of terror might be over. This new marriage had the potential to tip the balance of power in their direction. All I did was get in the way of their relationship with their father.
They made it clear to me that they knew their father hadn’t fallen in love with me. I came from a family of no importance. They felt it was a pity that their father had had to marry such a dud. I had intruded on their lives without bringing a solution to their bondage. A widow of the late prophet was a woman of real stature. Surely she would come into the family and improve things. What delight it gave them to think of how upset Barbara would be at being replaced by a woman who was younger, prettier, and more powerful than she! The girls hated Barbara not only for her meanness but also because her ascendancy in Merril’s life had driven their mothers, Ruth and Faunita, into oblivion. Cathleen could spell an end to her supremacy.
As I listened to Merril’s daughters prattle on I began to rethink my situation. Merril was much older than my father, and I’d always known the chances of our ever having a real relationship were almost nonexistent. In my heart of hearts, I’d always known tha
t there would never really be love in my life. This was a grief I’d already contemplated.
But I despaired at this new possibility of never having children—not that I was certain I wanted to create life in such a loveless environment. If Merril became consumed by his new marriage, I could go to sleep at night knowing I would never again awaken with his torpid, clammy body over mine. His abuse would be less humiliating if I wasn’t also having sex with him. I would just concentrate on college and becoming a teacher. That was the most I could hope for.
Merril’s daughters delighted in what looked to be my demise. I was now consigned to the pile of wives who no longer were in favor.
My father and I made the five-hour trip to Salt Lake City that Sunday morning. Merril told my dad not to bring me to the hotel. We met somewhere else for lunch. When we finished eating, my father left Merril and me alone. Merril looked at me and told me he’d married yet another wife late on Saturday night.
Merril said he was back at the hotel when the call came from Uncle Rulon to marry Tammy, another of Uncle Roy’s widows. He acted as though it had come as a bolt out of the blue.
In the coming days, I’d learn the truth. Merril had been planning to marry Tammy and Cathleen at the same time. But Tammy had balked and refused to come to Salt Lake City. He married Cathleen Saturday morning and kept the pressure on Tammy to relent.
Tammy, as I would later learn, had gone to her father shortly after Uncle Roy died and demanded that she be allowed to marry an FLDS bishop who was living in Canada. The Canadian FLDS community was far smaller than our community in Colorado City. It had fewer than a thousand members. It began with a small group of converts who left the mainstream Mormon Church to live the principle of plural marriage.
Tammy had been in love with the Canadian bishop. When he came down to Uncle Roy’s from Canada, he’d spend a lot of time in the evenings talking to her. Tammy’s father didn’t like him at all. Her father refused to let her think of marrying him and said there was a good man in Colorado City whom she belonged to and with whom she would fulfill the work of God. Tammy was incensed. After a decade of marriage to Uncle Roy, she was now twenty-eight and had never had sex, let alone children. If she was sealed for all eternity to the prophet, why couldn’t she make a life with the man of her dreams?
In the end, Tammy buckled under the pressure, was whisked to Salt Lake City, and married Merril late Saturday night. Even though she had been to college and was a teacher, she never mastered the ability to stand up for herself. She had a mouth and would often complain about things no one else would, but Tammy also felt the need to please people.
I felt blindsided by the news and said little. Merril took me back to the hotel. Barbara was prancing around, trying to appear as though she was in complete control. Ruth was veering into a nervous breakdown. She blinked uncontrollably, her eyes seemed not to focus, and they danced when she talked. There was little coherence in her words. Her jaw shook with palsy as she spoke. When I arrived, she gave me a hug and in slurred speech said, “For our husband to be given this honor of marrying two new wives is a blessing to us all.” But it was clear she didn’t believe a word of what she was saying.
Cathleen was sitting by herself on the bed, her eyes so red from crying they were almost swollen shut. The tension in the room was pulsating.
I was eighteen and Cathleen was about twenty. I knew exactly how she felt.
Merril announced that he had business to take care of, and he and Barbara left together. I was left with the mess his marriages had created.
I said a few gentle words to Cathleen and she opened up immediately. She told me she’d had no warning that she was about to marry Merril. The order came out of the blue. She’d been told that all of Uncle Roy’s wives were going to be married off to two men. The late prophet didn’t want his family separated. Truman was her uncle, so she couldn’t marry him. That left Merril.
She hadn’t been allowed to call her father or consider other options. She told me that she’d said over and over to anyone who would listen that she didn’t want to marry Merril Jessop. But she was told her feelings didn’t matter—only the will of her late husband did. Cathleen ran to her room and wept until she had to get in Merril’s van for the ride to her marriage.
She was taken directly to the prophet’s home to stand before Rulon Jeffs and marry Merril. Cathleen was demolished by sadness.
Barbara and Merril soon returned and insisted we all go to dinner. Afterward we returned to the hotel and Merril announced that I was to come to his room. I thought Cathleen had slept with him on her wedding night and that he didn’t want to sleep with her again because she was so upset. I later learned he hadn’t slept with her at all. Barbara was apparently so upset after his marriage to Cathleen that Merril slept with her.
I hoped Cathleen and I could become friends. We were both mired in a weird and disturbed world. I would try to help her if I could. Maybe if we grew close we could find ways to help each other survive Merril’s oppression.
Sunday night, Merril insisted I have sex with him. As always, I complied and went through the motions.
When we returned home from Salt Lake City, the dysfunction within our family escalated. There was not enough space in our house in Colorado City for Merril’s six wives.
Tammy and Cathleen had yet to sleep with their new husband. This infuriated Tammy, but to Cathleen it felt like an answered prayer. She had been praying to the late prophet to rescue her from this debacle, and her hope was that if her marriage remained unconsummated, she might have a chance to have it annulled.
When we first returned from Salt Lake, Tammy went back to Uncle Roy’s. I was in Merril’s office with Merril’s other wives when Tammy called and asked when she should come over to meet her new family. Merril told her to wait until the next morning. Then he turned to me and said, “Carolyn, I will have Cathleen sleep in your room with you until I can make another room in the house available for her.”
It felt strange beyond words to be sharing my bed with someone, especially my husband’s newest wife. Cathleen could barely talk, she was so frustrated and upset.
It was highly unusual for a man in our culture to ignore his new wives. The first wife was often unloved, mistreated, and ignored. Most men believed they would have an abundance of wives, so they didn’t put much effort into their first marriage. It was the later wives, the women who ended up marrying men twice their age, who were usually more valued and better treated by their spouses.
Tammy tried to cajole Merril to sleep with her at Uncle Roy’s. He refused. Finally, after several days, she marched over to our house and commandeered a room. Merril had given Cathleen one of his sons’ bedrooms and sent the younger boys to share a room with their older brothers. Tammy took one of Merril’s daughter’s rooms, so it meant five of the girls would have to sleep together.
Before I went back to college, I helped Cathleen bring some of her furniture over from Uncle Roy’s. As soon as she entered her former home she burst into loud sobs. The other wives hugged her and tried to be consoling, but she was too distraught to be comforted. Everything about her life was coming undone.
She was giving up a large and beautiful bedroom and a private bath at Uncle Roy’s. In our house she had a room barely large enough to hold her furniture and sewing machine. She also had to share the four bathrooms in the house with dozens of children and Merril’s other wives.
Cathleen had been forced to marry Merril without her father’s knowledge. He was enraged when he found out what had happened. But there was nothing he could do. Once a marriage is sealed by the prophet nothing can be done to take it apart.
Cathleen told me she knew this marriage was not inspired by a revelation from God. It was put in motion by a power play of her Uncle Truman’s. She tried to pray and stay full of faith, hoping for divine revelation to get her out of her marriage.
Cathleen had married Uncle Roy when she was seventeen and he was ninety-six. They never had sex, she told me, b
ut he kissed her a lot and said he wanted to make love to her. She felt honored to serve him. Even though she did a lot of housecleaning as a younger wife, the house was so orderly it did not feel like the slave labor she was slammed into at Merril’s.
Because Merril and Barbara took off for Page, Cathleen was left as the only stable adult in charge of twenty-eight children. I was spending the week at college, Faunita slept all day, and Ruth was descending deeper into madness.
Ruth’s breakdowns were cataclysmic and frightening. When we came back from the weddings Ruth began watering the shoes in her closet and treating them like plants. She put her clothes on backward and would dance with the dishes in the kitchen while the children watched and laughed. Ruth had a beautiful voice when she was well, but she sang out of tune when she was mentally ill. We always knew she was getting sick when she began singing off-key. She’d shut herself up in her room and sing song after song.
Cathleen got up every morning at five. When she first married Uncle Roy he asked her to get up that early, and she felt it had a religious significance and was something she would have to do for the rest of her life. So at five o’clock she began to get the children ready for school and prepare their breakfasts. Then she spent the day cleaning our house, which was so overcrowded it was usually filthy. When Merril called home, his teenage daughters would pretend that they were doing the work and everything was running smoothly.
The next weekend when I returned home from college she told me that she’d grabbed the phone and said, “Merril, this house is total chaos. I don’t know why you are asking your daughters what is going on here. None of them has been in this house since you left.”
Merril had chided her. “Cathleen, you don’t need to worry. My daughters have everything under control. Since you are the newest member of my family, you should learn from them about how I like things done.”