Fear

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Escape (2007)

  On a follow-up visit, I talked to Shirley about my fears of getting pregnant again. She said I didn’t meet any of the risk factors for another abruption and assured me it would never happen again. She was wrong. I had three more life-threatening pregnancies. My pregnancy with Andrew changed my sense of security in the world. I had five healthy and beautiful children whom I cherished, but I was terrified of becoming pregnant again. I wanted birth control but had no access to it. The FLDS believed that if a woman used birth control to keep life from coming into the world, she would pay for it in her next life by being a childless servant to her husband’s other wives throughout eternity. The instability I felt in my personal life was mirrored by increasingly strange changes taking place in the community. By 1995, Warren Jeffs was becoming a subtle but more powerful presence in our daily lives. This struck me as odd because there were many other men who were more powerful in the FLDS than he. But he was Uncle Rulon’s favored son, and the prophet would often say that Warren spoke for him. Warren spoke in other ways. He began teaching special priesthood history classes in Salt Lake City, where he still worked as the principal at a private FLDS school. The classes were taped, and Tammy’s sister came to our house one day enthusiastically talking about how much information they contained. I wondered why anyone would care about whatever Warren Jeffs had to say. Tammy’s sister said that these tapes were not available to just anybody. Only the privileged could purchase them. Some people who heard them found them disgusting and said they were little more than Warren’s racist rants. He claimed that the black race had been put on earth to preserve evil. I decided to listen to them myself. Warren based his talks on foundational FLDS doctrine. He spoke in a strange, trancelike voice that seemed deliberately aimed at hypnotizing the listener. One set of tapes described how God would destroy everyone on the North and South American continents. Then he recited a lengthy list of things a person would have to do before he or she could be lifted off earth. Anyone who hoped to ascend had to live with a burning in their chest at all times, and this burning was the spirit of God. The tapes were becoming so popular that there was a frenzy among those who were trying to get them. Their exclusivity gave them great status and everyone wanted to get hold of a set. Warren spoke at church and elaborated on how the burning in our chests would presage being lifted from the earth. Those who didn’t have it would be destroyed along with the wicked.

• From Escape (2007)

  I was too distraught over the crash of the charter school to continue teaching. I quit when the school year ended. There was no future for me in education, at least not while Warren Jeffs was the de facto prophet. I didn’t think about what might happen after his father died. No one really expected Warren to become the next prophet. I certainly didn’t. He was too much of a nobody. Merril’s Heart Attack After the demise of my charter school, I knew I could never go back to teaching. The thought of going into a classroom again was heartbreaking. I wanted to move before the public schools were closed in the community, which I was sure was going to happen. I told Merril that I could make more money as a Web site designer, and he agreed to let me try. Merril gave me some office space and I began developing simple Web sites for local businesses and selling health food over the Internet. Within a few months—the fall of 1996—I was pregnant with my sixth child and was sick again. Life was changing, and not in good ways, as Uncle Rulon began exerting more control on the community. He had built a house in Colorado City, and he and Warren were spending more and more time among us. Our freedom was increasingly disappearing. We were now under strict regulations that prohibited us from going to the movies. Television and the Internet were also completely off-limits except for business purposes. Even our clothing requirements changed. It was now forbidden to wear large prints. In the coming months and years, as our lives became more severe, plaids were banned and we were limited to wearing only pastel clothing in a few styles. The other new and completely bizarre commandment from the prophet was that now we were all required to wear long underwear—including all children who were old enough to be potty trained. This created frenzy within the community as we all struggled to comply immediately. Until Warren’s edict, wearing long underwear was optional. Only about 20 percent of the families chose to wear long underwear on their own—but they never tried to make toddlers wear them. I had to buy and sew underwear for us all. Then I had to buy more clothes that would cover up all the long underwear, which was not supposed to be visible. Like all the changes, the only reason that was given was that God believed his people were now ready to live by a higher law. One afternoon I went with several of Merril’s other wives to take a baby gift to one of Warren’s wives who’d just given birth to a son. I’d heard that she delivered at Uncle Rulon’s house and could not understand why she hadn’t gone to the clinic. I asked her what happened.

• From Escape (2007)

  She and Bonnie ran to the truck and lifted it so the other children could pull their siblings out. Some of the children were injured themselves but nevertheless tried to do what they could to extricate their siblings from the wreckage. Most of the children were under six but still tried with all their might to do what they could. Annette thought she had everyone out from under the truck when she saw Nurylon’s lifeless body. Nurylon was my two-year-old sister and my mother’s namesake. We looked like identical twins, even though we were sixteen years apart. Annette grabbed Nurylon and took her to the side of the road, away from the truck, and frantically began doing CPR, trying to breathe oxygen and life back into her body. She heard a gurgling in her lungs and thought it might be a sign of life, so she breathed even harder into the limp child. The truck exploded. The children screamed in terror. The heat from the blast radiated back toward the injured. The fourteen children watched as flames consumed the truck and as Annette kept up her desperate efforts to save Nurylon. She finally quit when she realized she was having no impact. Nurylon’s limp body held no signs of life. Annette and Bonnie had to get help for the fourteen surviving children. Some seemed to have serious injuries, even though they were breathing. But what to do? No one had cell phones in those days, and they were also no longer on the main road. Help would come only if someone ran for it. Christopher, my six-year-old brother, did not seem as injured as the rest. One arm seemed to be broken, but despite that he had managed to pull his siblings out from under the truck with the other one. Christopher volunteered to go to town for help. “I will run there as fast as I can and tell someone what happened!” Annette wasn’t comfortable sending a six-year-old child on a five-mile run for help, but she and Bonnie had to stay with the injured. Christopher was a capable little boy, but he was still very little. Annette told him to watch out for cars and stop the first one he saw. Christopher ran most of the way. My father had a business at the edge of town where he built modular homes that were shipped to different housing projects. A man there spotted Christopher and listened to him blurt out his story. One of the other men on the job radioed for help, and the volunteer fire and ambulance crews headed down the road, unsure of what they’d find. Christopher told them that the truck had blown up and that Nurylon was dead. A radio call went out for another ambulance crew.

• From Querelle (1953)

  54 I JEAN GENET on with it." Mario dimly feared the boy might betray him. The voice in which he answered showed signs of softening, but he caught himself quickly, even before opening his mouth, and the words came out tough and dry. Dede looked at his wristwatch. "It's getting on for four," he said. "It's dark already. And there's some fog rolling in ... Visibility five meters." ''Well, what are you waiting for?" Mario's voice was suddenly more commanding. He was the bo ss. Two quick steps had been quite sufficient to take him across the room and bring him, with the same ease of move-. ment, in front of the mirror, where he combed his hair, and once more became that powerful shadow, raw-boned and muscular, cheerful and young, which corresponded to his proper fonn, and sometimes to that of Dede as well. (As he watched Mario approach their meeting place, Dede sometimes told him, wit h a grin : "I like what I see, and I'd like t o be it," but at other times his pride rebelled against such identification. That, then, was when he would attempt some timid gesture of revolt, but a smile or-a concise order would put him right back where he belonged, in Mario's shadow.) "All right." He tried to sound tough, but for his own ears only. Stock-still for a second, to prove his absolute independence to himself, he let a puff of smoke drift in the direction of the window at which he was staring; one hand in his pocket he then turned abruptly toward Mario · and, looking him strai ght in the eye, extended his other hand, stiffl y, at ann's length. "So long." He sounded positively funereal. With a more natural calm, Mario replied: "So long, buddy. Get back soon as you can." "And don't you feel too blue. Tain't worth it." He stood by the door. He opened it. The few items of cloth ing hanging from the door hook billowed out, sumptuously,

• From Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018)

  “YOU DRIVE A PORSCHE”—RHYMING WITH BORSCHT WITHOUT the final “t”—I’d said, after I’d lowered myself down onto the soft leather of Kurt’s sleek silver car, hoping my friends on the second floor of the freshman dorm were peeking from behind the curtains. He’d leaned in toward me, breath too minty, already-thinning dark hair glinting with product in the spring sunshine, and moved his large hand from the gearshift to my thigh. I think he was trying to look sexy but managed instead to look maniacal. “Por-shhhhha,” he said. “People who don’t have Por-shas call them Porsches. People who drive Por-shas call them Por-shas.” I moved my knee a fraction, the tiniest of objections, and said, “Well, I don’t have a Porsche, so I’d better call it a Porsche.” “You’re with me now,” he said, thin lips curling into a smile. “Now you can call this car a Por-sha.” I hadn’t had a date like this before—what I imagined to be a real college date, during which Kurt picked up, moved, or lifted everything that might need picking up, moving, or lifting: the door to the Por-sha, my chair at the table, my body by the arm when another man came too close, and of course, the check. We went to a real sit-down Italian restaurant with white linen tablecloths, candles, and dim lighting, where we talked about the extensive time he and I both spent at the gym on the edge of campus: me in aerobics classes burning away any calories I’d consumed in moments of weakness, and him lifting and slamming giant iron discs in the testosterone soup that was the main gym. We were both too tan, this being the era of ten tans for twenty dollars in the warm booths on the campus strip. I was in my first year in the Honors College, reading Darwin and Shakespeare and Austen, having my mind blown by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and theories about sexual selection and how the universe began. Kurt was in business, a supersenior—the first I’d heard such a moniker, though it didn’t take me long to figure out that the “super” didn’t mean anything good. Since we had nothing else to discuss, the conversation turned to tanning. I told him how I always fell asleep under the lights, the humming blue womb offering respite from the gray Eugene winter—although I’m sure I wouldn’t have said “womb,” not that night—and Kurt’s teeth glowed in the dim candlelight like something out of a horror movie.

• From Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018)

  WE HADN’T EVEN LEFT THE DOCK BEFORE IT WAS OBVIOUS that D’s companion wasn’t much of a date—they weren’t even speaking to each other—but she didn’t care. She may as well have been on another boat, lost as she was in drugs, Jack Daniels, and the eyes of a new friend with whom she was swaying near a boom box, hitting rewind on a worn Eagles cassette, “Desperado” locked in as their song. By the time Kurt and his pack of drunken brothers, baked in every way there is to be baked, anchored our boat on Slaughterhouse Island in the middle of Shasta Lake, the deep water was not just a metaphor. On the roof deck in my magenta bikini, I felt alone and trapped. The fraternity brothers on the boat assigned all the girls nicknames for the weekend, and mine was Carcass. Kurt hovered over me. I knew it was too late to get away, and, somehow, I knew what was coming. I don’t know how many white houseboats docked on our side of the island that night—at least a dozen. After the sun had set, fires sprang up, the music got louder, and voices rose in a discordant roar. I’d refused the coke all day—that night in Kurt’s apartment had been enough for me—but when the party was raging, Kurt pulled a baggie out of his pocket and held something out to me in the palm of his big hand. Brown mushrooms like shrunken heads on tiny necks. I took a few and chewed the tough, dry stems, washing them down with a slug from his beer. When the mushrooms started to kick in, I slipped away from Kurt and the hordes of drunken Greeks, climbing the bare slope where the dark, swaying shapes of human bodies circled the flames, pushing through some thick brush near the top, and finding shelter next to what seemed at the time to be a fantastically magnanimous scrub pine. From my refuge, I watched the bonfires burning red, a postapocalyptic hellscape, the moored houseboats bobbing like a flotilla of crocodiles. I was well hidden, and far below I could see Kurt moving from boat to boat to boat, up and down the bank, looking for me, screaming my name, yelling, “Where is she? Where the fuck is she? Who’s she with? Who’d you see her with?” I was with nobody, alone on top of the hill, and I knew when I came down, I would be caught, so I stayed under the tree: two o’clock, three o’clock, four o’clock. The mushrooms wore off, and I was tired—so tired and so cold. When I finally didn’t see him anymore, I crept back down to the boat.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  labiis contingebat adulescens, multo celerius opinione rediens maritus adventat. Tune uxor egregia diras devotiones in eum deprecata et crurum ei fragium abominata, exsangui formidine trepidantem adul- terum alveo ligneo, quo frumenta confusa purgari consuerant, temere propter iacenti suppositum abscondit, ingenitaque astutia dissimulato tanto flagitio, intrepidum mentita vultum, percontatur de marito, cur utique contubernalis artissimi deserta cenula praematurus afforet. At ille dolenti prorsus animo suspirans assidue, * Nefarium " inquit “Et extremum facinus perditae feminae tolerare nequiens fuga me proripui. Hem qualis, dii boni, matrona, quam fida quamque sobria turpissimo se dedecore foedavit! Iuro per istam ego sanctam Cererem, me nunc etiam meis oculis de tali muliere minus cre- dere.” His instincta verbis mariti audacissima uxor 436 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK IX the day was coming towards its term, so that my harness should be taken off and that I should rest myself in peace, I was not so joyful of my liberty, as that the veil being taken from mine eyes, I should see all the abomination of this mischievous quean. When night was come and the sun gone down beneath the sea to lighten the under part of the earth, behold the old bawd and the young lover at her side came to the door; and he seemed to me but a boy, by reason that his cheeks were yet smooth and bright, and very pleasant: then the baker's wife kissed him a thousand times, and receiving him cour- teously, placed him down at the table. But he had scarce taken any first draught nor eaten the first morsel, when the good man (contrary to his wife's expectation) returned home, for she thought he would not have come so soon; but, Lord, how she cursed him, good woman, praying God that he might break his legs at the first entry in. In the mean season she caught her lover, that was now very pale and trembling, and thrust him into the bin that lay near by some chance, where she accustomed to sift her flour, and dissembling her wickedness by her wonted craft, put on a firm countenance and asked of her husband why he came home so soon, and left the supper of his dear friend so early. “I could not abide," quoth he, deeply sighing, ‘To see so great a mischief and wicked fact which my neighbour's wife committed, but I must run away. Oh, how good and trusty a matron she seemed, but what a harlot is she become, and how she hath dishonoured her husband ! I swear by this goddess Ceres that if I had not seen it with mine eyes I would never have believed it." His wife, made desirous by his words to know the matter, desired him to tell what she had done; and 437 LUCIUS APULEIUS noscendae rei cupiens non cessat obtundere totam prorsus a principio fabulam promeret: nec de- stitit, donec eius voluntati succubuit maritus et sic, ignarus suorum, domus alienae percenset in- fortunium :

• From Escape (2007)

  Before Bryson was born, the challenges of caring for Harrison had made me think my life couldn’t get any worse. After my near-death experience, I knew it could. The nurse brought Bryson from the ICU so I could hold him. He was the tiniest human being I had ever seen. Completely perfect, but on a miniature scale—and born into a world I was determined to escape. I kept thinking of what I needed to do before we fled. Harrison was in the hospital nearly every month, and Bryson would need a lot of care. I had to get both boys strong. Then I would take my children and run for my life. My religion had always felt like an unsinkable ship. But Warren Jeffs and his extremism loomed large, like the iceberg that could smash everything apart. I left the hospital after five days and moved back into Jubilee House so I could be close to Bryson. We didn’t go home for two more weeks. I missed Harrison so much. He was my buddy. I was desperate to get back to him. I’d been away from my children for five weeks. Bryson weighed four pounds when we finally came home and he was a feisty baby. He nursed easily, but at first I was allowed to breast-feed him only once a day. Breast-feeding is a lot of work for a preemie. A bottle is easier. I expressed my breast milk so he could be bottle-fed. I marveled at my exhausted and depleted body’s ability to create food for this tiny boy. It took me months to feel that I was regaining strength. I now had two more strikes against me in Merril’s family. My hysterectomy and near-death experience were further proof to Merril’s other wives that God was still condemning me for my rebellious ways. I was thirty-three and unable to bear any more children. For me that felt like a divine blessing rather than proof of a curse. I would sometimes hear the other wives talking about me. They wondered why I refused to get in harmony with my husband. I should know, they said, that it didn’t matter how many times I took Harrison to the hospital. As long as I was in rebellion he would only get worse until he finally died. I had nearly lost my life but still refused to repent. What more would God have to do to make me wake up? What they did not realize was that I was already wide awake, building my strength, and plotting my strategy. Cathleen was still my only friend among Merril’s seven wives. She welcomed me home from the hospital, helped me with my laundry, and continued to have coffee with me every morning. She bought a few items that I needed for Bryson and Harrison because when I first came home from the hospital I was completely confined to my bedroom. The other wives treated Cathleen like she was radioactive and shunned her.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  such sort that they would invade and set upon such which passed by like thieves, and devour them and their beasts: and sometimes they would be mad with hunger and would attack the country-farms that lay hard by, and that the same death as of the peaceful cattle would await the men therein. More- over, we were advertised that there lay in the way where we should pass many dead bodies, half eaten and torn with wolves, and their inward flesh was all torn away and the white of their bones was every- where to be seen. Wherefore we were willed to use all caution in our going, and to observe this above all, that in broad light, when the day was well on and the sun was high, and the fierceness of such horrible beasts was constrained by the light, to go elose and round together, avoiding all hidden lairs, whereby we might pass and escape all perils and dangers. But (notwithstanding this good counsel) our caitiff drivers were so covetous to go forward, being rash in their blind haste, and so fearful of pursuit, that they never heeded the advice nor stayed till the morning: but being not long past midnight, they made us be laden and trudge in our way apace. Then I, fearing the great danger which was foretold, ran amongst the ‘middle of the other horses and hid there as deep as I could, to the end I might defend and save my poor buttocks from the wolves: whereat every man much marvelled to see that I scoured away swifter than the other horses: but such my agility was not to get me any praise for speed, but rather a sign of fear. At that time I remembered with myself that the valiant horse Pegasus did fly rather for fear and for that was deservedly called winged, that he did leap up in the air and skip up ‘to the very sky, more to avoid the 371 17 LUCIUS APULEIUS

• From Escape (2007)

  After school I was waiting in the bus line with Linda when I saw the school’s double doors fly open. The principal of the school came running out, chasing his mentally retarded son, Kendall, who was ten. Kendall was screaming and trying to run away from him. His pants were wet with urine. We could all see the wide circle of dampness. The principal caught up with him and grabbed him. He kicked him so hard that Kendall flew off the ground and landed in a heap on the sidewalk. He yelled at Kendall to get up. Kendall started running away again. The principal kept chasing and kicking him. I was so sickened by what had happened to Randi earlier that day that this overwhelmed me. I could not absorb what I was seeing. In the weeks and months ahead, I would see this again and again. Kendall would wet his pants and his father would beat him. Some of the other children on the playground made fun of Kendall for wetting his pants. Others stood still, shocked to witness a father’s brutality and terrified because he was the principal of the school. That day when the school bus pulled up with the same expressionless gum-chewing driver who scared me so much, I said to my sister that I was not getting on his bus, no way. Linda pulled my arm. “Carolyn, you have to get on this bus.” But she wasn’t strong enough to pull me past my determination not to ride home on the school bus. Linda gave up. I told her I would run home. It was about a mile. I thought if I ran fast enough, I could get home before the bus and then maybe Mama wouldn’t spank me. I looked at the bus driver again. I wasn’t riding on his bus, even if it meant getting spanked. I ran until I couldn’t run anymore and then walked until I caught my breath and could start running again. I dashed into the house just as the bus was dropping off my two sisters. Mother was in the kitchen. “I got home before the school bus, Mama,” I said. She said I was silly and asked why I didn’t ride home with Annette and Linda. But I never told her. By now I was in the second grade and I walked to school or ran home for the rest of the year. One day the gum-chewing bus driver hurt Laura’s little sister. When Laura got off the bus she said she hated him and stuck out her tongue. She stopped riding the bus after that and walked with me every day.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  Let thy talk with them be brief; till thou returnest, I will speak with this beast, that he may lend us his strong shoulders.” Thus also, on the utmost limit of that seventh circle, all alone I went to where the woeful folk were seated. Through the eyes their grief was bursting forth; on this side, on that, they with their hands kept warding off, sometimes the flames, sometimes the burning soil. Not otherwise the dogs in summer do, now with snout, now with paw, when they are bitten by fleas, or flies, or breezes. After I had set my eyes upon the visages of several on whom the dolorous fire falls, I knew not any of them; but I observed that from the neck of each there hung a pouch, which had a certain colour and a certain impress, and thereon it seems their eye is feasting. And as I came amongst them looking, on a yellow purse I saw azure, that had the semblance and gesture of a lion. 3 Then, my look continuing its course, I saw another of them, red as blood, display a goose more white than butter. 4 And one 5 who, with a sow azure and pregnant, had his argent sacklet stamped, said to me: “What art thou doing in this pit? Get thee gone; and, as thou art still alive, know that my neighbour Vitaliano 6 shall sit here at my left side. With these Florentines am I, a Paduan; many a time they din my ears, shouting: ‘Let the sovereign cavalier 7 come, who will bring the pouch with three goats!’ ” Then he writhed his mouth, and thrust his tongue out, like an ox that licks his nose. And I, dreading lest longer stay might anger him who had admonished me to stay short time, turned back from those forwearied souls. I found my Guide, who had already mounted on the haunch of the dreadful animal; and he said to me: “Now be stout and bold! Now by such stairs must we descend; mount thou in front: for I wish to be in the middle, that the tail may not do hurt to thee.” As one who has the shivering of the quartan so near, that he has his nails already pale and trembles all, still keeping the shade, such I became when these words were uttered; but his threats excited in me shame, which makes a servant brave in presence of a worthy master. I placed myself on those huge shoulders; I wished to say, only the voice came not as I thought: “See that thou embrace me.” But he, who at other times assisted me in other difficulties, soon as I mounted, clasped me with his arms, and held me up; then he said: “Geryon, now move thee!

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  * Then those wicked women, opening the gates of their sister’s beart, did put away now all privy guile, and egged her forward in her fearful thoughts, drawing openly the sword of deceit, and persuading her to do as they would have her; and one of them began and said: ‘ Because that we, obliged by our kinship with you, little esteem any peril or danger to save your life, we intend to shew you the best way and means to safety as we may possibly do, and we have long thought thereon. Take a sharp razor, whetted upon the palm of your hand to its finest edge, and put it under the pillow of your bed, and see that you have ready a privy burning lamp with oil, hid under some part of the hanging of the chamber ; and (finely dissimulating all the matter) when, according to his custom, he cometh to bed and stretcheth him fully out and sleepeth soundly, breathing .deep, arise you secretly, and with your bare feet treading a-tiptoe, go and take your lamp, with the razor lifted high in your right hand, from the ward of its hiding-place that you may borrow from its light the occasion of a bold deed, and with valiant force cut off the head of the poisonous serpent at the knot of his neck: wherein we will aid and assist you, and when by the death of him you shall be made safe, we will bring quickly away all these riches and marry you, that are a woman, to some comely man, and no beast.’ After they had thus inflamed the heart of their sister, who 229 to LUCIUS APULEIUS sus ardentis deserentes ipsae protinus, tanti mali confinium sibi etiam eximie metuentes, flatus alitis im- pulsu solito porrectae super scopulum, illico pernici se fuga proripiunt statimque conscensis navibus abeunt. * At Psyche relicta sola, nisi quod infestis furiis agitata sola non est, aestu pelagi simile maerendo fluctuat, et quamvis statuto consilio et obstinato animo, iam tamen facinori manus admovens adhuc incerta consilii titubat multisque calamitatis suae dis- trahitur affectibus. Festinat, differt ; audet, trepi- dat; diffidit, irascitur; et, quod est ultimum, in eodem corpore odit bestiam, diligit maritum. Ves- pera tamen iam noctem trahente praecipiti festina- tione nefarii sceleris instruit apparatum : nox aderat et maritus aderat priusque Veneris proeliis velitatus altum soporem descenderat. Tunc Psyche, et cor- poris et animi alioquin infirma, fati tamen saevitia subministrante viribus roboratur, et prolata lucerna et arrepta novacula sexum audacia mutatur. Sed cum primum luminis oblatione tori secreta clarue- runt, videt omnium ferarum mitissimam dulcissi- mamque bestiam, ipsum illum Cupidinem formosum deum formose cubantem, cuius aspectu lucernae quo- que lumen hilaratum increbruit et acuminis sacrilegi novaculam paenitebat. At vero Psyche tanto aspectu deterrita et impos animi, marcido pallore defecta tremensque desedit in imos poplites et ferrum quaerit abscondere, sed in suo pectore : quod profecto fecis- set, nisi ferrum timore tanti flagitii manibus teme- 230 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK V '

• From Escape (2007)

  At eighteen, I was coerced into an arranged marriage with Merril Jessop, a fifty-year-old man I barely knew. I became his fourth wife and had eight children in fifteen years. They ranged from Arthur, my oldest, to Bryson, the youngest, who was then eighteen months old and still nursing. The six children in between included my son Harrison, who was almost four and severely disabled with nerve damage from a highly aggressive cancer known as spinal neuroblastoma. The first thing I did when I realized I might be able to escape was go to my sister Linda’s house to use the telephone. I couldn’t call from my home because the phones were monitored. My husband’s six other wives were suspicious. I had a reputation for being somewhat independent and thinking for myself, so the other wives kept tabs on me. If anyone suspected something, one of the wives would immediately call Merril. My sister was part of the FLDS community, but she and her husband were not in a plural marriage. She knew from our previous conversations how desperate I was to escape. We both felt the sect was becoming too extreme and frightening under the leadership of its prophet, Warren Jeffs. The running joke between us on the phone was “Don’t drink the punch.” Ever since Jeffs had taken over the sect after the death of his father, Rulon Jeffs, he had been preaching that he was Jesus Christ incarnate and that his late father was God. He also started talking in apocalyptic terms about moving his followers to what he called the “Center Place.” We feared that meant a walled compound from which there would be no escape. Jeffs did not believe people had the right to make their own choices. My husband was a powerful member of the FLDS community and very close to Jeffs. With his seven wives and fifty-four children, the odds were my husband would be one of the first to be taken to the Center Place. It would be tantamount to a prison camp for me and my children—one where we’d be required to report on others who strayed from or disobeyed the word of God. When I was growing up in the FLDS, our lives had not been as extreme as they were becoming under Warren Jeffs. The children in the community attended public schools. But that ended when Jeffs took over. He felt that teachers in the public schools had been educated by gentiles and were “contaminated.” Jeffs ordered all FLDS children into church-run schools, called private priesthood schools. Jeffs preached that our children were the “chosen seed of God” and that it was our duty, as God’s people, to protect them from all things unclean. In the FLDS-run schools, children were brainwashed, not educated. My kids were taught that dinosaurs had never existed and that men had never set foot on the moon. I could see how fast they were falling behind.

• From Escape (2007)

  Title : Escape Author: Palmer, Laura,Jessop, Carolyn [image file=image_rsrc3JF.jpg] [image file=image_rsrc3JG.jpg] PUBLISHED BY BROADWAY BOOKS Copyright © 2007 by Visionary Classics, LLC Epilogue copyright © 2008 by Visionary Classics, LLC All Rights Reserved Published in the United States by Broadway Books, an imprint of The Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. www.broadwaybooks.com A hardcover edition of this book was originally published in 2007 by Broadway Books. BROADWAY BOOKS and its logo, a letter B bisected on the diagonal, are trademarks of Random House, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Jessop, Carolyn, 1968– Escape / Carolyn Jessop with Laura Palmer.—1st ed. p. cm. 1. Jessop, Carolyn, 1968– 2. Mormon women—Utah—Biography. 3. Polygamy—Religious aspects—Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. 4. Marriage—Religious aspects—Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. 5. Mormon fundamentalism. I. Palmer, Laura. II. Title. BX8695.J47A3 2007 289.3092—dc22 [B] 2007023172 Ebok ISBN 9780767928472 rh_3.0_c0_r5 CONTENTSCover Title Page Copyright Preface: The Choice Was Freedom or Fear Early Childhood Child’s Play School Days New Wife, New Mother Linda’s Flight to Freedom The Nusses Marriage Newlywed Tragedy Cathleen and Tammy Marry Merril Photo Insert Honeymoon Accident Move Home My Patriarchal Blessing Hawaii: Seven Days but Only Two Nights Giving Birth in the FLDS Marrying into the Jeffs’ Family Tammy’s Failed Rebellion Resound of Music Warren’s Rise to Power Charter School Merril’s Heart Attack Ruth’s Nose Patrick’s Abuse Turning Point I Take Charge of My Life Harrison’s Cancer Cathleen Comes Home Last Baby Harrison’s New Port Warren Becomes the Prophet After the Escape A New Life Begins I Meet the Attorney General Shelter Our First Christmas Last Custody Case Brian Better and Better End Game Epilogue Dedication Acknowledgments Reader’s Guide About the Authors PREFACE The Choice Was Freedom or Fear Escape. The moment had come. I had been watching and waiting for months. The time was right. I had to act fast and without fear. I could not afford to fail. Nine lives were at stake: those of my eight children and my own. Monday, April 21, 2003. At ten o’clock that night, I found out that my husband had left earlier in the evening on a business trip. All eight of my children were home—including Arthur, fifteen, my oldest, who often traveled on construction jobs. There were two things that had to happen before I could escape, and they just had: my husband was gone and my children were all home. I had to act within hours. The choice was freedom or fear. I was thirty-five and desperate to flee from polygamy, the only world I had ever known. I came from six generations of polygamists and was part of a sect known as the Fundamentalist Church of the Latter-Day Saints (FLDS). Ten thousand of us lived in a small community along the Utah-Arizona border.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  beast; and many of the inhabitants hereby, and such as hunt about in the country, affirm that they have seen him towards evening returning from pasture and swimming over the river: whereby they do un- doubtedly say that he will not pamper thee long with delicate meats, but when the time of delivery shall approach, he will devour both thee and thy child as a more tender morsel. Wherefore advise thyself, whether thou wilt agree unto us that are careful for thy safety, and so avoid the peril of death, and be contented to live with thy sisters, or whether thou wilt remain with the most cruel serpent, and in the end be swallowed into the gulf of his body. And if it be so that thy solitary life, thy conversation with voices, and this servile and dangerous pleasure, that is the secret and filthy love of the poisonous serpent, do more delight thee; say not but that we have played the parts of natural sisters in warning thee.’ “Then the poor simple Psyche was moved with the fear of so dreadful words, and (being amazed in her mind) did clean forget the admonitions of her husband and her own promises made unto him. And (throwing herself headlong into extreme misery) with a wan and sallow countenance, scantly uttering and stammering forth her words, at length began to say in this sort : ‘O my most dear sisters, I heartily thank you for your great kindness towards me, and I am now verily persuaded that they which have told you hereof, have told you of nothing but truth, for I never saw the shape of my husband, neither know I from whence he came; only I hear his voice in the night, in so much that I have an unknown husband, and one that loveth not the light of the day; which causeth me to suspect that he is some beast as you affirm. Moreover I do greatly fear to 227 LUCIUS APULEIUS semper a suis terret aspectibus, malumque grande de vultus curiositate praeminatur. Nune si quam salutarem opem periclitanti sorori vestrae potestis afferre, iam nunc subsistite ; ceterum incuria sequens prioris providentiae beneficia corrumpet.’ “Tune nanctae iam portis. patentibus nudatum sororis animum facinerosae mulieres, omissis tectae machinae latibulis, destrictis gladiis fraudium sim- 20 plicis puellae paventes cogitationes invadunt. Sic 21

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  25 Tune quidam viator solitarium vagumque me respieiens invadit et properiter inscensum baculo quod gerebat obverberans per obliquam ignaramque me ducebat viam. Nec invitus ego cursui me com- modabam relinquens atroeissimam virilitatis lanienam; ceterum plagis non magnopere commovebar, quippe eonsuetus ex forma econcidi fustibus. Sed illa For- tuna meis casibus pervicax tam opportunum latibulum misera celeritate praeversa novas instruxit insidias: pastores enim mei perditam sibi requirentes vaeculam variasque regiones peragrantes occurrunt nobis fortuito, statimque me cognitum capistro prehensum attrahere gestiunt, Sed audacia valida resistens ille fidem hominum deumque testabatur: * Quid me raptatis? Violenter quid invaditis? " « Ain, te nos traetamus inciviliter, qui nostrum asinum furatus abducis? Quin potius effaris ubi puerum eiusdem agasonem, necatum seilicet, oceultaris? ": et illico detraetus ad terram pugnisque pulsatus et caleibus contusus infit deierans nullum semet vidisse ductorem, 1 One MS has et ; another (the best) a gap. before summo. Colvin’s ex seems satisfactory. E 336 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK VII wherewith I was tied. Then there was no need ta bid me run away, for I scoured not only on foot, but tumbled over the stones and rocks with my body, till I came into the open fields beneath, to the in- tent I would escape away from the terrible bear, but especially from the boy that was worse than the bear. Then a certain stranger that passed by the way (espying me alone as a stray ass) took me up quickly and rode upon my back, beating me with a staff which he bare in his hand through a blind and un- known lane: whereat I was little displeased, but willingly went forward to avoid the cruel pain of gelding which the shepherds had ordained for me, but as for the stripes I was nothing moved, since I was accustomed to be beaten so every day. But for- tune, ever bent on my ruin, would not suffer me to continue in such estate long, but with wondrous quickness undid my timely escape and set a new snare for me : for the shepherds (looking about for a cow that they had lost), after they had sought in divers places, fortuned to come upon us unawares; who when they espied and knew me, they would have taken me by the halter, but he that rode upon my back valiantly resisted them, saying: “Good Lord, masters, what intend youto do? Will you rob me?” Then said the shepherds: ** What, thinkest thou. that we handle thee otherwise than thou deservest, which art stealing away our ass? Why dost thou not rather tell us where thou hast hidden the boy that led him, whom thou hast doubtless slain?" And therewithal they pulled him down to the ground, beating him with their fists and spurning him with their feet. Then he sware unto them saying that he saw no manner of boy, but only found the ass ERR. 337 LUCIUS APULEIUS

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  To whom he answered, Madam in the office of your bounty shall prevaile herein, but the insolencie of some is not to be supported. This hee spake very angerly: But Byrrhena was earnest upon him, and assured him hee should have no wrong at any mans hand. Whereby he was inforced to declare the same, and so lapping up the end of the Table cloath and carpet together, hee leaned with his elbow thereon, and held out three forefingers of his right hand in manner of an orator, and sayd, When I was a young man I went unto a certaine city called Milet, to see the games and triumphs there named Olympia, and being desirous to come into this famous province, after that I had travelled over all Thessaly, I fortuned in an evil hour to come to the City Larissa, where while I went up and down to view the streets to seeke some reliefe for my poore estate (for I had spent all my money) I espied an old man standing on a stone in the middest of the market place, crying with a loud voice and saying, that if any man would watch a dead corps that night hee should be reasonably rewarded for this paines. Which when I heard, I sayd to one who passed by, What is here to doe? Do dead men use to run away in this Countrey? Then answered he, Hold your peace, for you are but a Babe and a stranger here, and not without cause you are ignorant how you are in Thessaly, where the women Witches bite off by morsels the flesh and faces of dead men, and thereby work their sorceries and inchantments. Then quoth I, In good fellowship tell me the order of this custody and how it is. Marry (quoth he) first you must watch all the night, with your eyes bent continually upon the Corps, never looking off, nor moving aside. For these Witches do turn themselves into sundry kindes of beasts, whereby they deceive the eyes of all men, sometimes they are transformed into birds, sometimes into Dogs and Mice, and sometimes into flies. Moreover they will charme the keepers of the corps asleepe, neither can it be declared what meanes and shifts these wicked women do use, to bring their purpose to passe: and the reward for such dangerous watching is no more than foure or sixe shillings. But hearken further (for I had well nigh forgotten) if the keeper of the dead body doe not render on the morning following, the corps whole and sound as he received the same, he shall be punished in this sort: That is, if the corps be diminished or spoyled in any part of his face, hands or toes, the same shall be diminished and spoyled in the keeper.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  As they grew older, the punishments evolved. Soon, it wasn’t enough to pull the hairs out of Alek’s body. They had to burn him, too. By then, both Igor and Grigori were smoking in the alleyway behind their apartment building after and before school, when their parents weren’t watching, sending up white trails. Alek caught them one day and ran to tell their parents, his body thrumming with the pleasure of finally having a secret on them, some measure of power. But as he turned to run, he didn’t see their bodies growing taut with pursuit. They caught him before he even reached the end of the alley. Grigori came around first, pushed Alek up against the wall. A cigarette jutted out of his thick lips. “Ah, Sasha,” he taunted. “Sasha with his pretty hair.” Igor whistled as he came up next to him. He flicked some ashes to the ground. Grigori first pinched Alek’s nose and then caught him under the chin, gripping his throat. “What are you going to do, huh?” “Nothing,” Alek said hoarsely. Grigori had grown five inches that year, and he was terrifying. His body smelled musky, like fear itself. Grigori shoved Alek’s head back against the wall, and suddenly the alley, the ground, the sky, his brother’s faces, and even the very stench of the garbage swam, started spinning around and around. The dull thud of his skull on concrete filled his ears. He felt then that Grigori could have done him any kind of harm without the slightest bit of remorse. Grigori, his own brother, could have kept hitting his head against the wall until there was nothing left on his little shoulders but a meaty pulp. He was seven or eight then, and they were older and stronger. Back then, strength seemed to be the only justification anyone needed to do anything. Grigori took the cigarette from Igor’s mouth. Igor looked disappointed and angry. Then Grigori pushed its burning tip into Alek’s arm. The pain was immediate and infinite, and it hurt so bad that he was sure it would never stop, that it would go on burning him forever and ever. Grigori bared his teeth as he twisted the burning cigarette into his arm. Alek didn’t even scream. He couldn’t muster a sound loud enough. They were not as bad now as they were then. There had been minor skirmishes as Alek grew stronger and better able to defend himself, and their relationship had resolved into a steady, tense stalemate. Perhaps it was always this way with brothers, a truce brokered only after an equilibrium of physical strength had been met, as if the potential for mutual destruction were the only thing that kept them from tearing each other limb from limb.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Hartjes turned in a slow circle. Hartjes held his breath. Hartjes waited. The quiet of the house droned. It gave no answers. The light overhead did not flicker. It did not waver. It was steadfast. The faucet dripped. The candle had burned itself out. Their bowls were on the counter. Everything was as it should have been. Upstairs, there was a thud like footsteps. Hartjes went to the front door and pulled and pulled at the bolt. It would not budge. He pulled harder. It would not budge. The door itself was so thin and shabby that Hartjes felt he could have jerked it right off the hinges, but he didn’t. He kept at the bolt, pulling on it, but the bolt just rattled and spun, and when Hartjes pulled on the knob, it twisted uselessly. There was quiet upstairs. Hartjes got the door open. The cold was on him right away. He had left his coat upstairs. At his car, he looked back toward the house. Two lights, the first floor and the second, burned like one yellow column. In Simon’s window, a shadow passed back and forth as if pacing. In the cold, Hartjes watched the shadow glide across the curtain like the second hand of a clock, the persistent beat of its passage. Then both lights went out, and it was impossible to tell the shadow from the rest of the house. And overhead, the tips of the trees brushed the night sky like the wingbeats of a thousand starlings. PROCTORING Lionel always felt a kind of secondhand embarrassment when he proctored exams. It was like visiting a friend’s house during a family function: everyone behaving in a formal, context-determined way that at once applied to you as a guest but also did not apply to you, because you were not family, so the level of artifice was clear, yet you weren’t supposed to comment on it. The department head was teaching an advanced seminar on early modern French history. Lionel’s job was to write the prompt for the essay on the board, wait the two hours for the students to fill their blue books with everything they knew, and then deposit the blue books with the departmental secretary. It was as easy a chain of events as he could have asked for. He was late getting to the room in the basement of the art library and found the fifteen white boys clustered in the hall, some standing and leaning against the wall, others on the floor, shuffling note cards, flicking them front to back. Their anxiety scuffed up the quiet. He let them into the room and wrote the prompt on the board: French Absolutism

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  At Marta’s house, Lenny walked her to the door, though she told him it wasn’t necessary. She pulled out her key and put it in the lock, and she felt his stomach against her back, and he pushed against her. The world was dim under his shadow. His hand was on her arm, its coarse heat. She stiffened, like some stupid, frightened animal. She turned to him and looked up, and he was coming in for a kiss. She turned her head and his lips landed on her cheek, and she knotted her hand into a fist. “Thanks for the evening,” she said. “I enjoyed myself.” Lenny looked faintly stunned by what she had said. She opened the door and went into the dark of her apartment, and for a moment, just before the door closed completely, she was afraid he would stop it with his hand. She was afraid he’d push his way inside. She was afraid of him. “Yeah, see you around,” he said. And she heard his footsteps go down the walkway, thudding. The next day, Lenny was at her cubicle again. He asked her to come back to his place for a couple of beers, knock a few back. He lived not too far from her, he said, it turned out. He was close enough that she could walk back if she felt like it. It wasn’t far at all. Or, hey, if she got too drunk, she could stay over. Marta said that it wasn’t a good day, maybe. Lenny just put his thick arm on the top of her cubicle, stood there with his legs crossed and a look of sad, aspirational confidence. “Didn’t we have a good time last night? Didn’t we? Let’s do it again. Come over.” She said she’d think about it. But Lenny kept coming back, and so she went over there. Just for a few minutes. She went over there, and she brought a six-pack and she sat on his couch, which was so worn out that it almost swallowed her up the moment she sat on it. They watched a taped recording of the Daytona. They talked about the plant, about the boys. And Marta felt like she was in college again. She had not realized how few friends she had until that very moment. Or maybe she had realized it, in small bits here or there, but, sitting on Lenny’s couch, talking to him about things they both knew about, about the common matter that made up their lives, she was suddenly aware of how lonely she’d felt after college. Lenny caught her looking at him in that moment. She could see his face change. It opened. His eyes widened. He stopped talking. His smile turned shy. He leaned in and kissed her, and she bolted up from the couch. “No, Lenny. No. We can’t,” she said.