Having just lived through another rape, I found it very hard to feel grateful.
Over time, I learned about what they called the Seven Diamonds Plus One. The seven diamonds were seven books: the Bible, The Book of Isaiah by Avraham Gileadi, the Book of Mormon, The Final Quest by Rick Joyner, Embraced by the Light by Betty J. Eadie, the Doctrine and Covenants, and The Golden Seven Plus One by C. Samuel West, which is all about natural healing and health. Those were the seven diamonds. The plus-one was the Book of Immanuel David Isaiah. I don’t know if you could really call it a book—it was only about forty pages of Barzee’s handwritten calligraphy bound between card stock and stapled together. There was also a binder of Mitchell’s personal papers: a collection of his blessings and revelations, his calling as a prophet and that kind of thing. These writings also contained the commandment that he was to take seven wives. It didn’t specifically mention that they had to be young girls, but Mitchell made it clear that this was his intention. That was the only way they would be malleable enough for him to control them, he would later admit. Finally, Barzee had written a long journal that chronicled their travels and conversion. On those rare occasions when her husband wasn’t talking, she would read out of this journal to me.
We always got up with the sun and went to bed when it grew dark. The weather was hot and monotonous. We were on the south face of the mountain and the sun bore down, cutting through the shade, making the afternoons very hot. All day long, we’d sit around in our linen robes, which certainly didn’t resemble linen any longer. At night, when the sun went down, it quickly grew cold. We were high up on the mountain and the air was too thin to hold in the heat. To stay warm, we put on these gray men’s shirts. They didn’t have any buttons, you’d have to pull them over your head, and they were large and ugly, but I was grateful for something to keep the chill away.
We never built fires in the beginning. We didn’t necessarily need one to stay warm, but a hot meal would have been nice every once in a while. We would eat granola and nuts for breakfast. A few vegetables and fruit for lunch and supper. The fresh food never lasted long, however, and soon we were spreading mayonnaise on tortillas again and eating those with crackers and not much else. We didn’t eat well, that was for sure. It seemed I was always uncomfortable. Always thirsty. Always in pain. Mitchell seemed to be completely confident that he was never going to get caught, but he was still careful, so he rarely hiked down to the spring to get us water, not wanting to take the risk of being seen or meeting someone on the trail. Plus, he was lazy. It was hard work to hike down to the spring, and very hard work to bring a heavy container of water back up, as I would soon learn when they began to treat me like a mule.
Eventually, Barzee began to figure out exactly what a handmaiden was. If her husband was going to use me for his pleasure, then she was going to use me too. And putting me to work was a good way to get even for all of the attention that Mitchell seemed intent on showing me. She didn’t let me prepare any of the meals—that was always just for her—but she made me do pretty much everything else. And it’s amazing how much work there is to do when you are actually living in a camp. Once in a while, Mitchell would put me to work expanding the dugout. It was backbreaking work to shovel the dirt, but my cable would only reach partway into the dugout and pretty soon I had dug about as far as I could go.
When I wasn’t working, the only thing I could do was read. During the first weeks I made my way through almost the entire Old Testament and some of the other scriptures too.
But I was bored. Oh-so bored. It was an impossible adjustment to make. I had been an active teenager. I was used to being involved in school and music and sports. I had a group of friends. My family and I always did things together. Now I was cabled between two trees. Twenty feet was as far as I could roam. I had the choice of listening to Mitchell talk or reading a few books, but that’s all that I could do. When Mitchell wasn’t talking, Barzee would be chatting in my ear. Sometimes it felt like I was being tortured by their voices. Tortured with boredom. Tortured with fear. Cabled. Humiliated. Taken from my home and family. It was no fun at all.