In Denver, all of us girls slept downstairs in the basement, along with my fifteen-year-old brother Heber, who had some privacy behind a walled-in space. June and Megan, two of Beverly’s children, lived more typical teenage lives. They knew all the Top 40 hits, falling asleep to the rock ’n’ roll countdowns on the small transistor radios they kept under their pillows at night. They wore makeup and fixed their hair in the popular feathered style. I tried to feather my hair on numerous occasions, but the thickness and texture didn’t cooperate. Both girls had boyfriends and hung out with the popular kids at school. My mom was mostly unaware of their activities.
I longed for my older step-sisters’ acceptance and tried to be as cool as they were. But I felt like a tagalong most of the time. They would leave the house to roam the neighborhood with their boyfriends, sometimes ending up at the boys’ homes when their parents weren’t there. June and Megan would disappear into bedrooms with their boyfriends while I waited in the living room. My longing and desperate need for acceptance put me in uncomfortable situations that no grade-schooler should be in.
On Sunday nights, the “big people” went to a church meeting at someone’s house, and when the meeting wasn’t at ours, we kids fended for ourselves with one older sibling in charge of the multitude of younger kids. One evening Heber was the designated babysitter, although when everyone left, he immediately sequestered himself in his room. When I went to the basement, I heard sounds coming from his bedroom and knocked on his door.
“Come in,” he shouted, rather impatiently.
I eased open the door and saw Heber’s face illuminated by a small black-and-white TV sitting on his dresser. I didn’t know he had his own TV! He must have gotten it for free on an appliance pickup or bought it at a thrift store with the money he’d found inside the dryers he had fixed.
“What are you watching?”
“Battlestar Galactica.” The picture was fuzzy since the reception with the “rabbit ears” antenna wasn’t the best.
“What’s it about?”
“Space. And interplanetary battles,” he said, never taking his eyes off the screen.
“Sounds cool.”
He sighed. “Wanna watch it with me for a few minutes?”
I nodded and rushed to sit on the floor at the foot of his bed. I had to crane my neck, but I didn’t care. I was fascinated by the program and fell in love with the show that night.
When I stood up, I decided to take a chance. “Um, Heber, can I ask you something?”
Smiling, he pointed his forefinger at me, like a gun. “Shoot.”
“I was wondering if I could watch Battlestar Galactica with you every Sunday night.” I tried to give him just the right combination of pathetic look paired with eager anticipation.
“What do I get out of it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you want to watch my TV in my room and disturb my privacy. What’s in it for me?” He ran his fingers through his hair and then laced them behind his head.
“What do you want?” As soon as the words popped out, I regretted them. I should have given him my thoughts on a potential trade-off first. Anything he came up with would undoubtedly be worse.
“I want you to clean my room.”
“What? How often?”
“Once a week. If you clean up my room every week, I’ll let you watch with me. That seems fair.”
I noticed he didn’t ask me if I thought his proposal sounded fair. But I didn’t care. “You’ve got yourself a deal.” I walked over to his bed, and we shook on it.
While we lived in Denver, Child Protective Services stopped by occasionally to ask Mom questions. We knew that when CPS was there, all of us kids had to be on our best behavior and not say or do anything that would alert anyone that things weren’t okay. Mom always made a point to call Beverly’s kids to come out and say hello to the visitors.
Sister-wife Beverly hadn’t been around in a long time. All we knew was that she was in prison, probably for the rest of her life. Mom and the other sister-wives told us kids the same things they always said when family members were arrested —Beverly, like others before her, was being persecuted for her beliefs. In truth, she was in prison for killing one of my dad’s followers who had been rumored to be going to the FBI with information on the cult. Still, all of my memories of her from earlier years were good.
A creative and spontaneous person, Beverly sometimes taught our Sunday school lessons, and they weren’t boring like everyone else’s. She taught us about Joseph Smith’s vision in the woods, where he was saved from an evil presence by two personages hovering above him. This eventually led Joseph Smith to establishing himself as the founding prophet of the Latter-day Saints. When we memorized and recited one of the Ten Commandments for Beverly, we’d get a rare treat —a large, puffy marshmallow. At this point, we were too young to learn much about the principles of polygamy or blood atonement, both of which would later have a huge impact on my life.
Beverly took us to Lake Dallas (now Lake Lewisville) to swim. With so many of us to look after, though, she couldn’t keep an eye on us all at once. I remember one time when several of my siblings and I swam under a dock and I nearly drowned. The water reached up to the bottom of the dock, and I couldn’t find my way out, despite frantically trying. Eventually I found a way to safety.
I felt horrible about Beverly being locked away, so I faithfully wrote her letters about whatever was happening at home or school. Beverly always answered my letters with sweet, encouraging words and always included something creative —a drawing, a poem she’d written, or a joke she’d made up. I eagerly anticipated her letters because I wanted to see the special thing she had enclosed. I prayed often for her safety and her release, which finally happened decades later, after she had served more than thirty years of her life sentence. Her parole instructions prevented —and still prevent —her from having contact with anyone from the cult, except her own children.
“Why do those government people come by our house all the time?” I asked Mom one evening while she was preparing dinner.
“By law, they have to check on Beverly’s kids.”
“Why do they have to do that?”
“It’s a long story, Anna, and I don’t really want to get into it. You know how it is. Others always want to persecute us for being God’s chosen people.”
I nodded, even though I didn’t understand how the world could be so mean to those of us who had been specially selected by God Himself.