“Maybe not,” Mom replied. “But Dan’s in charge. And we have to trust that he’s doing God’s work, and that he knows what’s best for all of us.”
At that moment, I didn’t want to hear about Dan Jordan’s excellent leadership skills. I didn’t want Mom to make excuses for such a mean, unfair man. I didn’t want to be envious that the other sister-wives didn’t have as many children in their care, which meant their children each got more to spend on their back-to-school clothes. I didn’t want to deal with the crushing disappointment of working all summer for something that could so easily and swiftly be taken away. Instead, I just sat there and listened to Mom try to be cheery about going shopping the next day.
“We’ll go to the thrift store. Won’t that be fun?”
I’ll admit that we did enjoy picking out a few shirts and jeans from an actual clothing rack in a store rather than sifting through a Goodwill collection bin. I chose two shirts, one red and one powder blue, both with the word “FOXY” emblazoned across the front. I wore the powder blue one to the first day of school the next morning. In fact, I wore both new shirts twice that week. In addition, I got a pair of jeans and a pair of shoes that had been marked half price. I went slightly over my school clothing allotment, but not by much. I could hardly fathom what I might have been able to get if I’d had the entire fifty dollars to spend.
The following Sunday, we headed to one of the sister-wives’ houses for church. Celia, Hyrum, and I sat on the floor of the crowded living room, awaiting Lesley, our Sunday school teacher. The smell of burnt bread lingered in the air from breakfast earlier that morning.
Suddenly, the front door opened, and in walked Dan Jordan’s family. Dan and his wife headed to the back room for their class, but the kids crossed the living room to stand in the doorway to the dining room. I watched Dawn walk across the rust-colored shag carpet. She wore a brand-new dress with a big bow tied in the back, matching tights, and a new pair of shoes. Dawn didn’t make eye contact with anyone. But everyone stared at her, especially me. Her siblings had new clothes too.
So Dan couldn’t afford to give us money for new clothes? He blamed us for not working hard enough. How could twelve hours a day, six days a week not be enough? I felt myself flushing red with rage and disappointment. It seemed evident that Dan took our hard-earned money and spent it on his own children, who didn’t even work half as much as we did in that filthy, disgusting warehouse. I knew making a scene wouldn’t do any good. I choked down my feelings of resentment, bitterness, and betrayal just like the bean sandwiches we ate every day that summer in the warehouse. But those feelings burrowed deep inside my soul to fester and grow.
I WAS NOW IN FOURTH GRADE, and a few months into the school year, my older half-brother Ed surprised us with a visit. He took all of us kids to Woolworth’s and bought each one of us a new outfit with money he’d earned working at one of our family’s Reliance Appliance locations in Houston.
A few weeks later, he surprised us again when he came back with a U-Haul truck, and we packed up our things to move near him. Not all of us were heading to the same destination. Teresa and Yolanda moved to Phoenix to work for an appliance business there, but Rosemary accompanied us to Houston, where she opened a new remote location of Reliance Appliance.
We lived in a yellow, two-story house on the Gulf Freeway in Houston. The upstairs level housed the kitchen, dining room, and bedrooms. Another large room up a few steps served as a living area, furnished with a shabby couch and several beds that became one of the makeshift places for the girls to sleep. The lower level felt like a typical basement space with an outside entrance. Mom was going to use this space to sell appliances, too, as another remote location of Reliance.
The men divided the inventory of used appliances among the various locations. I remember thinking that Dan Jordan and his family must have been devastated by the mass exodus of cheap labor. Maybe now his kids would actually need to work as hard as we had.
With the move to Houston, we enjoyed greater stability than we had ever known. We were reunited with Mark and Lillian, who oversaw the main Reliance Appliance store, and Mom actually made a decent wage working for them out of our home. She had enough money to buy normal food for our school lunches —a bologna-and-cheese sandwich, a few Oreos, and a handful of Doritos —packed in individual plastic baggies that she reused to make them last. Mom put the baggies into paper lunch bags with our names written on them. We must be rich! For the first time that I could remember, I didn’t dread eating my lunch with my classmates.
I definitely had to adjust to a new school, though. I had started my school year in Denver in the fourth grade, but here in Houston they placed me in sixth grade, based on my age. I was way behind the other students in my class, and I dropped from making mostly As and Bs to making Bs, Cs, and even a D that shamed me to my core.
One day my teacher, Mr. Gentry, asked me to remain in the room while he dismissed the rest of the class for lunch. What did I do? I stood by his desk, nervously twirling a lock of hair around my index finger, waiting for him to finish recording something in his notebook.
“Anna, I’m not going to waste any time getting to the point. Are you having trouble seeing the blackboard? Sometimes I notice you squinting.”
I blushed and stared at the floor.
“Listen, needing glasses is nothing to be ashamed of. Believe me, when you get the right prescription, it will make all the difference in the world.” He smiled and tapped the side of his own glasses. “It will help you learn, and you will do better in school. I’m writing a note for your mother. Will you please give this to her tonight?”
“Yes, Mr. Gentry.” I nodded and then fled his classroom, mortified at the thought of having to wear glasses in public. I don’t have to give Mom the note. She’ll never know about this conversation with Mr. Gentry. But my desire to do better in school made me change my mind.
When I got home from school, I took the note from the back pocket of my jeans, unfolded it, and placed it on the table in front of her. “My teacher says I need glasses. I’m having trouble seeing the board. He thinks that might be why my grades are so bad.”
She looked the note, moving her lips as she read each word. “Well, I guess I need to make you an appointment with an eye doctor.”