This was shaping up to be an interesting year. It would be lonely being in a school without many of my friends. The majority of my classmates were going to be nusses. Did I really want a diploma bad enough to put up with them? Yes, I did. The trade-off was that I was now a year ahead and would have a chance to get started in college.
On my first day of classes, the nusses were tripping over themselves with femininity. They didn’t walk, they pranced on tiptoe. When they spoke, it was in soft and girly voices. When they laughed, it was subdued and modest. “Oh, for heaven’s sake” was their all-purpose refrain when anything went wrong, like a book dropping to the floor. Their piety was precious to them but fundamentally fake.
But some of the teachers loved the nusses. They practiced perfect penmanship and were diligent A-plus students. The teachers who loved the nusses looked at me as if I had a righteousness deficiency. Thankfully, my cousin Lee Ann was in several classes with me, and some of my teachers remembered me from the private school I’d attended before.
By the end of the first week, I realized that for the first time I was embarrassed to be a woman. The nusses sickened me. I knew that I lived in a culture where a baby girl was of less value to her parents than a baby boy, but I’d never thought of myself as “less than.” But when I saw the nusses prancing and cavorting through school I felt ashamed and humiliated. Couldn’t they see that they were acting like perfect idiots?
Then something snapped inside me. The nusses did not represent women, only fools. Why should I feel disgraced? I knew in my heart that there was nothing wrong with being a woman. I wanted to roar like a woman. I knew that would never be allowed, but that didn’t stop me from being proud of myself. I was a woman, not a fake!
I grabbed Shannon and Jayne and asked them to meet me Friday after school. I could barely contain myself. “These girls are driving me crazy. Why do they act like this?”
Jayne and Shannon started laughing. “All right, all right,” I demanded, “you two have got to let me in on the joke.”
Shannon whispered two words in my ear: “Fascinating Womanhood.” I pushed Shannon away and loudly said, “What?”
Jayne’s voice was very matter-of-fact. “It’s a book called Fascinating Womanhood. It’s all about how to manipulate men.”
“But what does that have to do with being an idiot?” I asked.
“Everything,” they said. “You have to read the book. It’s a scream.”
I tracked down a copy and spent the entire weekend reading it. I was stunned. It was a self-help book about how a woman in a monogamous relationship could manipulate and control her husband. The first few chapters were all about why a man loved a woman who could make him feel like a manly man. Men didn’t love women who intimidated them. That I could see—no one wants to be made to feel inferior.
But the farther I got into the book, the more I could see how it was the nusses’ playbook. Fascinating Womanhood was the script that the nusses were following. But what was so surreal was that we didn’t even have that many boys in our school. What were they thinking?
There were descriptions about how to pout perfectly when your husband tells you no. The book explained how to stand, how to pucker in anger, and how to stomp your foot in an adorable and feminine way.
The manipulation chapters were outrageous to me. They were also designed for women who were the only wife. What was a plural wife supposed to do, and how could these methods work on a man who was supposed to be obedient to his religion? We were taught not to manipulate our husbands. A woman was supposed to pray for guidance and understanding about fulfilling her husband’s desires.
What a comedy. In Fascinating Womanhood, acting stupid was one of the most important ways a woman could make her husband feel manly. Installing the Dixie cup dispenser was one example. The husband asks his wife if she needs help. She refuses, insisting she can handle this itsy-bitsy chore herself. She pretends to read the instructions carefully and then hangs the dispenser upside down. Full of pride, she shows her husband what she has managed to do. When her husband explains the dispenser is upside down, the wife acts shocked and disappointed. She should have asked her husband to hang it after all, praising him for his many talents and manly abilities.
“For hell’s sake!” I shrieked to myself, not even trying to sanitize my reaction. I could not believe that anyone would believe such a stupid book. Were men so dumb that they could fall for something like that?
On Monday I found Jayne and mocked the book. She chided me about being disrespectful to the nusses’ Bible. “They have taken every part of that book to heart and it is going to be their salvation. This is how they will be treated like queens and escape their mothers’ fate.” I thought I would collapse in laughter. Apparently there was even a younger version, Fascinating Girl, which was making the rounds of the nusses’ younger siblings.
We began inventing nuss jokes. I came up with one of the first: “Did you hear about the nuss who was really stupid? She hung the Dixie cup dispenser right side up!”
Then there was the joke about the two hoods and the nuss who went on a trip to the Nevada desert. Their car broke down in the scorching heat, and the three girls realized that they would have to hike for help. One hood took a gallon of water from the car, and the other took the sandwiches they’d packed for the trip. The nuss took the car door so in case she got hot she could roll down the window!
There was a clear social divide at school between the hoods and the nusses. If we were in the same room, we never interacted with each other. When something came up at school that forced us to talk to each other, we were deliberately rude. We were divided into two camps, but there was a certain détente. The unwritten rule was that we were going to leave each other alone.
This worked very well until Margaret, one of Merril Jessop’s daughters, upset the delicate balance. Margaret was not attending high school. She worked for Merril and was about to turn twenty. She felt bad that she’d not been assigned in marriage yet. Unless something happened soon, she’d be the oldest old maid in town. So she decided to have a party and invite all the unmarried teenage girls. Her plan was to invite only the nusses and exclude all the hoods. That was just fine with us. We really didn’t want to go to a nuss party. The nusses were keeping us entertained, which was all we wanted from them.
One prime example of the pure theater they created was watching Merrilyn, one of Merril’s most beautiful daughters, flirt with a teacher she had a crush on. One day in class she was standing at the pencil sharpener, loving every moment of looking up into his eyes. The teacher was polite but clearly had a lot of other things to do while preparing for the next class’s lesson.
Merrilyn put her pencil in the sharpener and looked up at the teacher with an adoring gaze in her big green eyes. “Will you please turn the crank?” Without giving it a thought, the teacher turned the handle. Merrilyn removed the pencil, blowing on it carefully. “Thank you,” she said in her best little nuss voice.
Jayne witnessed the entire episode. Afterward she went up to Merrilyn and said, “So, Merrilyn, how does it feel to have your teacher turn your crank?” The teacher looked pretty sheepish when he realized what he’d been lured into. The nusses were so arrogant it was impossible for them to believe that we were making fun of them. They were so steeped in their own superiority.
The old maids’ party was turning into a big deal. All the girls were talking about it at school. One of Merril’s more serious daughters, Audrey, seemed bothered that we weren’t invited. She approached me in sewing class and asked if I’d come with some of my friends. She wanted us to put together a skit and be part of the entertainment. Other girls would be doing songs. I tried to back out of it—there wouldn’t be enough time, et cetera—but Audrey was persistent, and I knew her intentions were good.
Jayne and Shannon thought it would be fun. They loved the idea of performing before a captive audience of nusses and picked a song from Fiddler on the Roof that was about arranged marriages.
I was sure the nusses would think we were mocking the prophet if we sang this song, and so I opted out of the skit, but my cousins persisted. They did a great job, and I thought if they were allowed to perform it, they’d be the hit of the party.
There was a dress rehearsal before the party, and each contingent of girls got up and did its part. But Merril’s daughter, who’d organized the party, hated my cousins’ song. A song about an arranged marriage somehow exacerbated the state of misery she was in about being unmarried. She told my cousins that they could come to the party, but they’d have to find another song. Of course, there wasn’t enough time for that.
The nusses’ old maids’ party was the following weekend. The day of the party, my father got a call from Merril Jessop, who was, in effect, king of the nusses. Merril and my father had been business partners for years. He was prominent in the FLDS and very tight with Uncle Roy. Merril wanted me and my cousins to come. Dad explained we hadn’t been invited, and Merril went into a whole song and dance about how that wasn’t the case. Dad didn’t see any reason why we should go to the party and let the matter drop.
Then Margaret, who had been the one to throw us out of the party, came over the week afterward to try to clear up what she felt was a misunderstanding. Rosie, Annette, and I all sat quietly in the living room and listened to her state her case. She had been at the dress rehearsal and said she loved our song. She said the problem was Uncle Fred. He opposed it and had told her to talk to my cousins about doing something different.
She felt bad that we had not been at the party. After it was over, she said, Uncle Fred announced that every girl present at that party would obtain her salvation and make it into the highest degree of the Celestial Kingdom of God—the downtown of heaven. He didn’t have the power to make that actually come true. But Uncle Fred was so revered in the community as a godly man that his pronouncements were seen as the next best thing to divine intervention.
I couldn’t figure out her motivation. Was she trying to say that because we’d rebelled and not come up with another song, we were disgraced and would never obtain our salvation? I thought she had set up the meeting to apologize. But it seemed like the only point she wanted to make was that she and the other nusses were going to heaven and we were not.
My sewing teacher, Mrs. Johnson, was one of the few who stood up to the nusses. She had no patience for the way they assumed that rules did not apply to them. When it came time for parent-teacher conferences, Mrs. Johnson let Merril’s wife Ruth have it when she came up to her and said, “How are our girls doing?” Mrs. Johnson unleashed a tirade against the nusses. She told Ruth that her daughters were rude, none of them obeyed the rules, and she was tired of reminding them day after day of what was expected in class.
After that, suddenly the rules in sewing class applied to the nusses, too. It was the only classroom in the high school where that was true. (But Mrs. Johnson got some serious heat for the way she treated Ruth. In an effort to make amends with Merril’s family, she invited one of Merril’s other wives, Barbara, to honor our class by teaching us dance aerobics, which was a real hoot.)
I was one of the people the sewing teacher liked. She let me use her personal sewing machine and would allow me to leave class early if I had finished all my work.
Since sewing was my last class of the day, this was a real blessing when Brigham began following me home from school.
I didn’t know Brigham at all. We had never been in school together, plus he was a year ahead of me. But at the public school, we had a class together and for whatever reasons, he decided he liked me, so he began to follow me home.
On days when I could manage it, I’d leave sewing class early and run home as fast as I could. The minute I got home I ran to my bedroom, breathless but safe. I always tried to study before I had to help Mama with dinner. One day I had only been there a few minutes when Annette bolted into our bedroom. She was laughing so hard she could barely stand up.
“Annette, shut up, this is not funny!” I said. “I had to nearly run myself into the ground to escape him.”
Annette was rolling around on the floor in laughter. “Yes, it is funny. The look on his face when he got outside and couldn’t find you was the funniest thing that I have ever seen in my life. He was in such a panic when he realized you were gone. He got on his bike and rode as fast as he could. We were dying with laughter.”
But this was serious. I said to my sister that I knew I couldn’t outrun him every day, and if our father found out that a boy was walking me home from school he’d yank me right out.
Only Annette could think this was so funny. She was slapping her hands on the floor of our bedroom, still laughing. Words were not getting through. I grabbed a pillow off my bed and threw it on her and yelled, “Annette, shut up! I am in terrible trouble. He could make it so I can’t go to school. I have fought so hard to get my high school diploma and now this dumb boy could destroy everything.”
For the next six weeks he kept trying to follow me home, and eventually someone reported to my father that we were walking home from school together.
My father called me in and said I was disobedient in the ways of God. I should be saving my affections for the man I’d be assigned to in marriage.
I pleaded with my father and tried to explain that I’d been trying to ditch him. Annette came to my rescue and insisted to my father that I was telling the truth. This saved me. My father believed her and told Brigham’s father to make him stop bothering me. I felt deeply relieved. Now I knew I was really going to graduate and, I hoped, continue on to college.
I knew my parents wouldn’t let me go directly to college. My goal was to start at the community college and then move on. I had been on the honor roll my senior year of high school and had made mostly straight A’s.
I was so excited about graduating by the time May arrived. This was the biggest achievement of my life. Since we were the first graduating class of Colorado City High School, nearly the entire community turned out. Our accomplishment was an accomplishment for everyone in the community. Once again, FLDS children were getting a high school education, after nearly a seven-year lapse.
We were told to arrive two hours early for picture taking and goodbyes. As the time drew near, we all lined up to march across the stage. Nothing happened. More time elapsed. Still nothing. I asked someone why. “We’re waiting for Audrey.”
After what felt like an interminable wait, the teachers decided that we would start the show without her. If Audrey missed her graduation, it was her own fault. Music started to play and we began marching, but then we were ordered to stop and come back.
I felt that I was never going to walk across that stage, never going to graduate. Then I noticed heads turning. Audrey, who had stayed home to finish her graduation dress, walked into the hall in one of the most elaborate dresses I had ever seen.
She looked like an FLDS version of Princess Diana. Her hair was coiffed and every strand sprayed into place. Her gown was a mass of soft, shining blue fabric with yards of expensive lace sewn into cascades of ruffles that floated over her tiny white high heels—instead of the boys’ blue sports shoes she usually wore. Her sleeves were puffy and her tightly fitted bodice was smothered in lace. She smiled like she was the belle of the ball, except that there was no ball.
“Carolyn Blackmore.” When my name was called, I walked across the stage to get my diploma. It had been worth the fight. Now my sights were set on college and medical school. I smiled, thinking that if I could make it through the nusses, I could make it through anything. Little did I know that in a year I would be forced to marry their father.
Marriage
After graduation, I worked for a year as a teacher’s assistant while attending a weekly class at the community college. It was an exhausting schedule, but I wanted to establish the best academic record I could before I applied to school.
By the time I was eighteen, my secret dream was still to become a pediatrician. I didn’t know any
woman in the FLDS who had done something so ambitious, but I was determined to try.
I knew the first step was getting into a four-year college that had a good pre-med program. I started by telling my father of my desire to go to college. I left the doctor part out.
He said he’d ask the prophet. Uncle Roy was a comparatively moderate man, and he felt it helped the community if a small percentage of us went on to college and then came back home.
At two o’clock one morning I was awakened from the dead of sleep. It was close to the end of the semester and I’d stayed up late studying. I couldn’t imagine why my mother was awakening me or why my father would want to speak with me at such an odd hour. Nothing like this had ever happened before.
Dad was waiting for me in my mother’s bedroom. My father acted as though everything was normal. “I had a chance to talk to Uncle Roy about you going to college and he told me you were a smart girl and could go to school to be a teacher.”
My heart sank. A teacher? I wanted to do pre-med.
But it got worse.
“Uncle Roy said that before you go to school, you should be married. He wants you to marry Merril Jessop.”
I was stunned. My future had just vanished. Even if I continued with my education, I’d have to do so while being pregnant and having babies.