Mom part 3

A couple of months after her mother died, Mom began dating John again. Because she belonged to a secret society and John did not, her family did not want her to marry John. She couldn’t even tell him that her father was a polygamist.


She writes in her journal:
I started going with John again and the courtship grew. Things were getting harder and harder to break up with him. We had fun, only after Sunday night I knew I would have to quit going with him, and I didn’t know how to tell him.


Grandma is on grapes so I went in to stay and help her. Grandpa was there so he helped me write a letter to John and I mailed it Thursday. This is what the letter said:


Dear John,


I guess I have put off writing this letter too long because I did not want to hurt you, but I have known for a long time that the things you are planning could never be for us. While I respect you and prize your friendship, the further this has gone the more I realize how impossible it would be for us to carry out those plans because I realize that I could never love you in a way to make a happy home. So I would be doing a rank injustice not only to you but to your family if I should pretend something I could never feel.

Aside from all this since my Mother left us her passing has left a responsibility on my shoulders that I cannot shift onto someone else. My sisters are in desperate need of my sincere love and service until such a time as some of them are old enough to take over. I hope and pray that I am big enough not to let them down. Also I am in the hopes you and your mother understand.

When I get alone and to myself I have been grieved to know that there have been those who would entertain and spread false rumors to injure and attempt to ruin the reputation of my father. He has been so wonderful and fine, and my love for him has been so deep that I could never join myself with any of those who are against him, especially at this time when I see from day to day the marks of loneliness and grief which are so evident to me and the other children. Because my mother was taken so suddenly away, I couldn’t live with myself knowing I had done something to add to his load instead of placing my efforts and life where they would make it lighter.

Forgive me if I appear to have been inconsistent, hoping perhaps it might have been otherwise, but I know now at last, so I would appreciate it if you would not come to see me again as this is my final decision.


Yours Respectfully,
 (of course she signed her name, but I’m not putting her name here)

I haven’t seen him since, although I miss him. He is so nice; he told his sister that if I changed my mind to tell me he still loves me and wants to marry me.

The sad thing is that Mom talks about people trying to ruin her father’s reputation with lies, but the lies were the truth, but in this cult, the members are taught to never tell an outsider about what happens on the inside.

Grandma’s dying wish was for my mother to marry Grandma’s brother (yes, mom’s uncle). Mom was seventeen when her mother told her she wanted her to marry her uncle who was now the prophet of their cult. Mom worried about it – a lot.

She really felt pressure to marry him after Grandma died. Her parents always encouraged her to make her own decisions even if they were stupid decisions. She felt pressure because she believed she was letting her mother down if she didn’t marry him. Her two older sisters had married him, and she knew her mother wanted her to join the same family they had joined. Her uncle believed that his family carried the blood line of Christ and that it was important to keep that bloodline as pure as possible. For this organization, incest had become a religious tenent.

She felt she had fooled around enough and it was time to do what her mama wanted. She made a pink dress to wear to her wedding. The day of the wedding came, and mom thought, “I’ve just got to get through this.” She wasn’t scared; she was sad. She didn’t know or love him as a man; she worshipped him as her prophet. She had never even had a conversation with him – yet she was planning on becoming his fourth wife. He had asked for her, and he probably thought he was saving her soul by marrying her.

Mom writes: Today marks a day of my life that I will always remember. It was Monday night; I had no thrill and felt nothing. Maybe in years to come I will have joy. I hope so.

On the wedding night, her uncle kissed her, got a phone call, and told her he would come back another day. She took off her pink dress and never wore the hated dress again. On a rotating schedule about every two weeks, he would come to see her. He slept on his side of the bed, and she slept on hers. He took her on a business trip – they kissed and hugged, but the marriage was still unconsummated. She wanted children, so one night she decided to take the bull by the horns. She made the room nice and put perfume on the pillow. He ate dinner with her and two sisters. They went on a walk and held hands. She put her happy face on, tried to talk to him, and be nice, but she just felt panicky.

In the bedroom she gritted her teeth as he kissed her. His hand started moving down and she came unglued. She said, “Stop, stop,” and pushed him away. She hurried out of the bed and ran down stairs. He went back to his first wife. She cried and felt like a failure. He stopped coming to see her. She knew it was over – and she was relieved. Because Mom had been raped at age ten, she believed that she was evil and that sex was evil. She couldn’t have sex with her prophet husband because she didn’t think he was evil. She didn’t think she should do evil things with a prophet. Although rape is a terrible thing and I wish she had not been raped, I am thankful that she could not consummate her marriage to her uncle. I am thankful I am not inbred.

Mom began dating again while she was still spiritually married to her uncle. One afternoon, her Grandfather and Grandmother came out to talk to her during a date with a young man. She ended her date quickly so she could meet with them. Grandfather asked, “Why aren’t you able to talk to your uncle and work things out?”

“I don’t know why, but I just can’t talk to him,” she answered. Although they could not help resolve her problems with her uncle, she felt good that they were interested in her welfare.

Mom was attending Beauty School. Her school had a beauty show where the students modeled different hair colors. Mom modeled Miss Clairol Silver. She wore a black strapless dress with a silver banner that read, “Miss Clairol,” as she promenaded on the stage. In the audience that night was Mom’s date and his friend – my father. Mom saw her date talking to a pretty girl, and she angrily believed that he was propositioning one of her classmates, but in reality he was trying to find a date for my father. Dad asked her if she needed a ride home and she said, “Yes.” She thought he was nice looking, and she was attracted to him. He had thick curly black hair, dark brown eyes, and a nice tan. He said, “You have the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen.” He drove her home.

When Dad dropped her off, some of her cousins were on the porch. Dad said, “How ya’ll doing?”

“Are you a n*****,” they asked.

“Shor am,” he laughed.

Some time later, Mom’s aunt (her father’s second wife) came to her and said, “I heard that he is black. Is this true?”

“No,” Mom answered.

This rumor, started by an innocent joke, would resurface later in an attempt to hurt Mom’s standing and that of her daughters’ in the cult. Racial purity is very important to this cult. The members of this cult are prejudiced toward anyone of Hispanic, Italian, Pacific Islander, Asian, or African American descent.

When Mom and Dad decided to marry less than three months after meeting, her Grandmother (her mother’s and her uncle’s mother) told her she needed to get her marriage to her uncle annulled. Mom didn’t have a clue how one would go about annulling a spirit union. They had not been married legally. Grandmother said that she would take care of it. She called the uncle, and he came over. They stood in the front room and dissolved the marriage in front of God and his witnesses. Mom was grateful to her grandmother for taking care of that for her.

Mom’s grandmother (her mother’s mother) didn’t worry about food the way Mama did. When mom was small, her grandmother said, “Let her have sugar on her tomatoes – it isn’t going to hurt her.” Sugar was forbidden in the cult. Her Grandmother developed breast cancer, and her love of forbidden foods was blamed for her cancer. Mom often stayed with her to care for her. Mom slept with her, but Grandmother didn’t sleep; she prayed all night long because she was in too much pain to sleep. Her Grandmother had a hard time with polygamy. She was a blunt woman and did not have a great love (or like for that matter) for her sister wife. Grandmother was strong willed and stubborn.

During the time she cared for her grandmother, Mom made the veil for her wedding to Dad, but she needed a wedding dress. She had to find something tiny (she was less than five feet tall and weighed about 90 pounds) and inexpensive. She found a tea length ivory dress that was set with rhinestones with a price tag of nine dollars. She liked the fit, but because she was so tiny, it still fell off her shoulders. She used to make all of her clothes so they would fit. She said in that time period it was very common for a woman to not have a traditional wedding dress.
Mom said that Dad was a rebel. He felt Mom was a feather in his cap because he had stolen her away from the “Big Leader.” She was very happy to be married to him. One day as she pushed her first baby in her stroller, she felt such happiness, but then she had a premonition that her happiness with Dad would not last. She felt so badly. She thought, “What is going to happen – I love my life.”

The flashbacks about her rape were not an issue in her physical relationship with Dad. She believed that Dad was her spiritual equal – she believed they were both evil. She was evil for leaving the cult and her prophet husband; Dad was evil because he was an outsider.