The polygamists daughter, p.10
The Polygamist's Daughter, page 10
That school year passed far too quickly. On the last day of school, most of my classmates couldn’t wait for the bell to ring at three o’clock to signal their freedom for the summer. I had been dreading this day because it would usher in another depressing three months of labor at the appliance store. School had become my safe haven. So when everyone ran out the door, with Mrs. Klitsner making sure no one got run over, I lingered in the classroom, picking up candy wrappers and other bits of trash.
Mrs. Klitsner returned, surprised to find me still there. “Anna, it’s officially summertime. Why don’t you join your friends outside and celebrate?”
My stomach churned and my mouth went instantly dry. I longed to pour out my heart to my favorite teacher, to share my burdens with her. How could I explain that I didn’t want to say good-bye to her, to the school building, to the yummy cafeteria food and the playground equipment? I wished I could stay there year-round, in this safe place where I could learn so many things.
But I kept my mouth shut and simply approached her desk and shyly hugged her. “I’ll miss you. You’re the best teacher I ever had.”
Mrs. Klitsner hugged me tighter, then squatted down in front of me so she could look into my eyes. “I enjoyed having you in my class, Anna. I enjoyed school growing up too. I wanted to be at school more than anyplace else because I felt loved and challenged. Is that the way you feel?”
I didn’t trust my voice not to crack, so I merely nodded.
“Listen, you are a wonderful girl, but it’s time for you to go enjoy your summer. I’ll see you in the fall, okay?”
What if I’m not here next fall? What if we move yet again?
SUMMER MEANT WORKING ALL DAY, six days a week, at the appliance store warehouse, instead of just on Saturday. The sister-wives and the kids old enough to work woke up early each morning. It took a long time for a dozen or more people to get dressed and eat a “tasty” breakfast—hot mush with watered-down powdered milk and toast broiled in the oven and slathered with margarine.
Before we left the house, we formed an assembly line to prepare our lunches for the day. The women would set loaves of bread on the table—bread that had been bought at the bakery thrift store, so far beyond the expiration date that it was intended as animal feed. Anyone who spotted any mold on the bread just pinched that part off. Then we kids coated a side of one piece of bread with a thin layer of mayonnaise and another piece with a generous dollop of refried beans. We alternated between that combination and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. One of the older children stacked the sandwiches back inside the bread bags to take to the warehouse.
When everyone was ready, we would scramble into several vehicles, with most of us kids riding in open truck beds. It took about a half hour to drive to the store, so we would leave the house by eight o’clock to get there and be ready to open the store at nine. We worked until nine at night, with a few breaks throughout the day for a sandwich or to play. If we were caught playing when we should have been working, the adults yelled at us for wasting time.
About the same time we moved to Elmer Drive, I underwent another transition. One day while I was working at the store, Mom called me into the break room, where she and Ramona, who now lived in Denver too, were having a cup of coffee. Both of them had enormous grins on their faces.
“What’s going on?” I didn’t think I was in trouble. Did something good happen to someone in the family for a change?
“Anna, come sit by me.” Mom patted the seat of a faded blue plastic chair. “I have something to tell you.”
Mom glanced at Ramona and then looked back at me. “On Monday, you start helping with the younger children.”
“I get to help watch the kids?” This may sound like work, which it technically was, but to me at age ten, it meant that I had graduated from being one of the annoying little kids to contributing to the family. I would alternate between being a mother’s helper and cleaning the appliances.
Mom knew I understood the gravity of this rite of passage, and she nodded solemnly.
With all of the women working, each sister-wife who had a nursing baby assigned her infant to an older girl between the ages of eight and ten, who served as a second pair of hands. Our job was to do whatever the mothers asked us to do to keep the babies happy while they worked nearby. I was thrilled to be promoted from a liability to an asset, just like that.
I had always hoped that I would be assigned to watch the children of Ramona or Faye. I felt closest to them because they were my half-sisters from my mom’s first marriage. Sadly, that proved too much to hope for. Dan Jordan had given two of his older wives, Sheila and Jody, complete authority over the girls who tended the younger children. They discouraged any form of favoritism and deliberately placed in our care preschoolers and babies we weren’t closely related to. Determined to break up family loyalties, the sister-wives used this self-imposed authority as another way to control us. After being reprimanded and shamed for showing favoritism to my sisters’ children and accused of ignoring the children of Dan’s other wives, I learned not to question who was assigned to my care each day.
Every day brought new excitement, as several of us girls would get together and play moms. We diapered and clothed “our” babies and carried them on our hips around the vicinity of the appliance store. When the babies got hungry, we took them to their moms to be nursed. We often did odd jobs, like cleaning house and doing dishes for the moms, especially the ones who had living quarters on the warehouse property.
The warehouse was located off Federal Boulevard, surrounded by a chain-link fence woven through with plastic slats for privacy. The driveway to the warehouse was beside Taco House. The living quarters of some of my extended family was a tiny, rundown house on the side of the drive. At the end of the driveway was an L-shaped building that contained two areas of warehouse space, the storefront showroom, an office, and Linda’s upstairs apartment, accessed by a dark stairwell. The high ceilings in the warehouse made it hard to regulate the temperature, so in the winter we nearly froze and during the summer it was deathly hot. The big industrial fans hanging from the ceiling did little more than move warm air around. Thankfully, someone usually opened the oversized garage doors leading into the warehouse areas to allow fresh air in.
One afternoon, my step-sister June, my half-sisters Darlene (Linda’s daughter) and Eva (my dad’s seventh wife Rosemary’s daughter), and I took our babies out for a walk in the neighborhood. We passed the white house just inside the gates of the property, turned right, and headed toward Taco House, the restaurant right outside of the property gates. The owner just happened to be changing his menu on the sign out front when we passed.
“My, my. You girls have quite a parade going, don’t you?” he said, with his arms folded over his ample belly.
“No, we’re just taking the babies for a walk,” Darlene said.
“Is that so? Very nice.” He smiled and nodded at each of us. Suddenly, he raised his eyebrows and held up his right index finger. “Hey, wait here. I have something for you. I’ll be back in a minute.” He disappeared into the restaurant.
June’s brow furrowed. “That’s suspicious.”
Eva chimed in. “Yeah, I think we should go. Our moms wouldn’t like it if they knew we were talking to him.”
“I think he’s nice. We should see what he wants.” I rarely turned down the opportunity to get anything free.
“It would be rude to leave now.” Darlene, the voice of reason, finalized our decision, and we waited.
Moments later, the restaurant owner emerged, holding four colorful lollipops in his left hand. “Here you go—something sweet for some sweet girls.” He handed each of us a different flavor.
We thanked him, pulled off the wrappers, and began licking our tasty treats. I made mine last the entire walk. When we returned to the warehouse, our tongues were bright blue, red, green, and orange.
When I was not assigned to a mom and her baby, I was working in the warehouse cleaning used appliances. We never got to pick what appliances we scoured. Instead, each morning, we lined up to attack row after row of never-ending, filthy old appliances. Washers and dryers were always our first choice since they required less work to get them in sellable condition. But once we were done with these machines, we had to move on to the other appliances.
I detested working on stoves the most. Probably attracted by food remnants, there were often dead mice or rats or layers of their droppings inside, as well as dead—or more often, live—roaches scurrying out of reach, and years’ worth of charred, encrusted food and grease that had to be removed.
We used razor blades and Easy-Off to scrape the gunk off everything. The girls cleaned while the boys and some of the women made repairs. Next to the cleaning area was the washer and dryer repair department, then there was a big sliding metal door that separated the warehouse from the showroom.
The showroom floor was old, discolored tile that had to be mopped and waxed regularly. In the middle of the showroom there were rows of stoves, dishwashers, single washers and dryers, and matching sets of washers and dryers. Freezers and refrigerators lined the perimeter of the room near wall outlets, since customers often requested that someone plug in the appliance to show that it worked. The bathroom on the showroom floor had to be kept clean for customers, so sometimes we were assigned the task of cleaning it, too.
Whenever we kids were given permission to take a break, all of us headed for the yard behind the warehouse, where hundreds of discarded refrigerators and freezers were kept for parts. The appliances closest to the warehouse were lined up in neat rows, but those further out on the property were scattered willy-nilly. This huge area was our playground, where we enjoyed games of hide-and-seek, climbed on top of and inside the scrap appliances, and created forts and hideouts. Although I didn’t like them at first, I quickly grew used to the furry mold and the gross smells from the array of machines.
This is why I always dreaded the end of the school year. I would gladly have opted for listening to the world’s most boring teacher or taking tests or doing countless sit-ups in gym class rather than slaving from morning to night at the warehouse.
After work, we would drive home and eat a meager dinner before heading to bed, only to repeat the same grueling schedule the next day. One night I stayed later than usual with my mom so she could finish some paperwork. On the way home, Mom made a surprise stop at Wendy’s and bought two hamburgers, with an order of French fries and a chocolate Frosty to split between us. I was so happy sitting in the car with Mom, enjoying this rare treat with her.
WE WERE ON OUR WAY HOME from another long workday. I sat in the middle seat of the station wagon next to Celia and closed my eyes while I rested my head on her shoulder. My job had changed from babysitter to appliance scrubber, and I was exhausted. It seemed like I had used every muscle in my body that day.
Mom’s voice interrupted my brief respite. “Who wants to go gardening?”
“We do!”
The mood in the car shifted immediately from sheer exhaustion to energized excitement.
Mom drove the few blocks to the Safeway grocery store, making her way to the rear parking lot and finally behind the building where the giant blue dumpster was located. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw that only two spotlights were shining above the service entrance of the store. The other two bulbs must be burned out. My brother Hyrum and I were the designated “gardeners,” and the dimmer light would lessen our danger of being caught.
Mom swung a wide path in front of the dumpster next to the double doors where deliveries were received. With great precision, she backed up and stopped close to the dumpster. Heber jumped out of the passenger seat and opened the station wagon’s rear window, and we kids climbed out silently.
We knew the drill from previous excursions to various grocery stores. As stealthily as a SWAT team, we took our pre-appointed positions. Heber helped Hyrum and me up onto the tailgate of the station wagon. Then Heber and Sean lifted the heavy, metal lids of the dumpster. A stench immediately filled the air. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Celia covering her nose and mouth with her hand, and I flashed her a big grin. She rolled her eyes in return. Celia hated “gardening,” my family’s code name for dumpster diving. She couldn’t stand the smell or even the thought of rifling through garbage. But more than anything, she feared getting caught. I found everything about the experience exhilarating, but mostly I couldn’t wait to savor the spoils.
Before I knew it, Hyrum had hoisted himself up and over the top of the dumpster and disappeared from sight.
“You’re next,” Heber whispered. He squatted in front of the tailgate and hoisted me up until I could reach the edge of the dumpster opening. I swung my legs over and dropped inside.
My eyes adjusted quickly to the shadowy darkness inside the dumpster, and Hyrum and I got to work. We knew the rest of our family would serve as lookouts and signal if someone walked or drove by, or far worse, if someone from the store came out the service entrance. The exit plan was always the same—find a place to hide either inside or outside the dumpster.
I found a wide, flat box of overripe oranges. I leaned in for a quick whiff of the sweet-smelling fruit before I hefted the box over my head to Heber, who was standing next to the container. Hyrum and I worked quickly, sifting through packaging, old newspapers, boxes, and bins to find anything salvageable to eat.
“Anna!” Hyrum hissed with excitement.
“Shhh!” I reprimanded him for being too loud.
“I found a crate you’re going to want to see.” He held it proudly at waist level, his eyes beckoning me to take a peek.
“This had better be worth it,” I muttered, as I picked my way over a couple of mounds of garbage.
“It is.”
I peered into the box. Ice cream. I placed my hand on one of the two cartons. Not exactly freezing, but still cold. I grinned at Hyrum. “I hope one of them is chocolate.”
Hyrum stacked up some boxes from the crate and carefully leaned over the top of the dumpster and handed them to Heber.
I found a couple of gallon containers of milk in a corner. They were past the expiration dates, but so was most everything in the dumpster. As Mom said, those labels were guidelines the government required; they didn’t mean the food was bad—just that the store couldn’t legally sell them anymore. Why should we let it go to waste? We didn’t mind eating around the bruised spots in a banana or downing yogurt that tasted a little tangier than what most people enjoyed. These buried treasures added variety to our meager and mundane diet. Scraping my legs on the corroded metal and getting rust on my hands while going in and out of the dumpster was a small sacrifice for usually a big payoff.
I continued my search. Suddenly I stepped on something squishy and knew I’d found something good. I backed up a step, squatted, and peered into the darkness. Bananas! I loved the sweet smell and taste of overripe bananas, though truthfully, I’d never eaten a perfectly ripe one in my life. I tossed aside the two that I’d accidentally squashed when I stepped on them, but then I picked up the rest of the bananas to pass over the opening to Heber.
Right at that moment, I heard a hushed warning. Someone was coming! Hyrum and I hunkered down. I hoped whoever had interrupted our mission wouldn’t catch us stealing. I was looking forward to the bananas and the half-melted ice cream.
“It’s okay,” Heber whispered. “It was just a car going by. No one saw us.” Thank goodness. Although it had never happened yet, I knew that Mom would have to drive off and temporarily leave us in the dumpster if someone surprised her.
All in all, it was a good night of gardening. Hyrum and I had harvested two large boxes of apples, oranges, and bananas, two six-packs of yogurt, three gallons of milk, several cartons of sour cream and cottage cheese, and—of course—the coveted box that contained two half-gallons of ice cream.
Hyrum hoisted me to the top of the dumpster, and I grabbed Heber’s hands to be guided back onto the tailgate of the station wagon. The ten of us squeezed back into the car, holding large boxes on our laps for the drive home. A variety of smells permeated the car, and we chattered about what we would eat first.
Because we had found the ice cream, Hyrum and I were heroes. Although it was strawberry instead of chocolate, it was delicious. We passed the containers around in the car and took turns drinking the half-melted treat, finishing it all before we got home.
Once there, we each carried boxes into the tiny kitchen. Mom and Teresa quickly doled out the containers of yogurt, and Celia handed out spoons. During the handoff, my spoon clattered to the dirty floor. I didn’t care. I picked it up, wiped it on my even filthier jeans, and waited for my yogurt.
My family and I devoured everything that night, except for a couple of cartons of sour cream and cottage cheese. Both would be great on sandwiches the following day, enhancing the bean and mayonnaise combination. We didn’t go gardening as much as I would have liked, only a couple of times a week, but when the opportunity came, I always rose to the occasion.
THE SUMMER DRAGGED ON, with each week the same. Although it was wonderful not to have to go to the warehouse on Sunday, there were plenty of regular chores to do around the house. Wednesdays always seemed the longest to me, maybe because they marked the halfway point of the week. On one particular Wednesday, my muscles were especially sore from chipping gunk off a disgusting trade-in stove for hours. All I wanted to do was go home and fall into bed. I followed Celia to the station wagon and squeezed between her and Hyrum. With Yolanda and Teresa and their children, there were twelve passengers.
