The polygamists daughter, p.12
The Polygamist's Daughter, page 12
Celia grabbed our mother’s arm. “Mom, what happ—”
Mom turned and repeated curtly, “Did you hear me? Get in the car, now.”
We followed her out in single file and crammed into the station wagon. No one spoke until we had turned out of the warehouse parking lot and headed for the house. Kathleen finally broke the silence. “Mom, what’s wrong? Didn’t Dan give you our fifty dollars?”
“Sort of.”
Celia and I exchanged glances, and I shrugged.
Kathleen opened her mouth to ask another question, but Mom spoke first. “I have the money.” Then, in a low voice, as though she didn’t trust herself to speak more loudly, Mom related what had happened in their meeting. “Dan gave me fifty dollars, but only fifty dollars. Apparently the business didn’t do as well as he had hoped, which meant he didn’t have enough to give each child fifty dollars as promised. He was only able to give out that amount per family.”
Since Mom also cared for Mary Lou’s and Beverly’s children, that meant we had to split our meager bonus with seven other kids besides the seven of us. Someone did the math and announced that the individual share was about $3.57. Murmurs erupted from front to back throughout the car, and they grew in intensity and volume. Heber finally said out loud what we were all thinking. “That’s not fair.”
“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.”
A couple of days later, she picked me up from school and drove me to an optometrist’s office around the corner from the appliance store. A man with bushy, black eyebrows directed me to a chair in front of a giant machine and began moving different dials. With each new adjustment, I could see much better, until finally I was able to read the tiniest letters on the eye chart with ease.
Mom helped me pick out frames we could afford. I thought they made me look hideous, so I refused to wear them at school. I confided to Lillian how much I hated wearing my glasses, and she urged me to tell Mom, but I felt bad that my mother had spent so much money on me. Sometimes, out of desperation, I’d pull my glasses out of the case tucked into my desk, slip them on, quickly read the board, and then put them back, hoping no one saw me.
I took advantage of the Park Place Public Library, stopping there on my way home from school each day to check out books. It became a refuge for me and broadened my world. I had never lost my interest in photography, and from the wages I received from working at the store on weekends, I quickly upgraded my first camera to a Kodak 110 Instamatic. After finding the cheapest place within walking distance to buy film and get my pictures developed, I began regularly adding more photos of my classmates and siblings to the album Kathleen had given me for my birthday.
One morning, as I ate my corn bran cereal, I read to Mom an offer on the back of the box for a Polaroid camera. I knew that kind of camera was way out of my price range, but I longed for it anyway. Mom secretly began saving proofs of purchase from the cereal boxes, mailed in the form, and surprised me with the camera on my thirteenth birthday. I couldn’t believe I had received such an expensive gift, one that someone knew I wanted so badly. I felt as if it magically appeared because we had never been able to afford such luxuries before.
Because Mom operated the appliance business out of our house, I occasionally answered the phone to take down information from people who wanted us to come pick up their used appliances. I’d been listening to others take these calls for years, so I knew exactly what to do. On one of our preprinted cards, I wrote down the person’s name, address, phone number, and details about the appliance, including the type, make, and model number.
After I hung up the phone, I looked up the address in a big Mapsco book and located the corresponding square on the giant grid map of Houston that hung on the wall. Once I had taken several calls and pinpointed the pick-up locations, I could plot out a route for the driver that would take him to all of the houses without any backtracking. I became skilled with maps and directions, both giving them and getting to places with directions someone had given me. I quickly memorized the Houston highways and streets.
One afternoon, Mom had to run an errand and left me in charge. Minutes later, the doorbell rang, and when I opened the door, a middle-aged man was standing there.
“Welcome to Reliance Appliance,” I said.
“Hi there, little lady. I’m looking for a clothes dryer. Is there someone who could help me?”
“Sure, come on in. I’m Anna, and I can help you.”
He studied me curiously. “You can, huh?”
“Yes, sir. We have several dryers I can show you.” I led him downstairs to that section of the house and pointed out the features of the dryers we had in stock at the time. I knew exactly what to say, including the pros and cons of different makes and models, and the guarantee we offered on every appliance sold. Before Mom got back, I had sold my first appliance. I was busy writing up the receipt when she returned from her errand. I’ll never forget the shocked but pleased look on her face when she walked into the office. I had such fun that day.
Lillian and Mark cared about us and wanted good things for us, and they did everything they could to make that happen. Lillian was the daughter of Delfina, who was Mexican and my father’s first wife. Though I didn’t have many encounters with Delfina when I was a young child, I distinctly remember that when she was around, she used to wield her power over us by saying, “I’m the first wife. I can spank you if you don’t obey.” In actuality, Delfina never really had any power. My mom was the one with power. Delfina tried to exercise control, but when we learned the truth, we knew we didn’t have to obey her.
My half-sister and her husband also cared deeply about educating my siblings and me, since Lillian had experienced firsthand many of the same educational deficits we had from being moved so many times when she was growing up. She resolved to see her younger siblings have a better education than she had. Mark and Lillian read an article about Accelerated Christian Education (ACE) in either U.S. News & World Report or Time. Intrigued and impressed by the description of the Christian-based, church-run school curriculum, they attended the training in Lewisville, Texas, with the intention of starting a school for us kids.
At this time, the two of them were fringe members of my dad’s group, but they wouldn’t separate themselves completely because they were afraid for their lives if they left the group. In order to have an ACE school, you needed to have a church established first. Mark and Lillian obtained a 501(c)(3) status for their church. When that step was done, Mark and Lillian remodeled their garage and converted it into a classroom, complete with individual cubicles for us, offices, scoring stations, and other furnishings based on the instructions they’d received. We worked together enthusiastically as a family to make this exciting project happen.
When the schoolroom was ready, they pulled a dozen or so of us teenagers out of public school to begin this curriculum. Each school day would begin with opening exercises, a Bible “sword drill,” and prayer before we would go to our cubicles and learn at our own pace. That was part of what had attracted Mark and Lillian to this curriculum. Because all of us had gaps in our education, it was impossible to have a one-room schoolhouse approach. But with a self-taught, self-paced curriculum, each of us could pick up at the level we needed to. Lillian was always there if any of us had questions.
On Sundays, the church service mostly followed the Mormon format established by the group I had grown up with, with one interesting twist. Mark assigned each of us kids a different denomination to research, which involved interviewing a local clergy member. Each week, one of us gave a report during the church service on our particular “religion.” I had the Seventh-day Adventists, who intrigued me because they worshiped on Saturday instead of Sunday.
The night before starting our new home-based schooling plan, I had sat on Mom’s bed and rubbed her aching feet. She asked, “What do you think about this new approach to school?”
“I’m so excited!” My mind flitted briefly to the teasing and bullying I’d experienced at nearly every public school I’d ever attended. “I think I’ll do better, because I’ll be able to work at my own pace in each subject.”
“I also think you’ll do better if you start wearing your glasses.”
I hung my head. Lillian must have spoken to Mom about my refusal to wear my glasses.
“Anna,” Mom lifted my chin. “You are so smart, and I know you can do really well in school. But you have to be able to see to learn.”
“But I hate those glasses. My eyes look gigantic in them. No one else has to wear them, so they don’t understand.”
“I understand about not loving how you look. Do you think I’m one hundred percent happy with my appearance?”
I shrugged.
“Well, I’m not. For starters, I’d like to be about five or six inches taller. And I’d like to have thinner hips and thighs. I’ve been doing well at Weight Watchers, but I still have a way to go before I reach my goal weight.”
I smiled as I thought about Mom faithfully attending her Weight Watchers meetings—the only thing she did outside the group. She ate a lot of fish to help her weight-loss efforts, and none of us could stand the smell when she cooked it.
“But we can’t help things like our eyesight,” Mom continued. “That’s how God made you. And you have a choice tomorrow. You can refuse to wear glasses and suffer the consequences in your grades. Or you can choose to wear them and see just how well you can do academically.” She brushed a loose strand of hair off my forehead and kissed it lightly.
The next morning at school, as I joined the dozen or so other students, I sat down at my school desk in Mark and Lillian’s garage, reached into my bag, and pulled out my glasses. I gazed at the shiny, new classroom. I could see across the room now. After that, I wore my glasses every day.
DRESSED IN MY SUNDAY BEST—a wrinkled plaid skirt and dingy white blouse—I padded across the concrete floor in the appliance showroom to the phone that rang so loudly it echoed off the bare walls. I could smell that something had been burned in the kitchen upstairs. The person in charge of making the toast had probably been distracted and forgotten about the bread under the broiler in the oven.
It was August 16, 1981, a memorable Sunday for me because Mark and Lillian had recently promoted me from appliance cleaner at the warehouse to receptionist at the Gulf Freeway location of Reliance Appliance, aka our house.
“Anna can answer phones. She has a pleasant demeanor. And she thinks quickly,” Mark told Lillian.
I couldn’t believe any of the adults in my family noticed me, let alone would say such nice things about me. I assumed the adults around me thought about me the same way I felt about myself, as nothing but a nuisance and a bother. But apparently Mark and Lillian had enough faith in me for this new responsibility. After I thanked them, I silently thanked a God I didn’t actually have a relationship with. We still didn’t talk about Jesus or reference Him in conversation, but I was definitely becoming more aware of spiritual things and the basis of the Christian faith. Slowly, I was beginning to put the pieces together.
A couple of times a week, Mark ran ads in a local newspaper called the Greensheet. My favorite ad pictured a pirate with the headline “Wanted Dead or Alive! Reliance Appliance will pick up your unused appliances, working or not.”
So when the phone rang that morning, it was perfectly natural for me to answer the call. We had only one phone line for both business matters and personal calls, but we always answered it as a business phone until we knew who was on the other end. I picked up the phone and was about to begin my usual friendly greeting, “Reliance Appliance, how may I help you?” but before I could utter a word, I heard a familiar deep voice. An involuntary shiver snaked its way up my spine. Dan Jordan! Although I hadn’t thought of him for quite a long time, his voice immediately brought back my intense loathing for this man. In that split second, I realized that Mom had picked up one of the phones upstairs the moment I had and was on the line too.
