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She didn’t like us horsing around when she was trying to concentrate on the road, and she wasn’t afraid to tell us.
    Mother Audrey differed from Mom in the way she handled discipline. She had a clear idea of how things should be run, and her preoccupation with order pervaded every aspect of her life, including her appearance. While Audrey’s eyes glasses would shift within the bounds of popular fashion, everything else about her style remained constant. The long skirts and blouses she wore during my childhood had become a kind of uniform, and she never changed her hairstyle: one wave on each side of her head, with the rest swept up in the back. During the rides to school, Mother Audrey tried to impart her beliefs about how we should conduct ourselves both at home and in school. Often her lectures upset my sisters. Sometimes they’d argue back. Other times they’d fester in silence, telling Mom about the confrontation when they got home.
    Part of what made the car rides so tumultuous was that this was one of the only times during the day that we were alone with Mother Audrey. Because our mother was concerned over the way that Mother Audrey reprimanded us, she tried to keep us separated from her. If we wandered into Audrey’s room, we would be shooed out. By that time, to ease the pressure, Audrey rarely interacted with our side of the family, spending much of her time in her bedroom with her own children. After school, Mom and Dad would hear about the day’s drive and inevitably the friction would grow, frequently culminating in an angry blowup in which Mom defended her children against being deemed as the only source of the trouble.
    Every school day began with a class called Devotional, taught by Warren Jeffs. The meeting room on the ground floor, which was used as a religious hall for Sunday and priesthood meetings, was enormous, half a football field long, but it still could not accommodate all of the Alta Academy students for Devotional, so the fourth-through twelfth-graders met in there, while students in the lower grades listened over the PA system from their classrooms. Every student, no matter his or her age, was expected to take notes, which were always reviewed and graded. The content of the Devotional was mostly religious teachings, with readings and homework assignments from the Book of Mormon.
    Most of the students had to enter through the door at the very back of the room, and the age and grade level determined the section you sat in. This explained Teressa’s morning panic; at thirteen she’d have to walk all the way to the front with the older kids, directly in Warren Jeffs’s line of view. If she walked in late, she would meet one of his signature stern glares—no one wanted to receive one of those. We were all expected to treat Uncle Warren with the highest respect; he was not only our school principal but also the son of the prophet.
    Uncle Warren would start every morning by saying, “I am only here to do the prophet’s will,” a statement that always made it seem as though the lesson that followed had been dictated by his father and thus was the word of God. As students, we all strove to gain Warren’s approval. Having his good opinion and acknowledgment meant much more than the small prizes he would sometimes hand out for good deeds and high marks. Life at school could be miserable if you were not in Uncle Warren’s good graces.
     
    O ne night in the spring of first grade, our family was eating a thick, mushy spaghetti dinner—Mother Audrey was frugal with the sauce—when my father revealed some exciting news: our family was blessed to have a daughter marry the prophet. My sister Rachel was twenty-two years old, and Dad had received word that she was to be married to Uncle Rulon, who was eighty-one at the time. It seemed that all the prettiest girls were chosen to hold the honor of marriage to the prophet, but no one would dare say that out loud. My oldest sister was no exception.