The House of My Mother: A Daughter's Quest for Freedom

The two weeks that Shari spent in the house with Jodi were “a bizarre, chaotic blur” (156). Jodi was experiencing mysterious visions and trances, and Ruby and Kevin performed “spiritual interventions” to help her heal. Jodi recorded all of these visions, convinced they would one day be “personally validated by God Himself” (157).

Ruby spent most of her time locked away with Jodi in Shari’s room, while Kevin became “a shell of his former self” (157). They left only for occasional Dairy Queen runs and trips across the border to Mexico to stock up on antibiotics for the impending apocalypse. Ruby was ecstatic to have Jodi in the house. For the first time, she had close female friends, and Kevin was feeling more and more shut out. He was forbidden from going upstairs and could only return after leaving the house if he had Ruby’s permission. Jodi’s presence represented “a fundamental shift in [the Frankes’] family dynamic” (159), and the situation was becoming frightening even by Ruby’s extreme standards.

One day, Shari came home to an empty house. She snuck into her room to grab some books and was surprised to see it looking like a “honeymoon suite” full of candles and massage oil. Late that night, she noticed Ruby sneaking out of Jodi’s room, looking “mischievous.” The next day, Shari ran into some queer friends at the mall and causally mentioned Jodi’s name. One of her friends suggested that Jodi was “so closeted,” confirming Shari’s suspicions. Jesus taught that one should live and worship “in spirit and in truth” (163), and Shari felt that the worst part of whatever was happening between Jodi and Ruby was the lies and secrecy around it.

During these difficult weeks, Derek became Shari’s only confidante, always assuring her that she had his unconditional support.

Moving into her new dorm room at Birmingham Young University was a huge relief for Shari. For the first time, she could leave behind the “fake smiles and performative laughter” (164) and try to live a normal life. However, being truly alone for the first time felt “strange.”

Shortly after settling in, she received a text from Derek inviting her to his office; he had gotten her some gifts to celebrate the new school year. On the drive over, Shari began to feel an inexplicable panic, and by the time she arrived at Derek’s office, she was having a full-blown panic attack. Derek insisted that “skin-to-skin contact” would relax her (166). Shari was unable to speak as he removed her shirt and began to touch her. She struggled but then began to disassociate.

Back in her room, Shari lay on her bed, horrified at her “sin.” She felt “[d]irty,” “[s]hameful,” and “[r]uined” (167). When she was finally able to move, she checked her phone to find missed calls and texts from Derek. She felt guilty for making him worry and texted him back. He demanded to know if she was talking to any boys, replying “good” when she told him that she wasn’t.

Shari tried to pretend that Derek’s assault never happened. He continued to text and call her and would become possessive or angry if he thought she was spending time with boys. Rationally, Shari knew she should distance herself from Derek, but she still found his attention validating and fulfilling, especially as her father became more and more distant. When Shari went home for the odd visit, she was greeted by a “sad-sack of a father” (170) whom she barely recognized.

Thanksgiving was approaching, and Jodi’s continued presence made Shari unsure about her family’s plans. When Ruby called to tell her that they were going to spend the holiday at Jodi’s house, Shari immediately declined, insisting she had too much homework to make the four-hour drive. Instead, she spent the day with her paternal grandparents. When her grandfather asked gently if everything was “okay” with her family, Shari insisted she just wanted more time with her grandparents. Part of her wanted to tell them the truth, but she also appreciated the ability to “pretend that everything was normal” (174).

When dorms closed for Christmas break, Shari had no choice but to return home for two weeks, where she continued sleeping on the couch because Jodi was still installed in her bedroom. Kevin was sleeping alone in the bed he used to share with Ruby, while she spent the nights with Jodi. On her first night back, Ruby insisted that she and Jodi take Shari and her two eldest sisters out for a girls’ dinner. However, 7 PM, the appointed dinner time, came and went with no sign of the women. Shari made pasta for her siblings and settled in to watch a movie.

An hour later, Ruby and Jodi came downstairs, ready for dinner. Ruby was furious that Shari had already eaten. She warned her daughter that no man would ever want to marry someone so “selfish.” When Shari appeared unbothered, Ruby reminded her she was “only an invited guest” (177). Shari leaped up, ready to take her things and go, but Ruby rushed out of the house, accompanied by Jodi.

They returned late, after everyone but Shari had gone to bed. Both were in tears, and Jodi explained that Shari and Ruby’s argument had reminded her of being “abandoned” by her own daughter. Shari realized how much it would hurt both her and her mother if she truly walked away from her family, and she found herself crying, too, as she apologized.

Just before Christmas, Ruby and Jodi announced that the two youngest Franke siblings would not be receiving Christmas gifts to “[teach] them not to be selfish and entitled” (179). Jodi insisted that “[c]hildren are not entitled to a magical childhood;” they must not “just expect love and presents” when “[m]any have nothing at all” (180). Forced to open her own gifts in front of her siblings, Shari felt furious and “impotent.” As the eldest, she was supposed to protect her siblings, but she felt she could do nothing because she “was drowning in the same storm” (181).

Back at school, she felt intensely guilty for leaving her siblings to deal with Jodi and Ruby’s “emotional apocalypse.” When Kevin texted to tell Shari that Jodi had recovered and was moving out, her initial relief quickly turned to worry. She feared that Jodi’s departure would create a “void” in Ruby’s life, and she would take her frustrations out on her children. On the other hand, it was possible that Ruby would spend more time with Jodi in Ives, four hours away, giving her family more “breathing room.” Shari was ready to help care for her siblings if Ruby was around less often, even thinking that it would give her an excuse to get away from Derek.

As Derek became more physical, he told Shari that “he was training [her] for marriage” (182). Deep down, she knew that what he was doing was wrong, but she convinced herself that he was helping her “get over [her] issues and be a better wife” (182). Nevertheless, depression began to sneak in. Shari had agreed to share her iPhone location with Derek, who tracked her every move and sent “a relentless stream” (182) of text messages. Shari felt like vomiting when his messages became tainted with “longing and desire” (183), but she convinced herself that without Derek, she would be truly alone.

One day, she gathered her courage and “meekly” told Derek she didn’t think it was “right” for her to be with him. He scoffed at her concerns, reminding her that he was an elder at the church and insisting he would never “jeopardize [his] calling” (185). Shari didn’t argue. She didn’t find him attractive, but she was “addicted to the scraps of validation he gave [her]” (186).

Shari finally became desperate enough to text Ruby, telling her she felt like she didn’t love her. Ruby waited 24 hours to respond before telling Shari her text contained “a lot of aggression” and suggested Shari “invite” her to discuss it in person (187). Shari, Ruby, and Kevin had dinner at a nearby restaurant, and Ruby insisted that Shari was “selfish” and “hiding something.” Shari couldn’t tell her about Derek and ended the meal sobbing and apologizing for her selfishness.

Afterward, she was “catatonic” in bed for four days. She was consumed “with paranoia and self-doubt” to the point where she could no longer tell “what was real and what wasn’t” (188). She was terrified of being cut off from her family, and she still felt that Derek was the only one who was there to help her, despite his abuse. He took advantage of how Shari had “been trained to fall in line,” and she used her “big fake smile” to cope, as she had always done (188).

Meanwhile, Shari was learning about “abuse of power” in her classes, but she was unable to apply these concepts to her life.

Towards the end of the semester, Shari’s bishop recommended she try therapy. When she told him Ruby wouldn’t let her, he promised the church would cover the expense, so Shari began seeing a new therapist called Dana. She made an effort to let her guard down and be honest. She was shocked when Dana described Ruby’s behavior as “emotional abuse.”

Dana told her that it took strength to seek help, and Shari felt as if a “fog was lifting;” all those years of “dysfunction” and “chaos” were Ruby’s doing, not Shari’s (192). However, Shari still wasn’t ready to open up about Derek. She mentioned an older “friend” who was like a “father figure” but refused to say more.

In the summer of 2022, the Frankes were together as a family for the last time when they gathered for their annual family photos, which turned out to be “the most awkward family photos in the history of family photos” (195). The tension between the Frankes was impossible to hide.

The family generally took a trip to the Wasatch Mountains every year, but that summer, Kevin and Ruby announced that Chad and the two youngest siblings would be left behind for being too “selfish.” Shari, who wouldn’t go because of her classes, happily agreed to watch her youngest siblings but asked if Kevin would help with gas money for her daily commute to campus. This was agreed to, and while the Frankes were in the mountains, Kevin invited Shari and Chad to come for the day. Shari agreed and asked if her parents could still cover gas. Kevin responded, calling her request “brazen and impolite” and warning her that “[o]bsessing over and pursuing money will destroy every beautiful relationship in [her] life” (196).

Shari was shocked; her father sounded just like Ruby. After so many years of complying with Ruby’s every wish, Jodi’s control and influence “finished the job” of making Kevin “a pliant puppet” (197).

Kevin was obligated to make weekly confessions to Jodi, and she began to pull out incidents from his past, like when he snuck a young Shari a bowl of ice cream under the table after she’d refused to eat dinner, as examples of his “entitlement.” She argued that speaking to female coworkers illustrated his “lustfulness” and “extreme distortion,” and convinced him that his desire to hug his daughters was “sinister and perverse” (199). These were all tactics that Jodi frequently used to destroy families, punishing “men she resented” for taking “women she couldn’t have” (199).

After Shari confided in Mr. Haymond in high school, she became close with him and his family. They eventually gave her a key to their home and welcomed her any time, with no questions asked. One evening in July 2022, Shari drove to their house to avoid being alone in her dorm. When she arrived, however, the house was empty. She settled in to watch some TV, but she was interrupted by a call from her father. Kevin announced that Ruby had “invited [him] to leave the family home” to “work on [him]self” (200). This was the next step in Jodi’s playbook. He was taking Chad with him; they would leave for “at least a year” and would have no contact with anyone in the family besides Shari (200).

The Haymonds returned to find Shari sobbing on their couch. They put her to bed, and the next morning she woke up to another text from Kevin, this time announcing that she should not contact him or Chad until they reached out to her. Furious, hurt, and confused, Shari stayed in the Haymonds’ guest room for days.

After a week, Ruby texted, inviting Shari to lunch to discuss Kevin’s departure and telling her she hoped the experience would make her “humbler.” Shari refused, and weeks went by with no contact from Ruby. She felt that her father’s “greatest weakness was his selflessness” (204); he had spent years in service to Ruby, and now he was exiled. The separation was meant to be temporary, but Shari knew that Ruby and Jodi wanted him gone for good.

Sophomore year began, and Shari moved into an off-campus house with two other girls. They were an odd trio, but the company comforted Shari. She was still involved with Derek and still struggling with the disappearance of her father and brother. Kevin refused to answer her text messages, and Shari had recently discovered that Chad was living nearby but hadn’t told her. She was desperate for news of her brother and finally managed to track down his address. She went to visit with a care package of Chad’s favorite snacks, but he restated his loyalty to Ruby and wouldn’t speak to Shari.

By the time Shari returned to her apartment, news of her visit to Chad had reached Ruby, who sent a lengthy text claiming Shari had chosen to “disconnect” from the family. Ruby would consider discussing the matter with her when she was ready to “humble [her]self and acknowledge [her] aggression and deception” (211).

Shari took refuge in the Haymonds’ house, who insisted she could stay as long as she needed without prying into the new family drama that brought her there. Derek, however, wasn’t pleased with this arrangement. He sent a barrage of “carefully crafted barb[s] designed to sow doubt” (214), insisting that she was imposing on the Haymonds and would soon outwear her welcome. Finally, Shari summoned her courage to ask Mrs. Haymond if she was “absolutely, positively sure” (214) that staying there wasn’t a problem. Both Mr. and Mrs. Haymond insisted she was a part of their family.

One day in therapy, Dana told Shari about the “fawn response,” a trauma response in which an individual does everything they can to appease their abuser, such as “smiling and nodding while […] screaming inside” (215). Immediately, Shari recognized herself in Dana’s description. The realization was so strong that she blurted out her tendency to fawn instead of “fight back with Derek” (216) before she could stop herself. Dana remembered the “older gentleman” that Shari had mentioned before. Shari couldn’t say more yet, but she felt relieved to have finally said his name aloud. She also understood that her inability to say no to him “wasn’t weakness, it was a pattern etched into [her] very being by years under Ruby’s thumb” (216).

With Ruby threatening to cut her out of the family once and for all, Shari suddenly remembered that her mother had access to her bank account. She transferred all of her savings into a new account and braced herself for Ruby’s “retaliation.” Sure enough, the next day, she received a notification that she had been removed from the family insurance policy. She would need to secure her own car insurance, but she remembered that the title to her car was at the family home. She composed a “painfully polite” text, copying in their congregation president “as a form of emotional backup” (218).

Ruby responded that getting her the title was no problem; she didn’t have to stoop to “lying and manipulating” by bringing Jim Nelson into the thread (218). They arranged for Shari to pick up the title from a family friend the following week. However, in the intervening days, a neighbor phoned Shari to tell her that Ruby had left her younger siblings alone at home for five days. Horrified, Shari contacted DCFS to request a welfare check. The children were all found in good health, and the police did nothing. Ruby, however, learned that Shari had been the one to call DCFS, and was furious.

Adding to the stress, word had gotten out that Kevin and Chad had moved out, and the internet had exploded with rumors about the Frankes. Shari posted a story on Instagram announcing that she wasn’t speaking to her family and wasn’t associated with ConneXions. She asked for privacy and an end to harmful speculation to make room for healing. She knew that the story would incense Ruby further, but Shari was finally ready to stand up for herself.

In the midst of this drama, the prospect of retrieving the car title was terrifying. Shari asked Mrs. Haymond to accompany her, and sure enough, Ruby was there to “ambush” her. Ruby accused Shari of spreading lies about her, betraying her, and being “a traitor” to her family. She told her not to contact anyone in the family again until she was ready to apologize. Mrs. Haymond, who had been standing silently beside Shari, asked Ruby to hand over the papers and steered Shari back to the car. It was the last time Shari would interact with Ruby.

In the car, Shari finally broke down. The pain of being “disowned” was so severe she felt like “part of [her] soul had been ripped away” (225). Mrs. Haymond let her grieve, holding her hand as they drove away.