Free My Story by Chris Stewart, Elizabeth Smart

onions. He was just sitting there, waiting for his lunch.
    “I can help,” I said. “What do you want me to do?”
    She hesitated. I think she was surprised. Then she passed me a cutting board and grater, careful to keep the knife out of my reach. (Not that it mattered. I never could have hurt them, even in the most desperate times.) I started grating carrots, helping to prepare the food. They had onions, raisins, and carrots mixed with mayonnaise and rolled in tortillas for lunch. They ate like they were starving. I ate next to nothing at all.
    When they were finished, I asked if they wanted me to help clean up.
    “It’s okay,” Barzee said. “It’s your wedding day. You don’t have to help me anymore. You can go and cry again for now. But you’re gonna have to stop soon. You can’t cry your life away.”
    That started it all over again. My wedding day! Any composure that I had captured was immediately lost at that thought.
    “Please don’t hurt me again,” I begged him. “Please, please, just leave me alone.”
    Mitchell shook his head. “We’re man and wife. That’s a part of what we do now.”
    “No, no, please don’t do it again. Please … I’m begging you … you don’t have to do it. Please…”
    He was instantly angry. “It’s what we do!” he seemed to hiss.
    I kept on begging and crying. I couldn’t seem to stop.
    Watching me, he suddenly grinned in a menacing way. “Tomorrow we are going to be as Adam and Eve in the garden,” he said. “We’ll be his little children. Tomorrow, we’re all going to go naked. Then Hephzibah and I are going to demonstrate…”
    He went on to describe what they were going to do. Things I didn’t want to know about. I thought I was going to be sick to my stomach. The image was so disgusting. So humiliating. I couldn’t even think.
    I spent the rest of the day crying by myself.
    *
    I don’t remember if we ate dinner. All I remember is sitting there, alone. Night fell, and it grew cool. The mountain was dark. I could hear coyotes and crickets, the wind blowing through the tops of the maples. But that is all I heard. No voices calling out my name. No airplanes or helicopters. Nothing good at all.
    That night, we all slept in the tent. The cable wasn’t long enough and I couldn’t stretch out my leg. I curled in the fetal position against the side of the tent, not even on my pad. Mitchell curled up next to me, his arm around my shoulder. I recoiled at his touch. I pulled away as far as I could. He moved against me again. I was pressing so hard against the tent that I thought it was going to tear. I curled tighter into a ball. My rejection didn’t bother him. In fact, it seemed to urge him on, being able to dominate me like that. Domination and power. That was always his intent.
    The night wore on. I prayed as long and as hard as I had cried the day before. I was so scared and lonely. So afraid of what was coming.
    But never was I angry. Never did I blame God. I never thought, Why me? This isn’t right! This isn’t fair! I knew that He didn’t want these things to happen to me. This wasn’t an expression of His will. But I also understood that Brian David Mitchell had his free will. He had the freedom to choose. He could choose to be a good man or a devil. To be a devil is what he had chosen. And I also knew that God wouldn’t leave me to suffer through this alone. I just knew that was true. In fact, I never felt closer to God than I did throughout my nightmare with Mitchell. He did not leave me without comfort. I always felt Him near. And I felt the presence of my grandpa. I knew that he was near as well.
    As I felt a little of their comfort, exhaustion finally overcame me, taking me to a place where my captors couldn’t hurt me anymore.

14.
Adam and Eve
    There was only one time when I woke up in the middle of the night and thought that I was home. It didn’t happen on that first night. In fact, it didn’t happen until several months after I