Heaven's Harlots: My Fifteen Years in a Sex Cult by Miriam Williams Page A

pregnant came to see my delivery. She was at my side stuffing my mouth with crushed ice in between my contractions. I chewed on the ice and savored the cool, fresh liquid quickly before returning to heavy breathing.
    Cal arrived about 6 A. M. By this time, I could tell that Sheriah was worried. Cal’s first sight when he came in the door of the delivery room was the view of my legs wide open, a gaping, bloody birth canal, and me huffing and puffing in between contractions that were less than a minute apart.
    Sheriah called him outside.
    “I think something is wrong,” she said. “I want you to pray about it, but I am going to call for Mary. She is in New York, and she has had more experience than me with complications.” Mary arrived a few hours later and took over for flustered and exhausted Sheriah. Twelve hours had passed since I had first told Sheriah I was in labor, and she had missed a whole night’s sleep. Mary continued the job of stretching me with a renewed vigor, but I was so tired, and the pain was so intense that I could not feel the stretching.
    After each contraction, which now came only a minute apart while I was breathing hard and heavily, I asked for crushed ice. No one told me what time it was, but I noticed the light coming in through the window, so I knew it had been a long time. I also knew that we were not supposed to scream. Childbirth, we were told, was a natural function of the body and should not cause excess pain. If. I screamed, it would be a sign of lack of faith in the Word. The Bible, I had learned, said that it is God who delivers babies, so what was I worried about?
    But I could not bear the pain any longer. I took my last rhythmic breath and screamed for as loud and long as I wanted. I no longer cared what Mary or Sheriah or Cal, or anyone, would think.
    “The head—it’s here. Push! Push,” cried Mary!
    I took a breath and screamed through another push.
    “It’s a redhead! Push again!” Were they crazy? I didn’t have any strength left to push. I could not do it.
    “Push! Push!” The undeniable urge to push came again, and I pushed while a full body plopped out covered in mucus and blood. Mary held up a baby boy for me to see, and then she cut the umbilical cord and gave him to Sheriah to wash.
    I was ecstatic, but the work was not finished. Mary, who was very knowledgeable about childbirth, told me to stand up and squat so the afterbirth could come out. Then she washed me and helped me onto a clean, soft bed that had been prepared. Finally, they brought in the baby.
    He was a beautiful nine-pound infant. His perfectly rounded head was covered with bright red hair. Cal had been given a dream in which the baby had red hair and he wanted to name him after the Norse god of thunder. The day he had the dream, he had read a verse in the Bible about James and John being the “sons of thunder.” Although only Bible names were the rule in the Family, we named him Thor. As I adored him lying in the softness of my rounded arm and sucking firmly at my nipple, I thought that never again in my life would I be sad. The moment should have been eternal, but it was snatched away all too soon by Sheriah.
    “You have to get up and get dressed,” she barked. “You ripped pretty badly, and you will have to go to a doctor.” As she said the word “doctor,” I shuddered. We all knew that one went to a doctor only because of lack of faith. We had read about the sister who was in labor for three days, and when she finally went to the doctor, Mo said, she developed a spiritual problem. What was my problem?
    Oh, who cared? My baby was fine and healthy. That was all that mattered.
    Cal helped me to get dressed, and one of the brothers drove us to the nearest hospital. I sat in the emergency room for over an hour while Cal talked to the nurse.
    “They won’t take you,” he reported when he finally came back. “They said you are too much of a risk since you did not have the baby here in the