Born Yesterday - New Edition: The True Story of a Girl Born in the 20th Century but Raised in the 19th

By Rachel Williams-Smith

This revised New Edition features additional stories, a new cover design, and updates on Rachel's life.

Though born in 1965, Rachel's story could have been set in the 1800s. Wearing long dresses and bonnets and living without electricity, modern medicine, or indoor plumbing, she and her two older brothers were

• Language: English
• Publisher: Empowerment Communication Press
• Release date: Nov 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9798989462919

Rachel Williams-Smith

Dr. Rachel Williams-Smith is a master communicator and life lessons coach who loves to share thoughts, insights, and stories that encourage others and help them to flourish.In the New Edition of her memoir, Born Yesterday, she shares her incredible, profoundly moving life story of growing up in extreme circumstances. From living in a bus without modern conveniences and wearing long dresses and bonnets to earning two doctoral degrees, her life has been full of unusual twists and contradictions. She shares her story to nurture hope that transformation is possible, no matter the challenges.Rachel serves as Dean of the School of Journalism and Communication at Southern Adventist University. In addition to her many other roles as an author, speaker, consultant, coach, wife, mother, and grandmother, she has earned degrees in Communication (Ph.D.), Educational Leadership and Management (Ed.D.), English (M.A.), and Language Arts Education (B.S.). Her candid communication style allows her to speak openly and practically about her experiences, captivating audiences and enabling them to apply what she has learned to their own lives. Rachel's story challenges people to believe in God's amazing faithfulness, His redemptive power, and restorative loving care, providing hope for new beginnings. Please visit Rachel Williams-Smith's website to learn more about her background and expertise, request an interview, or book her as a speaker.

Book preview

Chapter 1:

The Lawnmower

The lawnmower roared to life, the noise cutting through the morning air of the lazy suburban neighborhood in Orting, Washington. I stepped back from the mower and glanced about uneasily, expecting heads to appear in the windows or at the front doors of the houses across the street. But the doors remained shut, and the curtains over the windows did not move.

Carefully, I guided the mower forward across the lawn near the street.

I can do this! I told myself firmly, trying to push down the panic that clutched at my throat.

I reached the edge of the lawn, stealing another frightened glance at the nearby houses. No signs of life.

Exhaling just a bit, I turned around and started mowing in the opposite direction—and then froze.

A car was approaching from down the street.

In a flash, instinct took over. Bolting for cover, I ran and hid behind the house. The lawnmower sputtered and died. The car slowly drove by and disappeared from view.

Cautiously, I emerged from my hiding place and peered in both directions to make sure the street was clear.

No cars.

Taking a deep breath, I walked hesitantly over to the silent lawnmower. I depressed the handle and pulled the cord the way Ms. Tarbell had shown me. The motor roared to life. I hated it! Surely this time someone would look to see what was making all the noise. But the curtains didn’t move; no heads popped out from behind the closed doors.

I pushed my dark blue bonnet back a little on my head and hoisted my long, homemade skirt up just a bit, hoping the slight breeze would cool me. Once again, I began pushing the mower across the swath of uncut grass. I hadn’t covered more than a few yards when I glanced over my shoulder and saw another car meandering my way. Without a second thought, I fled once again and hid behind the house.

I had just restarted the mower and taken only a few steps when I saw yet another car coming. My instinct told me to hide, but a brand-new thought dawned on me and stopped my feet from taking flight: This is never going to end—cars are going to keep passing by!

I realized that if I ran every time a car came along, I would never finish mowing the lawn. I steeled myself against the almost overwhelming impulse, gripped the handle tightly, and continued pushing the mower.

The car slowly drove by.

My only defense was not to look, but in my mind, I saw eyes staring at me. Of course, they would stare—a sixteen-year-old girl mowing the lawn in a long, homemade dress and full-brimmed bonnet as if it were as normal as the summer sunshine. I was, indeed, an odd sight.

It took me another twenty minutes to finish mowing the lawn, and at least a dozen vehicles passed by. But I didn’t run and hide again. During those twenty minutes, I made my first real adjustment from a separate and isolated life toward a more typical, normal one.

By this point in my childhood and youth, I had already dealt with a lifetime of changes and challenges: living in fear of my father, wearing bonnets and long dresses, living off the grid without electricity or indoor plumbing, experiencing frostbite in my own bed, witnessing my brother horribly burned in a gasoline fire, undergoing intense religious indoctrination, and having my family break up. Experiences yet to come would include getting up to speed educationally despite testing at a first-grade level in math, learning to engage socially with others my age, being reduced to tears at the mere thought of actually donning a pair of pants, navigating the bewildering world of guys, being devastated by marital betrayal, making mistakes that almost led me to accept the lies that I had been told since childhood, and learning how to let go of extreme religion without losing my faith.

It would take years before I felt reasonably normal more often than not; decades before I fully adjusted. But on that day, I began my long journey of learning to live in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Part I:

Separation

Chapter 2:

Time of Trouble

Seven-year-old Jeff and eight-year-old Paul were silently trying to see whose legs could dangle down furthest over the sofa. I sat beside them, wishing my five-year-old legs were long enough for me to compete. But with sly glances, they let me know that mine didn’t even count. I stared at my feet and resisted the urge to scoot forward because I knew I might draw Mom or Dad’s attention to the fact that I wasn’t really listening.

During our daily evening worship time, they were once again talking about how Jesus would be coming back soon. I wondered if my legs would almost reach the floor, like Paul’s did, before Jesus returned. Dad said that probably none of us would become teenagers on this earth. If we did, we would never reach the end of our teen years in this world. I wondered if I would be able to make it through the Time of Trouble.¹ It sounded so scary, but Mom and Dad said it had to happen before Jesus would return. And then, what if I made it through the Time of Trouble but couldn’t go to heaven?

One Friday evening I lingered on the sofa after a particularly long worship period focused on the second coming of Christ and watched my father sitting at his desk. He was wrapped in serious contemplation. With his back to me, head bent over the Bible and engrossed in thought, Dad didn’t look scary like he usually did; in fact, just then he looked like a saint. Five feet, four inches tall, my Dad had thin lips, a Roman nose, and white skin which often caused others to mistake him for Caucasian. The only giveaway was the crinkly texture of his flaming red hair. At this moment, his normally stern, almost angry expression had gentled some, his mind engrossed in his favorite subject, the Bible prophecies of Daniel and Revelation, and his eyes with a faraway look.

I decided that, considering how much time Dad spent reading the Bible and the writings of Ellen White,² he certainly was going to go to heaven when Jesus returned. I, on the other hand, could hardly read, and I certainly didn’t spend time studying like he did. How could I know I’d be saved?

Suddenly, a brilliant idea popped into my head. I jumped down from the sofa and ran to him.

Daddy, I announced, when Jesus comes, I’m going to make sure I’m standing close to you, so that when you start to go up, I can just grab onto your coattails and go right up to heaven with you! The idea made perfect sense to me. But then Dad explained that nobody would go to heaven riding on someone else’s coattails.

Worships had not always been so scary. Born in 1965, I was two when we kids moved with my mother and father, Mae and Paul Williams, onto the Torrejón Air Base in Spain where Dad was being stationed. We’d sometimes have Friday evening worship outside on the lawn with another military family who had four small children. One was named Melonie, and my brothers and I would always request, In My Heart There Rings a Melody, so we could switch melody for Melonie just to tease her.

There were many fun things about living on the military base, including getting to play sometimes with a girl named Christy while my brothers were in kindergarten. Four-year-old Christy one day showed me a picture book of fairy tales—Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Mary and her little lamb, the gingerbread men, and the house made from a shoe. And she showed me another about a jolly round man named Santa Claus, his elves, and a red-nosed reindeer named Rudolph. The next time Mom and I visited, I snuggled up behind a stuffed rocking chair and read the books, drinking in all the magic.

Mommy, please tell me the story of Santa Claus, I begged as we walked back home. Mom, five-foot, three inches tall, was round and cuddly, her skin the color of maple syrup, her eyes and short hair black as coal.

No, honey, Mommy patiently replied. We don’t believe in fairytales. Fairytales are not true. I’m not going to tell you lies, honey.

I know they aren’t true, Mommy, but I just want to hear the stories. Mom didn’t understand that the very reason I loved the stories so much was because they were make-believe! I don’t know what is was, but my imagination, probably like that of many very young children, was very strong, and the fairytales seemed to fuel me like nothing else ever had.

But plead as I might, Mom would not tell me fairytales or about Santa and his reindeer.

Our home was a second-floor unit, and the outdoor stairs, with the railing covered with thick green ivy, led to the backyard, which was bordered by a wall. Beyond the wall was the village down below where Mom often took my brothers and me and shopped, despite the military base warning to avoid locally grown produce. She said the prices were too good to ignore. It was on one of these occasional trips that I discovered one way the locals kept meat fresh without refrigeration. I saw an alligator tied to a pole and a section of its tail being chopped off for a villager who wanted to purchase fresh meat.

Once I saw a few minutes of a bullfight on our downstairs neighbor’s black-and-white television and was fascinated, mostly by an obsession with figuring out a way to save the bull. Occasionally, on Saturday nights, we would get to visit a nearby amusement park and have incredible fun in the haunted house, the crazy house, and the maze of mirrors.

We went to church every Saturday, and Paul, Jeff, and I would immediately be surrounded by loving people who jabbered in excited voices, giving hugs and kisses and pinching our cheeks—which we absolutely hated! Since the services were entirely in Spanish, Mom and Dad brought along coloring books for us and books for themselves to read. I had no way of knowing, but the more they read, the more convinced they became that Jesus would return soon and the world would come to an end. They began considering ideas for radically altering our lifestyle in preparation for the impending apocalypse.

We kids, however, had no idea that change was on the horizon. We fought and played and did most things that young children do, and life seemed good. The worst experience in my conscious memory during this period of my life was falling off a bike while learning to ride and cutting my forehead on a sharp rock. Mom, herself a registered nurse, rushed me to the Army hospital nearby for stitches. The wound healed, leaving behind a small, permanent mark on my forehead. However, what my conscious memory did not retain were compromising experiences that permanently marred my relationship with my father.

Looking back, this was the happiest, most normal portion of my childhood, with memories of my mom, neighborhood kids, and occasionally my brothers. In my memories, my father does not exist, with the exception of two pleasant experiences: taking us all to the fair with its fun house and other attractions and visiting his art studio filled with his beautiful collection of original paintings. Mom snapped a picture of us standing together behind one with a stunning ocean scene, me waving happily from under his arm.

Chapter 3:

Fear

By the time I was five years old, fear was a constant part of my life—to the point that I began developing stomach ulcers, so Mom told me. I’d drape myself over the arm of the couch or across my mother’s lap and scream until the pain subsided. Mom would give me yogurt and other such foods to help sooth my tummy, and her gentle and patient attention also helped soothe some of the anxiety inside me. But no amount of yogurt could ease my greatest fear—of Dad.

That was one thing I knew by the time we returned from Spain and were living once again in our small suburban home in Huntsville, Alabama.

Though actually short, to five-year-old me, Dad was a giant, especially when he was having one of his rages. Sometimes he’d stand in the middle of the living room, shouting at the top of his lungs. His knuckles would be clenched into tight fists, his normally white-skinned face flushed a deeper crimson than his flaming red hair. I’d stand transfixed, unable to move. I could neither hide nor tear my gaze away from his massive head, as with eyes squeezed shut and thin white lips curled, he’d rage on and on.

Yet when Dad was down on the floor playing a rousing game of horsey with my brothers, he didn’t look so scary, and what they were doing seemed like so much fun. I would watch from my safe perch on the sofa, as my desire to play wrestled with my fear of him. Finally, I’d jump down and run over to join in.

Let me play horsey too! I’d cry.

But somehow, just at that moment, the fun would always end.

Okay, Dad would say. Game’s over now. Time to stop.

Let me play, I’d squeal. I want a horsey back ride! I’d struggle to lift my leg over his back, but to no avail because he would stop being a horsey and get to his feet.

You’re a girl, he’d say. You might get hurt. Game’s over.

Daddy, play with me too, I’d beg, but he always refused.

Dad liked to sit in the living room and read the newspaper in the evening. I was loitering on the sofa one evening, staring at the upright newspaper. Curiosity tugged at my mind about the man who sat in the stuffed rocker, hidden behind the newspaper.

An image played in my head—a little girl I’d seen in church, sitting on her daddy’s lap. I studied the back of the newspaper and wondered if I dared sit on my daddy’s lap too.

My throat closed tightly at the thought, yet the idea ignited a spark that propelled my feet across the short distance. Slipping between his knees, I ducked under the newspaper and pushed myself up on one of his legs.

Dad’s reaction was swift. He dropped the paper and shoved me off his leg. He glanced downward, his face turning a flaming red. He shifted uncomfortably, then looked up and said huskily, You’re getting to be quite a big young lady—too big to sit on Daddy’s lap like that.

Clearing his throat, he continued, If you want to sit on Daddy’s lap in the future, you must sit like this. And with that Dad put his legs together, picked me up, and placed me sideways at the very edge of his lap, across both knees.

In an instant, I knew.

I sat there a moment, already mentally gone but afraid to move away too quickly.

Do you understand? he asked.

I nodded and got down.

I never again sat on Dad’s lap, begged him to play horsey, or voluntarily sought to be physically close to him. Though I did not know until decades later, memories from when I was two and three years old, lurking just beneath the surface of conscious thought, had laid the foundation for that sudden insight.

What I did know consciously was that being alone with Dad was terrifying. Mom mostly stayed home because Dad said a mother’s place was in the home, but every now and then she would dress up in her nurse’s outfit and work a dayshift, leaving Dad to look after me. As soon as Mom left, I would go outside and play with my kitten Heidi, dig little holes with my plastic hand shovel, or make dirt pies. Other than using the bathroom—only when I simply couldn’t hold it another minute—I would stay outside all day long until Mom came back, or my brothers got home from school.

One afternoon the sky clouded over, and raindrops began to fall. I looked around for shelter and found refuge between the bushes under the overhang of the roof. I sat there, hugging my five-year-old legs to my chest, hoping against hope that Dad would forget I was outside. After a few minutes, though, he came out, looked around, and spotted me between the bushes. I sat stock still like a rabbit, staring at the ground.

After a pause Dad said quietly, You don’t have to stay out here and get wet.

I’m fine, I said too quickly, my voice squeaky and shrill.

Dad stood there a moment longer, just looking at me; then he shook his head, slowly turned, and went back inside.

Mom never worked on a school day after that.

Being alone with my brothers wasn’t terrifying; it simply didn’t feel safe. We were always fighting, and I could never win without my personal shield and protector present—Mom.

Mom was my one and only safe place, and I learned early on that she was also a powerful weapon in battles with my brothers. By the time I was five, though, Mom wasn’t always around to save me from my brothers.

Once they got the idea of making slingshots from branches and rubber bands. They used a stone for the shot, and I found myself running for all I was worth to keep from being the target.

It was the same with the bows and arrows they next made. We were in the backyard one afternoon, and they proudly showed me their creations. I became uneasy, though, as I noticed they had stepped back and turned in my direction as they picked up their stone-tipped arrows.

You’re not going to shoot those at me, are you? I asked, my voice betraying me with a slight quiver. I-I could get hurt.

Well, then, you better run! Paul said, as he and Jeff began fitting the arrows in their bows.

I started backing away, wailing in protest, But if I run, you’re going to shoot at me!

Their response was the same: You’d better run!

I fled like a deer.

In my mind’s eye, I can still see those arrows arching gracefully through the air toward me. Of course, I told Mom, and they got in trouble. However, my father said nothing—and I cannot recall him ever rebuking my brothers no matter what they said or did to me. I think it was because I was a girl.

Sometimes on summer nights, Dad would take the boys outside and point out things in the night sky. He would show them how to calculate the distance of a thunderstorm by counting the lag time between a lightning strike and the subsequent thunder roll. He would take them to the end of the driveway, and they would watch the lightning display in the clouds and talk about the wind speeds and temperature. I stood in the front door and watched but never attempted to join them.

Somehow, I understood that though my brothers and I were growing up in the same house, we lived in very different worlds. They had privileges, like standing at the end of the driveway with Dad and learning about lightning, clouds, stars, and wind currents, because they were boys. I stood in the dark doorway and simply looked on because I was a girl.

The inferiority of being a girl was pretty clear to me by age five. And it was always tied somehow to automatically being evil.

Once, as our babysitter was telling my brothers and me good night, I stuck my thumb into the waistband of my pajamas and pulled downward for just a second. My brothers said, Ooooh! and the babysitter put her hand to her mouth. I knew right away I must have done something bad. I went to bed feeling dread inside. But it was fear and utter confusion that I felt hours later when the sting of two belts startled me from my sleep. It took a moment to remember what earned me a whipping from both parents.

The middle-of-the-night whipping had come with the sharp rebuke that I was acting like a Jezebel.³ I didn’t know what a Jezebel was, but it wouldn’t be the last time I’d hear it.

I think Mom probably participated in spanking me that night because in her own way, she was trying to protect me. But sometimes, her protection was more harmful than helpful, like when she told me about rape when I was five years old.

Naturally a very friendly, outgoing child, I one day spied a car pulling up into our driveway and ran out to greet the stranger, who turned out to be a White salesman. He was a very nice man to talk to, but when Mom came out the front door a few minutes later, she looked furious. Whatever the man was selling, Mom didn’t care about it in the least. No thank you, she said, dismissing him abruptly. Taking me by the collar, she hauled me inside. After a good lecture and sound spanking from her, I definitely understood that I had made a mistake. Tearfully, I said I was sorry and would never go up to a stranger’s car again, not even in our driveway.

But Mom wasn’t finished; she had me sit down on a tall chair in the kitchen and told me about rape until I graphically got the picture. She told me a story about when she was a teenager and was followed one night by a man, and how an angel stepped out of the wall and saved her from being raped. I was so scared by what I had just learned that all I could do was cry.

To make matters worse, my brothers came home from school and crowded into the kitchen to find out why I was being such a baby. So she repeated the story while I stuck both fingers in my ears and screamed. I was sitting in a tall chair at the kitchen table, trapped, unable to move, escape, or hide. Not only had I learned something horrible about the world I lived in, but now I knew my brothers knew about it too, and they knew that I knew. Not only that, but they could tell I was frightened beyond my ability to hide or pretend I wasn’t, and that gave them power, and it was Mom, my one and only safe place, who made me feel so helpless and terrified.

Still, overall I felt safe with Mom. I would follow her around throughout the day, listening to her stories, playing near her, and helping where I could. She’d teach me things, like how to spell my name, and told me Rachel meant little lamb. Sometimes when we were in the living room, she pointed to a picture on the wall of Jesus leading a flock of sheep, and in His arms was a little lamb. I could see the contentment in the lamb’s eyes and knew without a doubt that I was that little lamb. I was special to Jesus, and at the age of five, I felt my heart respond with longing to know who He was and belong to Him.

Chapter 4:

Church and Beyond

It was 1970 and 1971, and we attended church every Sabbath on the campus of Oakwood College (now University), a historically Black Seventh-day Adventist school in Huntsville, Alabama. Church was held in Ashby Auditorium, the gymnasium, and there, we’d sing songs like I Surrender All and Jesus Paid It All. I couldn’t put into words what the songs meant to me, but I’d feel a tugging at my heart that made me want to open up to the warmth, light, and love calling to me through the songs and let it inside.

I started asking to be baptized. Every week at the end of his sermon when the minister gave an appeal to join the church, I was the first, and often the only, person to go forward. Yet week after week, it was as though no one saw me. The minister and the deacons always seemed to be waiting for someone else. They would smile at me but then ignore me. I thought that maybe they forgot each time that I was standing there. So I would go back to my seat with my mother and father and wait until the next week and go up again. My parents never once stopped me from going.

One Sabbath the minister came over to my parents as they were leaving church and asked them why they let me come up front week after week. Mom and Dad glanced at each other, and Dad half smiled and lowered his head, not responding immediately. I felt tension in the air and knew the pastor was annoyed—which didn’t seem unusual. From what I could see, Dad and the preacher, tall and with an authoritative air, didn’t like each other very much.

He usually tried to hurry Dad through the line of people who came to shake his hand and congratulate him on his sermon. Dad always had something to say, and the pastor never smiled about it like he did when people ahead or behind us spoke to him. Just a few weeks before, I had overheard Dad remark while gripping his hand, Pastor, I thought I’d just write down here… My father waved a tiny notepad. "…how many times you mentioned the words ‘God,’ ‘Jesus,’ or ‘the Bible’ in your sermon.

You know how many times it was? Dad asked, leveling an intense gaze on him. The pastor’s jaw clenched tightly.

Without pausing for an answer, my father leaned in and spoke.

Not one time.

The pastor jerked his hand free and turned away as Dad ushered us out the door.

Now standing there with the pastor staring down at the top of my head, I held my breath and waited. Dad looked up finally and smiled

Reviews for Born Yesterday - New Edition

[MLW · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Rachel Williams-Smith shares the remarkable story of her unusual upbringing and subsequent journey to wholeness with sensitive candor and an emphasis on God’s redeeming love—for all involved.