Effigy (17 page)

May 17th, 1867

Dear Daughter

The girl has just fetched me in a bowl of her soup the steam off it so foul I have directed her to bear it away again. Have you any bread I asked her. Yes Mother Burr. She will insist upon addressing me so. And cheese? Yes. Then bring me a little of each and no mould on either. Dorrie you will judge me peevish to have added this last but you cannot conceive of the specimens she has delivered to this bed. You may imagine her spiteful as I once did. I will confess I took a kind of bitter pleasure in the idea. But my girl you would be wrong.

She is a slattern no denying but the home she was raised up in schooled her so. The mother you might recall is famous for riding to Cedar on mule back with her house apron flapping and flour in her hair. Her dozen or so children could grow a fair crop of cabbages on the muck in their ears. The girl was the same when she came to us. I doubt she had ever washed there
and many another part besides. I know because it was I who bathed her on the day of their sealing.

Can you credit it Dorrie? We were in rooms at the Salt Lake House Mr. Burr having determined to strain our finances sorely and do the thing up in style. Yet he would not brook our stopping to visit you on the way home. He was so good as to inform me that we had taken holiday enough and there was work to be done back on the farm.

The girl had passed the previous night in her own room while I bunked in with Mr. Burr. That night after the ceremony we would switch places myself returning alone to the smaller room. But before that she had to be made ready. I stood her unclothed in the washtub and scrubbed her head to toe. I suppose I could have left this work to the women at the Endowment House but I chose not to. In this matter I cannot seem to explain myself except to say that I wanted to get a good look at her. Or more truthfully that I didn’t want him seeing any part of her I had not.

To this end I found myself faced with a particular challenge. While she didn’t pretend to any modesty when removing her dress and everything under it she clung stubbornly to her right stocking going so far as to step into the tub with it bunched about her ankle like a man’s sock.

I wonder Dorrie if you ever had occasion at Sunday Meeting to take notice of the girl’s limp. Perhaps not given the way you kept your eyes to yourself when in company. Suffice it to say she favours the left foot as the right is not entirely formed. This was no secret of course. Mr. Burr would never have rated such yellow locks if they hadn’t come part and parcel with a considerable flaw. The girl would have been snapped up by at least a Ward Bishop long since.

I was impatient with her perhaps even a little harsh. You
must remember I was on my knees before the glory of her eighteen years. I will admit to yanking at the stocking even to the point of threatening her balance but that was before I looked up and saw her face twisted and streaming with tears. Now child. The words were out before I thought them. Your mother is a tenderheart by nature Dorrie as I believe you know. I shan’t hurt you I said. Then I saw it was not pain she feared and I told her she must not be ashamed.

Plain enough sentiment but the look of wonder on her face told me she had never heard the like before. She bit her lip and shifted her weight to her good foot without a word. I peeled the stocking down to find a curled and filthy thing. Its smell was that of some poor creature crawled off to die. My girl you will judge me a liar when I tell you I felt nothing akin to disgust. When I tell you my throat was so swollen with pity I feared for a moment I would choke.

I would know that sensation again. Months perhaps even a year on when I was already beginning to suffer from a pooling in my feet and legs. The hour was late. I had been abed and sleepless in my discomfort for some time when I decided a poultice might afford me some relief. I was creeping to the kitchen each step a punishment when I spied them through the crack of the parlour door. This time it was Lym Mr. Burr who was on his knees. The girl was in my armchair a fact that would have irked me had it not been for the way she was holding her face in her hands. He had the stocking off. He was lifting the fist of her bad foot and touching it to his mouth. Dorrie you will pardon my plain talk. You are a married woman now and so I believe you will understand. A man’s feelings do not always spring from his heart. Do you take my meaning? Mr. Burr’s interest in that foot was unhealthy. The girl knew it. She kept
her face hidden the entire time I stood watching. She held herself rigid as a corpse.

Dorrie I know well how such a scene will trouble you now you have witnessed it through my eyes. I know you must cry inwardly that a mother ought not to burden her child with such a story most especially with regard to the man she has called Papa. Do you think me cruel my daughter? This is nothing to what I must tell you before I am through.

Doubtless you imagine your mother to be a virtuous woman unshakable in her faith. You will recall how I polished the table upon which the Book of Mormon and the Bible and the Doctrine and Covenants lay. This last my favourite and yours too I believe for its recounting of the many revelations that came to Brother Joseph direct from God. How many lines of Scripture have passed from my lips into your ears? As many and more into the ears of Mr. Burr. At times I confess I have fancied myself a kind of bottomless pitcher pouring out the word of the Prophet and with it the word of the Lord. But there is a bottom. I can see it now.

It turns upon this point. I am Mr. Burr’s wife in this world. It cannot be helped. But to be sealed to him for all eternity is a fate I cannot brook. The idea sticks in my throat. I cannot swallow it and so my girl I spit it out.

Some three decades have passed since Mr. Burr and myself were baptized by Brother Joseph himself at the temple in Kirtland. Decades during which my faith has been tested and tempered more times than I care to think on. And yet I can still recall a time before I made bold to call myself a Saint. At that time I was acquainted with a vision of the hereafter that was a
good deal vaguer and in my dark hours I find it is this Heaven and not the Prophet’s upon which I dwell. I tell myself I will be admitted entry. Mr. Burr may or may not but I believe I shall be rid of him in either case. God willing I shall tread upon the clouds alone.

Dorrie yesterday morning Brother Creel came to say a blessing over me and to heal me with a laying on of hands. It was all I could manage to lie quiet while he jabbered on. Words even holy ones can lose their worth if you hold them cheap. Just as if one were entrusted with an innocent body and allowed strangers to make free with it until the flesh ceased to feel. Am I frightening you? Forgive me. It is my own fear that leads me to so dance about the matter.

Let me begin with a small truth and see if it won’t loosen my pen. The girl as I have always named her to you is called Katherine. Her family called her Kitty and Mr. Burr has followed suit. A sly ridiculous name he utters at every chance. I have refused to do so just as I have refused to call her Sister which as you know an obedient wife is called upon to do. Katherine is the best I can manage. I would call her Miss Ells but she no longer is. She is like myself Mrs. Burr.

But I promised you a truth and here it is. Kitty suits her. Not because she is sly or ridiculous but because she is warm and demands little more than her keep. Because she belongs and she doesn’t. Because she turned up one day and never left. Nor would I have her do so. I would not be without her. There now. All this fuss over a name. But a name holds meaning my girl. Shall I keep on while my ink still flows?

Eudora I told you time and again you were named after your real mother my poor sister who perished on the road to Zion. That was a lie. I had a sister called Eudora yes but she died
before her seventh birthday of poison blood from a blister overlooked. Poor child she was always a secretive thing. She said nothing until a vein the full length of her leg had turned black. She was like you in that way but she was not of course your mother. I don’t know who your mother was. And yet I still presume to write these words. Not because I claim the right but because I cannot bear to give them up.

All a mother’s love
Helen Burr