True Sisters (12 page)

“We leave in the morning, Annie,” John said, emerging out of the darkness to sit down beside her at the campfire.

She had not heard him return from the meeting, and she was startled. At first, she thought to object one last time, to reply with chosen remarks about the foolhardiness of going on when they might run into poor weather, but instead, she bit her tongue. Such replies did no good and only hardened John in his decisions. “We’ll be ready. The children were as sleepy as laudanum, and I put them to bed. I’ve prepared enough food for the next few days. Did they argufy much?”

“Oh, yes, but almost all wanted to go on. It’s for the best.” John put his arm around her, and his lips brushed the top of her head. “It’s not been easy for you. I know it.”

He had not said that before, and Anne was moved. “No,” she replied, “but it’s been tolerable fair.” Except for Emma Lee, she thought, but she would not burden her husband with that now.

“It’s a long journey, and you’ve given up much.”

She nodded, although he could not see her in the dark.

“Are you liking the Mormons a little more?”

Anne pulled away from her husband to remove a skillet from the fire, then leaned back into John’s arms. “I like the Mormons fine. It’s their religion—your religion—that I have a quarrel with.”

“I thought by now…”

Anne felt a certain sadness as she realized her husband’s tenderness was not caused by his feelings of concern for her but was yet another attempt to convert her. She wondered if that would always be so, if the closeness they had felt those first years of their married life would return only if she gave up her soul to the Mormons. Then she wondered if maybe she ought to pretend to accept the church. That would not only restore domestic harmony but would keep that bothersome missionary Thales Tanner away from her. Did it matter if she lied? But it did matter. “I am pretty well worn. Let’s not discuss it,” she said.

*   *   *

Louisa had been right about Thales. The two slept outside the tent, and when all was quiet, Thales pulled her to him. She swallowed her embarrassment that someone might awaken and know what they were about—although she herself had heard other couples moving around in the night—and yielded to him, for she wanted him to need her. She listened to the snores, the sleeping cries of children, the coughs of the older people as Thales’s body moved on top of hers, and at last, she felt him shudder, then move away, satisfied, and he fell asleep holding her in his arms. Louisa took her own satisfaction in knowing that she had pleasured him and that tomorrow he would be tender toward her and her family.

He is not an easy man, but he is a good one, Louisa thought. Oh, she knew that Jessie Cooper considered him overbearing and self-important and that others found him unyielding. But they did not know him the way she did. They did not hear him pour out his heart, bemoaning his weaknesses, his sins. They did not know how he worried that God would find him inadequate, how he prayed that he would be strong enough to see his hundred through to Zion, how he suffered over each Saint whose faith faltered.

She had heard her husband beg God to let him be the instrument for converting the Gentile who accompanied her Mormon husband, and knew his sense of failure when the woman repulsed him. Louisa did not understand how the woman—
Sister
Anne, she was in Louisa’s mind—could live among them all those weeks and not become a convert. Now as she lay beside her husband, listening to his deep breathing, Louisa decided she would try again with the woman. Perhaps if she did not talk about religion, if she put off trying to convert Sister Anne but instead lived her life as an example of the true faith, Louisa might move her.

*   *   *

Long before the cornet sounded, Louisa felt Thales leave their blankets and knew he would be sorting through the belongings in the Tanner cart, a task he had put aside the night before in his desire for her. Brother Martin and the captains in charge of the hundreds had ordered the Saints to undergo another purge, to throw out everything that wasn’t necessary, since each cart was now to be loaded with a hundred-pound bag of flour. Of course, that weight would lessen as the flour was consumed, but the next days of travel would be difficult.

So her husband was following his own dictate and searching for things that could be discarded, and when Louisa rose and went to the cart, she found her silver hand mirror lying on the ground between the cart’s wheels. The mirror had been Thales’s wedding present to her, and she protested leaving it behind, for it was her prized possession. “I can carry the mirror. I will tie a string around the handle and fasten it to my waist,” she promised her husband.

“We are to rid ourselves of everything that is not necessary. What would it look like if as head of our hundred, I allowed my wife to take along such a luxury? I must set the example.” He looked at Louisa, whose eyes pleaded with him, and perhaps because he remembered the night before, he added, “I shall buy you another once we reach the valley.”

Louisa searched his face, uncertain. “Do they have mirrors in Zion?”

“Of course they do. And until then, you can see yourself reflected in my eyes.” He leaned over and kissed her forehead in an uncharacteristic gesture of affection. “You are so pretty, you deserve to see yourself in a mirror when we get there. I think you will be surprised at how you are no longer a girl in her first bloom. You have become a woman all at once.”

Louisa flushed, because Thales did not often compliment her. “Pleasing you is my fondest desire. I hope I may always do so.”

“And I you,” he replied, and Louisa turned away, knowing he meant what had happened in the night. She was overwhelmed by the remark, because she and Thales never discussed such things. Then her husband added, “I am hoping that before we reach Zion, there will be proof of it.”

He smiled at her, and Louisa flushed. That was her wish, too, and a wish, she thought, that might have been granted already. But she said nothing, because the nausea she had dealt with each morning for the past few days might have come from straining behind the cart or kneeling beside the river with the washing, not from a child growing inside her. Although she thought she had become pregnant as far back as Iowa City, she would wait a little longer to tell him.

Thales left Louisa and her family the chore of rearranging the cart so that he could attend to his duties as head of the hundred, and the family unpacked the cart and laid out their possessions and began the difficult task of choosing what to discard. Margaret threw away her second pair of shoes, saying she could go barefoot until bad weather set in, and Louisa’s sister left behind her pillow and an umbrella. Hall took a letter knife from his pocket and set it on the ground, causing Margaret to protest that its weight was of no consequence. But he insisted that if others were leaving behind their treasures, he would do so, too.

Then after the cart was repacked to Louisa’s satisfaction, for in Thales’s absence, Louisa, not her father, took charge of the family, she picked up the crosspiece, and her sister arranged herself behind the cart to push. Before they could get under way, however, Hall—the only man present—begged to pull the cart, and Louisa agreed. He would feel belittled if he let the women do the work, especially at the outset. Besides, he still suffered the embarrassment of having been called an apostate by his son-in-law, and he needed to redeem himself. That left Louisa free to walk beside her mother, who appeared stronger that morning because of the days she had rested in Florence.

Margaret was cheerful, too. “Once my poor feet toughen up, I believe I will do a better job of the walk than before,” she confided. “I have such faith that I will reach Zion.”

“God blesses us,” Louisa replied. She turned to look at her mother, but instead, she caught the eye of the Gentile. “Good morning, Sister Anne,” she called.

Anne was pushing her own cart, while her husband pulled it. Their son, Joe, pushed alongside Anne. The baby, Lucy, perched on top. The cart rolled along easily on the flat, dry surface, and Anne let go of it for a moment to walk beside Louisa. “Good morning, Mrs. Tanner,” she replied. Louisa did not correct Anne by saying she was not Mrs. Tanner, but Sister Louisa. In time, when Anne is one of us, Louisa thought, she will adopt the Mormon form of address.

“It’s a morning the Lord has made,” Louisa said. Indeed, the day was dry and cool, with a feeling of fall, for it was now late August. The sun would beat down on them later in the day—that is, if rain didn’t soak them—but the morning was glorious. Louisa looked across the plains at the prairie grass, dried now to a golden brown. The stalks rustled as the carts and the Saints trampled them. When we reach camp, Louisa thought, I shall gather the grass and wind it together for kindling. There were bright wildflowers among the grasses, and birds sang, their shrill notes rising above the murmuring of the travelers. The land was so different from England, but Louisa had come to love the dry air, the clean, bright sky, the openness.

Someone at the front of the train began the Mormon favorite, “Come, Come, Ye Saints,” and the song spread down the line of carts as the emigrants joined in. Anne, too, sang the song, in a sweet, strong voice, and Louisa thought what a good Mormon the woman would make.

She wanted to remark on it, to say how the Mormons loved the singers among them, but she knew if she did, the woman would turn cold. So instead, she confided, “I am glad to have a chance to speak a word with you, for I should like to ask your advice.”

When Anne looked at her sharply, Louisa wondered why in the world she had spoken up. Although she had not confided her suspicions to her family, she knew she should have inquired of her sister, Huldah, who had delivered two children. She lowered her voice. “I cannot ask my mother or my sister, for if I should be wrong, then great will be their disappointment.” She paused, not sure how to bring up the subject. But the Saints were a direct people, so she simply said, “I believe I am with child, although I do not know for certain, and I would ask your advice.”

“About what?” Anne asked.

“How I should care for myself.”

Anne gave a short laugh and replied sourly, “If we were at home, I would tell you to drink plenty of milk, to rest with your feet on a footstool so that your legs and ankles would not swell up. I should advise you to engage a hired girl to do the heavy work and to take naps in the afternoon.”

Louisa laughed, and in a minute, Anne joined her. “Have you any other questions I can help you with?” Anne asked, and they both laughed again.

They walked on a little, Louisa leaning over to pick a purple flower beside the trail and handing it to Anne. “Here is my thanks until you are better paid.”

Anne stuck the flower into a buttonhole in her dress. “How are you feeling?”

“Very middling.”

“I would tell you to rest as much as you can, then, but how can you do that when you’re pushing a handcart?” She thought it over and added, “Who knows, perhaps all this walking will strengthen us. There is some talk, you know, that women should not be pampered when they are in our state, but encouraged to exercise, so that their bones will be strong and the blood will flow to the vital organs.”

“If that is so, we are better prepared than any women in the world. In any case, I believe God will see me through. And you?”

“I am not so sure. I have a difficult time with it and have nearly died.”

Louisa impulsively took the other woman’s hand. “I’m sorry for that.”

“I will manage, I suppose. Most women have it easier,” she said, as if she were sorry she had frightened Louisa.

“I’ll pray for you.”

Anne frowned and reminded Louisa that she was not a Mormon.

“Do you think we Mormons pray only for ourselves? I shall pray all the harder for you to show you how much God loves you. And to show you that I, too, love you,” she added as she broke away to catch up with the Tanner cart, because her sister Huldah had stopped pushing and was rubbing her back.

*   *   *

Anne stared at Louisa Tanner as Louisa replaced Huldah behind their family’s cart. With the exception of Catherine, Anne had exchanged virtually no confidences with other women since leaving England, but in the past two days, she had made two friends—Ella and the pious Louisa. She had undertaken the journey with hundreds of other women, and yet she had isolated herself. She had held herself aloof to avoid the proselytizing, and in doing so, she had robbed herself of intimacy with other women. Anne missed the connection, the sharing of confidences and complaints that only another woman could understand. After all, where was the husband who could sympathize with the difficulties of pregnancy? She would need these friendships during the miles that lay ahead on the trail—and later on, after she was settled in the valley. It would be a wise thing to make friends now.

She wondered if the plural wives in Zion were intimates with one another. She had heard that some Mormon men had taken sisters as wives and that more than one man had married a mother and her daughter. Did the women remain friends, or did that hideous system destroy their closeness? The latter was more likely, because how could you be close to a woman who shared her bed with your husband? How could you hold her in esteem after you heard your husband on the bedsprings in her bedroom? The Mormons could call it “plural marriage” or “celestial marriage” or “the principle” or anything they wanted, but it was plainly immoral. It was despicable.

At home, when she and John had talked about that strange doctrine—because by then, it was common knowledge that Mormons were polygamous—neither one of them had seriously considered that John would ever take another wife. The idea was too vile, he told her, so with all her resentment toward the Mormon Church, Anne, at least, did not have that worry. Still, once when they had argued about making the trip, Anne had lashed out, saying she supposed that once they reached the valley, he would find himself another woman, so why should she go all that way just to be set aside? Instead of denying it or defending the principle, John had stared at her incredulously, then burst into laughter, and when he was unable to stop, Anne found herself smiling a little, then laughing, too.