Palmyra

by Susan Evans McCloud

  He was angry that I had trapped him with this comparison. “You cannot go,” he repeated.

  “It is all arranged,” I said patiently. “Tillie will take Lavinia. She—”

  “You cannot leave your baby!”

  “I cannot take her and risk her safety! I would be of no good to Georgie like that.”

  “She is not even weaned yet, Esther—she has not even reached her first birthday.”

  “Tillie is still nursing May. She will take care of Lavinia. And she has a nurse to assist her.”

  “And what of me?” It was a boyish cry, laced more with fear than with selfishness. I put my hand upon his head; I began to weave my fingers into the curls at his neck.

  “You can take care of yourself, and use the solitude for writing, and for finishing the settle you have been working on. You can take meals at your folks or mine, and you can have Lavinia any time you have need of her; Tillie understands that.”

  He sat very quiet beneath my touch. He knew I was going. He knew he could not stop me. I wondered what was running through his head until he buried it against me and said, “If anything should happen to you, Esther! I could not conceive of life without you—I could not—”

  “Eugene!” I kissed him. I longed to comfort and reassure; I longed to pour some of my strength and resolve into him. It was not until later, lying sleepless beside him in bed, that the quiet conviction came: This parting will strengthen his love for me. It will strengthen the cords that bind us to one another, and remind us how precious love really is.

  Chapter 24

  Kirtland: June 1832

  The journey was a nightmare; I could not have survived the journey with a baby. The insects would have eaten her alive in the first place, not to speak of the filth, with the only washing on board being done with dippers of murky canal water, and with men spitting whenever and wherever it pleased them best!

  There was beauty, breathtaking beauty, and wildlife to observe along the waterway and an abundance of birds, hovering above us, tiny bright-colored escorts that never seemed to tire. And the food was not bad—just excessive, with too many meats, cakes, and pies. Fresh hot bread was served every morning, accompanied by mounds of butter, and pitchers of honey and syrup, which many of the passengers poured, with liberal indiscretion, over everything on their plates!

  Nights were by far the worst, trying to sleep in a crowded, ill-smelling roomful of strangers, on bunks so narrow they were little more than shelves, set so close together that I could not turn over without falling off nor raise my head without cracking it on the shelf directly above. We ladies removed our bonnets and shoes and loosened our corsets, and that was the extent of our preparation for bed. I was cold and cramped all night long, every night, and my head rang with the sounds of night noises from the boat and from the men’s quarters adjacent to ours, separated only by a flimsy curtain drawn between the two.

  The cook beat on a pan to alert us that breakfast was ready, and we ate in the saloon where we had been sleeping just hours before. Stuffy and unhealthy it was, and I tried to spend as much time on deck as I could, enjoying the brisk spring air, even when it happened to chill me. At such times I would wrap in one, or even two, of the thin blankets and situate myself on a chair, where I could write observances in my little journal. That was the part of the trip I liked best: the lazy daytime hours that I could while away as I saw fit, reading, writing, daydreaming, or merely sitting, my mind as smooth and blank as the surface of the water stretching ahead and behind.

  I had two occasions during those days to make use of some of the medicinal herbs I had brought along with me. And each time my thoughts leapt unwillingly forward to the scene I could not picture, of my dear friend in an unknown place, locked in the darkness of dying. Would she wait for me? Would she hold on until I could get there—and would my coming make enough difference?

  These were the agonizing questions that haunted me, especially during the endless hours of night I spent shut up in my narrow cell, surrounded literally on every side by other human beings, but feeling more lonely than I had ever felt in my life.

  Kirtland. It does have the appearance of a raw frontier village, as I had expected. But there is such a bustle of industry here as to astound the observer who happens upon it. Every available building—house, shop, and barn—is crammed to capacity. There is the constant sound of building and the fragrance of lumber, shaven and sawn, in the air; and the streets are very crowded with wagons and teams. The people are, by and large, patient in their privation, and generous, despite their poverty. Of their own accord they have left behind the comforts of possessions and society in order to—what? Gather to this place with strangers, who at once become friends, with “brothers and sisters,” as they call one another. And no sacrifice, to them, seems too heavy to bear. I wonder: Can religion appear so desirable as to outweigh all else one has valued and worked for, sometimes throughout a lifetime? These odd people seem to answer that question in the affirmative and throw themselves into “the work” with a will!

  I note all this—I am shown it, I hear it talked of, from the very moment I arrive. I have come to help! Yet neighbors, anticipating my arrival, pooled their scanty means together and appear on Nathan’s humble doorstep with offerings of food: everything from eggs to dainty baked goods to freshly dressed chickens and pickled preserves. One woman even brings over a beautiful long Paisley shawl that had been her mother’s, telling me that I must borrow it against the raw spring winds and wear it happily during my sojourn here.

  I do not know how to react; I would rather be on the giving end than the receiving. When I first walked into the house, still and darkened as much as possible against the late afternoon glare, I felt like walking on tiptoes; I dreaded what I might see when I entered the bedroom. But, to my astonishment, there was Georgie, sitting up in her bed! True, she appeared pale and emaciated and weak as a kitten—propped up by pillows—but she was sitting there staring at me. Both of us turned open-mouthed to Nathan for an explanation. He hunched his shoulders over and looked back, chagrined.

  “What are you doing here, Esther?” Georgie breathed, at the same moment I began to ask, “What are you doing sitting up in bed, Georgie?” We turned again to Nathan and he said miserably, “I have bungled things terribly, I know! But I did not mean to!”

  “Sit down,” I entreated. “Explain what happened—slowly, if you will.”

  “The doctor treating Georgie had given up hope when I wrote to you; he said it was only a matter of time. And she kept moaning, day and night, crying for her baby. I thought if you came—with your love and your healing powers—there might be a chance.”

  I nodded. His words had seemed to take the air out of Georgie. She slumped back against the pillows, and there were tears in her eyes.

  “I did not know—I did not realize there were other healing powers as well.”

  “What do you mean?” A slender thread of memory begins to vibrate within me.

  “Some of the Apostles learned of the severity of Georgie’s illness and came to administer to her. They laid their hands on her head and rebuked the illness, and from that moment she began to improve and gain strength.” He pauses, miserable still. “This happened but two days ago, Esther. There was no way to let you know.”

  I put my hand on his arm. “I understand,” I say gently. “I am not sorry to be here.”

  “But your family—your own child—it is all for—”

  “It is all for a reason. Georgie still has much healing and strengthening to do.” I pat the little leather case that sits at my feet. “I have many things here that will help her. And—it will be good for both of us to be together again.”

  Nathan smiles and begins to relax just a little. I want to ask him what it was like to watch this healing—what it felt like, what he thought about it. I want to tell him about my experience with Joseph Smith on a cold autumn evening. But I dare not, and turn a bit sadly to other concerns.

  So I spent sprin
g with my dear friend Georgeanna. For the first week I administered herbs and teas and soothing words, and Georgie slept. During the second week, for a portion of each day I read to her, and she sat in bed and listened, stroking one of her interminable cats. And sometimes we talked briefly about this and that, matters of little account. During the third week I took to bringing my sewing in with me, and she darned one or two of the worst stockings; I had never been very adept at that. During the latter part of the week she said, “You have been here nearly a month, Esther. I will soon be able to manage without you.”

  “I will soon go home, then,” I said.

  “You must,” she urged. “You have been remarkably brave and kind to linger so long.”

  I was distressed to feel the tears begin to gather behind my eyes. “You need me,” I replied simply. “Isn’t this all that matters?”

  Without knowing quite how it happened, we were in one another’s arms. She cried—for the first time, I was sure, since Emmeline died. I held her tight and let the sobs pour out of her, shudder through her thin body, knowing the necessity of them. “I am here, sweetness, I am here,” I kept repeating, as I smoothed back her damp dark hair.

  During my last week in Kirtland, Georgie was able to really talk to me, and the days, rich and full, slipped between our fingers like sunbeams that scatter in every direction and cannot be held. I had long ago told her every scrap of news concerning home and the people there. Now, at last, I felt free to ask questions concerning her life.

  “I do not know how to answer you,” she said in the old forthright manner. “My answers will be almost meaningless to you.”

  “Well, try it,” I said.

  “Will we stay in Kirtland forever, now that we are building our own settlement here? I do not think so. Brother Joseph speaks of the land of Zion—”

  “Zion?”

  “Located in a portion of the state of Missouri, chosen by God as a gathering place for his people.”

  “Georgie, I thought Kirtland was that!”

  “It is, for a season. There is talk of building a sacred place of worship, a house of the Lord in Kirtland.”

  “This religion is so demanding!” I complained. “What do you do in your lives, because of it, that you did not do without it?”

  “What do I do as a member of this church that I did not do previously? I look upon myself and upon God differently. I know He is my Father, that I truly came from Him and that I will return to Him. I know He loves me! I pray to be worthy of that love.”

  “How—worthy?”

  “To be honorable in my doings, to be kind, to be compassionate—to serve and give.”

  “You have always been that way—and look at Phoebe!” I cried.

  A strange soft expression played along her wan face. “I find purpose in what I do,” she attempted. “I know why I am doing it. I serve God through serving His children. I have something to work for, something to look forward to.”

  “Heaven, you mean?”

  “Returning to live with my Heavenly Father.”

  “Because He loves you?”

  “Yes, because He loves me. Because I know this.”

  “Even now . . . even after . . .” I was sorry to say this, but I could not help myself.

  Georgie smiled at me, as I might smile at a child of whom I was very fond. “It was bitter at first; I will not try to pretend it wasn’t. To see my precious child cry out in fright as the wheels of the wagon passed over her—to hold her limp, unseeing form in my arms—to see her slip away from me without even saying good-bye.”

  I could feel her pain; it reached out like a flame to sear me.

  “It is not fair!” I cried. “If He loves you, if God loves Joseph Smith’s people especially, then He ought to favor you, He ought to at least take care of you.”

  “He does.” She spoke very softly. “Loss can temper and strengthen us. I have seen it happen with many. I know a woman here, Esther, who has buried five children—not as babies scarcely born and unable to survive for some reason, but as children: two years old . . . six years old . . . eight years old . . . all taken from her.”

  In horror I put my hands up over my ears.

  “She is a woman I would do anything to emulate,” Georgie continued in the small, quiet voice. “She has been tempered into a spirit so radiant with love, with wisdom—so powerful, so full of life and vitality.”

  “That makes no sense!” I protested.

  “But, Esther, our lives here are but a season, a small part of the whole of our existence—and they are a time of testing. I know, through my faith and because of the promises God has made, that I will be reunited with Emmeline.”

  “You cannot say that you know!”

  “I can and I do, my dear. And that is where you cannot understand.”

  I rose and paced the floor, because there was a great churning inside me, a terrible confusion that was as bad as any pain I had felt.

  “Esther, Esther, dearest of all of us. I wish I could give to you what I have. I wish I could pour my own joy into you and see it shine back in your eyes.”

  I smiled through my tears. We had been closer these days—more one in spirit and love—than ever before through the long growing years of our friendship. Yet when I left the next day, I would leave behind a woman who was partly a stranger—a woman who had visited beautiful places and learned beautiful things that were unknown to me.

  Georgie and I walked through the city of the Saints, with my friends Peter and Jack trotting like frisky young puppies beside us. Everywhere people lifted their hands in greeting; several stopped to ask after Georgie’s health, to engage us in a few words of conversation before moving on. We stopped in the churchyard and knelt beside Emmeline’s grave for one last time together, and my head hurt trying to hold back the tears. Dear little soul. She and May and my Lavinia were meant to be a new beginning, were meant to go on after us! I could hardly bear the thought of walking away and leaving her there.

  The day was sunny, yet the morning was mild. There was promise in the air here, but also stirrings of hatred and envy, which these people had given up home and friends in order to leave behind. The persecutions were real. In the early spring, before I arrived, Joseph and his friend Sidney Rigdon had been dragged from their homes, roughly treated and reviled, and then tarred and feathered in a frenzy of brutality. The horror of such scenes was nearly beyond bearing! Nathan said that his friends spent the night in scraping the tar from Joseph’s bruised body, then washing and cleansing it. And the following morning, what did he do? Go to meeting and preach to the people as- sembled, with his flesh scarified and defaced. And—Georgie added in her quiet voice—one of Joseph and Emma’s adopted twins, an eleven-month-old baby, caught a severe cold that night and died four days later. Her looks said quite clearly, God does not spare even his elect. But there was nothing of the fanatic in her expression, nothing of the smug, only the gentle, yearning affection that had bound us together these past weeks. A newspaper with a little pluck reported the tarring and feathering as “a base transaction, an unlawful act, a work of darkness, a diabolical trick.”

  I wanted to catch sight of Joseph the Prophet. I wanted to set my eyes on him one more time—this man who had stirred malice or adoration in the hearts of men since he was a boy in Palmyra and claimed to have seen a vision in the woods near his house.

  Men spoke evil of him freely. But most, if they spent any time at all in his company, found themselves strangely moved and subdued. One man said of him, “He is the most profoundly learned and intelligent man that I have ever met in my life, and I have traveled hundreds of thousands of miles, been on different continents, and mingled among all classes and creeds of people, yet I have never met a man so intelligent as he.”

  Georgie smiled when I jotted down these sayings as I read them printed here and there, but I did not care. I had my own opinions, my own feelings and memories. I knew for myself of this man’s kindness and integrity. I also knew of his light—thi
s power that drew others to him. I experienced it that night when I listened to him pray for my brother. I knew there was nothing strange, nothing self-serving in what I felt, in what happened, in what existed in Joseph Smith’s heart. This much I knew. This much I could bear witness to if it ever came down to that.

  I was to be taken by wagon the twelve miles from Kirtland to the steamboat landing. I would ride only a few miles on the steamboat before transferring to the canal at Fairport, from Fairport to Buffalo, from Buffalo to Rochester, Syracuse, then home.

  Although it cost the rather outrageous sum of twenty-five cents to post a letter, Georgeanna and I promised to write often. I believed we would keep that promise.

  I was so very eager to go home, but I was not eager to be leaving. My weeks here had been very precious and of great value to me. I kissed Georgie’s smooth, fragrant cheek one more time. Nathan gathered me to him in a tenderness that nearly unbalanced my precarious hold on myself. I climbed into the wagon and the driver started up the horses, and in a very few moments we had left Kirtland behind. The sensations remaining were those of the sun warm on my hair, the sounds of meadow birds overhead, and the fragrance of new-mown hay in the fields we passed through. And Georgie’s eyes, as shiny and wet as stones in a creek bed, smiling after me.

  Chapter 25

  Palmyra: October 1832

  The first person I wished to speak to upon my return was Phoebe. As soon as I had immersed myself in Eugene and my baby, feasted my eyes upon the sight and sound and nearness of them, refusing to leave their side for even a moment, I paid her a call. Perhaps I was all the more anxious for a sympathetic, listening ear because of my encounter with Tillie when I had gone to collect my treasure, examining her from the top of her head to the tips of her toes, smothering her with such a profusion of caresses that she began to whimper and hold her arms out for Theodora, both frightened and confused.