Magrete

By Penelope Lanphier

Mette, a fourteen year old, struggles with mental impairment while her Danish family are converted to Mormonism by two Mormon missionaries who have traveled to Denmark in 1857. The family barely survives the passage by ship to New York, a train ride to Council Bluffs Iowa, and a harrowing completion of their journey in covered wagons to Salt Lake City Utah.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781595948656

Book preview

I love this novel’s language. The writing is often gorgeous, honed to an extraordinary degree, capable of veering between concrete imagery and fascinating and bizarre abstraction. This is a rich, strange and quite stunning work.

—Joanna Ruocco

Joanna is a winner of the Catherine Doctorow Prize and author of, Man’s Companions, A Compendium of Domestic Incidents, and The Mothering Coven.

She is also the author of Another Governness/The Last Blacksmith—Adiptych.

Magrete

A Novel

by

Penelope Lanphier

WingSpan Press

Copyright © 2013 by Penelope Lanphier

All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, settings and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, settings or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in reviews.

Published in the United States and the United Kingdom by WingSpan Press, Livermore, CA

The WingSpan name, logo and colophon are the trademarks of WingSpan Publishing.

ISBN 978-1-59594-865-6

Coypright number: 1-963079864

First edition 2013

Printed in the United States of America

www.wingspanpress.com

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013950571

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Acknowledgements:

To Joanna Ruocco for her immensely helpful review and recommendations.

To Judith Huntera and Donna McIntyre for their clear-sighted editing.

And to my family for their ongoing support and encouragement.

Chapter 1

Water still as night spread ink-black before dawn, spread to where I could not imagine. Past and future hid under its surface while morning imprinted both sky and sea. A dark silhouette took shape, hovered quietly, cautious on the water. Its sails blazed full when dawn commenced, reflecting the sun in the red morning. The Spanish Galleon had come to rescue me from the misery of this journey.

It was odd seeing something I knew was not real, but was clearly there in front of me, solid as anything. They say I was inventive. I say, as it was needed in waters that rose around me then subsided becoming dormant. There was a niche in my mind that revealed a different universe, one so odd yet gentle that it calmed my feeling askew yet kept me lost between somewhere and another. It allowed me to meander in and out its unknowing tide and I became more and more reliant on this unseemly safety as it was far from anything recognizable.

The galleon moved towards us growing larger as it approached. I waited until I had to leave and attend to the day’s chores that were decided by the needs of my family now ensconced in this long sea journey. As I turned away I resisted the image knowing it would remain. It had no choice, nor did I in its refuge. Was this legend or reality? The two merged and separated without logic. Now Spanish Galleon, now a thought disintegrating. It came in dire times to rescue me. I was certain.

We left before dawn the first day of May, 1857. We sailed from a port on the west coast of Denmark in to the North Sea. We were one hundred and two in our party and three hundred and fifty all together excepting the ship’s crew. Our numbers filled the entire vessel called the Kirkland. We were many families from all over Denmark. Our party made up our estate which had been located in the larger part of Denmark—not exactly an island, but nearly surrounded by water. Most of our farm workers and their families came along as well. The numbers of children exceeded the numbers of adults and it was thought they would be the most vulnerable to the journey’s perils. We had crowded but adequate quarters with men and women separated dormitory style because of the squeezing together. No one felt discomfort the first few days, the novelty and good weather made it seem an adventure. It was when we encountered the first storm that turbulent waters caused a scourge of seasickness and many stayed in their beds. Gripping the sides of their bunks, they leaned over onto stench-pocked floors and regurgitated any food they had been able to swallow.

My father funded most of the journey for our family including our extended family who also chose this intense and dangerous resettlement. Uncles, aunts, cousins, their children and as well, the hired families who had helped work the land, take care of live stock and crops. All heard the calling and came. The journey was dangerous in more ways than the physical form. Many questionable illusions had taken over the minds of my parents and the other adults who risked life for this new religion called The Latter Day Saints. The Gathering issued forth from the mouths of the missionaries. This was the inspirational premise on which the church was founded—to gather the Lord’s people of the world into one place where God could build his kingdom and establish Zion.

The chores required for the working of our large farm overwhelmed my parents and other relatives some time back and they resorted to hiring families who had been victim to well intended social changes in our land. Because of the new efficiency, our estate grew. Father and mother took in the new help as part of our family and community and so did the newcomers witness the prosylization by the young Mormon missionaries along with the rest of us. And, I must add, they may have joined us on the pilgrimage as much because their entire journey was paid for as having conviction for the new faith. With the sale of everything we had owned, my father afforded the costs of moving and reestablishment in a foreign country. I suspected that our travel was partially subsidized by the ship company, advertisement spreading by word of mouth. I doubted the covered wagon people had wealth and substance enough to allow the giving of discounts to travelers walking west.

We were three days out and I was not seasick, but homesick. I wrote in my journal to quiet my sadness and record the past—record the life we had before this alteration—keeping it alive so it would always be with me. Denmark is a group of islands and the relative nearness of our home to the sea gave the soil a rich advantage. Most crops grew there with abandon. Dead sea-life blew northerly over our land imbuing richness and nutrients into the soil heavy with corn stalks, beet and alfalfa plants—fields of them. Our horses and cows enjoyed the gifts of the sea as well. They grew fat and mellow in nature. Though some in my family were not mellow in nature, they were both fat and lean and one could say happy. We felt blessed by the richness and beauty of our homeland. We were only a few hours by horse and buggy to the west shore and white sand dunes, knolls covered with heather, pine trees blown sideways lining starch-white beaches. We made great attempts to spend a week at the beaches during Denmark’s summers. The days had eight blessed hours of daylight and renewed our lives after living through winter with one hour of daylight each day. My cousin Neils and my sister Mette and I would run in the sand, hide from each other in the dunes and behind patches of heather while sea wind blew sand and hair in our eyes. I’ll catch you both, Neils yelled chasing us grabbing our skirts sometimes pulling us down all of us giggling and laughing. I can hear Mette scream, Don’t you dare cousin, remember we’re two and you’re only one. Exhausting ourselves and delirious, the sea roar drowning our shrieks, we would keep on running and flailing about knowing our outings would soon end. From these childhood sojourns I would bring heather home tied into bunches with small ribbons as gifts for Neils and my schoolteacher who gave with such effort to her teaching.

It was after one of these excursions I remember first taking ill to bed, but the taking to bed at the onset was all I ever remembered until I woke from what I thought was sleep. When waking, I felt as though I had gone off somewhere, my head felt heavy and I had thirst and hunger of such proportions that my mother and I were frightened. After these episodes, which began with a dose of anxiety and confusion, I would sleep for more than a day. Mother Lene took care in the way she spoke to me about this strangeness. Magrete, you seem to have slept twenty hours. Now isn’t that the funniest thing, she would say, laughing and making light of it, patting my body all over to rouse my muscles. She would bathe me, feed me then send me out to help with the chores. At some point and I’m not entirely certain when it started, I was given a cup of strong smelling herb tea at the onset of these moments of extreme confusion then the sleeping spells would follow. The cup would be by my bed when I awoke, a brown foul smelling grime lining its inner edge. Years later I would discover the tea given to me was a concoction of herbs my grandmother Dorethe put together from her large assortment and a dose of laudanum as well.

Mette and I were close in age and looked enough alike so that we were frequently confused one for the other. Neils was my age as well giving the three of us a grand camaraderie. We roamed wild over the rough felled land, through cornfields and dead beet plants like a pack of young fox. On the Kirkland, we walked together round the deck, hid in lifeboats under their canvas covers and bemoaned what our parents had done by moving us far away into questionable circumstances. The lifeboats were strapped to the sides of the vessel and secured to the deck. The cover was easy to slide under and we managed by quietly crawling in and huddling close. We breathed heavily knowing we’d be punished if we were caught. Neils whispered, Careful you go Mette, you’re breathing too much. We all giggled then held our mouths in the musty mildewed tarp air. Stop tickling me Neils, Mette whispered. A dull ache sat in my stomach hearing Neils and Mette. I felt angry and jealous. I loved Neils and the thought of him and sister Mette flirting made me feel sick. I had a moment of dizziness, a blur of anguish and confusion as I thought he had tickled me instead and that Mette was not there at all. I squeezed my legs then said, Enough, let’s read our poets. Adjusting to life at sea made the writing of poems difficult. But we read often the English poets. As Neils read William Blake’s The Voice of the Ancient Bard, the poet’s words spoke to what I felt was a growing dilemma of giving up home and land for religious zeal.

I confess I did not share most of my poems because they had transformed into love poems to Neils. I dared not make this revelation known to him for fear I would lay forsaken in his heart. The seasickness did not abate and we were given new chores taking care of the sick. Cleaning up the plentiful vomit, and washing of clothes did require great focus and large portions of time.

It was mid morning and I closed my journal as the sun was hot. We were barely moving.

The stench of illness ripened into fear and the fear smothered us as much as the real smell. Along side the few deaths from cholera, we had a new sickness on board called measles and it began to take the children. Only today my little cousins Hans and Hette succumbing to virulent fever and unquenchable thirst left us in their sleep. And then my dear Mother Lene became ill. I awoke from my own scourge of sleep to her delicate fingers lifting a cup of water to my mouth. She told me she was ill and that I had been sleeping for twelve hours. I had no memory of my sleep.