In the dark of the white canvas tent, Zoe lifts Pippa to her breast so Pippa’s wildcat screeching doesn’t wake the entire company. Susan and the teen girls are fanned out around Zoe, asleep in a stagnant bouquet of campfire smoked hair and body odor.
Zoe’s slumped over leaning uncomfortably against the tent pole and Pippa makes her greedy little drinking noises, ingesting Zoe’s milk into her cat sized body. This is when Zoe hears the crack crack cracks outside the tent. The sounds are faint at first, but then grow louder, closer, like the paper white party snappers she threw at the pavement as a kid. But there’s no pavement here. This is the wilderness. There’s yelling, and the thunderous sound of hoofbeats which echo off the dark Wasatch mountains surrounding camp. Then, more cracks and the harsh sounds and whistles that cowboys make in a roundup. Zoe feels panic rising from her pelvic floor, then guilt and more anxiety about her own animal response, the cortisol bath leaching into her milk which will then permeate Pippa’s gut and become part of her DNA and Pippa’s entire future will be burdened because of Zoe’s poisonous stress and the stress of the women who came before her.
Someone screams from another tent. Is this a backcountry robbery? Zoe’s fight or flight is stuck in freeze and the only thing that feels real is Pippa coaxing milk from her nipple as if she knows it might be her last meal.
Susan sits up like a shot and crawls to the tent opening. She’s in a white long sleeve nightgown, blond barrel curls starting to unravel. She looks like a wild angel peering out into the night. “Oh my heck! Girls wake up!”
Zoe tenses and feels Pippa become even more aggressive on the boob as if she only wants to save herself before her milk supply dies.
Susan’s bulldozing around the tent now shaking girls’ shoulders in a frenzy. “It’s a mob! They set one of our carts on fire!”
A mob? Zoe pictures all the recent flash mob videos she’s geekily watched during Pippa’s all night feeding frenzies at home, but she can see through the tent flap now, under a night sky dotted with stars, Big Mountain and Little Mountain sit illuminated under the glow of a roaring bonfire.
The girls are up now, crying and reacting and Zoe can’t breathe. The eldest girl Esther puts on her glasses and tells everyone to calm down and do as she does.
“We have to go help!” Susan crawls toward the tent opening, and the girls follow her into the night like cattle in white nightgowns marching to the slaughterhouse.
“Wait!” Zoe says. She sticks a finger in Pippa’s tiny mouth to unlatch her. She’s only fed her standing up with the My Brest Friend pillow in the kitchen, but she’s still not strong nor skilled enough in her awkward mushy postpartum body to get up or crawl with her this way. Despite Pippa’s screams, Zoe lays her down, trying to get organized but it’s hard to think. She’s exhausted and foggy, and hasn’t slept more than 2 hours in a row in weeks. What should she grab and where should she run with Pippa?
Ben didn’t want her to go. He said she was assuming too much. This wasn’t Outward Bound, and you’re bringing a two month old on a pack trip? He ignored her new friendship with Susan, and all of Susan’s claims of how this trip would be good for her and Pippa’s health especially with all of the issues Zoe was having that he was too busy to notice. Zoe didn’t say goodbye to Ben. He was at work in the ER, a 30 hour shift, which was part of her point– he wouldn’t even miss her. Sleeping during the day or any time would be easier if she and Pippa were just gone, suffering from sleeplessness together elsewhere, sacrificing themselves for him. He didn’t know that Zoe saw his texts with Jillian, saw that they’d made more plans to meet while Zoe was doing what–breastfeeding their child? Changing shitty diapers? At the trailhead, she left her phone in a plastic bucket with everyone else’s. She wishes now, of course, that she had it. But like Susan said–we’re doing it the pioneer way–anything they didn’t have, we don’t have.
There’s more screaming, more yelling, as if something new in the chain of events has happened. Pippa is going ape shit. Zoe looks for her shoes. The list Susan gave her of things they could and couldn’t bring stated that, in accordance with keeping as close as they could to how things were, along with traditional pioneer skirts and long sleeves, they’d all need to wear plain black sneakers or sandals– nothing flashy. Even though she had been sure that Susan hadn’t meant for anyone to go buy new shoes, she’d gotten herself a pair of black Hokas that look like cow hooves on her milk making body.
Zoe crawls out then fishes inside for screaming Pippa, drawing her into the cool smoky night. She can feel the heat of the flames and sees the entire handcart company forming a human chain, each teen struggling to pass orange Home Depot buckets of water all the way down to a burly father who hurls each bucket of water on it so fast over and over, despite the men on horses galloping all around and yelling and creating chaos. Zoe wonders where the buckets and plethora of water came from as they were lectured the day before on not having very much, that they’d need to really conserve.
A bottle whizzes through the air, nearly missing Pippa’s head and Zoe ducks back in the tent and sinks to her knees unsure of how to protect her other than cowering in the tent pressing her to her chest and wishing she were in another time, another place.
There’s cheering outside and Esther pokes her head in the tent. Esther isn’t her real name, it is her pioneer name and Zoe doesn’t know what her real name is. “Do you know where my mom is?” She doesn’t seem stressed.
“No— what are you going to do?” Zoe tries to breathe like she did during birth but it feels like hyperventilating.
“I’m going back to bed. I’m done.”
“Watch out!” Zoe sees horse legs behind Esther. Western boots coated in dust. Hands reaching for Esther’s head. Yanking her braid.
“Shut it Uncle Billy!” Esther smiles and lurches into the tent and the horse trots off.
What?
Susan bursts through the tent door, panting, her face a mask of terror and exhilaration. She seems annoyed to see Esther and Zoe, for that matter, back in the tent. “What’re you doing?”
“I’m tired. It’s over.” Esther flops onto her sleeping roll. There’s laughter outside. Boys rowdying around. A harmonica wheezing.
“Your great great-great-great-grandmother was tired but she didn’t stop.”
“But this isn’t accurate. No mob burned handcarts on this route.” Esther pushes her glasses up and rubs her eyes. Her hair is in two braids, one falling apart. Acne dots her chin and her dress is too tight in the boob area.
“But there were mobs in Nauvoo and on the trail,” Susan argues. “I can create a timeline that best suits us.”
“Mom. Stop. It’s time to call it. No one will want to walk tomorrow if they’re up all night. It’s going to be so hot.”
Peals of flirty laughter erupt outside. Zoe is sweating. It feels as if someone has tried to scare her so her hiccups go away. She straps Pippa on and crawls back into the night wandering away from the now shrunken fire, the giddy groups of teens, past the other tents and the men and horses all laughing now and clearly not threats. A drone almost hits her face and she stops. It hovers, staring right into her eyes before it turns toward the smoldering handcart.
Zoe walks as far away from camp as she dares until she finds a cluster of trees, hoists her skirts, leans back and pees all over her Hokas.
***
A few months earlier, pregnant Zoe, a grieving, motherless mother in a new city where she knew no one except Ben who had just started medical residency and didn’t seem that excited to have a baby, was silently crying on the elliptical at Salt Lake Fitness. Not to sound cliched, but Zoe had seen Susan a few times in the gym and had felt drawn to her–and now she thinks that it must have been something maternal even though Susan, draped in Lululemon, glowing from spin class, touching her arm, asking how she could help, was absolutely nothing like Zoe’s dead mother. But she listened, and asked her about her pregnancy, and the life she left in New Hampshire. Susan started taking Zoe for French pastries in the shopping plaza next to the gym and because Susan had two sons in medical school and one in residency, she understood all that Zoe was going through. It was a satisfying match.
Even though Zoe didn’t want a baby shower, in the final weeks of her pregnancy, Susan insisted on throwing her one. Zoe arrived at her sprawling foothills mid-century modern for a small gathering, complete with desserts and gifts. Susan’s older daughters and sisters and their older daughters came and Zoe invited her neighbor Ardis, the grey haired Church historian who didn’t drive and politely declined. But she shyly gave Zoe her gift and told her to bring it to the party and read it to the others.
There was a vast age difference between all the guests all to a point where it all blurred. Susan couldn’t be older than 55, but her style, her Botox, her long cascading curls and bell sleeved midi dress, mixed with her maturity in hosting made Zoe feel like she was 12 and Susan was a cool older sister. The theme of the baby shower was tips and tricks passed down from generations that they wanted to bestow upon her, and each woman wrote these down on sturdy cardstock accompanied by a relevant gift. Susan, a certified lactation consultant, gifted her a pastel green My Brest Friend cushion and her tip and trick was: when in doubt, go outside.
Before Zoe’s mother died, she handed Zoe the photocopied diary given to her by her grandmother, and her mother before and before and before. It tickled her mother that ‘lil Zoe Bug was moving to Utah. What a great circle, Buggie– it seems the ancestors since your great great grandmother have spent the last 150 years leaving that place and now, you’re going back. I hope to visit you there and see it for myself. Zoe had shared the diary with sweet odd neighbor historian Ardis who told her she knew this person well from her research. That Belinda was important.
Susan’s family listened with respect when Zoe read aloud from Ardis’ gift, a pink binder decorated with beehive stickers, with a history describing Zoe’s 4th great grandmother Belinda, who at age 23 ran away from her husband in Boston to join the Mormons, married an apostle 17 years her senior, as one of his polygamous wives, and they trekked from Missouri to the Salt Lake Valley. She read them a paragraph from Belinda’s diary too, a capstone performance for her baby shower. As if they hadn’t heard anything like it before. She now cringes at her naivete.
“On January 1st, 1846 I had a son born who was named Nephi by his father. . . . The persecution of the saints became so great that the authorities of the church and many of the saints had to bid farewell to their homes in February and we crossed the Mississippi River about the 14th of this 1 month. It was extremely cold and my babe only 6 weeks old. I had not recovered my strength but a merciful Providence sustained me and by degrees I gained strength. It was a terrible journey from Nauvoo to the Missouri River. It stormed almost continually, snow and rain and the earth was soaked. The poor horses and cattle could drag us but a few miles in a day.” — Belinda Marden Pratt Feb 1884
Zoe’s favorite part was what Belinda wrote later, that Zoe thought was delicious in its horror as Belinda described keeping her baby alive while she existed only on thistles for months, and that she wished she hadn’t left Boston. Susan and the others seemed unfazed by Belinda’s wavering faith and hardships and only nodded with compassion. And then Susan, handing her a batch of handmade lactation cookies, asked her to join them on their pioneer trek with her baby as an honored mother.
***
When light seeps through the tent a few hours later, Zoe feeds Pippa, and Susan and the other Mas and Pas set to work rousing their “families” and getting the teens on their chores. Before the trip, Susan said Zoe would not have any chores except keeping Pippa alive and making her way to Zion without dying. Zoe’s and Pippa’s assignment is to play their ancestor grandmother Belinda and her daughter, Louisa. Being Belinda consisted of being called Sister Belinda or just “you” since no one could remember regular names or the assigned names. Susan is playing Sister Constance whose husband died on the boat from England of cholera or dysentery and she’d made it this far alone, still determined to get from Winter Quarters to Zion.
The teens heat beans over the fires and others wander down to a muddy creek to gather water in handmade leather pouches. Zoe wonders where the orange Home Depot buckets went? Where is the fire ravaged handcart? Everyone received a satchel of iodine tablets which the pioneers did not have but was one thing Susan allowed so she didn’t have to deal with a bunch of teens and diarrhea.
Zoe changes Pippa’s soiled diaper. The baby poop smell only adds to the sour smell of her milk regurgitation and Zoe’s own body odor. Pippa is red and screaming and Zoe burps her and walks onto the prairie to bury as much of her runny poop as she can in a hole, which is more like wiping the cloth diaper into the dirt. She wishes she had her phone to google yet again all the potential problems and issues the red screaming baby might have. She trudges back to the family handcart holding the wadded up diaper, shushing and soothing Pippa. It is already so hot. Susan agreed that Zoe could store rotten diapers in a burlap bag in the handcart. It’s an exception, for sanitation. If Susan searches through the dirty diaper bag, she might also spot the bottles of used ready to drink expensive stinking rotten milk Enfamil bottles, mixed with diapers. Zoe wasn’t sure she could make enough milk for Pippa on a trip like this and didn’t want to risk it. So far, she’s fed her a few under the cover of night when no one can judge.
Zoe sneaks some hand sanitizer from her dress pocket just as Susan comes over and sneaks Zoe a homemade lactation cookie. Susan is a rulebreaker. It’s the only way to survive as a woman in her religion, she’d confessed recently.
Susan pushes a still perfect barrel curl off her shoulder. “Lemme hold this little angel!” She reaches for Pippa.
Zoe passes her over hoping for another cookie. She’s starving. Not starving like the pioneers but the hanger is starting to hit and all she can think about are the lactation cookies, the chocolate chips melty and warm from being out in the heat.
Susan hands over another cookie like she knows. “Sorry about last night,” she says. “I know you weren’t expecting it. But it’s important to these kids’ testimony that they truly feel what their ancestors must have felt. I think it went well, don’t you?” She pats Zoe’s arm, her confidante.
Zoe nods and feels bad for being annoyed and the cookie is so good. She smiles.
“Ah you have chocolate on your tooth,” she points, then almost puts her finger on Zoe’s tooth.
It isn’t such a big deal is it? The way she’d been so scared for nothing? The cortisol bath she and Pippa had taken together had been kind of nice right? Susan stares into Zoe’s eyes. Does she have another cookie?
Two women pull a wagon over to their campsite and pull out some bundles. It is now 7 am and probably already 80 degrees and Zoe wonders when they’re going to get going with the cart pulling.
“Oh great,” Esther moans. Susan hushes her.
James, Susan’s husband, who Zoe hasn’t met before the trip and finds him bossy and awkward at the same time, calls the group to prayer and heaves three bundles from the wagon to his feet.
“Well, surprise everyone! Some babies have just been born on the trail! We are blessed!” He lifts what looks like a flour sack loaded with beans from his feet. They each have a Raggedy Ann creepy face made with felt triangles and magic markered hair and googly eyes from the craft store.
The group claps. The boys find it hilarious and are punching each other which annoys James, she can tell. His voice grows tense and more preachy and everyone shuts up and listens.
“Some of you will get a baby to take care of. Ok? You must never put your baby down! You must feed your baby and keep it safe. If you have to take a turn pulling the cart, someone needs to carry your baby.”
Pippa wakes up and starts screaming which is unnerving as she drowns out James and everyone laughs nervously.
Susan points her out to the group. “Everyone look at Sister Belinda and her daughter Louisa. They’re really doing this. This is not a game for them.”
Zoe admires Susan’s candor and wonders if she’s had a boob job.
James squints at some writing on the doll’s butt “This is Thankful, born July 22, 1847 on the trail before they reached the Salt Lake Valley. And…” he heaves the bundle up. “Esther, you are the mother of this baby.”
Esther’s face is pained but she says nothing as James places the bundle in her stiff arms. The other girls in the group seem more excited to get one and Esther says to Zoe quietly “you think they would have spared us since we have this real baby as dead weight.”
Susan doesn’t hear and Zoe tries not to laugh at Esther’s manufactured misery. The burlap looks hot and itchy. And Esther doesn’t get to use the sling that Zoe brought for Pippa which looks like a pioneer scarf but it’s really from the posh baby store.
After Zoe’s water broke in Ben’s truck and the entire birth was horrible and painful and not magical at the end, and she didn’t feel anything with the baby on her chest like they said she would, and all she could do was cry that her Mother wasn’t there to see her first grandchild, and Ben was trying to get back to his shift in the ER, Susan was the one who came by to sit with her and she had sobbed, saying she wanted a do-over– of her mother’s death, which didn’t go the way it should, of Pippa’s birth, and the part after, which wasn’t so far going the way it should.
And later, which to be fair was only a few weeks ago, when Zoe told Susan there’s no way she could go on a pioneer trek, and that she was experiencing sleep deprived hallucinations and some strange bad thoughts every time she fed Pippa, she sobbed and told her again, how she wanted a do-over of her mother’s death. A do-over of Pippa’s birth.
The sun is already high and burning and it feels like it’s over 90 with their long sleeves and dresses. A boy takes off his flannel exposing his tee shirt and Susan makes him put it back on. They are supposed to be doing 20 miles, pulling the wooden handcart loaded with their things and suffering and praying. It’s slow and awkward to pull and they try to take turns but clearly some are not suited for it and some are. Esther is built like a rower and she is absolutely suited for it but she’s pissed off, clearly, burdened with carrying her fake baby instead. Zoe lets Susan carry Pippa, and pulls the cart in Esther’s place while Esther stalks next to her not carrying her baby the right way.
“You know they’re all going to die anyway, right?” She looks toward the horizon, toward the promised land. “Actually, you don’t know. That’s the beauty of it. It’ll be tomorrow I bet. Only one day of carrying this thing then we get to bury them.”
This information is not surprising based on what she’s witnessed so far, so they walk together while Zoe thinks the things she knows Susan wants her to think– that her gggg grandmother did survive this, that she should be more grateful and treasure life and not mourn the dead so much. Or convert which is the end game as Ben reminded her. But so far, it doesn’t seem like anyone cares and this makes Zoe feel even more lonely and even more of a disappointment. She hasn’t really made any new friends except maybe Esther. Susan treats her like a pet but the empathy and kindness seems to have evaporated or is now being used up by the arduousness of manufacturing this many do-overs.
***
The next day, before the babies die, many of the men die. James sends them up ahead to disappear and then makes the announcement. And these aren’t really men, they are 15 year old boys, who have, so far, been less than helpful, and mostly annoying.
So now it is only the women. And the babies. Zoe panics because Pippa seems quieter. It has to be 95 degrees and she’s nestled into Susan in the sling. When was the last time she fed her? It’s hard to keep track as the day drags on. And all this carrying just makes her more awake at night. Zoe goes to get her from Susan’s sling, but Susan calls the women to stop and gather.
“They’ve died. It’s on us now. Us women. To get up that hill.” She points ahead but Zoe doesn’t see a hill. It’s not that far. She can see the men lining up to greet them in what might be ten minutes? It is maybe less than half a mile.
Susan starts crying. And then many women join in. They are sobbing. They are grieving. This makes Zoe feel panicked too. It’s dysregulation, manufactured. It’s not real. When people cry, it makes her cry too. Much like in movies. Or yawning. And soon she finds herself weeping as they stagger forward with the carts and act like they can’t do it through swarms of black flies that Susan calls a blizzard and then white is covering her face as Susan throws shredded materials at them like rice at a wedding.
When they reach the men, it’s at a river crossing that they’ve anticipated for the past few days. And suddenly the men are alive and they are to carry the women across the stream. Zoe finds herself disappointed that the men are alive and thought they’d just continue ahead so they could pretend they were dead for the rest of the trip. Esther stands at the edge with the baby and Zoe sees her look at one of the girls from the other group who Zoe thinks could be a lacrosse player. They hold hands to cross while at the same time dropping Esther’s baby on purpose in the stream. The baby gets stuck in some reeds and Zoe can see that Esther is pretending not to notice as they drag the cart and she tries to avoid a teen boy trying to lift her.
“I got it,” Esther says.
“Your baby. I saved it.” Zoe fishes the sopping burlap now heavier as the beans soak in the marshy water and hands it to her.
***
Pippa seems sleepier than usual. Susan says she’s fine. Zoe doesn’t feel fine. No one does. The heat and beating sun is rough. Sunscreen isn’t allowed. Bug spray is not allowed. Deodorant and toothpaste are not allowed. They eat a pot of beans soaked in bacon fat that someone brought and each person gets a roll. Zoe is crazy with hunger and she isn’t sleeping like Susan said she would. Her back hurts. Her uterus hurts.
While Susan’s busy, Zoe ducks in the tent and grabs an Enfamil from her burlap sack. Pippa sucks at it lazily while she hears Susan’s theatrics by the fire. She’s so hungry and looks in her bag. Hadn’t she thrown in protein bars? They are gone. There are 10 more Enfamils for how many days? She peels off the top of one and downs it like a shot.
It’s dark out when she creeps to the back of the handcart to hide the bottle in the gross diaper sack, just as Susan announces that the babies have died. She almost trips over feet sticking out and realizes people are lying under the handcart in the dark.
“Oh my god!” She exclaims. “I’m so sorry!” Are they supposed to be dead? Did they get run over?
Over by the fire, the women and girls start weeping. She hears James weeping too, like a church choir, his voice deep and mournful at the dead babies. She leans down to see who the feet belong to but the feet move and Esther and lacrosse girl wiggle out from under the cart laughing.
“I told you.” Esther looks at her hard.
They dig the graves with their hands in the dark and bury the burlap sacks and Zoe wonders who will unbury them to use again next summer.
***
On the final day, Pippa refuses to eat. Susan carries her in the sling while Zoe thinks of the returning home and if she’s changed and if it could have been better if she didn’t have Pippa. Or if it would have been easier if her mother would have died before she was pregnant with Pippa, or after she’d given birth. Or if Pippa were older, more of a child. Would she do this again in a few years or would she never have a chance do it again at all?
They start down a hillside almost crashing the heavy carts as they gain speed onto a paved downhill road. “Hey this is Emigration Canyon!” someone yells. “We’re close! This is the place!”
They troop what feels like miles more down a canyon onto a paved road. They pass the hospital. They march down the hill and into the city. She sees the street where their rented bungalow sits. She hears horns and music and crowds and crowds lining the streets and they are now tromping, ragged while her feet are screaming. She’s dehydrated and sad, and she thinks that Pippa might need to see the pediatrician. There are floats ahead of them. Is this a parade? The streets are packed and wild and news reporters are there. There’s no way to get out if she wanted to. She marches with her family while people ooh and ahh and she hears the announcement of Salt Lake Emigration Stake and the greatest pioneer day reenactment of all time. Susan is suddenly beside her and she takes Pippa from her arms and holds her up high for all to see, a real surviving baby. The crowd goes wild and she thinks of her gggg grandmother’s arrival with her babies. And if Zoe feels this, or if it’s fake. She tries to feel this as she felt her mother’s death, as she felt Pippa’s birth and wonders if redoing is repairing.
They keep marching and Susan is next to her now. “How are you feeling?”
“Kind of sick, actually.” Zoe realizes she’s either going to have diarrhea or throw up. She just wants to lie down. She thinks of going home to her rental bungalow, of Ben’s bowls of cereal and old milk left in the sink of being alone with Pippa again.
“Well.” Susan stops her and pulls her to the side. She beckons others who gather. “May I?” She reaches into Zoe’s sling and pulls out a cranky Pippa who starts screaming.
“I can just take her,” Zoe says. She thinks she feels her milk letting down. Maybe she doesn’t need Enfamil.
“Well, I don’t know if you forgot, but we have a final thing.”
What would she have forgotten? Susan looks so glowy, so unaffected by the last 6 days. Has she put lipstick on?
Susan continues. “If you read the entire bio, Constance reaches the Salt Lake Valley and unfortunately, like many others, she succumbs to the trials and disease of the journey on the day she arrives. Such a shame, right? After all that work and her husband and son dying? So, come over here.” She points to a grassy area on the side of the road. The crowd parts ways for them.
Zoe is obedient. She hands Pippa to Susan and nudges a toppled fountain drink cup out of the way and lies down on the spilled ice. Susan and Esther and some of the girls kneel over her, and they lay hands on her as if they’ve done it before. She closes her eyes.
“This is your do-over sister,” Susan says. “What do you want to say? How do you want it to go?”
Zoe pictures her own mother lying there with her eyes closed too, the cancer in her brain making her unable to speak. Her hair that had grown back after the failed chemo came in a shocking snow white and full of spiral surprises like a baby’s first curls. She’d gripped her mother’s hand, and said some selfish things, begging her not to leave her, not knowing if she could hear her. It had felt like watching someone drown and asking them to swim. She holds Susan’s hand now just like that but the roles are reversed.
“Sister Constance, if the men hadn’t died, they would bless you, so now it’s on us. We will take care of little Louisa for you and she will have a wonderful life. Heavenly Father has blessed me with the ability to make milk after years because you are my sister.”
Zoe feels a letting go, as if she is floating. She thinks of Pippa, so quiet. Where is she? She opens her eyes at the bright blue sky and blazing sun and when Susan leans over her to kiss her forehead, she sees that Pippa is nursing Susan’s breast which is presumably giving her milk. And then it makes sense, how the last few days have been, the blur of it all. And while all the girls and Susan put their hands on her, as if to hold her down, and she lets them, closing her eyes, and thinking the last thoughts of her mother and grandmothers going back to Belinda who had regrets, who wished she hadn’t gone, as the parade marches by and she hears Ben faintly calling her name as her body melts into the grass.
