Charlotte's Rose

Saturday, April 19, 1856 Aboard the S. Curling, ready to set sail from Liverpool Here's a secret I have not told a soul. Not even Papa. I wish I were famous. Like Queen Victoria, maybe, although I would not care to look like her. She has lovely blue eyes, but she is too short. So perhaps I would rather be famous like that man Dickens. I am sure I could do what he does. Publish stories in journals and get paid. Oh, I have so many tales blooming in my head. Comedies. Romances. Tragedies. Some of them are stories Mam told me before she died, but most of them I just made up. I cut and stitched them from air. My girlfriends back in Port Talbot, Wales, used to love my stories, especially the romances, which I told as we strolled through narrow streets at night. We walked to the Morfa Colliery to greet our fathers and brothers, who were covered with coal dust. "How do you do it, Charlotte?" my friends would say. Truly, I don't know. My head is just a cupboard. I open it up and the stories are waiting for me on the shelves. So it is a huge sadness to me that although I will be thirteen years old come this summer, I cannot read. Nor can I write my stories down. I must try to remember, then--everything that happens to us as Papa and I commence our journey this nineteenth day of April in the year of our Lord 1856 from the docks of Liverpool, England. Like those children of Israel who searched for the Promised Land, we are headed with seven hundred Mormon brothers and sisters for the distant blue mountains of Utah in America. Zion! I only pray that my remembrances will not unravel and turn back into air but will always hold their shapes in my heart. Monday, April 21, 1856 On the S. Curling, in Cardigan Bay, off the Welsh coast Brother James Bowen sits across the chessboard from me, stroking his gray beard with strong fingers stained from years of scratching the earth for coal. Sister Margaret Bowen stands with her arms folded across her stout bosom, looking over her husband's shoulder. Papa rests on a stool nearby, carving a piece of wood. He's not wearing his hat, so his red hair gleams like copper in the sun. We're surrounded by ship sounds. Sails snapping in the wind. Passengers gossiping. Children laughing. A band is playing "All Is Well" on the other side of the deck. One of the brothers from London is preaching in that language which I do not care for, but which I must learn because I'm going to America, where they speak English, not Welsh. There are ship smells, too. Mingled scents of fish and food and wool clothing slightly wet. Papa teases me about my nose, saying I use it more than I use my ears or my eyes--or sometimes my head! Brother Bowen reaches across the chessboard to make a move. Just then I take a bite from my hard crust of bread and chew loudly. Brother Bowen frowns. He draws his hand back as if he has just touched something hot. Sister Bowen catches my eye and winks. She understands what is happening here, of course. Sister Bowen understands everything. Overhead a circle of seagulls laughs against a bright blue sky. Inside, I laugh with them. Ha! Ha! Ha! I am beating you for the first time ever in my whole life, Brother Bowen. "Good afternoon, President and Sister Bowen. Brother Edwards." Oh no. It's that awful old Brother Nathaniel Roberts and his shriveled wife, Lititia, who believe they are more righteous than the rest of us. They come from Glamorgan County like the Bowens and Papa and me, although Brother Roberts didn't work in the mines. They used to have money once. You can tell because of the expensive cameo Sister Roberts always wears pinned beneath her chin. I was hoping we could leave the Robertses behind in Wales. "Good afternoon, Nathaniel.Cannon, A. E. is the author of 'Charlotte's Rose' with ISBN 9780385900577 and ISBN 0385900570.