Devotion(66)

The sky closed in upon the sea.

The storm approached.

The wind wanted to drag me into a dance. To be touched like that! The feel of the natural world running its hands over me, all violent invitation, was a wild pleasure. The ocean rose. My skin smacked with water lifted from the cresting waves, and I suddenly felt loose and angry and desirous. As the wind pulled my head up into the closed fist of sky, I understood that I need not hide from it. I was free to do as I liked. Unanchored from life, I could be unmoored from fear of its loss.

And so I stayed.



I remember laughing throughout the storm. I was open-mouthed. I climbed the rigging and clung to it like a spider and felt the spume dash across my teeth, felt my hair whip about my skull as if the wind would have me scalped. It could not touch me. The water could not drown me. I swallowed it down. I remember the cold upon my skin, the laceration of salt. The ship groaned, boards creaking, and I imagined passengers below, hands gripping the planks between their bunks, rolling with the waves, praying for safety.

I shook the rigging and curled my toes about the rope and sang to the storm.

‘Praise God,’ I screamed, ‘for He has a wild heart and I am in His image! Praise God, for his angels are birds and their trumpets are filled with fish! Praise God for the wind that blows the skies apart!’

I am done with my dying. I remember thinking that, as the storm filled my lungs. I am done with my dying.



I woke sticky with salt. My cheek pressed against the rope, my hands and feet knotted in the rigging. Undrowned, skin raw only with the cold.

I climbed down and sat in the sun, revelling in my curling hair, its tangles down my back. I felt wayward and mutinous. Around me sailors were busy. I paid them no attention. My whole body thrummed. My eyes stung from the rain and sea water that had harassed them, my skin prickled, and my hands ached from where I had clung to the rope. I did not feel invisible. I felt as though I had fought something and won. As though I had wrestled out a blessing.

I did not braid my hair again that day, but let it remain loose and salt-filled. It was the first stirring of my resistance. I remained in my shift, too, even as I returned below deck. What need of modesty had I, who was seen by no one? I felt ungoverned for the first time in my life.


In the bow, I found Anna Maria and Friedrich telling Thea about my funeral: what hymns were sung, the prayers offered, the sunshine of the morning. Anna Maria told her that services were not the same without my voice. That my family was being strong and making the best of things. Friedrich offered a prayer of such deeply felt gratitude that I shuddered to hear it. I watched him press his fingers together to stop them from shaking as He praised God for keeping their only child with them, as he extolled the Lord with gulping breaths for the great blessing of her recovery.

I sat by Thea’s side as she watched him pray. She was dry-eyed, mouth twisting as though she wanted to interrupt him. When he finished, his amen falling from his mouth like a shrugged-off weight, he reached for Thea’s hands and held them to his forehead.

‘But Hanne did not recover,’ Thea said. Her voice was a snapped twig. ‘Hanne has not been kept.’

Friedrich looked up, eyes red-rimmed. ‘No,’ he replied softly. ‘The Lord has taken her to be with Him.’

‘How can you be sure?’ Thea said.

‘She died in faith.’

‘How can you be sure she has gone at all?’

I rested my head against Thea’s.

‘What do you mean?’ her father asked.

Thea opened her mouth, then closed it again. I noticed Anna Maria frown.

‘I saw them tip her body into the sea, Thea,’ Friedrich said. ‘Let’s pray for her.’

I did not want to hear any prayers for the keeping of my soul, not even from Thea’s lips. I climbed out past Friedrich and went into the main quarters. Many of the passengers were trying to sop up the water that had fallen below during the storm, wringing out rags in buckets and hanging sodden clothes to dry on lines strung between the useless upper bunks. I ducked under dripping breeches and blouses and found Mama lying in her berth, Hermine propped up between her legs.

‘Hello, Mama,’ I said. I sat by her side. Touched her beautiful dark hair.

She closed her eyes.

Her stillness frightened me.

‘Buh.’ Hermine stared at me.

I shifted to the side. Her pupils followed. ‘Hermine?’

My sister smiled and shoved her fingers in her mouth, drooling.

I touched her cheek. She swatted me away, then toppled sideways, head colliding with the post. Mama sprang up as Hermine opened her mouth to cry.

‘Shall I take her?’ Elize Geschke pulled aside the cloth between the berths as Hermine began to bawl in earnest. ‘We’ll go for a little walk.’ She hoisted Hermine up over the dividing plank and sat my sister on her lap. ‘Look, Hermine! What is this? A biscuit! Reinhardt, show her the little poppet you made.’

The cloth dropped back down and Mama sank onto the mattress.

‘Go to sleep, Mama,’ I said. ‘I’ll watch over you.’

I stroked my mother’s hair until she fell asleep that afternoon. I hoped she might feel something tender, even if she could not know its source. Mama had held me at my moment of birth and at my hour of suffering, and I understood that there was a part of my mother that still lay in the soil of Kay, and that now a part of her would remain in the ocean.