Mamie

**Mamie Andersson**, or **Mamie Holtzclaw** is an inactive inhabitant of The Five Territories.

## Background

### Early Life

Born in 1872, Mamie Andersson was an only child. Her father was Swedish, her mother German.

Mamie grew up speaking English, but her father saw to it that she learned Swedish as well. An alcoholic and a violent man, he never allowed Mamie's mother to speak her native tongue.

Mamie's mother was a gentle soul well known by the residents of Grass Valley for her kindness and compassion.  She was often known to spend her time delivering food to the less fortunate despite her own poverty.

Mamie's days consisted of gathering eggs and other chores around their meager farm.  On some days, if she was especially fortunate and her daddy wasn't three sheets to the wind, she was allowed to attend school.

The sound of her mothers muffled cries were as common as the dust carried in the Kansas wind.  Mamie often crept outside to her pet goat and crawled into the barn where she would crouch down in the corner, her arms tightly wrapped around her furry friend and wait for the crying to cease.  Though the beatings were as regular as meal times, her father had never laid a hand on her.

When Mamie was ten years old, life as she knew it was turned on its head.

It was an ordinary day for all practical purposes.  She'd been out and gathered the eggs and the laundry from the clothesline, and as a reward for finishing her chores early, she was allowed to attend school that day. Content and happy, she skipped her way home after school.  As she approached the dirt road leading to the old broken down farmhouse, the scent of a warm meal wafted through the dry Kansas air.  A very unfamiliar smell, because you see, Mamie's family rarely could afford anything more than dried bread.  Mamie learned long ago that the unexpected was never a welcome sign, but the hunger pains in her belly spoke louder at just that moment.

She cautiously approached the house and entered, removing her boots just inside the door.  The silence was overwhelming but she followed the smell of warm spices to the kitchen because right at that moment her stomach grumbled louder than the sound of her own frightened, beating heart.  And there, at the kitchen table, sat her mother, stoic, eyes swollen and red. The entire meal, which consisted of meat and potatoes, was eaten in silence until it was broken by the laughter of her drunken father. The last thing Mamie remembered before her world collapsed under her feet was her father saying 'How'd you like that goat meat girl?'

The next moments were remembered in snippets; the banshee scream of her mother as she broke from her trance, rose from the table and in one swift movement pulled the shotgun off the kitchen mantle.  The flash of the muzzle as it obliterated the face of the man Mamie had grown to hate; the smell of gunpowder and lastly; the sound of her mothers knees as she dropped to the floor in silent defeat and laid the shotgun beside her.

The following days were a blur. The sheriff, the undertaker, the preacher.  The townsfolk huddled in corners whispering about the tragedy, and they would continue to whisper for years to come for such things just didn't normally happen in their small poor town.  Because of her mother's reputation as a kind woman, because of the fact that everyone secretly knew of her father's drunken tendencies to beat on his wife, every effort was made to spare her mother the gallows.  One dark, cold February morning, her mother was whisked away never to be seen again.  Rumor had it, it was a mental home she was being sent to. It was the only way to spare her mother's life, they said.  In the end it made no difference to Mamie, because she never saw her mother again.

And, as it were, a young ten year old girl lost everything in a single day.  Mamie was taken in by a foster home run by the local Catholic Church where she refused to answer to the surname of Andersson.  Even at ten years old, she knew she never wanted a single thing to do with the name of the man she knew as her father. She took her mothers surname Holtzclaw instead, much to the frustration of the old, tired nun who ran the foster home.  Day in and day out, Sister Perpetua spent her waking hours trying to mold a child of trauma into a proper catholic young lady.  Mamie would have nothing to do with it, and circumvented her efforts at every turn.  This of course meant that Mamie spent a lot of time being disciplined instead of loved and cared for.

It didn't take long for Mamie to run.  And run she did, heading straight to the local train station where she spent the next 6 years of her life riding the local box cars in search of her mother.

### Later Life

As she grew older, the boxcar life took its toll and Mamie hopped off the train for the last time.

She discovered that digging through trash piles behind the local doctors office often paid off with at least some decent scraps for a meal, and it was here she returned when the hunger could no longer be ignored. She picked up whatever odd jobs she could find, from farming to hunting rabbits, just to stay alive.  One snowy morning, sick and overwhelmed by the cold, Mamie huddled up next to the pile of garbage she so often frequented and closed her eyes.  She would remember being carried, kind words whispered, warm blankets and the soft touch of hand resting upon her feverish brow.  In those moments, she dreamed of her Mother.  She dreamed of everything that could have been, should have been. Eventually, the fever broke, and she woke to the kind, relieved gazes of the local doctor and his wife.

From that day on, she was given shelter and a proper job assisting them at their small rural clinic. It was those skills she would carry with her and one fine summer day, she set out on her own eventually landing in Valentine, where she became the doctor she had only dreamed of becoming.