Between Earth & Sky (10 page)

Your Sister,

Abigail

July 20, 1875

Dear Maggie,

You ask what has become of my drawing and the art work I hoped to take up once we settled in the west. I will tell you. Each morning I wake just before dawn and go outside into the dark desert. The sky is crazy still with stars. They seem to spin and fall in all sorts of ways until the sky is like a large wagon wheel rotating so fast the spokes cannot be distinguished, dirt and clay and stones set flying. Some mornings I stay outside in my wrapper so long among the stars and planets, splashing water on myself, that I see the first streaks of red light to the east as I walk back towards the house. I love best the earliest hours of the day.

When I return to the house I often need to help Clayton get up from the bed if he is stiff upon waking. By now little Margaret is awake, and I sit as long as I can to feed her before hurrying to the stove to fry up hominy cakes or stir porridge. The children dress, and after eating we go into the fields and begin to work the corn or beans or alfalfa. Clayton rides out to check the ditches, and often there are repairs to make. Last month a portion of the bank collapsed and the land flooded. The ditch had to be dried out before it could be dug again.

We have a cow now, which Amy milks before coming to the field. George Michael is already quite adept at feeding the chickens and collecting eggs. I bring the baby to the field and set her on a blanket while Amy and I work.

We stop work for lunch and rest until the sun moves across the sky and the heat lessens. Often in the afternoon, the wind increases, and the heat and sand are driven across the valley in waves. If we do go outside, we must wrap our faces with a cloth. I read to the children and feed the baby; I put on a pot of beans or grain for supper.

Sometimes a neighbor calls on us, or we see burros on the roads, packed with great bundles larger than themselves. There are these few distractions. So you see, by evening when the children are all in bed, I am too tired to get out paper and charcoal, and there is not much light from the oil lamp that hangs over our table.

Doña Romero's prophecy about the dryness of the summer has been borne out, as we have had no rain for three weeks now. I have heard that she is a curandera, someone who can cure sickness, and that she can predict the seasons of drought. She has said that until the moon turns its horns down and lets the water out, we will not have rain. Some evenings when Clayton raises the gate, the ditch is almost dry. He mentioned that this was so while several of them, including Señor López, were repairing the main ditch, and he says there was too little reply made and that he noticed a few mysterious smiles. In the past two weeks we have lost nearly an acre of alfalfa, after all that work of planting and digging the ditches. “Only our second summer, Abigail,” Clayton told me, “and I see already how a man could kill for water.”

I know you will wonder again, perhaps out loud, why I chose this life, for it is full of difficulty, but in truth I feel it has chosen me. When I walk out into the dry fields and take the crumbling soil in my hands, I feel as if this were the earth I was made of, that I was born to work it. You will say that desires plant themselves inside us, so firmly, so convincingly that we live our lives out of them, believing they are destiny. And perhaps life is a canvas on which our dreams and desires are painted. When the sun sets behind the mountains here, they glitter as if bits of gold had dropped from the sky. So do not be too sorry for me.

Your desert-crazy sister,

Abigail

February 2, 1876

My Dearest Maggie,

I was filled with grief on reading your letter. To have lost both twins within a few days of each other, and just weeks after they were born—how empty your arms must feel. They left this world as they came into it so little time ago—together. But I know the thought of them with one another is a small comfort, so I will not write to you of it. I am sure that you have been counseled that the Good Shepherd has taken your gentle lambs into His flock. Instead I would tell you that grief is like a mourning cloak that can be removed and hung on a high hook but is always with you. Do not turn too quickly to the living. Let sorrow wring your heart until it is emptied. It can be filled again.

If at all possible I will come east next month, as you suggest, and bring the children. I do so want to hold you in my arms.

I am your devoted sister,

Abigail

March 29, 1876

Dear Maggie,

Perhaps we can come at Christmas time. You see, it is difficult to leave a farm—we now have two milk cows and chickens—without considerable planning. I long to be with you now, but I am not certain that Clayton could manage the animals and the planting alone if I were gone. We will plant the four acres in alfalfa and hope to put in a considerable vegetable garden as well.

I am sending a money order with this letter, written to the amount of John's money which Clayton lost to the mines. He has had better luck speculating this past year, and I now sell enough eggs and milk to manage our small household. You must tell Mother not to worry about the living we are able to scrape out anymore, for Aunt Celia has written that Mother does worry, even if she will not write to me of it.

Amy will return in May for the summer. The teachers have written that her progress is exceptional and that she should go on to finish school and attend an academy or a college. She could train in the east for a vocation such as teaching. I cannot tell you what a demand there is out here for teachers.

George Michael plays with a boy who lives nearby. They speak Spanish together, and I cannot understand all that they say. I would like to find him more suitable playmates. Pamela Porter and I meet occasionally to sew or share tea and conversation, but her boys are old enough now to work the ranch with their father. Any schooling they have had she's managed to give them herself with books she brought from Tennessee.

I wish that I could promise to come east by this fall, but after the harvest is finished, the weather will turn quickly and we must prepare wood for the stove. While I do not mean to worry you, for in truth we want for nothing, our life here is a struggle fit to the changes each season brings, and I fear what might happen if we were not prepared.

Now that we have the comforts of a true home, with plenty of bedding, shelves of cookware, and ample provisions, perhaps John will allow you and the children to make the trip westward. I assure you, there are no more wild, scalping Indians. To the contrary, you would find their villages most interesting. If you can come we will make an outing to one, and you can tell everyone back in Virginia you have met the “savages.”

Clayton says that if you come by railroad, we could meet you at the station with the wagon. The trip would not be arduous. We have plans to expand our home, and there would be plenty of space to accommodate you and the children. Until we see one another,

I keep you in my prayers,

Abigail

August 19, 1876

Dear Maggie,

I am writing to you by lantern, as this is the only time I can steal for such things as letters. Our alfalfa cuttings have been more successful than last summer, due in part to an abundance of rain in late June, which has meant water for the ditches all summer. Our neighbor, the old woman Doña Romero, had said it would be so. She watches for signs: the smoke from a newly made fire which settles quickly to the ground, the whirl of ashes in her fireplace, the coyotes' cries.

Last month Clayton and I took her with us to the market place, where we saw her trade for copper bells and the feathers of a song bird. “For use in her incantations,” Clayton whispered, smiling. He finds her predictions amusing. But she was right about the water. I cannot tell you what a change it has made not to concern ourselves over each drop spent on dishes or wasted during a washing. There is no animosity between neighbors, only good wishes for a bountiful harvest.

The children are carefree this summer as I have never seen them, Amy nearly dancing through the fields and George running behind her, sometimes charging ahead, with baby Margaret crawling after them through the high grasses, nearly lost in the thick fields of ripening corn. The color, you cannot imagine the color of it all! The deep yellow of the corn, the purple alfalfa, and the fields of dark green bordered by red and white cliffs, all of it covered by the bluest of skies. By next summer, Clayton promises we will have a larger home. Perhaps then you will visit us and see the harvest for yourself. Washed in the brightness of this place,

I am your sister,

Abigail

November 30, 1876

Dear Maggie,

December is nearly upon us, and so I am sending you these few gifts: a ristra made of red peppers, some stones from the mountains, which should delight the children, and a shawl for you, Maggie, one for Irene, and one for Mother, which I have knit of wool spun here in the valley. We wish you the joys of the season.

You asked about the clothing I wear here while working out-of-doors. It is far from what you would call stylish. Last winter I made myself a pair of men's pantaloons of wool, which I wear under a short skirt. It is a practical and somewhat feminine outfit. There are times when I confess I pull on a pair of Clayton's trousers before going out to do the chores. There is seldom anyone who sees me thus outfitted, except for an occasional Mexican on a burro. But yesterday morning as I stood hitching up my pants, having just left the barn with the morning's milking, I saw Señor López sitting on his horse in our drive, his teeth flashing under the brim of his hat. He does not speak much English, and so the joke he might have made about the “Anglo” lady would have been lost to me. I suppose this much was fortunate.

Señor Martínez and his wife, Teresa, took us for a ride last month, and we saw a village which is nearby. The Indians were dancing in the streets, carrying sticks ornamented with feathers and rattles in their hands. They wore white moccasins and leg wrappings. Old men beat drums and sang. Margaret clapped her hands as if it were a parade.

Amy will take the train home soon, and Clayton will meet her with the wagon. We have plans for Christmas Day at the Deerings' ranch. Their house was completed last summer, and it is quite large, with a wide sitting room and several bedrooms. Clayton has promised that he will add another room to our house by next fall. What a Christmas we will have then!

Your Sister,

Abigail

March 25, 1877

My Dear Maggie,

Patricia was born yesterday morning. She has a blond head of hair and eyes that mirror a desert sky. She is a hearty eater. Margaret has taken to holding my skirt hem all day, and I think she would keep me for herself if she could. I send her out to play in the yard with George and the rabbits they keep as pets.

George has a special love for his little sister. He sets Margaret in a cart and pushes her around the yard. She delights in this and claps her hands, demanding he go faster and faster, until they come charging across the yard, chickens scattering, Margaret screeching. Then she demands to have another “ride,” and they start it all again.

Soon it will be planting time, and Clayton is already outside most of the day with the two Mexicans he hired to help with the alfalfa. They will plant an acre or more in peppers also, which we hope to sell at the nearby market.

I regret I could not answer your letters this past winter. When Mother returned the shawl I had made for her, I felt that Virginia was a book I should close and put away on the shelf. All winter, while the snow fell two feet or more, I did not allow myself to think about any of you. Indeed, I feel cut away at times, as if the family of my childhood existed in another lifetime.

But Maggie, there are times when I stop in the middle of planting or cooking or washing the clothes and look out across the valley or up into the mountains, and I long for Stillwater. It is all of a sudden that I miss the streets lined with maples and dogwoods, their pale leaves unfolding, the heavily scented blossoming. You are fortunate, Maggie, that John owns both the store and such a home, the wide columns and those rooms filled with fine furniture, china bowls, and gold-framed portraits. I would I could see it and you for myself again.

The baby is awake. I must return to my duties! I am your happy but tired sister,

Abigail

May 27, 1877

Dearest Maggie,

You write that you are surprised I remember Stillwater after having been gone more than ten years. Has it been as long as that? Would I recognize the streets and the buildings? Have the people changed so much that I would walk the streets a stranger? What I long for most is to hold you in my arms; then I should care not what transformations the rest of the town has undergone.

Patsy is the sweetest baby. I can set her down at any time, for she amuses herself with the simplest things. Yesterday she spent nearly an hour wrapped in her blanket, propped up in a chair, “remarking” over her hands as she waved them in front of herself, curling the little fingers into fists. She delights in watching the other children and sleeps through any noise they make, her features smooth and soft as silk.