Between Earth & Sky (9 page)

My duties here are the cleaning of the house and cooking for the five Harmons and the four men who work for them. There is plenty of variety of vegetables here, and so I invent all kinds of recipes, like squash and green pepper pie, which we ate last night. There are two girls for Rachel to play with, and if we are still here in a month's time I will send her off to school with the others. She is learning hard work at a young age
—
hauling buckets of laundry, scrubbing and cleaning, caring for the baby and Will. I would like to see her get some sort of education before she is grown
.

Do you think often of Virginia? I do and long to go back, though there is nothing really to go back to in the way of making a living, as Roger has said to me too many times. It is awful how I miss my mother. Nearly most of my family is there still. But did you hear that Adam and Grey went to Colorado? I guess they will work the mines. Mother says they are bound for adventure and may come the rest of the way across to California. Wouldn't that be grand?

I do think of you often, Abigail. Perhaps we will see one another again
.

Your Sally

February 7, 1874

Dear Maggie,

We had snow last week, the most Amy could remember ever having seen. The world got whiter and whiter all morning, and by afternoon the tree limbs and our house were heavy with it. Clayton stayed inside by the stove, as his back was hurting again, but Amy and I bundled up against the cold and went out. I felt like a child again, running through all that whiteness. When the sky turned a hard, bright blue, everything was glittering. We fashioned a rabbit out of snow for George Michael, who was watching from the window.

Maggie, I hate to write to you to ask for anything after Clayton lost John's money and after all you have given us. But I can think of nowhere else to turn. Clayton's father has given all he can, and we are still quite low on supplies. I do not see how we can get through the winter. Thirty or forty dollars would be enough, as soon we shall be able to plant. Maggie, I am asking for a loan. Know that I will return the money by next fall, and soon we will repay John the money lost to the mines.

I am your thankful, indebted sister,

Abigail

March 1, 1874

Dear Maggie,

I am unsure of when I will be able to post this letter, as we have had a recent snowfall and Clayton tells me it will be a few days at least before we can reach the main roads, but I feel I must write despite this to thank you for the generous loan you sent. It arrived a few days ago and is none too soon, as we have depleted our stores of nearly everything, including flour and sugar. I do not know how we would have survived the next month if not for your generosity. As soon as the roads have melted enough for passage, Clayton will take the wagon to the nearest store and purchase enough to see us through for another month. We will certainly be in need of these extra provisions, as winter has lasted much longer than we planned on.

When the snow is melted, we will begin planting. We are told root crops do quite well here in the spring, including carrots and turnips, and many of the farmers plant spinach and lettuce. I have already marked off a large kitchen garden, enough, I hope, to provide all of us with something freshly grown during the spring months.

This summer we plan to use the acequia to irrigate. Each landowner is given a specified time during which he can raise the gate, allowing water to flow into his ditches, and various penalties result if a landowner is caught raising the gate when it is not his time to do so. Still, if someone upstream were to use our share of the water, it would be difficult to prove his dishonesty. Señor López, from whom we purchased our land, is a large and powerful landowner who farms a nearby tract of land, and we are counting on his influence to protect our water rights. But in a drought, as Clayton has pointed out to me, there is no way to know how one's neighbors will act.

Your Sister,

Abigail

August 5, 1874

Dear Maggie,

We have had enough alfalfa to sell some, and so I am sending the money you kindly loaned us last winter. We planted nearly an acre in alfalfa, first leveling the ground, then dividing it into squares with raised borders, finally digging the ditches to carry the water. Maintaining these ditches is timeconsuming, but well worth it. We have had four good cuttings in one season.

This past month Clayton made some money speculating on the mines south of here. He insists on taking half his earnings and investing them on a new site. I have tried to persuade him against speculation, but he will not hear me, and so I count this money gone. We spent part of what was left on the purchase of two buff-colored mules. There is enough remaining for Amy's school tuition and her board for the winter.

The only church nearby is a Catholic chapel. It has a courtyard with all kinds of statues painted so that the place looks nearly like a circus. The Virgin Mary is a bright blue, as brilliant a shade as the sky (indeed, I have heard a woman refer to her painted robes as the sky's mirror), and her skin is not cream colored but a darker shade, with the red of an autumn leaf or the sienna of clay. The folds of her dress and the features of her face are nearly primitive in their design, angular and harsh as if the artist did not know how to mold the lines. The feet are wide and the toes thicker than human toes. The hands also do not have the graceful curves we are accustomed to seeing on fine works of art.

By your last letter I see we are both to be delivered soon. I expect mine to come near Christmas. Amy will attend school, boarding in Santa Fe for the winter with the family of one of the other children in the school. While I have longed to send her, I know I shall miss her terribly, and even at the age of eleven, she seems young to be away at school. During the many days of Clayton's long absences, I spoke to no one but Amy. Sometimes it seems we are of the same mind, and I thank God that after losing Josh, I have been able to keep my first born.

Your grateful and devoted sister,

Abigail

December 6, 1874

Dear Maggie,

I have sent you a package. You should receive notice of it in a week or two, as I sent it by railroad. There is nothing of too great an expense in it, just an Indian basket and a few trifles from the southwest which you may find amusing.

This year we are well prepared for the season, with grains, dried beans, and the vegetables and fruit we have dried or preserved. We have a large quantity of wood cut, and Clayton has been on a few profitable hunting expeditions. Many of the people here raise hogs, goats, and chickens, and as soon as Clayton is able, we will build a barn so that we can raise our own livestock.

George has had a cough, and I have given him plenty of red pepper tea and wrapped his throat and chest in flannel. Clayton goes to town next week to bring Amy back to us, and Mrs. Deering has offered to come and stay. My hope is that the baby will wait until Clayton's and Amy's return, but if not, Mrs. Deering is of a sensible mind and will be of great help.

Will Mother not write to us, even at Christmas time? You write that she is full of concern about my condition. I sent her another letter, all but begging her to reply, more than four weeks ago now, and still I have received nothing. How is it you can say that I am the prideful one?

Your Repentant Sister,

Abigail

January 3, 1875

Dearest Maggie,

I received your letter and celebrated your news of Susan's arrival. Margaret Anne was born just before Christmas. She has hair dark as yours and blue eyes. I hope you are pleased by the name. If I cannot have my sister here in the flesh, I will have you here in spirit. She is a sweet baby but very colicky. I do not know if it is the water or maybe the drafts make her stomach cramp. But do not worry about her; she has the strongest set of lungs you have ever heard!

Amy was here for three whole weeks. She has learned reading, writing, and sewing and is quite the young lady. George Michael pestered to get her to chase jack rabbits, but she would not. She was such a help with the new baby, and every evening we spent reading together from a book of poems she had been given by her teacher. I shall miss her this long winter.

You would hardly know our house was the same shack we moved into a year ago. There is one big room made mostly of clay bricks, and we have put in a six-pane window and a wooden door. I put straw under the rag carpet Amy and I wove last summer and tacked it down. Our bed is on a platform, the curtains are put up, and Clayton got a store-bought rocker and two more chairs to go with our table. I trimmed the shelves Clayton made with newspapers cut in fancy patterns. With the stove going, we are quite snug, a far piece from last winter, when our walls gleamed with a sheet of ice and the air itself was nearly crystallized with frost.

Last week our neighbor Señora Teresa Martinez took me inside the Catholic church. It is small and built of clay bricks, lined inside with crude wooden benches that are the pews. There were a number of statues inside, similar to those in the courtyard, except that they are actually dressed, the same way you would dress up a doll, in lace and bright satin. A statue of the body of Jesus had been made and placed in a glass casket which stands along one of the walls. The figure was quite realistic, complete with gashes and blood.

Señora Teresa told a strange story about the man who sculpted it. As he worked on the statue, his feet bled from mysterious holes, which could not be healed. It became his wish to live long enough to finish his sculpture for the church, and when he did he prepared to die. At that moment the holes closed over, and a red rose bush grew instantly on the ground where the last of his blood had fallen.

Our Spanish neighbors wave to us, shouting greetings as we ride by in the wagon, but I have not been able to converse much with them. I do not understand their beliefs in miracles and curses, devils and witches. It seems they celebrate frequently, and we have heard that any wedding, baptism, or saint's day is an excuse for a fiesta or a dance.

Several Protestants besides ourselves have settled in the valley. Mrs. Porter lives with her husband and two boys not far from here, and the Deerings are establishing their ranch less than a day's ride north. Mrs. Porter came to call on me last week, and we discussed setting up a sewing circle, even if it is just the two of us in attendance.

Indians still come to the house, mostly to beg for food, and it is likely if we have any visitors on a cold winter day it will be them. They go through the scraps I put out for the rabbits; they are really quite sad. Last fall Clayton and I visited a small group of them that live near here, and I must say that the majority of them are very industrious; I think these beggars are but a small portion of the entire Indian people. They have plentiful gardens and weave rugs and blankets from the wool of the sheep they raise.

You must write and give the news about everyone. I have a letter recently from Aunt Celia but still none from Mother. It seems as if Mother has lost all affection for me. Aunt Celia writes that my decision not to return to Virginia two years ago was a great disappointment to Mother and that she refuses to open my letters herself but seems to listen if Aunt Celia reads them to her. Do I no longer exist for her? Can she be so cruel? Aunt Celia advises me to bring the children east for a visit. If I were able to manage the trip, could amends be made? Would she allow me to return to the southwest without resenting my leaving of Virginia all over again? I am afraid her animosity would be doubled.

I am your loving sister,

Abigail

May 2, 1875

Dear Maggie,

I must thank you for your comforting words about Mother. I suppose it is her love for me which makes it so difficult for her to accept my leaving. I will continue to write to her, as you advise, even if she does give the appearance of turning away my letters.

We have had a wet spring, thunderstorms driven out of the mountains across the valley, the entire sky a churning pot with the explosion of clouds and brilliant, sharp lines of lightning. Then, as soon as the rain stopped, the sky was swept clean. The river and ditches became so full with water, gushing and running with a swift current, that several times a week Clayton had to ride out to repair a bank or remove branches and whole trees which had been knocked loose by the force of the water.

Last month a Spanish boy drowned trying to drag a tree from the river. After Clayton helped to retrieve his body from the tangled branches, he attended the boy's wake, a strange affair, with the boy laid out in the main room and much drinking, eating, and crying going on all around him. There was a guitar and singing. Clayton swears some of the sounds were unearthly, strange moans, the screech of some animal, and there was a gust of wind that came and pulled at the boy's hair; all this while the doors and windows remained closed.

“It was as if there were ghosts,” he told me. All night there was an owl just outside our window, and I do not think either one of us slept through its queer, dark sounds.

Doña Romero, an old woman who was born in this valley and learned to speak some English years ago from a missionary, claims that the excess of water so early in the season forebodes a dry summer. “Too much, too early,” she says, shaking her head, staring out across the valley, which is thick with the growth of early summer. I cannot imagine that she is right, for if the river is more full now than usual, certainly it will be higher later in the summer than is normal. With the help of two men Clayton was able to hire, we planted nearly four acres in alfalfa this month and are hopeful of a great harvest.