Between Earth & Sky

by Karen Osborn

  The baby does well. She was sickly for several days in January but recovered quickly. I myself was in bed for a few days, and Teresa spent two nights caring for us. She brought with her bags of horehound and spearmint, which she had gathered last spring, and the effects seemed beneficial. For years she has been called a curandera, a woman who is a doctor of herbs. Many of her neighbors have sought her advice. But now that Doña Romero is dead, there are rumors that Teresa is the bruja, the witch. It is because she lives alone since her husband’s death and because she is growing old. “Only their mindless superstitions,” I said, but she will not speak against them to defend herself.

  Last week I received a letter from Margaret. She did not ask about the child, but her questions about my own state of affairs were so insistent that I must assume she wanted some indication of her daughter’s well-being. She fled to California, where she has taken up with a traveling band of actors. They are the worst kind in this part of the country, vagabonds capable of every sort of indecency. I only wish that she would return to her home.

  Your Sister,

  Abigail

  July 29, 1901

  Dear Maggie,

  It seems I have become accurate at portending the weather. We are in the midst of a most terrible drought. I foresaw the difficulties of this season enough not to plant as I usually would, allowing the alfalfa and corn fields to stand idle. And so I have little need for the water that runs so shallow in the ditches and use only what is necessary to keep the fruit trees Clayton planted alive and to grow a few vegetables. Our neighbors bring me corn and grain for the animals. They are grateful to me for not using more of the precious water. Without Clayton, I doubt I would be able to engage in the fight for it; I find it easier not to have the crops that would demand a greater use.

  You mentioned Amy’s concerns in your letter. Of course, she has written to me also, explicating her reasons once again why I should sell the land and come east this summer. Perhaps it has become too much for me to manage. But both of you forget that I have a grandchild and two other children here—George, who wrote last month that he plans to come for a visit in the fall, and Margaret, who is wandering somewhere in California. Although I spend much of the year alone, I must be here for them when they do come home. Clayton would want it. And he would see my return as a failure after all that we worked so hard together to achieve.

  Thomas Mayfield visited me here one day last week. We rode along the river and then out across the desert to the edge of the mountains. The mesa loomed over us, its dark, unchanging shape. Thomas wanted to take the horses up into the mountains and ride along the high, flat ridge, but it felt as if that would be a betrayal, for riding along the top of the mesa was Clayton’s favorite ride, and so I told him it was too late in the day. “Another time, then,” he said, and perhaps there will be a time when I am past betrayal, past the sense that I owe an allegiance still to Clayton.

  But Maggie, Thomas has changed, he is not the same young man I knew at all. And why did I not expect it? He has grown so quiet, so lost it seemed in his own thoughts, that I hardly dared speak, and indeed he said little the entire time we rode. But still he would jump off his horse to look at a plant or rock or to rub the sage brush between his hands, his face suddenly animated as it was more than twenty years ago, as if he is still surprised by the world.

  He took two of the sketches I showed him for his book, a landscape and one of an Indian child. I have a whole series of drawings of the Indian children and will enclose one in this letter. I gave him another small painting, of a branch of apple blossoms, which he admired.

  He gave up his medical practice several years ago to care for his wife, who died of diabetes. Shortly afterwards, one of his sons was shot and killed by a bandit. He has a daughter, who is attending medical school back east, and another son, who lives in New Mexico and has married a Spanish-speaking woman. I told him about Anna, and he said that he has a grandchild who is dark also.

  I rode out with him to the railroad station, where he took the train that travels daily to Santa Fe. Before he left, he asked if he could come out another time for a visit. “Of course,” I told him. “I would welcome it.” And I would. Then he put his arms around me, for a brief moment, there at the station where anyone could see. I did not care. I could feel how thin he has become, how much older.

  Your Sister,

  Abigail

  December 1, 1901

  Dear Maggie,

  Margaret was here for two months this fall. To put it plainly, she had gotten herself mixed in with the wrong sort of people. She had taken up with a man who ran a theater company. She arrived at the door one evening with only a small trunk, having taken the railroad car from California. She showed little interest in the baby after arriving and only went to her old room and began unpacking her trunk.

  “What are you here for?” I asked, following her into the room. “What do you want?”

  “I came to rest,” she said simply, and rest she did. There was nothing would get her out of bed—not hunger, not the sound of Anna’s cries or even the promise to let her have a horse with which to ride out into the hills.

  “It is my opinion you’ve come here to die,” I said after two weeks of her lying in bed with the shades drawn.

  “I came to forget,” she said, then told me things I did not want to hear about the man who ran the theater company and how he took each new girl that joined their company and expected Margaret to clean up after them. He forced her to do all kinds of vile things for him, and when she would not, he turned her out of the rooms where they were staying, so she had to wander the streets, and sometimes with little clothing on.

  What could I say to her, Maggie? I gave her your name, and it should have made her sensible and steady of heart, as you are, but she has always had to get just what she wants and there is no thinking on it. “Why did you stay with him?” I asked her.

  “Oh,” she breathed out. “He was so fine-looking.”

  I did not raise her this way. That next morning I offered her my plan, that she should stay with me and finish her studies. If she did well, I would send her to a college, so she could teach as Amy has done. “You must find a way to make your own living,” I told her, as no man will marry her now. Someday, I hoped, she would be able to take over Anna’s care.

  At last, she came to her senses and got out of the bed. When I came home from the school, she had dressed and gone outside to see the horses. The next day she held Anna and fed her. Later that week I would hear her singing Spanish lullabies and think: Yes, how she loves her daughter. Like any mother. Each night I tutored her, and she could not get enough of learning, the two of us up until dawn, bent over the books.

  “My head,” she said once. “It’s like being filled with the wind, knowing all this.”

  Two months she studied and mothered Anna. Oh, she took such care of her daughter at times, dressing and feeding her, playing and singing. A few times each week we would take two of the horses and ride out into the desert or along the river. She asked to do this even when it was bitterly cold or if there was snow on the ground.

  Late one afternoon as we rode, the dark hulk of the mesa looming above us, the sky cold and dry, brittle as if it could be cut away like crystal, we heard a sound like the playing of a flute. It was far away but, like smoke, seemed to sift through us. “We need to turn back,” I said to Margaret.

  Slowly she turned around on her horse to face me. “I love it. Don’t you understand?” she asked, and rode off towards the strange music. I would not have been surprised to see her horse leave the ground, she was so fast. It was as if she vanished. Hours after I returned, she rode back through the darkness of a new moon, her hair matted from the wind, tangled and torn like an animal’s. And I thought again, as she collapsed on the ground, undone with exhaustion, how she was possessed by some spirit, some animal spirit. She would have slept, slowly freezing, if not for José, who carried her to her bed.

  Two days later I wo
ke before the light came under the curtains, and even in the dark quiet I could feel what was changed. When I stepped out into the garden, a cold wind snapped me almost in two. I leaned against the doors to bolt them, and it was then that I felt the chilled stillness which filled the inside of the house.

  Anna, still in her bed, felt it too, for she cried out, and this was my relief; that my daughter had not taken her child. Here was Anna in her bed, not blown across the mountains to some unknown desert, some foreign place. I carried Anna into her mother’s room, where the simple shapes of the furniture lay like shadows, and slid my hands along the wall and the bed. The mattress was bare. When I lit a lantern, I saw she had taken her trunk and the bedding with her. Later I would find one of the horses and a wagon missing.

  Today the cold finally broke. I should be grateful for the time I had with her, as I was for Josh and Patsy’s brief stays, but Maggie, I am not. I wish she had never left California, and if she dies somewhere out in the open, I hope I do not learn of it.

  Your Sister,

  Abigail

  June 12, 1902

  Dear Maggie,

  We had a quiet winter and spring, with few visitors—Miss Jenny Alden, Paula and José, who came almost daily to help me with the chores, and Teresa, who often spends the afternoon with us. Jenny Alden visits frequently, and twice during the winter she spent the night with us. I delight in her company, for it is a pleasure to exchange ideas with someone who is knowledgeable and thoughtful in all that she does. She brought with her a book by Rudyard Kipling and left it for me to read. Also, there are some papers she is compiling on Indian life from her own observations, which she wished me to read.

  Pamela Porter, Annabelle Sloaner, and the others who once formed an intimate circle with me no longer visit here. I know it is because of Anna, but they will not say, any of them, when I ask why they have refused an invitation to dinner or for sewing and gossip. I do miss their company, but their absence has made me value Jenny Alden’s company all the more, for she is forthright and honest about her opinions and does not allow any prejudice to stand in the way of friendship.

  I look forward to my visits with Teresa with increasing gratitude. We ride or walk the short distances between our houses and talk of Anna, who is her delight, of gardening, the season, young people—of whom we have little understanding—and water, always the talk of water or drought, about which Teresa has many stories and predictions. She claims this summer the harvest will be plentiful and that the river will swell with water. This she says she knows from watching her burro and horse, for they cannot seem to get enough of running through the pasture. “God tells the animals,” she said yesterday as we watched her horse leap across a fallen tree, then rear back on its hind legs as if dancing.

  I was sorry to hear of Sally Burton’s passing last winter. Amy mentioned it in her letter and said the funeral was held in California, but she did not include any other details. If you know anything more about the circumstances of her death or about the family she left behind, please let me know. I only saw her once since we separated from the wagon train all those years ago, but she has been forever in my heart, as you are, Maggie. I still receive an occasional letter from Bea Manning. She has asked me more than once to meet her in San Francisco, where she travels to do business, and I suppose that someday I shall. It would be quite a reunion that we would have.

  Your Sister,

  Abigail

  January 7, 1903

  Dear Maggie,

  It was a fine holiday, as full of people as I have had in years. George was here for a week-long visit, and Jenny Alden stayed with us for two nights. All of us attended church on Christmas Day, and it was the first time I have done so in years. Anna was dressed in white ruffles with a wide sash, and Jenny Alden had curled her hair so that it fell in ringlets. She made a pretty picture; even Pamela Porter and Annabelle Sloaner had to smile at her.

  George has offered to return in the spring to help build a house for Paula and José here on my land. For several years now José has overseen the planting and cutting of alfalfa and corn. His wife still helps with Anna, and both of them have seen to the chores for me in the winter when I have needed their help. I have paid them, of course, but it is a small amount when compared with what they have given. The house and the piece of land surrounding it are only what they deserve, and as more of the work here becomes difficult for me, it will be necessary to have someone to take over the operations of the farm.

  I still work at the school once or twice a week while Teresa cares for Anna. Recently, others have offered to relieve me of that responsibility, but I am not ready to give it up. It is as if those hours exist in a glass that I could carry to the window and, holding it to the sun, watch rainbows dance. Each loss of my life is forgotten, every trial disappears, as I listen to the children recite and watch them compose their lessons. Miss Alden has had her way, and so there is no separation between the white children and the Indians. For the most part it is a harmonious blend.

  I have received a letter from Margaret postmarked Arizona. It is really just a note and difficult to decipher. Tell me what you understand of it. I am afraid her mental state is precarious. I have written back that she can come and live with me, as I imagine she is destitute. It is both my hope and my dread that she will do it.

  Your Sister,

  Abigail

  This is a post office box where you can write me, care of Joseph Lames. I want to know how Anna is and tell me everything. I am staying different places. There was some work but none now. I was trying to get out of California and a bad time there that I came here. I want somewhere to stay but there is nothing to do here not even laundry that I can find. 1 won’t stay in one of those asylums. Oh Susan did and she said it was worse off. I need a horse and then I could ride the desert. Margaret

  August 13, 1903

  Dear Maggie,

  Each summer seems to go by more quickly. If I live past seventy, I suppose I will blink my eyes and the harvest will be over. José managed all of the alfalfa cutting and harvesting this summer. He and Paula are content in their house, which George helped build this past spring. “The land could still be yours,” I told George one afternoon while he was here. “I would sign the deed over to you today if you wanted it.” But he is used to the wider spaces where they range cattle and says the mountains are too close here. Like Clayton and me, he wants to make his own way.

  Anna continues to thrive. Paula tends to the child as if Anna were her own, and Teresa will often keep her for the better part of a day. I sometimes think she receives too much mothering, but I am just as guilty. Entire afternoons I spend with her in my lap, both of us napping. Perhaps I am getting old. Teresa insists I am still young. She herself turned sixty this past summer but still oversees the operations of her farm. Last month I found her in the heat repairing a break in the acequia. “Help me with the wood,” she called up to me, and so we were two nearly old women dragging a branch up out of the water.

  It has been a dry month. There was little alfalfa in the last cutting, and since most of the water has gone to the alfalfa field, the apples are woody and tasteless. Amy has written that they will visit in October. She sent a photograph of Ellen, which is simply adorable. My hope is that George can get here, if only for a few days during their visit, as they have not seen one another since Clayton’s death.

  I spend much of my time painting the mountains and cliffs, Paula bent over a child in the yard, a vase of verbena. Are we to feel wise as old age approaches? I cannot imagine it.

  Your Sister,

  Abigail

  January 15, 1904

  Dear Maggie,

  For nearly a month now, I have meant to respond to your Christmas greetings. As you have no doubt heard, George was here for three days during Amy and Everett’s visit. I insisted on taking them up to the mesa, as the month of October was strung with clear, dry days. Amy and Everett were certain the trip would tire me, but it did not. Indeed, poor Everett ha
d more difficulties than I did with staying on his horse. It was during that week in October when the world turns all shades of gold and red, so that it looks as if the land is on fire. The wide blue sky formed a brilliant contrast, which all afternoon I spent delineating in my mind so that sometime later I could paint it.

  By the end of their visit Ellen followed me about the place quite merrily and wanted paints of her own whenever she saw me at my easel. I set her next to me with paper and charcoal, and she spent an hour or more at a time carefully marking lines. I do think she has a talent if Amy will indulge it.

  Christmas was rather dreary, as a freezing rain fell all day. I am quite sure the ice damaged the fruit trees, and it may have killed the small ones, which I had José plant last fall. The mission school put on a pageant, for which I sewed all of the costumes. Jenny Alden has taught the children to sing beautifully.

  While Amy was here, I took her to the school, and she was impressed with the changes that have been made. She said that in reading and writing it was as advanced as the schools back east. The friendship between her and Miss Alden was instantly made. If Amy had not met Everett and settled in Virginia, I can picture her working here, like Jenny Alden, forging a place for young minds in the wilderness.

  Anna does well. We had a scare with her last month when she ran a fever for three days, but it appears she only had a cold. Please give Irene my best wishes on her latest arrival.

  Your Sister,

  Abigail

  June 25, 1904

  Dear Maggie,

  The summer heat is upon us, and the season promises to be dry. Already the ditches are shallow. I have given over the alfalfa planting and harvesting mostly to José. I still tend to my flowers and a small vegetable garden and ride out to inspect the ditches and orchard, but José completes any repairs that must be made and helps with the fruit harvest.