Prospects of a Woman

by Wendy Voorsanger

  The next morning shined luminous and entirely too bright for Elisabeth, with her head still pounding wicked with wine from the night before. She breakfasted outside with John and Lily Beth and Doña Maria and a dozen other folks from the Gabilan family under the shade of a pergola dripping with fuchsia bougainvillea. Thankfully, Nemacio wasn’t among them, already out on ranch business. They ate fried eggs, warm bread with honey, and ripe raspberries from the garden. She cleaned her plate, listening to the water cascade down the fountain in the center of the courtyard, knitting together her frayed insides from Nemacio nearly tearing her to shreds again. A hummingbird fluttered back and forth joyful through the spray, then darted around the bougainvillea overhead, sucking nectar from the fuchsia flowers with its tiny needle beak. Elisabeth’s heart beat stronger at seeing the power and speed of those tiny wings.

  Lily Beth suggested they spend the day together canning jam. Elisabeth would have rather hung by her knuckles from the nearest oak than spend the day in the kitchen with women peeling and slicing and standing over steaming pots of boiling sugar.

  “I’m terrible in the kitchen,” she said.

  Thankfully, John rescued her, saying he was taking her on a tour around the ranch.

  “For her reportage,” he said. “The folks of America need to know the value of Californios. What they contribute to America.”

  Grateful, she followed him into the walled gardens blooming bright with fragrant sweat peas, hollyhocks, nasturtiums, and yellow lilies. Solicitous, John held her hand and pointed out the peas, beans, beets, lentils, onions, carrots, red peppers, potatoes, corn, squash, cucumbers, and melons, going on as if she didn’t know the plants. Beyond the vegetable garden grew fig, olive, lemon, and orange trees among lavender and roses. It seemed as if anything and everything could grow tall and strong and abundant out here in this heavenly slice of fertile earth. She’d never seen such a bounty in all her life.

  “Beyond the garden are bee hives. Lily B. loves the honey,” he said.

  She finally understood why Lily B. had agreed to move all the way out here, away from the city. Away from her father. The place was paradise.

  “These are Lily B.’s favorite,” he said, snapping off a clump of tiny white flowers. “Narcissus.”

  The flowers smelled strong and sweet, reminding her of all she’d missed and all she’d wanted. Taking another deep whiff, she sneezed.

  “Oh my,” she said, sounding ridiculously flirty.

  She didn’t mean to lead him on, but she liked the way he made her feel important and wanted.

  “Bless you,” he said, placing a reassuring hand on her back.

  John handed her a crisp linen handkerchief embroidered with an L for Langley. She wiped her nose as John pulled a pear off a tree and cut it with his pocketknife, handing her slices. She bit into the ripe, sweet pear, the juice dripping down her lips. When she swallowed the fruit, John leaned over and kissed her. She held her breath, regarding the kiss. By now she’d had some experience to compare, with Nate and Nemacio and that Dane up against a tree. He scratched her face with his stiff mustache and mashed his puffy cheeks up against her face, covering her nose, moving his lips full around her mouth in a manner not altogether unpleasant but not thrilling either. She didn’t smell even a whiff of cheese on him, and hoped the kiss might grow passionate. Perhaps his whole self might prove better than this one particular piece. But she grew bored as he kept working his mouth atop hers for what seemed entirely too long. She stepped back, giving them both a break. She cast her eyes downward and demure, like an inexperienced woman might.

  “I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time,” he said, leading her to the barn.

  They mounted their horses and set off into the lower slopes of the Gabilans on horseback. As they passed a herd of nearly fifty elk grazing lazy, she noticed no pines grew in Gabilans, only cracking chaparral and grand oaks among craggy rocks, brown and rugged. Overhead, silver-gray clouds gathered and separated against the stark blue sky, creating a soft light illuminating the sharp edges of the oak leaves and the rich redness of madrone branches against the yellow grass. She distracted herself from thinking of Nemacio by imagining what her life would be like as Mrs. Langley. With a kind, generous companion like John, she could surely continue the independent work she’d found as necessary as air. She’d live comfortably and want for nothing. And having Lily B., he might not mind her being barren.

  They rode up and over on the south side of the mountains toward a creek flowing down to a tannery, where he toured her around, explaining each step of the tanning process. She wrote down all the details in her new notebook. The horse-driven wheel crushing a half cord of oak bark. The seven large oval vats of oak pulp and water. The cow hides soaking soft and supple.

  “The tannery is the life blood of the ranch. We make more than two hundred steer hides and three hundred deer hides a year. We also have a leather working shop near the barn, where we make saddles and boots. Our workers are true artisans. They made your notebook,” he said, slipping into “we” and “our” as if he owned the ranch and not Nemacio.

  She didn’t want to know the details of the arrangement he’d made with Nemacio. Swapping a daughter for a ranch struck her as unseemly, no matter how beautiful the ranch. Leaving the tannery, they climbed up and over the ridge, their horses stepping sure-footed down the thin path. Up on the top of the hill, the hacienda gleamed white in the far distance below as a thunderhead clapped and blue-streaked clouds streamed in front of the sun. When drops of rain dotted down delicate, she looked up, letting the sprinkles wet her face.

  “Let’s find cover,” he said.

  They galloped their horses down toward an oak grove and dismounted, huddling under a tree, laughing in the rain. She fooled herself into thinking she’d tossed off that weight of lost love still crushing her chest.

  “I do enjoy you,” he said, smiling broad, the scar on his cheek glistening waxy and wet.

  In the distance, a rider galloped up the slope toward them. As the rider came closer, she saw it was Nemacio, wearing a wide-brimmed sombrero and brightly colored striped serape, looking like an ordinary vaquero. As he reached the oak grove the rain came down harder, and water poured off his brim. Thunder clapped, and a lone streak of lightning lit across the valley below.

  “John,” he said, serious. “A group of rustlers were making off with fifty head at the east border.”

  “Mexicans?” John asked.

  “Americans. Pablo shot two. He and Jorge are holding one more down by the river. We don’t want more trouble.”

  “Damn it,” said John, mounting his horse. “Take Miss Parker to the hacienda, out of this storm. Get a rope, and meet me down by the river.”

  As John rode off toward the river and the rustlers, Nemacio got off his horse, dropping the reins careless in the grass. He and Elisabeth stood alone and together, numb under the oak. The rain slowed, hitting the leaves with a drip, drip. An eagle, tall and proud, landed on a wide branch overhead, making no noise at all, just turning its head from side to side, looking fierce with bright yellow eyes.

  “I can’t stand seeing you with him,” he said, stepping closer.

  She stepped back and he stopped. He took off his hat and ran a hand through those unruly curls, now cut short, tamed into submission.

  “Mi amor. Lo siento,” he said, his voice shaking with guilt.

  “Don’t,” she said, holding a hand out, flat.

  Burrito stamped his hoof in the soggy dirt as a coyote crossed the grass twenty yards from them, bouncing into a hole and pulling out a rabbit. As the coyote ran off along a gully with the catch in its jaws, out of sight, Nemacio started making promises.

  “Come away with me,” he said.

  She backed up, untying the yellow ribbon from her hat, slow.

  “You’d leave your family for me?” she asked, slipping off her hat and dropping it in the dirt.

  “I’m desperate for you,” he said, his voice low and quiet.


  He didn’t look like the proud, powerful Don Gabilan anymore. He looked ashen, with foggy, distant eyes sunken into his head like he’d been hollowed out on the inside by a worm. Even in his misery, she still wanted him. She wanted him wrapping his pain around her, throbbing with grief. She wanted his lips, full and wet all over her. She wanted them to suffer and wallow together. She untied her bodice, slow and teasing. When her breasts fell out bare, he drew in a breath.

  He lunged then, pulling her down to the ground, kissing her neck and nipples with wretched despair. He smelled delicious like the dry grass and the river and bliss and hope and her own self. She touched his hardness through his pants as he trembled in agony. She wanted him moving in her like before, breaking her open, making her whole. She pulled up her dress and slipped down her pantaloons, opening her thighs. He fumbled his pants down and thrust himself inside, harder and more. He pushed her deep into the wet dirt as she wrapped her legs around him. Weak with want, she melted into him, losing herself in his desire. His love. His lies. His promises and power over her.

  Filling with rage, she flung him off her. In a leap, she straddled atop him, pounding on his chest with her fists as her long hair fell loose, tumbling down around his face, messy. He dug his fingertips into her hips as she flailed and thrashed and cried. In a fury, she pressed herself down, taking him inside forceful and he grabbed hold of her bare bottom, coaxing. She slid up and down on him with a crazed passion, deeper and darker and furious, capturing more and enough, loving away the anger and sorrow and loneliness, and he moaned with hunger, calling out her name as they moved together in reckless rapture, kissing and sucking and eating and drinking and living whole lives in that precious moment, loving like they’d never been apart, plunging down together into an eternity of heartbreaking fire, erasing themselves into each other, until bursting open, shaking and shuddering as one.

  Raindrops dripped off the leaves, and a cooling wind sang calm through the branches overhead as they lay holding each other, hidden in the tall grass. Still inside her, he spoke.

  “My soul is yours,” he said.

  “I had a part of you growing in me once,” she whispered in a queer unfamiliar voice, much too calm. “When you left, I killed it.”

  She admitted it. She admitted it to herself and to him. She admitted her choice, understanding the consequences for the first time. She faced her sin and guilt with a strange peace and resignation, looking up toward the eagle, wondering if Nandy sent him.

  “Lo siento, mi amor,” he said. “It’s all my fault. Let’s leave from here. Let me take you away. I’ll say I still hold interest in the claim on the American.”

  “You’d lie for me?”

  “We’ll be together, forever. Right after the baby comes,” he said.

  His eyes pooled honest, saying everything. And she knew. She understood he could never leave his family, no matter how much he wanted to. He’d always be here, in his heart, no matter how far away they traveled together. She’d never ask him to leave his child, the way Henry had left her. She wanted him but wanted herself more. She wanted to be brave and strong and true, for herself.

  The eagle called out with a single soft high-pitched note, talking to her. Giving her courage. She stood up. Straightened her skirt. Laced up her bodice.

  “No,” he said, crawling on his knees toward her.

  Kneeling before her, he wrapped his arms around her legs and buried his face in the silk folds of her wet skirt.

  “I can’t live without you,” he said.

  At that moment, she knew he wasn’t enough. Under the witness of the eagle, she cut herself away from Nemacio. From his beautiful body and his beautiful soul. She cut away her love and hate and shame. She forgave herself and forgave him, knowing he would stay. He belonged here in the Gabilans. She cut herself away, leaving him behind kneeling in the dirt, his fate sealed to his land and his family. As she led Burrito toward the hacienda, the rain stopped and the sun pushed through the dark clouds into thin streaks of California light glimmering down upon her.

  48

  Summer 1854

  Dearest Louisa,

  News of your publication of Flower Fables greets me with such admiration. Your success is a long time coming, a pure recognition never more so deserving in a writer. Receiving the gift of your first published book is my greatest treasure. I read it over and over again, finding you in the pages, filled with pride in knowing this will be the first of many books the world will read from my dear friend Louisa May Alcott. In time, all of your financial worries will settle behind you, at last and for good. While you protest the thirty-five dollars from your publisher George Briggs as paltry, you must know money doesn’t make a woman. It’s the texture of her mind and the strength of her heart that matters in the end.

  I must concede, my investments have at once removed my past distress of caring for myself alone. My mining shares paid out handsomely, so I purchased a whole city block in San Francisco, and then some. I have set down roots in California, aiming to never again fret over my future. In my bones I feel you burgeoning the same, with proper compensation for your valuable contributions. As women, we must demand more. No longer should we apologize for our living, however halting and hard and harrowing that living strikes some. Bumbling along the way, I can say without a doubt, I will never again set my sights low like a proper lady most often does, even understanding how I’ve paid a high price for striving beyond the life of an ordinary woman and bear a cost which still stings even now. I’ve come to understand my journey in all its full truth, walking forward with the ashes of my life scattered behind as a reminder of the burnt ugliness from which I grew, and with a pride of which I am no longer capable of feeling ashamed.

  I am a self-reliant woman now, with a full heart. In turn, I let Nemacio go, and John too, knowing neither man could make me whole again. I haven’t given up all prospects of passion, the possibility of which I might know again somewhere along my adventures, as I believe myself still capable of a great unreasoning love. After years of serious examination, I see truth in Emerson, after all, when he wrote, “All our progress is an unfolding . . . we must trust ourselves to the end, even though we might not render any reason.”

  I’m now out on the trail again, traveling with Julie in the first scouting party with James Lamon to the stronghold of the Yosemite Indians in the Sierras. We’re intent on reporting its splendor for California Illustrated. I’m committing my observations to paper, while Julie pictures it all in her camera box. Yosemite shines as my reflection, which I accept without reservation, as I capture the spectacular scene before me. Please understand my attempts to write about the grandeur of this place fall woefully short, as no mere mortal has words adequate for a proper description. Humbly, I try.

  Coming out of the woods to a rocky point, the most magnificent sight hits me. A place to end all places and the beginnings of a wondrous unknown, like the Elysium Fields at the western edge of the known earth. From a bluff, I stand in awe of massive granite walls surrounding a grand valley far below filled full of verdant pines and grassy meadows. A valley too large for the largest of giants, with an immense waterfall roaring down one sheer rock face, falling beautiful and violent, transforming, floating off the rocks as a rainbow of misty light and into a wild river below. Soaring in the distance stands a towering rock dome, cut clean in half by God Himself, yet still whole and complete in the halving, like my very own soul. The sun lights up the gray half dome in golden glory like a luminous altar beckoning me at the end of a majestic cathedral. The Yosemite call it Tissaack, which means “The Face of a Young Woman Stained with Tears,” for the dark stripes dripping down.

  Out here I stand in the precipice of my own perpetual prospects, expanding beyond my own limits, halving in whole. Overwhelmed with awe, I drink in the wild, in all of its beauty and terror, understanding in this moment. California is my Promised Land, giving me the power and the glory to find my own happiness and freedom. I’ve finally seen the el
ephant, and it’s given me more than enough.

  Always and forever, I remain your self-reliant friend in California,

  Elisabeth Parker

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  While Prospects of a Woman is a work of fiction, actual California women inspired me: Francis Gearhart, Anne Brigman, Juana Briones, Nancy Gootch, Luenza Stanley Wilson, Mary Hallock Foote, Emily Pitts Stevens, Ina Coolbrith, and Amelia Dannenberg, among others. In striving to reframe a more authentic account of women in the West, I borrowed from their lives, and I remain in awe of their valuable contributions to early California.

  I’m grateful for the many friends, family, and early readers who supported me during my long journey toward the publication of Prospects of a Woman. A special thanks to Brooke Warner at She Writes Press and the whole SWP team for their valuable mission of promoting literature written by women, and for believing in Prospects of a Woman. I also owe heaps more gratitude. . . . To the Vermont College of Fine Arts community, for sheltering me in literary warmings during snowy residencies and after, and especially to Doug, for pushing me off the edge of the trail into a deep river without throwing me a life vest. To Scott James and the whole Castro Writer’s Cooperative, for providing me a haven within the most supportive group of unpretentious talent in one Coop. To Paco and Kate, for requiring more at the end. To Lee, for picking me up and dusting me off. To Andrea Hurst for her critical eye. To my posse of strong California women, including Liz, Carey, Lucy, Suzy, Kim M., Kat, Kim G., Nina, Michelle, Alicia, and Hillary for showering me with continuous inspiration, support, and encouragement. To the extended VoorClan, now and generations before, for offering me countless examples of how Californians love with passionate vulnerability, respect, and equality. To Oma Heide, a powerful California matriarch, for showing me how to love unconditionally. To my mother, for teaching me how to pick the right path. To Kevin, for his brotherly loyalty. To Karen, for walking alongside as my life’s witness, cheering me on with understanding and humor. To my boys, for giving me sunshine I didn’t know was possible before. And most importantly, to Conrad—the single best decision I ever made—for his enduring optimism and unwavering belief in me. Finally, I acknowledge California herself, whose air and water and mountains and valleys continue to gift me with immeasurable joy and hope.