These Is My Words: The Diary of Sarah Agnes Prine, 1881-1901

by Nancy E. Turner

  I am feeling fine and have no sign of stomach upset at all. Also no sign of rounding out, but that will come soon enough, Savannah says.

  February 19, 1883

  Savannah has told us she and Albert are expecting again. Soon there will be Prines all over this valley!

  We have had a spell of beautiful weather, although now it is cold again. I put all my books into my adobe shed, and it is fine. So far it is a good shed and watertight enough to float away in a flood like a boat.

  Jimmy went to town for four days and said I couldn’t go, but the Maldonado boys stayed here and slept on the kitchen floor. I tried to make them tortillas and chilies and red gravy like their Mama makes for breakfast, but I could tell they weren’t too good and the boys only ate them to be polite.

  Then there was nothing to do, so I read a new book I have not read before. It is called Elemental Botanical Theory. It was difficult and is one I will put some thought into. Then I got to thinking about my missing book and a certain ornery soldier who has it, and I got out page eighty-seven from my cigar box and read it over.

  I wonder what use Captain Elliot would have for a story about a woman in straights as that? It seems more like he would be the type to read Elemental Botanicals than about ladies wearing scarlet velvet in trials and tribulations. Maybe I will write to the Texas Rangers and see if they can locate him, and perhaps I can sell Rose’s foal for money to buy it back. Seems like by now the book is not worth an Army horse, and I think if I had traded with the U.S. Army for that book, and he has taken it with him, why then he has stolen from the Army. Then I think this is purely foolish, as what would the U.S. Army need with a story book?

  Then to fill my mind with pious and good thoughts I finally got out The Expositional Sermon Texts, and began the first one. Every time I came to a new paragraph, I wished Captain Elliot had this book instead of the one he has.

  March 21, 1883

  Mama came back from a trip to Tucson with Mr. Raalle and Harland. She said Harland has had a talk with the school teacher, Miss Wakefield, and she gave him the loan of an arithmetic primer, and told him to do all the problems he could do on some paper and bring them in next time, and she will find time to help him. She was a stern looking lady, with thin and pinched lips, he said.

  She is probably just stern because you have to be with a room full of ornery children or they will get the best of you quick. Maybe she wanted him to know this is serious business, too. So Harland came over today and we sat and looked at the numbers and tried our best to work them. Most of the first ones I can do, but I kept quiet and let him work it out so he can learn. After the second lesson, though, I am really lost with it. Then he said she also wanted him to write a theme and draw a picture, so he borrowed my Animals of Africa book again and read all about giraffes, and said he is going to write about a wrangler who roped a giraffe and went on a wild ride. That sounds like a good story, I said, I will be glad to hear a fun story like that so you must read it to me when it is finished.

  I finally am a little plumper, but not as much as Savannah. She told me I work too hard, and I should be careful of myself, and that Albert said Jimmy wouldn’t let one of his mares put in the day I work, as it would be too much for them. She said, You know Sarah, Albert knows horses too, and he treats her like a queen, and I know these things for a fact.

  I am going to try to slow down and not work like a field hand all day. I surely don’t want anything to go wrong. There is just so much to do, I don’t feel like resting but I will try.

  April 2, 1883

  Found Rose in labor, lying on the hay and struggling with her foaling. All night long I stayed with her, listening to coyotes howling and petting her head. About dawn she started pushing hard, and Jimmy pulled her baby for her. A beautiful dark brown colt. She licked him and nuzzled him and loved him and made him stand right up. I felt real proud and happy for her. She wouldn’t let me get close to him to touch him, though, so we went to the house and cleaned up and started our day. Went to bed with the sun tonight, very tired.

  July 17, 1883

  It has been so hot we decided not to work this afternoon, but sit and rest. Yonder from the south clouds are building up, and I hear thunder already. If the wind changes and cools, we will know rain will come and cool our thirsty ranch. All the horses just meander around from one shade to another, wishing they were cool. The people here do, too. Our cistern is about empty, so we are being careful with water.

  I feel lonely today, looking at all our ranch while sitting on this porch. I feel far apart from everyone. Don’t know why. There is a stack of mending here to do, and if I get that done I have some embroidery here.

  August 25, 1883

  I have been feeling poorly all day. Just ache all over. It is hot enough to kill some of our chickens and we are all praying for rain.

  August 29, 1883

  April Alice Reed. My baby girl, born August 28, 1883 at 11:30 at night, my daughter, my little lamby. If it was possible for me to have chosen to die rather than go through that childbirth, I am sure many times during it I would have gladly died. How anyone would go on to have another baby, I am sure I do not know. I cannot sit up to write anymore.

  September 3, 1883

  I am finally able to sit up to write now. On August 26, I started feeling the baby coming right after breakfast. I walked and walked. Jimmy wouldn’t let me walk to Mama’s house, but rode over to get her. All the walking I did to help the baby come along, I could have walked to her house and back by way of Texas. Later I tried to go to bed, but when I lay down the feelings got worse. I began to get scared as the pains came on stronger.

  I thought I could be brave, but I screamed and screamed. Savannah tried to hold my hand but I think I crushed her hands because she pulled away with a yell.

  Mama said I must relax more, and Savannah said, try to work with it. But there is no working with something that feels as if your legs are being torn off by the roots, and your insides are being cut with axe blades. They kept saying, Sarah, just let it go, you are fighting against it too much. And I hurt so bad that I told them both to stop talking. There was nothing I could do but fight against my dying. For two days I laid in that bed, soaking with sweat, tired and hungry and scared to death, until finally I gave out and couldn’t scream any more.

  It was only when I had no more fight in me that the baby was born. So I understand what they were trying to say, but I don’t know how any woman could give up and make herself surrender everything to what feels like being torn in half by teams of horses. I quit begging them to kill me when I thought I was really dying, so I laid there and waited for it to happen like Mrs. Barston. I wanted it to happen, to get the pain over with, and nothing else mattered except that. I don’t remember having the baby, just hearing Mama saying, She’s pushing! She’s pushing! After that all was pain and darkness until Mama handed me a tiny pink baby girl. I could hear her crying loudly, and feel her in my arms, but I couldn’t open my eyes to see her.

  When it was finished, there was not a single part of me that did not feel worn and exhausted and sore. My eyelids are sore. My fingers are weak. I cannot hold the baby in my own hands, she feels like she weighs about a hundred pounds in a little block like a sack of flour. Lord, tell me this is the last one I will ever have, and I will be forever grateful. If I had had any idea, I would have never married as long as I lived. Even Savannah said she had been worried, that it took so very long, and so much laboring. Hers was not as bad as mine was, she says. Then she brought me the baby and helped me to try to nurse her. Savannah, I said, do you reckon I’ll die yet before I get over this?

  No, no, she said. Don’t even think such a thing. You just rest and let us tend you and you get well.

  I can sit enough to hold the baby and nurse and to write a little. Her name is April Alice. She is a little dark haired thing, all red faced when she cries, which she does a lot. She is perfect and I love her fiercely, like a mama grizzly, I suspect. Every time I sleep I have
terrible dreams, and still many pains and cramps. In my head I feel like I want to get up, but just trying to tend to my personal needs is almost more than I can do, and it is embarrassing to ask for help to the outhouse like I was a child. So I sink back into the bed, half thankful for it and half hating it. Dear Savannah. Dear Mama. Precious baby. Sleep baby, please just sleep now.

  October 20, 1883

  I wonder if every new mother feels as if there is nothing left of herself. Every minute of my day and every last thing I do is tied to this little someone else. I am scared to death I will do something wrong, and she will die or grow up meager or sickly. And I got to thinking about all kinds of things like, how will I know how to teach her not to be selfish? And, how will I teach her to be honest? And how will I know if she has a sickness when she is too little to say what hurts? I am driving my mother to distraction asking her questions.

  November 11, 1883

  Savannah delivered another baby boy today. His name is Joshua David. It was just like before for her, she struggled for about five hours and then it was over. She was calm as a dove, and made me feel ashamed of how frightened I had been with mine. There is no outrunning fear, though, it comes on you and you have to face it. Childbirth is not an enemy you can fight or conquer or outrun, it takes you and tears you apart from the inside out and you have to just submit to it. I never understood why a girl would choose to be an old maid, but now I do.

  November 14, 1883

  I went to see Savannah and little Joshua today, and brushed and braided Savannah’s hair for her. I only stayed about an hour because I was so exhausted, and when I got home, Jimmy said, When are you going to tend to your own house and get some washing done? Then he said, If you got enough strength to drive a buckboard over there you got enough to iron me a clean shirt.

  Then he went off to do some work and I tried to do some wash, and cried all afternoon. I got the wash hung up by night fall while April screamed at the top of her lungs the whole time. Most of the wash is diapers, and I only have a few left. And now I see it is starting to rain and supper isn’t made yet and Jimmy is still cantankerous, but the baby is sleeping and I wish I could, too, but I must cook something.

  December 18, 1883

  What a wonderful Christmas present to see Ernest William Prine coming up the road. He was wearing a uniform with corporal stripes on the arms, and looking all filled out and like a man we hardly recognize. He stopped on the way home and had his picture made, and has given us each a little one to remember him by.

  We sat around Albert’s and Savannah’s big stone fireplace and talked until late. Jimmy went home early to tend stock, but I spent the night. I nursed little April and listened to Ernest tell stories of his life, and he rolled up his sleeve and showed us where an arrow had gone clear through his arm.

  He will be staying a week, then has to start back. He is bound for Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas now. We all have much to tell him and show him. I have missed Ernest dearly, and begged him to stay with us at least one night, and he said he will.

  December 25, 1883

  Christmas dinner today was hectic and scattered and everyone seemed almost glad to be done with it. Between my baby crying four or five hours in spite of anything I tried, and Savannah’s new one and little Clover wanting attention, I burned the pies nearly black and forgot to put salt in the crust to boot. If it wasn’t for Mama and Harland helping nothing would have been done at all. Jimmy stayed in the barn working on the horses but kept coming in every few minutes asking if supper was ready yet, until I could tell Mama was about to light into him. Every time little April fell asleep in my arms I tried to lay her down. She would start crying again and no one could soothe her for another hour or more. I am fit to be tied.

  I see Savannah and Albert both tending their tiny ones and they seem so calm. But even Savannah couldn’t calm my April, she just shook her head and didn’t know what to say.

  February 13, 1884

  A new year is upon us. Little April sleeps more now and I am feeling as if I have gotten over the childbirth. Mama said it took so long because I didn’t get any rest. She has come a few times and carried April home, and I just stretched out on the bed and slept hard for three or four hours, and that helped more than anything.

  Jimmy went to town. It is cold and frosty, but not rainy. I kind of like the way the cold air smells and the way everything sounds early in the morning in the winter. Saw a flock of geese flying in a V today. You don’t see geese often here. They made a strange noise, calling to each other. I thought about trying to shoot one for supper, but then I decided to just watch them fly away.

  April 1, 1884

  Jimmy has gone to the stage station to get mail. I have not written this journal so long because I am busy with my sweet baby. I love her but she cries so much and is so peevish. She seems to have colic often, and I have tried every remedy known, but to no use. She is finally sleeping through at least seven hours at night, so I am not always so wrung out. It is hard to get much done, trying to tend her all day. I don’t know how Savannah does it with two, but hers both sleep more, maybe that’s how.

  Jimmy works hard all day and doesn’t understand how I get so little done, but he isn’t the one trying to do it all with a colicky baby on his shoulder night and day. Every time I sit still for more than five minutes I fall asleep.

  Some men came and bought two horses for eighty dollars each. Jimmy has bought steel water troughs and a rocking chair for me and two chests of drawers and some tools and seed. Our house is the only white painted house in the Territory, as people have remarked about it to us. I am proud we have a fine ranch.

  May 1, 1884

  Have felt a deep sadness all this week. Not sure why. Our ranch is prosperous and some mares are expecting again but I told him not Rose, she can wait a year. We had a big argument over how he wanted to get all the use he could from his brood mares, and I said, Well, Rose is mine and has been given to me twice, and isn’t yours to USE and I don’t want her pregnant and that is my decision.

  Jimmy was mad and said it would serve me right if Dan or Terry got her and then the pony would be worthless.

  Jimmy works hard all day every day but seems lately he is always short tempered with me. Maybe I should have let him breed Rose if it made all that difference to him. He seems to have a lot of business in Tucson, too, but doesn’t prefer me to go along, although sometimes I’d like to.

  Some Easterners drove out from the stage line and came by just to admire the place, and it filled me with a mean feeling, like they took pleasure from our hard work and they didn’t deserve it. I’m about to give up being righteous and generous to a fault, and I feel like a draft horse that has pulled all day.

  Took some scraps for quilts over to Mama’s. Harland was doing lessons, Savannah’s babies were both there sleeping side by side on a quilt on Mama’s bed. Mama gave me coffee with milk in it and said it would perk me up, so I went out under the peach trees to sip on it. The trees that we brought from Texas are bending down with fruit that is not ripe yet, and beautiful, and all seems peaceful here, although not as orderly and white painted and fancy as our ranch, it is calm and welcoming here and cool in the shade of the fruit orchard.

  Sitting there on a rush chair I saw Savannah walk from her house across the way over to where Albert was digging an irrigating trench, bringing him a pail of something to drink. They talked a bit, then they smiled hard at each other, and Albert bent down and kissed her like a man shouldn’t do in public. He kissed her long and hard, and she wrapped her arms around him, and nuzzled her whole body against him, and smiled, and he held her tight to him and I could see them both sigh together like they were one person.

  Again I wondered what it must be like to be Savannah, and be loved like that, and maybe in time will that happen to me and Jimmy? Must be her good and simple ways, and Bible study. I haven’t been kissed at all since months before the baby came, much less kissed like they were doing.

  I thanked Mama
for the coffee and left. And I just can’t quit this sad feeling, lonesome and achey.

  When I got home, Jimmy hollered, Sarah, you been wasting time, iron me some shirts, I’m going to town.

  July 22, 1884

  It seems Jimmy does more hollering at me than talking, and today I had my fill when he started complaining about his eggs being too cold. I turned around and lit into him like a wet hen. I told him he could just hold his tone of voice and act like he was married to me instead of like I was a field hand he’d hired, and that if he didn’t like it that was too bad. I have had enough of being fussed at when I am doing my level best and never once have shirked a chore as long as I was able. I told him he didn’t even act like he loved me at all, and for a married man he was about as nice to have around as a cholla cactus and a lot more noise. He just stood there like I’d hit him on the head with a stick, and then went to the barn and then came in later and said he figured he’d been pretty ornery. He said I was right, and he hadn’t realized he was making me so mad. Well, what did he think, that I would just take all his hollering forever?