Between Earth & Sky (24 page)

When we reached home, the children were still asleep, all except for Anna, who wanted to know how a statue could help someone to walk again or see. I wanted to tell her about God, I should have explained Catholicism, a faith that does not follow reason, but instead I told her about art, that a statue, like a painting or drawing, can never be more than a mere representation.

“Even if it cries tears?” she asked.

“We did not see any tears,” I reminded her. “And if we had, if indeed others have truly seen the statue weep, it means only that the work of art is so well done, it comes so close to being the actual person, that we look on it and believe we see the tears. That is the power of art, to change our vision, to make us see what is not there.”

Anna kissed me on the cheek; she went to bed. In the evenings I watch her running through the orchard, so light on her feet she could be dancing, and I think for a moment how like her mother she seems, moving everywhere at once. But as soon as I think this, she runs across the field and lies on the ground at my feet, more pensive than her mother was, more practical. She says she is sure it is time she was in bed. “Like a little adult,” I tell myself. “Already, like a little mother.”

Your Sister,

Abigail

October 25, 1906

Dear Maggie,

We have started riding, Anna and I, up into the mountains. Last week we rode beneath the long, flat mesa, and the sky suddenly tore. Clouds twisted against the flat blue in every sort of shape, gray mushrooms, thick bulbous creatures. The wind rushed between branches of the piñons and fir trees, blowing sand into our faces. Dark clouds knotted, and long, feathery plumes swept the sky.

We dismounted and found a small cave. From that hollow place cut into the side of the mesa, we watched lightning strike so close we could smell the burnt, sulfuric odor and see the sparks that grazed the piñon trees. Maggie, I wanted to weep with fear, but Anna reached out, she held my hand, and we stood watching until the storm had passed.

Later as we walked back I told her how brave she had been. “We need the rain,” she said simply, and it was true, we were in the midst of drought.

Do not worry that we are too surrounded here by the Catholics and “their miracles.” Anna will make her own way. Unlike her mother, she is a sensible child. Her feet are firmly planted.

I am your sister,

Abigail

January 15, 1907

Dear Maggie,

I know how difficult, how peculiar my life must seem to you. You say that I must accept age and not act as if I am a young woman. I am sixty-seven, but I can still climb up into the mountains. If it is foolish for me, “an old woman,” to do so with a child, so be it. I cannot stop myself from going.

You write that Amy has concerns that age is beginning to make me “senseless.” The two of you have talked of this. “Perhaps it is too many years in the desert, too much sky, too much wind and sun. Did it not make Margaret mad?” you ask.

If Amy has worries about my mental condition, she did not tell them to me when she was here at the end of last summer. Instead she asked me to take her riding and praised the food Teresa brought. After the first day, she did not even try to convince me to give up Anna.

You ask why I do not marry Thomas Mayfield if we “must” persist in visiting with one another. It is because I prefer to continue living here alone. I am used to running the ranch, to the hours when Anna is with Paula or Teresa, which I spend painting. I see Thomas whenever I like. I do not care how you or Amy or anyone else might judge me. (I have not told Amy, so if she knows, it is your doing.) Teresa says it is because I am getting old that I have stopped worrying over what the rest of the world might say. Raising Anna has taught me that I cannot care, and I thank the grievous circumstances which brought her into my life.

You say you are concerned only for my good. Go on praying for me, Maggie, as you have said that you do.

Abigail

September 15, 1907

Dear Maggie,

Each morning this season I go to the orchard to pick apples, for we are having a harvest like none we have had in years. All morning, leaning my ladder against the trees, I climb into their deepest centers, into the cores where leaves thicken and the fruit hangs heavily off the branches. There, reaching upwards from my precarious perch, I close my hands around the hard red fruit. The sky is down among the leaves, and surrounded by the low hum of bees, I grow thick with light.

Sometimes as I stretch towards the fruit I think of you, Maggie, so many miles away it seems I will never reach you, and I wonder how I could feel so much anger at your accusations about my grandchild and Thomas, mixed with the longing I feel for your company. There, among the leaves and fruit and sky, in all that dappled light, my objections seem inconsequential. They are not worth risking the tenuous connection our letters have strung together these many years.

Is it tenuous, Maggie? Today I feel that it is, yet at other times it has felt as permanent and binding as any tie could be to this earth. If we were to lay out our letters, would the link seem more substantial? Would the letters themselves provide some sort of order to our experience, a concrete way of understanding our lives? Or would we be lost still in the details, the arguments, in the various perspectives? You must wonder when I will end this philosophical rambling. These past few years, that is what I miss most about Clayton being gone: discourse, daily conversation which is brimming with meaningful substance. It is my good fortune to have only a few moments each day for such thoughts, high in a tree, surrounded by green leaves, red apples, and a dance of light.

Your Sister,

Abigail

April 4, 1908

Dear Maggie,

Earlier this evening I set up my easel near the river and tried to paint the sky. There was a softness lingering between the branches of the cottonwoods, the kind of stillness that settles over the valley just before the sun stains the horizon. I tried to get it all on the canvas, Maggie, the thin pink line that scratched the horizon, the gray net which spread through the trees. But somehow my paints felt too heavy and the colors, no matter how I mixed them, turned false as soon as I brushed them over the canvas. Would that I could set it all down, just as I see it. There would be a kind of peace in getting it right.

Before Amy and Everett left last week, I gave Ellen three of my better attempts at painting the sky and the mesa. She had accompanied me on a few of my painting excursions and had completed her own study of the mesa, a nicely proportioned drawing, especially for a child of eleven. As I have told Amy, her daughter exhibits both interest and talent in drawing, which could easily be cultivated. Everett has convinced her that artistic endeavors are frivolous activities, appropriate for filling our leisurely hours, of which there should not be too many. But never mind. Amy is an excellent mother, and as Ellen attends school with your grandchildren, I am sure she is receiving an education which will serve her well in all things.

Last week Teresa broke her arm. The bone was split entirely and protruded through the skin, and so I took her to the nearest doctor, who in turn sent us to a clinic, where her arm was examined under X-ray. I had no idea of the medical advances that have taken place. The doctor used chloroform to put her to sleep while they cut the arm open and wired the bones into place. I have asked her to stay with us, so that I could nurse her more easily, but she will not leave her kitchen, where all of her plants are hung. She applies various poultices throughout the day, and her rapid improvement has been impressive. She knows how to heal even herself.

Paula has left dinner for Anna and me, and after I end this correspondence, I shall heat it. The house Paula and José live in is visible from my front yard, and Anna spends much of her day playing with their four children. Once every few years, Paula hears word of her brother, Ramon. He has remarried and has two small children. They live on his wife's father's ranch in Mexico. Paula hates what he has done, disowning his own child, annulling his first marriage. I sometimes worry she cares for Anna out of penance, but both she and Teresa seem to have a genuine love for the child. Paula treats her like one of her own.

Your Sister,

Abigail

August 6, 1908

Dear Maggie,

Margaret arrived last month. She came by train and had only a trunk with a few dresses in it and a hat, all her worldly possessions. She had been involved with a man, and I still do not know his name or much about him, but I am sure he was not a decent sort. She claimed all kinds of things about him, once that he had become rich by investing in property in California, and that he had taken her with him on expensive automobile trips to San Francisco, buying silk dresses and hats and shoes, even several parasols for her use. She knew of the earthquake but said she was too far east of it to be harmed. I am not sure that the whole story isn't made up. She was not clear why she had left such a situation in haste. I am fairly certain they were never married.

Three weeks after her arrival, I took her to the asylum and had her admitted. Twice she had tried to take her own life, once with Clayton's rifle, and several times she got on a horse and rode off for hours until I was frantic with worry. José took a horse and followed her early one morning, reporting that she rode far out into the hills, following no path that he could see.

Teresa brewed every sort of concoction, but Margaret would not drink of them, complaining they were foul. I don't know that even Teresa's magic could help her. The doctor said he would keep her for several months. They have a problem with overcrowding, and I hated to leave her in such a place; it was dirty and filled with vile smells. But I do not know what else there is for me to do. I keep her in my prayers.

Abigail

October 19, 1908

Dear Maggie,

You write that you “cannot help but find more and more about (my) life outrageous.” If I were not your sister you would see much of what has happened as “unacceptable.” Do you think that you can change the circumstances of Margaret's insanity by finding it “unacceptable”? I suppose you are also referring to my raising of Anna, my friendships with Paula and Teresa and with Thomas Mayfield. There seems to be much that you criticize me for.

I suppose old age becomes you more. You have a son who will take over the managing of the store and another who plans to run for state senator. Irene has four “lovely children.” By your own accounts, you spend your days socializing with the ladies of Stillwater, attending to charities, giving advice to your children, and caring for your grandchildren. Your evenings are spent with John, “quiet evenings in the home, lingering over dinner or reading together.” Your life is so good.

I am glad also that Mother never had to know of “her granddaughter locked up in some asylum.” It is an illness Margaret has, like any other sickness. She cannot help herself.

Your Sister,

Abigail

December 2, 1908

Dear Maggie,

I have learned of your conspiracy. Did you think you could involve Jenny Alden and she would not tell me. She, at least, has remained my loyal friend. You will never be able to have Anna raised by others because her mother has been declared unfit, at least while I am living. And this threat is reason enough to keep me alive for at least another decade. Amy has written asking forgiveness for her part, but I cannot help thinking that the ill plan was yours from the start; your silence condemns you.

As you know, Amy and Everett plan to visit next month. She has promised to make an effort on Anna's behalf to see her as a niece, a cousin to Ellen. We have had our differences, but I am convinced she meant well and was concerned that my health might fail if the responsibility were too much to carry.

I am not sure I understand your motives as clearly. Would you stretch your hand across these miles that lie between us to take hold of my life? Is it because we have spent so many years apart, because I am a stranger to you (“I cannot,” you have written, “understand the circumstances of your life or the decisions you seem moved to make”), that you reach out blindly to try to control my life?

I remain,

Abigail

March 29, 1909

Dear Maggie,

I am enclosing your most recent letter. I cannot bear to have it in my possession. Your attitude is similar to the foolishness I have encountered in town. In spreading the news throughout the sewing group that I have no moral backbone, Pamela Porter, who used to be one of my closest friends, has shown herself for what she really is, petty and closeminded. By your letter, I must conclude that you are of the same species. Even if Anna were black like a Negro, I would not allow her to be taken from me.

Margaret was here in October for a brief visit after she was discharged from the asylum. When she left, it was with no clear plans of where she would go next. She talked about traveling south where Anna's father lives, but he has remarried and has more children. Teresa says he has become a bandit and the meanest sort of man. She does not know him for her son. I was relieved to have Margaret go, and I do not expect her to return with any regularity or to help in any way with raising her child. However she might dote on Anna one minute, the next minute she forgets the child exists.