by Karen Osborn
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 yo
ur 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.
Paula sits outside, pulling the husks from the corn or stringing peppers as she watches the children play. They sometimes spend all morning chasing one another in circles or playing some other game. I enjoy it most when they sing. Their sounds drift through the house until I feel that I could be in heaven. In truth, they almost never fight with one another, or if they do, Paula hurries them off to her own house, claiming they will hurt the grandmother’s ears with their shouting.
I look up from the letter I am writing and see their dark heads now framed by the window, and all around them the blue of the sky. Does it matter into what color skin we are born?
I remain,
Abigail
January 5, 1909
Dear Abigail,
My motives in trying to find a suitable home for your grandchild were to save you from having to take that difficult hut inevitable step yourself. You are nearly seventy; who would care for the child if you were to die? Her mother could come at any time and take her. Think of it, poor, senseless Margaret. And then what would become of the child?
I wish you had been able to come for the holidays. Surely winter must he difficult without any relations. Perhaps next year you could come and stay with John and me or Amy for the remainder of the winter. It was a lovely Christmas, with a tree Robert had cut for us, all decorated, and the house trimmed with ribbons and pine cones and lace. They came here to celebrate, all of them, Irene with her husband and four children, Robert and his family. Alex and Susan, who traveled all the way from Baltimore, where she works for the newspaper. And your Amy came with Everett and Ellen. So many grandchildren. I had filled various dishes with candies and spread them about, and there were the candies I had hung on the tree. Oh, they had a time finding them all and were filled with sweets before they left.
Irene and Amy did all the cooking—the turkey and dressing, potatoes, green peas, breads, pudding, the pies. I had nothing but to sit in the armchair with the children playing all around me and take in the smells of the cooking. When they were done and the meal eaten, Amy came to sit by me at the partially empty table, saying she did not know what could be done about Anna, since it was clear you would refuse any help she tried to offer.
I do not know myself and told her so. The child is dark-skinned—Amy says it is—like a Mexican or some Indian, a child of mixed origins with no father who will claim it and a mother who should by all rights have remained committed to an asylum. Who knows what this Anna will do with her life, given her heritage?
It is a difficult thing to watch the family line be extended this way. You have said that Anna’s father’s mother and sister care for her. Perhaps they or some other member of their family would claim her and take the responsibility of raising her. It would be more simple. Surely you must see it would benefit her also. Think how many minds you would ease if you could agree to some reasonable, some moral resolution.
Yours, in sincerity,
Maggie
Chapter 9
July 7, 1915
Dear Maggie,
Today is my seventy-fifth birthday. When I look backwards, I cannot imagine how I have allowed my refusal to write to you to continue for this long. One thing you must admit, your tenacity is equal or nearly equal to mine, for it has been more than five years since I have heard any news of you except for the bits Amy sends me. Have we become two sullen, foolish old women that we cannot step beyond what has happened and forgive one another? This birthday gives me pause, and I realize I cannot afford to let any more time pass without at least trying to make amends. I pledge my best effort.
You have no doubt read that we were granted statehood three years ago. Everywhere flags were unfurled in celebration, and I had the good fortune of hearing President Taft speak when he made his tour. It was a long and difficult climb. What a wondrous feeling to wake up a citizen of the state of New Mexico and know that the children born here will have the guarantee of an education.
We were in our third year of drought that fall, and there was nothing to be had, no corn, no milk from the cow. If not for José and our Spanish neighbors, Anna and I would have perished. But we have had rain the past two years, enough to fill the rivers again, and the valley is once again green.
Margaret comes to stay periodically, and each time I see how her illness has progressed. I have taken her to the doctors in the city, and various treatments were recommended, but nothing seems to help her. She has tried to poison herself with quicksilver. There was an asylum they wanted to put her in, but I would not let them. Perhaps I am to blame, trying to raise children in an unsettled place. She is as wild as the sage brush she ran through each day of her childhood, as unpredictable as the jack rabbits she chased. It is George’s opinion that if a girl could run cattle, she would have been happy and not harmed herself.
George has settled on a ranch north of here, near the Colorado border. It is a large ranch, to hear him tell of it, but I have never got up there to see it. He is in charge of the entire operation and lives in a small house. I don’t know that he will ever marry; he is forty-five years old now and so used to doing for himself, but there is a woman who washes his laundry. Once a year he comes for a visit, and I hardly know him for my son when he slides of
f his horse, picking me up and swinging me around as if I were a child.
Last month, the day before Margaret left, she spent all afternoon running through the desert until I had to ask José to go and find her, to bring her home. For another hour she screamed at the walls in her room, railing against me, then slept until late morning. That afternoon, when she disappeared without leaving a trace, I put on my riding clothes and rode up to the mesa on the gentle mare George had brought me.
It was a hot afternoon, so hot that I pictured them finding my old-woman bones weeks later, picked clean by buzzards. The sky pulsed with light, and when I looked across the sand I seemed to see small pools of water everywhere reflecting it. A dry, hot wind blew as I sat on my horse before the mesa, its shape cut against the sky, that mesa as familiar as any house to me. My eyes touched every part of it—the small piñons that grow at the base and the dark cedars that push themselves between the crevices, and the purple of the rock, everywhere rock. I leaned back in the saddle Clayton had ridden in and turned my face up to the sky. Its light poured through me, the dry heat.
Somehow, Maggie, I’ve let go of everyone now—my littlest children and Clayton, George, Amy, Margaret, many of the friends I made here, and you also, Maggie. It is that each day blows into the next one, all equally filled with light, and I do not expect or even hope for a letter or a visit. It no longer occurs to me to take the train east, where I could stay indefinitely with Amy and her family.
You will probably think this the babbling of an old, mindless woman. No doubt you and John are the contented elderly couple, surrounded by your children and grandchildren and nephews and nieces. Anna is becoming a young woman. My granddaughter, at least, I have not lost. And although I seldom leave the ranch, Thomas Mayfield continues to visit me, and Jenny Alden rode out just last week. Teresa is here, and Paula and José. I would change not anything I have done in my life.
