These Is My Words (16 page)

I had made him four white shirts and two pairs of wool pants for a wedding present, but it doesn’t seem like much compared to this.

All the Maldonados came, and brought us a cat to get at the mice around, and seven glazed pottery plates, and a wagon load of food. I could have eaten myself sick on corn tamales and roasted chilies and chicken paella. Albert and Mama brought us two big calf skins to use for anything we want, and a kerosene lamp, and a pen full of chickens, and a little machine like Mrs. Maldonado uses to make tortillas, a wooden thing with a hinge to make the little corn cakes flat and thin.

The preacher was a tall, thin man who came with his wife and stayed all day at our house before the ceremony. He and his wife turned up their noses at all the good Mexican cooking we had. Mama has brought a pot of squash and corn and roasted a piece of beef, and it had cilantro and chili in it too, like the Maldonados make, so the parsons went home hungry. The only thing they could manage to get down was Savannah’s butter cake, and luckily she had made four of them, because I think the preacher and his wife ate a whole one themselves. They got in their buggy and left long before sundown, as they were afraid to travel after dark.

Well, I have found out the other things about marriage. And it wasn’t at all like I thought, either. Mostly Jimmy was real embarrassed and quiet, and couldn’t look me in the eye. I kissed him and said, Jimmy, I love you, honey, do you love me?

He said to me, Are you mad at me?

And I told him No, not a bit. But I wished he’d have said he loved me, too. It seems that now we’re married and alone and after what just happened, he could feel free to speak his mind, too. But he rolled over. Goodnight, I said, and he didn’t say anything.

I listened to that old familiar snoring for a while, then I went to sleep myself.

This morning, he was gone from the bed before I woke up. Out to tend the horses. So I got up and dressed quickly in my new skirt and blouse and apron and went to start the coffee. There was a fresh stack of wood and a box of kindling next to the stove waiting.

December 25, 1882

We have roasted a turkey, not a goose as I promised Harland and Savannah last spring, but Christmas dinner at Mama’s house is a fine one, with the weather so pleasant and mild that we set up tables out front and spread out such a bounty it was a wonder.

Whatever had been bothering Albert toward me seems to have lifted, and he is his old self. We all miss Ernest dearly and sat together and wrote him a long letter with words from every one. Pretty soon everyone talked so fast I couldn’t write to keep up, but we laughed and had a wonderful time.

Jimmy said just to show Ernest how big Baby Clover is, he wanted to paint his little feet in ink and stamp them on the letter. Well, everyone else thought it was a grand idea except for Baby Clover, and he began to cry with everyone fooling with his feet and stamping him up and down.

When they were done his Mama made a frown and went in the house to wash his feet off, and came back with him under a blanket, nursing. Then she said, Albert, I want you to know your son has a tooth! Ouch! And everyone laughed.

January 9, 1883

I have prayed and prayed, and it seems I may be expecting. I don’t know whether to tell Jimmy yet or wait until I am more sure. I finally asked Mama how to know. And she grinned at me real hard.

All is cold and clean and the horses have put on winter coats. Rose is too big to ride, and I spent all this morning with her, talking to her and smiling at our shared babies. I put my hand on her and felt her colt wiggling. Then I patted my own belly and said I Love You for the first time to my baby. I think tonight after supper I will tell Jimmy. This will surely set him thinking. I have tried every way I can think of to get him to say I love you to me. Now he will. It is a fine thing to have a baby. He will be right proud and happy, I am sure.

January 12, 1883

Jimmy said he will buy more lumber on the next trip to town and start a nursery room. I told him that was a fine idea, and we will need a cradle and cloth for diapers, and he just grinned like a goose all day.

With a little dry weather I have been stacking up my adobe blocks and making a little outbuilding. Mostly I just wanted to see how it was done and there’s no lesson like one you learn with your own hands. Ruben Maldonado has helped me moving adobe. Jimmy said this adobe building is nonsense, but I feel it is worth a try, and if this one falls down, it will be a lesson from the mistakes.

Coyotes have been after my chickens, and got one today. They dug right under my ocotillo fence. So today I am digging a trench all around the chicken pen and filling it with cholla burs which we collect with a piece of string and a forked stick. Then I bent some loops of wire and hammered them into the ground, just like pinning batting down to a quilt, and pinned those burs in place.

January 14, 1883

Jimmy says it is dangerous to the baby. He lays there tossing, and sometimes goes and sleeps on the floor in the kitchen. It doesn’t seem like it has to be but there is no convincing him and since he knows horse breeding, I thought, maybe he is right. I told him I’d like to sleep together anyway, and just hold hands and be close, but he says that makes him nervous.

I got most of the roof on my little adobe shed. Good time, too, as it looks like it will come a rain. No coyotes have been able to get into the chicken coop, but I hear them sniffing around. It is hard to keep Bear from going after them. One at a time they would be no match for him but they are traveling in packs and I’m not sure he could take them all at once, and I doubt Toobuddy would be much help.

I have named my kitty Speckles as she is spotted with colors like a crazy quilt. She brought me her first mouse this morning. Bear decided he wanted a piece of that mouse too, but she told him No in no uncertain terms and his nose has a big deep scratch to prove it.

Jimmy had to go to Tucson for some business today. Went over to Mama’s this morning, and Albert and Savannah have finally moved into their own little house, so Bear and I walked over and said hello and admired Baby Clover. Then I told them all my news about expecting. Savannah cried. Everyone seemed overjoyed except Albert acted strange again, and had a hard time to smile. I have known him too long and something is in his craw but he isn’t telling. Well, that’s just too bad, as Jimmy and I are real happy, and building a fine ranch, and I’m not letting a cranky brother spoil it.

January 26, 1883

In the middle of the rainy night one of the mares has delivered a wobbly little chestnut colt with beautiful white boots on all four legs. Jimmy is just so happy he could bust. This morning he has asked me to make a written record of all the horses, and name them all, and note the sire of all the new foals that will come, like a chart. So since it is still raining hard, I will be working on a ranch record which he says is really important for breeding in the future. He says my papa only had a few head and let them pretty much go wild, but he plans to do some special breeding and wants a line of first quality horses to sell, especially with the next generation in about five years. This will be a business, I can see, not just a living. So these records are very important and I am going to enjoy naming all the pretty horses. I named the yellow colored one Honey after Rose’s mama.

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.