Chapter 21
New Year, New Challenges

The year 1854 opened with a gigantic snowstorm the day after New Year’s. It was four days before Pa finally rode Jester into Miracle. When he came back he said that no one else had been able to get to town either, and that Miss Stansberry had cancelled school until the roads were melted off.

The old timers of the area said they never remembered so much snow that low down out of the mountains. Alkali Jones, of course, had stories to top everyone’s, and he claimed that long before gold was discovered, he had seen snow six feet deep where Sacramento was now. Nobody believed him. But they listened, every now and then throwing winks from one to another to show they weren’t swallowing a word of it.

When we finally did get back to school, a lot of things started changing. There are times we look back on as being turning points, and after those times nothing is the same again—like when Ma died, or that first day when we rode into Miracle Springs with Captain Dixon.

This was one of those times. It wasn’t sudden, not one particular moment, but a spread-out time of change. I suppose it started with Pa’s letter from Miss Morgan. Nothing could be the same after that. And the idea of a second Mrs. Drummond Hollister took a lot of getting used to. I wasn’t altogether seeing things from Pa’s standpoint. I should have been happy for him, and down inside I knew he was doing it for us kids as much as for himself. But the selfish part of me was afraid of what Miss Morgan’s coming might mean.

Christmas day at our house had been a day to stick in the mind for a long time. There had been so many difficulties from the first when we came to California, getting all the people and feelings and relationships figured out—first we found our Pa, but Pa and Mrs. Parrish didn’t get along too well. Then Uncle Nick got into trouble. When the minister came, he and Pa did a lot of arguing. Then Pa changed from being so gruff, and his life became different than his rough past. Finally Miss Stansberry came, and the school started up.

There had been so many changes! Yet there we all were in our cabin—together, talking, having fun, laughing, singing—Uncle Nick, the minister, Alkali Jones, Pa, and Mrs. Parrish! It felt like a high point, the perfect end to all the problems we had all had that year.

But it seemed almost fated to end just as it was beginning. The minute Pa told everyone about Miss Morgan and about him marrying again, I could feel that things were going to change again, that we might never again have a day where everything was as good as that Christmas day.

Maybe it was selfish of me, but I didn’t know if I relished the thought that a year from then there’d be a new woman taking care of things in the Hollister kitchen instead of me. Mrs. Parrish might not ever spend Christmas with us again. She might not even be Mrs. Parrish the next year, but Mrs. Rutledge instead.

Not all the changes were things I worried about. After that Christmas day, once we got back to school, I started feeling a special friendship with Miss Stansberry. After that day she felt a part of our family, and I noticed her always smiling warmly and taking a moment or two with Tad and Becky and Emily. She knew just how to treat Zack, helping him with his learning, but in a way that made him feel like he was one of the older and grown-up pupils. She had such a knack for making Zack feel like she really needed him in the school that he started perking up, working hard on his papers and reading, doing schoolwork at home, and trying all the time to please her.

Pa’d say things like, “What’s got into you, boy?” half joking at Zack working on some assignment, and Zack’d just shrug.

But I could tell Pa was happy about it—though not half as proud as Zack was when Miss Stansberry praised him in front of the class for his hard work and improvement. It wasn’t long before she had him helping with the younger boys. Even Little Wolf went to Zack for assistance a lot, and Zack was proud of that, since he was several years younger than Little Wolf.

Miss Stansberry was kind to me too. She gradually quit treating me as one of her students and began treating me like another teacher. Whatever she’d said about needing an assistant, all of us knew by that time that she could handle most anything that would come up. No one thought of her as crippled anymore—I don’t even think we remembered it half the time. I think she wanted me as her assistant as much for my sake as her own.

In March I turned seventeen, and that had plenty to do with some of my worries. I didn’t think of it at the time, because when I’m in a situation I don’t really know why I think certain things.

But looking back on it now, deep inside I realized that seventeen was nearly grown up. I wasn’t a little girl any more. And maybe that’s why Miss Stansberry treated me differently as time went on. Late in the spring she even asked me if I’d like to call her Harriet.

Before Miss Morgan’s letter I didn’t need to think much about what would become of me. There was nothing much to think about except helping Pa with the young’uns, cooking, and keeping the house. I never really thought much about the future. I hoped I’d get to write some more for Mr. Singleton, but I never thought about having to leave Pa and the cabin.

But with Miss Morgan coming, it seemed that Pa might not need me much any more. Being seventeen, I’d be grown pretty soon, and it gets cumbersome with too many grown-ups in a little house. She’d take care of the kids and the cooking, so there wouldn’t be much for me to do. And I was getting too old for school. I couldn’t keep being Miss Stansberry’s helper for ever!

I had never thought much about my future—just a little about being a teacher or writing some newspaper articles. But now I realized that people would start to figure I ought to get married.

And if I tried to do some kind of work like teaching or working for a paper, they’d start to call me an old maid! I didn’t figure I was the marrying kind, and wasn’t interested in being one. Yet if I tried to do some kind of work of my own, it might mean leaving Pa and the kids.

I knew Pa was trying to help, but Miss Morgan’s coming didn’t do much for me except make me afraid of what might happen to me next.

So that spring of 1854 was a hard time for me. I went for lots of walks by myself and wrote lots of thoughts in my journal. I was moody and quiet sometimes, and I wasn’t altogether pleasant to the others.

I tried to pray whenever I’d get to worrying, but I couldn’t tell if God was paying much attention or not. I knew I ought to talk to Mrs. Parrish about it, but sometimes I was embarrassed to tell her what I was thinking and feeling because it seemed selfish, and she was always so thoughtful of other folks.

But on Easter Sunday afternoon, just a couple of weeks after my seventeenth birthday, I had a talk with her that I’ll never forget. And of all the things that made the first part of 1854 so memorable, that was the biggest day of all. It was a turning point that made all the others seem small.

Mrs. Parrish took me for a ride out into the country and told me, “I think the time has finally come, Corrie, for me to tell you something I’ve been wanting to share with you for a long time.”

Pa had gotten a letter from Miss Morgan the day before. It wasn’t the first letter we received, and it didn’t say anything different from the others. But maybe because of my birthday, because I was thinking about getting older and wondering what was to become of me, that particular letter unnerved me.

Or maybe it was the way Pa seemed to be gradually getting excited about her coming, because from the letters she sounded like a fun lady. And he was talking more regularly about how things would be after she got here, and I was feeling a little hurt that he didn’t seem to care much about me and what I was feeling.

The letter said:

I don’t know exactly what day I will arrive, since so much of the passage time, I am told, depends on the weather. I will stop over several days at a hotel in San Francisco, and from there I will notify you of my arrival. I will then take the steamer up the river to Sacramento, where I hope you will be able to meet me. If there are other details, I will write again. I will tell you now, so that whenever and however I manage to get there, how you may recognize me. I do not favor hats, but on this occasion I shall be wearing a floppy white hat with a red flower. It is the only hat I own. I am looking forward to meeting all of you—children, brother-in-law, yourself . . . your whole clan. You have warned me to be prepared for a humble mountain cabin. But it will be a pleasure for me to have a stove and kitchen to call my own after so many years with my aunt. Tell Corrie and Becky and Emily that I am so happy to have such big girls for my stepdaughters—that is, if you decide to keep me, Mr. Hollister!

That was not all she wrote, but it was enough to bring a lump to my throat, and as soon as Pa was finished reading it I went outside to be alone.

I didn’t want to be anybody’s stepdaughter! And I didn’t want to be called a “big girl,” as if I were ten years old! And I didn’t want to share my kitchen with someone I didn’t even know!

I couldn’t tell any of what I was thinking to Pa. He’d either get mad at me or else feel bad himself, and I didn’t want to cause him any more misery.

I’d already overheard him telling Uncle Nick once that he was having second thoughts about what he’d done. And now that he was planning to go through with it, I didn’t want to upset him any more.

Worst of all, I felt so selfish! Why couldn’t I be happy for Pa, happy for Miss Morgan, like everybody else? If this was for the best for all the rest of the family, how could I be so mean as to worry about no one but myself? I wanted to be good and I tried to ask God to help me think better thoughts, but down inside I felt miserable.

The next day, Easter Sunday, we went to church. I sat there the whole time trying hard to keep from crying. I didn’t hear a word Rev. Rutledge said. I don’t even remember what he spoke about. I just sat there glum and staring forward, with my mind tumbling about on all the things I was wrestling with inside, and knowing I wasn’t behaving like God would want. It was Easter Sunday, when folks were dressed nice and happy and smiling to one another, and that just made it all the worse!

Some folks have a way of being able to look at you and know just what you’re thinking. Mrs. Parrish was always that way with me. She walked over to me after the service, pulled me a few steps away from the others, and said, “How about if I drive out this afternoon and you and I go for a ride together?”