Perhaps if Rebekah had been in awe of her, as giddy as the other women were whenever Mother was with them, she could never have solved the problem. But Rebekah was not in awe. In fact, she was more than a little disappointed that Mother wasn’t . . . well, wasn’t serious about learning.

“I’ll tell you what,” Rebekah said. “Since you aren’t interested in memorizing the letters, I’ll assign one of the servant women who can read and write to stay with you whenever you’re with Father.”

“What?” said Mother. “What are you saying? I have to learn this!”

“Yes, you do,” said Rebekah. “But this isn’t something you can assign to a servant to learn for you. You have to do the work yourself, and actually learn it by paying very close attention and practicing it over and over.”

Mother was quite taken aback. “Did I come here to have my daughter speak to me like this?”

Rebekah was annoyed that Mother so instantly appealed to a relationship that in fact they didn’t have. “Did you come here to waste my time with lessons you don’t care enough to pay attention to?”

“What is it? Why are you angry at me?” asked Mother. “Is it because I’ve taken your place among the women? I hope you don’t think I’m going to supervise every detail of what they cook and how they weed the garden and . . . I think if they’re well trained they can do all those things themselves.”

What did this have to do with the matter at hand, Rebekah wondered. “Mother,” she said, “I’m perfectly happy to have you supervise whatever you want to, or not supervise whatever you don’t want to. In fact, I’m not even talking about that. I’m talking about learning to read and write so you can talk to Father.”

“There you go again, getting that impatient tone with me, as if I were a servant. I’m not, you know.”

The last thing Rebekah wanted to do was fight. “Apparently I can’t talk to you about this without offending you,” said Rebekah. “There are the letters, all written in the dirt. As long as you don’t sweep that patch, you can keep referring to them until you know them. Good luck.” She got up and headed out of Mother’s tent.

“It’s very rude to walk out of your mother’s presence without her permission,” said Mother.

“It’s also rude,” said Rebekah, standing at the doorway of the tent, “to ask me to teach you a skill that I have and you don’t, and then pay no attention and make no effort to learn it.”

“I am making an effort,” said Mother. “Just because I’m not learning it as quickly as you’d like doesn’t mean you should just give up.”