This morning, when I wake up in my mother’s house, I feel more confused than I have ever felt before. I am in the familiar room where I went to bed last night. I am in the same bed I have slept in since I left my mother’s side and began to sleep on my own. Yet today everything around me seems strange.

What is it? The window is where it has always been. The logs that make up the walls have not moved or changed their shapes. There’s the place by the window frame where I tried scratching my name, in the letters of the alphabet that the missionary taught me.

Uwohali Guess.

And there is my chair. And next to it my shoes are resting where I took them off last night. My shirt is hung over the back of the chair, right on top of my pants.

So what is not the same?

Then the answer comes to me. Nothing around me has changed. It is what is within me. I am the one who has become different. It is as if my mind has divided itself into two opposing sides that are having a tug-of-war with each other.

One half is trying as hard as it can to pull me away from the influence of my father. There is danger there, that side is chanting. He may be evil. Go back to him and you may be lost.

But the other side is pulling just as hard, if not harder. He has a voice that is gentle. His face shows no anger, no greed, no hatred. How can anyone who seems so kind be of harm to anyone—especially his own son?

And the image of those shapes he made on the bench, along with those on the backs of my sister’s dolls come back to me.

. The one like a B.

. The one like a W.

And what were those two that Ahyokah read off the back of her doll. Like a big G and small letter b.

.

.

Then there are the designs on the underside of the knife sheath that rests now underneath my windowsill.

.

.

.

.

Why is it that I can remember them so well?

Aha. I shake my head to try to quiet both sides. I need to think of something else.

“Atsuta?” my mother’s musical voice calls from the front of the cabin. “My son, are you awake? Are you hungry?”

I smell the hominy and the bacon cooking. The thought about the confusion in my mind fades. Nothing in the world can make me feel better than food, especially the food my mother cooks.

“Uh-huh!” I call to her as I roll out of bed. “Yes!”