I knew that I should not, must not, forget that I was a captive waiting to be redeemed. As it was written: “Turn again our captivity, O Lord, as the streams in the south. They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.”

I had never seen streams “turn again,” reverse themselves. Were there certain streams in Israel, in the south of Israel, that turned back upon themselves with plashing and only slight flailings of fish? Was the Bible meant for Israel and not for me? Perhaps not for America, where there were renegades and traders and drinkers of rum and dissenters and people of vast ambitions. Father’s body had been tense with this ambition.

But I myself was part of America, I in fact had been born at sea on the way here. They bore me as a secret seed to Penn’s land, where seeds could fall and get lost. Where vast streams were too large to run backward. Did my parents know what they had done?

Or perhaps the Psalmist wrote “streams,” but meant the turning back on itself of the Red Sea. I had often walked through the Red Sea as I lay under my quilt at night.

First, I saw Moses. “And Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided.”

Then I started to cross with the children of Israel. “And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground: and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left.”

The waves were as tall as the roof of our barn and looked to come crashing down on me, on all of us, but instead the threatening curves and curls at the top were arrested. They bent back on themselves and finally appeared as grooves, as thick crescents which looked like the sculpted wings of an angel in a drawing I had seen.

No drop of the Red Sea had dampened my clothing as I drew nearer to the glittering shore that meant freedom from Pharaoh. We were crossing over from bondage.

But there were no Pharaohs in America, only the Seneca and these Delaware, one of whom was actually courting her, if you could call it that. And no Red Sea.

And no one, not one of her family, was smiling now, nor would anyone smile an earthly smile again. Not one was reaping in joy. Not one would walk out of a field, would ever walk toward her with a flaring sheaf of wheat balanced on his shoulder and say, “Mary.”

OR “LITTLE Sister.”

Or “Miss Mischief.”

“Our good girl.”

“Our pretty one.”

Or from behind the coarse curtain one fragrant night: “Doubtless our Miss Mary is very intelligent, Jane.”