How dared he? How dared he be in that place where my husband was, and not keep my husband from dying?

WEEKS later, she stood in the soft shadows of the cornstalks. The privacy was the same. If she took off her outer garment, would Sheninjee prove himself not dead, would his large body make the ears of corn scrape and scratch against each other as he approached? He could not resist coming to her, he must come to her in the corn if she stretched her arms out to the sun and then out to him. He would say her name; one brown finger would trace the path of her left collarbone.

She would touch his face, his nose; she would do what he loved. She herself would slide her strap off her shoulder.

In the cornfield, in her thin undergarment, she raised her arms and held them out in front of her. Then she lowered them.

NOW THAT her husband was dead, the dark thought of leaving the Seneca again occurred to her, grasped her one day when she was in her hut and sweating in the hottest summer she had ever known.

I could go back now. This is the time.

The heat contributed to my longing to be in another place. But in what place, I bethought myself, amongst whites or anywhere else, would I escape the moist air that oppressed me such that I felt faint all the time? The whites, like the Seneca, could do nothing about the heat. I had heard someone say that the waxy, mask-like makeup that wealthy white women wore tended to melt in the summer daytime heat as well as before a fire in winter.

IF IT had not been for Thomas she would have wished for death again. “It is better for me to die than to live,” Jonah had said when the gourd withered and he sat bareheaded under the hot sun. He had been very angry.

At that time she would have welcomed being swallowed up, as Jonah had earlier been swallowed up by a fish. “And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.”

That was what she wanted: nothing less than being swallowed up would do. In the belly of the fish the heat would cease to bother her.

Inside the great fish it would be cool, if damp and somewhat putrid. What had Jonah done inside there for three days and three nights? She thought perhaps Thomas would ask this question when he got older and he heard Jonah’s tale. She began to think about how she would answer.