It came to me that I could listen, could memorize, could speak, could tell stories, could sing, and that in two languages, to be sure. That was what I would do. I would not let one word escape me; I would speak new words aloud as I learned them so as not to forget them.

I would pay attention to the human voice; I myself would speak carefully and expressively; I would never mumble. And I could give my children this gift: the words, the names, the arrangements of words, the pitches—rising notes, falling notes. I would teach them about the world using my ears, my throat and tongue.

I would speak the things of the earth out loud, so loud that the moon itself would feel called upon and would incline to my signals.

AND SO she played naming games and singing games with her children, starting with corn, which was their daily companion. Mary said in English the names of varieties of corn planted by their different nations and the children would answer her, would repeat:

“short-eared”
“short-eared”

“purple-blue bear”
“purple-blue bear”

“Mohawk red-and-soft”
“Mohawk red-and-soft”

“calico”
“calico”

“black sweet”
“black sweet”

“red pop”
“red pop”

“white flint”
“white flint”

“Now sing this: Rejoicing, rejoicing, our family is rejoicing, bringing in the corn.”

“Rejoicing, rejoicing, our family is rejoicing, bringing in the corn.”

I wrote what I thought was the tune for this line in the dirt:

I suddenly realized that this line set to this tune had been in my head for some time. As had other lines in Seneca and in English, set to other tunes.

Was an interior singing of which one was at first unaware a sign of being happy? Perhaps the surest sign.

“MOTHER,” Jesse said, “make us some of that red pop kind of corn.”

THE CORN became her children’s catechism:

“What will happen to us after death, Betsey?”

“After death, we return to the ground as seeds, and when our seedcases split we are those shoots which rush through the dark earth toward the light, only to find ourselves in heaven with the Good Spirit forever.”

“And who is the Good Spirit, Thomas?”

“The Good Spirit is the best of male and female in one. It is in all things without being captive to things; all things are in it.”

Then Polly, who cried at the slightest affliction, had her own catechism question: “Does the Good Spirit ever cry?” The children all turned to their mother.

“Yes. The Good Spirit does cry. The Good Spirit feels sad that we cannot understand what it is doing sometimes, that we can see only the underside of the dyed and woven floor mat of the heavens and not the design on the top.”

Jesse, who had been fidgeting until he heard the words “cry” and “mat,” asked if the Good Spirit ever laughed.

“Yes. The Good Spirit especially loves a humorous story.”