The White by Deborah Larsen

Author:Deborah Larsen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307429605
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

“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.”

When I heard some new word, whether it was French, Seneca, Dutch, English, or Delaware or Shawnee, I would stop the speaker: “Stop. What? What did you say? Excuse me?”

“Excuse me? What is ‘citrouille’?”

AND THE word would go to her children. “I have a new word, in French, for you. Pronounce after me: ‘citrouille.’ ”

“Citrouille.”

“Again?”

“Citrouille.”

“Again.”

“CITROUILLE.”

“ ‘Citrouille’ is the same as our orange squash, and I think it means ‘pumpkin’ in English. Say it.”

“Pumpkin!”

“Again?”

“Pumpkin, pumpkin, pumpkin.” The children giggled.

Then John said, “ ‘Pumpkin’ makes me feel very hungry.”

“I’m hungry, too,” Jesse said. Her boys were always hungry. “I want some cooked orange squash and corn and beans. The Three Sisters.”

“I want the berries that are sky-colored,” Betsey said.

“I want the men’s RUM,” John said, and they all laughed.

In this way, she would interrupt someone and demand to know what a leatherapron was: “Stop. Excuse me? A what? Why are you calling a person a leatherapron?”

She learned “matchlock,” the nature of the “Dutch Continental Sunday,” and “waterwheel.” She lay down at night with “indentured,” “cusp,” and “spume.”

The Seneca had stories about a creature called the Skeleton, who, as long as his bones lay aboveground on a pallet-bunk in his isolated hut, had feasted at night on the bodies of wayfarers who stopped for shelter. Once the Skeleton was buried he lost his envious, ravenous tendencies.

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