One evening in the corn planting moon, she was making ready her seed for the morrow’s planting. She had a string of braided ears lying beside her. Of these ears she chose the best, broke off the tip and butt of each, and shelled the perfect grain of the mid-cob into a wooden bowl. Baby-like, I ran my fingers through the shiny grain, spilling a few kernels on the floor.
“Do not do that,” cried my grandmother. “Corn is sacred; if you waste it, the gods will be angry.”
I still drew my fingers through the smooth grain, and my grandmother continued: “Once a Ree woman went out to gather her corn. She tied her robe about her with a big fold in the front, like a pocket. Into this she dropped the ears that she plucked, and bore them off to the husking pile. All over the field she went, row by row, leaving not an ear.
“She was starting off with her last load when she heard a weak voice, like a babe’s, calling, ‘Please, please do not go. Do not leave me.’
“The woman stopped, astonished. She put down her load. ‘Can there be a babe hidden in the corn?’ she thought. She then carefully searched the field, hill by hill, but found nothing.
“She was taking up her load, when again she heard the voice: ‘Oh, please do not go. Do not leave me!’ Again she searched, but found nothing.
“She was lifting her load when the voice came the third time: ‘Please, please, do not go! Please, do not leave me!’
“This time the woman searched every corn hill, lifting every leaf. And lo, in one corner of the field, hidden under a leaf, she found a tiny nubbin of yellow corn. It was the nubbin that had been calling to her. For so the gods would teach us not to be wasteful of their gifts.”
Another evening I was trying to parch an ear of corn over the coals of our lodge fire. I had stuck the ear on the end of a squash spit, as I had seen my mothers do; but my baby fingers were not strong enough to fix the ear firmly, and it fell off into the coals and began to burn. My mouth puckered, and I was ready to cry.