always be someone else.”
Doro turned to look at him, and after a moment, Isaac looked away.
“Be a child out here if you like,” Doro told him. “But act your age when we go in. I’m going to settle things between you and Anyanwu tonight.”
“Settle … you’re finally going to give her to me?”
“Think of it another way. I want you to marry her.”
The boy’s eyes widened. He stopped walking, leaned against a tall maple tree. “You … you’ve made up your mind, I suppose. I mean … you’re sure that’s what you want.”
“Of course.” Doro stopped beside him.
“Have you told her?”
“Not yet. I’ll tell her after dinner.”
“Doro, she’s wild seed. She might refuse.”
“I know.”
“You might not be able to change her mind.”
Doro shrugged. Worried as he was, it did not occur to him to share his concern with Isaac. Anyanwu would obey him or she wouldn’t. He longed to be able to control her with some refinement of Lale’s power, but he could not?nor could Isaac.
“If you can’t reach her,” Isaac said, “if she just won’t understand, let me try. Before you … do anything else, let me try.”
“All right.”
“And … don’t make her hate me.”
“I don’t think I could. She might come to hate me for a while, but not you.”
“Don’t hurt her.”
“Not if I can help it.” Doro smiled a little, pleased by the boy’s concern. “You like the idea,” he observed. “You want to marry her.”
“Yes. But I never thought you’d let me.”
“She’ll be happier with a husband who does more than visit her once or twice a year.”
“You’re going to leave me here to be a farmer?”
“Farm if you want to?or open a store or go back to smithing. No one could handle that better than you. Do whatever you like, but I am going to leave you here, at least for a while. She’ll need someone to help her fit in here when I’m gone.”
“God,” Isaac said. “Married.” He shook his head, then began to smile.
“Come on.” Doro started toward the house.
“No.”
Doro looked back at him.
“I can’t see her until you tell her … now that I know. I can’t. I’ll eat with Anneke. She could use the company anyway.”
“Sarah won’t think much of that.”
“I know.” Isaac glanced homeward guiltily. “Apologize for me will you?”
Doro nodded, turned, and went in to Sarah Cutler’s linen-clothed, heavily laden table.
Anyanwu watched carefully as the white woman placed first a clean cloth, then dishes and utensils on the long, narrow table at which the household was to eat. Anyanwu was glad that some of the food and the white people’s ways of eating it were familiar to her from the ship. She could sit down and have a meal without seeming utterly ignorant. She could not have cooked the meal, but that would come, too, in time. She would learn. For now, she merely observed and allowed the interesting smells to intensify her hunger. Hunger was familiar and good. It kept her from staring too much at the white woman, kept her from concentrating on her own nervousness and uncertainty in the new surroundings, kept her attention on the soup, thick with meat and vegetables, and the roast deer flesh?venison, the white woman had called it?and a huge fowl?a turkey. Anyanwu repeated the words to herself, reassured that they had become part of her vocabulary. New words, new ways, new foods, new clothing … She was glad of the cumbersome clothing, though, finally. It made her look more like the other women, black and white, whom she had seen in the village, and that was important. She had lived in enough different towns through her various marriages to know the necessity of learning to behave as others did. What was common in one place could be ridiculous in another and abomination in a third. Ignorance could be costly.
“How shall I call you?” she asked the white woman. Doro had said the woman’s name once, very quickly, in introduction, then hurried off on business of his own. Anyanwu remembered the name?Sarahcutler?but was not certain she could say it correctly without hearing it again.
“Sarah Cutler,” the woman said very distinctly. “Mrs. Cutler.”
Anyanwu frowned, confused. Which was right? “Mrs. Cutler?”
“Yes. You say it well.”
“I am trying to learn.” Anyanwu shrugged. “I must learn.”
“How do you say your name?”
