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, Mother had begun to mutter to herself a few months ago.
    It was true. For two years now, Father tried to sell wheat at market to the Indians, but no one wanted it. He then sent his wheat far away to be ground into flour and then sent back, but still no one was interested. After that, he had Ixna bake breads and cookies, but no one would even try the free samples he offered. They approached his cart, in varying degrees of boldness, to see his blue eyes. Then they walked right on over to the piles of corn on either side. Not one Indian tried the grains, the flour, or the baked goods. Not even the animals would eat bread, Evie realized, watching Magellan defecate on his piece of toast. Not even Ixna, who had once almost starved to death.
    From the age of eight until she came to the mountain, Ixna had worked on a coffee plantation, where they paid and fed the workers “per task.” By law, a task was supposed to take a day to complete, but tasks had a way of growing and taking three days. So she worked every day but only received food every three days. The coffee trees, however, were shaded with banana trees. Ixna could not help herself. The overseer caught her, whipped her, and she had to work a year to pay for the “damaged” tree.
    It took so long to pay off the tree because Ixna was paid with worn-out pretend money to be cashed in every two weeks for real money. With nowhere to safely keep these slips of paper, she had to tie them to her body beneath her blouse while she worked. During the rainy season, as she worked through heavy rains, the strips of paper disintegrated against her skin and she could not get her work credited against her debt.
    So when Mother threatened to sell Evie to a plantation, she had cried, thinking of starvation, bananas hanging over her head that she could not eat. Whips and dogs. She pictured Ixna, eight years old, a brown version of herself.
    Considering all this, Ixna had no reason to complain about her work on the mountain, but Evie watched her now, plodding around their kitchen like a slave. How many different ways to cook wheat, to mix wheat, to make it look like something else? Breads, cookies, biscuits, cakes, thick floury pies. Something, anything, to convince the Indians.
    Ixna did not like cooking with wheat and certainly did not eat it. She handled flour with visible disgust, moaning at the traces it left on her hands, the clouds it formed with a misplaced breath. She squeezed her eyes and mouth shut, averting her face, not wanting to breathe it in. But she made all of the dishes just how Mother told her, baked them for market knowing they would not be sold. Father’s favorite wheat, the one he insisted would save the Indians, hard red spring, was reserved for breads. Beaten, risen, baked, and cooled by Ixna’s strong hands, the loaves were fluffy on the inside, with a fortress of crust on the outside. By year’s end, Father said, he would convert all his fields to hard red spring. The Indians needed to learn a new crop, for the higher, dryer land. The plantations were expanding, the government giving them all the communal corn-growing fields the Indians had used for centuries. They had a choice: adapt or starve. At the moment, they seemed to be choosing the latter.
    â€œIxna, why don’t you eat our food?”
    Ixna’s forehead rippled in annoyance as she kneaded dough for dumplings. Her fingertips left marks on little balls she twisted away, dented and smiling like little faces. “Our ancestors did not have bread.” The water on the fire had begun to boil, the pot rattling like something trapped inside. “So why should we?”
    â€œBecause progress is good. My grandparents didn’t have telegraphs, but now we do, and we’re happy.”
    â€œYour family is happy?”
    â€œ
Goddammit, Mattie!” Father shouted from the porch.
    The little faces were lined up, ready for the pot, but Ixna did not put them in