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617 Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel (b. 1960) Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel is the tribal historian and medicine woman for the Mohegan Tribe. After receiving a bsfs in history/diplomacy from Georgetown University and an ma in history from the University of Connecticut, she traveled throughout New England as a storyteller for the tribe. In 1992 she won the first annual nonfiction award of the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas for The Lasting of the Mohegans, based on her research for the Mohegans’ federal recognition case, which was successful in 1994. Shortly after that Zobel became the first American Indian appointed to the Connecticut Historical Commission. Zobel has written a biography, Medicine Trail: The Life and Lessons of Gladys Tantaquidgeon, and two novels, Oracles: A Novel and Fire Hollow. Her first young adult novel, Great Bear Blues, will be released in 2015. “The Window” is an original contribution to this volume. The Window Let me tell you about my morning. The new moon hung low in the February sky, like a sickle or an icy smile. Never wish on a new moon. Never view a new moon through a window pane. Never hunt on a new moon. I heard those superstitions over and over again, growing up on the Mohegan Reservation in Connecticut. I ignored them. I was more interested in things that were real, like the woods. It was a good thing too; the other sixteen-year-old boys refused to include me in their snow snake contests, snowball fights, and other winter fun. My mother said it was because they thought our family was cursed, just because a couple of men disappeared on hunting trips. Whenever my mother mentioned my father’s final hunting trip back in 1909, her sparkling Indian eyes dulled down to lumps of coal and she said something creepy, like, “The devil is as smooth as glass.” I did not believe in her white man’s devil, or in my father’s Great Spirit either. I believed in things you can touch and smell, like the woods. But my mother didn’t allow me to hunt in those woods. So before she 618 mohegan woke up, I grabbed my axe along with the shotgun she kept by the door to ward off hobos. The week-long blizzard had mostly died down and it was at least fourteen degrees when I pushed out into the breaking dawn. It took forever to plough through the snow-heaped trails past the main cluster of reservation homes. It was a miracle that some of the older shacks remained standing after so much wild weather. I found myself picturing those frozen hills covered with old-time wigwams. Then I imagined them dotted with western tepees, painted with buffalo, elk, bear, and any other enormous game that can feed you for months. Upon entering Hoscott’s Woods on the edge of our territory, I was greeted by a skin-and-bones red fox pawing its way out of the crusted entrance to its den and a jittery woodpecker chipping ice crystals off the hole to its nest. Those crackling sounds reminded me of my mother’s fried pork rinds, crisping up in the cast-iron pan on our wood stove. I had not heard that sound since we sold off the last of our livestock at the New London County Fair last August. That day, I recall my mother pointing to a man with smoky gray curls in a bright-green suit and saying to me, “You remember Mister Church. Go see him about a job, and never mind what your late father said about him.” I was eleven when my father disappeared, and I did not recall him ever saying much about Church. Although he did often claim that wearing green was a sure sign of wickedness. Maybe that’s why he always insisted that my eyes were hazel. I never did talk to Church that day at the fair. Instead, I entered the hatchet-throwing contest and split the crimson bull’s-eye right down the middle. The man in charge slapped a ten-dollar bill in my hand. My mother adjusted her fake pearls and said, “Looks like your father taught you at least one useful thing.” Indeed, he did. After that, I did not hear another word from her about Mister Church—until yesterday, right before I smashed her Mason jar. It was a good thing for me to get out of the house today after all that...

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