The Three Sisters
It should be them who tell this story. Corn leaves rustle with a
signature sound, a papery conversation with each other and the
breeze. On a hot day in July—when the corn can grow six inches in
a single day—there is a squeak of internodes expanding, stretching
the stem toward the light. Leaves escape their sheaths with a
drawn-out creak and sometimes, when all is still, you can hear the
sudden pop of ruptured pith when water-filled cells become too
large and turgid for the confines of the stem. These are the sounds
of being, but they are not the voice.
The beans must make a caressing sound, a tiny hiss as a soft-
haired leader twines around the scabrous stem of corn. Surfaces
vibrate delicately against each other, tendrils pulse as they cinch
around a stem, something only a nearby flea beetle could hear. But
this is not the song of beans.
I’ve lain among ripening pumpkins and heard creaking as the
parasol leaves rock back and forth, tethered by their tendrils, wind
lifting their edges and easing them down again. A microphone in the
hollow of a swelling pumpkin would reveal the pop of seeds