1997 - The Red Tent (17 page)

When I admired the copper bangles on her wrist, she told me her mother’s life story. How Esau had been smitten by the lovely young Basemath when he saw her in the marketplace near Mamre, where our grandmother Rebecca lived. For a bride-price, he had offered Basemath’s father, in addition to the usual number of sheep and goats, no fewer than forty copper bangles, “so that her wrists and ankles should announce her beauty,” he said. Esau loved Basemath, but she suffered at the hands of his first wife, Adath, who was jealous. Not even the stillbirths of Basemath’s babies had softened Adath’s heart. When I asked how they could celebrate the new moon together with so much anger in the house, Tabea said the women of her family did not mark the moon’s death and rebirth together. “That’s another thing the Grandmother hates about the wives of Esau,” Tabea said. “You know our grandmother?” I asked. “You know Rebecca?” “Yes,” said my cousin. “I saw her twice, at barley harvests. The Grandmother smiles at me, though she does not speak to my mother, nor Adath, nor did she take notice of Oholibama when she was alive. “The Grandmother says hateful things about my mother, and that is wrong.” My cousin knit her brow and her eyes filled with tears. “But I love the Grandmother’s tent. It is so beautiful there, and even though she is the oldest woman I ever saw, her beauty is not erased.” Tabea giggled and said, “The Grandmother tells me that I look like her, even though it is clear that I resemble my mother in every way.” Tabea did seem a copy of Basemath, with her thin nose and glossy, dark hair, her fragile wrists and ankles. But when I met Rebecca, I remembered my cousin’s words and saw what the Grandmother meant. It was Tabea’s eyes that Rebecca could claim as her own, for my cousin’s eyes were black and direct as arrows, where Basemath’s were brown and always downcast.

I told Tabea about the red tent and how my mothers celebrated the new moon with cakes and songs and stories, leaving ill will outside for the duration of the darkness. And how I, the only daughter, had been permitted inside with them throughout my childhood, although it was against custom for anyone past weaning and not yet a woman to enter. At this, we both looked down upon our chests and pulled our tunics tight to compare what was happening to our bodies. Although neither of us was ready to suckle, it seemed that I would reach womanhood first. Tabea sighed and I shrugged and then we laughed until our eyes filled with tears, which made us laugh even more until we were rolling on the ground.

When we caught our breath, we spoke of our brothers. Tabea said ^he did not know Eliphaz well, but that Reuel was kind. Of the little boys, she hated Jeush, who pulled her hair at every turn and kicked her shins whenever he was sent to help her in the garden. I told her how Simon and Levi made Joseph and my other brothers abandon our games, and how they treated me like their personal servant whose only duty it was to keep their wine cups filled. I even told her how I spit into their cups when I had the chance. I spoke of Reuben’s kindness, and Judah’s beauty, and how Joseph and I had been nursed together.

I was shocked when Tabea said she wanted no children. “I have seen rny mother cradle too many dead babes,” she said. “And I heard Oholibama scream for three days before she gave up her life for Iti. I am not willing to suffer like that.” Tabea said she wanted no part of marriage but would rather serve at Mamre and change her name to Deborah. Or else, she said, she would sing at the altar of a great temple like the one in Shechem. “There I would become one of the consecrated women who weave for the gods and wear clean robes always. Then I will sleep alone unless I choose to take a consort at the barley festival.”

I did not understand her desires. Indeed, I did not fully understand her words, since I knew nothing about temples or the women who serve there. For my part, I told Tabea I hoped for ten strong children like those my mother had borne, though I wanted five girls at least. It was the first time I had said these things aloud, and perhaps the first time I had even given them thought. But I spoke from my heart.

“You have no fear of childbirth?” asked my cousin. “What of the pain? What if the baby dies?”

I shook my head. “Midwives do not fear life,” I said, and I realized that I had come to think of myself as Rachel’s apprentice and Inna’s granddaughter.

Tabea and I stared into the water and our words ebbed. We pondered the difference between us and wondered if our hopes would be fulfilled, and whether we would ever learn what happened to the other after our fathers took their leave. My thoughts flew back and forth, like the shuttle on a great loom, so that when I finally heard my name in my mother’s mouth, there was some anger in it. We had tarried too long. Tabea and I walked quickly, hand in hand, back to the cooking fires.

My cousin and I did our best to stay together after that, watching our mothers circle one another with thinly veiled curiosity. They studied one another’s clothes and recipes, politely asking one another to repeat their names, just one more time, if you please, to get the pronunciation right. I could see my mother’s eyebrows rise at the Ca-naanite women’s use of salt, and I noticed Adath stiffen at the sight of Bilhah adding a handful of fresh onions to her dried-goat stew. But all judgments were masked under thin smiles amid the rush to prepare the feast.

While the women readied the meal, Esau and Jacob disappeared within my father’s tent. After the sons of Esau put up their tents for the night, they gathered near my father’s door, where my brothers also stood. Reuben and Eliphaz exchanged pleasantries about their fathers’ flocks, subtly comparing the number and health of each herd, sizing up each other’s approach to pasturage and skills with dogs. Eliphaz seemed surprised that neither Reuben nor any of his brothers had yet married or sired children, but this was not a subject that Reuben would discuss with the son of Esau. There were long lulls in the conversation between the cousins, who kicked at the dirt and clenched and unclenched their fists in boredom.

Finally, the flap to the tent opened and my father and Esau walked out, rubbing their eyes at the lingering brightness of the day, calling for wine and for the meal to begin. The two brothers sat on a blanket that Jacob himself spread. Their sons arranged themselves in self-conscious order of rank, Eliphaz and Reuben standing behind their fathers, Joseph and Korah sitting at their sides. As I ran back and forth, keeping the wine cups filled, I noticed how my brothers outnumbered Tabea’s, and that they were much more handsome than the sons of Esau. Tabea served bread, while our mothers and their servants filled the men’s plates until they could eat no more.

Every woman noticed who had taken the most of her stew, her bread, her beer, and each man took pains to compliment the food served by his brother’s wives. Esau drank deeply of my mother’s beer and favored Bilhah’s oniony goat dish. Jacob ate little, but did his best to honor the food brought him by Basemath and Adath.

When the men were done, the women and girls sat down, but as happens with great meals, there was little appetite after the hours of stirring and tasting. The mothers were served by the slaves of Esau—two strong girls wearing small silver rings through holes in their upper ears. One of them was pregnant; Tabea whispered that it was Esau’s seed, and if she bore a son, the girl would remove the upper earring and become a lesser wife. I stared at the strapping slave girl, her ankles as thick as Judah’s, and then glanced at the slender Basemath, and told Tabea that Esau’s taste in wives was as generous as his other appetites. She started to giggle, but a glare from Adath stifled us.

The light was starting to fade when Jacob and Esau began to tell stories. Our bondswomen brought lamps and Esau’s slaves kept them filled with oil, so the light from the flames danced upon the faces of my family, suddenly grown numerous. Tabea and I sat knee to knee, listening to the story of our great-grandfather Abram, who had left the ancient home in Ur where the moon was worshiped in the name of Nanna and Ningal, and gone to Haran where the voice of El had come to him and directed him to Canaan. In the south, Abram had done great deeds—killing a thousand men with a single blow because El-Abram had given him the power of ten thousand.

Jacob spoke of the beauty of Sarai, Abram’s wife and a servant of Innana, the daughter of Nanna and Ningal. Innana loved Sarai so well that the goddess came to her in the terebinth grove at Mamre and gave her a healthy son in the extremity of her life. That son was our grandfather Isaac, the husband of Rebecca, who was the niece of Sarai the priestess. It was Rebecca, my grandmother, who divined for the people now at Sarai’s holy grove in Marnre.

Having recalled the family history in the proper fashion, my father and my uncle moved on to childhood stories, slapping each other on the back as they recalled the times they had slipped away from their mother’s garden to play with the baby lambs, helping one another remember the names of their favorite dogs—the Black, the Dappled, and especially the Three-Legged Wonder, a miraculous bitch that survived a jackal’s attack and still herded with the best.

It was wonderful to see my father’s face as these stories spilled out. I could see him as a boy again—carefree, strong, willful. His reserve melted as Esau reminded him of a day they had fallen into a wadi and entered their mother’s tent covered in thick gray mud. He laughed at the story about a time the brothers stole a whole day’s worth of baking, ate themselves sick, and suffered a beating for it.

After many stories, a satisfied hush fell over the company. We listened to the rustling of the herds and the Jabbok’s whispers. And then Esau began a song. My father broke into a wide grin and joined in, giving loud and lusty voice to the words of an unfamiliar herding song all about the power of a certain ram. The women pinched their lips together as the verses continued, each one randier and bolder than the last. To my amazement, my brothers and our cousins knew every word and joined in, making a great shout of their voices, and finishing with a whoop and then laughter.

When the men were finished, Esau nodded to his first wife, who gave a sign that opened the mouths of his wives and daughters, his bondswomen and slave girls. It was a hymn to Anat, a name the Canaanite women used for Innana, and it praised the goddess’s prowess in war and her power in love.

Their song was unlike anything I’d ever heard, and the hair on the back of my neck stood on end, as though Joseph were tickling me with a stalk of grass. But when I turned to rebuke him, I saw that he sat by our father’s side, his eyes shining and fixed upon the singers. They sang the words in unison, yet somehow created a web of sound with their voices. It was like hearing a piece of fabric woven with all the colors of a rainbow. I did not know that such beauty could be formed by the human mouth. I had never heard harmony before.

When they finished, I discovered tears in my eyes and saw that Zilpah’s cheeks were wet, too. Bilhah’s lips were parted in admiration, and Rachel’s eyes were closed to listen with perfect attention.

The men applauded and asked for more, so Basemath began anew with a song about the harvest and the fullness of the earth. Tabea joined with them, and I was dazzled to think that my friend could perform such a miracle with her mothers. I closed my eyes. The women sang like birds, only more sweetly. They sounded like the wind in the trees, but louder. Their voices were like the rush of the river’s water, but with meaning. Then their words ceased and they began to sing with sound that meant nothing at all, yet gave new voice to joy, to pleasure, to longing, to peace. “Lu, lu, lu,” they sang.

When they finished, Reuben applauded the music of our kinswomen and bowed low to them. Joseph and Judah and Dan also rose and bowed in thanks, and I thought, “These four are my favorites, and the best of my brothers.”

There were more songs and a few more stories, and we sat by the light of the lamps. Only when the moon began to set did the women clear the last of the cups. With sleeping children in their arms, the young mothers moved toward their own beds, and the men began taking their leave too. Finally, only Jacob and Esau sat, staring silently at the sputtering wick of the last lamp.

Tabea and I slipped away and walked down to the river, our arms around each other’s waists. I was perfectly happy. I could have stood there until dawn, but my mother came to find me, and though she smiled at Tabea, she took my hand and pulled me away from my friend.

I woke the next morning to the sounds of Esau’s tribe making ready to leave. During their late-night conversation, my father told his brother that he would not follow him back to Seir. As fondly as the brothers had met, their fortunes could not be married. My uncle’s lands were vast and his position secure. Had we joined him, Jacob’s worth would be judged puny in comparison. My brothers, too, would have been at a disadvantage, since Esau’s sons already had flocks and lands of their own. And for all the fellowship of the night before, the sons of Isaac were not entirely reconciled, nor could they ever be. The scars they had borne for twenty years could not be erased with a single meeting, and the habits of those years, lived in such different worlds, were bound to come between them.

Nevertheless, the brothers embraced with declarations of love and promises to visit. Reuben and Eliphaz clasped each other by the shoulder, the women nodded goodbye. Tabea showed her boldness by running from her mother’s side to hug me, and we tasted each other’s tears. While we held each other she whispered, “Take heart. We will be together again soon at the Grandmother’s tent. I heard my mother say we would surely meet you there at the barley festival. Remember everything that happens from now until then, so you can tell me.” With that, she kissed me and ran back to her mother’s side. She waved her hand until she was out of my sight. As soon as they departed, my father instructed Reuben and my mother to prepare for our own leave-taking.

I did my part with a happy heart, glad to take up our travels free of the fear of Esau, eager to see my friend again and to meet the Grandmother, who had already begun to live in my imagination. I was certain that Rebecca would love my mothers; after all, they were her nieces as well as her daughters-in-law. And I imagined myself her pet, her favorite. Why shouldn’t I be, I thought. After all, I was the female heir of her favored son.