Sarah: Women of Genesis: 1 (Women of Genesis (Forge)) (30 page)

And having decided to do it, must I keep deciding to do it each step of the way? Will I ever stop wishing for thy word in my heart to tell me that I need not do it after all?

“Hagar,” said Sarai, “you know that I have borne my husband no children.”

“Mistress,” said Hagar, “you will bear him a child someday.”

Sarai laughed mirthlessly. “Hagar, this is a good time for you to listen instead of trying to reassure me.”

“I’m listening, Mistress.”

“The body I was born with has grown old. Too old to bear a child, I fear. The Lord has shown me another way to give my husband the son who will inherit all that God has given him and through whom God will fulfil all his promises.”

“How will it be done?” asked Hagar. Sarai knew that Hagar expected some kind of magic. In fact, now that Sarai looked at her, she could see that Hagar was steeling herself for something terrible. She was afraid.

“Girl,” said Sarai, “why are you afraid?”

“I’ve known for years that it would come to this,” said Hagar. “Mistress, I will submit to your will.”

“Submit to what?” said Sarai. “I haven’t even asked you yet.”

“The sacrifice,” said Hagar. “So Asherah will let you have a child.”

It took a moment for Sarai to realize that Hagar meant a human sacrifice, and thought that she would be the victim. “Are you out of your mind, child?” said Sarai. “Have you lived with us all this time and yet you still think that Abram would ever, ever sacrifice a human being? Asherah is nothing but statues and empty words. The true God does not ask for human blood! You
know
that. We’ve taught you that.”

Hagar searched Sarai’s face, trying to see if there was some lie in what she was saying. And when she found no lie, she burst into tears and clung to Sarai in relief, in gratitude.

“What were you thinking,” said Sarai. “What
were
you thinking of us.”

“You were so long without a child, Mistress,” said Hagar. “It had to be Asherah punishing you.”

Sarai petted her hair. “You poor confused child.”

At that moment, Sarai looked up to see Abram standing in the door of his tent, looking at them, appalled. It took a moment, but then she realized how it must look to him. He must think Sarai had asked Hagar to lie with him, and that at the thought of it, Hagar had burst into tears and was clinging to Sarai to plead with her not to require her to do it.

For a moment she thought, Serves him right!

But she knew at once how unjust it was for her to think that. This wasn’t
his
idea, after all.

So she shook her head, so he’d realize that it wasn’t what he was thinking, and then with her fingers she made a little dismissing gesture. Go inside your tent. Pray to God. Leave me to my business with this girl.

He understood. Maybe not all of it, but at least the part about going away—or maybe he understood nothing at all, but it didn’t matter the reason. He went inside the tent, and Sarai got back to the task of giving her husband to her handmaiden.

“Hagar,” said Sarai, “Do you want to hear what I was actually going to ask you?”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“I have asked my husband to lie with you and get you with child for me.”

Hagar nodded. “Of course,” she said.

“Just like that?” asked Sarai. “You don’t need to think about it?”

Hagar pulled away a little, so she could look at Sarai. “Mistress,” said Hagar, “your husband is the only master I’ve ever heard of who did
not
lie with every servant girl who wasn’t actually deformed or sick. I wondered at first what was wrong with me that he never came to me, until I found out from the other women that he didn’t lie with any of them. And then I thought, perhaps he has the curse on him, so he can’t lie with anyone. But some things you said . . . well, you kept thinking that perhaps you might be with child this month, or the next, and you wouldn’t have thought such a thing if . . . I simply didn’t understand. But if you want him to lie with me, then of course I will. And if you want me to bear a child, I’ll do it. I am yours. The child will be yours.”

“All right, then,” said Sarai. “Now we have only to wait for Abram to get his answer from . . . no, wait.” She had just understood what Hagar’s words really meant. “No, you don’t understand yet. The child you bear will not be a servant in this house. The child you bear will be Abram’s son.”

Now it was Hagar’s turn to stare at her in silence, trying to understand. “You mean . . . a son who inherits?”

“That is the only kind of son that Abram will ever have.”

Hagar’s eyes grew wide, and she sat very still, staring at nothing.

“I will still be Abram’s wife,” said Sarai, wanting that to be very clear.

“Of course,” said Hagar. And then, “This was
your
idea?”

“It was given me by God. I think.”

Hagar nodded. “Yes, I’ll do it.” She turned to Sarai and searched her face as she said, “Mistress, will you hate me if I bear him a child?”

“I will rejoice for you,” said Sarai. “And I will rejoice for my husband. And I will rejoice for the child, and for the land of Canaan that will be blessed by him.”

“But you will also hate me,” said Hagar.

“I will never hate you for obeying me, for serving me as I ask you to.”

“You will,” said Hagar.

“I will not,” said Sarai. “Please don’t accuse me of being an oathbreaker.”

“You have to hate me for it,” said Hagar, sounding as if she were desperate to make sense of this thing that was happening. “You have to.”

“Why do I have to, when I say I will not?”

“Because I would hate
you
for it, if I were in your place. To have another woman bear a child for my husband, when my own body could not? How could any woman endure that, Mistress?”

“A woman can endure it,” said Sarai, “for love.”

When she said it, she meant it. But later, she realized it was not true. She had loved Abram all along, and yet never thought of this solution to her barrenness. It was only for faith that she did this, to offer a way for God’s promises to come true.

Abram got his answer from the Lord. He went into Sarai’s own tent with Hagar, and lay with her. Two weeks he lay with her every night, while Sarai went with Eliezer to visit Qira and Lot in Sodom. It was the nicest visit that Sarai had ever had with her sister. Not that Qira was not as awful as usual—she was in her finest form. But it all washed over Sarai like a gentle breeze with no sting in it. Qira had no power to cause her pain, now that she knew what pain was. Instead, Qira was a kind of antidote, for she carried Sarai back so many years, to a time when they were girls in Father’s house, before either of them had married, before Sarai had met the man from the desert who promised to come back and marry her. They promised me to a goddess then, but now I belong to God. He is using me as he sees fit. It is hard to bear, but I have this much more than I would ever have had, serving Asherah: I have known the love of a man. And such a man. He will love Hagar now, as a man must love the mother of his child. I have lost everything. But I have everything, because my husband will have a son at last, and his joy will be my joy.

After three weeks, Eliezer took Sarai back to Mamre. Life returned to normal. No one spoke to her of what had passed between her husband and her maidservant. Everyone acted as if nothing had happened at all.

But no one was fooled. Everything had changed. What had once been real was now a play, everyone acting an old part, going through the motions, saying the speeches, but knowing that no one was, any longer, what they still pretended to be.

And the pretense finally ended when Hagar said to her one night, “Mistress, five days have passed since it should have been my time.”

That was when Sarai’s last hope died. “I’m so glad,” she said to Hagar. “Let’s go tell Abram.” She held the girl’s hand as they crossed the continent between the tents.

Chapter 18

The first time, Sarai did not think it amounted to anything. Hagar was feeling ill in the morning, as women often did when they were with child. So when Hagar’s voice awoke her, croaking, “Sarai, Sarai,” all she could think was, Something’s wrong with the baby she’s carrying.

“Bring me a jar,” whispered Hagar.

Sarai rose from the carpets she slept on and hurried to fetch an empty jar and carry it to Hagar, who promptly vomited into it. When, exhausted, Hagar collapsed back onto her pillows, Sarai took the foul jar outside and left it for one of the women to empty it and clean it later.

It did not even cross her mind at the time that Hagar had not called her Mistress, but had addressed her by name, as an equal. Nor did she take it amiss that Hagar ordered her to bring a jar. She would have to be a fool not to realize that such breaches arose out of the need of the moment—Hagar was sick and could not rise; she had to wake her mistress because there was no other woman in the tent.

All Sarai thought of was that they would need to bring another woman into the tent, so Hagar would always have someone to take care of her. And so she brought Ptahmet, a Cushite girl that Abram had bought only the year before from Amorites who had captured her in a raid on Egypt. Ptahmet would sleep at Hagar’s feet and attend to her in her sickness.

A few days later, as Sarai sat in the door of the tent and dealt with a dispute between two women, one of whom was accusing the other of trying to seduce her husband, Hagar called out angrily from inside the tent, “Can’t I have peace here! Can’t you take that somewhere else!”

“Oh, we’re disturbing poor Hagar,” said Sarai. She led the two women away from the tent to work out some sort of peace between them. Only later did it annoy her that Hagar had shouted so impatiently instead of sending Ptahmet to request that the discussion be taken away from the tent door.

But when she suggested this to Hagar, the girl looked away angrily.

“Why are you angry?” said Sarai.

“I shouldn’t have had to shout
or
send Ptahmet,” said Hagar. “You should have thought of it yourself.”

“Perhaps I should,” said Sarai, “but in the future, if you wish me to do something, send Ptahmet to ask me quietly, instead of shouting at me as if I were a disobedient servant.”

“Oh, I see,” said Hagar. “It’s not enough that I’m carrying your husband’s baby and have to endure this sickness and take care every moment that I do nothing to cause the baby harm, now I have to make sure I don’t hurt your feelings somehow. I’m sorry I’m causing you so much difficulty.”

Sarai was dumfounded by her tone, by her words. What Sarai had asked for was nothing more than to help maintain good order in the camp. “Hagar, you
are
my servant, and I never yelled at you the way you yelled at me,” said Sarai. “I always either came to you or sent another servant to deliver my message.”

“Yes, well, that’s because you were never lying here suffering the misery of being childsick.”

There it was, the taunt that Sarai had been dreading. But she had never expected it to come from Hagar herself.

“I would have given anything, including my life, to be where you are, and as you are,” said Sarai.

“Well, you’re not, and I am,” said Hagar, “and I can’t get any rest because you keep this tent so busy with things that are apparently more important than whether this baby is healthy or not.”

“How can you say that to me?”

“Because it’s true and you need to see what you’re doing to me.”

“I’m doing nothing to you,” said Sarai. “I’m going about my life while I try to see to it that all the baby’s needs are met.”

“Yes, the
baby’s
needs. But right now the baby is inside
me
and that means
my
needs matter too.”

“Hagar,” said Sarai. “I’ve done nothing to deserve these cruel things you’re saying to me.”

“Yes, you’ve done
nothing.
Except that here I am bearing a child for Abram and all
you
can think about is that I’m still your slave. Well, I wasn’t born a slave, you know!”

“I didn’t take you into captivity,” said Sarai. “I brought you out of Egypt, and you’ve been treated well.”

“Oh, yes, you’re treating me
so
well, standing here railing at me when all I asked for was a little peace.” Hagar started to weep. Loudly.

Too loudly. Sarai knew what was happening here. Hagar’s weeping would be heard outside the tent. People would wonder what had been said and done here. And if they asked, what would Hagar tell them?

Sarai walked out of the tent and stood alone, thinking.

A boy, passing, stopped and asked her, “Mistress, is something wrong?”

“No, no,” said Sarai. “Go about your business, I’m all right.”

“No,” said the boy. “I meant with Mistress Hagar.”