Sarah: Women of Genesis: 1 (Women of Genesis (Forge)) (40 page)

So today Isaac was being bratty, naturally. Everybody else was having a party, and
he
was getting ignored by his mother and his wetnurses. With all the strangers coming in from the town and the nearby villages, and all the men returning from the outlying flocks and herds, Isaac was afraid and wanted to be held, and to him, being held and protected meant suckling. Poor child.

Abraham was the proud host, which meant that he sat near the cookfires and talked to people who were lining up for food or whose flatbread was freshly covered with spicy meat or stewed beans and fruit. From time to time he’d call for the servants to bring Isaac to him, and Abraham—still remarkably strong and fit for a man his age—would hoist the boy high over his head for all to see. Naturally, Isaac, already out of sorts because he wasn’t getting suckled, regarded this as an affront, and he yelled in protest, his face turning red. This provoked laughter and applause from the crowd, which only made Isaac angrier, and the moment Abraham set him down, Isaac would run off on his stubby little legs. The crowd parted for him and cheered him on.

Then, of course, Isaac would head for Sarah, needing the comfort of the breast. Soon he would learn that it was his mother he wanted, and not just one small part of her, but then, plenty of grown men had a similar problem, didn’t they?

Feast days were tiring. Abraham seemed to thrive on them, getting so energized that he often could not fall asleep until late in the night. But Sarah could only take a few hours at a time before she had to withdraw to her tent. In her younger days, she would have lasted out the day and fallen exhausted into bed the moment the crowd broke up. But she simply couldn’t do it now. And, because she was old, she didn’t have to. People assumed her weariness was physical, that like many old people she needed frequent naps. Well, she didn’t mind napping, but if that were her problem, she’d simply doze off where she sat. It was solitude she needed at times like this, not sleep.

So no one thought ill of her when she got up and doddered off to her tent. She hated the fact that her hip joints had never really recovered from the pregnancy, so that now she could walk only in fairly short steps. It made her look crippled, when in fact she was quite robust in most other ways. She could still outspin most of the women in the camp. Her eyes and her mind were sharp. Her hearing was acute. But, seeing her walk in that shuffling way, people assumed they had to speak slowly to her, and shout, and tell her who they were even though they were standing right in front of her. Oh, well. Let them assume what they assume. It only meant that when she revealed how keen her mind was they were pleasantly surprised. Or unpleasantly—depending on their own character.

It was hot inside her tent, but she didn’t care. She drew the curtain closed all the same, so she would not be intruded upon. She lay on her bed, not intending to sleep, but soon she did doze off.

She slept only lightly, and not for long, for she heard noises outside her tent. A grunting sound, and soft laughter. Her first thought was to wonder if some young village couple, wits dimmed by wine, had decided to have a tryst behind her tent. But as she lay there listening, the sounds began to make a different sort of sense. The grunting was really not grunting at all. It was more like a sustained scream, only so muffled that it could hardly be heard.

A muffled scream, she realized, from a little child’s throat.

She rose from her bed with an alacrity she had not thought her body capable of. Heart pounding, she drew apart the door of her tent enough to see a sight that chilled her to the soul.

The soft laughter came from Ishmael. The screaming came from little Isaac. Ishmael had bound a long scarf around Isaac’s open mouth, muffling his voice. And Ishmael held the end of the scarf like a tether, so that even though Isaac strained against it with all his might, he could not get away.

Isaac was desperately trying to get to Sarah’s tent. It was his mother he was calling for.

Was this not Sarah’s worst nightmare, being acted out in the flesh? All her fears of what would happen after she died, with Isaac helpless in the hands of Ishmael, were here before her eyes.

Isaac threw himself toward the tent so hard that his legs flipped out from under him, and he fell on his back, still tethered. The way his head was twisted by the scarf as he fell sent panic through Sarah’s heart. His neck! Ishmael has broken his neck! But after a moment of lying there, still and winded, Isaac scrambled back to his feet and ran at Ishmael, pummeling him with his little fists. Ishmael only laughed, holding his little half-brother by the head so that his blows struck only air, or landed uselessly on Ishmael’s tight-muscled arm.

Grinning, Ishmael glanced up to share the joke with someone standing off to the side. Obviously, he was still unaware that Sarah was watching—but he had
some
audience that he was playing to.

Sarah parted her door wider, and now she could see who it was that watched this miserable scene of torment without intervening. It was Hagar of course, standing in the door of
her
tent, smiling indulgently at the sight of her son mocking Isaac’s fear and rage.

Then Hagar glanced toward Sarah’s tent and saw her. At once the smile left her face. “Ishmael,” she called sternly. “Come here.”

At first Ishmael simply ignored her, laughing as Isaac tried to free himself by pulling the scarf from Ishmael’s grip. But when he glanced at her and saw her nod her head toward Sarah’s tent, it was Ishmael’s turn to notice Sarah standing there. For now she had the door fully open and stood there in plain sight.

At once Ishmael started to untie the scarf around Isaac’s mouth. But all of Isaac’s pulling had made the knot too tight to undo easily.

“Let go of my son,” said Sarah.

“I’m just untying the—”

“Let go of him now,” said Sarah.

Ishmael, apparently realizing how bad this looked to Isaac’s mother, finally obeyed. At once Isaac ran to Sarah and clung to her leg, sobbing, his voice still muffled by the scarf. When he inhaled, his breath was a labored gasp, for crying had plugged up his nose, so that the only breath he could get was whatever air he could draw through the gag. And since it was now soaked in saliva, there wasn’t much air getting through at all.

Sarah tried to get a finger between Isaac’s cheek and the cloth of the scarf, to open a passage for air to pass. But it was so tight that she could not do it.

“I was trying to keep him quiet so you could sleep,” said Ishmael.

“Go to your mother,” said Sarah. “She thinks it’s clever for you to torture a baby.” She couldn’t undo the knot either.

“I was just teasing him,” said Ishmael. “I didn’t hurt him.”

Sarah pulled the knife from the sheath at her waist.

Ishmael gasped. She looked at him, saw the horror on his face as he backed away from her. Stupid boy, to think she would take after him with a knife at her age. Carefully she worked the blade between the scarf and Isaac’s cheek, then carefully sawed at the wet fabric, careful to keep the edge from touching Isaac’s tender skin. Soon the scarf came apart, and Isaac gasped and sobbed and fell into her arms as she lowered herself to the ground to hold him close. She did not even bother to look to see where Ishmael was, beyond noticing that he was gone.

Finally one of the servants noticed her in the doorway and came to her. “Oh, is he crying again? Did he wake you?”

“Go get my husband,” said Sarah.

“Let me take the baby and you go back to bed,” said the servant.

“Go get my husband,” said Sarah again. Perhaps because her intonation was exactly the same both times, flat and brooking no discussion, the servant realized that something quite serious must be going on. So she ran down the slope to where Abraham was regaling the company with some story or other. Soon he came up the hill, with far too many of the company coming with him, to see what was so urgent that Sarah would summon her husband, instead of going to him herself.

Well, let them wonder. They would see Isaac crying. They would see the stern look on Sarah’s face. No doubt Hagar would be spreading the story through the camp that Ishmael was just teasing the baby as boys will do, and Sarah was making something out of nothing. Let her say what she would. It was Hagar’s indulgent smile more than Ishmael’s cruel teasing that condemned them both. Hagar had shown that rather than being a restraint on Ishmael’s worst impulses toward Isaac, she would be an encouragement to him. Today she allowed petty cruelties and mocking contempt. What would she allow in a year or two? What would she allow when Sarah and Abraham were dead?

I have kept still for the first years of Isaac’s life, because Abraham asked me to be patient and see how things turned out between Hagar’s son and my own. But now I will be patient no longer. I saw this from before the baby’s birth, and my husband did not hear me. He will hear me now.

Abraham looked puzzled and, perhaps, a little annoyed as he approached her. Sarah rose up, parting Isaac from his grip on her. “Your father will carry you inside the tent,” she said.

Isaac turned his tear-streaked, saliva-soaked face toward Abraham and reached up his arms. Abraham lifted him as Sarah bent over and picked up the scarf. She led the way inside the tent, and when Abraham had also entered with Isaac at his shoulder, she closed the door behind her. She knew that Eliezer would soon have would-be eavesdroppers dispersed from around the tent.

She held up the scarf. “This was tied around Isaac’s mouth so tightly that I could only get it off by cutting it. He could hardly breathe.”

Abraham looked properly horrified. “Who did it, do you know?”

“The other end of the scarf was held by Hagar’s son. Isaac was screaming for me and trying to run to my tent. He could have broken his neck when he outran the tether and flipped over on his back. Ishmael laughed at his screams and his fear and his rage.”

“Surely he meant no harm by it,” said Abraham.

“His mother stood at her tent door and smiled at him while he did it.”

“Perhaps you’re making too much of this.”

“No, Abraham. You’re making too little of it. I saw Ishmael’s face, and Hagar’s. You did not. There was no pity in them. Only malicious delight.”

“You’ve been so sure that they would hate Isaac,” said Abraham. “How can you be an impartial judge?”

“You’ve been so sure that your Ishmael could not do any wrong,” said Sarah, “how can you claim to be impartial? I saw. You did not. Here is the scarf. It happened.”

“The baby is not harmed.”

“When will you die, Abraham? Has the Lord promised that you will outlive Ishmael? Because if he hasn’t, the day will come when it won’t be childish pranks. If Ishmael has no mercy now, when Isaac is a baby, and if Hagar has no pity when you and I are both alive to protect our son, what will happen when we’re dead?”

“What do you want me to do?” said Abraham. “In all those family histories of yours, the only solution that seemed to work was to kill the rival son. Is that what you want? For me to sacrifice Ishmael for your son?”

“What do you want, to sacrifice my son for Hagar’s? Because that is the choice you face, as God is my witness.”

“Do you claim that God tells you this?” demanded Abraham.

“I didn’t need God to tell me this, because I saw with my eyes what is obvious to anyone with any wisdom. But you have blinded yourself, so you can’t see it. Look at how the scarf chafed against Isaac’s cheeks!”

Abraham looked. Isaac’s face showed two bands of red.

“He could hardly breathe,” said Sarah. “He could have suffocated. His neck could have been broken. And Ishmael had the gall to tell me he did this so that Isaac wouldn’t wake me. He’s a liar as well as a tormentor. That’s your precious firstborn. Well, Abraham, it’s not really your choice. Isaac will not dwell with Ishmael, nor I with Hagar. They will not inherit together—that is not possible, no matter how you delude yourself. One will inherit, or the other. They will share nothing. They will not grow up to be friends. They will grow up to be enemies. So if you choose to keep Hagar and her son here with you, then I will take Isaac somewhere else with me, and if you try to stop me, I will sneak away in the night. And don’t imagine that you can get your servants to stop me. They are not blind to the truth. They will help me save Isaac’s life.”

“Save your threats,” said Abraham. “I can hear you without your having to bludgeon me.”

“No, you can’t hear me, or we wouldn’t have reached this day.”

“But we
have
reached it, haven’t we?” said Abraham. He turned from her and headed toward the tent door.

Sarah ran toward him at once, ignoring the pain in her hips, though the bone ground painfully on bone with each bound. She blocked the door. “Where are you taking my son?”

“I’m keeping him with me, of course,” said Abraham. “You just threatened to run away with him.”

“So you’ll steal him from me? You, the one who sees no danger, will steal him from me, the one who would keep him alive? That makes you a murderer.”

Abraham was even more horrified by Sarah’s words than she was. “You say this to me? After all these years together, you believe I could kill my own son?”