Sarah: Women of Genesis: 1 (Women of Genesis (Forge)) (6 page)

And yet . . . she knew he was a man of honor. He had said he would come for her. She had promised nothing to him. Yet even if his words were merely a jest with a child, it did not change this single fact: If he did come, she was determined that he would find her waiting, ready to be a good wife, ready to be the mother of his children. And she would never be like Qira, making him live in a city so she could wear fine gowns. No, she would live in his tent, travel when he traveled. If he came for her, she would go with him, and stay with him forever.

If the ten years passed, and then an eleventh, and he did not come, she would never send word to him, either, nor give a hint to anyone, not even Qira, that she had waited for him. She would simply decide, then, what to do with the rest of her life. By then it would probably be too late for her to marry any other man. But having once known Abram, she could not be content with a lesser man, and apart from Lot, she knew of none that came close to being Abram’s equal.

Did it hurt her? Yes, there were times when she felt a pain so sharp that it was all she could do to keep her weeping silent and secret in her room.

But then, in the midst of such suffering, she would remember: Abram told me the truth about God, and saved me from a life wasted in the service of false gods. I would rather have had that hour of truth with Abram than any other possible life in which I did not have the truth and never met that man. She would pray at such moments, and soon her heart would be lighter, and even though she had no sign from God that her future was being watched over, still she was content. She could wait to see what life would bring.

It was a hot day in summer, the kind of day where there is no shade except indoors, and indoors there was no air that one could bear to breathe. No breath of wind—the dust from travelers or animals moving on the roads would rise in a cloud and hang there, unmoving, settling so slowly that it seemed to be a brown-grey fog. Sarai could not remain inside, and in the courtyard there was so much yammering from the servant women that she couldn’t think. The dust of the streets made the air unbreathable; she could not walk to Qira’s house. So she took her distaff to the roof, and with a white linen hood over her head to give her shade, she spun, while thinking her thoughts and glancing out over the desert, over the city, over the nearly-dry riverbed. Would the drought, which had already consumed so many years that she had never known a season when the river ran full, finally do to Ur-of-the-North what it had done to the cities of Canaan? Was it going to kill the grasslands and turn them into desert like the rumored empty lands of the far south, where only sand covered the earth as far as the eye could see?

And who is that coming from the driest part of the desert, raising dust so thick that he must have an army with him? Does no one else see this marauding army? Why are there no trumpets of alarm, warning of a raiding party of so many Amorites that they will swarm over Ur like locusts?

Then they came near enough that she could see that it was not an army at all, but a huge herd of cattle and a vast flock of sheep. What Amorite would be mad enough to assemble such a large herd in one place? Where would they find grazing? If all these animals were sold at once in the markets of Ur, they would force the price down so low that the animals would have almost no value. Even Sarai knew that much about trade.

On they came, and on, and on, and finally riders went forth from the city, and then the riders came back from the herd, and after a very short while there was talking and shouting in the streets and riders came to the door of Father’s house and Sarai heard her own name being shouted down below in the courtyard, in the rooms of the house, but she did not need to be told anything—she already knew. Abram had come for her, and with a bride-gift so large that no woman in all of Ur would be able to claim that so much had been given for her.

Father himself came to the roof and handed her a sealed wax-stick. “For you only,” he said, and his eyes danced with happiness, for he had been worried about his younger daughter.

Sarai tremblingly opened the stick and exposed the two waxen surfaces. Very little was written there. But it was enough.

I am almost two years early, Sarai, but I can delay no longer. I wait for you outside the walls of the city, with a gift for your father but none for you except my love and my faith and my future, which I ask you to share with me forever.

Abram

Sarai looked up from the stick. “Father,” she said, “I think my husband has brought an inconvenient number of cattle and sheep for you to dispose of.”

“His message to me,” said Father, “spoke of plans to divide this herd and take the animals to a dozen other cities, where they will be sold and the proceeds brought to me. My only fear for you, Sarai, is that your husband will be poor, having given so much to me. And yet the gift does not begin to make up for the great loss to me when you leave and the light goes out of my life.”

Sarai burst into tears and embraced her father. “He remembered,” she said. “He remembered me.”

“No one, having known you, could ever forget you,” said Father.

“Many men have forgotten me,” said Sarai, “and far more have never noticed me.”

“Abram noticed you,” said Father. “And God has noticed Abram.”

“And God has noticed
me,
” said Sarai. “Or I would not be so blessed, to go from the house of such a father to the house of such a husband.”

Two days later, under a canopy that shaded the bright calm sun of morning, she and Abram were married, with Father, Terah, Lot, and Qira looking on. She did not know what the future would bring, but because she was married to Abram, she knew that her life would matter, that the world would change and she would be a part of it.

Part II

In a Dry Season

Chapter 4

In the desert, wealth was not measured in cattle after all. Calves were born, and kids, and lambs, but they didn’t live long without pasturage for their mothers, and there was no grass where it did not rain. And rain was rare.

There were storms—plenty of storms, as many as ever. But there was no moisture in them. Instead, when clouds appeared on the horizon, people shuttered their windows and brought their animals inside so they would not be suffocated by the dust. The lands to the north were so dry that every storm scooped up their soil and carried it out across the land between the rivers, down through Canaan, choking cattle, burying fences and fields, blinding travelers, and turning the feeble drought-stricken rivers into beds of mud. Grasses struggled to rise above the dust, sheep to graze through it. The beards of goats were caked with mud, as if they had been trying to eat the very soil. In a dry season, storms brought no relief, they only forced the drought inside houses, tents, mouths, noses, ears, and eyes.

Abram had not impoverished himself with his extravagant bride-price. Indeed, Sarai soon realized that his gesture had been wise. There wasn’t water enough or grass for the vast herds that Abram once had owned. If he had sold them all at once, the price would have been so low that everyone would have known he sold from desperation. The cruel laws of the marketplace would have guaranteed that he would be charged higher prices for everything, and paid less for what he sold. But by using the cattle as a bride-price, Abram rid himself of herds he could not feed while enhancing his reputation for wealth. His credit and reputation everywhere were enhanced.

Early in their marriage, Sarai had moments when she wondered if that was the only reason he had returned for her. But he was such a loving husband that she could not believe such a thing for long. In all his labors, in all his traveling from well to well and herd to herd, in all his sending of servants and taking account of those who returned, he always had time for her. Nor did he keep her from knowing of his business. He would meet with his men or with his visitors at the door of his tent, so that she could sit in the door of hers, just across from them, and spin or sew as she heard all that passed. She kept her silence; they did not notice or soon forgot that she was there. But afterward, Abram would come to her tent and talk with her until she understood what she had heard, and it was not too long before she knew the work of a nomadic chief as well as she had understood the protocols of a king’s house, or the mysteries of Asherah.

He included her in his life, and she in turn longed to include him in her own. But of course a bride had no life at first, except the gossip of her aging handmaid, Bitute, a Sumerian slave who had passed all her years serving the women of Sarai’s mother’s family. What could Sarai tell Abram of her day? “Bitute brushed out my hair and then we both carded wool until our hands were raw. Then we spun and spun until I see the distaff before my eyes even when I close them. All the while, Bitute kept reassuring me that I’ll have a baby soon, that it’s just a matter of time, some women conceive slowly but it means the child will be a boy, and very strong, don’t worry about it, your husband will love you at last when you give him his first son, and is that true, Abram, will your love for me only begin when I conceive a child?”

No, she made no report to him of days trapped with a well-meaning old woman who did not know how her words cut Sarai to the heart. “And don’t you believe those who say that Asherah dries up the wombs of girls who break their oaths. It wasn’t
you
who took the oath, young mistress, and besides, Asherah has many priestesses, she can spare such a beautiful young princess, she’s not spiteful.” Sarai did not bother to explain to Bitute that there was no such god as Asherah, and therefore no possibility of her drying up wombs or filling them. Nor did Sarai ask Abram for reassurance—she already knew what he believed, and it would only trouble him to think that his wife was nagged by the worry that an imaginary god was wreaking vengeance on her.

She did try to find out how he felt about it, especially after the first year of their marriage. “Does it worry you that God has not yet blessed you with a son?” she asked him. He looked up, distracted, as if the question were utter nonsense. “God has never failed me before,” he said. “Why would he start now?” And when he saw that this did not reassure her—after all, it was not God but Sarai who had failed him in this—he took her in his arms and laughed and said, “I married the woman, not the babies she might have. But there
will
be babies, lots of them I imagine.”

He was sincere, but she knew that his words were false all the same. He might
think
he married the woman, but a man marries to have sons—all the more when he needs men- children to receive his priesthood and carry it on. God was tied up in every part of Abram’s life, this not least. Abram must want a child in his arms, a child on little legs, to be hoisted up to the back of a donkey and taken with his father to the hill to see to the sheep, or to the riverbed to watch over the cattle, or to the altar to witness the sacrifice.

Sarai saw the servants’ babies, and every happy cry, every fitful squall, every greedy slurp at the breast was like a knife in her heart.

Patience, she told herself. Have faith as Abram has faith. Qira has had two children—girls, it’s true, but it was a sign that her family did not have barren daughters.

And thus she passed her days, and her months, season after season, until she could not call herself a girl anymore, could not tell herself that it was just as well, she was too young to bear children, being hardly more than a child herself. Girlchildren born the year of her marriage were ten years old now, eleven. When they began to marry and bear children the reproach would be unbearable. Maybe then she would have to tell Abram they could pretend no longer, that it was time for him to put her aside and marry a woman who could bear him sons.

On nights when she thought such thoughts, she tried to pray, but found the words bitter in her mouth. I gave up all for you, God of Abram. But now my womb tells me that Asherah, not you, has all the power over me.

She covered her mouth with her hands, but knew that God had heard her already. It was too late to call back the words she had spoken to a god, even when they had not come to her lips, for the gods could hear the words that were whispered in the heart. O, forgive me, God of Abram. I have faith only in thee.

That was in the night. By day those fears faded in the heat of the morning. Each pasture was smaller, the grass shorter than it had been the year before, and even with far smaller herds the pasture was too soon exhausted. Years before, Abram and Lot had separated their herds, because their men had begun to quarrel over whose cattle were being allowed to overgraze. But now, though Lot had sold most of his herds and now lived as a man of land and wealth in the city of Sodom, Abram’s herds alone were too many for what grass remained. Little was said, but Sarai could see from the grim faces of the men how things were going. From their faces, and from the fact that they feasted on goat or mutton or beef every night. They grew sick of meat, and not just from having too much of it. It was Abram’s wealth, his future they were eating, because the rain had not fallen, and the grass was not growing, and the cattle were starving. They were devouring the inheritance of the children Sarai had not yet borne.

“What if,” said Abram one hot afternoon, sprawling wearily beside her on the rugs piled in her tent, “what if we went to Sodom with Lot?”