Eve (13 page)

Maybe that’s what Abel was shouting at Cain for, right before breakfast. I couldn’t hear a word they were saying, but they are always at each other’s throat lately. Mama notices it but doesn’t say anything. Too many times, either Cain or Abel shouts at her, “This is none of your affair!” so now she stays away with all her might, and Father can’t hear them when he’s far off. So it’s fight fight fight, all the time.

Mama cooked up the grouse and eggs, since Aya was feeling bad, but we all ended up feeling bad because Abel passed the bread to Cain the wrong way. Cain stood up and threw the bowl on the ground. The bowl broke and the bread got smashed all over the dirt. Mama went to pick up the pieces and put them aside. Everybody stopped eating.

Cain yelled at Abel, “How dare you laugh at me? You think you have all the answers, but how do you know that what they’re doing is not the right way?” Cain looked at Father and said, “You’ve even said yourself that you don’t know if there are other gods besides Elohim,” and Father nodded.

Mama sat down again. The veins in Cain’s face were popping. He said, “We should offer gifts to them because the more we ignore them, the worse our lives will be.” His eyes darted back and forth, and he pointed at Aya and said, “There. I told you before. She is proof that the gods are angry at us.”

Aya’s eyes got big, and she sucked in lots of air,
whoosh.

Mama stood up again, quick, with her hands on her hips, and said,
“That
is none of
your
affair.” Her face got red and speckled, and her fingers were shaking like leaves in a storm.

Abel looked at Cain and said, “Meanness is a weak imitation of strength.”

Cain copied him in a high voice. “Meanness is a weak imitation—”

“Aya is a gift from Elohim, as you all are,” Mama said. “Remember that.”

Father looked at Cain. “You would do well to attend to what your mother is saying.” He leaned forward toward the fire, still glaring at Cain.

Aya blushed, and she looked down at her bowl.

Cain cringed and said, “It’s the truth, though. The people in the city have many gods, and they sacrifice to them, and they are prospering.” He glared at Abel.

Mama said, “Fine, then, it’s
your
truth, but don’t ruin everyone’s meal,” and Cain squatted back down and stuffed a fig into his mouth.

Father reached out his hand to Mama and said, “Are you all right?”

Mama sat back down and curled her fingers around his. She nodded.

Abel said to Cain, “I have a proposition for you.”

“Please, Abel,” Mama begged. “Can we not have a little peace?” Father released her hand and said, “She’s right.”

Cain’s eyes flashed fire, but Abel kept going. “If you think these sacrifices are so important, let’s do it, you and I, out in the fields.”

Cain’s eyes bugged like a grasshopper’s, and he said, “Who would we offer to?” and Abel said, “Elohim.”

Cain thought about that and said, “Why not my gods?”

Father’s eyebrows raised up, like Turtle’s back, and Mama got real still.

“You have decided, then, that they are
your
gods?” said Father, standing up. He put his hands on his head and tore at his hair. “I did not think my son—”

Mama threw up her hands. She cried out, “What will Elohim say? What will He do to us?”

Father walked over to Cain and slapped him across the face, hard, like this,
smack.
Father and Cain stared at each other, and Cain brought his hand up to his face. Father looked around at all of us, then at Cain, and said, “You have gone too far.” Father smacked the heel of his hand against his forehead. “Have we been so negligent in teaching you about Elohim? If not He, who made the sun, moon, and stars? Who made us in His image?” Father clenched his fists and roared into the air. “Have we?” He stomped and huffed out of the courtyard, holding his head in his hands and muttering to himself.

For once, Cain did not talk. He ate. He kept his head down. His furry eyebrows bunched together.

Now I’m scared of going to the people with many gods. They don’t believe in Elohim, and Father slapped Cain for that, and they have bad men who will hurt me, like they did Aya. I try to think of something happy, like what I will look like in my new yellow robe or what will be the number-five thing I will find for the baby, but my stomach hurts.

And then I see it—a pottery shard from the broken bowl right by my knee. It’s in the shape of a butterfly, and I reach down to pick it up, but Naava is there first, and when she grabs it, she grins at me and says, “Insolent goat. I hate you.”

I try to be good, honestly. But still. Naava is not a nice person.

So, when Naava goes out to the corral to make pretty eyes at Abel, I sneak into her weaving room and find a loose thread and pull and pull and pull. I try to swallow my giggles as Naava’s robe that she is going to wear to the city gets smaller and smaller and smaller.

It is only in hindsight that I can say this. I was frightened out of my
wits when that horrible fat woman from the city killed the lamb right in front of me and my daughters. Still, to this day, when I think of it my hands begin to shake, and the dragonfly in my chest seems to want to fly up and out of my throat.
What would they have done to us had I refused them?
Later, Cain explained how such readings worked, how priests and seers looked deep into the liver for auspicious or inauspicious signs, and this frightened me too, that I was unaware of such things. Certainly Elohim had not taught us to do this.

And now, because of my fear, my baby would be leaving me. She was blood of my blood, skin of my skin. Each time I looked at her, I saw her wide sweet eyes, her open expression of trust. When she was an infant, I could not put her down. She had been gracious and kind to me in my time of birthing torment.

And now this.
How could I have done this to her?

As the time neared for her to go—and I had delayed, and delayed again, in telling Adam the events of that chilling day—I chided myself for waiting so long. Surely Cain could have gone to the city and refused for me. Surely Cain could have explained that I needed all my children here, with me.

It was only six days before Dara had to leave when I finally summoned
the courage to admit to my husband the thing I had done. I waited until night, when Adam came to lie by my side, to ask his opinion. I could hear the lilting voices of Dara and Jacan as they lay in the dark, under the stars, not wanting to sleep yet, talking about
what ifs
and
would yous,
and I knew I would miss—miss terribly—Dara’s high excited voice. My throat became thick like wool, and I fought to keep back tears. Adam would be more attentive if I didn’t cry.

“Adam,” I whispered into the dark. I could hear him turn toward me, the reeds crackling beneath him, his breath warm on my shoulders, his hands hungry on my breasts.

“I miss you out in the fields,” he said. “There is no one to talk to.”

I let him touch me, grope me. I thought of my betrayal of Dara and wondered what Adam would say.
Would he blame me for this too?
I pushed his hands away. “There is something I want to discuss with you,” I said. “We have had visitors.”

His hands grew quiet, and his voice rose. “Visitors?”

“Yes, women from the city,” I said.

He raised up on his elbow and waited.

“They—oh, it was horrible!—they sliced open a little lamb, right in front of us… Naava, me, Dara … and—”

He sat up. “Ours?”

“No, no,” I said. “They brought it with them. They scooped out its liver and set it on the ground in front of them and looked at it, then somehow made a connection between that and asking for Dara. Cain says they read livers as signs of fortune, well-being.”

There was a short silence.

“Dara?” Adam said. “I don’t understand.”

My voice wavered. “I don’t either. They originally asked for Naava—”

Adam grabbed my wrist. “What do you mean,
asked?”

“They want someone to look after their children,” I said. “They—”

Adam’s voice was stern. “They will do the same thing they did to Aya. We cannot—”

I struggled to steady my voice. “I said no. I need Naava here, to care for me and the baby. But Dara—do you think they would harm a child?”

Adam released my wrist.

I explained how in return we would receive valuable fabrics and tools and stones from them.

Adam grunted. “Bartering,” he said. “That’s what Cain calls it.”

I told him how Cain had made it clear to me that all city children over the age of four were required to learn to read and write and that they needed another older child who did not fall under this requirement, to care for their little ones.

“What is there to study but the signs of drought or how to best preserve foods or how to grow larger dates?” Adam asked, irritated.

I said nothing.
What could I say?
Cain had explained to me the benefits of reading and writing, but Adam would never see past the immediate urgency of a thing. If he wasn’t using it now, it probably wasn’t necessary.

He sighed and settled back, leaning his head into my chest. “I thought you wanted to Be One,” he said.

“I do,” I said, eager to please him. I pulled back and put my hand on his rough, whiskered face. “It’s just that… well, I’m troubled about sending Dara. She’s only six.”

He was quiet for a bit. “They would not dare do anything to her at such an age. And she will be responsible for their babies.” He paused, then said, “Maybe it would foster good relationships with them.”

And here I lost my composure—what was left of it. I broke down into gulping sobs, and Adam held me. I was unable to speak for a very long time.

“I trust your opinion,” said Adam. “Do what you think is best.”

Relief washed over me. He trusted me. As my breath grew steady and I could talk, I said, “Do you think she’ll be all right? I chose her because she’s the littlest, and she’s smart, and I cannot spare Naava and Aya now, with the baby coming. Do you think she’ll think I don’t love her?”

“Explain it to her,” said Adam. His fingers grew nimble once again, and his tongue was upon my ear, gentle and flicking. “Make it seem like an adventure. Tell her that we will visit her.”

I turned my face to his. The darkness prevented me from seeing his expression, but I said, “Oh, could we? You and I?”

“Of course,” he said, and enveloped me in his arms again.

That night it was like we were back in the Garden again. Our bodies
melded into One and moved to the music of the crickets and cicadas. And, oh, we sang the glory of the universe, of the stars and of the sun and of the moon, then created new songs of rivers and mountains and forbidden gardens.

I wish it were always that way.

More often than not, marriage was an exercise in mutual incomprehension. Adam heard my sighs and saw my weepy eyes, and instead of grief and sorrow, he felt a simmering anger directed at him. To look at me, really look at me, was too painful. It was a reflection of the fires of his own regret.

Likewise, I may have been misreading the language of
his
body. There were times that our lovemaking was old and boorish. Being One had become Being One in Body Only. Adam sought his own pleasure, gasping aloud, then sank into a deep slumber as though drugged. Afterward, my chest and belly were tinged with Adam’s salt and indifference, and I could not sleep. There was a sadness and great loneliness in this disparity of love, of friendship, and I did not know how to repair it. The things that had given me the greatest joy in the Garden—a handful of clear cool water, an exquisite fern frond, the lilting birdsong, the tug of a lemon on my tongue, and Adam, my Adam, of course—had all vanished into a grayness of feeling.

Long ago I had designed a new purpose, separate from Adam, and began constructing a personal bower of joy. I reveled in my swelling body, the lively kicks from my unborn children. I memorized the map of my belly, the growing purplish lines that stretched from end to end, the furry path that ran down to my sex, my nipples grown vast and dark. You might say I collected my babies as herons scrounge for insects, with a wild and ravenous hunger, and you would be right. My babies were thirsty for me; they clung to me as a climbing vine, and I bathed them in kisses and songs. Too soon, though, they were gone—off to the fields or off to their chores— and the songs fell on empty arms.