Eve (38 page)

“Do you now?” I said.

“No,” said Cain. “But if I try very hard to gain the approval of all the gods, I cannot fail. I will have done everything in my power.” He stepped out of the circle and began picking up the stones. Then he stopped and heaved a great sigh. “Aya, I do not mean offense, for I know you are of weak constitution, but…” His words trailed off like snail slime.

I could not see his face, but I was not stupid. I said, “You want to ask me why Elohim has not healed me, even though I’ve asked Him to time and time again.”

Cain raised up, his shoulders rounded with the weight of the stones. “Yes,” he said.

“I have wondered the same thing,” I said. “Do you remember what Mother told us about Elohim long ago? That He’s
in time?”

“She is no longer coherent when it comes to the Garden, Aya. You know that, and I know that. I think she dreams more than she lives.”

I badly wanted him to understand this, this one thing, because if he could, then I could too, and we would be strengthened in our common knowledge. Two reeds twisted together are stronger than one. “But
in time—
the concept that Elohim can be everywhere at once, in the Garden with Mother and Father, and here with us many years later, and then with our children someday, and theirs after that: Doesn’t that mean that time is not important to Elohim? Maybe
my
time is not
His
time.”

Cain laughed then. “Our little philosopher. What she lacks in limbs, she makes up for in the head.”

I swiveled then, on my good foot, and hobbled back to the lamplight of the courtyard, circling like a moth to the flame, searching for acceptance and not finding it.

“Aya, come now, I meant it only as a jest,” pleaded Cain.

His words meant nothing to me.

So I knew full well what I was doing when I cut down Cain’s prized dates. Condemn me not; wait until you’ve heard the complete tale.

Cain had worked long and hard for those luscious orbs. When the male flowers emerged in the spring, they were cut down and tied up to dry. The female flowers emerged weeks later, and Cain—here was the first part of his secret—cut off the center of the flowers so as to get
bigger
fruit, not
more
fruit. Up and down those trees he had to go. It was a wearying and brutal task. Indeed, many days I had to pack poultices around his thorn wounds. Here was the second part of his secret—he knew about flower dust. All be told, it was something Elohim had taught Mother and Father in the Garden, so Cain was not as clever as he’d like you to believe.

When the female flowers bloomed, Cain gathered up the male flowers, full of flower dust, and again made the arduous climb up the female trees. He shivered the male flowers over the female flowers. The dust glittered in the sun and settled like crushed limestone on the waiting female flowers. This was what created the dates.

Then came the wait. And the tending.

For Cain had a third secret. Within weeks, he climbed up again and culled every other pea-size date from the bunch—again to get
bigger
and
better-tasting
dates, not
more
dates.

This was the pact he had made with the city men—to produce bigger and better and juicier dates than they had ever laid eyes on.

He would have succeeded had it not been for me.

Which made me wonder:
What was Cain planning to offer Elohim if he lost the wager and his first fruits went to the city people?
We had all heard about his rash bet after he had returned from the city. Father’s angry response was, “If this goes awry, it will affect the whole family.” But Cain knew then, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he would win his wager. He would offer up
some
of his prize dates to Elohim, keep the rest for us—for drying, for sweetening, for eating. Father would get the city’s prize—two oxen—and Cain would have the blue-headed flax to plant.

What am I saying?

Two things.

First: Later, while eating our evening repast, Goat became curious and
went nosing about in Cain’s extra bowl, which Cain was going to use for his temple offering and which he had mindlessly set off to the side, half empty. When Cain realized that Goat’s face was deep within the confines of his bowl, he rose up in anger, took a club from his waist, and undercut Goat’s hind leg with it—
crack,
it went—and Goat limped away, confused as to why she could walk one moment and not the next. “That damned goat,” he yelled.

I gasped. I stood and hobbled toward him as fast as I could manage. I yelled at him.

He stood there and laughed at me. “Faster, Aya, faster.”

Father sputtered something into his food, and Mother’s hand went to her throat. Naava, the infernal donkey, did nothing, said nothing.

“Why are you so mean?” I screamed. My fists found Cain’s chest, and I pummeled him over and over. Inside, I wanted to hurt him. Inside, I wished him dead, like the asp I had killed. But he was bigger and stronger than me. He was unpredictable. Any true revenge would have to be subtle, or a secret.

Not that I could have protected Goat. I should have tied her up. I always do when the sun goes to bed, and I don’t know why in this particular instance it had slipped my mind.

To Abel’s credit—valiant heart that he is—he rose up from where he was sitting and called out Cain’s name, to distract him from me. When Cain turned, Abel’s clenched fist hit him square on the nose, sending blood spraying and Cain flying, limbs all askew.

Father startled and stood up, between Cain and Abel, his two fires that needed quenching. “Enough,” he said. He turned to me. “Aya, mind your animal.” To Cain and Abel, he said, “I will say this once, only once. May Elohim have mercy upon your souls. You are brothers. Blood. Family. Look upon each other.”

From then on, the tension between Cain and Abel was like a bowstring, set in place, taut and thrumming.

Mother said only one thing—she certainly knew how to feed the flames! “Never did I imagine such things when I carried both of you. It is better you were never born, if your behavior is such.” Her jaw tensed, and sadness seeped like bitumen from her skin.

Aya the Asp Killer wanted to ask Cain why his nose was crooked. Had he joined the ranks of crookedness, of wrongness? Yes, he had, and I was glad for it.

My anger did not emerge fully formed until I had discovered the second thing—that when Cain had, under the rising full moon, poured his holy wine upon the ground, the remains of Turtle were in it. When I went to check on Turtle, he was nowhere to be found. Turtle’s hardened legs were there, discarded in a heap, bloodied and limp. Cain had wanted the shell and nothing more. Something of the shell rendered his offering more consecrated, I suppose.

Instantly I was not only angry for myself but for Dara, who would return to find her pet gone, vanished into a useless liquid that simply dis appeared into the dry earth like a fleeting thought.

As the stars traveled their courses, I stole Abel’s ax made of sharpened flint off the courtyard wall and sneaked off toward the river, where Cain’s date palms grew tall and heavy with fruit. The trees’ spiky fronds shone in the moonlight. The clusters of dates hung like forbidden jewels.

It was the time of jackals and boars and hyenas, that I knew, but I was the hand of justice, and justice would not be stopped.

I was the hand of Elohim.

He would be grateful to me, His humble and faithful servant, for meting out what Cain deserved. Since Elohim moved
slowly
and
in time,
I could not be sure of a swift reply to Cain’s sins; therefore, I would act in His stead, as Aya the Bird, Aya the Crooked, Aya the Asp Killer.

I used Cain’s reed sling to shinny up the tree—mind you, this was difficult work, not something to take lightly. Unlike the mornings I climbed up, just to see the sun peep over the top of the horizon and hear the birds set to talking, this time I had other motives. The night was hot. My sweat worked against me, and I feared of losing Abel’s ax.

Once up, I could see the gleaming moon path on the river—like a thousand stars fallen to earth—and the dark flutterings of geese and crane and heron, and the occasional screech of something caught and devoured. The air heaved like a dying fish.

I paused.

I thought.

I raised my wrist, my hand holding firmly to the ax handle.

I hacked at those dates.

Fast, faster, fastest. Swift, swifter, swiftest.

I heard the soft thuds of the dates on the ground below. They were squashed and ruined—to be pecked at by the birds, drained by the bees, and dried by the suns hungry rays.

It took me all night.

You can agree or not agree, if you like.

I am cognizant of one thing, but it does not deter me. You might think I had sealed my family’s doom, for I had destroyed the very thing that could bring us sustenance over the long winter months. No dates—no syrup, jam, or cake. No beer sweetener. But do not fear. I am Aya the Resourceful, Aya the Healer. I will come up with a brilliant plan, an ingenious solution.

It was Cain’s doing, not mine.

Elohim would be pleased.

I am familiar with the desert’s night sounds—the yips and yaps of
the jackals, the scrappy squeals of the fox, the snuffle of beetles and roaches and rats, the screech of bats and owls.

But what I heard that dawn was none of those things.

I was extinguishing the night lamps and sweeping away the detritus of the night—seared moths and crisp butterflies and rat droppings—when I heard a noise that rendered my bones to sand.

Cain’s roar gave terror a name, a face. He stood like a massive ox between the posts that marked the courtyard entrance, his large hands wrapped around them so tightly that the muscles in his torso were visibly straining. He groaned with the effort, and his face was twisted into a whirlwind. He bent the posts down and pulled their fibrous roots from the earth. It took me too long to understand what he was yelling: “We ve been pillaged!”

I stood in his path. “Cain, what is it? Cain?” I reached out an arm to stop him, but he grabbed it and flung me to the ground. I landed on my elbow and heard the crack of bone. I cried out for Adam to come quickly. My arm went limp, and when I raised up, I found that I could not move it properly.

Cain was a destructive fire scorching a path, an angered badger clawing
and scraping. He tore adzes, slings, hoes, and flint daggers off the wall. He overturned the courtyard bench and poured water on Aya’s embers.

Anything that could be destroyed, he destroyed.

He had a mind to ravage Naava’s weaving too, had she not stood in the doorway, arms blocking his path. “What is
wrong
with you?” she hissed. He reeled away from her, as though he were grasping and clutching at any lucid thought that might blunder into his path, like a witless grazing an imal.

“Who will go with me?” he shouted. “Do we stand together as a family, or will you have me do it all?”

If Cain had not been my child, I would not have tolerated his violent moods. But he lived with us, in all his coldness and misery and cruelty, and he was inextricably linked to the fiber of our family, for better or for worse. One might fancy that we were helpless, Adam and I, that we were blinded to the monster set before us, but one would be wrong. An outsider cannot possibly see the slight incremental steps of borderline madness it takes to get to a land in which you arouse your sleeping self and ask, “How did I come to be here, in this place that threatens to tear me limb from limb?”