Eve (41 page)

Dara giggled. “Do you like it?”

Naava glared at her. “What do I want with a lump of bitumen?”

Dara’s smile faded. “It’s kohl. You put it around your eyes, like this…” She made to grab the box from Naava, but Naava swung it away from her.

Ah, so it was a prettifier.

“I know what it is,” Naava said.

Dara’s hands were by her sides now. “I can show you how to put it on.”

“There’s no need,” Naava said. Inside, she was shouting,
Yes, amen!
She would shine like the midday sun and blossom like the lilies of the field.

Dara stepped forward and motioned for Naava to bend down. She had a secret. She whispered into Naava’s ear, “The prince says to come visit him. You’re supposed to stand by the copper makers, so Balili in the white robes can see you. He will go get the prince, and you will go to the meeting place.”

Naava was stunned. Here was the little sister
helping
her.
Oh, joy! What would she wear? When could she go?

The women motioned Dara back to them, and she returned to their side. The strange girl, the one with the black-rimmed eyes, clung to her
mother’s robes like a vine. The other, Shala was her name, was a wild hornet. She had already broken a wooden stirring spoon by banging it over and over again on the bench’s edge, and Aya had already scuttled out of the shadows to wrench it away from her. Then Shala disappeared into the pantry, and Naava grinned, knowing that she would encounter Aya’s wrath.

The women uttered their strange throaty words, and Dara answered back in kind.
How had Dara learned their words so quickly?
Naava wanted to know.
That could have been me.

The women smelled of sweet spices and perfumes. If only Naava knew what they mixed to get that scent, she could smell delicious too, and Cain would be drawn to her like a bear to honey. The prince—he had said he wanted to see
her!—
would come to her like an ant to dates.

The women pushed Dara forward, toward Eve. Dara said, “They want you to come to their New Year’s celebration, to honor Inanna, the Queen of Heaven.” When Eve looked confused, Dara said, “It’s their harvest festival.”

The woman who held her nose in the air, as if to say all this squalor was beneath her, added a few more phrases to what Dara was saying.

Dara said, “Ahassunu says that your presence would be most appreciated.”

Again, Naava was strangely aware that the
A
-woman seemed to eye her mother with more than a general interest, as if Eve were someone special, someone deserving. And try as she might, she could not figure out why.

Eve nodded and brought her hand up to her cheek, and asked, “When?”

Dara babbled to the women. They babbled back.

Dara said, “At the harvest’s full moon.”

Eve grasped at her ears, her arms, at their bareness, feeling plain compared to these spangled women. “Yes, yes,” she said, almost absentmind-edly Naava saw her begin to plan her attire, consider all the things that would have to be done before that day.

Then Dara clapped her hands and added, “They say I can come home then, to be with you until the baby comes. Then I have to go back.”

“Oh, I’m glad. Thank them for me.” Eve bowed slightly, smiling. “Oh,
what am I thinking?” She turned to the shadows of the interior of the house and called, “Aya, darling, will you bring a little wine and barley bread … ?” Then, remembering, “Oh no, that won’t do. Dara, will you go help your sister?”

Right then there was a sharp cry from the pantry, and the haughty woman ran, calling out Shala’s name in a worried tone.

Shala stomped out into the sunlight, rubbing her arm. Her bottom lip was curled out, and she said something in a pouty voice and pointed back to the pantry.

Her mother peered into the cool darkness of the houses depths and took a step forward.

“Dara, please,” said Eve, shooing Dara toward the pantry. To the women, she said, “Why don’t you sit here in the shade and cool off?” She waved them toward the reed mats in the shade of the eaves.

The women sat, with their girls at their sides. There was nothing to discuss, or rather, there was everything to discuss, with Cain’s disaster the other night and his ongoing imprecations against the city, but with Dara gone to help Aya, there was no one to translate.

Naava used her time wisely. She studied the women’s almond eyes and noted how they had painted all around the edges and even extended the lines past the outer corners. By doing so, they made them appear more open and the whites whiter than Eve’s or her sister Aya’s. Their hands were decorated like Dara’s—flowers and loops and dots and swirls that stretched the length of each thin finger and culminated in an elaborate design on the back of each hand. When they spoke, their gestures were like flapping wings, their jewelry like light upon the sea. Their large full lips were stained the color of grapes. Naava knew then that her own were pale and thin like willow leaves.

Naava began to dream of how she would transform herself, in body and mind, for the New Year’s celebration. She would outshine Inanna herself on Inanna’s glorious celebratory day. The prince would see Naava as something unattainable, and she would make him beg for crumbs, for the scraps of her love. Cain would be insanely jealous, of course, and he would lap at her too, like waves upon the shore, but she would not care.

Dara brought out trays of figs and barley bread and wine, stumbling under the load. Eve bustled about, arranging the platters and cups before the women, assuring that they were well taken care of. Still, the women looked at her with a sort of reverence that puzzled Naava.
What did they want from Eve? Who did they think she was?

Naava itched to tell them of Eve’s weaknesses and how every day Eve talked about how she would not live to see the next day, so sorrowful was her life.
Couldn’t these women see how hopeless Eve was, how truly wretched?
When Naava was right there in front of them. Naava, who was not at all like Eve, and never would be.

Rocks fascinate me, especially the ones that have captured the trace
of a limb or a wing or a carapace of a living creature gone before. I mourn the creatures loss, for it did nothing to deserve its dying, except to be someone’s meal, or to be trapped without food or water, or to have simply lived out its days. It did not ask to be squeezed between layers of mud, to heave that last sigh, or to leave its delicate imprint upon the compacted earth.

I find very few pure rocks; they are usually conglomerates of various materials. Limestone is riddled with pockets of silica and clay and feldspar. Chalcedony has crystallike fibers of gray and white running through its opaque body. Even the sand upon the river’s shore is muddled with a finer silt and a gray-flecked salt that I collect on a regular basis, to pack the fish we catch.

My point, for I do have one, is that nothing is pure or without guile. It is not a fact that the city people are good and Mother and Father are bad, as Cain would have us believe. There is a mixture of good and bad in both, just as there is in each one of us.

In this way, Cain has told small, insignificant lies to himself over and over again, until over time he has grown to believe this compounded lie and has begun to live accordingly. He has held Mother and Father up in the palm of his hand and said, “They are bad,” and he has immediately
dismissed
everything
they have taught us. About the city people, he has proclaimed, “They are good,” and he has persisted in copying every aspect of their worship, their attire, even their tongue. He has seemed unaware of the sour and sweet within his own body. If something goes awry, it is
they
who are the problem, not
him.

I am aware that the same could be said of me. That I pray to Elohim to heal my foot, then turn a blind eye to the fact that He has not placed His hand upon it to right its inversion. I do not lie to myself, though. I do not blame my abnormality for my station in life. I do not expect compensation for the weaknesses He gave me. In other words, I will accept His verdict, once it comes.

What next, Aya?

Well, once Cain knew we were invited to Inanna’s harvest festival, he began scheming in earnest, preparing his revenge for the destruction of his dates. I confess: I have eavesdropped on his conversations with Naava. Mother and Father know nothing, and I have found it difficult not to mention it. After all, it will affect our whole family, for good or bad, depending on the severity of his actions.

Cain does not suspect me for the date slaughter. I have been careful to hide my swollen and scratched legs and have not asked for any special dispensations to get out of work. Despite myself, I do feel sorry for him. It is going to take a catastrophic event to jolt him from his wayward path.

Dara, my sweet sister, came for a visit. My, she had changed. I almost didn’t recognize her. Aside from the painting upon her limbs and the addition of jewelry, she seemed distracted and edgy. She wasn’t the calm child who left here almost two moons ago.

When I told her about Turtle, I simply said that Turtle had died and that I had buried him in the ground—which, in a way, was true. Poor Dara, the stricken look on her face drove an arrow into my heart. She asked if he had felt pain, and I told her no, though how was I to know that? I was grateful she didn’t ask to see where he was buried.

At one point, Dara untied a braided red wool bracelet, knotted with numerous agates, from her wrist and handed it to me.

“For you,” she said. “You put your fingers here, see, and you’re supposed to chant something over each one. Like this—” She wrapped her fingers around one of the knotted stones. She looked away from me, as though to some faraway place. “Make my leg whole.” She moved to the next stone, still not meeting my eyes. “Make my leg whole.” She would have continued this way if I had not stopped her.

“Who are you talking to?” I said.

“The gods,” she said. “It’s magic.”

I grabbed her arm and said, “Dara, you cannot do that. Why, if Elohim found out, He’d be furious. Do you remember what I told you in the garden?”

Dara looked on the verge of tears. “Yes, but—”

“No,” I said, wrenching the bracelet from her hands. “You cannot be like Cain. You must talk only to Elohim. Elohim! Do you hear me?”

She looked away, confused.

“Dara. Look at me. Do not listen to those women. They know nothing about how the earth and heavens were made. They know nothing about Elohim.”

“They’re nice ladies,” said Dara, nervously playing with her fingers and scuffing her sandals in the dirt.

“I’m sure they are,” I said, placing the back of my hand against her cheek. “But I cannot bear the thought of you being hurt.”

She looked up at me, her bottom lip sucked in. “What would Elohim do to me?” she said.

Bless her heart, they had made her fearful of what the gods could do to her.

“Elohim loves you, just like He loves Mother and Father,” I said.

“And Jacan too?” she said.

I nodded. “Jacan too,” I said.

Thank the moon and the stars that Jacan was there. He had corralled her right away, when he and Abel returned early from their day in the fields, beaming at the sight of her and calling her to him. He had harvested a basket full of round gray nicker seeds from the vines in Mother’s garden and made up a little game of skill with them. Dara did not have time at first, with all the translating she had to do and the serving of food in my stead,
but she got her chance to sit and play with her twin near the end of her visit, after the women and their girls had finished eating. The women had asked to see Mother’s garden. At the precise moment that Dara translated the word
garden,
Mother’s face sparked to life, and she stood quickly, motioning for the women to follow her.

Dara hung back, chewing her fingernails.

Mother called for her. “Dara, I need your words.”

Dara shook her head. “They only want to look,” she said. She pressed her fingers against her teeth to get the last bit of nail.