Eve (42 page)

The women and their children ambled out of the courtyard after Mother, moving toward the humming bees and bursting colors. I knew our guests would come back changed, altered somehow, for the garden held special powers, medicinal qualities, which relaxed the limbs and refreshed the mind.

That left me with Dara and Naava. And Jacan, who had been waiting patiently for his sister. While Dara and Jacan played the seed game, I cleaned up the dishes.

Still, Dara did not laugh at Jacan’s jokes, nor did she even try to beat him at his game. Her detachment surprised me. She and Jacan had always been as tight as the burrs in Goat’s hair.

Naava sat quietly, plaiting her hair. She was dreaming of blackened eyes and perfumed skin and blushing cheeks, I knew. Always this with Naava. Thinking only of herself.

I do not think I could care for the children Dara watches. They are like whirlwinds, circling up out of nowhere and utterly uncontrollable. I don’t see how she does it. I would have slipped a little something into their drinks by now, to ease them into a deep, comfortable slumber.

The kind heart that he is, Jacan must have given his nicker seeds to Dara to take with her, for when she was pulled back up into the curtained platform, after the women and their children, I saw a bag, lumpy with seeds, tied to her robes sash.

I waved then, happy to know that she would take a piece of home with her into that inhospitable environment.

I had forgotten to ask if she had stayed clear of the men. She had said nothing, so perhaps the women were indeed protecting her.

At least Father and I are in agreement on one thing. The despicable red clay goddess, sky-blue eyes and all, must be destroyed.

Poor Dara didn’t know any better. She’d heard fewer stories about Elohim than we older ones had. You might say that Cain and Abel and Naava and I had had Elohim imprinted upon our foreheads by Mother and Father, which made it all the more troubling that Cain had been so quick and so bold to question and contradict our parents—although maybe it was not so strange to test the validity of an abstract notion. Mother had taught us all to pray, certainly, but in an irregular fashion, on the rare occasions she had said she could actually
feel
the presence of Elohim. Abel’s instruction, after my near-disaster on the mountain— “Elohim hears the brokenhearted”—was much clearer than Mother’s. It seemed more authentic, more heartfelt. Easier.

Elohim had also told Mother that she should never stop questioning, that you are dead, once you do. I think this was much of the reason my parents had tolerated Cain’s erratic thoughts.

Oh, that goddess was a wedge among us.

After Dara left, Mother held up the goddess and asked me, “My eyes… they are really this color?”

I nodded.

She smiled at me. “Yours, too. I always thought you had the look of the sky to you. You were the only one.” She added softly, “My little bird.”

So she knew about Aya the Bird. Aya the Goat Owner. Aya the Asp Killer. How I was going to fly away from here, on golden wing, with the sun and wind upon my face. How I would be perfect one day.

Instinctively, my hands went to my face, to my eyelids and eyelashes. Oh, I could not feel the blueness. It was only a gesture of happiness, that I was like my mother in some way.

The feeling passed quickly.

Mother sighed deeply, put her hand on her swollen belly, and waddled out of the courtyard toward Cain’s god house.

I watched her as I worked, for I was prepared to destroy this evil thing that had infiltrated our house. You might ask why I had not destroyed Cain’s praying figurines yet, when I had so rapidly disposed of Mother’s first goddess, but you would have to understand, I care not what happens to Cain. I
do
care what happens to Mother. She knows better. She has seen Elohim with her own eyes.

I tell you this: For her first indiscretion—a simple term for a simple deed—she was thrown out of the Garden and made to enter an unforgiving world. What would it be for her second—well, third, if you counted the first time she prayed to the alabaster goddess? Severance from the family she loves? Banishment from earth? Where else could she be sent?

I fear for Mother. She is not right in the head if she thinks that Elohim will turn a blind eye and deaf ear to her. He gave her life; He expects her heart. Something received for something given. I am not so stupid to think Mother can be forced to love. I only wonder why she cannot love Him.

Mother stood before Cain’s abominable temple and contemplated the myriads of folded-handed figurines Dara had made for our foolish and misguided brother. They were a tiny sea before the temple. She bent at the waist to stroke their heads and eyes. She set the red goddess in the midst of them, so that it appeared that the others were paying homage to this new figure.

For a long time, she stood there, doing nothing.

The nightly meal was in its final preparations when I first saw Mother lift her hands to her lips, fold them, and mouth a few words. I abandoned my cooking pot and my baking bread and hobbled toward her. “No,” I cried. “Stop.”

Startled, Mother looked up.

“Do not do this thing,” I said, coming up to her. “Please. Just because Cain believes it to be true does not mean it is. You have seen Him. You know Him to be real. You do not know about these other gods.” I could not hide my contempt. “You are praying to baked
dirt
.”

“What about Lucifer?” she said. “He could have been another god.”

“If so, he was a bad one,” I said. “He convinced you to hurt Elohim.”

“What if there were other gods but Adam and I didn’t meet them?” said Mother.

Anything was possible. “Elohim said
He
made the world. He said nothing about anyone else helping Him. Did you not say this?”

“Yes,” said Mother, looking down at her feet.

“Maybe this is a test,” I said, “to see if you will be loyal to Him.”

“I’m weary of tests,” said Mother. “I want Him to show Himself again.”

“But you didn’t believe in what He said then, when He
did
show Himself,” I said. “What makes you think you’ll believe Him now?”

Mother said nothing. She looked up and saw Father approaching from the irrigation ditches. “Say nothing to your father about this,” she said hurriedly. “He would not understand.”

I could not stop myself. “Mother,” I cried out. “You
know
Elohim is real, do you not? You
know
He exists.”

She looked at me sharply, then drew me into her arms. “Oh, Aya, my sweet child,” she said. “Elohim would have loved you. You ask all the questions He would have wanted to answer.”

“He loves me now, does He not?” I said.

She pushed me from her and held fast to my shoulders. Her breath came in agitated spurts. She searched my sky eyes for clouds. “Aya, I do not want to shake your faith in Elohim. That is not my purpose. It is me I worry about—that I cannot hear Him, that I cannot see Him. I relive these things—turn them over and over again in my mind—day and night, and still I know not why Adam and I were expelled so … so
definitively
from His presence. For eating one small piece of fruit? I know not why He has been so harsh with us.” She hugged me again, holding me tight. “I do not have parents as you do, and I wish to have someone who adores
me,
wants to be with
me
.” She paused, then said, “You know I love you, do you not?”

I nodded, my face pressed against her bosom.
But do you love me just as much as the others?
I wanted to cry out.
Do you love me even though I am not whole? Or do you love me
because
I’m not whole?

“You have Father,” I said, my voice muffled in Mother’s robes.

She released me. “Yes,” she said. “I have him.” She held out her hand for me to take, and I did. We went back to the courtyard, mother and daughter, where my pot had boiled over and my bread was burned.

Later, after a hastily prepared repast of overcooked stew, crispy barley bread, goat’s milk, and grapes, Father asked if I wanted to play the star
game with him. It was something we had done from the time I was little. I had started making up stories about the stars and how they moved across the skies, and he had found it funny and had joined me upon occasion.

It was the time of no moon, which was the perfect time for viewing stars but the worst time for finding our path. We had to go out a ways from the courtyard, because the lamps’ halos washed out the starlight. Fireflies, like dying embers, dangled, blinking in the air. Father carried a flint dagger in case of ambush, and I carried several pieces of fig leather to chew on. We went slowly, listening for animals, feeling for familiar plants.

We found a weedy knoll, not easy in this dry weather, and Father beat it down with a stick to clear the area of snakes and rats. Then we lay down upon it, with our faces turned to the sky. I lay on Father’s right side, so he could hear my voice.

“There,” I said, when I had oriented myself. The sky stretched out like an upside-down bowl sprinkled with salt. I pointed. “See? The Scorpion. That is its tail, and there is its stinger.”

“Yes,” said Father. “I see.”

“And there,” I said. “The Cart in the Sky. And its sister Little Cart. I wonder how far away they are from us? They move like the sun and moon, except slower—”

“Aya,” said Father. His hand searched for mine. “Aya.”

“Yes,” I said. I held his hand tight. It was rough like bark, and it engulfed mine.

“Your mother,” he said. “I’m worried about her.”

I was flattered, truly, that he would confide in me, but there was another part of me that wanted to scream,
I cannot take care of everyone.
But I listened dutifully and heard the anguish in his voice. I could not see his face. It was too dark.

“Has she said anything to you at all?” he said.

“She has a new goddess,” I said.

“A new goddess?” His question raised up at the end, like the Scorpion’s tail, alert and ready. He squeezed my hand.

“Dara brought it from the city,” I said. I knew Father had been disappointed to learn he had missed Dara’s surprise visit. He had seen the dust
clouds approaching, but he had assumed it was Cain returning from the city.

“So it’s just a gift,” said Father, an edge of relief in his voice.

“She prayed to it,” I said.

“She must have been talking to herself.” I could hear the clipped urgency in his voice.

“I don’t think she believes in Elohim anymore,” I said.

“That can’t be,” breathed Father. “Maybe it’s being with child.”

“She thinks she’s going to die,” I said. “She says she cannot hear Elohim.”

“But none of us can,” said Father.

“Abel and Jacan do,” I said. “I think I have—in Mother’s garden and on the mountain.”

Father was silent.

In that moment I felt a kinship with my father as never before—maybe because we saw eye to eye on Mother. Though I hated myself later for doing so, I spilled my heart. “I have prayed to Elohim to heal me,” I started. “Either He’s not listening, or He’s not there.” I rushed on. “I can understand someone like me doubting, but Mother? Who has
seen
Elohim and
talked
to Him?”

Father sighed. “It is a difficult thing, this Elohim…. You’re right, we did see Him and talk with Him—He was
with
us there, in the Garden. And then, after eating of the forbidden fruit, everything changed, like that”— he snapped his fingers—“and we were thrown from His presence to wander in this place, this place far from Him, so desolate.” He let go of my hand. “I sometimes wonder, although I don’t tell your mother this, why Elohim created us, if He knew He could lose us someday. We couldn’t have possibly known how our decision to eat of the fruit would be so significant, for it
was.
Everything conspires against us, it seems.”

“Even my crookedness,” I added. I did not want Father to forget me in his list. It was important that I be included in his list of Elohim’s wrongs.

“What is He waiting for?” said Father.

“Do you pray to Him?” I asked.