1997 - The Red Tent (20 page)

“Why did they not put you out to die at birth, with eyes such as yours? What is your mother’s burial place? How do you prepare wool for dying? Where did you learn to make that beer? What kind of father is Jacob, my son? Which of your sons is your favorite? Which of your sons do you fear? How many lambs does my son sacrifice to El at the spring festival? What is your practice at the new moon? How many babies have you lost in childbearing? What plans do you make for your daughter’s coming-of-age? How many epahs of barley do you grow in Succoth, and how many of wheat?”

My mother could not even remember all of the questions put to her that night, but she answered them fully and without taking her eyes from the Grandmother’s face. This startled the older woman, who was used to unnerving people, but Leah was not cowed. The two of them glared at each other.

Finally, when the Grandmother could think of nothing else to ask, she nodded and made a wordless sound, a grunt of grudging approval. “Very well, Leah, mother of many sons. Very well.” With a wave of her hand, my mother was sent away. She found her way to her blanket and fell asleep, exhausted.

Over the next two days, my aunties were called to the Grandmother’s inner chamber, one by one.

Rachel was greeted with kisses and caresses. Girlish laughter rang out as the two of them passed an afternoon together. The Grandmother patted my lovely aunt’s cheeks and gently pinched her arms. Rebecca, who had been the beauty of her generation, took out her makeup box—a large, black, lacquered thing with many compartments, each one filled with a potion or unguent, perfume or paint. Rachel left the Grandmother’s presence smiling and smelling of lotus oil, her eyelids green and her eyes ringed with a shiny black kohl that made her look formidable instead of merely beautiful.

When Zilpah was sent for, my auntie fell upon her face before the Grandmother, and was rewarded with a short poem about the great Asherah, consort of El and goddess of the sea. The Grandmother looked briefly into Zilpah’s face, closed her black eyes, and foretold the time and place of my auntie’s death. This news, which she never revealed to a soul, did not disturb Zilpah. If anything, it gave her a kind of peace that lasted the rest of her life. From that day forward, Zilpah smiled while she worked at the loom—not a wistful little grin at all, but a big, tooth-showing smile, as though she were remembering a good joke.

Bilhah dreaded her interview with the Grandmother and stumbled as she approached the old woman. The Grandmother frowned and sighed while Bilhah kept her eyes on her hands. The silence grew heavy, and after a short time, Rebecca turned and walked out, leaving Bilhah alone with the beautiful tapestries that seemed to mock her.

These meetings meant little to me. For three days my eyes were on the horizon, watching for Tabea. She finally arrived on the day of the festival itself, with Esau and his first wife, Adath. The sight of my best friend was more than I could stand, and I ran to her. She threw her arms around me.

When we stood apart, I saw how much she had changed in the few months we had been apart. She was taller than I by a good half head, and there was no need to pull her garments tightly against her chest to see her breasts. But when I saw the belt that declared her a woman, my mouth dropped. She had entered the red tent! She was no longer a child but a woman. I felt my cheeks grow warm with envy as hers grew pink with pride. I had a thousand questions to ask her about what it was like and about her ceremony, and whether the world was a different place now that her place in it was different.

But I had no time to ask my cousin anything. The Grandmother had already taken note of Tabea’s apron and approached my coin-covered aunt. Within a few moments, she was screaming at Adath with a fury I thought reserved for gods who had thunder and lightning at their disposal.

Rebecca’s anger was terrible. “You mean to tell me that her blood was wasted? You shut her up alone, like some animal?”

Adath cringed and made as if to answer when the Grandmother raised her fists. “Don’t dare to defend yourself, you ignorant nothing,” she hissed. “You baboon.’ I told you what to do and you disobeyed me, and now there is nothing to be done. The best of his girls, the only one of his seed with even a trace of intelligence or feeling, and you treated her like a…like a…Pah!” Rebecca spit at her daughter-in-law’s feet. “I have no words for this abomination.”

Her voice grew icy and hushed. “Enough. You are not fit to be in my tent. Get out of here. Be cursed and leave this place and never let me see you again.”

The Grandmother drew herself up to her full height and slapped Adath with all her strength. The poor woman crumpled to the ground, whimpering in fear that a spell had been cast on her. The men, who had rushed over to discover the reason for the Grandmother’s displeasure, recoiled at the sight of the Oracle’s curse and quickly turned away from what was clearly women’s business.

Adath crawled away, but now Tabea was on the ground at Rebecca’s feet, sobbing, “No, no, no.” My cousin’s face had turned ashen and her eyes were wide with terror. “Take my name and call me Deborah, too. Make me the least of your servants, but do not banish me. Oh please, Grandmother. Please. I beg you, I beg you.”

But Rebecca did not look at the creature suffering at her feet. She did not see Tabea tear at her face until there were bloody streaks down her cheeks. She did not see her rip her robe into shreds or swallow handfuls of dust. The Grandmother turned and walked away from the death throes of Tabea’s hope, wrapping her cloak tightly around her body, as if to protect herself against the misery before her. Finally, Tabea was lifted from the ground by the Grandmother’s followers and carried back to the tents of Esau’s wives.

I did not really understand what had happened, but I knew that my dear friend had suffered an injustice. My ears rang and my heart pounded. I could not believe the Grandmother’s cruelty. My beloved cousin, who cared more for Rebecca than for her own mother, had been treated worse than the lepers who came seeking miracle cures. I hated Rebecca as I had never hated anyone.

My mother took my hand, led me to her tent, and gave me a cup of sweet wine. Stroking my hair, she answered my question even before I asked. Leah, my mother, said:

“The girl will suffer for the rest of her days, and your compassion is well placed. But your hatred is undeserved, daughter.

“It was not her intention to harm Tabea. I think she loved her well enough, but she had no choice. She was defending her mother and herself, me and your aunties, you and your daughters after you. She was defending the ways of our mothers and their mothers, and the great mother, who goes by many names, but who is in danger of being forgotten.

“This is not easy to explain, but I will tell you. Because you are my only daughter and because we lived for so long in such isolation, you already know much more than you should. You have spent time with us in the red tent. You have even attended a birth, which is something you must never tell the Grandmother. I know that you will not reveal what I tell you now.”

I nodded my promise, and my mother sighed from her heart. She looked down at her hands, brown from the sun, wise with use, and rarely in repose as they were now. She placed her palms face up upon her knees and closed her eyes. Half singing, half whispering, Leah said:

“The great mother whom we call Innana is a fierce warrior and Death’s bridesmaid. The great mother whom we call Innana is the center of pleasure, the one who makes women and men turn to one another in the night. The great mother whom we-call Innana is the queen of the ocean and the patron of the rain.

“This is known to all—to the women and to the men. To the suckling babes and to the failing grandfathers.”

Here she stopped and broke into a big, girlish grin. “Zilpah would be so amused at the sight of me speaking legend,” she said, looking straight at me for a moment, and I smiled back at her, sharing the joke. But after a moment my mother resumed her formal pose and continued:

“The great mother whom we call Innana gave a gift to woman that is not known among men, and this is the secret of blood. The flow at the dark of the moon, the healing blood of the moon’s birth—to men, this is flux and distemper, bother and pain. They imagine we suffer and consider themselves lucky. We do not disabuse them.

“In the red tent, the truth is known. In the red tent, where days pass like a gentle stream, as the gift of Innana courses through us, cleansing the body of last month’s death, preparing the body to receive the new month’s life, women give thanks—for repose and restoration, for the knowledge that life comes from between our legs, and that life costs blood.”

Then she took my hand and told me, “I say this before the proper time, daughter mine, though it will not be long before you enter the tent to celebrate with me and your aunties. You will become a woman surrounded by loving hands to carry you and to catch your first blood and to make sure it goes back to the womb of Innana, to the dust that formed the first man and the first woman. The dust that was mixed with her moon blood.

“Alas, many of her daughters have forgotten the secret of Innana’s gift, and turned their backs on the red tent. Esau’s wives, the daughters of Edom, whom Rebecca despises, give no lesson or welcome to their young women when they come of age. They treat them like beasts—setting them out, alone and afraid, shut up in the dark days of the new moon, without wine and without the counsel of their mothers. They do not celebrate the first blood of those who will bear life, nor do they return it to the earth. They have set aside the Opening, which is the sacred business of women, and permit men to display their daughters’ bloody sheets, as though even the pettiest baal would require such a degradation in tribute.”

My mother saw my confusion. “You cannot understand all of this yet, Dinah,” she said. “But soon you will know, and I will make sure that you are welcomed into the woman’s life with ceremony and tenderness. Fear not.”

It was dark when my mother uttered the last of these words. The songs of the barley festival reached our ears, and my mother rose, offering me her hand. We walked out into the night, to watch the offerings, burnt on an altar beside the tallest tree. Wonderful music was sung, harmonies of many parts. The Deborahs danced in a circle to the sound of their own clapping. They spun and crouched, leaped and swayed as though sharing a single mind, a single body, and I understood Tabea’s wish to join their dance.

Adath disappeared during the night, taking my friend with her, strapped onto the back of a donkey, like an offering not yet dead, with a rag stuffed in her mouth to muffle the cries.

In the few days before our departure, I avoided the Grandmother and stayed near my mothers. I wished only to leave the place, but as we prepared to return to Succoth, Leah came to me with a grim face. “The Grandmother says that you are to stay here at Mamre for three months,” she said. “Rebecca spoke to your father, and it has been arranged without my…” She stopped at the sight of my stricken face. “I wish I could stay or leave Zilpah with you, but the Grandmother will have none of it. She wants you only.”

There was a long pause before she said, “It is an honor.” She cupped my chin between her two hands and added tenderly, “We will be together agaift when the wheat is ripe.”

I did not cry. I was frightened and angry, but I was determined not to weep, so I kept my mouth closed, breathed through my nose, and kept my eyes from blinking. That was how I survived as I watched my mother’s form grow smaller and smaller and then disappear into the horizon. I had never imagined the loneliness of being without her or my aunts or even one of my brothers. I felt like a baby left outside to die, but I did not cry. I turned back to the Deborahs who watched me anxiously, but I did not cry.

Only at night, alone on my blanket, I turned my face to the ground and wept until I choked. Every morning I arose, groggy and confused until I remembered that I was alone in my grandmother’s tent.

My memories from those months in Mamre seem pale and scattered. When I returned to my mothers, they were disappointed that I could not say more of wonders I had seen or secrets I had learned. It was as though I had walked through a cave filled with jewels and picked up only a handful of gray pebbles.

This is what I do remember.

I recall that once in every seven days, the Grandmother made a great show of baking. The rest of the week she did not soil her hands with the work of women, much less the kneading and handing of dough. But on the seventh day, she took flour and water and honey, turned them and shaped them, and sacrificed a corner from a three-sided cake, “for the Queen of Heaven,” she whispered to the dough before consigning it to flame.

I doubted that the Queen would much care for the dry, tasteless things Rebecca offered. “Aren’t they good?” she demanded when they came out of the oven. I nodded dutifully, washing my portion down with water, which was all I was given to drink. Luckily, her servants were far better bakers, and their cakes were sweet and moist enough for any queen. Still, when my grandmother whispered over her small domestic offering, it was the only time I saw her smile with her eyes. It was my job to go to Rebecca early in the morning to assist her morning ablutions in preparation for the pilgrims who arrived at the grove daily. I carried her elaborate cosmetic box, which contained different scents for forehead, wrists, armpits, and ankles, a potion for the skin beneath the eyes, and a sour-smelling concoction for the throat. After the perfumes and creams, she began the careful application of color to lips, eyes, and cheeks. She said that the most important beauty treatment of all was to smell sweet, and her breath was always scented with mint, which she chewed mornina and night.

The Grandmother seemed to burn with some kind of fire. She ate little and rarely sat down. She looked down upon anyone who required rest. Indeed, she criticized everyone except her sons, and although she favored Jacob, praising his good looks and his fine sons, it was clear that she depended on my uncle for everything. Messengers came and went from Seir every other day. Esau was called upon to deliver an extra epah of barley or to find meat worthy of the Grandmother’s table. I saw him every fortnight at least, his arms full of gifts.