Eve (20 page)

Adam nodded. Abel looked down at the ground.

“A compromise,” Cain continued. “You share your wealth of knowledge with us; we share ours with you. I have said this from the beginning.” Cain’s face was eager, lit by the fire within.

“You have
what,
exactly?” said the prince, sinking to his reed mat once again.

Abel looked up and said, “It is better we leave you alone, and you leave us alone.”

The stranger turned to Abel and saw he was serious. He looked back at Cain, with a bit of shock on his face. “I am confused,” he said.

Cain glared at Abel and said something to the prince in the city’s language.

“You have our women, our trade,” continued the prince. “What more do you want?”

The muscles near Abel’s jaw tensed, released, tensed, released.

Adam interrupted the awkward silence. “We cannot have a repeat of—”

The prince waved his long, delicate fingers in front of his face. “A mistake. The men working—what do you call it?—laborers. They know nothing. All the water they take for themselves. They do not think. We make it right, no?” The prince was referring to the near disaster that had occurred right after his people had arrived on the plains. Several days after Adam and Cain had come back from that first visit to the city peoples camp, the shoreline next to their orchards began to crack with dryness, and when Cain walked upriver to see what the trouble was, he found that the city’s workers had built dams along their shores, shunting the water to their newly dug irrigation ditches, with just trickles left to travel downstream to Adam’s orchards and Cain’s gardens.

“I am referring to the assault on my daughter,” Adam said firmly. “By your shepherds.”

“What assault? What is this word?” said the prince. He looked to Cain for help.

Cain explained what had happened, while Abel bit his lip in anger.

The prince expressed only shock. He bowed his head and clasped his hands in front of his face. “For this, I am sorry. I will have them punished. It is not our way.”

Cain’s face glowed. It was as though this humble proclamation had vindicated his city, the new love of his life. The rightness and goodness of his choice had been substantiated, and here were Adam and Abel to verify that it was so.

The prince had already wormed his way into the apple of Naava’s heart. As he shook the dust from his sandals after his arrival, he had winked at Naava and brushed past her, his arm briefly at her elbow. He had whispered, “Your cheeks are like pomegranate blossoms”—and, oh, the flutters in Naava’s stomach would not be still. But Naava could not linger, it was not permitted—unless, of course, she was serving food and drink to the men. So she had offered her services to Aya, who had rolled her eyes and said, “A twig between the legs is all the encouragement you need to work?”

Naava became self-conscious, but she smoothed her hair with her hands, bit her lips to a fevered blush, and loosened her sash, so that the neckline of her robe fell dangerously low. She glanced up to see Aya watching her and felt warm all over. “Too bad you are not so presentable,” Naava said.

Aya smiled and said, “Your wiles may work on our brothers, but do you think they will work on a prince? He can have anyone he wants.” Aya poured the beer into large drinking mugs and placed a hollow reed in them, for sucking on. “What of Abel? Have you given up on him?”

“He turns away from me now,” said Naava haughtily. “Maybe he pleasures himself in the fields with his animals. Cain has said it is so.”

“Cain is dim-witted,” said Aya.

“He has agreed to take me to the city,” said Naava.

“Dara’s
going, not you,” said Aya.

“I am going with Cain when he does his trading,” said Naava. “That’s something
you
can’t do.” Naava reached out to take the mugs from Aya and, in her haste, splashed great quantities on the ground.

“At least
my
hands work,” said Aya.

Normally Naava would have retaliated, but her mind was elsewhere, with the prince sitting in the courtyard, waving his hands like startled herons lifting from the river. Naava steadied herself and balanced the mugs
in her hands. She could not falter. She wanted to be away from this abominable place, with Eve and Aya at her throat and brothers who paled in comparison to this resplendent man. Already she had visions of the prince running his hands through her hair, kissing her hard upon the lips, and breathing heat down her neck.
Ah,
she shuddered.
It would be, it would be.

She approached the men, who were engrossed in conversation. She cleared her throat. The men looked up, blinking in the sleepy afternoon, surprised by the intrusion. Naava smiled at the delight in the prince’s face, wondering,
Does he like me?
and
How can I make him want me?
and she was still smiling as the prince broke off mid-sentence to take the beer from her hands, his fingers lightly stroking hers, smiling until the very moment she fumbled with the mug and dropped it into his lap. The prince stood, astonished at the sudden wetness on his torso, his mouth taking on an O shape, but before he could cry out, Naava dashed back around the corner to Aya, where there was safety in hiding. There was a sharp howl behind her, then thunderous laughter from her brothers and the prince.

“Oh, I’ve done it now,” wailed Naava, her face in her hands. “Tell me. Was it as bad as it looked?”

Aya plopped another mug onto the table and poured a steady stream of golden beer into it. “Worse.”

“Oh, why didn’t
you
serve the beer? I could have served them the cherries or plums, something that wouldn’t have fallen out of their own accord.”

Aya finished pouring. “Well, from what Cain says, there are plenty more where he comes from.”

“You’re jealous,” said Naava.

“Jealous is the wrong word,” said Aya. She turned to Naava. “I’m angry. Angry at your meanness. Angry that you poisoned Mother. Angry that you think of no one but yourself. Have you thought of Dara once today? She’s frightened out of her wits because she’s going away from her family, the only people she’s known, and all you can think about is yourself and whether or not this prince likes you.” Aya put her hands on her hips. She seemed to have settled into a rhythm, drumming out all the things she’d wanted to say to Naava but had held back. “If you think I am glad for your clumsiness, you’re wrong. I wish—Elohim as my witness—that you would have been perfect, that the prince would like you and take you instead of Dara—”

“That’s enough, Aya,” said Eve. Her voice surprised both girls—she’d returned from scrubbing Dara at the river, and she stood behind them, her hand in Dara’s.

Naava smiled triumphantly. She was disappointed Eve had recovered for this day, thanks to Aya’s care. She had found no time to press her case with Adam, alone. But she felt exonerated by Eve’s chastising of Aya now.

Aya turned, saw Dara, grew soft. “I’ve made fig cakes for you,” she said. “To take along with you on your journey.”

Dara’s eyes and nose were red and glistening, but other than the occasional sniffle, the little girl was quiet. She was dressed in her new yellow robe, and she wore fresh squeaky sandals upon her feet, made for her by Jacan. He was there too, moping about and sucking his thumb, a trait he had abandoned long ago because of the merciless jabs of his older brothers— “Jacan the baby” or “Jacan, do you still need your mother’s teat?”

Naava watched as Aya took Dara’s hand to show her and Jacan Turtle’s new house, a rectangular barricade of clay bricks and broken wheat stalks and one of Dara’s chipped bowls full of water. Naava had no words to describe her feelings right then—she was disquieted, angry, restless, and sad. She did not begin her days thinking,
I will be evil to my siblings, to my mother, to my family.
No, she wanted to be agreeable; after all, it made life so much easier. But at the most inopportune times, something twisted inside her, when she was striving to be good, and it was as though she was lost to herself. The words she said, the things she did—they were all products of she knew not what. She wished she could wipe them away as easily as wiping away tears, but she could not, because even though she
knew
she was being horrid, she could not stop herself from narrowing her eyes and saying, “You’d better watch out. Walls won’t stop hawks. And they love, absolutely love, baby turtles.”

Dara started blubbering, and Aya shot her a fierce look and said to Dara, “She didn’t mean it,” and Eve grabbed Naava by the scruff of the neck and hissed, “Quiet, child.”

Naava swung a wide arc with her arm and twisted away from Eve. “I’m not a child,” she hissed, straightening her robe. “You cannot tell me what to do.”

From the day Dara was born, I felt nothing but the most
unabashed, most protective love for her. She came easily, after the nightmarish torture of Jacan’s birth. Indeed, I had not known I carried two children within me. I had not known it was possible to have a multiple litter, as our flocks did. With Jacan, each contraction gripped my back in its tight fist, leaving me whimpering like a dog, and even as I moaned, I could feel there was no dropping, no progression. Aya was there to massage my buttocks, my back, to soften my tension with mint oil, to whisper to me, “Shhh, the Garden, think of the Garden. The cool waters. The green moss.” Naava was there too, although she watched, helpless, as her younger sister of five years knew more, did more.

After the second birth—Dara’s birth—I felt lighter than wheat chaff and as brittle as dead leaves. In the midst of the wet sticky blood between my legs, the smell of mint and earth, the murmur of my babies smacking their lips, sucking in new air, I fell back onto blankets spread especially for me and groaned, “Please, give me the second child.” Aya laid her, stomach down, on my chest, in the hollow between my breasts, covering us with a cloth made warm by the fire. “Rest,” she said, as she stuffed my womb with herbs and wool and washed my legs with water.

I strained to see my girl child. I lifted her tiny fingers, one by one, marveling at the exquisite detail, even in one so young. The soft dip at the top
of her head. Her lips, lit like the edges of curled leaves. The deep folds in her legs and arms, like smooth, kneaded dough. “Dara,” I said finally. “I shall name you Dara. You have been compassionate to me, your mother. I thank you for that gift, in no way small. May Elohim make the sun shine upon you and your children and give you the fruits of the earth. Selah.” She slept upon my breast, without a sound, until her brother began shrieking for milk. I fed them together, cradling one at each breast. Jacan, suckling hungrily, greedily. Dara, suckling mildly, as though she was reluctant to chafe my tender raw nipples. Even her sleep patterns were long and dreamy, as though she were wrapping me in delicate fly casing, protecting me from sickness and exhaustion.

She was my baby, my youngest.

I was feeding her to the lions.

For what? A measly goods allotment every week? To protect what was rightfully ours? To placate strange people I did not know?

What mother does this? What mother, out of fear, sends her daughter away?

My child, oh Elohim, listen here: My child was to be put into the hands of strangers! You saw how she looked at me, tears streaming down her cheeks in glistening ribbons, as she peered out at me through the fluttering curtains of the prince’s litter, which heralded her absence. In a moment, in a snap of the fingers, it was too late. She was gone and me with her. It became part of the past, something to look upon and regret, another memory that haunted and lingered like the smell of smoke.

There was no consolation in knowing I would see her again. She would be changed into something new, something foreign, something horrible—
oh, I hoped not.
Or worse: She would hate me for giving her up so easily.

I cannot stand being despised by any one of my children, who were nested and nourished by my body, each holding fast to the vision that is Eve in their minds—though Naava is with me now, may she be blessed. I cannot plead my case before them, when they already know in their hearts what they believe. And what, exactly, do they see? Was I not a good mother, a good woman? What does
good
mean, anyway?—there we are, back to the Garden again, for it always comes to this, somehow, some way, that all steps lead back to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.