Eve (31 page)

Once I can understand a little more, Balili takes me to the school in the marketplace at the foot of the tall mountain. The babies stay at home while I’m away. At the school there are lots of children, not just me. He says if we’re good, he will tell us the story of the
huluppu-tree.

We sit as still as frightened deer.

Balili draws a picture of a tree.

“This is the
huluppu-tree,”
he says.

Balili is a good storyteller, because his drawings are spectacular.

Inanna, the very brave girl of the story, will someday wear the heavens and earth like a beautiful robe, but for now she’s a girl like me. One day Inanna finds the
huluppu-tree
floating in the Euphrates River. She takes it home and plants it in her garden. She loves that tree with all her might and makes plans of everything she can do with it, like build a throne or a bed.

But then, oh no, oh no, the
Anzu
-bird makes a nest in it, and a snake makes his house in it, and a girl by the name of Lilith lives in it. All these homes in Inanna’s tree! She asks everyone for help to get those rascals to go away, but no one will help her. Poor Inanna. I would have helped her.

Finally, Inanna begs her brother Gilgamesh to please help her get those things out of her tree
right now!
Gilgamesh does. I would ask Cain, I think, but maybe Abel might be nicer. Gilgamesh puts on some armor that Balili says is heavy and thick and lifts his bronze ax and goes into Inanna’s garden. He hits the serpent with the ax. He throws out the
Anzu
-bird. He smashes Lilith’s house. Then Gilgamesh rips that tree out of the ground and makes a throne and a nice warm bed for Inanna. As a thank-you, Inanna makes a
pukku
for Gilgamesh, and a
mikku
for him too. I don’t know what those things are that Inanna gives him.

I clap at the end when Inanna’s tree is saved, because Gilgamesh is so nice to help. Balili smiles at me, then looks past me, and a funny look comes over his face. I turn around to see what he is looking at, and there is Naava, a long ways away, walking through the marketplace. I stand and wave, but the marketplace is busy, and my sister doesn’t see me.

I tell Balili, “That’s Naava. She’s my sister, and she is very beautiful, and she weaves and weaves all the clothes we wear.”

“Hmmm,” says Balili. There’s a funny look on his face.

“Sometimes she’s as mean as a fox and I don’t like her, but sometimes she is sweet like honey; then she is a nice sister,” I say.

“I must take you back to the prince’s house,” says Balili. He’s acting very strange all of a sudden. He pulls on my arm and says, “Let’s go.”

“Ow,” I say. “I’m coming.”
Why all the fuss?

When the boys were young, we had an evening family ritual, to
walk along the shore of the Euphrates and to avail ourselves of the spectacular sights and sounds. Truth be told, it was the noise I missed most about the Garden—the incessant bird chatter and the frog caterwauling and the cricket chirps. This happy singing lifted me up, day after day. Here in the desert there are sounds, certainly, but they are not of such a bountiful bursting nature.

In the dying light, Adam and I strolled arm in arm, leaving our footprints in the warm mud, while the boys ran through the sun-bleached reeds and bulrushes and cattails to collect trinkets—cowrie shells and birds’ nests and bulbous frogs. It was a happy time, for whatever had gone on during the day—endless chores, incessant cooking, backbreaking weeding—was behind us, completed until the morrow. We felt secure and steadfast, much like the moon that shone brightly overhead.

We warned the boys, of course, about wild boars and badgers. Abel had been, two years previous, fairly run over by a startled boar, and he had had nightmares about them since then. We made it a point to be inside the courtyard walls when the time of the predators began.

One particular late-spring night, Cain was five, Abel three. I was pregnant with Micayla, my dear child who would be born three moons later with a swollen head and buried the same day.

The sun lingered, and its warmth stroked our faces.

Adam and I were speaking of adding on to the animal pens, making them more spacious and strong, because the herds were growing swiftly. We had been able to predict the onslaught of river waters that year and had taken our family and our flocks to higher ground for the duration of the flooding. To extend and fortify the pens would require more time and labor away from the crops—the weeding, the watering, the rodent and insect control. It was not a small matter to consider.

“Mama,” cried Cain. “Mama.” Normally he spoke in a thin, flimsy voice that did not match his bravado, but this was a hearty cry of horror, of desperation.

My arm fell from Adam’s, and we ran toward the cries.

Cain and Abel were facing each other. Cain was on his knees, holding his jaw and scrabbling around on the ground with his fingers. Abel stood there, alarmed.

Cain looked up then, still wailing as we approached. Blood poured down his chin.

“What’s happened?” said Adam, running to Cain’s side and grabbing his face between his hands. His fingers came away wet and bloody.

Adam looked to Abel and studied his chary countenance. His little shoulders hunched, and his eyes drooped. He opened his fist, and a rock thudded to the ground.

Always, a mother glances quickly at the evidence and surmises what has happened, and although I knew in this situation that the normal roles had been reversed, and Abel the younger had been the aggressor and not Cain, I chose to react swiftly—and wrongly, as it turned out. “Abel,” I snapped. “What have you done?”

“I—I—” Abel said.

I slapped him hard across his face. His hand went up like a startled bird wing and rested on his cheek. His shocked eyes took me in, that this was his mother who had hurt him, and he stood, silent and injured.

Cain cried and babbled as he sifted through the soil with his fingers. “I lost them,” he said.

“Cain,” I said. “Look at me.”

He tilted his chin up, looked me straight in the eyes, and said morosely, “They’re all gone.”

I gasped. The boy had no front teeth. His lips were mangled and torn like the edges of a leaf. I turned to Abel. “Explain,” I commanded.

He looked only at the ground.

“Boy,” said Adam, grabbing Abel by the arm. “What have you done? Speak!”

But Abel refused. He jerked his arm out of Adam’s grasp and turned to walk back to the house.

“It’s too dangerous to be out by yourself,” said Adam to Abel, warning him of the night animals. His voice was full of irritation and exasperation.

Abel halted.

Adam and I stood in silence, waiting for a response.
What had he been thinking?

He plopped down upon the sand, his back to us. Evening birdsong filled the air. The water moved among the reeds. The evening seemed to slow into a swell of meaning we could not know.

Then Abel lifted his trembling chin and began to sing the melancholic song from the Garden that Adam and I had sung only between ourselves. His high sweet voice strengthened and climbed, tugged at the air, and burst into white flame; he sang as one who had seen the Garden; he sang as one who was far, far away. He sculpted a world of memory, of innocence, of time long past, and I gasped and held my panging heart.

We were mesmerized. Our son was creating the Garden again, beast by beast, plant by plant, waterfall by waterfall. He had done this only once before, when he was very young and a leopard had dragged him away from our campfire. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Cain stood, his cheeks glistening with tears. “Will they come back?” he said. “My teeth?”

I had forgotten my hurting child. I turned to him. “Come. We’ll get you mended in no time.”

Our voices had smudged the moment.

Abel’s voice trailed off into nothingness, and a great sadness seeped into the corners of my being. Adam grabbed Abel’s hand and pulled him up—although, I noted, gentler than he would have without the song.

The day before, Cain had lost his first tooth and had come running to show me. I was petrified, of course, until I saw the tiny white bud emerging from the pink soil of his gums. I was comforted to see any sign of life in Cain’s mouth, since Adam had lost several of his back teeth in the same accident in which he lost his hearing in one ear, and those had not grown back.

“I don’t know,” I said. “We’ll have to look under the light when we get home.” I took his hand. “What did you do to your brother to make him so angry?” I asked.

“He wasn’t angry. I told him to do it,” said Cain. “I thought if there were other teeth down there, that would get them to come out.”

“You
told
him to?” I said.

Cain nodded.

Oh, Abel darling, my tender warbler, I should have known, but now the red mark of my hand is upon your cheek and cannot be undone. Oh, Abel my son, forgive me.
“I have punished Abel,” I sputtered, more to myself than to Cain.

Cain had his fingers in his mouth. “I can’t feel any other teeth. I thought for sure that it would work. It hurt very bad, but I didn’t cry until the end. How will I eat? Maybe you’ll have to—”

I threw Cain’s hand down. “Stop. That’s enough.”

Cain continued, “But—”

Adam turned. “You heard your mother.”

Cain pouted and stomped his way home.

That was Cain. That was his way. The mindless, fruitless testing, probing, of everything, just to see what would happen.

After applying a sage poultice to Cain’s mouth and commanding him to stay put, I went to search for Abel.

He did not respond to my calls, or Adam’s.

Frantic with fear, Adam searched the cistern—always the first place we checked, for obvious reasons—and I searched the animal folds. We held up oil lamps and yelled his name, all to no avail. Weeping now, I retraced my steps. First, the reed mat where he slept. Then the blackened corners of the courtyard. Once more, I stumbled out into the jagged edges of the night, where the moon, like a milky thumbprint, flattened and lengthened everything about me.

I found Abel in the sheep stalls.

He had gone to Pora, his favorite ewe, and had curled up like one of her lambs, his dark curly head resting on her spotted tan belly. He was fast asleep, sucking his thumb.

I set my lamp down on the dry barley stalks and crouched in front of the ewe, to study this littlest boy child of mine. Pora bleated once and raised her head, as if to say,
Don’t bother the lad; he’s come home to Mama.
I stroked her head and looked at Abel. Sweat had caked long strands of hair to his forehead, and his cheeks were rosy with exhaustion. His eyelashes were like dragonfly wings, and he stank of manure.

“My dear boy,” I murmured. I stroked his arm and cried.

What did I feel as I sat there? Did I think Abel was replacing me with Pora? Did I feel inadequate as a parent? Yes, it was all these things and more. For I saw and heard my vicious and ill-timed
slap
over and over again, then his reply, the perfect soaring melody from his lips. I sat there for a long time before Adam’s voice broke the silence.

“Eve,” Adam called.

“Here,” I said wearily. Adam’s yellow light veered my direction.

I sighed and scooped my hands under Abel’s armpits to lift him to my breast. His head dangled sidewise off my shoulder, and I heard his quiet snuffling. I snatched up the lamp with my other hand, thinking only of the lost opportunity to crawl up next to him, surrounded by the affection of Pora.

To live in the embrace of one of your children is the most beautiful thing in all the world. When they are young, they love you with an unconditional love, a love that waits for your return, a love that ignores your faults, and a love that wants to please. Then, I suppose, they grow older, and wiser. And that is where a mother’s grief begins.

Cain did not always act in a foolhardy manner. He was clever and hardworking, and if he was presented with a problem, we knew he would have a handful of solutions by the next day.

Indeed, he was the one who thought of the mud bricks for building our house.