Eve (45 page)

Too much noise. Everywhere there are hammerings and poundings so that I can barely hear the words in my head. The colored cones of the columns are almost done, and I make sure to keep Shala far away from them. A couple of times, Shala tries to trick me and tells me to look over there, then she makes a run for them. But I am faster than her. I catch her and spank her and tell her that I am going to send the
gidim
after her—this is what Ahassunu says all the time when Shala is bad. Shala says, “No, no, no,
don’t say that,” and I try very hard not to smile, because Shala believes me. I wonder what she thinks the
gidim
are.

The New Year’s festival is the reason why everybody is whirling about like dust storms. The cook bakes. The seamstress sews. The women sit around and argue over what they will wear and how they will color their hair and what they will draw on their skins. Zenobia holds up orange cloth to my face, then yellow cloth, then red cloth and says, “Oh, this one is pretty with your brown eyes.” So, that’s what color I’m going to wear on festival day, red, and Balili has been sent to find a carnelian stone for my nose.

Balili brings the red stone back to me. Then he says, “Promise not to tell?”

I’m scared of making more promises. I will get more people into trouble, and then Ahassunu will find me and throw me out into the desert where the lion will gobble me up. Then Mama will be sad because I will be gone, just like Turtle.

Balili has a basket over his shoulder. He takes it off his back and reaches into it and takes out a shiny bull that fits in the palm of his hand. The bull is silvery, like fish scales, and it holds a bowl in its hooves, like it’s offering it to someone. Balili shakes it for me.
Rattle rattle rattle
it goes. I jump back because I think it’s alive. “I had them fill it with limestones,” he says, smiling.

“To keep away the lion?” I say.

He laughs. “No, for the festival,” he says. “Because of you, the people will hear the Queen of Heaven on festival day.” He pats my head and winks. “But you must not tell anyone. It is our little secret.”

I nod. Here is something I’ve done right. And Balili has praised me for it.

The whole family—me and Ahassunu and Shala and Zenobia and Puabi and the prince—sleep on the roof, where it’s cooler. All night I hear whispers and groans and moans. I think maybe somebody is crying, so I go and look. The prince is hurting Zenobia. He’s laying on her, squishing her, and his skirt has fallen off. One of her bosoms is bare.

“Zenobia,” I whisper.

The prince snorts. His face looks like a white flower in the dark. He reaches out and puts his hand over my mouth. “Shhh. Go back to bed,” he says.

“But Zenobia is crying,” I say.

I see Zenobia’s face then. “Go, child,” she whispers. “I’ll wake you in the morning.” She giggles.

“Can we not get some quiet around here?” hisses Ahassunu, from her mat on the other side of the prince. She throws something, and it clatters at my feet and goes skittering across the roof.

I go back to my mat, but all I see when I lie back down is Turtle’s face looking at me. He asks why I couldn’t save him, why he died without his mama around. No one to take care of him. Maybe he is mad because I left him with Aya. I don’t know.

I sleep with the babies. Always it is this way, so the mothers won’t be bothered at night, in case the babies have to pee-pee or cry or wiggle.

Shala taps me on the shoulder. “Who’s Naa-va?” she says slowly.

“My sister,” I whisper.

“Mmm,” she says. “She come live here?”

“No,” I say. “She lives down the river with Mama and Father.” Then I remember the festival. “Maybe you mean she’s coming to the festival, for a visit?”

But Shala is already back asleep.

Adam, my Adam, betrayed me. It was a mistake of catastrophic
proportions.

As I went to my garden one afternoon, expecting to bask in its quietness, instead I found bejeweled men and women wandering about in it and plucking things from the trees and branches and bushes. I knew not what to do at first. I stood upon the border, curious, for I wanted to watch them. Before long, I realized they cared not that I was there, and, moreover, they held absolutely no regard for me.

I greeted them as warmly as I could, and they all pivoted upon their heels, surprised at my presence.

A bare-chested man with a skirt wrapped around his waist and a pendant of a yellow star about his neck approached me. I realized as he came nearer that it was the prince. He said something in the strange tongue of the city.

I shook my head.

“Thank you,” he said, bowing his head slightly.

“For what do you give me thanks?” I said.

The prince’s face registered surprise. “Why, for your husband. He give the garden to us.”

“Give? But it can’t be,” I stammered. “It’s mine. He made it for
me.
”

The prince persisted. “We bartered. You get cattle and flocks and
wagon, and we get the garden. A fair price.” A lady in the background placed a grape on her tongue and fairly moaned with pleasure.

My hands started to shake. My insides were aflutter.

The prince looked at me, concern etching his face. He pointed to the garden, as if I hadn’t understood. “Ours,” he said.

I shook my head. “No,” I said. “My husband built it a long time ago. It is ours.” My agitation increased. They could not just come across something and lay claim to it. Surely they had to understand this. “There must be some mistake.”

The prince shook his head. “No mistake,” he said. “He did not tell you?”

I tried again. “It is ours, my husband’s and mine,” I said. “We have been here for many years. Many of these seeds we brought with us from another Garden far away.” Cain had explained to me their importation of materials from the north, so certainly they would understand that we, too, had done the same—albeit in a different fashion.
Adam would
not
have done such an atrocious thing. He couldn’t have.

I was not thinking clearly. I backed away from them, shaking my head, a terrible seed of fear beginning to sprout in my belly. I had to find Adam, to make him come and straighten things out with these people. They had become more of a nuisance every day, with the diverting of water, with the attack on Aya, with the destruction of Cain’s dates, and now this.

My husband was out at the river, clearing the silt from the irrigation ditches and opening sluices for watering.

I filled a waterskin at the cistern and made my way out to him. While I walked, I pondered what had happened here in such a short amount of time.

My grievous error was letting the city women see the garden—in truth, I had been proud of it, wanting to flaunt it, thinking they would have had nothing like it in their city. In fact, I cannot remember if it came up in conversation or if they had already known of it through Dara. It’s allure had tantalized them, as surely it did me every afternoon, and they had exclaimed at the green-black lushness of it.

If their strange exclamations and facial expressions to each other were any indication, they had been astonished at the great numbers of roses and
marigolds and cyclamen and irises and orchids. They had sniffed at the sage and onion flowers and the dill weed. Without Dara present, I had not been able to answer any of their questions. I simply named what they were touching, and they looked back at me in shocked wonder—at me or at the garden, I did not know.

As they left with my sweet Dara once again, they bowed to me over and over. They kissed my hand. Dara translated their parting words for me.

It wasn’t until later that I learned that Dara had told them about Eden, and for this they thought I was special, to have hailed from their paradise equivalent of Dilmun.

When I was but a short distance away from Adam, he saw me coming and raised up, shielding his eyes with his hand. He set down his tools and came to greet me, the angry wife, except he did not know I was angry.

It is one of my faults that I immediately dive into blaming. Before even asking what has happened, I am already deep into the pointing of fingers and angry accusations. This is wrong, I know it, but sometimes I feel so strongly that it takes everything within me to stop or measure my words.

That time was no different.

Adam fell upon me with kisses, and I pushed him away.

“What have you done?” I cried.

He held up his hands, rough hands, blistered hands, to protect himself, and his eyes registered hurt.

“My garden,” I said, plunging in, heedless to his feelings. “Those people are ripping things from the branches,
eating
fruit and flower; by the hairs on my head, they are destroying what you’ve made for me. Why?” The last word I cried out and struck him upon the chest.

“Eve,” Adam said. He grabbed my arms and pinned them down with a force I could not overcome. “I did not mean to hurt you—”

“I did not mean to hurt you,”
I sneered. “What does that mean, exactly? What have you done? You did not even see fit to consult me first, and it is my garden, not yours!” I struggled against him. “Release me!”

Still he held me fast.

I kneed him in the groin, and down he went. I had never done this before, and the moment he dropped, I felt sudden guilt and nausea. I made my voice softer, but I was still as angry as a hornet. “It was
mine,”
I said. “Not
yours. You gave it to me as a gift.” I fell to my knees, next to him. “The garden. The
garden,”
I whimpered. “You gave away the
one place I had left
.”

“I bartered it. I did not give it away,” said Adam, wincing and stumbling to his feet.

I stood and began to pace. The rage boiled up from my center. It singed a path up my throat and into my mouth. It spilled upon the ground and trailed toward Adam. I fairly spit my words at him. “How could you have done such a thing? I
loved
it there. It was my one place of escape, of peace.”

“You
hated
the garden,” he said. “You complained about it always, how you wanted this or that, and ‘Adam, could you make it more like the Garden,’ and ‘Adam, do you remember,’ and ‘Adam, let’s go back.’ Always it was this way with you, and I, for one, could not keep doing it, this harping for the past, longing for a place that is gone and forbidden to us. It is time you grasp this, Eve, really grasp it. We are never going back there. We aren’t invited. Elohim wants us out here for some reason, and you must accept it. Life will be easier for you if you do.” He added, muttering, “Life will be easier for all of us if you do.”

I tangled my fingers in my hair and yanked. “I don’t know what I shall do. I
need
that place. I
want
that place.” I dropped my hands and screeched, “Get it back!” I pointed toward the house, to the garden, my lost garden. “Go over there right now and tell them you’ve made a disastrous error and you want it back.”

“I can’t,” said Adam. “It’s theirs now.”

I stared at him. I could not believe my ears. “What?” I said weakly, sinking to my knees. “No!”

Adam wrung his aching hands and scuffed at the ground with his sandals.

“Could you not have asked me first?” I said, crying and rubbing my swollen belly. “Could you not have asked your pregnant wife what she needed most of all?”

He knelt beside me and tried to put his hand on my shoulder. I brushed it away. “I should have,” he said. “But I wanted to rid us of that poor reminder of the Garden. I thought it might do you good.”

“Good?”
I said. I snorted through my tears and my dripping nose, mindful
that my laughter was tinged with scorn. “What did you get in return for it, husband?”

“One oxen for plowing,” Adam said. “Ten goats, twelve sheep, a wagon, and enough linen for Naava to make new robes for the festival.” He bent lower, so I would have to look at him. “I did make one more exchange, with Aya’s permission—that of a bit of sesame oil for a box of adornments.”

I looked at him, incredulous. “Why do you squander what we have labored for?” I said.

“They are for you,” he said proudly. He brought his face close to mine. We were like sandpipers hovering over the sand. He whispered, “For the festival. I wanted to surprise you. I thought I should like to have my wife shine like the moon, as she once did.” He embraced me, and I did not protest. “I want my beautiful wife back, the one who was curious and thrilled by everything she touched, the one who wanted to suck the marrow out of life, the one who sang and laughed, the one who loved me and was happy.”