Eve (5 page)

The lady at the front clicks her tongue when her donkey reaches the courtyard gate. The donkey stops, and the lady gets off. She’s wrapped in yellow robes that move like feather grass. Around her neck is a string of white shells. She has a yellow ring about her forehead and black lines around her eyes, and her nose has a funny yellow hoop in it.

I point to the lady’s nose and say, “What’s that?”

Mama slaps at my hand. Surprised, I move away from her and put my fingers in my mouth.
Why did Mama hit me?

Yellow Lady kneels down in front of me and takes my hand and lets me touch the hoop in her nose. Oh, and see, she’s got a hole in her nose too. I don’t know how it got there, but the hoop is pretty, and I like it very much. Yellow Lady smells like cinnamon and aloe.

Naava comes out from her weaving to see the ladies. She grasps at the lady’s robes shyly, and the lady smiles at her.

Naava says to Mama, “Feel them. They’re so soft.”

Mama claps her hands. “Aya, darling, will you bring some honey water and some figs?” But she never looks away from the ladies.

Yellow Lady looks at Aya, who is moving toward her pantry, and her face turns white like Goat’s mouth. She makes some strange clicking noises at the other ladies, and they frown and chatter like crickets. Yellow Lady shoos Aya away with her hand, and Aya looks upset and all confused and limps into the shadows.

Yellow Lady smiles and bows. Mama bows too and shows the lady with her hands that she and her other ladies should sit on the reed mats. They do, except for a lady with big bosoms. She lifts her hands to the sky, like she’s trying to hold it up. She tilts her face up to the sun and closes her eyes and begins to moan and sing at the same time. It sounds like sheep’s bleating and crow’s crowing, all rolled into one. Her chin wobbles. She sways back and forth, back and forth. After a long time, she puts down her hands and brings out a knife from the folds of her robe.

I can’t help it. I gasp and move closer to Mama, and she pulls me tight against her. But the knife is flashing in the sun, and suddenly it slices across the throat of the lamb Bosom Lady has brought with her. The lamb’s eyes grow still, its head flops, and blood spurts
everywhere.
I can’t look. I hide my face in Mama’s robe.

Mama squeezes my shoulder, then stands up. She holds her hand out and says, “Oh, that isn’t necessary. I shall bring us some bread and dates.”

The ladies ignore Mama. Two of them turn the lamb over on its back and stretch its legs out. Bosom Lady cuts right through the sheep’s belly, and its insides poke out. They look like curled-up snakes. She reaches in
and pulls out the sheep’s liver, brown and steaming. Her hands are smeared with blood.

I scrunch up my face and whisper, “Mama, what’s she doing?”

Bosom Lady lays the liver on the ground in front of her gingerly and plunks herself down in front of it. She sighs deeply. The lamb’s carcass is forgotten.

Naava looks at Mama and says, “Should I get Aya to cook it?”

Mama shakes her head. Her eyes are as big as ostrich’s eggs.

Naava gasps and says, “Does she expect us to eat it… like that?”

Mama looks like she might be sick. She says, “Please, let me get some figs.”

Yellow Lady motions for Mama to sit, and she does. Naava and I do too. Mama holds me close. I can feel her heart beat fast fast fast underneath her robes.

Bosom Lady leans over the liver and grunts like a boar. She cuts into the liver, a long straight line, then looks up at Naava, at me, at Mama, and back down again. She studies that lump of liver for a very long time.

Yellow Lady puts her hand on her belly and points to Mama.

Mama nods and says, “With child.”

“Wit chile,” says Yellow Lady, like she’s got something in her mouth.

Suddenly Bosom Lady claps her hands. A hawk calls from the sky. I’m afraid of Bosom Lady. Bosom Lady is big and ferocious and carries a long shiny knife. Mama squeezes me like Aya presses her dates.

Bosom Lady clucks like a pigeon and points to Naava.

Naava looks at Mama. Mama looks at Naava and crinkles up her forehead. She shakes her head at Bosom Lady and shrugs her shoulders.

Bosom Lady points to Naava again and makes a cradle in front of her like she’s rocking a baby, but there
is
no baby.

Mama lets go of me. She waves her hands, no no no, and puts them on her belly. “She has to stay here, to take care of the baby,” she says. “I cannot spare her. She does too much work around here.”

“What?” says Naava, her mouth opening like a cave. “They want
me
?”

Mama hushes Naava and whispers to her, “I’m not sure.”

Bosom Lady claps her hands again and frowns. She makes little circles in the air, and the other women bring out sacks of wonderful things from
inside their robes, which they spill out onto the table—bracelets and jars and wine and cloth.

Mama says, “I think they want a caretaker … for their children, and I’m afraid what will happen if I say no. We’ll stall them a bit and talk to your father.”

Naava’s face wrinkles up, then it’s flat again. I hear her
hmmph,
a
hmmph
that means she is thinking about things. Then Naava grabs Mama’s arm and says, “I’ll go. Tell them I’ll go.” She’s smiling and nodding and begging. “I’ll learn how they make their cloth.
Please,
Mother.”

“We don’t even know them,” says Mama. The ladies get more excited. They talk louder and reach for Naava. Mama wrings her hands. Then she turns to the ladies and points to me. She says, “Her. She’s a hard worker, that one.” To Naava, she hisses, “Leave this to me.”

I stare at Mama, and my eyes get real big.
Why, what is Mama doing? She is giving me to them and not even asking me if I want to go!
I can see Mama talking with her hands, I can hear her words, but this is not good, not good at all, and I have a scary feeling, right here in my stomach, and I press down on it, to make it go away.

Naava is staring at Mama too. She grinds her teeth. “She’s only a child,” she says to Mama.

“Yes, Mama,” I say. “I don’t want to go. I have to get dung for Aya’s fire, and, look, see?” I point to my collecting pot. “I’m making presents for the baby.” I point to the clay pots around the fire. “And I have to keep making pots for Aya. She needs me.”

Mama ignores me. She keeps her eyes on the visitors and says, “She knows how to milk a goat, pick up dung, make sturdy pottery. She’ll do nicely.”

I see Naava’s eyes. They are like two points of fire. My words rush out of me, fast, like the water in the river. “Naava can go, Naava can go.” Mama is getting blurry, and my cheeks are all wet.

Naava pulls on Mama’s elbow again. “You
know
I can do a better job.”

Mama looks at her and says, “Naava, not now. I will not discuss this with you now. Go on.” She waves her hand across the courtyard toward Naava’s weaving room.

Naava’s mouth makes an O shape. She stands up and crosses her arms. She leans over and spits on me.

Mama turns and reaches up to grab Naava’s hand. She squeezes it tightly, to hurt her.

Naava squeals and tries to pull away, but she can’t.

Mama squeezes tighter and says, “You will do as I say.” She lets go of Naava’s hand, and Naava sighs loudly enough for everyone to hear. She keeps sighing as she goes back to her weaving room.

Mama is still pointing at me, and I want to hide so no one can see me. All of the four ladies are around me now. They smile and laugh and pinch my cheeks. They babble to one another, and I can’t understand what they’re saying.

With a stick, Bosom Lady makes the mark of a half-moon in the dirt at her feet and circles it.

“Half-moon,” Mama says, and nods. “She will be ready.”

I can’t see all the gifts they give to Mama, but when Bosom Lady shoves a sparkly black stone in my hand, all shiny like a raven’s wing, I remember Mama’s precious black seeds in the jar under the ground. Mama’s secrets, wrapped up so tight no one can find them.

Eden is a distant memory, yet it persists, under the skin, like a
mosquito bite. It has been so long ago now that Adam and I lived in the Garden that, often, I wonder if it was just a passing dream or a figment of my imagination. The mind is a tricky thing. Perhaps I have made the Garden grander over time. Perhaps I myself, in body and soul, have changed.

I think it is the latter. It is natural to treat something or someone with disdain—your husband, for instance—if you have changed, if you have embarked upon a different road than he has, because he is stagnant and you are renewed. Or consider this: If you have left a place of contentment and naïveté, then life will seem harder than before, because you
know
more, you
feel
more, not necessarily because anything external has changed. You know that once you were happy; now you’re not. You know that once you were replete; now you’re not.

That is how it was with me.

I must go back even further.

I shall begin with the waking. In the dewy light of morning, with the shafts of light driving down through the Garden’s canopy, I woke on a bed of spongy moss, entwined with a warm, slumbering being. Of course, all of these things—moss, warmth, light—were just impressions I could not
name. I lay very still, absorbing this… thing … in front of me. As yet I had no self-perception, because I could not know myself except in relationship to something similar.

I now have names for everything I saw and felt. At that moment, I did not.

The silvery air was alive with birdsong and the thrum of insects, a triumphant chorus raised in joy, for me, for him, for this new union. It was as though the forest had a pulse, and I could feel it here, in my chest and in my bones. The wind raked through the clacking bamboo thicket, setting its leaves to quaking and rustling. The orchids clung with tentacled fastness to the bamboos, and their sweet, cloying smell wafted upon the breeze. There were so many kinds of green—light, dark, fuzzy, pointed— and enough color in the flowers and shrubbery to outdo any sunrise or sunset thereafter.

Adam shone.

That is the best I can describe it. He was different, somehow, than the trees and birdsong and colors and wind that surrounded me, perhaps more relevant to me, once I recognized our similarities. His skin and his face glowed as though the light of the sun itself were a garment. He was a garden spring, a refreshing well of water. He was a tree, strong and able, with a bunched force across his arms and chest. The hair on his head and chin and chest was dark and clumped, like clusters of dates, his nose long and sloped. His lips were apricots, sweet and honeyed. I confess, I licked them with my tongue, gently, as you would a dripping peach. I felt the very heat of him, and though I could not know
why,
I knew I wanted to wrap him about me like a cloak, to keep him close, for always, to make him mine.

He snored a little and caught himself now and then, when a fly landed on his nose and caused him to twitch.

I loved him.

I know, it is all so confusing. How could I love him if I had only just looked upon him? Do not ask me to explain, for it is beyond reason. In love, there is a little bit of peace, a little bit of pleasure, and a little bit of solidarity. What makes a bee love a rose? My heart brimmed over as a bromeliad does after a rain, and I knew he was mine. Later, I would have
to share him with the children, and as we grew into our roles as parents, we often forgot we started here, in the Garden.

Alone.

Content.

Adam opened his eyes, black as obsidian, and gazed into mine for the first time. He smiled and, with his finger, traced my lips and nose and eyebrows. My thighs grew warm; my belly clenched.

“So,” he said. “You’ve come.” His voice was raspy from a long sleep. He glanced down where our bellies pressed together and drew me closer. “Elohim said you would.” His breath was musty, stale.

I must have looked confused, because he continued. “He said He would give me a companion, a friend, made from my very flesh, and He has done so. I did not know how He would do it.”