Eve (50 page)

One day, only seven days until the festival, I am showing Puabi how to hold a stylus. We are sitting cross-legged in the rectangle of shade made by the prince’s house, our backs up against the cool mud bricks. I demonstrate, then Puabi takes the stylus and tries to copy me.

“No,” I say pushing Puabi’s thumb down. “Like this. Good. Now draw
water.”

Puabi does, except her lines are straight like a stick.

“Like this,” I correct her, taking the stylus and drawing two waves, one on top of the other.

Just then the prince walks around the corner.

Puabi stands and hands me the stylus. She runs to greet the prince, yelling, “Papa, Papa.”

The prince laughs and swings her up into his arms.

I remember my father doing that to me, and I smile.

The prince turns to me and speaks in his own language, now that I know it. “I have something to ask you,” he says. “It is of critical importance.” He sets Puabi down and squeezes her cheeks. Looking down at her, he says, “I am thirsty, what
will
your poor father do?” and Puabi jumps up and down and says, “I get it. I get it.”

The prince nods and watches as Puabi runs back around the corner.

I straighten my robe and lay the wet tablet and stylus in my lap.

The prince sits down next to me and wraps his arms around his knees. He’s wearing a huge gold star around his neck, and it swings back and forth when he moves. I cannot take my eyes off it for a long time.

“Your sister Naava,” the prince says.

I look at the prince’s smooth face. It reminds me of Turtle’s wide round shell. I want to touch it, to feel its softness. But I do not.

“She has not been with a man, no?” says the prince.

I think this is a funny question. Of course Naava has been with lots of men—Father, Cain, and Abel—oh, yes, Jacan too. And she must have been with some of the men in the marketplace, because Balili said she visits the city.

The prince’s eyes look like the clay pellets that I make for Abel’s and Jacan’s slingshots—round and big. He laughs nervously and says, “What I mean is, has she lain with a man?”

I am happy to give the prince any information he’s looking for. After all, I do not want to give him or Ahassunu any reason to throw me out into the desert where I could be eaten by the wicked lion. “Well, she sleeps with me and Jacan and—”

The prince interrupts. “Jacan is…” He pauses for me to answer.

“My brother,” I answer. “My
twin
brother. He came out first, then it was me. Mama says that I was very kind to her when I was born—”

“You were saying about your sister, whom she has lain with,” says the prince.

I think the prince is rude to interrupt me. I am telling him very important things about myself, things that he should know if I am taking care of his children.

“Cain and Abel sleep outside mostly, so I don’t know if she ever sleeps with them,” I tell him.

“Mmm,” says the prince.

I shake my head. I don’t think that Naava has ever spent the night in the city.

“What about the blood between her legs?” says the prince.

My mouth goes like this:
O.
“Is something the matter with Naava?” I ask.

The prince laughs. “No, certainly not, I am just wondering if she has had her first month yet.”

“She has had many months,” I tell him. “She is older than Aya, and Aya is older than me. Wait a moment, I will tell you how many months Naava is.” I take up the stylus and make bird scratches in the wet clay, moving my lips as I count. I look up.

The prince is studying my face, his lips twitching like Mongoose’s tail when Mongoose is getting ready to pounce on a snake.

“She is about one six … um, one hundred and sixty-eight months.” I hold up the tablet to show my countings to the prince. Balili would be proud of me.

Puabi comes around the corner with a mug in the shape of a lion in her hands. She walks slowly, so as not to spill anything.

The prince takes the mug and says to me, “You’ve been most helpful. I’ll tell Zenobia that you deserve a sweet.”

Puabi looks up. “Me too?” she says.

“You too, little one,” says the prince. He sips his beer through a reed stalk and waves good-bye.

Puabi and I wave back. Puabi says, “Mama say your sister is a rat. She will be sorry if she comes here.”

Adam’s fever broke after two days.

Abel made Adam a cane out of a small poplar tree, and Adam walked with it every morning, grimacing and grunting like a boar. It was painful to watch.

Adam remembered nothing I had said to him in those first few dark hours, and I did not reiterate my feelings.

I felt it a continual challenge to hold on to the few lucid memories of that night; everything seemed so different and harder to sort out when I was in the thick of my normal routine.

Abel, the dear heart, was with us more in those difficult times. He returned home each night rather than staying out on the steppes with his flocks. He was concerned, I knew, about the lions presence and what harm it could do to me and his sisters.

On the night that Adam’s fever broke, as I was blowing out the oil lamps and checking on the girls, I heard, from the stables, Abel singing in his low voice. I stopped, stood still, and the melody washed over me like a much-needed cool breeze. Oh, how I had missed his singing!

Tears sprang up in my eyes, and I sat down slowly upon the dirt, to let his song fill me. I lifted my wet face up to the dark luminous sky pocked
with stars and felt such an overwhelming oneness with everything around me that I could not stop crying.

Call me a fool, but then you have never been overwhelmed with wonder like that. It was enough to make me believe in Elohim, enough to make me feel there was a higher purpose for my life than the drudgery, the everydayness I so dreaded.

Well, almost.

So many betrayals, like bolts of lightning. How savage and ruthless
they can be.

Tell me this, if you can: How do you stop a river once it has the force of melting snows behind it? So determined is Cain to have his revenge, so determined is Naava to be loved, so determined is Dara to belong, so determined is Mother to find happiness, so determined is Father to unify his family, that their rushing river is bound to overflow its banks and sweep all the trust and loyalty away.

Ah, me. So it is. I am called upon once more to right the wrongs of a thoughtless family member.

After all, if it’s not me, no one else will do it. I must deliver Mother from an ill done to her, for Father has not once uttered an apology for selling Mother’s garden. Thank the starry heavens, he did not think to barter for my herb plot! He has accepted Mother’s ministrations with not one grateful word or even a single regretful look. He is blind not to see Mother’s love. He is deaf not to hear her words of apology for a misdirected life.

So. I must resort to stealing. Not by choice, but by necessity.

I am the steady hand of punishment. I am the consistent provider of food. I am the knowledgeable mender of ailments. I am the merciless killer of snakes. I am the girl who will not learn her limits. Ever.

This is
my
story, whether I like it or not. Do not pity me. I rather like the challenge.

In the end, I had to tell Mother everything, for she wouldn’t have known where all the seeds came from, and in mentioning it to Father, she would have been informed that it was because of the good hand of Elohim. Now, I do not mind if Elohim gets praise and adoration for the things
He
has done, but if He receives recognition for something
I
have done, that is where I draw the line.

I chose the cover of night, when the last person had departed Mother’s garden to return to the city. The line of torches was a yellow snake winding northward toward the main gates. I caught faint bits of conversation and laughter upon the breeze when it was blowing my way, but other than that, the torches looked like strange little unassisted flames dancing above the plains. I watched until the last bobbing light became a vague circle of brightness on the horizon, then made my way past the gardens boulders—which the men from the city had rolled thunderously off their carts to enforce their admonishments to “stay away”—and entered the chatter of the garden. So many noises—frogs, birds, crickets, leaves, and water. I should have liked to rest my head awhile, but, no, I had come on a mission, and I was going to see it through. I am Aya the Brave, Aya the Stouthearted, Aya the Persistent, but you already knew that.

I set my oil lamp down on the ground and lit it with glowing embers from a clay pot. This way, if I could not see by the light of the moon—which was growing each night to its fullness for the festival—I could bring my collections back to the lamp to identify them before placing them in my baskets, so as to assure an even assortment of seeds.

The fragrance of the flowering trees and shrubs was like the sweetest of rains. So many plants and trees were fruiting now, their pods bursting open, their fruit ripe and broken upon the ground, that I was able to fill my baskets with a wide selection of seeds, all waiting to be dried and planted in Mother’s new garden.

My leg bothered me little while I was there, for I was keenly aware of the hallowedness of the place. Most seeds had come from the Garden of Elohim.
Every plant spoke of its Creator. This was what I missed most, the awe that flowed through my body when I entered this place. It was a green-leafed respite away from the harshness and bitterness of life.

Except that the city people had cut some of the vegetation back, ravaging the sheer wildness of it. They had trimmed and shaped some of the bushes. I found several birds’ nests, torn apart and discarded, on one of the paths. I discovered a hare, bloodied and fly-covered, caught in a woven reed trap, that they had forgotten. The waste! The profanity! They gave no regard or respect to their environment. Woe be to them when Elohim finds out. That is all I will say on the matter.

All in all, I gathered enough seeds to have difficulty carrying them back. It was then that my leg ached and my shoulders cried out. I hummed Mother’s and Father’s song—not loudly, of course, because I could not keep a tune— and somehow it bolstered me up so that I could make it back to the courtyard without mishap.