Eve (6 page)

“There is another one of you?” I said. I heard my voice, like an echo, and it confused me for a moment.
What was this flow of breath that formed itself into odd, staccato sounds?
How strange it felt!
And how was it that I could understand Adam’s breath?

Adam chortled. He was giddy now. “Before, I was a stale pool; now I am a rushing river. You are bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. You are woman; I am man.”

I did not understand all that he was saying; his words overlapped so. It seemed that I was a planned thing, something dreamed up by Adam and this Elohim. I understood that I was no longer
with
Adam; I was
for
Adam. It was a huge disappointment to me, and I instinctively recoiled. At that moment, I couldn’t have told you what
disappointment
was. I simply felt different than I had moments before, as if all the gladness was emptied out of me and poured upon the mossy ground.

He looked puzzled. He asked what was wrong.

I explained as best I could, but he only laughed at me and pulled me back into the folds of his arms.

“Truly, you jest,” Adam said. “We were made
for each other.
Elohim says—”

“Who is this Elohim?” I asked, perturbed that Adam should have another friend.

“Elohim is…” Adam paused and studied my face. “Elohim is the one
who created this garden and everything in it.” He looked up, through the tree branches, then back at me. “Elohim made me from a handful of dust. You, from myself.” He pointed to his side.

“Me? From you?” I said. I looked down at his abdomen, at mine, back to his, incredulous. His abdomen looked darker than mine, but still it was smooth, unbroken. “How?”

Adam’s eyebrows came together like two caterpillars nudging noses. He sat up and felt his body. “I don’t know. I don’t feel any different.” Between his legs, his sex was like a wilted branch, I noticed, so unlike my own. His chest was flatter and hairier than mine.

He stared at me, taking in my entire length.

I was not embarrassed. Rather, I fully enjoyed his obvious pleasure.

Here is the strange thing: Although my body ached to be embraced, there was this breach between us, which I shall call
respect
for lack of a better term. It was as though we recognized that there were other things worthy of sorting out before we relished each other physically.

Does this make sense?

Looking back on it now, it was as though we understood that we wanted to
know
each other first, then abandon ourselves in each other, which would, in turn, cause a vulnerability that would only enhance the relationship we already had. Our physical drive was only a facet of the whole
us—
simply an extension, you might say, of the depth of our feeling. If our love were a tree, then our physical drive would be a branch or a root—giving life certainly but, even more than that, providing a different form of expression than, perhaps, a leaf or a fruit.

How did we know that?

I know not. But it was there, in both of our hearts.

So it was not until later that we drank our fill from each other.

I was sitting on a grassy mound in a field, feeding a sparrow from my hand, when Adam came up behind me and shooed the sparrow away. Surprised, I looked up at him. “Why?” I said. “It’s beak, it was—”

Adam pushed me down the knoll and fell on top of me. He laughed.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I have seen the animals Being One,” he said, his voice quickening. His fingers ran through my hair, over my nipples, and, oh, down my thighs.

“Being One?” I said, confused.

“Yes,” he said. He pushed up with his arms and adjusted his sex, which had grown, like a roll of warm bread pressed between us.

“What is it?” I said, alarmed. “Why has it changed?”

Adam laughed and rolled off me. “Turn over,” he said.

I did.

He lay on top of me, on my back, and patted my legs apart with his knees. “The animals. They do it like this.” He reached for the slipperiness between my legs, and as he probed, a warm ache spread from my groin to my back. I felt him enter me then, and it was an odd sensation, like the depths of me were being plumbed. He moved gently. “Ah,” he said. He groaned, as if with pleasure.

I felt only squashed. “No,” I cried.

Adam grew still. “I am hurting you?”

I shoved him off and turned. “Can we not do it facing each other?”

Adam looked at me blankly.

“I want to look at you. See your face.”

Hope flickered in Adam’s eyes once again, and he quickly slid on top of me.

And here I will try to be as faithful to my feelings as I can. I was utterly terrified and wholly astonished. That we were pressed
together.
At first I felt torn asunder; the pain was unexpected. But just as rain is replaced by sunlight, the pain shifted into slow, pleasurable waves across my belly—so pleasurable, in fact, that I felt I must hold on lest I disappear altogether. It was in this twilit, half-there place that I realized the sincerity—the rightness—of
us,
Adam and me. I should have been breathless with exertion, but all I felt was a deep tranquillity. All I could see were Adam’s eyes, which spoke of love and desire and passion.

I held him close. I tightened and flexed against him and wrapped my legs about him. I caressed his skin. He bent to kiss me, and his kisses were as flower petals, his touch was as shade and water, and, oh, then I, too, shuddered with delight. Such a fire as ours could never be quenched! I felt as though I were plunged under a waterfall, breathless at the cool rush of water and delirious with the fullness of it all. I found my pleasure, and it left me exhausted and happy.
Oh, if this is Elohim’s doing, I want more of it,
I thought.

Adam said later that he had seen the animals Being One as he named them, and it brought a tremendous loneliness and sadness upon him. What is life if you have no one to share it with?

Afterward, we basked in the coolness of the Garden. Adam handed me a small orange orb, and I took it, rolling it in my hands.

“What is it?” I asked. It’s flesh was bumpy and waxy.

Adam looked at it and shrugged. “Give it a name.” He showed me how to put it to my mouth. I did, but it was bitter and pithy, and I winced. “That might be one you have to peel,” he said. He grabbed it out of my hands and dug his thumb deep into the fruit, tearing away the fibrous outsides. “There,” he said, handing it back. “Try that.” And this time it was softer, much sweeter, and the juice dripped down my chin. It broke away in sections, separated by membranes, and I laughed to think of all there was to learn.

“Mmmm,” I said. “Are they all this sweet?”

We did this with green tender fruits, and red tart fruits, and brown mushy fruits, for that’s what Adam called them. I told him we should make distinctions between the fruits, so we called them avocados and pomegranates and figs. As we tasted and named, Elohim appeared.

I have described the Garden to my children as lush and inviting and never-ending, but this moment of meeting Elohim—of Elohim Himself— is always harder to explain, for I have not the proper words for it, even now, and I do not want Him to appear as a comical oddity. His raiments were as the lights of the sky, one hundred times over, and His exuberant presence filled the air like myrrh. Even the plants and animals seemed to stretch toward Him, as if they could suckle directly from His outstretched arms. It was as though He was in the heavens and on earth all at once, even though He was there, in bodily form, in front of Adam and me.

“Adam,” He said, “you have found your counterpart.”

Adam nodded exuberantly, and I found myself growing warm all over again. “Thank you,” said Adam, gripping my hand tightly, as though I might be taken away.

Elohim smiled at me, and for me, it was like a thousand flowers opening for the first time. “Come. I want to show you something.”

I approached Him slowly.

“Be not afraid,” He said in a low voice.

I came to stand by His side. I held my breath, I think, out of sheer awe of Him.

“Do you like the Garden?” He asked.

I nodded. I could not, at first, find my words—
how had I spoken so easily with Adam?

Elohim gestured to everything around us. “I’ve made
everything
for you—the birds in the sky, the beasts in the field, the fish in the sea, every tree, every plant, everything for you.” Here, He bent over and picked up a handful of dirt. Elohim took great pleasure in it, as a potter would. You could see that. He held it up and let it tumble through His fingers—or what looked to me like fingers. Then again, I could only know Him in relationship to what I knew so far, and that was as someone like Adam and me. Now I’m not so sure what I saw.

Elohim turned to Adam. “Plant your seed, Adam, so that you may be as prolific as the lilies of the field.” He touched my cheek. “Blessed woman, you will be mother of all, queen over dominions. Work in the Garden to keep it, maintain it. It will provide you with endless inspiration, for I want you to be happy.” Elohim’s eyes were soft, kind. “Cleave to each other— you are as one flesh now.”

“That’s it,” cried Adam. He turned to me, his face glowing. “That is your name.”

“Name?” I said. I’m sure I looked perplexed.

Adam cocked his head, thinking. “I am Adam,
adamah,
earth. You are …” He closed his eyes. “Eve … mother of all living.”

Elohim smiled. He seemed pleased with Adam’s naming.

I offered Elohim one of the figs, full of sweetness, but He refused.
Did He eat?
I did not know.

“
There is one thing,” He said. “You know I have given you everything in this Garden to eat of, to enjoy, even the Tree of Life.” He pointed to the center of the Garden, to a tree with delicate magenta blossoms and heavy green foliage. It blazed as if on fire, its petals pooled with brightness. Here, He frowned. “But see
that
tree, there, next to the river?” He pointed to a
tall, thorny tree with green-blue fanlike leaves that gushed out of the top of it like a fountain. Orbs of red-brown fruit clung to one another, clustered high up on the trunk.

Adam and I nodded sleepily, for we had greatly exerted ourselves in our Being One.

“Of this one tree, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, you may
not
eat, because on the day that you eat, you will surely die.”

“Die?” I said.

Elohim thought awhile. He stooped to pick up a dead fig branch from the ground. It’s dry, wilted leaves chattered. He gave it a hard look and twirled it between His thumb and fingers. He continued. “This twig represents one form of death, or dying, in which this part of the tree is not connected to its life source anymore—the tree, the ground, and its roots—so it withers and dies. There is another sort of death, my children, that comes… with all this.” He waved His hand around to include all the splendor about us. Elohim looked off in the distance. “It causes me much consternation.”

Adam sat down at Elohim’s feet and looked up at Him. “You are Elohim,” Adam said. “You can do anything. You are not bound by anyone.”

I sat by Adam, leaning into him, my arms embracing my legs. I would come to find that whenever Elohim was present, my heart stilled, and although I had questions to ask, I did not feel an urgency to them—meaning simply that the questions did not burrow holes or tunnels in my heart. That would happen much later, when I felt I could
not
ask Him.

Elohim appeared sad, somewhat reserved, and contemplative. “By creating you, I am bound, in that I cannot hold you fast. I cannot make decisions for you. I cannot make you love me.” He threw the fig branch on the ground and brushed His hands together, to rid them of dirt. “Choices have consequences—some desirable, some not. You, of course, will not understand this until you
have
to make a choice.”

Adam sat cross-legged, open and free, almost as if he were too familiar with Elohim. I watched him with interest but kept my ear turned toward Elohim.

“There is another type of death, and it has to do with your vision, or, rather, your perception of things. Right now you have a greater desire for
me than for your passions or your desires. You trust me, and I trust you. A beautiful and fulfilling place to be.” He looked at Adam, then I felt His gaze on me. “But soon you will chafe at this. It cannot be helped. And you will have to make a choice.” His voice became softer, like water in a brook. “That is why the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil must exist.”

Adam jumped to his feet. “Elohim! Why … How could we grow tired of such a place?” He held his hand out to help me up. “We love what You have made.”

“Yes,” I said. “We do. And You’ve given us each other.”

Elohim wore an expression I can only describe as grief. “Yes,” He said, “that I did.” With this last statement, Elohim’s face shifted, and I could have sworn, on the validity of Eden, that it was due to His jealousy of Adam’s and my new closeness with each other. Elohim did not have such a relationship, and I wondered if, watching us, He felt the way Adam had felt watching the animals Being One. I thought upon this later and wondered why, if He could make me for Adam, did He not make a partner for Himself? Or was He already the total embodiment of both male and female?

I went to Elohim and put my hand in His. This, too, was an indescribable feeling, which I will forever be trying to interpret. I felt a pulsating radiance, a blinding surge of energy through the core of my belly—but I err, because this description sounds terrifying, and it wasn’t. It was an intimate awareness of my attachment to Him, to all things around me. Everything here existed because of Elohim, the Great Gift Giver, and I was His, and He was mine. I would be
known.

It seems silly now. But, as if to mock my unbelief, I have had these same fleeting moments on a number of occasions in my life outside the Garden. Certainly every time I lost a child. It was as though He joined me in my mourning—every bird sang my sorrow, every breeze carried my pain.