Eve (62 page)

The sudden absence of our lost ones was overwhelmingly difficult— emotionally, of course, but more than that, logistically The hours needed to pack up all our belongings, prepare the necessary foodstuffs, and keep the animals milked and fed made us all intolerant of one another.

In the end, Father shooed three-quarters of the flocks into the steppes, because we could not maintain them. He said, “Maybe they will accept this gift as payment for the prince’s death.” He ran his hands through his hair and beard, and I looked at Mother, and Mother looked at me. We knew he did not truly believe that we would be forgiven that easily, but just his saying it made it seem real. It was a severe loss for us.

Elohim has answered my prayer. Oh, no, I have not been healed. I am still crooked. But I am confident that He has shown me that I am as He intended me to be. I do not understand it, for I would have liked
not
to be crooked, but after all that has transpired I am better able to be content.

Not every day, mind you, but
most
days.

I have an idea, which I very much like, and as I ponder it I think it a viable thought that simply reinforces all the pieces of Mother’s story.

Here’s what I think. The Garden was not a place of perfection—
perfect
meaning no death, no crookedness, no anything-that-we-perceive-as-bad—as Mother described it. Elohim had said that Father and Mother would have to
subdue
the earth. The word
subdue
indicates to me that there were hardships that needed to be overcome—sicknesses and pain, maybe? I remember too that Elohim had said to Mother that her pain in childbirth would
increase,
meaning that there was already a bit of pain to begin with.

Oh, I am reticent to say these things—after all, am I simply believing it because I
want
it to be so?

Maybe Elohim created the world in great diversity,
including
the crippled and the blind and the deaf,
including
creatures that would be born and experience pain and die, and He said it was
good.
Then, in the Great Disconnect, when Mother and Father desired wisdom, their
perceptions
of what was and was not acceptable changed and dimmed.

Elohim did not desire for Mother and Father to see or experience evil, but in their choosing, they now
knew
evil, and it colored how they saw, felt, tasted, heard, and touched.

And more fantastically—bear with me—
if
this were true,
if
it is our vision that is discolored, then, oh joy, we might be able to regain what we have lost, by altering the way we see the world, the recognition that it is much bigger and brighter than we realize. Life can be
better.

So. This is what it means for me.

Elohim thinks I am beautiful the way I am. I cannot change my parents’ or siblings’ thoughts or manner toward me. In fact, I should not try but should rest in the knowledge that Elohim created me this way for a purpose, just like He has made others for a different purpose.

I should like to know what prayer is, because it seems a tedious thing when I am the only one talking. And I should like to know also how you know when it’s been answered, if the answer is simply a
realization
like the one above, of which I’ve just spoken. It is not so clear as I would like it to be.

I might have been expected to choose one of the following explanations: 1) The lion did not kill me because I ran faster than Goat; 2) The
lion did not kill me because Elohim willed it; 3) The lion did not kill me because Elohim
made
me run faster than Goat (or
made
Goat run slower); 4) Everything has a greater purpose: For instance, by maiming Goat, Cain unwittingly saved me from the lion.

These choices only knot up my thoughts.

True, I had been trying to
change
Elohim’s heart in my prayers—the fact that He may yield to my request, or at least consider it, is a hopeful thing, don’t you think? Then to pray makes sense to me.

But sometimes I wonder if it works both ways—while I am asking Him to
change
His heart, He is wanting me to
know
His heart, and where the two merge, there I have been given my answer.

Cain and Naava were shooting stars, fallen to earth. Naava
knew this.

One thing had led to another. She connected herself to Cain, and Cain had been damned, so they were inextricably linked in a mire they couldn’t climb out of.

She never could convince Cain that what she had done with the prince was legitimate—after all, they
had
been married. Cain heard only what he wanted to hear, saw only what he wanted to see, and that was the way it was. Always. Never, in all the years Cain and she were together, had she seen him alter from that path. It was a nuisance—
more
than a nuisance, to be sure, for he looked at her in only one way, as a traitor. He punished her for it.

That black night, lit by a yellow moon, Cain and Naava escaped downriver, wading along the shore among the bulrushes and cattails for an unbearable distance and coming out on the opposite shore to throw their pursuers off.

Naava’s heart and mind were numb. She was no longer beloved princess of the city, and now she followed a murderer—a murderer who was the father of her child. Naava knew that Adam and Eve would take the brunt
of Cain’s punishment, and she was glad of it. To say all of this happened because of Adam and Eve was simplifying things, but for a long time Naava blamed her parents. Eve was especially to blame for giving Naava’s secret away before she could say it on her own.

Cain and Naava traveled south to the sea, thinking that they would follow its coastline, that where there was water, they could live. Un for tunately, the sea was rife with salt. They could not even drink it. What they thought would nourish their plants did nothing but cause them to wilt and die.

Cain and Naava then moved eastward, toward the Tigris River, forever hungry and always thirsty.

Naava had a girl child and named her Miri,
bitterness.
Miri’s head was covered with black down, and her eyes were her grandmother s—blue like the uninhibited sky. She screamed constantly, and Naava cried along with her many a night because Miri was so wearying, so demanding. Naava, in a half-delirious moment, remembered Aya saying that dill tea was good for a colicky baby, and it was this that saved Naava from her great depression.

Naava wanted then to return home—in fact, she begged Cain to do this one thing for her—but Cain was adamant that her family had moved on and it would be futile to try to find them.

Cain talked incessantly about building a city and naming it after the son she would bear. Naava told him she did not want to have more children. They were a headache and a heartache. Cain did not listen, of course, and in due time, Naava was again with child.

Then Naava had a boy child and named him Enoch,
to dedicate
or
to begin,
for she and Cain were beginning a life together, for better or for worse—mostly worse.

To think that Aya, crippled Aya, may have had a better life than she did made Naava want to bite her nails.

Naava saw Aya two more times in the years before she returned to Eve’s bedside. The first was when Cain and Naava were living in the southern plains, near the sea, in tents made from dyed hides, with their three children—they had added a girl by the name of Shachar, because she was born
at
dawn.
This was before they had settled down in one place, and truly they were an unsophisticated lot. Later they lived in their northeast city of Enoch, in rooms adorned with basalt columns and limestone carvings and luscious silks and decorated walls. But back then, Naava was still tending the fire, cradling her littlest in a shoulder hammock, when up from the desert arose a dust cloud so thick, Naava thought an army of people were approaching.

Cain went out to greet them.

He said later that he spoke to a man, a man who claimed to be the leader of his clan, a shepherd of many flocks, carrying on a lucrative business with the cities to the north. The shepherd wanted to know if Cain had any need for plucked wool, and Cain, in true form, had declined the offer.
What was he thinking?
Naava had built a makeshift loom, and she needed more wool, to be sure, but her husband did not consider this. He had been thinking only of his infernal city. With a stick, he continually scratched plans of walls and buildings and temples into the sand outside their tents, plans that were erased when the winds came. When Naava asked him, half jokingly, how he was going to build a city on rubbed-out dreams, he said, as he tapped his head with his forefinger, “It’s all in here.”

Naava had gone into the tent with the children, remembering Adam’s long-ago warning that you never knew if a stranger was friend or foe. Upon pushing aside the door flap and peering out, Naava saw her sister. Aya’s face had grown long and more narrow, like a gazelles. The skin around her eyes showed her age, but the thing Naava noticed most was that Aya had a peaceful glow, almost as if she was glad of her life, glad of her circumstances. Naava had never known Aya to be glad of anything, and it made her wonder what exactly Aya possessed.