Rachel and Leah (Women of Genesis) (22 page)

“We’re used to women who wash themselves occasionally,” said Terah.

And since that category didn’t include either of their wives, Zilpah could only conclude that well-washed women was at least one of the pleasures of the city that they couldn’t keep away from.

“We want you to tell us,” said Nahor, “about Jacob.”

“What do you think
I
know?” she asked. “You were there when he dined with your father, just as I was.”

“And placed far enough away that we heard almost nothing, whenever they spoke quietly,” said Nahor.

“You were right in their laps,” said Terah.

“Not to mention washing his feet,” said Nahor.

“If it was just his feet you washed,” said Terah.

“Reuel was there. Ask him.”

“We’re asking you,” said Nahor. “Not just for what you’ve already seen, but for what you might see in the future. Reuel is going to assign you to attend to Rachel, so you’ll have plenty of opportunity to learn what Jacob is planning.”

“He’s planning to marry Rachel,” said Zilpah. “Surely someone already told you that.”

Terah reached out and casually slapped her. Not hard, but it was humiliating, and something that Laban would not have tolerated if he had been there. So this was what camp life would be like when Laban died.

“He’s a younger son,” said Terah. “And he earned his brother’s hatred. Why? Because he stole his birthright. You don’t think we’ve heard stories? They fly like birds across the miles. There’s a reason his name is Jacob, ‘supplanter.’ He steals things that belong to others.”

“How can marrying Rachel deprive you of your inheritance? He’s entering into service with your father, not getting adopted by him.”

“Yes, very humble of him,” said Nahor. “But he’s full of tricks, this one. We know friends of his brother Esau’s. And we want to make sure he doesn’t take us by surprise.”

“Rachel’s so besotted with him,” said Terah, “that I think if he wanted her to, she’d poison us.”

Which just showed how little they knew their own sister. Rachel liked Jacob, but she wasn’t possessed by him. If anything, it was the other way around.

“So you want me to watch them and see if they’re plotting something?” asked Zilpah. “What if they’re not? Or what if they are, but they never show a sign of it in front of me?”

“You’re not the only friend we have,” said Nahor.

Good thing, thought Zilpah, because if I were, the total of your friends would be zero.

“Just watch, that’s all,” said Terah. “And if you get a chance, you might, you know, earn his trust yourself.”

“His trust?” she asked.

“His
intimate
trust,” Terah explained.

“He doesn’t look at me that way.”

“Do you think we’re stupid?” said Nahor. “Every man looks at you that way. You make it impossible for them to do anything else.”

“Then Jacob does the impossible,” said Zilpah.

“If the opportunity arises,” said Nahor.

“No man can wait seven years without finding
some
woman,” said Terah. “Unless there’s something wrong with him.”

“And when he looks for a woman,” said Nahor, “and you’re right there, let’s not have any foolishness about your virtue being saved for your husband.”

“The best you can hope for is to be some man’s concubine,” said Terah.

“We can promise you decent treatment, if you serve us in this,” said Nahor.

And, therefore, the opposite of decent treatment if she refused.

“I am your humble and obedient servant in all things,” said Zilpah.

“You
are
still a virgin, aren’t you?” said Nahor.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Terah. “Do you expect her to tell you the truth, either way?”

“I am,” whispered Zilpah.

“You see?” said Terah.

“All I’m saying is, keep it that way,” said Nahor. “A man like this Jacob, who casts his eye on children like Rachel, he may only want virgins.”

“Yes,” said Zilpah. “I plan to keep it that way.” I plan to give my virginity only to the man who takes me away from this camp and out of your power.

“Well, good, then,” said Nahor. “That’s all we wanted.”

“Not quite all,” said Terah.

He leaned close to her. She shuddered, thinking he meant to kiss her, with his own baby on her shoulder, drooling on her neck.

“When you want to tell us something, go to Reuel and tell him you miss my baby and want to tend her again. Just try to do it on a day when one of us is in camp. Reuel will get word to us.”

“That’s just stupid,” said Zilpah.

Terah stiffened, and Nahor frowned.

“If
I
ask, then Reuel will know that I’m a spy, not a woman you make use of. Unless you want him to know.”

“She’s right,” said Nahor. “It only makes sense if
we
ask for her to tend the baby—so he’ll think we’re in the mood to have use of her.”

“Can he really think we’re so desperate as to want to soil ourselves with this unwashed she-goat?” asked Terah.

“That’s what we’re counting on,” said Nahor. “If anyone in the camp suspects that she’s anything more than that to us, that she’s actually in our confidence, then he’ll make sure she’s nowhere near him and Rachel, and we’ll have to find someone else.”

“All right,” said Terah. “Besides, maybe one day she’ll get caught in the rain and the dirt will get washed away and who knows? Maybe she’ll be worth the trouble of peeling off all those rags.”

To have them talk of her like this made her feel unclean in so many ways. She had always disliked them. Now she truly hated them, and feared them, too. This was the kind of men they were, the kind who enlist spies in their father’s own camp.

“He’s a clever one, this Jacob,” Nahor said. “You have to listen carefully because his plans might be well disguised. And men like him are suspicious, expecting other people to have secrets of their own.”

She almost laughed. They knew nothing of Jacob, with his almost childlike lack of deceit. They were describing themselves. Not that they were clever. But they thought they were. They suspected Jacob, not because of stories they heard, but because of what they knew they themselves would do.

In fact, it occurred to her for the first time that maybe the much-vaunted closeness between Nahor and his younger brother Terah wasn’t really more of the same. Love between brothers as a mask for something darker—Terah plotting that when Laban died, there would be only one son to inherit; and Nahor keeping him close so that he could act first, when the time came. Maybe Choraz had guessed this about his brothers, and that’s why he had begged his father to send him into service with a prince who made war instead of only tending sheep. So he’d be far away—or, if he came home, so he’d be trained as a warrior to fight and defend himself.

Once she knew that besides being drunkards and wastrels, they were also sly conspirators, she had to believe them capable of almost anything. The things they suspected Jacob of were a list of the kinds of things they thought of doing themselves.

So when Terah added, “The thing to watch for most is if he seems to be plotting against our father,” Zilpah’s blood ran cold.

“I’ll watch indeed,” she thought. I’ll watch
you
, and warn your father or Jacob or Rachel or
someone
if I think you’re actually readying yourselves to carry out such a plot as these you think Jacob capable of.

At least this one good thing: Neither of them kissed her
before leaving. Nor did they insult her intelligence by trying to pay her in city money. She could never spend it, after all—and if she tried, everyone would wonder how she got it. No, all they could offer her by way of enticement was a promise of good treatment later, and since their idea of good treatment was bound to be different from hers, they were promising her essentially nothing.

This was such a precarious situation—so much could go wrong—that for the first time in years she desperately wanted an ally. A protector. Not since she had first realized that her mother was as powerless as she was had she allowed herself to wish there were somewhere she could run for safety, for comfort, for advice.

Who? Could she tell Laban? If he believed her—and there was small chance of that, her word against his sons, with the two of them united as witnesses against her!—what could he do? What
would
he do even if he could?

Rachel? She was powerless herself, compared to her brothers. Not till Jacob was fully and truly her husband would he be able to act on her behalf.

Jacob himself?

Now, that would be a gamble, wouldn’t it? He seemed smart enough, but would he have the cleverness to hear her warning and bide his time, doing nothing that would indicate he had learned of the brothers’ plotting from her? She knew enough about the ways of powerful people to know that most such folk wouldn’t spare a thought for keeping
her
from harm. If Jacob confronted them with what she had said, it would end her life in this camp—either she would be expelled or so mistreated she’d have to run away.

But Jacob didn’t seem to be a confronter. He was a protector.
Hadn’t he gone after Bilhah, to protect her, to bring her back? And Bilhah was a nothing, a stranger, not even beautiful.

Did she dare to trust Jacob?

Did she dare
not
to?

B
ilhah brought the comb to Leah’s inner room, expecting to prepare her hair before they went to study with Jacob this morning. But Leah was still lying in bed. “My eyes hurt from yesterday’s reading,” she said.

“That’s why you should stop trying to read for yourself,” said Bilhah. “I was taught to read so you wouldn’t have to.”

“I like to see the words with my own eyes.”

“They’re written so small,” said Bilhah. “They’re not easy even for me.”

Leah sighed. “I don’t want to go today.”

“But Jacob is waiting,” said Bilhah.

Leah rolled over, turning her back to Bilhah. “Go and tell him not to wait,” said Leah.

Bilhah couldn’t understand why Leah was acting this way. “What about the word of God?”

“It will still be there tomorrow, won’t it? The books won’t
vanish in the night, will they? Can’t anybody ever just do what I ask, for
once?
”

For once? People do what you ask all the time. Or rather, they do what you demand—and wish that you would ask, so they could do it freely.

But Bilhah said nothing. It wouldn’t do to provoke an argument with Leah. When Leah was in a good mood, she was sweet and they could almost be friends. But when she was feeling sorry for herself, she would say the nastiest things and then, later, not even realize that she had been hurtful. Maybe, thought Bilhah, it was because Leah couldn’t see the expressions on people’s faces. If they didn’t tell her in words what they were feeling, maybe she simply didn’t know they were hurt or irritated by the things she said.

“Do you want me to comb your hair anyway?” asked Bilhah.

“I don’t know why I should take special pains just to go see my sister’s husband anyway,” said Leah.

“I didn’t think you combed your hair for Jacob,” said Bilhah. “I thought you prepared yourself to go before the Lord.”

“God sees me all the time anyway,” said Leah. “So that’s just stupid. He sees me when I’m dirty and sweating and stinking hot. He sees me at my very worst.”

Bilhah knew this was a silly argument. But if Leah wanted to pretend she didn’t know the difference between ordinary life and going to read the words of God, it wasn’t worth arguing with her.

“I’ll go tell Jacob you aren’t coming,” said Bilhah.

“I’m going to sleep again,” said Leah. “My eyes are so tired.”

Yes, you said that already, and I haven’t forgotten, even if I am just the stupid girl who learned to read so that your eyes wouldn’t
have
to be tired.

Of course Bilhah knew that this wasn’t about tired eyes, or not entirely, anyway. Leah was disappointed in the word of God. She had expected to have the meaning of her whole life spelled out for her, apparently, and was bitterly disappointed that most of the writing was about Enoch and his teachings and experiences. Leah kept trying to turn the meaning of every line of the scripture into some specific reference to her own life, and Jacob kept saying, No, this is the message Enoch gave to the people from God. Now that Leah finally understood that not everything in the books was a private revelation for her, she was apparently getting bored with the whole enterprise.

On her way through camp, Bilhah greeted everyone she passed. When she first arrived, she had thought she could never learn who all these strangers were. Now she knew them all—at least the people who spent their days here in the camp, working. And she even knew some of the shepherds who roamed the hills, because their wives and children were in the camp.

Zilpah detached herself from a group preparing to dye some unusually fine yarn. “Bilhah,” she said.

Bilhah had no use for Zilpah, but she was courteous to everyone. “Peace to you, sister,” she said.