Rachel and Leah (Women of Genesis) (32 page)

What a selfish thought. She was disgusted with herself for thinking it.

Why not think of Jacob? When he marries me, what dowry does he get? He might hope Father will give him herds and flocks of his own—and Father might, he’s not an ungenerous man. But no dowry is owed. Jacob is entitled to nothing, he can count on nothing. For all these years, this man of such proud heritage has served as a bondsman in Father’s household. A prince, bowed down … for my sake!

Am I a blessing in his life? He thinks I am. But in truth we’re a mixed blessing to each other, bad along with good, sacrifices along with benefits.

So why do we do it?

She asked this aloud one time, when she and Leah were sitting together shelling beans into their aprons. “Why do we do it?”

“Do what?” asked Leah. “Or am I supposed to guess?”

In the old days, those words would have been nasty and Rachel would have fallen silent. But now Leah spoke them with a laugh, as if she enjoyed Rachel’s habit of speaking as if everyone already knew what she had been thinking before she spoke.

“Marry,” said Rachel. “It’s so awful, how marriage changes things.”

“It’s about babies,” said Leah. “Or didn’t you hear of that?”

“It isn’t
marriage
that makes the babies,” said Rachel. “Or do the beasts have weddings we don’t see?”

“Beasts rut in the fields,” said Leah. “Humans marry.”

“But why?” said Rachel. “Why can’t we just … make the babies but stay at home with our parents? Why do I have to go off with Jacob and live as a stranger somewhere? It must have been awful for Rebekah.”

“Not awful,” said Leah. “Just hard.”

“Oh, yes, as if you know.” Rachel knew that in years past, her scornful tone would have caused a fight. Leah was so much better a sister and friend since she had taken to reading the holy books. So Rachel was able to speak more freely—almost like when they were little.

“You don’t know either,” said Leah—keeping her temper.

“I just thought—I just don’t want to leave home.”

“Well, first, what makes you think you’re leaving? Where’s Jacob going to go, anyway?”

“How can he stay? Is Father going to let me be married to the
steward?
”

Leah laughed. “He won’t be steward, silly girl. He’ll be Father’s
son
. Sons inherit. Sons rule in their father’s name.”

“Nahor and Terah will hate that.”

“Yes,” said Leah. “It’s a good thing neither one of them is a man of action, don’t you think?”

“Jacob won’t want to make enemies of them. He’ll leave.”

“As soon as he
can
, he’ll leave,” Leah said. “But he can’t leave when he has
nothing
. How would you live?”

“It’s frightening,” said Rachel.

“But forget this idea about doing without marriage,” said Leah. “It would never work.”

“Why not?” said Rachel.

“Well, for one thing, if Father and Mother hadn’t married, and we were just living with Mother, then when she died, where would we have gone?”

“With
her
father,” said Rachel.

“But you’ve eliminated
all
fathers, haven’t you?” said Leah. “And Mother’s mother died in bearing Aunt Mirya. So our mother would have been an orphan.”

“I know we need to marry,” said Rachel. “I know it. I just wish …”

“You don’t have to marry if you don’t want to,” said Leah. “Father’s promise doesn’t truly bind
you
. You’re still young.”

“Most girls my age are already married.”

“My age, too,” said Leah. “Does that make it the right time?”

“Maybe I’m just the wrong girl.”

“Jacob thinks you’re the only one.”

“All he knows about me is my stupid pretty face.”

“You’ve had plenty of chances to show him what else you are.”

“It’s the only thing he loves about me.”

“If you think that, then you don’t know Jacob.”

“I
don’t
know him.” Only when she said it did she realize it was true.

“He knows
you
and he loves you,” said Leah. “He marries the whole woman, not just the face.”

“Why doesn’t he marry
you?
” said Rachel. “
You’re
the one filled with thoughts of God. You’re the one who can read and write.”

Leah said nothing.

Rachel realized what she had just said. “Oh, Leah, I never thought—do you love him? Do you wish you were marrying him?”

Leah laughed. “He knows you and loves you. He knows
me
and thinks very little of me, dear sister. When I marry, I want to marry a man who doesn’t think I’m weak and foolish and vain and malicious.”

“He doesn’t think those things of you!”

“Jacob’s not a man to lie, and those were his words.”

“When did you have such a quarrel?”

“He didn’t spout them all in a single list,” said Leah. “But over the years, he’s used those words, not to refer to
me
, of course, but the lesson was clear enough: You’re like
this
, Leah, you’re like
that
, now stop it.”

“So he cares about you.”

“The Lord knows how weak and unworthy I am. He brought Jacob here to love you, but to correct me. I only hope I’ve learned all that I
can
learn, before Jacob takes away not only you, but the Holy books as well.”

“So you do think he’ll leave.”

“Someday, yes. Not the day after the wedding!”

“I’m not a
wife
,” said Rachel. She meant that she was not a wifely kind of woman, but of course Leah had to tease her by pretending not to understand.

“No one is, until they are,” said Leah.

“If you think that made sense …”

“I know who I’m talking to, Rachel,” said Leah with a laugh. “I didn’t expect it to make sense to
you
.”

“I’ll tell on you for being mean to me.” That was part of the game these days, to make fun of how they used to be with each other, during the bad times.

“Father won’t care,” said Leah, “and God already knows. And they both forgive me.”

“Whoever told you
that
doesn’t know God!” said Rachel.

“Hush,” said Leah, for the first time letting her voice show genuine warning.

“Leah,” said Rachel softly. “Why do things have to change?”

“They always will.”

“The sheep never change.”

“Oh really? Then why do you watch them so closely?”

“They
do
things, stupid things, but no matter what they do, they’re still sheep.”

“Maybe that’s how God looks at us,” said Leah. “We do things, but we’re still his children.”

“Why did God make me such a happy child, if he only meant to change me into something else?”

“He sends us into the world as babies so we can
learn
to be people,” said Leah.

“Well, I don’t want to be people,” said Rachel.

“You want to stay a baby forever?”

“I’m happy
now
.”

“Why do you sound miserable?”

“Because God sent Jacob here to change
everything
.”

“Because Jacob was willing to wait for you, you’ve had seven years without change. Thank God for those years, Rachel. And thank God for a good husband, when there are so many bad ones.”

Rachel knew good advice when she heard it. “Why can’t you snap at me and tell me I’m stupid?” she said. “Then I could get angry at you instead of having to pay attention to the wise things you say.”

“Am I wise today?” said Leah. “Well, how nice. I can’t wait for you to get smart enough to say wise things to
me
.”

“The beans are done.”

“That’s why my fingers feel so empty as I shell them,” said Leah.

“
My
beans are done.”

“And mine are nearly done,” said Leah. “But you can run off, little sister, and play with the other babies if you want.”

Rachel stuck out her tongue.

“I’m not blind,” said Leah. “I know a tongue-poke when I almost see it.”

“Give me some of your beans,” said Rachel. “I’ll help you finish.”

“Just remember,” said Leah. “When you’re married, you won’t have
me
to remind you of how good your life is compared to mine.”

“And you won’t have
me
to accuse of being an ungrateful brat.”

“I’ll miss you so much,” said Leah dryly.

“You
will
, you know,” said Rachel.

“And you’ll miss me,” said Leah.

“Yes, but I
know
it.”

“If you throw that bean at me, I’ll take it all back.”

“You see everything.”

“I don’t have to
see
when I know you so well.”

Rachel wondered if anyone really knew anyone all that well.

I don’t even know myself as well as Leah does, Rachel realized. I don’t know anything or anybody. How am I supposed to be someone’s wife and mother, when I’m such a hopelessly ignorant child?

Another year, Lord! Give me just another year!

Or two.

I
t was a shearing day, when the normal duties of the camp were all set aside, except for a few who still prepared food and hauled water. Everyone else was bringing sheep in and out of the makeshift pens that covered all the land round about Padan-aram, except for those strong enough to hold the terrified sheep absolutely still, while those with dexterity and experience sliced away great fleeces of wool. Whether it was human blood or the blood of sheep, it was a mark of pride and cause for celebration when a whole shearing could be accomplished without any slicing of flesh. “Shearers, not butchers!” cried Laban. “That’s what we are today!”

It was Laban who made the great show of leadership, thought Bilhah, but she knew from the comments of others that before Jacob came, there was blood in the wool most years, and usually roast mutton as their consolation for a fatal mistake in the shearing. There had never been a man lost,
thank the Lord, but they heard of such things happening in other camps, a knife going awry and slicing someone’s thigh. From such a wound the blood would flow so copiously that the victim would be dead in moments, and all the wool on the floor ruined. Who would wear a garment or even tread on a rug that was brown from the blood of a dead shepherd?

Under Jacob’s leadership, though, they had practiced before the shearing began. Instead of plunging right in, the experienced ones talking the newer men and women through their work, Jacob had them act it out first, with no sheep at all, and then with a sheep but with sticks instead of knives.

That was how he was able to tell which men were too old now, their eyes too weak to go on shearing. It was hard on them to be turned out of the shearing shed and forced to go back to guiding the sheep in and out of the pens, but as Laban explained to the men who complained bitterly that first year, “I’d rather have you grumbling out here in the pens than dead with your blood all over the fleece. Or worse, with
my
blood all over, because you missed and slashed my belly open!”

By the third year, the complaints were over. Two clean years in a row were persuasion enough, and now, in Jacob’s seventh spring shearing, the shearers were proud of being part of what they now called “the dance,” when they went through the motions to make sure everyone was up to snuff, and give the newer ones a sense of what it felt like to do the job.

The “dance” had been yesterday. Today, the fleece was piling up, more than ever before, and cleaner and whiter, too. It was wealth they were carrying away to stack for carding, and under Jacob’s leadership, everyone could see that his methods had led to prosperity beyond anyone’s experience.

Bilhah’s job, since she had never really become good with
the animals, was to haul water for the shearers to wash their hands, and for the whetstones they used to keep their blades sharp. She knew enough to stay back out of the way, pouring the water into the basins only when the shearers were between sheep.

She happened to be in the tent where Jacob was, overseeing the work of Terah, who had been commanded by his father to take a hand at shearing this year or see it cut off. Jacob had worked with him especially during the weeks before the shearing, to make sure he was ready, and Bilhah could see that Terah had, despite his complaints, learned well.

It was while she was watching Terah shear a sheep that Zilpah approached her, tapping her on the arm. “Talk to me when you come out,” she whispered into Bilhah’s ear.

Bilhah nodded, and dreaded keeping the appointment. Zilpah always acted as if she had all the important secrets of the universe to tell, when usually it was something quite ordinary or even unnecessary.

But Bilhah knew her judgment was unfair, even as she thought of it. Zilpah had changed in her years of service with Leah. She dressed more modestly, and without any particular flair. At first Bilhah had assumed it was because Zilpah was trying not to overshadow her mistress Leah—but in truth, under Zilpah’s care Leah became more lovely, her hair always nicely arranged, her clothing always clean and well-chosen. There was little chance of Zilpah taking attention away from Leah now.