Rebekah: Women of Genesis (5 page)

Just like Father, in his deafness. Laban and I worked hard to make sure he was told everything. But nobody told
me,
and I wasn’t even deaf or blind or anything. My whole future will be different than I thought it would be. Men will want to marry me, and not just for my dowry. Maybe a man will want me out of love.

For a moment she felt herself dazzled by the future. Beautiful! I might be mistress of a great house! I might marry a prince, a king!

And then she remembered Belbai, bleeding, staggering, his mother supporting him as she led him away. Belbai could easily have died today. For her. For his desire for her, for his anger at being forbidden even to speak of her. His mother was ruined again, after having once been saved. Father had been generous to Khaneah, but it did not change the fact that she once again was without protection.

Because Rebekah was beautiful.

Rebekah did not want to cry in front of Father. She pulled away from him and fled to her own tent, suddenly ashamed and afraid.

Alone in her tent, Rebekah threw herself onto the rugs and wept. In moments Deborah came in and lay down beside her, covering her with a comforting arm. “My poor baby! Did Uncle Bethuel beat you, too?”

“No, no, I’m all right. Father would never hit me. I’m just sad.”

“Because of Belbai?”

“I’m sorry he and his mother have to suffer so much because of what he did.”

“He shouldn’t have made mean pictures of you.”

“No, he shouldn’t,” said Rebekah. She patted Deborah’s arm. “See? I’m all right now.”

“No you’re not,” said Deborah. “You just want me to leave you alone, but I don’t want to.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t want to go out there. What if Uncle Bethuel sends me away?”

“He’ll never do that. As long as I’m here, you’re my nurse.”

“But the other women say you’ll soon get married and go away and then I won’t have any work to do and I eat too much, everybody says so. Uncle Bethuel can’t afford to feed people who don’t work.”

Which was a common thing for Pillel to say. How could Deborah know that it didn’t apply to her?

“Deborah, you’re
family,
not a servant. You’re my cousin.”

“What if he sends me home? I don’t want to go home. My papa is angry with me.”

“No, he’s not.”

“He’s angry because of the baby. I wasn’t supposed to have a baby.”

“You don’t have a baby,” said Rebekah.

“I know,” said Deborah. “He died.”

She said it so simply, as if it made her only a little sad. “I never knew you were married,” said Rebekah.

And then she realized how stupid a thing that was to say. Who was the simple one? Deborah had never been married. Simple as she was, some man in her father’s household—or perhaps some stranger—prevailed upon her when she was very young and begot a child on her. How could Deborah even have understood what was happening?

“I’ll never get married,” said Deborah. “Men don’t want ugly stupid girls. They want pretty smart girls like you.”

Suddenly Rebekah understood what it meant that all her life Deborah had told her how pretty and smart she was. Deborah was saying, without even realizing it, How unlike me you are. I’m ugly and stupid, you’re pretty and smart.

“Deborah, don’t you know? I don’t want to be pretty. I didn’t even know I was pretty.”

“I always told you,” said Deborah. “You’re so pretty all the time.”

“I wish I weren’t,” said Rebekah, her whole heart in the words. “I should take my knife and cut a deep scar right across my face and
then
nobody would be troubled about me.” She even reached for her knife, though she had no intention of actually cutting herself.

Deborah did not know that, however, and clutched at her hand, clung to it, refusing to let Rebekah take the knife. “No, no, you can’t, you can’t! Not my little Bekah baby! Nobody can ever hurt you, not even you!”  Deborah wept furiously.

“I know, I know, don’t worry, I didn’t mean it. Please, Deborah, don’t be frightened, I won’t cut myself, I just . . .
wish
something would happen so I could get away from my face.”

Deborah laughed through her own tears. “How can you get away from your face? Your face isn’t even chasing you, it goes in front!”

“Why do I have to be beautiful? Laban isn’t handsome. It isn’t fair!”

“Laban is very strong and good,” said Deborah.

Yes, that was the truth. A man didn’t have to be handsome; nobody cared what a man looked like as long as he was mighty in battle or commanded a huge household. Laban was heir to all that Bethuel owned, and so he would be beautiful enough to attract every ambitious girl for many miles around. He could have his choice of wives. Even if Father picked his first wife for him, Laban could take whatever additional wives and concubines he wanted.

But even if she were extraordinarily beautiful, which she doubted, the choice of husbands would not be Rebekah’s. Father would not force her to marry someone awful, but he would choose carefully for her, and whatever man he chose, that would be her husband for life. If she were ugly, then it would be ordinary men who sought her, men that she could easily persuade Father to turn away until one came who was decent and good that she could love. But being beautiful
and
the daughter of a prominent household meant that men of wealth and power would also be attracted to her, and Father would be tempted by the bridegifts they might offer, by the possibility of connection to a great house. He would not force her even so, but it would be harder to persuade him if he liked a man that she could not bring herself to love. It would hurt him, anger him, and Rebekah hated even to imagine such a thing. She had spent her life trying to keep her father happy. Whatever beauty she had would fight against her now, unless by some miracle the first great man who came to court her was also a man that she could love.

Not likely. She had seen plenty of rich and powerful men, and almost all of them were ugly of soul, greedy and grasping, bossy and mean-spirited. They smiled at Father because he was rich and powerful, but to their servants they were curt or surly or brutal, demanding always and praising never. Rebekah knew the truth—that as a man treated his servants, so would he treat his wives. Married to such a man as that, she might please him at first but soon he would grow tired of her, irritated at her ways, because such men were never pleased for long. She had seen the wives of men like that, shadowy women who lived in the small circle of their children and womenservants, finding such happiness as they could but always under the cloud of their husband’s disdain or even, now and then, outright hatred.

Father would never choose such a thing for me. But he would choose a man who seems to be cheerful and happy, and that is the face that all men show to him, so how can he know the truth? How can he understand what marriage to one of his friends would be like for a girl like me?

“Rebekah,” said Deborah. “You should pray to God to make you ugly.”

Rebekah laughed. “God doesn’t grant prayers like that.”

“Yes he does!” said Deborah. “Father said that God made
me
ugly.”

“You are
not
ugly, you silly goof. You’re beautiful.”

Deborah pursed her lips. “Everybody but you says I’m ugly, so who’s the silly goof?”

Rebekah sat up and hugged Deborah tightly. “
They
are, anyone who would say that,” she said.

“Are you happy now?” asked Deborah.

“Yes, I am. I’m happy.”

“Happy as can be?” Deborah could never be happy until she knew she had cheered Rebekah up.

“Happy as can be.” Rebekah showed her a big toothy grin—the grin that had always been the end of this childhood game.

“I’m so glad you’re my little girl,” said Deborah. “They would never have let me keep my little boy even if he hadn’t died. So I’m glad they gave me you to nurse instead.”

Rebekah had a sickening thought. When her mother died, and Rebekah needed a wetnurse to feed her as an infant, had they taken Deborah’s baby away from her so that Rebekah could have the infant boy’s place at Deborah’s breast? Or was it simply a coincidence that Deborah’s baby had died just when Rebekah needed a nurse?

If they took Deborah’s little boy, was he still alive, perhaps? Or had they . . . could they possibly have . . . killed him?

No, no, they served God, all the descendants of Terah, and that meant that they did not sacrifice human beings and regarded all children’s lives as sacred, even those born in bastardy. Those who served God did not take the lives of the innocent, certainly not for the mere convenience of the baby daughter of a powerful man.

Deborah’s baby must have died, that’s all. Perhaps God in his mercy took one child to himself so that Deborah could have the care of a little girl that she could stay with forever, instead of a little boy who would have been taken from her as soon as he was weaned.

“Poor Deborah,” said Rebekah. “I didn’t know you lost a baby. That must be the hardest thing in the world.”

“I didn’t lose him,” said Deborah. “I took very good care of him. I always knew where he was and whenever he cried I fed him. God wanted him, that’s all. Father didn’t want my baby around the camp, he got angry whenever he saw me with him, so God took my little boy to his own house where he could love him all the time.”

“Who told you that?” asked Rebekah. Whoever it was had been very kind to Deborah, to tell her a story so filled with comfort.

“Nobody had to tell me, silly,” said Deborah. “That’s just the way God is. Everybody knows that.”

“God doesn’t always do nice things,” said Rebekah. She felt wretched immediately for saying so, and not just because Deborah looked so dismayed.

“God does only good things,” Deborah insisted.

Although she already felt bad about it, Rebekah was in a defiant mood and refused to back down. “Not to me. It wasn’t nice to make me beautiful.”

“He gave you a beautiful face because you have a beautiful soul,” said Deborah. “I heard Uncle Bethuel say so.”

Rebekah realized at once what this had to mean to Deborah. Since she had been told God made her ugly, wouldn’t that imply to her that it was because she had an ugly soul? It made Rebekah angry, to realize that Deborah had lived all her life with the sort of things being said right to her face that Belbai had written about Rebekah. Deborah should not have to believe such things.

“I’d rather be good than beautiful,” said Rebekah, “and you
are
good.”

“You’re good
and
beautiful.”

“I’m not either one,” said Rebekah. “I’m not really beautiful, either, because I’ll get old just like everybody else and if I get married I’ll have babies and get fat and nobody will think I’m beautiful then. So beautiful is not something I
am,
it’s just something I have to put up with for now.”

Deborah reached out and touched her face. “You’re my pretty girl,” she said. “Always and always.”

“I don’t mind being
your
pretty girl. I just don’t want some man to see me and think of me as
his
pretty girl. I don’t want someone else to get angry and get sent away like Belbai.”

“Then always stay in this tent with me!”

“If only I could.”

“Just like during a storm, when the sand is blowing everywhere, you stay in here with me and nobody has to cry.”

One of Rebekah’s favorite memories was the first big sandstorm she remembered. It had begun terribly, with everyone running around the camp in a panic, tying things down, getting animals into the shelter of caves and tents. A dozen sheep crowded into the tent with Rebekah and Deborah, but from that moment on the memory was a good one, of Deborah singing louder and louder to outshout the wind outside, the feel of her arms around Rebekah triumphing over the horrible sound of a million grains of sand pelting against the tent walls. When the storm was over it took two hours for the men to dig out their tent entrance, but through it all Rebekah had never been afraid because Deborah had her arms around her and kept singing songs and saying, “God knows where you are, God knows where you are.”

Maybe that was an exceptionally strong sandstorm, or maybe she was simply old enough not to have to hide in a tent, but there had been no more storms that drove her inside. Nowadays Rebekah just put on her veil, tied it at her neck, and helped the others get the animals to shelter and staked out long cloths over the beans and vegetables. The veil kept the sand out of her eyes without keeping her from seeing what she was doing, until the job was done and she could go inside a tent with the others.

She thought of all the women wearing veils during a windstorm and how no one could tell who was who until the veils came off. Women in veils were not beautiful or ugly. They were simply invisible, indistinguishable.

O God, she prayed at once, Is this what I should do? Thou gavest me the burden of prettiness, but may I not bear that burden in privacy by wearing a veil?