After Abel and Other Stories (19 page)

She tried again, “Don't celebrate this death. Let it be the last.”

No one paid any attention to her. She had already become the woman in their song, the one who didn't hesitate, who went after the same glory they chased. Nothing she said would change that. Yael felt trapped between reality and the myth they were constructing, between the tents and the road, the ground and the sky. In between, the tranquil cedars rose, unhearing, eternal.

SHILOH

“There was a man from Ramathaim of the Zephites, in the hill country of Ephraim, whose name was Elkanah son of Jeroham son of Elihu son of Tohu son of Zuph, an Ephraimite. He had two wives, one named Hannah and the other named Penina; Penina had children, but Hannah was childless.”

Samuel 1:1-2

F
or as long as I remember, my father's wives had agonized over me. They loved me, and so they tried to hide their distress, but I had eyes to see and ears to hear. I saw the shepherds at the well trace the shape of other women's bodies as they passed, their
round hips swinging back and forth. I heard them discuss the finer points of one girl's poppy-red lips or another's hair that bubbled over her back like a ripe cluster of darkest grapes.

At those moments, I looked down at my body, my fingers pulled at the lank hair that clung to the contours of my narrow forehead and sharp cheekbones, or rose to my own thin mouth that I've been told stretches too wide across my face.

The problem was obvious. I was ugly in a region of women prized for their beauty, so I watched all the other young women be claimed as brides and ride off into homes of their own. As each left, I stayed behind and wondered if I would remain a burden to my father and brothers for the rest of my life.

My mothers tried to console me. “The men of this region know so little about women,” they said, “but there are some who have the discernment to know that the way a woman looks promises nothing about her ability to bear him children,” but it meant nothing. They knew as well as I that a girl's looks were the currency she used to attract a mate. I watched them worry over my fate like hens clucking together over fallen seeds.

Imagine, then, the excitement in our house when a man came to inquire about me. My mothers and I hid behind a door to watch as he spoke with my father. He was of middle age, older than I would have hoped for
when I was younger, but I had accepted that whoever expressed interest in me wouldn't be one to make other women's hearts uneasy. His manners were fine when he ate and drank, but I got no more of an impression of him than that.

Later, the three of them brought back more information. “His name is Elkanah,” the first said. “He is not a rich man, with only two servants, a few acres to his name, and a small flock of sheep.”

“But he boasts a fine lineage that goes back generations, and counts leaders and wise men among his ancestors,” said the second.

“And it is well known that he is pious and devoted to his first wife, though she has given him no children,” said the third, who had given birth to me. Though she was my father's last wife, she entered a home and sisterhood with her fellow wives and was never treated as lesser than the others.

My father said yes, of course. Even a poor man is acceptable for an ugly daughter.

My mothers fussed over me in the days that followed. They prepared baths of milk so I would go to my husband with skin as soft as a newborn calf. They mixed pots of kohl and rimmed my eyes and made jars of perfumes that left me smelling like a field of wild-flowers. They packed linen sheets and fine clay pots for me to take into my new home.

“Take these as gifts for Elkanah's first wife,” my first mother said.

“The men can worry about bride price and dowry,” said the second. “She is the one with whom you will share your life.”

“You will find a husband and a sister at once, as we did so long ago,” said the third. “She will become closer to you than your own heart.”

I believed them. They were my mothers and had seen all manner of men and women, and had the wisdom of generations of mothers before them to pass along.

What they couldn't prepare me for was Elkanah's first wife's beauty. She was everything I was not. Her skin glowed like sand under the sun. Her hair was as dark and thick as the deep recesses of a cave. Her neck rose long and straight above delicately plump shoulders. She was a delight to behold. I thought maybe that was why she didn't open her arms to me, but my mothers had warned me of that. “First wives often don't welcome the second wife at first. After all, you are younger, and she has not had to share her husband with anyone until now.

“But wait. Things will work out. Who knows a woman better than another who shares the same man's bed?”

I believed them about that, too. They ran my father's household as one. All their children found refuge in any of their laps. The three of them spun around my father,
the stars to his moon, but it was to each other that they were devoted. They shared the work of their lives, and loved one another for it.

It wasn't to be that way for me. Childbearing came easily. Milk poured from my nipples and stained my dresses. My children quickly grew fat and content on it. Even before I weaned the first, I grew large with the second, and before I weaned the second, my womb was filled with the third.

And so it went. I grew round with the seasons. At each birth, I held the warm flesh of my newborn against my skin and felt a newfound pride in what I was capable of doing.

Still, Elkanah remained devoted to Hannah and did not come to love me.

I took solace in my children. I gathered them around me, inhaled their smells, the dirt, milk, and traces of rosemary they trailed behind them. I told myself they were enough. That they were ample compensation for what was missing. But my closeness with them was never going to last. Already my oldest were pulling away from my embraces. The boys turned their heads when I tried to kiss their cheeks, the girls walked with their heads together. I was left out of their childish confidences.

It is as it should be. It is the way of the world. A mother brings her children into life and then sets them on their way. They never could have been mine forever. My job, as Elkanah reminded me, was to push out children. “My little breeder,” he called me, and then took the flesh of my hips into his hands, squeezed lightly, although there never was much to grab, even after so many pregnancies.

At those moments, my body bared to him, each fold of muscle and dimpled skin a mark of how much I had given him, I could almost pretend he spoke out of affection. But then he'd smack my rounded haunch and send me away. “Let's see how efficient we've been this time,” he'd laugh, then wait until I told him I was with child again.

And they came, girl after boy after girl after boy. Every time the midwife came to cradle me as I screamed a new child into the world, I knew the only power I would ever have. My only saving grace. After it was over, I would hold the baby to my chest, peer into its unseeing eyes and whisper, “He may not love me, but I will do better for you.”

So let the others snicker as I pass. Let them call me a cow, my udders always swollen and full to bursting, a new infant strapped to my chest, another to my back, and little ones tugging at my sides. Even here, where women walk sway-backed and big-bellied for most of
their adult lives, I outshine the rest. But while the women laugh, the men commend me. They call me a credit to my husband.

They don't know what I do. They have never watched Elkanah take Hannah's hand in his, or kiss her palm. They have never seen him slide his fingers across her cheek or the way his eyes brighten when he catches sight of her. They have never heard the laughter that comes from his room when she spends the night with him.

I have lain awake, my children's breaths a warm cocoon, listening, not for the quickened breaths, the gasps, or moans, but to the hum of their voices in the dark. It is then I wonder what it would be like to have a man love me enough to talk to me, to open his mind to me, but I was not brought into his home for conversation. I was brought to give him what Hannah could not, and nothing else.

He doesn't treat me badly. Anyone watching would call him an exemplary husband. My children are cared for, even the girls and younger boys who will eventually leave to make their own way. He even shows me respect, of a kind. When we are not alone in his room, where his body shows its desire even if his heart does not, he makes sure I have grain to eat and wine to drink. “You must stay strong,” he tells me. “Do not tire yourself out.” It is all in the service of his growing family, but I take
every sentence as a sign that he values me. If that doesn't add up to love, it is some small comfort.

I held out hope that that my mothers' words would bear fruit, that I would gain a sister in my marriage. I waited, quietly giving way to everything Hannah demanded, but after my third pregnancy, after the midwife had come and gone, and a baby's squealing cry filled the rooms and yards of our home again, she picked up Elkanah's name for me. “Breeder,” she said, “your child has fallen. Go see to him.” She was careful never to say it in our husband's hearing, so he never saw how it pained me, and because he never probed my mind, he didn't know how she had twisted the only bit of affection between my husband and me into a slur.

I was just a second wife. I couldn't even tell him not to share what happened between us—sparse as it was—with her. I couldn't tell him that I wanted something between us to be ours alone. Does a cow ask for privacy? Does it demand the secrecy of the bedroom?

And so the years passed. I ballooned with life, leaked it, fed it, my womb never empty for long, and grew used to my own silences. Even my mothers didn't listen.

“Do not tell us of the difficulties in your marriage,” they said when I cried in those early years. “Do not invite anyone into your home life, not even us. You are a wife now. Your task does not begin and end in the bedroom. You must protect the boundaries of your
household. In everything you do, you must remember your husband's good name. You must guard it as your own. It is yours now.”

After that, if anyone asked why my cheeks were wet, I said that I had held a crying child to my face. At night, their gentle snores covered the sound of my sobs. I loved each of them. I relished the tangling of my limbs with theirs, the way they fit themselves into my shoulder or curled against the curve of my hip. I gave thanks for their untroubled sleep, their trust in my presence. But each night, I counted the days I had left with them, the nights they would lie with me. I dreaded the day that would surely come when my bed would be empty, and I would lie alone, night after night, while whispers came through the wall from my husband's bed.

Is it any wonder, then, that my sadness curdled into bitterness? Here I was, my body inhabited over and over again, each time a gift to Elkanah, and yet he still loved Hannah more. I hated myself for it, but I couldn't stop the tumor of resentment from growing inside me, another fetus I carried alongside the others. This one never left. It had no nine-months gestation, no birth or growth outside the confines of my body. It stayed there, mutating until it filled so much of me that it became me. I felt my lips grow even thinner into the grimace of the aggrieved. Only my children brought laughter out of me. Only they saw whatever was left of the girl I'd
been when I entered Elkanah's house.

And still, it was Hannah's complaints I heard. “Give me a child,” she cried to Elkanah. “I am half a woman.” She glared at me. “Even Penina has surpassed me.” And always he smoothed her hair, shushed her as if she were a child herself. “Don't cry,” he said. “You are all I need. I love you more than any child ever could.”