Sarah: Women of Genesis: 1 (Women of Genesis (Forge)) (24 page)

“Mistress,” said Eliezer, rather sharply, “you have not heard the truth of my words.”

“I know your words are true! I face them every morning and every night,” Sarai said. She was surprised at her own bitterness. She had never spoken of this to anyone but Abram, not in terms so heartfelt and therefore so wounding. It was all she could do to keep from bursting into tears and fleeing into the tent. “Now let’s have done with this conversation.”

“Mistress, you are too just and too merciful to forbid me to explain my words, because if you understood me you would not be suffering such pain.”

“I understand better than you do what you have sacrificed because of my barrenness!”

“You do not understand me at all,” said Eliezer, and though he lowered his voice, he spoke with a harshness that could only exist between equals, and not between servant and mistress. For a moment she glimpsed the authority that he must have had in his father’s household, and how readily he could have stepped into that role, if it had existed for him when he came of age.

“Mistress,” said Eliezer, taking her silence as permission to proceed, “I took that vow for many reasons. First, I was born heir to a family that once was respectable if not as great as Abram’s. I saw how it devastated my father to have no inheritance to give his son. I feared that if I had a son before Abram does, I would become a father before I was a servant, and I would find myself hoping and, yes, praying that you and your husband would never have children, so that my son might have some portion of this house as his inheritance.”

“If you’re trying to make me feel better, it isn’t working. It still comes down to my barrenness.”

“It comes down to the will of God,” said Eliezer sharply. “Do you think that God lacks the power to open your womb at any time?”

Chastened, Sarai looked away. “I know God has that power.”

“Then when I make a solemn vow to God not to have children until Abram has an heir, I am making my vow to the same God who will decide when that heir will be born. I am putting my future in the hands of God, just as you and Abram have done. Nothing depends on you. Everything depends on God.”

She could not stop tears from spilling from her eyes and tickling their way down her cheeks. “Now you have truly shamed me,” she said.

“Mistress,” he said, bowing his head submissively. “All my words come out wrong.”

“You shamed me at last because you reminded me of my own lack of faith. It
is
in the hands of God. Abram never forgets that. Neither do you. But I can never seem to remember it. Sometimes I even. . . .”

But no, she could not confess
that
to any man.

“Sometimes,” said Eliezer, “you even wonder if it might not be Asherah punishing you for leaving her service.”

Sarai burst into tears in earnest now, covering her face in her apron. “I can’t help it—that thought comes to me all the time.”

He said nothing.

When she gathered herself together enough to speak without weeping, she had to ask him, “How did you know my most terrible secret? Is my lack of faith in God so obvious?”

“My lady, I assumed that you would have such thoughts simply because any human being in your position would
have
to have them. You give no outward sign of it. And it is not a lack of faith. You can’t stop thoughts like that from entering your head. Faith doesn’t mean that you never doubt. It only means that you never act upon your doubts.”

“Abram never doubts,” said Sarai.

“First, I don’t believe that,” said Eliezer. “He, too, is human. And second, if he has fewer doubts than you, it might be because God speaks to him more often than to you or to anyone else in this world. So it’s easier for him to drive out of his mind any questions about how many more years you’ll be young enough to bear children at all, and when it is that God is going to get around to granting you a son.”

“God doesn’t speak to him constantly, you know. He goes months and sometimes years without a word from heaven.”

“But I have never heard the voice of God at all,” said Eliezer.

“But you
have,
” said Sarai.

He looked puzzled and perhaps a little angry. Apparently it mattered to him that he had not heard God’s voice himself. “When?” he demanded.

“Coming from the mouth of the prophet.” She grinned at him. “There, I caught you being less than perfectly faithful.”

A smile slowly came to his face, too. “Now we’re even,” he said.

Hagar was coming back—and not alone. Qira and three servants were with her. It made Sarai tired just to see them coming.

“Eliezer, you know that I can’t speak to you like this again,” said Sarai.

“We both stepped outside our roles as mistress and servant,” said Eliezer. “We spoke for a few moments as brother and sister—children of God. It will happen again if it needs to, and not if it doesn’t.”

“Yes,” said Sarai, “that’s right.”

“But we both know that while we must treat each other properly, to maintain the good order of the camp, in the eyes of God there is no master and slave, but only men and women trying, with varying degrees of success, to be good. That is truth, my lady, but you never need to fear that I will treat you with anything other than the proper respect that the world requires of one who is in my position when dealing with someone who is in yours.” He bowed his head.

Qira and Hagar were nearly within earshot, and Sarai could see now that Hagar’s face was rigid with anger.

“About your original business,” said Sarai to Eliezer. “I will speak to Abram and make it clear that in your judgment, Bethuel’s, and mine, something must be done.”

“Thank you, Mistress,” said Eliezer. “And I hope you will also tell Hagar that because of a vow I have taken, she must not hope to marry me, but must look for love somewhere else.”

“I will,” said Sarai.

And then Qira was upon them. “Did you deliberately humiliate me, Sarai, or is your envy of me so ingrained that you don’t even notice when you insult me?”

“It’s hard to know which answer is right,” said Sarai, “until you tell me what it is that I apparently did that caused you to be embarrassed.”

“Oh, you’d like
that,
wouldn’t you, for me to repeat the whole humiliating experience in front of that gossipy little dirty-mouth Egyptian servant that you spoil so shamelessly.”

“Hagar,” said Sarai mildly, “my sister feels uncomfortable speaking candidly in front of you. Perhaps you can find a shepherd within walking distance and stand near him until he makes an indecent suggestion so you can give him a good, solid slap across the face.”

The anger on Hagar’s face gave way just enough for Sarai to see the corners of her mouth twitch toward a smile.

“I must also take my leave, Mistress,” said Eliezer. “Bethuel will want an accounting.”

“Of course,” said Sarai. “Thank you for calling the problem to my attention.”

In moments, Eliezer and Hagar were both gone, leaving Sarai alone to face the lioness.

“Now we’re alone,” said Sarai. “What is it that I—”

To her shock, Qira lashed out with her right hand to try to slap her across the face. Sarai’s reflexes were quick, and she ducked in time to catch the blow glancingly across the top of her head. Even at that angle, the blow was painful. Qira had not intended the slap to be symbolic.

And she meant to try again. Sarai had to catch her by both wrists to stop her, and when Qira tried to kick her, Sarai had no choice but to twist her around and hold her from behind.

“Let go of me!” howled Qira. “How dare you!”

“It was you who hit
me,
” said Sarai.

“Get your filthy sheep-covered hands off me!”

“First give me your word that you won’t hit me or kick me again.”

“I promise!” said Qira.

Sarai let go. Immediately Qira whirled around and kicked at Sarai. It was like their fights when they were little children—and, just like then, Qira got clumsier in exact proportion to her rage. It took little skill for Sarai to catch Qira’s foot and raise it high, upending Qira and leaving her flat on her back in the dust and grass. Qira rolled onto her side and curled up into a ball, sobbing dejectedly. Nowadays, though, Father wouldn’t come into the room and see Qira sobbing like that and demand to know what Sarai had done to her. Some plays worked only in front of a select audience.

“Now you really
are
humiliated,” Sarai said. “How much better it might have been if you had merely told me your message instead of trying to deliver it physically.”

“Don’t play the princess with me,” snarled Qira. She went back to sobbing at once, but it was even less convincing now that she had shown the rancor that underlay the tears.

“I’m going into my tent,” said Sarai. “If you wish to speak to me, you may enter and we can have privacy. But if you raise your hand against me again—or your foot—I will forbid you to come near me again, and the servants will be happy to see to it that I am obeyed.”

As Sarai expected, Qira’s crying ended the moment Sarai went inside the tent. And it took very little time for her to compose herself enough to enter with a shy little smile. “I was so very upset, I didn’t know what I was doing,” said Qira.

This was as close to an apology as Qira was likely to produce. But Sarai wasn’t inclined to be forgiving. She and Qira had never been close, but they had stopped exchanging blows by the time Qira was twelve. And there had been times, in Qira’s teens, that the two of them had almost been friends. All that was gone now. Qira had somehow reverted to the worst aspects of her childhood. Was it Lot who had done this to her? Or Sodom? Or . . . was this Qira’s true character and she had merely stopped concealing it?

“I don’t expect you to forgive me right away,” said Qira.

Good thing. “Have a seat,” she said aloud.

Qira lowered herself daintily to the carpets. She was not young anymore, but she still had the grace that had once made Sarai so envious. “To look at you, you’re still a girl,” said Sarai.

“After all those babies, it’s a miracle I’m not a cow,” said Qira. “But you wouldn’t know what a battle it is to recover from being pregnant.”

Sarai sighed inwardly. Was it truly impossible for Qira to respond to any overture of friendship without saying something hurtful?

“I believe you said that I somehow humiliated you earlier,” said Sarai. “Since I was obviously not present for the event, I will need to have you explain to me which of the many traps I’ve set for you happened to be sprung.”

Qira looked at her in wide-eyed surprise. Then her eyes narrowed. “Oh, I see, you’re mocking me.”

“Make your accusation, Qira.”

“Yes, and that weary tone in your voice. I’ve heard quite enough of
that,
I can tell you.”

“Have you forgotten what was bothering you? I can always go ask the servants to remind you.”

Sitting there on the cushions, Qira drew herself up into her most regal posture. “You are destroying my daughters,” said Qira, “and teaching them to hate me.”

I’m sure they’ll come up with their own reasons for hating you, if you treat them the way you treat everyone else. “Qira, just tell me what made you angry, will you?”

“I have devoted my life to making sure they do
not
become shepherdesses, thank you very much, and now you’ve given them a sheep.”

At once everything became clear. “I haven’t given them anything,” said Sarai. “They saw a ewe with its lamb only moments after the birthing. They asked if they could have it—an absurd idea, of course, and I told them that the lamb needed to stay with its mother or it would starve to death. But that made them cry, so I told them they could visit the lamb every day and they could give it a name.”

“Yes, and thank you for
that,
too. They are now arguing bitterly about that, which gives me a headache.”

“What I don’t understand,” said Sarai, “is how any of this could possibly have humiliated you.”

“Oh, no, of course not. You interfere with the way I raise my children, and there I am in front of everybody, not even knowing what my girls were talking about. Come away from that sheep, I tell them, and they answer me by saying, ‘Aunt Sarai gave us this lamb and she’s in charge!’”

“I’m sure they meant that I’m in charge of the lamb, which I am, since it was one of our ewes.”

“I’m sure I couldn’t tell one sheep from another.”

“The lamb is the little one. The ewe is the big one.”

“You made me look as though I had no authority at all over my own girls!”

You always look as though you have no authority over them, Qira, because you barely notice they’re alive most of the time and whenever you do, you clearly have no idea who they are, beyond their names. “My dear sister, everyone understands that children leap to wrong conclusions. All you needed to do was remind them that you’re their mother and they must obey you.”