The Red Tent (27 page)

Without hesitation, I told her everything. I leaned my head back, closed my eyes, and gave voice to my life. In all of my years, I had never before spoken so much or so long, and yet the words came effortlessly, as though this were something I had done many times before.

I surprised myself, remembering Tabea, remembering Ruti, remembering my coming of age in the red tent. I spoke of Shalem and our passionate lovemaking without blushing. I spoke of our betrayal and his murder. I told her about Re-nefer’s bargain with me, and Meryt’s care for me, and I spoke of my son with pride and love.

It was not difficult. Indeed, it was as though I had been parched and there was cool water in my mouth. I said “Shalem” and my breath was clean after years of being foul and bitter. I called my son “Bar-Shalem,” and an old tightness in my chest eased.

I recited the names of my mothers, and knew with total certainty that they were dead. I leaned my face into Werenro’s shoulder and soaked her robe in memory of Leah and Rachel, Zilpah and Bilhah.

Through it all, Werenro nodded and sighed and held my hand. When at last I was quiet she said, “You are not dead.” Her voice betrayed a little sorrow. “You are not like me. Your grief shines from your heart. The flame of love is strong. Your story is not finished, Dinah,” she said, in the accents of my mothers. Not “Den-ner” the foreign midwife, but “Dinah,” a daughter beloved of four mothers.

Werenro stroked my head, which rested on her shoulder, as the room began to brighten with the first hints of dawn. I fell asleep leaning there, but when I awoke she was gone.

Re-mose left a week later, in the company of Kar, who arrived from Memphis on his way to Kush. Re-mose brought the venerable master into the garden to introduce us, but he barely acknowledged the lowborn mother of his favorite student. After they left I wondered, without pity, whether the old man would survive such a long journey.

CHAPTER THREE

B
ENIA HAD DELIVERED the box as he had said he would, but I was not there to receive it. When he brought it to the garden gate, he was brusquely told that Den-ner was sitting in the great hall with her son and could not be called away by a tradesman. The box was placed in a corner of the kitchen, and I did not see it until after Re-mose had left Thebes and the house had returned to normal.

When the cook gave it to me, her curiosity overwhelmed her. How had something so elegant and rare come to be mine? And who was the man who asked after me so eagerly? I said nothing of him or the box to anyone in the house, and the gossip soon died away. I sent no word to Benia either, hoping he would take my silence as a rejection of the indirect offer he had made me in the marketplace. Although I had been moved by his words and by his touch, I could not see myself living like other women. Despite Werenro’s words, I was sure that Re-mose would tell the next and final chapters of my story.

Meryt was furious at me for turning Benia down. “A man like that? So accomplished? So kind?” She threatened never to speak to me again, but we both knew that could never happen. I was her daughter, and she would never cut me off.

But Benia’s box remained an embarrassment and a reproach to me. It did not belong in a garden shed. It was not made for a foreign-born midwife without status or standing. It was mine only because the carpenter had recognized my loneliness and because I had seen the need in him, too. I filled the box with gifts from my mothers, but covered its gleaming beauty with an old papyrus mat so that it would not remind me of Benia, whom I resigned to the corner of my heart, with other dreams that had died.

The weeks flowed quietly into months, the passage of time marked by the stories of births, most of them healthy. I learned that a tonic made of the red madder growing in my garden eased childbirth for many, and Meryt and I were called to ever more distant neighborhoods. Once, a barque was sent to bring us to the town of On, where a priest’s favorite concubine lay dying. We found a girl far too young to be a mother, screaming in terror, alone in a room without the comfort of another woman. Shortly after we arrived, we closed her eyes and I tried to free the baby, but she, too, was dead.

Meryt went to speak to the father, who, far from bereaved, began to curse my friend and me for killing his wife and child. He rushed into the birthing chamber before I had time to cover the poor mother. “The foreigner raised a knife to her?” he shrieked. “Only a surgeon can do such a thing. This woman is a menace, a demon sent from the east to destroy the kingdom of the river.” He lunged at me, but Meryt stopped him, and with strength I did not know she possessed, pinned him against a wall and tried to explain that I had cut the mother in hope of saving the child.

But I saw no reason to explain myself. I looked into his eyes and saw an odious and petty soul, and I was filled with rage and pity for the young woman who lay at my feet. “Pervert,” I roared, in the language of my mothers. “Foul son of a maggot, may you and others like you wither like wheat in the desert. This was an unloved girl who lies here dead. The stench of her unhappiness clings to her. For this, you will die in agony.”

Both Meryt and the priest stared at me as I spewed out my curses, and when I was finished the man began to shudder and in a terrified whisper said, “A foreign sorceress in the House of the Gods!”

The sound of our voices had drawn other priests, who did not meet my eyes and held their brother so we could leave. On the journey back, I watched the shoreline pass and remembered Inna’s prophecy that I would find my heart’s desire by the banks of a river. I shook my head over the irony of her vision, and returned to my garden shed unsettled and discontented.

For the first time since my childhood, I was restless. I no longer dreamed of Shalem or his death but woke up every morning haunted by visions of deserted landscapes, gaunt sheep, wailing women. I rose from my pallet vainly trying to name my disquiet. Meryt noticed gray hairs on my head and offered to make me a dye of ash and the blood of a black ox. I laughed at the idea, although I knew she used the potion and looked far younger than her years because of it. Her suggestion made me view my restlessness as nothing more than a sign of the passing years. I was nearly of the age when women stop bleeding at the new moon, and I pictured myself passing the twilight of my days in the familiar peace of Nakht-re’s garden. I set a statue of Isis over my bed, and prayed for the wisdom and tranquillity of the lady goddess, healer of women and men.

But I neglected to pray for the well-being of my earthly protectors. Late one night, I was awakened by the sound of howling cats, and the next morning Nakht-re came to tell me that Re-nefer had died in her sleep. Her body was collected by priests, who would prepare her body for the next life with elaborate ritual in her father’s tomb in Memphis, where a statue had been prepared in her memory. The rites would last for three days.

Nakht-re asked if I would like to attend the ritual with him. I thanked him but said no. He must have been relieved, for we both knew that there was no comfortable place for me among the celebrants.

In the days after Re-nefer’s death, I cursed her as much as I wept for her. She had been my savior and my jailer. She had given me Shalem and then stolen his memory. Finally, I did not know the woman at all. I had seen little of her since Re-mose had gone to school and had no idea how she kept busy all those years; if she spun or wove, if she slept the days away, if she wept at night for her son and her husband. If she hated me or pitied me or loved me.

I dreamed in vivid detail in the nights following her death, and Re-nefer visited me in the form of a small bird flying out of the sunrise, screaming “Shechem” in a familiar voice that I could not name. The Re-nefer bird tried to lift people and objects from the ground but had no strength and beat her wings in frustration until she was exhausted and furious. Every night, she disappeared into the sun, shrieking. It seemed her troubled soul would never find peace. After seven nights of that vision, I felt nothing but pity for her.

Nakht-re died the following season, and for him I mourned without reservation. Honest, generous, good-humored, and always kind, he was the model of an Egyptian nobleman. My son was blessed to have had such a father, and I knew Re-mose would weep for the only Ba he had ever known. I assumed that Re-mose went to Memphis for the rites, though I was not told. Only Nakht-re had thought to tell me about my son’s travels. With his death, I felt my connection to Re-mose weaken.

After Nakht-re was gone, his wife went to live with her brother, somewhere north in the Delta. The house would be given to a new scribe. Had Re-mose been a little older and more practiced in the politics of the temple, he might have been given the position. Instead, one of Nakht-re’s rivals was chosen. Most of the staff would remain, and the cook urged me to stay on, too. But the chill in the eyes of the new mistress who came to survey what was to be her home made me want nothing less.

Meryt, too, was facing a change. Her older son, Menna, had offered her a place under his roof in the Valley of the Kings. He had been appointed chief baker and given a larger house, where his mother was welcome. Menna made the journey to see his mother and said that though many babies were born to the wives of craftsmen in the valley, there were no skilled midwives and many women had died. Meryt would be an honored citizen if she came to live among them.

My friend was tempted. Since the disastrous journey to On, rumors had begun to circulate about the foreign-born midwife and her companion. The priest I had cursed had lost the use of his voice after I saw him, and then he went lame. There were fewer calls to attend at the births of noblewomen, though their servants and the tradesmen’s wives still sought us out.

I knew that my friend relished the thought of honor and a new start, but she worried about living with a daughter-in-law and fretted about eivins up the comforts of life in Thebes. She told her son that she would weigh his invitation until the following season, when the new year began. After all, she explained to me, the appearance of the dog star marked the most auspicious time for making changes.

My friend and I weighed our choices, but we often fell silent, keeping our worst fears to ourselves. In truth, I had nowhere to go. Herya had not offered me a place with her. I would simply have to stay where I was and hope for the best. If Meryt left for her son’s house, loneliness would swallow me, but I kept still about that and listened as she described life in the valley.

Meryt never considered leaving without me, but she worried about asking her daughter-in-law to put up with two women in her house. My friend presented her dilemma to her good mistress, and Ruddedit begged her to stay and gave her word that I, too, would always have a place under her roof.

But the lady’s husband was nothing like Nakht-re. He was a narrow-minded tyrant with a temper that sometimes broke upon the backs of his servants, and even Ruddedit kept her distance from him. My life would be pinched and furtive if I went to that house.

I might have lost heart except for the consolation I found in my dreams, where a garden of a thousand lotuses bloomed, children laughed, and strong arms held me safe. Meryt put great store in these dreams, and visited a local oracle who foresaw love and riches for me in the steaming entrails of a goat.

The new year came and Menna returned to see his mother. His wife, Shif-re, accompanied him this time and said, “Mother, come home with us. My sons work with their father in the bakery all day and I am often alone in the house. There is plenty of room for you to sit in the sun and rest. Or if you wish to continue as a midwife, I will carry your kit and become your assistant. You will be honored in my husband’s house, and after your death we will honor your memory with a fine stele with your name on the west side.”

Meryt was moved by her daughter-in-law’s speech. Shif-re was a few years younger than I, a plain woman except for her eyes, which were large and ringed with thick black lashes, and radiated compassion. “Menna is lucky in you,” said Meryt, taking the woman’s hands in hers.

“But I cannot leave Den-ner here. She is my daughter now, and without me she is alone in the world. In truth, she is the master midwife, and I am her assistant. It is she the women of royal Thebes call for when their time is at hand.

“I cannot ask you to take her in. And yet, if you offer her the same hospitality, I believe you will be well rewarded in this life. She carries the mark of money and luck. She dreams with great power and sees through lies. All of this has rubbed off on me, and it will benefit you and your house, too.”

Shif-re went to her husband with Meryt’s words. Menna was not pleased at the prospect of yet another aging woman in his house, but the promise of luck struck a chord with him. He came with his mother and wife to my shed to make me welcome, and I accepted his offer with genuine gratitude. I took a turquoise scarab from my box and gave it to Menna. “Hospitality is the gods’ own treasure,” I said, placing my forehead to the ground before the baker, who was embarrassed to be shown such obeisance.

“Perhaps my brother can give you his garden for your own,” he said, helping me to my feet. “His wife has no knack with growing things, and my mother tells me you have Osiris’s own touch with the soil.” Then it was my turn to be embarrassed at his kindness. How had I come to find so many kind people in my life? What was the purpose of such good fortune?

Menna’s work called him home, so we had only a few days to prepare for our journey. First, I went to the marketplace and hired a scribe who wrote on behalf of unlettered people, and through him sent word to Re-mose, assistant to Kar the scribe, residing in Kush, to inform him that his mother Den-ner had moved to the Valley of the Kings, to the house of the chief baker called Menna. I sent him blessings in the name of Isis and her son Horus. And I paid the scribe double his fee to make sure the message would find my son.

I gathered the herbs of my garden, taking cuttings of roots as well as dried plants. As I worked, I remembered how my mothers stripped their garden before leaving one life for another. I ventured into the market by myself and traded most of my trinkets for olive oil and castor oil, for juniper oil and berries, for I heard that few trees thrived in the valley. I scoured the stalls for the finest knife I could find, and the day before we left, Meryt and I went to the river and collected reeds enough to deliver a thousand babies.

I packed what I owned inside Benia’s box, which had grown even more beautiful as the wood mellowed with age. Closing the lid, I tasted relief at my escape from an unhappy future.

The night before I left the house of Nakht-re I kept watch in the garden, walking around the pool, running my fingers over every bush and tree, filling my nose with the rich smells of blooming lotus and fresh clover. When the moon began to set, I crept inside the house and wandered past sleeping bodies up to the roof. The cats rubbed up against me, and I smiled, remembering my first fright at seeing the “fur snakes” of the land.

All of my days in Egypt had been spent in that house, and looking back on them in the night air, I recalled little but good: the scent of my infant son and the face of Nakht-re, cucumbers and honeyed fish, Meryt’s laughter and the smiles of the new mothers to whom I delivered healthy sons and daughters. The painful things—Werenro’s story, Re-nefer’s choice, even my own loneliness—seemed like the knots on a beautiful necklace, necessary for keeping the beads in place. My eyes filled as I bade farewell to those days, but I felt no regret.

I was sitting outside the garden door, my box and a small bundle beside me, when the others arrived in the morning. Ruddedit walked with us as far as the ferry and embraced me before I got on the boat. She wept into Meryt’s arms for a long while, but she was the only one weeping as the ferry pulled away from shore. I waved at her once, but then I set my eyes to the west.