After Abel and Other Stories (21 page)

He will grow up very lonely, I thought, if she denies him the companionship of even his brothers and sisters. Nor would she make new ones for him if Elkanah kept away from her bed. He told her to hand the baby to me, but she said no. He demanded that she leave her son, if only for an hour, but she refused. She would not be separated from her child.

Elkanah's smile faltered. He became a new man, uglier and angrier than I had ever seen him. He shouted at the children. His touch became rough at night. Finally, he exploded in rage.

“You have an unnatural attachment to that baby.” He thundered at Hannah, who had been absorbed in her
son's antics as always. “You have forgotten your duties as a wife.”

“Aren't you happy now?” she asked. She seemed truly puzzled, as if she had not even noticed all the tension that had been growing around her. “I have given you a fine son. Isn't that what you wanted?”

“It is what you wanted! But it has made you forget who you are. My wife.”

“And his mother.”

“My wife.”

I stood in the doorway behind Elkanah and saw the whole thing. He was furious, she resentful. I saw as he rushed to her and grabbed Samuel out of her embrace. He clutched the boy's arm tight enough to make him cry out. “Let him go,” Hannah said. “You've gone mad.”

She ran at him, tried to pry his grip loose, but it was only when Elkanah lifted the boy as if to fling him against the wall that I rushed in. I acted on instinct. No one should hurt a child, no matter what his mother has done, how she has tortured me. Hannah was too small to stop Elkanah on her own, but together we pulled the boy away from him.

Hannah hugged him and rushed to the other end of the room, Samuel sobbing into her shoulder. I couldn't believe this man was my husband, who had always been mild-mannered, who spent his days praising the Lord for all he had been given. The man in front of me was
possessed of something evil. It drenched his skin in a sheen of oily sweat, distorted the planes of his face. He snarled. Spit flew from his mouth when he spoke.

He pointed to me. “She understands. Even with all her children, she gives me my due.” But I would not be a bludgeon to be used between them anymore, and he no longer deserved my attention. I turned from him and addressed her.

“He will hurt your boy eventually if you don't do something,” I said. For the first time since I came into Elkanah's home, she answered me without adding an insult.

“What can I do? He is my son. I waited so many years for God to answer my pleas.”

Neither of us had the answer. Elkanah's displeasure with Hannah had not increased his affection for me, but at least I could distract him. Every night, I went into his room whether he called me or not. He was not young when I came into his household, and age had overtaken him in the years since then. I gave my body to him so often at night that he was too tired to feel anything for his first wife or her son during the day.

The sun rose and set, rose and set, until the time came for us to go to Shiloh again. Despite Elkanah's newfound impatience, we went up as usual. He chose the finest ewe, led her by a rope himself as we made the trip.

At the temple, the priests greeted us, praised Elkanah on the great bounty that God had given him. “So many fine children,” the high priest said, as if he had something to do with their coming into the world. When his eyes alighted on Hannah, his satisfaction seemed to grow even greater.

“So this is the young man you prayed for,” he said, and took the boy from her arms, held him up in the air to make him giggle, and then returned him to Hannah. “He is a fine boy who will bring merit to his parents' names and to his people. You have much to be thankful for this year.”

Elkanah sucked in his breath. Hannah's face twisted at the cruel irony of the priest's words, but they gave me the solution to our problems, a way to protect the boy.

“Leave him here,” I said to her after the evening meal.

Her brow furrowed. It took her a moment to understand what I was talking about. “My boy?” she said, and looked over to where he slept. Desperation and love seemed to seize her by the shoulders. “I can't. God finally answered me. Maybe it would be nothing to you to give up one of your children, but he is all I have. A mother can't abandon her child.”

I had grown calloused to her insults, so it was easy to ignore this one. “If you love him, you will leave him here with the priests. Dedicate him to God. The priest
said the boy is destined for great things. They can raise him to that fate better than we can in our small home.”

It didn't matter that I enlarged upon what the priest had really said, that I had blown his words up more than he probably intended. Hannah would believe anything about her son.

Hannah hesitated, but she didn't turn away. She listened, so I kept talking.

“The priests will care for him. God will watch over him. He is not safe in our home. Soon, even you won't be safe.”

When I made her the object of discussion, her eyes flared with some of their old anger. “You just want him out of the way so that your children will be the only ones Elkanah cares for.”

I sighed. I had suffered so much at the hands of this woman, and still she abhorred me, but I was no longer the hated second wife. We were equal now, if only because our husband held back his affection from both of us.

“I have no love for you,” I said. After all these years, she still couldn't see the truth of our lives, “but I am trying to help you.”

There was no more for me to say, and I had to be back in my room. Elkanah would expect me to be waiting for him. Being in the presence of the priests and bringing the sacrifice seemed to have returned him to
a semblance of himself. He remembered his piety, and with it his mood lightened. His caresses were gentler that night than they had been in months. I was almost deceived into believing there was some emotion in them, but I had learned enough by then to know better.

The next morning, I was in a frenzy of work packing our family up to return home. When all the donkeys were loaded with their burdens, all the children accounted for, and the innkeeper assured that we had left his rooms in good condition, we began the long walk home. I didn't notice Hannah until we were on the road. She sat on her donkey as if her body weighed too much for her. Her arms hung limply at her sides. They swung back and forth to the rhythm of the ass's footfalls as if they were not attached to her shoulders. She looked ahead, but it was as if her eyes saw nothing.

It was then I saw that her son was not strapped to her back. I looked again. Her arms were empty, too. She had listened to what I said. I marveled at it, but she didn't acknowledge me. I knew then that I would never learn what had changed her mind. As bad as things had been between us before, they were bound to get worse. She had sacrificed the best of herself, had lost her boy even if it was to save him. Even though I had been the one to save him, she would blame me for his absence for the rest of our lives.

Elkanah must have seen what she had given up for
him, or known of her intentions before we set out. As always, they kept their confidences from me. He rode over to her, took her hand in his and ran his fingers over the skin of her forearm. He pulled in close to her, whispered into her ear as he used to do. She didn't respond, but she allowed him to hold onto her, to adore her as he always had.

Everything, I saw, was returning to how it had been. To normal. The road stretched out before us. We had two long days of walking ahead of us. I tightened the cloth that held my baby to me, felt the warm heft of her against my shoulder, and labored on.

SAUL'S DAUGHTER

“Her husband walked with her as far as Bahurim, weeping as he followed her; then Abner ordered him to turn back, and he went back.”

2 Samuel 3:16

Gallim

L
ife happens slowly in a small village. Our bonds of family and clan run deep. We take care of each other here. The content of each person's heart seems open for all to read. We live and we die here. The men bring their brides to dwell among us. We care for the widow, feed her at our tables when there is no one left
to provide for her. We give the orphan a place to sleep, find him a wife, become the parents he needs us to be.

Our village, Gallim, is a quiet place. We are used to the slow rhythms of our corner of God's world, to the vistas of terraced fields, pasture, and mountains unbroken by a city wall. It was like all the other villages that dotted the Judean hills, tiny outposts whose young men were often away fighting our unseen enemies, Philistine to the west, Moab to the east, who could scale the hills and overrun us if we didn't stay vigilant. Nonetheless, the struggles of the kingdom rarely entered.

Hills remain sturdy. They never move, though we scamper over their surfaces. To them, there is no difference between us and our animals. The goats jump higher, sheep bend to the grass, and we tread heavily. What is that to the soil, which will renew itself long after we are gone?

Palti

I
t took time for me to convince Michel that my love was sincere. “You are here now,” I said. “You are my wife, part of my home, my family.”

“You are kind,” she replied. “I have not deserved the welcome your family has given to me. I will forever be grateful to you, and to them.”

It was not what I wanted to hear. Gratitude is what a man feels for his savior. It is the emotion of strangers unless accompanied by something deeper—affection, shared purpose, love.

“Please,” I begged, “you are mine, and I am yours. Nothing will change that.”

Her reticence was not hard to understand, and I felt for her. Life had not been kind to her. I am a patient man, but even I have my pride. It took considerable persistence to let her come to me. It was like coaxing a wild animal—platefuls of food left out, and each night the bowl a little closer, until finally, it is inside and no longer afraid. That's only half-right. She was aloof, but not skittish. Warm to everyone, including me, but she held a piece of herself back, would not allow herself to be comfortable in my company. She was sure, I saw, that I would prove myself like the other men she had known, who made use of her and then, when she was no longer valuable, walked away.

I had watched her for years. When I was still young and of sound body, I served our king as all other young men do. I was fast and fearless. I was also loyal, a trait I have carried with me all my life. When I entered Saul's service, I signed my existence over to him. He was a wise leader, a forceful man who had united the restive tribes under one rule. We were stronger when we fought as one than we had been as scattered clans, each vying for its
own glory. I admired him for seeing that, for being able to act on it.

Soon after my induction, I was noticed by Saul's highest general, Abner. He watched me throw a spear and wrestle others to the ground. He saw that I stayed calm in the confusion of a fight and that I was not loud and intemperate, but kept my own counsel. Which is how I came to be part of the king's own detail. We served longer than others, stayed in the capital while the young men around us went home to marry and raise families. We took oaths to hold his life dearer than our own, to march into battle with him, to protect him.

It was the first time I had lived in a city. Not just any city. The capital itself, with its winding alleys and buildings set one atop the next. We were given a place to sleep inside the walls of the palace, and marched out every day to practice our maneuvers in the shadow of the city walls. We followed the king when he left, and came back with him when he returned. In the evenings, we filled the dining hall, its thick walls grimed with the smell of sweaty men that I doubted would ever fade.