1997 - The Red Tent (21 page)

My uncle was a good man and a fine son. He made sure that wealthy pilgrims visited the grove and brought rich offerings. He found Isaac the stone hut that afforded Rebecca the luxury of living like a priestess, without a man to serve. The Grandmother patted Esau’s cheek whenever he left her tent, and he would glow as though she had praised him to heaven. Which she never did.

My grandmother never spoke ill of Esau, nor did she say anything good about him. His wives, however, she detested in detail. Although they were dutiful women who, at one time, sent fine gifts in hopes of winning her approval, she dismissed them all as slovenly idiots. For years she had sneered at them openly, so they visited only when Esau insisted.

She was not much kinder about my mothers. She considered Rachel lazy—beautiful, but lazy. She called Bilhah ugly and Zilpah a superstitious stick. She grudgingly admitted that Leah was a good worker and clearly blessed to have delivered so many healthy sons. But even Leah was not good enough for Jacob, who deserved a perfect mate. Not a giantess with mismatched eyes.

She actually said such things in my presence! As though I were not my mother’s daughter, as if my aunts were not my beloved mothers, too. But I did not defend them. When the Oracle spoke, no contradictions were permitted. I was not as bold as Leah, and my nighttime tears often tasted of shame as well as loneliness.

Rebecca saved the worst of her tongue for her husband, though. Isaac had grown foolish with old age, she said, and he smelled—something she could not abide. He had forgotten what he owed her, for hadn’t she been right to make him give the blessing to Jacob? She spoke incessantly about Isaac’s ingratitude, and her suffering at his hands. But it was not clear to me what my grandfather had done. He seemed gentle and harmless when he came on hot days, to enjoy the breezes beneath the great terebinths. I was glad that Isaac had no need of Rebecca’s care. He was well served by his veiled Deborah. It was rumored that her covering hid a harelip, though it was unthinkable that such a one would not have been killed in infancy.

When Esau came to Mamre, he visited his mother first and saw to her needs. He was polite and even fond, but as soon as he could, he turned to the Grandfather and accompanied him back to Arba, where the two men enjoyed their evening wine. They stayed up very late, talking and laughing, served by the veiled Deborah.

I learned this from the other ones who wore white. They were kind to me. They patted my shoulder when they gave me my dinner, brushed my hair, and let me work with their beautiful ivory spindles. But they did not tell stories in the evenings, and I never learned the names their own mothers had given them, or how they had come to Mamre, or if they missed the company of men. They seemed mild and content, but as colorless as their robes. I did not envy them their life with the Oracle.

At the new moon, Rebecca did not permit me to enter the red tent with the women who bled; she was strict about this observance. She who was past childbearing did not enter, nor could I, who was still unripe. One of the other Deborahs stayed outside with us as well. She explained that her periods had never come, but did not complain about her lack of rest. She and I cooked and served the celebrants, whose quiet laughter made me long for my mothers’ tent.

When the women emerged, rested and smiling, on the morning after the third day, I was permitted to follow them as they stood at the highest point of the hill to watch the sun rise. The Grandmother herself poured out a libation of wine, while the women sang a wordless song of quiet rejoicing. In the deep silence that followed, it seemed to me that the Queen of Heaven was in the trees above us. That memory returns to me at every new moon.

I never learned to love my grandmother. I could not forget or forgive what she had done to Tabea. Nevertheless, the day came when I honored her.

The doors to the Oracle’s tent were always open, and from every direction the stranger was made welcome. This had been the decree of Sarai and Abram, who, it was said, gave an equal welcome to princes and beggars. And so, every morning, Rebecca would receive pilgrims inside the beautiful tent. She saw all who came—wretched or resplendent—nor did she hurry with the poor.

I stood with her women as she greeted the guests. First, a childless woman approached and begged for a son. The Oracle gave her a red cord to tie around one of the trees at Mamre, whispered a blessing in the barren one’s ear, and bid her go with the Deborah skilled in herbs.

Next there was a trader seeking a charm for his caravan. “It has been a bad season for me,” he began. “I am nearly destitute, but I have heard of your powers,” he said, with a bit of a dare creeping into his voice. “I’ve come to see for myself.”

The Grandmother moved close to him and looked into his face until he turned away from her gaze. “You must make restitution,” she said in a way that sounded like a warning.

His shoulders sagged and his swaggering manner melted. “I don’t have the goods to make restitution, Grandmother,” he said.

“There is no other way,” said the Oracle, in a loud, formal voice. She dismissed him with a wave of her hand, and he backed meekly out of her presence and ran down the hillside as though an army were chasing him.

Rebecca saw my open mouth and explained with a shrug, “Only thieves come looking for business miracles.”

The last pilgrim that morning was a mother carrying a child who was old enough to walk—three years, maybe four. But when the woman unwrapped him, we could see why he was still in her arms. His legs were withered and his feet were covered with sores, raw and oozing, and painful to see. From the look in his eyes, it was clear that he was nearly dead with suffering. The Grandmother took the boy from his mother’s arms. She carried him to her cushion, her lips pressed against his forehead, and sat with him in her lap. She called for an unguent used for burns, something that soothes but cannot heal. Then, with her own hands, without flinching or drawing back, she rubbed the stuff into his wounds. When Rebecca was done, she wrapped her perfumed hands around his diseased feet, and held them as though they were precious, delicate, and clean. The mother gaped, but the little boy had no awe of his healer. With the pain eased for the moment, he rested his head upon her shallow breast and fell asleep.

No one moved or spoke. I don’t know how long we stood as he dozed, but my back ached before the child opened his eyes. He wrapped his arms around the Grandmother’s neck and kissed her. She embraced him in return, and then carried him back to his mother, who wept to see the smile on her boy’s face, and who wept again to see the sadness upon the Oracle’s face, which showed there was nothing she could do to keep this one alive.

I could not hate Rebecca after that. Although I never saw her show such tenderness to anyone else, I could not forget the way she took that little boy’s pain into her own hands and gave comfort to him and peace to his mother.

I never spoke about Tabea to my grandmother. I did not dare. In silence, I mourned the loss of my best friend as sorrowfully as if I had wrapped her in a shroud.

But it was Werenro we put into the ground.

I had been anxious to see the messenger again, as were the others at Mamre. She was a favorite among the Deborahs, who smiled when I asked about her return. “Surely she will come soon,” said the one who liked to brush my hair. “And then we will have stories in the evening and you will not be so sad.”

But word came with a trader on his way from Tyre that Werenro, messenger to Rebecca of Mamre, had been murdered. The remains of her body were found on the edge of the city, the tongue cut out, red hair scattered all around. A trader who had visited the shrine years before remembered the strange-looking woman who served the Oracle and recognized her bag. He gathered what was left of her, to bring her bones back to the Grandmother, who betrayed no emotion at the terrible news.

The sack he carried was pitifully small, and we buried it deep in the earth in a plain earthenware jar. I heard the Deborahs weep that night, and added another layer of salt to my own blanket. But when I dreamed of Werenro, she was smiling her dappled smile from a seat in a great tree, a large bird perched on her shoulder.

The day after Werenro was buried, I went to Rebecca in the morning as usual, but she was already dressed, scented, and painted for the day. She sat on her cushions, silent and withdrawn. I was not even certain she noticed that I had entered. I coughed. She did not look up at me, but after a time she spoke, and I knew why pilgrims came to Mamre.

“I know you are here, Dinah,” she said.

“I know that you hate me on behalf of Esau’s girl. It was a pity. She was the best of them, and of course it was not her fault. It was the poor stupid mother, who did not do what I told her but what her own stupid mother taught her. I should have taken her as a baby. The girl had no chance.”

____/’ My grandmother said this without looking at me, as though she were airing her own thoughts. But then she turned her eyes upon me and fixed me in her gaze.

“You are safe from that fate,” she said. “Your mother will not let them turn your maidenhood into a prize. She will not permit your blood to be anything but an offering into the womb of the great mother. You are safe in that way.

“Some other unhappiness awaits you, though,” she said, peering at me intently, trying to discern my future. “Something I cannot fathom. Just as I could not foresee the end of Werenro. Perhaps your sorrow will be nothing worse than a lost baby or two, or maybe an early widowhood, for your life will be very long. But there’s no use in frightening children with the price of life.”

There was silence for a time, and when Rebecca next spoke, although her words were about me, it was as though I were no longer there. “Dinah is not the heir, either. I see now that there will be none. Mamre will be forgotten. The tent will not stand after me.” She shrugged, as though it was of no great matter.

“The great ones need nothing from us, truly. Our libations and prayers are of no more importance than birdsong or bee song. At least their praises are assured.”

She rose and walked toward me, until our noses nearly touched. “I forgive you for hating me,” she said, and waved me out of the tent.

Reuben came a few days later, and I left Mamre without so much as a nod from the Grandmother. Glad as I was to be returning to my mother’s tent, my eyes stung with tears as we walked away. I returned empty-handed. I had merited little of Rebecca’s attention. I had failed to please her.

A
LTHOUGH I HAD longed for home every moment of my absence, I was shocked by it when I arrived. Nothing was as I remembered it. My brothers, my father, and all of the other men had become impossibly crude and brutish. They grunted rather than spoke, scratched themselves and picked their noses, and even relieved themselves in plain sight of the women. And the stink!

The noise of the camp was overwhelming, too. Barking dogs, bleating sheep, crying babies, and screaming women. How was it that I had never noticed the way they all shrieked at each other and at the children? Even my own mother was changed. Every word out of her mouth was critical, demanding, and imperious. Everything had to be done her way, and nothing I did was good enough. I heard only scorn and anger in her voice when she told me to fetch water, or mind one of the babies, or help Zilpah with the weaving.

Whenever she spoke to me, my eyes stung with tears, my throat closed in shame and anger, and I kicked at the dirt. “What is the matter?” she asked, three times a day. “What is wrong with you?”

There was nothing wrong with me, I thought. It was Leah who had become short-tempered and sour and impossible. Somehow she had aged years in the months I had been gone. The deep lines of her forehead were often caked with dust, and the grime under her fingernails disgusted me.

Of course, I could never voice such disrespect, so I avoided my mother and escaped to the calm of Zilpah’s loom and the gentleness of Bilhah’s voice. I even took to sleeping in Rachel’s tent, which must have caused Leah some pain. Inna, who I now realized was at least as old as the Grandmother herself, scolded me for causing my mother such sorrow. But I was too young to understand that the changes were mine, not my mother’s.

After a few weeks, I grew accustomed once more to the daily sound and smell of men again, and found myself fascinated by them. I stared at the tiny buds on the baby boys who ran about naked, and I spied upon mating dogs. I tossed and turned on my blanket and let my hands wander over my chest and between my legs, and wondered.

One night, Inna caught me by the side of Judah’s tent, where he and Shua were making another baby. The midwife grabbed my ear and led me away. “It won’t be long now, my girl,” she told me, with a leer. “Your time is coming.” I was mortified and horrified to think that Inna might tell my mother where she had found me. Even so, I could not stop thinking about the mystery of men and women.

On the nights I was consumed with curiosity and longing, my father and his sons were deep in conversation. The herds would soon be too numerous for the lands at our disposal, and my brothers wanted greater prospects for themselves, and their sons. Jacob had begun to dream again, this time about a walled city and a familiar valley in the shoulder between two mountains. In his dreams, we were already in Shechem, where his grandfather had poured wine over a pile of stones and called it a holy altar. My brothers liked this dream. They did business in the city and returned to the tents full of stories about the marketplace, where wool and livestock got good prices. Shechem’s king, Hamor, was peaceful and welcomed tribes who wished to make the land blossom. Simon and Levi spoke to Hamor’s vizier in my father’s name and returned to Jacob, all puffed up with themselves over their agreement for a good-sized parcel of land with a well on it.

So the tents were taken down and the herds gathered and we traveled the short distance to the place that the king said could be ours. My mothers declared themselves pleased with the valley.