Eve (29 page)

Except the next day Adam didn’t get home until nighttime, and by then Naava had fallen asleep at the courtyard entrance, waiting for him. The next morning, her father stooped down, his fingers on her cheek, and said gravely, “The gophers were destroying the roots of our fig trees. I had to set out traps for them.”

“Oh,” Naava said.

“I shall make a great effort to take you today,” he added.

Eve protested because Adam had promised to fill in the rain ruts in the courtyard and to fix the chinks in the cistern.

Adam looked at Eve then in the sternest way possible—although he was joking—and said, “But this girl has never seen the closest equivalent of Eden. And she must. It would be an outrage if she didn’t.”

Eve laughed. “Take us all, then. I should like to go back to Eden.”

“Me too,” said Aya.

That afternoon, though, the sky’s underbelly turned a shade of ominous green and split in two. Large hailstones puckered the river and pebbled the earth. The river grew angry and seethed over the levees like a sinewy silty beast, creeping steadily toward an unsuspecting Eve, who was teaching Aya the various techniques of drying herbs, and Naava, who was brushing out clusters of sheep’s wool, smoothing it before she twirled it into workable fibers. Naava saw it first and screamed as the water rushed in and lifted her loom and tore the clouds of wool from her hands. By the time she had found her footing, clutching at her wet mass of wool, Aya was swirling about the courtyard, and Eve was attempting to chase after her, her fingers slipping from her daughter’s hand several times before she was able to pull her to safety. The water raged about their legs, sucking and pushing and pulling.

Eve yelled at Naava, gesturing, but her words twisted away on the howling wind. She grasped Aya’s arm, and together they waded toward Adam in the fields, toward the fruit trees, the only safe vantage point.

Naava followed them, crying out for them to
stop, wait.
She thought she would be swept away, and no one would know or care. Her breath was spent by the time she reached her father, who grabbed her legs and hoisted her up into the leaning branches of a fig tree next to her mother and sister. He climbed up after them. They sat like a family of roosting doves-mother, father, and babies. Eve shouted something at Adam, and Adam pointed in the direction of the date palms, where Cain and Abel were already perched.

In the bright gashes of lightning, Naava watched their house crumble. Later, she would stand with her parents in knee-deep lakes where the barley and wheat had once stood. Dead sheep and goat carcasses floated like water bugs, their bloated bodies splitting and reeking in the day’s heat. There was
no food and no potable water for days, and their lips grew thick and cal-lused. They became faint and weak as they labored to rebuild their home.

It was a sullen Eve who finally voiced their exhaustion with the words, “Why did this have to happen?”

Adam did not answer until Eve repeated the question a second time. He sighed. “It rains. It floods. This has happened before, and it will happen again. The question is not ‘Why did this happen?’ but ‘What shall we do about it?’”

Eve blurted out, “Elohim does not care about us.”

“Elohim gave us limbs to work, minds to think,” said Adam. He turned to Naava and winked. “What does that cloud up there remind you of?” he asked. And Naava had squinted through the now-bare branches and said, “A badger.”

“Me too,” said Adam. He whistled. “Look at that tail.”

In the end, they broke open cactus spears, then tilted their heads back to catch the bitter drops on their tongues. They foraged for root vegetables—beets, carrots, parsnips, and radishes—still trapped in the ground under muddy waters.

Adam was right. They rebuilt their house one brick at a time; they erected corrals to keep in their animals, the ones they found alive. Cain replanted their crops, once the seed heads were dried and extractable. Abel searched for wild sheep and goat pairs, built up his pens and shelters once again, and bred them into a hearty flock. Eve—then Dara after her, when she had learned to work with clay—formed jars and flasks and bowls and platters from the thick mud present everywhere and hardened them in Aya’s fire. Aya planted herbs for cooking; Naava planted madder and chamomile and larkspur for dyeing. Eve dug up her jar of seeds and buried it once again, in a place she would remember. All these things took many days. All these things had to be done each and every time the river overflowed.

Even the smaller bushes and vines and flowers of Eve’s garden had to be replanted. The trench and cistern had to be repaired.

Through it all, her father led them, a calm and steadying presence, no matter what dilemma presented itself.

The prince caught Naava looking at him. “I will buy,” he said finally, waving his hand toward the cheese.

Naava nodded.

The prince halted in front of a dark and airless doorway, rife with gnats and fly-noosed spiderwebs. He gestured for Naava to follow. She did, her donkey clambering in after her—
tip tap tip tap.
Inside, it was empty, save for a rough-hewn chair and table.
The room has a gloomy aspect,
Naava thought,
drenched in shadows.
It smelled of earth and manure and incense.

The prince counted out small round clay tokens into her palm, then he extracted the cheese from its sling and laid it, still wrapped in reeds and cloth, on the floor.

Naava knew enough to understand that she had been paid. After all, she had seen the tokens being exchanged in the square as something of value. But what she wondered was why they had to conduct this strange transaction in the dark and what her parents would do with these silly tokens, even as the prince drew near enough for her to feel his warmth, even as she was reaching out to him and kissing him, darting her tongue out to part his lips and probe his mouth. Naava had envisioned this moment in her dreams, both before and after she had lain with Cain, but she had not seen nor felt it like this. Things were happening too quickly—
were all men the same this way?—
and she wanted to slow it down, even if just a little. She pulled back, pushing on his chest. “We could sit here and talk. Tell me about your family,” she said politely. She sat, as if to make herself very clear.

The prince sat too, facing her. The grin remained on his face. He ran his finger across her eyebrows, down her nose. “Bee-oo-ti-ful,” he said.

“Thank you,” said Naava. She reached for his hand and held it in her lap.

He wriggled free and fumbled for the hem of her robe. Finding it, he crept his fingers up her leg, as if they were playing cat and mouse. He laughed.

Although she had wanted this for so long, Naava sensed something was wrong. She thought maybe if she kissed him one more time he’d be satisfied, at least until she was prepared to do what he wanted. She leaned into him and reached up to touch his hairline and trace his ears. She licked her lips and kissed him open-mouthed. The prince latched on, and before she knew it she had fallen back onto the floor, with the prince solidly on top of
her. Now he was absolutely frantic about something
other
than Naava— she felt it in her chest. She started to thrash and pull away, to no avail.

“No,” she breathed.

The prince placed his hand over her mouth. He was still grinning, but she could have been mistaken—maybe it was a grimace. His eyes bulged, and the vein over his right temple was big and blue and pulsing. His fingers groped her thighs and reached in between her legs.

She scratched at his face, at his eyes, and suddenly, mercifully, he grew still. He lifted up off her and helped her to her feet.

“So sorry,” he said. “I have made a mistake. Forgive me.”

Naava was too stunned to say anything, even to accept an apology. She was half disappointed in herself and half angry at being treated like a regular beast. This had been nothing like her dreams—he had spoiled them! The hem of her robe had come undone, and she brushed the dirt from her skirt. She picked up the spilled clay tokens, and without looking back again at the prince, she hurried through the doorway and into the shaded alleyway, leading her donkey back to her old life, the one she understood—and could control.

As she walked, she thought. She thought about her bruised self, the hurts more emotional than physical. She thought of Cain and how he had been rough and brusque with her, in that same hurried manner.
What did men like Adam and Cain and Abel and the prince want from a woman? And how could she discover these things without embarrassing herself?

Cain was her only hope. He would teach her everything she needed to know. All the fumbling and roughness—surely this could not be a man’s sole desire.

As she neared the market, the tinging of the metalsmiths and the barking of the merchants and the savory smells of roasting meat overcame her. She emerged from the sleepy shadows and into the stark sunlight. She blinked.

Cain would be waiting for her.

But first she wanted to use the tokens to purchase some of that fine, luxuriant fabric, not from the linen girl but from the merchant two stalls down. Naava wanted the linen girl to observe the transaction.
Look,
Naava wanted to say,
I would have bought from you, but you reap what you sow. Think you’re too good for me, do you?

I could not keep doing this—holding my family together. I did not
want the responsibility of it.

It was afternoon. The sky blushed over the grain-fringed horizon. I was collecting pears in the folds of my skirt. Goat tore at anything green. She behaved less and less those days. Maybe it was because I was distracted by Mother and had not the heart to discipline her. Turtle, too, I had neglected. I fed him but did not talk to him. I knew I should do better for Dara’s sake, but Mother was about all I could think about. I was worried her dreams would come true—that she would die in childbirth.
What would I do then?

The air was turning cool, and I paused to close my eyes and breathe in the evening dampness. There was the smell of sour fruit, then rank river grass.

I opened my eyes. Along the shoreline, a heron hovered over the gleaming sand. Ever since the building of the city up north and their diversion of our water, the wide riverbeds had become marshes, and I had seen more dead fish than I wanted to see. What was the fortune of one was the demise of the other. The herons head tilted down and pecked at a silvery fish floundering upon the bank. In the blink of an eye, the thrashing sliver of life was gone.

In the distance I could see Naava flirting with Abel. She had been acting strangely of late, and I knew it was due to her irritation that he was ignoring her. She climbed up on the rungs of the fence and leaned over toward him as he milked the goats. I hated her for this—what she did to my brothers.

Really, I was jealous. I thought Abel was the most handsome man I had ever seen. I wished for him to see
me,
care about
me.
But I am afraid his eyes glanced off me like rain off a ducks back.

Abel refused to look up. He milked the goats, one after the other, occasionally swatting at a fly that flew about his head. When he accidentally knocked over his jar of milk, Naava laughed. I knew this because there was a certain tilt of her head when she did so, and it infuriated me that Abel had to stumble about to place the jar in exactly the right spot again. His head was down, and I could tell by the slump of his shoulders that his irritation was rising as assuredly as the floodwaters did in the spring.

Cain returned from the city through the vegetable fields. He saw me and approached. He held out his fist, rounded about an object. “Close your eyes,” he said.

I did.

“Smell,” he said.

I did. Oh, glorious wonder! My eyes flew open. “Oranges,” I said.

“Well, one, really,” he said. “I brought it back from the market. One of the pretty girls gave it to me.”

“Thank you,” I said. I moved to block his view of Abel and Naava, blaming the sun. “I’ll stand here so you aren’t blinded,” I said. I knew jealousy ran like fire through my brothers, and this circumstance was the perfect kindling, despite the fact that Abel had not bit at Naava’s bait. From what I could tell, Naava wanted every man to like her. She didn’t care which fish she netted, as long as she got what she wanted, which was laughable, because I’m not sure she
knew
what she wanted. She performed mating dances, darting here and there and making silly little noises that were intended to attract Cain and Abel. And they did. Cain, anyway.