Eve (39 page)

Aya, dear child, slumbered like a baby through it all. I made a mental note to check on her later, after this debacle. It was not a good time for her to become ill.

I saw Abel and Jacan making haste back to the house, leaning into the thick straps across their foreheads, careful not to spill the fresh milk. Abel’s eyes went immediately to Cain, and Jacan looked up at Abel, limbs quaking like dry leaves in the wind. They set the jars down, the milk sloshing over the rims and onto the ground.

Cain pointed at Abel, his finger making large looping circles in the air.
“You
will not go. I know that already.” He slid his finger through the air to rest on Jacan. “How about
you?
Will you go with me to protect our family’s honor? Our family’s good name?”

At Cain’s proposal to include Jacan in this mess, I stumbled forward, good arm outstretched. “No!” I said.

Abel put his arm on Jacan’s shoulder and pulled his little brother toward him. “Why don’t you explain,” he said, glaring at Cain, “what it is you’re after.”

Cain laughed. I did not know if he had been drinking or if he had truly gone mad. “You do not care, shepherd boy. It is not you they want.”

Abel’s jaw clenched.

With my good hand supporting my ripe belly—for the baby had grown exceedingly heavy over the summer months—I stepped nearer to Cain. “What has happened? Start at the beginning. We are having difficulty following you.”

Cain brushed past me, cruelly and unnecessarily.

I stumbled back.

Abel took one step forward, his fists raised.

“Don’t,” I said. “He is not himself.”

“He is more himself now than ever before,” said Abel.

Jacan pulled on Abel’s belt. “Let’s go,” he begged. “Father will be angry.”

Abel took hold of Jacan’s hand and flung it away. His eyes followed Cain’s movements, but he stayed where he was. “Why has your face fallen, brother?”

Cain swirled. He spit. He said, “They have come under veil of night and cut down my dates. All of them. You hear me? All of them.” He paced like a wild animal contemplating a kill. “They enter into a sacred oath with me, and this is how they assure their victory, by taking the spoils for themselves. They are scoundrels! Infidels! And I shall have my revenge.” He smacked his fist into his palm, as if the pummeling had already begun.

Still, Abel did not move, for which I was grateful. I did not understand why our neighbors to the north would do such a thing, especially because we had been bartering and trading with them for weeks now.
Why would they do such a scurrilous thing, when they had to cohabit the plains with us?

“They are gone?” I asked, incredulous that this was so.

“No, woman,” Cain said, using the same disgusting dismissive tactics that Adam used with me on occasion—the flick of a wrist and the word that oozed disdain. “They left them to rot in the sun, to be eaten by the creatures. There is no hope for retrieving them. They will not grow on broken branches.” He looked so unprotected and shamed that it broke my heart.

“They want to know my secrets,” said Cain.

I bit my lip to keep from saying,
Well, if you hadn’t flaunted them …

Cain righted the bench. He sat and put his head in his hands. He began to sob like a child. It was as though he had gone from flame to ember in the space of a few moments.

I went to him, put my good hand on his shoulder. He shoved it away.

“Go,” I said to Abel and Jacan. “Go,” I said to Naava. “Leave him be.”

The other children slunk off to their chores, and I managed to maneuver my body to the ground to kneel at Cain’s feet. “Cain,” I said. “Why not go to your father and talk about what course of action to take? I fear that a rash action may heap endless sorrow upon us all.”

Cain’s body was shaking. My mother’s heart rose up within me like a spring of water, and I thought,
But he is just a boy.
This realization took me by surprise, for I had forgotten what it was like to hold Cain—suckle him, nurture him, and wipe his face clear of tears. My eyes brimmed with wetness.

When Cain was born, Adam and I were still nomads, inching our way down the winding river toward the great sea to the south. We crossed treacherous terrain, wandering over hill and valley, and although we did not know what we were searching for, we knew we would recognize it when we saw it.

Much of my pregnancy with Cain was excruciating. My body rejected food and water, and there were days I seemed to be more upon hands and knees than upright, moving forward in minuscule amounts. My breasts ached. My skin left purple trails where it stretched translucent over my belly. My legs and ankles swelled, and no amount of rest assuaged my weariness.

I lost track of the days and wondered how long it would take for the birth gates to open and my baby to emerge as a smaller version of Adam or myself. I thought much of my lost child, and I worried that this pregnancy, too, would end tragically.

Adam was sweet. He tore off large fluted leaves and fanned the heat away from my engorged, melonlike body. He brought me new delicious sundries to quench my thirst—cactus milk and rose-hip water and hyssop
tea. He stroked my stomach and talked to the growing baby inside. “Little one, your mother and I want to say a few words. Can you hear us?” Then he would press his opened mouth on my skin and moan into the cavern that was my belly.

“You will scare her,” I said, laughing.

“Her?” he said. “What about him?”

“What about him?” I said, smiling. “I should like to think a girl would be very nice. A little version of me running about, don’t you think?”

“Elohim have mercy on us,” he said. “Another one of you? I should go mad.”

I hit him playfully on the arm, and he kissed my eyelids.

He told stories to the baby, with his head turned sideways, his good ear resting on my swollen mound. “Can you hear me?” he whispered. “Do you know that you are loved, even before you appear?” Adam’s head raised up. The delight in his eyes was obvious. “I think he heard me.”

“You mean she,” I said.

“Yes, as you wish,” he said. He rested his head against me again and continued. “Once upon a time, I was alone”— his words floated, soared in the space above our heads—“in a beautiful, wonderful place, where there were butterflies with gossamer wings, where there was a river that poured over red jasper, where there was a one-armed monkey that ate ants out of my hand, where the flowers were brightly colored and bloomed every day”— here he paused—“and where there was tranquillity and happiness.”

“Do you think she understands?” I asked.

Adam didn’t answer. His vision hung between us in glorious detail. “It was all Elohim’s doing. But Elohim noticed that I was morose, that I needed a friend, much like the animals had. I wanted someone like me. To talk to, to be with. Elohim seemed to understand. So He said to me, ‘Sleep, Adam, sleep, and when you wake, you will have your answer.’ I fell asleep then, and when I awoke, oh, I cannot describe it, there was the most beautiful creature in the world facing me. She was very much like me, except for these”—he reached up to tweak my breast; I batted his hand away— “and I felt… I don’t know what I felt, maybe a completion, a satisfied feeling in
my belly, that I at last had someone to share
me
with.” He was quiet then. The river ran. The birds chirped.

My belly moved.

“Did you feel that?” Adam exclaimed, his head coming away from my skin. “Did you?”

I nodded. “The baby hears your story, and it makes her happy that you love her mother so.”

He caressed my face, my hair, my limbs, my swollen tender nipples.

“You are beautiful,” he said.

“Me or the baby?” I said.

“You, my darling, my love.” His kisses were like honey, his caresses like cool streams of water. I sank in them, drowned in them, and was happy.

That said, I knew not what to expect from the birth. I had vomited profusely and felt extreme cramping with our first child, but I conjectured that this time would be different. My middle had grown as large as a watermelon, and I did not know how we would get the baby child out of me. True, I had seen lambs and kids and cats being born in the Garden and had marveled at how something so big could force itself from its mother for no male animals had ever given birth, that I had seen. When Elohim had cursed me, He had made pregnancy and childbirth sound so ominous and painful, it frightened me. I discussed this over and over again with Adam, trying to prepare myself for the ordeal that lay ahead.

When the first pains came, I was sleeping. It felt as if Adam had kicked me in his sleep, but no, he was facing the opposite direction, snoring considerably. Again the pain seized me, and I doubled over.
Was this it?
I didn’t know.

“Adam,” I whispered, sitting up.

Still he snored.

“Adam,” I said louder.

A short snort, then Adam turned to face me. “What?” he said.

“I think it’s time,” I said.

He was quiet for a moment as this sunk in. Then suddenly he was a bundle of quickness. He sat up, rubbed his hands through his hair, and looked at me, at my terrified face. “It’s coming out?”

I looked between my legs and back up at my rounded belly. “I don’t think so. But it hurts.”

Adam put his hand on my stomach. “Here?” he said.

I shook my head and pointed to the area between my legs.

“What shall I do? I mean, what
can
I do?” said Adam. The furrows on his forehead deepened. “Do you need something to eat? Or drink? Some water, perhaps? Maybe you should lie down.” He held my shoulders and tried to force me to lie back.

“Stop,” I grunted, reaching my hand out. “It feels better to sit up.”

“Oh, yes, all right, then,” he said. He stood and paced. “Do you wish for me to sit with you, talk with you? What do you want me to do?”

“Be still,” I said, laughing. “I just want you near me, in case something bad happens.”

Adam sat, but he chewed on the insides of his cheeks. “Do you feel anything now?” he said. “Anything new?”

“No,” I said. “I’ll tell you when I do.”

He nodded, still chewing.

I held his hand, for he seemed to be in more need of it than I.

In the end, after two full days of severe pain, I could bear it no longer. I do not remember if it was morning, noon, or evening. I could not say which lamp—sun or moon—was in the sky, or whether birds were singing my baby’s arrival. I squatted in the brush, over a carefully constructed grassy nest, and told Adam to watch closely for any sign of anything.

“Where?” said Adam. “Where do you want me to be?”

“There,” I said, pointing and grimacing with the pain of it all.

“Where?” said Adam, fidgeting with his hands.

“Anywhere,” I screamed, panting. I pushed then, vaguely noticing Adam’s eyes, astonished and hurt, but I could not help it; I was beyond kindness and civility by then. My legs were numb from squatting, and I so desperately wanted to have this thing done with.

I felt a tightness in my groin, then a ripping and a tearing. Through tears, I reached down to feel the slick hardness of a head emerging.

“I see it,” said Adam. “Push!”

“I am.” I breathed between pushes. Then I was crying, a rainstorm of tears. I felt strangely absent and disconcerted. My body was doing nothing I was telling it to do, and suddenly I was awash in more body fluids than I
knew I had. I had defecated with the first push, and as the stench rose up, I was horrified that I had lost all control.

Adam seemed not to mind. “The head is out. Now the shoulders,” he yelled. He knelt next to me and reached down to pull the baby out.

I screamed and pushed once more. The baby whooshed out of me, and my body felt hollow and scooped out. I fell back on my bottom, spent.

Amazingly, I was so struck by the miracle of the baby’s compact wet body sliding out of my own after such an excruciating length of time that I quite forgave him for the pain he had caused me. I could scarcely see through my tears, though, and as Adam held him up for me to gaze upon— “It’s a boy child,” Adam said, grinning—I smelled blood and earth and sky, and I was joyous and relieved. I named our boy child Cain,
Ka-yin,
meaning “acquire,” as I had acquired him through Elohim.

Within the time it takes for the sun to slide over the edge of the earth, Cain had slid between two worlds—from the warmth of the Garden into the harsh cold of the Garden exterior, just as Adam and I had done, with one significant difference: He had had no choice in the matter.

Adam severed the cord with his teeth and buried the afterbirth behind a yellow-flowering bush. We thought of inviting Elohim to witness this, the sanctified washing of our first child, but we knew He would not come.
Was He watching from behind the bushes and trees? From above?
We knew not.

We washed Cain’s dimpled body in the river—oh, how he screeched at the cold of it!—and wiped the crusty matter from his lips. We wrapped him in the dried skins of the ibex. He slept, unaware that we could not stop looking at him—his curly-lidded eyes, his tiny hands like folded petals, his thick shock of black hair. And his features! So small, so perfect!