Eve (4 page)

That’s how I came to be the cook, and I am eleven years now. My education began as soon as I could speak. I learned quickly, surpassing Mother’s knowledge after only several years. I discover new plants and new weeds all the time, and I take great delight in bestowing clever names upon them. I collect bulbs—garlic, onion, and leek—and seasonings— nigella, anise, mustard, marjoram, cumin, coriander, and mint. I test the medicinal properties of plants like cassia and thyme, myrtle and asafetida. I catch fish with my bare hands. I dig up shellfish and crustaceans from the muck and scour them in the river. I churn butter from warm milk and press oils from the sesame seed and olive fruit, delicious for dipping and cooking. I harvest salt from the dry crusted soil and steal the thick sweetness found in honeycombs. I use a grinding stone to crush barley and wheat
seed down to a sort of downy flour with which to make bread. By accident, I discovered that by soaking barley seeds in water I could make a beer that eased the tension between Cain and Abel, and recently I found that, miracle of miracles, the sap from the palm tree does this too.

All in all, if something happens to me, my family will die of starvation. Well, maybe not starvation, but serious deprivation. This is a comfort to me, strangely enough. Why should I feel secure in such a small kernel of knowledge? I’ll tell you why. I am counting on them needing me too much to send me away or, worse, discarding me as easily as Abel does his crippled or flawed animals, even though
discarding
is such a clean word for what Abel actually does.

He calls it
culling,
and, in truth, it must be done—I know this—but it’s still hard to watch.

Once, when I was in my fourth year, I begged Abel to let me help with the lambing. I, being a sentimental goose then, thought it would be pleasant and clean and easy.

It was not.

At the new moon, Abel had plucked the wool from the ewes, and now their bellies swayed with the weight of their babies. He interrupted my bread baking one afternoon.

“They’re starting,” he said.

I looked at Mother, who was churning milk.

“Go along,” she said, smiling. “I’ll watch your bread.”

Abel turned to Mother. “I need oil.”

Mother hopped up and ran to the larder. She came back with a delicate thin-necked clay jar with a knobbed stopper on it and gave it to him.

Abel nodded in thanks and held out his hand to me. His palm was like leather, and his fingers pressed firmly into my own. It was then I first felt his commitment to this thing he had to do, and another commitment to me, his younger sister, to show me how it was done. For a moment I felt privileged. To think: I could help Abel, my brother who was as steady as a tree, as accountable as the sun, as wise as the moon.

I smiled and hobbled after my thick-legged brother—I had often thought of him as a bear or an ox—and asked him
which one
and
how many
and
what can I do?

There were two ewes down, their noses pointing up, their bellies heaving. One of them had expelled its purplish water bag; the second one was still straining. The other sheep
baa
ed.

“What’s that?” I said, wrinkling my nose.

“The lambs private sea,” he said.

“Oh,” I said, although I didn’t understand.

Abel removed the stopper from the clay jar and poured oil over his right hand and arm.

“Hold this,” he said, handing me the jar. He situated himself at the rear of the struggling ewe and shoved his hand and arm into her.

I cringed. I had not seen this done, not even in the one stubborn birth I had seen of Mother’s, that of my sister Miriam, who came out like a shriveled grape with a knot in her cord. “Doesn’t that hurt her?” I said.

“It’ll hurt her more if we can’t get her baby out.” Abel grunted and turned his arm inside her. “I can’t find—” he said. “Hand me that rope. On the wall.”

The rope was thrown over a wooden nail, and I retrieved it.

By this time, the other ewe was licking her lamb’s slick body clean.

Abel looked up at me and nodded over at the lamb. “Take the flint—no, to your left—and cut off the cord just a short way from the navel, about the length of your little finger. Think you can do that?” His hand was still in the ailing ewe, but this time the rope was too.

I took the flint in my hand and approached the newborn lamb cautiously. I looked at my little finger, then back at the helpless lamb.
Would the mother bite? Would I do it right? Would it hurt the baby if I didn’t do as Abel asked?

Abel cried out behind me and said something I didn’t understand. I looked over to see him pulling a limp and wheezing lamb from his ewe. Abel wiped its nose and mouth clean. But still the lamb wheezed.

“What’s wrong?” I cried, leaving behind my assignment and coming over to comfort the poor lamb. “What’s wrong?” I said again, leaning down to touch it with my hands. “Hello, little lamb. Wake up. There, there…” I cooed.

“It’s lungs are filled with water,” Abel said. He sighed and knelt beside the ewe, who was now searching for her child. “I’m sorry,” he said, stroking
the ewes head and face. “I tried everything.” He picked up the sickly lamb and said to me, “Don’t be frightened. It has to be done.” He took the lamb a short distance away from the mother and laid it on the barley straw. He looked at me. “Have you cut the cord on that one?” he asked kindly.

I shook my head. I did not move.

I don’t know what I expected. A miracle? That the lamb would get up and walk? That Abel would be able to mend the lamb’s burdened breaths?

Oh, but I couldn’t know.

Abel took the lamb’s little head in his hands and twisted, fast, in one direction, and I heard a sharp
snap,
like the crack of a dry reed. The newborn lamb slumped. A blue hush fell over the pen. Mumbling a prayer, Abel gently released the lamb’s head onto the straw. He stood up and came over to me. He wiped furiously at his eyes with a shrug of his shoulder. “Now,” he said, “let’s see if we can get this one taken care of.” He took the flint from my trembling hand and severed my lamb’s cord—there, like that, with the same swiftness he had used on the other.

“You
killed
it,” I said, with accusation in my voice.

Abel said nothing.

“It could have gotten better. You’d see. I could have taken care of it, kept it warm by my fire.” My voice rose to a cry. “It could have lived.” Then, in disbelief and anger, I put my hands on my hips and said, in the most adamant voice I could muster,
“Someone
has to protect them.”

Despite the evidence of his reddened nose and the wetness of his eyes, Abel laughed and said, “Aya, my sister, do you think everything is meant to live? Some babies die. Remember Mother’s babies? The ones she buried in her garden? I will die one day. You will die one day. We will all return to the dust from which we were made.” I had heard Mother and Father referring to this as one of the edicts Elohim had uttered upon their expulsion from the Garden, and here it was again, in the mouth of my murderous brother.

With that, he went back to the newborn lamb, who was now dry and sucking on the front knee of the ewe. “See?” he said. “This one could use your help. He can’t find his mother’s teat. Perhaps you could show him. Squirt a little milk into his mouth to get him going.”

I contemplated this. Yes, certainly I was needed. I could see that. But this was a trap, to make me forget what I had seen.

What if Mother had done that to me? No one would have known. A quick jerk of the neck,
snap,
and she would have been rid of her mangled little daughter. A slight dusting—
smack smack—of
the hands, and back to cooking; that’s how easy it would have been.

“Why are you pouting?” said Abel.

It came upon me suddenly, in a gush—a river of tears, like juice squeezed from Father’s grapes.

“Why, whatever is wrong?” said Abel, reaching up to place his hand on my back. I imagined he felt the tiny bones between my shoulder blades, my tucked-in wings—for I had already dreamed of flying, me being Aya the Bird.

“Don’t you see?” I whispered finally. “You would have killed
me
.”

Abel studied my face a moment and blew out a breath of air from his puffed-up cheeks. “Aya, you think too much. That lamb would not have lasted the night. He was too weak. You, however”—he looked me up and down—“are …” He paused, trying to find the right word, the right meaning.

“Crippled,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. He looked me straight in the eyes as he said this, searching for my response. He had agreed with me, acknowledged the label I placed upon myself, and had not immediately apologized for it, like Cain would have, in a quick attempt to cover an embarrassing blunder. Abel treated me as someone who was… well, whole. “But,” he continued, “that is the way Elohim wanted you. Do you believe that?”

I nodded, half believing, half
wanting
to believe. But also I wanted to ask,
Why?

In Abel’s defense, he had given me a hobbling goat as a gift, and she follows me wherever I go, so I know he speaks the truth—he will spare a cripple once in a while.

So, as I stood in the courtyard that night, after Cain had stomped out, I saw an opportunity to impress Father, a small moment of time in which I might convince him to understand me just as I understood myself. I had
no idea how to do it, though. Here I had been given a gift, and I couldn’t, for the life of me, think of anything to say, to do. I stood, mute and un -moving.

Father’s eyes shifted uneasily after Cain’s squared shoulders and barrel of a neck, then shifted back to me. He laughed suddenly and said, “Aya, you’ve done it again. Delicious.” In the withering light, his face was full of shadows. I could not read his eyes.

I bowed and scurried to remove his plate.

I scold myself when I act like a mouse.
Why do I care what Father wants?
Am I not Aya, the beautiful magnificent bird who can fly away from here in her dreams? Aya, the girl who holds the staff of life in her hands. Aya, Goat Owner.

I put my hand on Mama’s fat belly, and I feel something go bump.
I clap my hand over my mouth, surprised, and Mama says it’s the baby inside her. She says that’s how me and Jacan were—tiny tiny in her belly.

I ask, “How did we get out of you? Like the baby sheep get out of their mamas?”

“Yes,” says Mama.

“Did we look that bad?” I say.

Mama laughs and says, “Yes.”

I’m holding a turtle, a gift from Jacan. I’m jealous of Jacan because he gets to go with Abel and watch the sheep and the goats. Abel is a nice brother—he gave Jacan a horn to blow, and I always hear it, blasting in the distance, and Mama laughs and says, “That boy. I’m going to hide that thing from him one of these days!”

Mama is lying down on her back, on a bench in the courtyard. Her middle looks like a termite hill, and she holds one arm over her face, so the sun doesn’t hurt her eyes. She says, “In the Garden, there was thick moss over the forest floor. To lie on it was divine.”

“Why didn’t you bring some of it here?” I ask, stroking the turtles shell. That’s it, I’ll name him Turtle, like Aya’s name for Goat.

“I didn’t know how far we were going,” says Mama.

“Oh,” I say. “Look, Mama, a butterfly.” I pick the butterfly up by its
wings. It’s got all sorts of colors on it, blue like Mama’s eyes and yellow and shiny green. It tries to fly away, but I trap it between my fingers. I stuff it in one of my pots, the ones I make in the fire. I have a plan—it’s a secret— to save special things for the baby. Already I have: number one, turtle; number two, butterfly; number three, swirly agate; and number four, pomegranate. These are all the things the baby will get from me, its big sister, when it comes out.

Aya’s making lots of noise. She pours some grain onto a stone, then pushes another stone across it, back and forth, back and forth—
shup shup shup—
until it looks like the fluffy part of a dandelion. Her baby goat is black and has white ears and a white mouth, and it tries to eat her hard work. Aya shoves her away and says, “Find your own food.”

I call out to Goat, but Aya frowns and says, “Make yourself useful and get me some dung for the fire, why don’t you?”

Mama sits up and says, “That sounds good. Up we go.”

Suddenly, the lapwing nesting under the eaves sings a warning.

There’s a loud noise on the road. Donkeys, it looks like, with people—
other people!—on
them. So these are Father and Cain’s people.
What do they want?
They’re coming here, to our house. They have a lamb too, and they’re leading it by a rope.

“Mama,” I say. “Why are they coming here?”

Mama stands up and shields her eyes. She squints. Her forehead is wrinkled with worry, and she
tsk-tsks
for me to come to her right now. Aya stops her grinding and comes to stand next to me. Mama stands me up on the bench and wraps her arms around me. I tippy-toe to see better. I remember Father saying that he doesn’t know if the strangers are friend or
foe.
I don’t know what that means. All I know is: There are four ladies— I can count them—and they’re very pretty, like Naava.