Rebekah: Women of Genesis (2 page)

But when she spoke, Father heard her, and since he was the most important man in the whole world, however weak her voice might be, it was strong enough. Even after she grew too big to ride his shoulders, she was at his side as much as possible, listening to everything, understanding or trying to understand every aspect of the life of the camp, the work and workings of the household. He, in turn, called her his conscience. The little voice always at his side, never intruding, but asking him wise questions whenever they were alone together.

And then, trying to keep a cart from sliding down a muddy bank into the cold water of a brook in spring flood, Father slipped himself and fell into the water, the cart tumbling after him. The men swore later that it was a gift of God that Bethuel was not killed, for the cart was held up by the spokes of its own broken wheel just enough that he was able to keep his mouth above water and breathe while the men hurriedly unloaded the cart enough that they could lift it off him. He seemed at first to be no worse the wear for the hour he spent in the cold water, but that night he awoke shivering and fevered, and for two weeks he came back and forth between fever and chills as if the icy water still had a place in him.

When he rose at last from his pallet, the world had gone silent for him. He shouted everything he said, and heard no one’s answer, and when Rebekah ran to him and covered her ears and cried, “Father, why are you angry with me?” he bent down to her and shouted for her to speak up, speak up, he couldn’t hear her. Louder and louder she spoke until she was red-faced with screaming and Father gathered her into his arms and wept. “Of all the sounds that I shall never hear again,” he murmured into her hair, “the voice of my sweet girl is the one I will miss most of all.”

Father remained master of his household, but there was no more ranging out in the hills to oversee the herds. There was too much danger to a man who could not hear a shouted warning, or the roar of a lion, or the cries of marauders. Instead, Father had no choice but to trust his servants to oversee his flocks and herds. It embarrassed him to have to ask people to repeat everything, to talk slowly, to pronounce their words carefully so he could try to read their lips. He did not have to tell Rebekah that she could not stay with him all the time that he was in camp, as she had used to. She could see that he did not want her there, partly because he was ashamed to show his weakness in front of her, and partly because, when she spoke to him, she saw how much it hurt him that he could not hear her anymore.

“Why don’t you go with your father?” Deborah asked her. “He likes you beside him. He used to carry you when you were little. You’re too big now.”

Rebekah had to explain it to her several times. “Father is deaf now. That means he can’t hear. So I can’t talk to him anymore. He doesn’t hear me.”

And after a little while, Deborah understood and remembered. Indeed, she took to informing Rebekah. “You mustn’t go to your father today. He’s deaf, you know. He can’t hear you when you talk to him.” Rebekah didn’t have the heart to rebuke Deborah for the frequent reminders. Instead, she would ask Deborah to sing her a song as she plaited Rebekah’s hair or spun thread beside her or walked through the camp, looking at the work of the women and children and old men. Everyone looked up when Deborah came singing, and gave her a smile. And they smiled at Rebekah, too, and answered her questions, until she understood everything she saw going on, all the work of Father’s household.

Rebekah was ten years old when Father lost his hearing, and her brother Laban was twelve. It was just as hard on him as it was on her, for as she had been Father’s constant companion in the camp, Laban had been his shadow on almost every trip to visit distant flocks and herds where they grazed.

To Laban it was like a prison, always to be in camp because his father rarely traveled. And Rebekah was no happier. Once she would have rejoiced to have Father always near the home tents, but he was short-tempered now, and bellowed often for no good reason.

Everyone was ill at ease. But the work of the household went on, day after day, week after week. People get used to anything, if it just goes on. Rebekah didn’t like the way things were, but she expected this new order to go on unchanged.

Until, a year after her father’s deafness began, she happened to come up behind several of the servant women boiling rags, and overheard them talking about Father.

“He’s an old lion, with all that roaring.”

“A lion with no teeth.”

And they started to laugh until one of them noticed Rebekah and shushed the others.

Rebekah told this to Laban, and at first he was all for telling Father. But Rebekah clutched at Laban and held him back. “How will you even tell him? And if you make him understand, then what? Should he beat the woman for saying it? Or the others for laughing? Will that make them love him better?”

Laban looked at her. “We can’t let them laugh at Father behind his back. Soon they’ll laugh in his face, and then they’ll do what they want. Already the servants don’t even try to tell Father half the things that happen. Pillel makes decisions all by himself that he used to never make, and Father knows it but what can he do?”

“We can pray to God for him to hear again,” said Rebekah.

“And what if God answers us the way he answered Abram and Sarai when they prayed for a son? Can Father wait ten years? Twenty? Thirty?”

They knew well the tales of their father’s uncle Abraham, the great lord of the desert, the prophet that Pharaoh could not kill, and how his wife Sarah bore him a baby in her old age.

“But what else can we do?” said Rebekah. “Only God can let Father hear again.”

“We can be his ears,” said Laban. “
We
have time to explain things to him. Let the men tell us, and
we’ll
tell Father.”

Rebekah had her doubts about this. She had tried talking to Father many times, speaking slowly so he could read her lips, and at first he had tried to understand her, but most of the time he failed, or got it only partly right, and the resignation in his eyes when he looked away from her and refused to try anymore made her so sad she couldn’t even cry. “What, you’ll press your mouth into his ear and scream?”

Laban rolled his eyes as if she were a hopeless simpleton. “Writing.”

“That’s a thing for city priests.”

“Uncle Abraham writes.”

“Uncle Abraham is far away and very old and spends all his time talking to God,” said Rebekah.

“If the priests in the city can write, and Uncle Abraham can write, then why can’t Father and I learn to write?”

“Then I can, too,” said Rebekah, daring him to argue with her.

“Of course you can,” said Laban. “You have to. Because as soon as I can, I’ll be out with the men, and you’ll have to be able to talk to Father, too.”

For three days, Laban and Rebekah spent every spare moment together, working out a set of pictures they could draw with a stick in the dirt. Some of the words were easy—each of the animals could be drawn quickly, as could crops, articles of clothing, pots, baskets. Day and night were easy enough, too—the sun was round, the moon a crescent. Water was a bit more of a challenge, but they ended up with a drawing of a well.

“What if you want to say ‘well’?” asked Rebekah.

“Then I’ll draw a well,” said Laban.

“What if you want to say, ‘There’s no water in the well’?” asked Rebekah.

“Then I’ll draw a well, point to it, and then rub it out!” Laban was beginning to sound exasperated.

“What if you want to say, ‘The well has been poisoned’?”

Laban pointed to his well drawing and then pantomimed gagging, choking, and falling down dead. He opened his eyes. “Well? Do you think he’ll get it?”

“That can’t be the way Uncle Abraham does it,” said Rebekah.

“We aren’t trying to write to Uncle Abraham,” said Laban. “We’re just trying to talk to Father.”

“What if you want to say, ‘I’m afraid there might be bandits coming but Pillel says they’re just travelers and there’s nothing to worry about but I think we should gather in the men and sleep with our swords’?”

Laban glared at her. “I will never have to say that,” he said.

“How do
you
know?”

“Because I would just . . . I would just tell him that bandits were coming and bring him his sword.”

“No!” shouted Rebekah. “The men would know it was you who decided and not Father. And they can’t follow Father into battle anyway, so it would have to be Pillel in command at least until you’re tall enough to lead the men yourself, and anyway the whole idea of this is to help Father keep the respect of the men, and if you aren’t telling him the truth and letting him decide then they won’t respect him or you and they won’t trust you either and then we’ve lost everything.”

It was obvious Laban wanted to argue with her, but there was nothing to say. “Some things are just too hard to draw,” Laban finally admitted. “But you’re right, we have to try.”

“I think writing isn’t worth much if you have to be right there to make faces or fall down dead,” said Rebekah.

“There’s a trick to it that we don’t know.”

“If priests who are dumb enough to pray to a stone can do it,” said Rebekah, “
we
can figure it out.”

“If we make fun of their gods, people in the towns will shut us out,” Laban reminded her. It was one of the rules learned by those who moved from place to place, following green grass and searching for ample water.

Rebekah knew the rule. “I was making fun of the priests.” She looked again at Laban’s drawings in the dirt. “Let’s show Father as much as we’ve figured out about writing.”

“I don’t want to show him until we have it right.”

“Maybe he can help us
get
 it right.  Maybe he knows how Uncle Abraham does it.”

“And in the meantime, how will I draw a picture of us not knowing how to draw pictures of things we can’t draw pictures of?”

“If you draw something and he doesn’t understand, then at least he’ll understand that we don’t know how to make him understand, and that’s what we’re trying to make him understand.”

Laban grinned. “Now
you’re
sounding like a priest.”

Rebekah laughed. “The Lord is not made of stone, he is in the stone. The Lord is not confined by the stone, he is expressed by the stone. Since the Lord was in the stonecutter who shaped the image, the idol is both man’s gift to the Lord and the Lord’s gift to man.”

Laban whistled. “You
listen
to that stuff?”

“I listen to everything,” said Rebekah. Her own words made her think of Father, who could never listen to anything again.

“I listen to everything, too,” said Laban. “But
you
remember it.”

“That has to be the worst thing for Father,” said Rebekah. “That he remembers being able to hear. Being at the center of everything.”

“What, you think it would have been better if he had
always
been deaf? Who would have married him, then? Who would be our father?”

“Father would,” said Rebekah. “Because Mother would have loved him anyway.”

“But Mother’s father would never have given her to a deaf man in marriage.”

“She would have married him anyway!”

“Now you’re just being silly,” said Laban. “Would
you
marry a . . . a
blind
 man? A cripple? A simpleton?”

“I would if I loved him,” said Rebekah.

“That’s why fathers decide these things, and don’t leave them up to silly girls who would go off and marry blind, deaf, staggering fools.”

Laban said this so loftily that she had to poke him. “But Laban, someday Father will have to find a wife for
you.
”

“I’m not a . . . I don’t . . . I refuse to let you goad me.”

Rebekah laughed at his dignity. “Let’s go show Father as much writing as we’ve got.”

“I don’t want him to see how bad we are at it.”

“The only way to get better is to do it wrong till we get it right. Like you with sheep shearing.”

Laban blushed. “You really
do
remember everything.”

“I remember eating lots of mutton,” said Rebekah. “I remember you wearing an ugly tunic woven out of bloody wool.”

“You were only a baby.”

“Come on,” she said, pulling him toward the brightest-colored tent that marked the center of their father’s household.

They did not clap their hands outside the tent, or call out for permission to enter—what good would it have done? That was one of the things Rebekah knew Father hated worst—the fact that people now had no choice but to walk in on him at whatever hour they thought their need was more important than his privacy. Or his dignity. He had tried keeping a servant at his door, but either his visitors ignored the servant or the servant kept out people Father needed to see, and besides, it was not as if the household could afford to keep a man away from his real work just to sit at the master’s door all day. So Laban parted the tent flap and peered inside.