Rebekah: Women of Genesis (33 page)

“Or you might be pregnant.”

“I might be.”

“When were you going to tell me?”

“When I
know!
”

“Don’t you think I want to know that you
might
be?”

“Well, my vomiting hasn’t exactly been a secret.”

“Apparently it was to me.”

“Oh, should I have thrown up at your tent door every night before supper?”

He burst out laughing. “Don’t get so upset at me.”

“You were getting upset at me.”

“I was teasing you.”

“Who can tell?”

“Usually, you can.”

“Well, excuse me for being on edge, but what do you expect? After all, I might be pregnant!”

A few weeks later, she was certain enough to tell Isaac he could send word to his father if he wanted to.

“I don’t know if I want to,” said Isaac. “The first thing he’ll do is insist we move to Kirjath-arba.”

“No, no, no, no, no,” moaned Rebekah. “Isn’t it bad enough that I already lose my supper most nights? Do I have to have Keturah hovering over me being endlessly wise and helpful about pregnancy, this being my first time and her being so experienced . . . honestly, Isaac, I think it will be better for our child if his mother doesn’t commit murder while he’s in the womb.”

“So let’s not tell Father until the time is right.”

“And when will that be?”

“When the boy is thirteen?” Isaac suggested.

“That would be cruel.”

“That’s why it was a joke.”

“A joke, yes. Cruel, yes. But also a very attractive idea.”

“If we wait to tell Father until you’re farther along, we can refuse to leave Lahai-roi because it’s not safe to move you.”

“It’s already not safe,” said Rebekah. “I certainly can’t ride there, and I don’t think the woman with Abraham’s and your heir in her womb should be walking all that way.”

Isaac nodded and twiddled his beard. “I suppose that means we can break the news to Father any time, since you already can’t go there.”

“I also don’t want to move to Kirjath-arba after the child is born.”

“If it’s a girl, you won’t have to.”

“I especially don’t want to move there if it’s a boy.”

“I’ve been thinking about this ever since Father first brought it up,” said Isaac. “My father may not have long to live. Hasn’t he earned the right to have as much time as possible with my son before he dies?”

“Please don’t think I’m being disrespectful, Isaac, but your father’s imminent death was Eliezer’s excuse for hurrying me here to marry you without allowing my family a chance to give me a proper send-off. That was many years ago. I’m beginning to think, with the evidence I’ve had so far, that your father is going to live forever. Or at least longer than me, which amounts to the same thing as far as I’m concerned.”

“And this makes you sorry?” asked Isaac, only half teasing.

“No, I’m delighted, I hope he does live forever. But it does make me less inclined to try to raise my son under his constant supervision, just because he might die.”

“He
will
die sometime, you know.”

“And then he’ll be caught up into heaven and he’ll be with God, who’ll probably let him see the whole future of all our children and their children till the end of the world.”

Isaac studied her face. “You’re not joking.”

“No, I’m not. Well, about your father being immortal, yes, of course that’s a joke. But I don’t want to try to raise our children under your father’s watchful gaze. Everything I do is going to be wrong.”

“I thought it was Keturah’s hovering that had you worried.”

“Maybe you’ve forgotten, but I haven’t. Your father thinks he’s going to take charge of the rearing of our son.”

“He’s a very wise old man. And a good one.”

“But he has his children, and we have ours. I didn’t notice him handing you over to old Terah to raise.”

“Because Terah was an idolater who once colluded with men who were plotting to kill my father.”

“So if he hadn’t done those things, Abraham would have been right up there in Haran to hand over the baby.”

Isaac laughed. “All right, of course he wouldn’t. But it’s different in our case.”

“Isaac, it’s
not
different. I can’t believe you don’t see it. The reason your father wants to supervise the raising of this baby is because he doesn’t think either of us can do it right. Especially not me. He thinks I’m going to treat the baby like . . . like a baby. Which is precisely what I’m going to do, when you stop and think about it, and it’s none of his business. I’ll bet somebody treated
him
like a baby, too.”

Isaac grew very still, and when he spoke he was almost inaudibly quiet. “Well, you see, he’s afraid that if he doesn’t intervene, our son will turn out to be
just
like me.”

Rebekah was relieved that Isaac understood the situation without having to have it spelled out for him. “Yes! And that’s just . . . unbelievably stupid! I want our boy to be as much like you as possible. I would be thrilled if he was just like you.”

Isaac looked at her as if she were an idiot. “Why?”

“Because—because you’re a wonderful man. A man of God. A good ruler of a household, a
perfect
husband, a . . .”

The look on his face turned sadder and sadder with everything she said.

“What?” she demanded. “What’s wrong with having a son who’s like you? I
love
you!”

“Only because you’re a woman,” said Isaac.

“Well excuse me, Isaac, but I think having me be a woman was one of the primary instructions your father gave Eliezer when he sent him off to find me.”

“Yes, that was pretty much the minimum. Whomever he brought back, she definitely had to be a woman.”

“And our son will probably marry a woman, too, don’t you think?”

“That would be my choice for him, yes,” said Isaac. “It’s been a long tradition in our family, extending all the way back to Adam, I believe.”

“So maybe
that
woman will think he’s just as wonderful as I think
you
are.”

Isaac turned away from her then. “Pleasing women,” he said, “is not how a man is measured.”

“It’s how
women
measure men!”

“No it’s not,” said Isaac.

“Now you’re the expert on how women think about men?”

“You’re the expert on how
you
think about men,” said Isaac. “But tell me honestly, having listened to the gossip of women for all the years of your life, how often do the women say, ‘Oh, and he’s so nice and thoughtful and kind.’”

“They say that a lot.”

“They say that when they can’t come up with any
real
praise for a man. When they don’t think much of him and they have to say something nice.”

“Maybe stupid women think that way—”

“Why do you think Father sent Eliezer instead of letting me find a wife for myself? I’m a grown man, you know.”

“I thought . . . because your father didn’t want you leaving his camp . . .”

“Oh, and that’s
better?
My father doesn’t even trust me out of his sight?”

“Well, of course he does. But I thought maybe it was because of Ishmael—you know, how his first wife, that Egyptian woman, whatever her name was, I never met her—”

“Meribah.”

“He divorced her and sent her away because she was wrong for him somehow.”

“She had a penchant for frenzied worship of Asherah in the company of men she wasn’t married to.”

Rebekah had never heard that. “Really?” Mother certainly hadn’t indulged in that kind of “worship” of the goddess.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Isaac. “Father sent Eliezer because he didn’t think the right kind of woman would find me attractive. He didn’t want me to take the leavings of men like Ezbaal. Or Ishmael.”

“I turned Ezbaal down,” said Rebekah, “and Ishmael never asked.”

“Right. Yes. But if I had been there, quiet Isaac, studious Isaac, Isaac who never gets angry and doesn’t like to go out hunting and has only killed animals for sacrifice, Isaac who looks like he should be a strong man but he just couldn’t get interested in handling a sword or practicing battle so he never became very skilled at it, Isaac who—”

“It sounds like you want our son to grow up to be Ishmael!”

Isaac cocked his head and thought about that. “Well, yes, except for the part about breaking most of the commandments whenever he feels like it.”

“And the part about being a show-off and a braggart.”

“He’s not just bragging,” said Isaac. “He really is what he seems.”

“A bully?”

“A great man.”

Rebekah finally understood. “You’re telling me that you reject
yourself
as the father of our child.”

“No, no, that’s not it at all.”

“Yes it is,” said Rebekah. “That’s exactly what you’re saying. But I’ll have you remember something, my beloved husband. The Lord could have had the birthright go to Ishmael if he wanted to. But he didn’t. You’re the one who was chosen.”

“I just happened to be born to my mother instead of a concubine.”

“No, you didn’t just ‘happen’ to be born. The Lord chose what spirit to put into each little baby and he chose
you
to be born as the boy who would grow up to have the birthright.”

Isaac leapt to his feet and began to pace. He never did that. When he was upset he always became physically still. Yet here he was, walking around slapping the walls of the tent in a haphazard way as he moved, as if he wanted to brush everything out of his way, make everything around him disappear. He was truly upset, and she didn’t understand why.

“Rebekah,” he said, “I don’t know why we’re even having this discussion, it’s probably a girl.”

“Probably,” said Rebekah, more because he seemed to need agreement than because she thought God would give them a daughter first.

“But we’ve
got
to have this discussion because the baby’s the answer to prayer. How could the Lord answer that prayer and not give us a boy? Can you tell me that?”

“So it’s a boy,” said Rebekah.

“My mother
was
too possessive of me,” said Isaac. “She really did watch over me too much. Kept me from getting into fights with other children.”

“Oh, she should have been
stoned
for that.”

“It made a coward of me.”

“You’re the bravest man I know.”

“I avoid every fight I can avoid. I back down immediately.”

“Any fool can bluster his way into a fight. It takes courage to make peace.”

“Oh, right, well, if that’s how you define courage, then I really am the bravest man around, because I can’t stand to quarrel. It makes me ill. It makes me . . . stand up and walk around hitting the walls of the tent.”

“Are you saying that we’re quarreling?”

“Yes.”

“Well, maybe you are, but I’m not.”

“Now you’re being silly, Rebekah. Nobody can quarrel alone.”

“Apparently it’s another of the skills you deny that you have,” she retorted. “The ability to quarrel without the other person realizing it.
I
thought we were discussing.”

“You’re a strong woman, Rebekah, and I’m a weak man. My son is not going to be weak like me, and that’s what your strength and my weakness will combine to make of him.”

“So you really are going to turn him over to your father to raise?”

“I want us to move close to Father so he can influence our son, yes.”

“That’s not where it will stop,” said Rebekah. “Your father doesn’t stop until he gets his way. If you take him there, you might as well leave me here for all the influence I’ll have over my own son.”

“Even Father isn’t strong enough to erase your influence.”

“But he’ll try. And I can see now that you’ll let him. Well, that experiment’s already been tried. My father divorced my mother and sent her away, so my brother and I were raised entirely by our father. Why don’t you do likewise? Divorce me, and then your father won’t have to worry about my evil influence at all. In fact, it’s something of a family tradition. My father did it, Ishmael did it, and Abraham did it with Ishmael’s mother. It’s really just a matter of time till you send me away.”

“Never,” said Isaac. “That will never happen.”

“Well let me tell you a little secret,” said Rebekah. “You’d better do it, either that or kill me, because I’ll have to be either dead or gone before I’ll let Abraham or anybody else take a son of mine and turn him into . . . into . . .
Ishmael.
I want
you
to be the father of our son, I want him to grow up wanting to be just like you. And I’m going to do everything I can to make sure that’s exactly what happens.”