After Abel and Other Stories

by Michal Lemberger

  It was only when he stood back up that she saw the cuffs he wore around his wrists. She recognized them immediately. Heber had forged them. He’d been paid handsomely. And why not? A general can afford to adorn himself with the best workmanship, the priciest metals.

  That was how she knew the man. The bronze that gripped Sisera’s arms shone pink from the alloys Heber had mixed in. The metal was hammered as thin as a leaf hanging from a tree. Any seams between the plates were polished so smooth they were invisible. She could make out the designs on each, still as clear as the day Heber finished them. On the right arm, a king being served by a stag who stood upright on two legs. On the left, a man under a tree, its canopy a series of circles within circles that wound all the way around Sisera’s surprisingly delicate wrist.

  “Give me some water,” he said. “I have run far to reach a friendly place. My enemies surround me. They pursue me. Please, give me some water.”

  Yael’s hair still held the moisture from the water she had showered over herself. Here was the man who was the cause of her revulsion asking for water to sate and cleanse himself, as she had tried to clean herself of him. Heber had made his peace with Sisera, but to Yael, who still held by the old ways, who grieved at each sword that came out of her husband’s shop, he was the living image of how far her people had fallen.

  They were all barbarians to her, the Canaanites, the Judeans, the Arameans; all would trample what the gods had made to claim a slightly bigger piece of it. Sisera was the worst of them all. Yet here he stood, above her but at her mercy. He could not drink unless she drew the water for him. Yael looked down. At her feet lay the jugs of milk and cream that she had just separated.

  In that moment, Yael saw the choice that had just been given to her. The future of two nations had been placed in her hands. The Canaanites had already lost the battle. Sisera wouldn’t be here if they hadn’t. He was the only thing that stood between more bloodshed and peace. If he died, the fighting would stop.

  Yael recoiled from the thoughts that were forming in her head. She was a Kenite, she reminded herself. She could not lift her hand in violence against another person. But no matter how she tried to deny it, she had watched as aggression had been used to resolve disputes all her life. She understood its logic. She weighed out her choices. One death, of this man who had brought destruction to so many, against the countless others that would follow if Sisera were allowed to leave her home. She was torn. She had to decide.

  Yael looked up at the general. She rose to her feet, gestured toward the ground. “Drink this cream instead. It will serve you better than water.”

  She led Sisera out from among the goats and into the tent. “Thank you,” he said, as humble as a roadside beggar. Yael couldn’t swallow. The spit stuck in her throat, but her hands around the neck of the jug didn’t tremble.

  She set the jug down, spread out the thickest skins she had. Sisera sank down onto them like a man saved. Yael watched her arms as they stretched toward him. She watched as his hands rose to meet hers, felt their fingers graze as the jug passed from her to him.

  Sisera raised the pitcher to his mouth, swallowed quickly, the lump in his throat bobbing up and down as the cream filled him. When the jug was empty, he reached out his hand. “Give me the milk, too.” Yael ran outside, scooped up the second, heavier, jug. The milk splashed over its lip as she rushed back inside. Sisera grabbed it out of her hand, drank deeply, then lay back on the skins. His face had taken on some of the color that battle and retreat had robbed of it. Although he did not reach from one end of the skin to the other, he lay with his limbs spread wide. He was no longer a supplicant at her door. He was a general who expected to be obeyed.

  “Thank you,” he said, his voice relaxed. “Don’t let anyone in. I have to rest, replenish my energy. Then I will go back and take my revenge on that woman, Deborah, on her general, and all the people who would fight me.” Yael saw that he felt safe with her. She was just a woman whose husband had made a pact with him. She didn’t carry a sword or spear. She would never go to battle. To a man like Sisera, who thought all men could be divided into those who fought for him and those who fought against him, the idea that a woman could harm him was unthinkable.

  Yael was at war with herself. She wanted to be alone again. She wanted to cry and scream and tear at her hair. My whole life has led to this moment, she thought, and I don’t know what to do.

  Yael watched him grow sleepier. She kept herself coiled next to the tent flap, afraid to go too close to him. His smell, of sweat and vinegar and something bitter she couldn’t identify but which she thought must be the vestiges of fear, radiated from him. It repulsed her. “Enough to kill him?” she asked herself. “Enough to go against every belief you hold?”

  Sisera sighed. He had forgotten his cares, if only for the moment. She had to act quickly if she was to act at all. He would be deeply asleep in minutes. Yael didn’t allow herself to think. She ran outside to where Heber had his forge set up, scanned the ground until she found a tent peg he’d made but had tossed aside, and his heavy hammer, whose strikes against metal made up the soundscape of her life. She gripped them tightly.

  “Forgive me,” she whispered up into the cedar canopy, where she imagined her father and every ancestor who preceded him perched, then reentered the tent, her hands behind her back. Sisera had curled onto his side while she was outside. He lay like a child, his knees drawn up, arms bent next to his head. He breathed evenly as she approached. She raised the peg above his temple, held it straight with her left hand. At the moment she swung the right hand over her head, he opened his eyes and comprehension lit them. He started to form a word, but Yael brought the hammer down with as much force as she could muster before he could finish it.

  She felt the metal slip down. She felt how easily it cracked bone and slid into the soft matter within. Blood spurted up and onto her. She had hit the peg with so much force that it passed through his head, pinned his corpse to the ground.

  When she saw that he was dead, Yael ran outside, bent over and threw up everything in her stomach.

  She stayed there on the ground, afraid now of what she had done, afraid of the body whose blood even now stained the skins and leaked onto the rugs inside the tent. Her head filled with the sounds of crows, each releasing its harsh caw into the wind, churning in her ears above the sound of her father’s voice, repeating, “We never raise our hands against another man.” Now that the act was done, Yael didn’t know how she would face her own children, whom she had berated every time they punched or kicked one another in the course of a childish argument. She had told them too many times to remember that they were desecrating the gods, defiling their family and people.

  Her thoughts were so tangled that Yael didn’t hear the footsteps of the men who ran toward her until they arrived in front of her. When she looked up, her face was splattered with blood, dirtied with tears. Her mouth was still wet with vomit.

  “Sisera?” they asked. They still wore the mud of the battlefield on their legs and thighs. Each man’s skin shone, his eyes glinted, focused and empty at the same time. They had left the valley, but the trance of war still held them. These were the enemies Sisera had run from, the Israelites for whom she had become a murderer.

  Yael’s throat closed again. It fought all language, so that all she could manage was a wave in the direction of the tent. One of the men lifted the tent flap and gave a shout of joy. He rushed back to his companions, his eyes glowing with admiration for the woman who sat shattered at their feet.

  “We are saved!” he shouted. He pointed to one of the other men, said, “Run. Bring Deborah, bring the general, bring everyone. This woman has given us victory today!”

  The men raised their voices, sang praises to their God, to Yael’s beauty and her bravery. They cursed the memory of the Canaanite general, celebrated his gory end. Yael heard none of it. As the men flung themselves into the frenzy of triumph, she crawled away, hid in the enclosure with the goats. The
ir earthy smell, pebbled droppings littering the ground, were a reminder of what her life had been until she lifted the hammer above a man’s head. She could never go back. Nothing would be as it was, even as the world itself didn’t change.

  Noise filtered back to her from in front of the tent. Yael could hear Heber, the babble of her children, more male voices as they joined the men who had stayed to watch over Sisera’s body, as if somehow the dead could stand up and sneak away. For the first time since they had come, Yael felt afraid. Heber had made a pact of peace with Sisera. He would be angry with her. She couldn’t even imagine what he would do in that anger.

  But it wasn’t Heber who found her there, her forehead bent against the flank of a pregnant goat. Instead of his heavy tread, she heard the hiss of fabric as it swept along the ground.

  “Get up,” a woman commanded. Yael looked over the goat’s black and grey back. It was the woman from the battlefield, the leader of all the Israelites.

  Deborah was the most striking woman Yael had ever seen. Iron grey hair bristled past her temples and neck. Her face was a quarry of etched lines and furrows, yet she did not look old. She looked like time did not touch her as it did the rest of them. Her lips were pressed firmly together. Her jaw pulsed. She was not used to being disobeyed.

  They could hear the men singing. One by one and in small clusters, the men had gone to look at Sisera’s body, his limbs as calm as in sleep, his head pierced and deformed, and came out with a story of what happened. Someone already began to compose verses in Yael’s honor. When other voices joined him, Yael caught snatches of it,

  Praise Deborah and Yael, greatest among women

  Mother of our nation, deliverer of our sons

  The sounds in Yael’s head finally stilled. All the voices receded, the storm of wind quieted. The enclosure filled with the goats’ bleating, her own heartbeat, and Deborah’s firm presence.

  “We came here for refuge,” Yael said, as if Deborah could know her husband’s history, the accident that sent them running to Kedesh. “I live here surrounded by killers, but I am the only murderer in the city.”

  She thought Deborah would understand her grief. She had heard of the older woman’s wisdom, how she sat in the stillness of her God’s presence to hear her people’s complaints, then judged fairly between them. This woman, Yael was sure, would see how terrible it is to have taken another person’s life, but Deborah grew impatient.

  “Stand up, woman.” Her tone was as unyielding as an avalanche of stone.

  Deborah strode over to Yael, yanked her roughly to her feet.

  “Do not become weak as all the other women now,” she said. “It’s too late for that.”

  “What of Sisera’s family? His people? Will they come to take my life in revenge? Will they kill my husband, my children?”

  “Sisera was a coward. He ran as his men died. Only his mother will weep for him. He has fouled his own memory among all men.”

  Yael marveled at Deborah’s ferocity. She thought she would find a woman’s softness, but Deborah was like everyone else in this cursed land. They all thought the only way to honor their gods came through someone else’s destruction.

  “You are a heroine to my people,” Deborah said, as if faced with someone so simple she could not understand the basic ways of the world. “Listen to them. Your grandchildren’s grandchildren will remember your name.”

  Outside, the men continued to sing,

  She did not waver, she did not delay,

  Her hand was steady, her heart was pure.

  She trampled over her enemy’s body,

  Left him lifeless, attached to the ground.

  “They are getting it all wrong,” she said. “I am not like you. I am not one of you.” Still, Deborah ignored her. Even she could not see how her men were turning Yael into one of them, who thirsted for bloody victory. Yael felt the world spinning around her, sky becoming ground, ground where sky should be.

  Deborah kept talking, “Come out and meet them. Let them see the woman who accomplished what they couldn’t do.”

  Yael allowed Deborah to guide her out of the enclosure. The goats scrambled after them as they walked. Yael saw the back of her tent, the fabric’s red and green dyes faded with time and exposure. The breeze pushed against it, barely ruffling the heavy material. It looked as it always did, solid and familiar. It gave no indication that the proof of her crime lay within.

  When they came around the front, the men shouted. Night had fallen, and someone had lit a fire that sent their shadows jumping as they waved their swords and spears in the air above their heads. A few let loose shrieks or frenzied war cries. Yael cringed at each sound. They didn’t belong here. A home was no place for battle. Too late, she thought, for such fine distinctions. She had brought the fight here herself.

  Her younger children ran to her, clung to her thighs and hands. In their faces she saw a mix of pride and bewilderment. This was worse than everything. Worse than disobeying her ancestors, defiling herself with the blood of another man, she had betrayed her children. She had gone against everything she had tried to teach them. All those years of fighting against the bloodthirsty ways of their neighbors, only to prove to them that she was no better.

  Her own death would be preferable to this, she thought. “I shouldn’t have done it,” she muttered. “Let them kill each other without me,” but only Deborah heard her. The older woman just snorted. “That’s a fine thought to have after you’ve already acted. Go ahead, say something. It’s not every day an army of men listen to a woman speak.”

  Yael gathered herself. She had to find just the right words to make this right again, to turn the tide back, to make them see what she had meant, that her act should lead to the end of war, not this crazed victory. She stood behind the fire, her face lit from below, the solidity of her body fading into the surrounding darkness.

  “Put down your swords,” she said. “Beat them down. Raise your hands in peace,” but her voice was not loud enough to rise above the din. The men, who had left a valley where they had been prepared to die, could not stop their tumultuous revelry. They were possessed by it. They thanked their god, the ground, each other. They promised vengeance on all their enemies. They did not hear her.

  She tried again, “Don’t celebrate this death. Let it be the last.”

  No one paid any attention to her. She had already become the woman in their song, the one who didn’t hesitate, who went after the same glory they chased. Nothing she said would change that. Yael felt trapped between reality and the myth they were constructing, between the tents and the road, the ground and the sky. In between, the tranquil cedars rose, unhearing, eternal.

  SHILOH

  “There was a man from Ramathaim of the Zephites, in the hill country of Ephraim, whose name was Elkanah son of Jeroham son of Elihu son of Tohu son of Zuph, an Ephraimite. He had two wives, one named Hannah and the other named Penina; Penina had children, but Hannah was childless.”

  Samuel 1:1-2

  For as long as I remember, my father’s wives had agonized over me. They loved me, and so they tried to hide their distress, but I had eyes to see and ears to hear. I saw the shepherds at the well trace the shape of other women’s bodies as they passed, their round hips swinging back and forth. I heard them discuss the finer points of one girl’s poppy-red lips or another’s hair that bubbled over her back like a ripe cluster of darkest grapes.

  At those moments, I looked down at my body, my fingers pulled at the lank hair that clung to the contours of my narrow forehead and sharp cheekbones, or rose to my own thin mouth that I’ve been told stretches too wide across my face.

  The problem was obvious. I was ugly in a region of women prized for their beauty, so I watched all the other young women be claimed as brides and ride off into homes of their own. As each left, I stayed behind and wondered if I would remain a burden to my father and brothers for the rest of my life.

  My mothers tried to console me. “The men of this region
know so little about women,” they said, “but there are some who have the discernment to know that the way a woman looks promises nothing about her ability to bear him children,” but it meant nothing. They knew as well as I that a girl’s looks were the currency she used to attract a mate. I watched them worry over my fate like hens clucking together over fallen seeds.

  Imagine, then, the excitement in our house when a man came to inquire about me. My mothers and I hid behind a door to watch as he spoke with my father. He was of middle age, older than I would have hoped for when I was younger, but I had accepted that whoever expressed interest in me wouldn’t be one to make other women’s hearts uneasy. His manners were fine when he ate and drank, but I got no more of an impression of him than that.

  Later, the three of them brought back more information. “His name is Elkanah,” the first said. “He is not a rich man, with only two servants, a few acres to his name, and a small flock of sheep.”

  “But he boasts a fine lineage that goes back generations, and counts leaders and wise men among his ancestors,” said the second.

  “And it is well known that he is pious and devoted to his first wife, though she has given him no children,” said the third, who had given birth to me. Though she was my father’s last wife, she entered a home and sisterhood with her fellow wives and was never treated as lesser than the others.

  My father said yes, of course. Even a poor man is acceptable for an ugly daughter.

  My mothers fussed over me in the days that followed. They prepared baths of milk so I would go to my husband with skin as soft as a newborn calf. They mixed pots of kohl and rimmed my eyes and made jars of perfumes that left me smelling like a field of wild-flowers. They packed linen sheets and fine clay pots for me to take into my new home.