After Abel and Other Stories
Page 14
What I feared most was the day the midwife arrived to help Hannah with the birth. Her son would become the princeling of the house. Her standing with our husband would be elevated even more than before. I was locked away in my own lonely misery and so I missed the signs of change as they slowly came.
Until Elkanah began coming to my bed again. So many months had passed, and the only touch I had felt was from children. It seemed as if all of a sudden he was ravenous for me. I never heard the whispering and laughing from his room when Hannah went in to him. It took a few more weeks, and then one day I realized that she hadn’t been in there since before her son was born.
After that, I began venturing out of my room. I washed my hair, mended the rips in my dress. My entrance back into the family was driven by curiosity. I wanted to see what had happened to drive Elkanah back to me, but this was the first thing that piqued my curiosity in so long that I snatched at it.
Hannah seemed unconcerned. She sat by the fire with her baby, whom she had named Samuel, running her hand over his down-covered head, as taken with his every sneeze, every smile, every shift of his arms or legs as any new mother. Our husband went about his business as he always had, praising the Lord for his good fortune. He didn’t approach her or take the child from her arms to cradle him. He didn’t bend over Hannah’s shoulder to gaze at their precious boy.
Now there were three spheres in our household. Elkanah stood on his own, Hannah and Samuel, and I with my children. The only contact between us came when Elkanah’s body entered mine.
I saw him begin to speak to Hannah once or twice, to reach for her hand, but she didn’t look up at him. She pulled her hand back to cradle their baby, hummed softly to him, and barely noted her husband’s presence by her side. After that, Elkanah didn’t approach her any more.
By then, he had planted his seed in me again. I was slowed by the sluggishness of early pregnancy. The bile of acid rose in my throat. Still, Samuel suckled at Hannah’s breast.
He grew as I did, laughed for the first time, rolled over, crawled. When the midwife came to me, Hannah’s boy had begun to pull himself up onto his feet by grabbing hold of his mother’s lap. She laughed and clapped her hands to see him do it.
If I had ever harbored a secret thought that motherhood would change her, that we would sit together, companionable with our babies, I discarded it soon enough. I thought back to my mothers, their eyes streaming with tears as they laughed over some silly thing a child had done, or a joke about my father that only women who shared the same man could understand. I thought back to running to any one of them, whether she had birthed me or not, when I fell and cut my shin, how she pulled me into her lap, washed out the dirt and held me until my crying had stopped. My children would know no such comfort from Hannah.
She would have nothing to do with me. Still. Even in her great joy, she let me know my place in her house. “She will get my boy sick,” she said of my latest infant, and carried him away. “Tell your brats to stay away from Samuel,” she snapped, after my older children tried to play with her son.
He will grow up very lonely, I thought, if she denies him the companionship of even his brothers and sisters. Nor would she make new ones for him if Elkanah kept away from her bed. He told her to hand the baby to me, but she said no. He demanded that she leave her son, if only for an hour, but she refused. She would not be separated from her child.
Elkanah’s smile faltered. He became a new man, uglier and angrier than I had ever seen him. He shouted at the children. His touch became rough at night. Finally, he exploded in rage.
“You have an unnatural attachment to that baby.” He thundered at Hannah, who had been absorbed in her son’s antics as always. “You have forgotten your duties as a wife.”
“Aren’t you happy now?” she asked. She seemed truly puzzled, as if she had not even noticed all the tension that had been growing around her. “I have given you a fine son. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“It is what you wanted! But it has made you forget who you are. My wife.”
“And his mother.”
“My wife.”
I stood in the doorway behind Elkanah and saw the whole thing. He was furious, she resentful. I saw as he rushed to her and grabbed Samuel out of her embrace. He clutched the boy’s arm tight enough to make him cry out. “Let him go,” Hannah said. “You’ve gone mad.”
She ran at him, tried to pry his grip loose, but it was only when Elkanah lifted the boy as if to fling him against the wall that I rushed in. I acted on instinct. No one should hurt a child, no matter what his mother has done, how she has tortured me. Hannah was too small to stop Elkanah on her own, but together we pulled the boy away from him.
Hannah hugged him and rushed to the other end of the room, Samuel sobbing into her shoulder. I couldn’t believe this man was my husband, who had always been mild-mannered, who spent his days praising the Lord for all he had been given. The man in front of me was possessed of something evil. It drenched his skin in a sheen of oily sweat, distorted the planes of his face. He snarled. Spit flew from his mouth when he spoke.
He pointed to me. “She understands. Even with all her children, she gives me my due.” But I would not be a bludgeon to be used between them anymore, and he no longer deserved my attention. I turned from him and addressed her.
“He will hurt your boy eventually if you don’t do something,” I said. For the first time since I came into Elkanah’s home, she answered me without adding an insult.
“What can I do? He is my son. I waited so many years for God to answer my pleas.”
Neither of us had the answer. Elkanah’s displeasure with Hannah had not increased his affection for me, but at least I could distract him. Every night, I went into his room whether he called me or not. He was not young when I came into his household, and age had overtaken him in the years since then. I gave my body to him so often at night that he was too tired to feel anything for his first wife or her son during the day.
The sun rose and set, rose and set, until the time came for us to go to Shiloh again. Despite Elkanah’s newfound impatience, we went up as usual. He chose the finest ewe, led her by a rope himself as we made the trip.
At the temple, the priests greeted us, praised Elkanah on the great bounty that God had given him. “So many fine children,” the high priest said, as if he had something to do with their coming into the world. When his eyes alighted on Hannah, his satisfaction seemed to grow even greater.
“So this is the young man you prayed for,” he said, and took the boy from her arms, held him up in the air to make him giggle, and then returned him to Hannah. “He is a fine boy who will bring merit to his parents’ names and to his people. You have much to be thankful for this year.”
Elkanah sucked in his breath. Hannah’s face twisted at the cruel irony of the priest’s words, but they gave me the solution to our problems, a way to protect the boy.
“Leave him here,” I said to her after the evening meal.
Her brow furrowed. It took her a moment to understand what I was talking about. “My boy?” she said, and looked over to where he slept. Desperation and love seemed to seize her by the shoulders. “I can’t. God finally answered me. Maybe it would be nothing to you to give up one of your children, but he is all I have. A mother can’t abandon her child.”
I had grown calloused to her insults, so it was easy to ignore this one. “If you love him, you will leave him here with the priests. Dedicate him to God. The priest said the boy is destined for great things. They can raise him to that fate better than we can in our small home.”
It didn’t matter that I enlarged upon what the priest had really said, that I had blown his words up more than he probably intended. Hannah would believe anything about her son.
Hannah hesitated, but she didn’t turn away. She listened, so I kept talking.
“The priests will care for him. God will watch over him. He is not safe in our home. Soon, even you won’t be safe.”
I sighed. I had suffered so much at the hands of this woman, and still she abhorred me, but I was no longer the hated second wife. We were equal now, if only because our husband held back his affection from both of us.
“I have no love for you,” I said. After all these years, she still couldn’t see the truth of our lives, “but I am trying to help you.”
There was no more for me to say, and I had to be back in my room. Elkanah would expect me to be waiting for him. Being in the presence of the priests and bringing the sacrifice seemed to have returned him to a semblance of himself. He remembered his piety, and with it his mood lightened. His caresses were gentler that night than they had been in months. I was almost deceived into believing there was some emotion in them, but I had learned enough by then to know better.
The next morning, I was in a frenzy of work packing our family up to return home. When all the donkeys were loaded with their burdens, all the children accounted for, and the innkeeper assured that we had left his rooms in good condition, we began the long walk home. I didn’t notice Hannah until we were on the road. She sat on her donkey as if her body weighed too much for her. Her arms hung limply at her sides. They swung back and forth to the rhythm of the ass’s footfalls as if they were not attached to her shoulders. She looked ahead, but it was as if her eyes saw nothing.
It was then I saw that her son was not strapped to her back. I looked again. Her arms were empty, too. She had listened to what I said. I marveled at it, but she didn’t acknowledge me. I knew then that I would never learn what had changed her mind. As bad as things had been between us before, they were bound to get worse. She had sacrificed the best of herself, had lost her boy even if it was to save him. Even though I had been the one to save him, she would blame me for his absence for the rest of our lives.
Elkanah must have seen what she had given up for him, or known of her intentions before we set out. As always, they kept their confidences from me. He rode over to her, took her hand in his and ran his fingers over the skin of her forearm. He pulled in close to her, whispered into her ear as he used to do. She didn’t respond, but she allowed him to hold onto her, to adore her as he always had.
Everything, I saw, was returning to how it had been. To normal. The road stretched out before us. We had two long days of walking ahead of us. I tightened the cloth that held my baby to me, felt the warm heft of her against my shoulder, and labored on.
SAUL’S DAUGHTER
“Her husband walked with her as far as Bahurim, weeping as he followed her; then Abner ordered him to turn back, and he went back.”
2 Samuel 3:16
Gallim
Life happens slowly in a small village. Our bonds of family and clan run deep. We take care of each other here. The content of each person’s heart seems open for all to read. We live and we die here. The men bring their brides to dwell among us. We care for the widow, feed her at our tables when there is no one left to provide for her. We give the orphan a place to sleep, find him a wife, become the parents he needs us to be.
Our village, Gallim, is a quiet place. We are used to the slow rhythms of our corner of God’s world, to the vistas of terraced fields, pasture, and mountains unbroken by a city wall. It was like all the other villages that dotted the Judean hills, tiny outposts whose young men were often away fighting our unseen enemies, Philistine to the west, Moab to the east, who could scale the hills and overrun us if we didn’t stay vigilant. Nonetheless, the struggles of the kingdom rarely entered.
Hills remain sturdy. They never move, though we scamper over their surfaces. To them, there is no difference between us and our animals. The goats jump higher, sheep bend to the grass, and we tread heavily. What is that to the soil, which will renew itself long after we are gone?
Palti
It took time for me to convince Michel that my love was sincere. “You are here now,” I said. “You are my wife, part of my home, my family.”
“You are kind,” she replied. “I have not deserved the welcome your family has given to me. I will forever be grateful to you, and to them.”
It was not what I wanted to hear. Gratitude is what a man feels for his savior. It is the emotion of strangers unless accompanied by something deeper—affection, shared purpose, love.
“Please,” I begged, “you are mine, and I am yours. Nothing will change that.”
Her reticence was not hard to understand, and I felt for her. Life had not been kind to her. I am a patient man, but even I have my pride. It took considerable persistence to let her come to me. It was like coaxing a wild animal—platefuls of food left out, and each night the bowl a little closer, until finally, it is inside and no longer afraid. That’s only half-right. She was aloof, but not skittish. Warm to everyone, including me, but she held a piece of herself back, would not allow herself to be comfortable in my company. She was sure, I saw, that I would prove myself like the other men she had known, who made use of her and then, when she was no longer valuable, walked away.
I had watched her for years. When I was still young and of sound body, I served our king as all other young men do. I was fast and fearless. I was also loyal, a trait I have carried with me all my life. When I entered Saul’s service, I signed my existence over to him. He was a wise leader, a forceful man who had united the restive tribes under one rule. We were stronger when we fought as one than we had been as scattered clans, each vying for its own glory. I admired him for seeing that, for being able to act on it.
Soon after my induction, I was noticed by Saul’s highest general, Abner. He watched me throw a spear and wrestle others to the ground. He saw that I stayed calm in the confusion of a fight and that I was not loud and intemperate, but kept my own counsel. Which is how I came to be part of the king’s own detail. We served longer than others, stayed in the capital while the young men around us went home to marry and raise families. We took oaths to hold his life dearer than our own, to march into battle with him, to protect him.
It was the first time I had lived in a city. Not just any city. The capital itself, with its winding alleys and buildings set one atop the next. We were given a place to sleep inside the walls of the palace, and marched out every day to practice our maneuvers in the shadow of the city walls. We followed the king when he left, and came back with him when he returned. In the evenings, we filled the dining hall, its thick walls grimed with the smell of sweaty men that I doubted would ever fade.
That’s where I first saw her. She came in with the other royal women—wives, daughters, and daughters-in-law—carrying jugs of wine and trays heavy with food. They wove between us, doing their duty as we did ours, each as out of reach as the stars in heaven. None of us dared speak to them. To look at them openly was to court the king’s displeasure. They were his women. We pretended, to the best of our ability, that they were spirits moving among us, magic winds that bore food and drink and then rushed back out, ruffling our hair as they passed.
Of course, we all looked anyway. Asking a roomful of boys not to notice the girls among them is like asking a tree not to grow or the rain not to fall. The trick was not to be caught. So we perfected the art of ducking our heads and looking out from beneath our hair, catching sight of what parts of them we could. Slender ankles and sandal-clad feet. The hems of dresses that swung around shapely calves. Brown arms as they lowered plates in front of us. And, in the quickest of glances, faces, necks, hair. They were as beautiful as they were untouchable. They made us moan with desire.
I didn’t take any notice of Michel at first. She was still just a girl, nine or ten years old, with brown hair that swung against the middle of her back, and dark, serious eyes. If I looked at any of them, it was at her older sister, just as everyone else did. Merav was a great beauty, one of those girls who understood the power of her position as eldes
t daughter of the king from her earliest years. She was also bound by her father’s expectations to stay away from his men, and yet she managed to gather all the boys’ attention to her, to spread it behind her as she passed like a perfume she wasn’t yet old enough to wear.
Michel didn’t draw attention to herself. She carried cups and wine as duty demanded, but she had been overshadowed by her older sister and her brother, the crown prince, from the moment of her birth. Jonathan already sat next to the king each night, a young warrior in love with his own expanding possibilities. From where I sat among the men, it was clear how much easier it was to be heir to the throne than to be king. Saul was rarely anything other than sober, even in the rowdy company of his men, but Jonathan jumped into the camaraderie of army life from the first. About my age, he was like his father, taller and more handsome than the rest of us combined, but he had a loud, quick laugh and slapped the other boys on the back whether he knew our names or not.
Some of my brothers-in-arms took nothing but pride in what we did. They competed among themselves to see who could fight harder, feel less. I couldn’t help but notice that the vows I had made—to swear off marriage and the comforts of a woman’s embrace—so that I would be prepared to fight, to die if that’s what it came to, were made in order to protect my king’s right to surround himself with all these women. It’s what a soldier does. He doesn’t question. He does what he is told, then takes his wages and helps care for his family.
The king’s women made a great show of ignoring us, but the capital was full of non-royal girls who were happy to toss their hair for our benefit and smile at us as we passed through the city gates. As warriors, we walked as if we, and not the man we served, owned everything within our reach.