“Dear one,” she said, putting my hand to her cheek, “I am so honored to be the vessel into which you pour this story of pain and strength. For all these years, no daughter could have made me happier or more proud than you. Now that I know who you are and what life has cost you, I am in awe that I number you among my beloved.” After a comfortable silence, Meryt gathered her things and prepared to leave. “I will go to give you time to prepare for Benia’s arrival,” she said, taking my two hands in hers. “Blessings of Isis. Blessings of Hathor. Blessings of the mothers of your house.”
But before she walked out the door, my friend’s face regained its impish grin and with a friendly leer she said, “I will call upon you tomorrow. See if you can’t get off your back long enough between now and then to make me something to eat for a change, eh?”
Benia ran in soon after, and we fell upon the unmade bed like youthful lovers, breathless and hurried. Afterward, knotted in each other’s clothes, we slept the famished sleep of reunited lovers. I awoke once in the night, startled and smiling, hating to close my eyes upon the joy of being home.
After my return, I never fully lost my reverence for ordinary pleasures. I arose before Benia to study his face and breathed silent prayers of thanks. Walking to the water fountain or pulling weeds in the garden, I was overcome by the understanding that I had spent a whole day without the weight of the past crushing my heart, Birdsong brought me to tears, and every sunrise seemed a gift shaped for my eyes.
When the vizier’s messenger arrived at our door, as I knew he would someday, I froze with dread at the thought of leaving for so much as a day, but to my relief, the letter did not summon me to the great house on the east bank. Joseph’s dream had been fulfilled, and a second son was born to him. This one came so fast, however, that As-naat did not have time to send for me before the one called Efraem found his way into the world.
Even though I had rendered him no service, Zafenat Paneh-ah sent a gift of three lengths of snowy linen. When Benia asked me why the gift was so extravagant, I told him everything.
It was the third time I had given voice to the full story; first to Werenro, then to Meryt. But this time my heart did not pound nor my eyes fill as I told it. It was only a story from the distant past. After hearing me out, Benia took me in his arms to comfort me, and I nestled into the sheltering peace between Benia’s hands and his beating heart.
Benia was the rock upon which my life stood firm, and Meryt was my wellspring. But my friend was older than I by a generation, and age was taking its toll.
The last of her teeth had fallen from her mouth, for which she claimed herself grateful. “No more pain,” she chuckled. “No more meat, either,” she said, with a doleful shrug. But her daughter-in-law, Shif-re, chopped and mashed every dish, and my friend remained hearty and enjoyed her beer and her jokes as much as ever. She attended many births with me, taking delight in newborn smiles, weeping over the deaths that came our way. We shared countless meals, and I always left her table chuckling. We knew her days were numbered and kissed each other goodbye at every parting. Nothing between us was left unsaid.
The morning came when Kiya appeared at the door to say that Meryt could not rise from her bed. “I am here, dear one, sister,” I said when I arrived at her side, but my old friend could no longer give me greeting. She could not move at all. The right side of her face had collapsed, and her breathing was labored.
She returned the pressure of my fingers in her left hand and blinked at me. “Oh, sister,” I said, trying not to weep. She stirred, and I could see that even though she was nearing death, Meryt was trying to comfort me. That would not do. I looked into her eyes and managed a midwife’s smile. I knew my task.
“Fear not,” I whispered, “the time is coming. “Fear not, your bones are strong. “Fear not, good friend, help is nearby. “Fear not, Anubis is a gentle companion. “Fear not, the hands of the midwife are clever. “Fear not, the earth is beneath you. “Fear not, little mother. “Fear not, mother of us all.”
Meryt relaxed and closed her eyes, surrounded by sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters. She sighed one long sigh, the wind through reeds, and left us.
I joined with the women in the high-pitched keening death song that alerted the whole neighborhood to the passing of the beloved midwife, mother, and friend. Children burst into tears at the sound, and men rubbed their eyes with damp fists. I was heartbroken but comforted by one of Meryt’s last gifts to me, for at her deathbed I became one of her grieving family.
Indeed, I was treated as the oldest female relative and given the honor of washing her withered arms and legs. I swaddled her in Egypt’s finest linen, which was mine to give. I arranged her limbs in the crouch of a baby about to enter the world and sat with her through the night.
At dawn we carried her to rest in a cave on a hill overlooking the tombs of kings and queens. Her sons buried her with her necklaces and rings. Her daughters buried her with her spindle, her alabaster bowl, and other things she loved. But the midwife’s kit had no place in the next life, and it passed to the keeping of Shif-re, who held Meryt’s tools with reverence, as though they were made of gold.
We buried Meryt with songs and tears, and on the way home laughed in her honor, recalling her delight in surprises, jokes, food, and all the pleasures of the flesh. I hoped that she would continue her enjoyment of these in the life to come, which she believed to be much like this world, only deathless and eternal.
That night, I dreamed of Meryt and woke up laughing at something she said. The following night I dreamed of Bilhah, waking to tears on my cheeks that tasted of the spices my aunt used in her cooking. One night later, Zilpah greeted me and we flew through the night sky, a pair of she-hawks.
When the sun set again, I knew I would meet with Rachel in dreams. She was as beautiful as I remembered. We ran through a warm rain that washed me clean as a baby, and I woke up smelling as though I had bathed in well water.
Eagerly I awaited my dream of Leah, but she did not come the next night or the night after. Only at the dark of the new moon was I visited by the mother of my flesh. It was the first time my body failed to give the moon her due. I was past giving life, and my mother, who had borne so many children, came to comfort me.
“You are the old one now,” she said gently. “You are the grandmother, giving voice to wisdom. Honor to you,” my mother Leah said, touching her forehead to the ground before me, asking forgiveness. I lifted her up, and she turned into a swaddling baby. Holding her in my arms, I begged her pardon for ever doubting her love, and I felt her pardon in the fullness of my heart. I went to Meryt’s tomb the morning after Leah’s dream and poured out wine, thanking her for sending my mothers back to me.
With Meryt gone, I was the wise woman, the mother, grandmother, and even great-grandmother of those around me. Shif-re, a new grandmother, and Kiya, about to be married, attended me wherever I went to place the bricks. They learned what I had to teach, and soon went on their own to deliver women from the fear and loneliness of birth. My apprentices became sister and daughter. In them, I found new water in the well I thought would remain forever dry after my Meryt died.
Months passed and years. My days were busy, my nights peaceful. But there is no lasting peace before the grave, and one night, after Benia and I had gone to bed, Joseph appeared inside our door.
The sight of him there, clad in a long black cloak that turned him into a shadow, was so strange that I thought him part of a dream. But the edge in my husband’s voice woke me to the moment, suddenly dark and dangerous.
“Who comes into my house without knocking?” he growled, like a dog sensing danger, for this was clearly no distraught father in search of the midwife.
“It is Joseph,” I whispered.
I lit lamps and Benia offered my brother the best chair. But Joseph insisted on following me back to the kitchen, where I poured him a cup of beer, which sat untouched.
The silence was thick and stiff. Benia’s hands we
re clenched, for he was fearful that I was about to be taken from him; his jaw was locked, for he was unsure how to speak to the noble perched on a stool in his kitchen. Joseph sent me glances full of unspoken urgency, for he was unwilling to speak in front of Benia. I looked from one face to the other and realized how old we had grown.
Finally I told Joseph, “Benia is your brother now. Say what it is you came to say.”
“It’s Daddy,” he said, using a baby word that I had not heard since Canaan. “He is dying and we must go to him.”
Benia snorted in disgust.
“How dare you?” Joseph said, jumping to his feet and putting his hand on the dagger at his side.
“How dare you?” Benia replied with equal passion, stepping closer. “Why should my wife weep by the bedside of a father who murdered her happiness and his own honor? A father who sent you to the long knives of men known for their ruthlessness?”
“You know the story then,” said Joseph, suddenly defeated. He sat down and put his head in his hands and groaned.
“They sent me word from the north where my brothers and their sons tend the flocks of Egypt. Judah says that our father will not live out the season, and that Jacob wishes to give my sons his blessing.
“I do not wish to go,” Joseph said, looking at me as though I had some answer for him. “I thought I had finished with my duty there. I thought I had even forgiven my father, though not without exacting a price.
“When they came to my house starving and seeking refuge, I twisted the knife. I accused them of theft and forced them to grovel before the mighty Zafenat Paneh-ah. I watched Levi and Simon put their foreheads to the ground at my feet and tremble. I gloated and sent them back to Jacob, demanding Benjamin be sent. I punished our father for choosing favorites. I punished my brothers, too, and kept them in fear of their lives.
“Now the old man wishes to place his hands on the heads of my boys, to choose them for his blessing. Not the sons of Reuben or Judah, who have supported him all these years and borne his moods and whims. Not even the sons of Benjamin, the last-born.
“I know Jacob’s heart. He wishes to atone for the wrongs of the past by blessing my sons. But I fear for them with such a birthright. They will inherit tormenting memories and strange dreams. They will come to hate my name.”
Joseph railed on as Benia and I listened. The hurts of the past clung to him, caught in the folds of his long dark cloak. He flailed around like a drowning lamb.
As he talked about fat years and lean years, about loneliness and sleepless nights, about how life had treated him so cruelly, I searched for the brother I remembered, the playfellow who listened to the words of women with respect and who once looked at me as his friend. But I saw nothing of that boy in the self-absorbed man before me, whose mood and voice seemed to change from moment to unhappy moment.
“I am a weakling,” said Joseph. “My anger has not abated and I have no pity in my heart for Jacob, who has become blind, like his father before him. And yet I cannot say no to him.”
“Messages get lost,” I said softly. “Messengers are sometimes waylaid.”
“No,” Joseph said. “That lie would finally kill me. If I do not go, he will haunt me forever. I will go and you will come with me,” said Joseph, suddenly shrill, a man accustomed to power.
I did not try to hide my disgust at his tone, and when he saw my contempt he dropped his head in shame. And then my brother bowed down with his forehead on the dirt floor of a carpenter’s kitchen and apologized to me, and to Benia, too.
“Forgive me, sister. Forgive me, brother. I do not wish to see my father dying. I do not wish to see him at all. And yet, I cannot disobey. It is true that I can force you to go with me, and for no other reason than to hold my hand. But you will prosper in this, too.”
He stood and resumed the demeanor of Zafenat Paneh-ah. “You will be my guests,” he said smoothly. “The master carpenter will do business on behalf of the king. I go to purchase timber in the north, and I require the services of an artist who knows how to select the finest wood. You will go to the marketplace of Memphis and see olive, oak, and pine in abundance, choosing only what belongs in the king’s house and tomb. You will bring honor to your- profession and to your own name.”
His words were seductive, but Benia looked only at me.
Then Joseph brought his face close to mine and gently said, “Ahatti, this is your last chance to see the fruits of your mothers’ wombs, their grandsons and granddaughters. For those are not only the children of Jacob; they are also the children of Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah.
“You are the only aunt of their mothers’ blood, and our mothers would wish for you to see their grandaughters. After all, you are the only daughter, the one they loved.”
My brother could talk the wings off a bird, and he talked until the sun rose and Benia and I were exhausted. Although we never said yes, there was no saying no to Zafenat Paneh-ah, the king’s vizier, just as there had been no saying no to Joseph, son of Rachel, grandson of Rebecca.
We left with him in the morning. At the river, we were met by a barque of surpassing luxury, filled with chairs and beds, painted plates and cups, sweet wine and fresh beer. There were flowers and fruit everywhere. Benia was stunned at the riches, and neither of us could look into the faces of the naked slaves who waited upon us with the same servility they showed Zafenat and his two sons and their noble retinue.
The lads were old enough to grow their hair, and they were good boys, curious about their father’s guests but polite enough not to ask questions. Benia delighted them by carving little creatures out of wood, and naming each one. He caught me watching him, and his plaintive smile told me that he had done the same for his own sons, dead long ago.
As-naat did not come with us, and Joseph never spoke a word of his wife. My brother was attended by a youthful guard, all of them as beautiful as he had been in his youth, and I often saw him staring at his handsome companions wistfully. He and I barely spoke on the voyage north. We took our meals separately, and no one suspected that the carpenter’s wife had anything to say to the powerful vizier.
When we did exchange words—to say good morning or to comment about the children—we never spoke in our mother tongue. That might have drawn attention to his foreign birth, which was a sore point among many in the king’s service.
Joseph kept to himself at the prow of the barque under a gleaming awning, wrapped in his dark cloak. Had I been alone, I might have sat like him, reliving the journey that had brought me to the house of Nakht-re, where I became a mother, remembering, too, the loss of my son. Had it not been for Benia, I would have thought of the impending meeting with my brothers and opened the old wounds in my heart.
But Benia was always nearby, and my husband was captivated by the sights of a journey that was, for him, like the gift of an extra life. He directed my eyes at the sails in the wind, or when the air was still, at the harmony of the rowers’ oars. Nothing escaped his attention, and he pointed to horizons and trees, birds in flight, men plowing the fields, wildflowers, a stand of papyrus that looked like a field of copper in the setting sun. When we came upon a herd of water horses, his excitement was matched only by that of Joseph’s boys, who crowded by his side to watch the children of Taweret splash and roar in the reeds.
On the third day of the journey, I set aside my spinning and sat quietly, watching the water lap against the shore, my mind as calm and wordless as the surface of the river. I inhaled the loamy smell of the river and listened to the sound of the water on the hull, which was like a constant breeze. I trailed my fingers through the water, watching them grow wrinkled and white.
“You are smiling!” said Benia when he came upon me.
“When I was a child, I was told that I would only find contentment beside a river,” I told him. “But it was a false” prophecy. The water soothes my heart and settles my thoughts, and it is true that I feel at home by the water, but I found my joy in dry hills, where the fountain is
distant and the dust is thick.” Benia squeezed my hand, and we watched Egypt pass, emerald green, while the sun sparked the water into countless points of light.
In the mornings and at sunset when the barque docked for the night, Menashe and Efraem would jump into the water. The servants watched for crocodiles and snakes, but my husband could not resist the boys’ invitation to join them. He removed his loincloth and jumped in with a roar that was answered by childish squeals. I laughed to see my husband dive under the surface and shoot up again, like a heron, like a boy. When I told Benia of a dream in which I was a fish, he grinned and promised to make it so. ‘
So one night, under a full moon, Benia put his finger to his lips and led me down to the water’s edge. Silently, he motioned for me to lie back in his arms, where he held me effortlessly, as though I were as light as a baby and he as strong as ten men. With his hands, he coaxed and reassured me until I put my head back and unclenched my hands and lay as though on a bed. When I relaxed, my husband released me so that I felt only his fingertips on my back, while the river held me and the moonlight turned the water silver.
Every night I grew bolder. I learned to float without the support of my husband’s hands, and then to move on my back, facing the waning moon. He showed me how to stay on the surface and swim like a dog, kicking and kneading the water for dear life. I laughed and swallowed water. It was the first time I had frolicked like a child since my son was a baby.
By the end of the journey north, I could duck my head underwater and even swim side by side with Benia. Whispering on our pallet afterward, I told him about the first time I ever saw anyone swimming, at the river on our way out of Haran. “They were Egyptians,” I said, remembering their voices. “I wonder if they were comparing the water of that river with this just as I am tonight.”
The Red Tent Page 30