Tirtzah paused, waiting for me to reply. I put my palms together and let my eyes rest on her sandaled feet. I suddenly thought of Mama and the New York marriage market. Couldn’t a woman be secure in her own right, without being attached to some man?
Serakh spread her arms wide. “Take courage, all of you. Our messenger is also of the line of Joseph. In her place and time, women have the right to possess the land, is that not so?”
Miriam Josefsohn to the front of the class. I swallowed hard. I tried to imagine Sister Margaret giving me her most encouraging smile.
“Absolutely,” I said, hoping I sounded confident. I had no notion whether Mama owned our house with Papa or had any stake in the print shop. She ought to, though. “Where I come from, women are very important.”
The sisters sat there, silent. Now what? The first image to pop into my head was that statue in Washington Park.
“Where I come from, the people honor Sacajawea. She was about as old as Tirtzah. And she guided men across the mountains and deserts, hundreds and hundreds of miles, to discover a way to the Pacific Ocean.”
Six sets of eyes stared at me. My face grew warm and my hands cold.
I decided to leave out the part about one of the men being Sacajawea’s husband. “They listened to her, and she kept them safe.”
Tirtzah looked the tiniest bit hopeful.
“Where I come from there are other women, too,” I said. I wondered whether I should tell them about the suffrage banner with their name on it. Would it be too confusing?
“Go on,” Serakh said.
“Um…there are sisters who have their own hat shop, the Osborne sisters. And there is another woman who is a leader of women and men, too. Some men, anyway. Her name is Anna Shaw. She makes speeches in many places and goes on marches to help women get their rights.”
Milcah’s eyes widened. “Are these women also of the tribe of Joseph?”
“Some are, I’m sure. Sacajawea was from the Shoshone tribe. And the Osborne sisters and Anna Shaw are of the tribe of, um…Jesus.”
Hoglah frowned. “There are no such tribes.”
“Not yet,” I said. “But there will be.” How could I explain the olam when I didn’t understand it myself?
Serakh touched Hoglah’s robe. “Listen to our messenger. She speaks the truth. Now that she is here, she will help you to ask for your father’s share of land. You deserve your father’s portion, and you must explain this to Moshe.”
Hoglah yanked her robe away. “Our father taught us to obey, not to challenge our elders!”
“If the land is important to you, then you have to be brave, like Sacajawea,” I said. “And you have to speak up for what’s right, like Anna Shaw.”
Milcah frowned.
Noa shook her head. “How can we ask for something that is not of our tradition?”
“Someone has to be the first,” I said. “Surely women should have the right to own land. How else could they survive?” I figured that married women owned land in Oregon, but what about unmarried women? Did the Osbornes really own their store? I didn’t remember. Portland seemed as far away as the other side of the moon.
“Do not stare in horror, Hoglah,” Serakh said. “Our messenger sets you on the right path. Tomorrow all of you must bathe at first light and dress in your best garments. Meet us in my cave. Then we will go before Moshe and the elders at the Tent of Meeting.”
Hoglah scowled and said nothing. Serakh stood. We did likewise. One by one the sisters bowed and walked toward the entrance. Makhlah turned to look at me once, but Noa pulled her away.
***
“Suppose they don’t come back,” I said, as we got ready for the night. My blanket was itchy, and I missed my feather pillow, smooth sheets, and quilted coverlet.
“They will come now that they have heard wise words from a messenger. Tomorrow you will tell them of the women of your time who gather in great numbers to claim their right to own land. Do not talk of newspapers, they would not understand. But tell the sisters that they have been remembered. My encouragement is not enough.”
“Yes, I read that article. And I saw the banner that said, ‘Like the daughters of Zelophehad, we ask for our inheritance.’ Is that what you mean?”
“The very one. I found it on your Hallowe’en, in your year 1908. It is easier to travel on this day. Many wear strange garments then, and I am overlooked. I waited until you and Tirtzah were ready.”
“But that banner was carried by the suffragists. It’s not about owning land.”
She settled herself on her blanket. “Suf-ra-jists? I have heard that word, but I do not know its meaning.”
I sat beside her as the darkness deepened. “Suffragists. They are people who campaign for a woman’s right to vote.”
“Vote? What is this?”
“Vote.” I took a breath and tried again. “Hmm… Voting is how we elect government officials and make laws. People raise their hand or cast a secret ballot. In most places it’s just the men, but in some states, the women are allowed to vote, too.”
Serakh cocked her head. “Do you also vote?”
“No, I’m too young. I think you have to be twenty-one in most places, and I’m only sixteen. Besides, women can’t vote in my state. Not yet anyway. I’m trying to change that.”
“You are a suffra…a suffered…?”
“Suffragist.” Two beetles crawled along a crack in the wall. “It’s complicated,” I said, sounding annoyingly like Mama. “My father is against women voting. He and my uncle own a print shop, and I want Papa to take me into the business. I was supposed to start last Tuesday.”
“That banner is not about women inheriting land?”
“No.”
She rubbed a callus on her thumb. “Forgive me,” she said. “I have traveled the olam, but it is rare that I come to your place and time. Still, I trust in the blue thread, which has led me to you. You can speak with Tirtzah outside my cave. You are of the line of Joseph. You are named for the sister of Moshe—for Miryam, who guided us, and rejoiced with us, and who died in the wilderness of Zin. She was a great prophetess. If she were here to inspire Tirtzah, perhaps it would help, but she is not.”
I hugged my knees and hoped she couldn’t see my face in the fading light. “You’re wrong, Serakh. I’m named for a woman who died in Bavaria. I’m not anything like the Miryam in the Bi…in this place. I’m not wise, or…or…” The words stuck in my throat. I swallowed hard. “This is all a big mistake. I’m not at all special. I’m useless here. You’re counting on the wrong person.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A gust of night air brought a sudden chill. Serakh crawled out of her blanket, walked toward the back of the cave, and reached into an earthen jar. She cupped something in her hands, stooped, and hollowed out a darkened area on the sandy floor. She blew into her hands. They glowed slightly, not blue this time, but a reddish-yellow.
“Help me build a fire.” Serakh nodded toward a pile of animal hair and kindling.
I was at her side in an instant, glad for a small task I could manage. I put kindling in the fire pit and watched her coax an ember from a brownish-black clump into flame. The clump smelled of animal dung. The fire was meager and smoky.
“Serakh—”
She cut me off with a wave of her hand. Then she squatted beside me and tilted my chin toward her face. “The prayer shawl rests on your shoulders, Miriam. The blue thread brought you here with me. Tirtzah and her sisters need you. I need you.”
I brushed her hand away. “All I’ve done so far is hand out candy.”
She responded in that lullaby voice of hers. “You give sustenance—sweet sustenance and hope. You bring Tirtzah the fresh air that fans her spark into fire. When she gathers that strength from you, she and her sisters will do what is right.”
I focused on the tiny flame. “That can’t be enough.”
Serakh put her hands on my shoulders. “It is more than enough, Miriam. I might have been mistaken about t
he picture from the newspaper, as you say. But I am not mistaken about you. You are named for my Miryam, as was your great-grandmother. You are the perfect messenger.”
The perfect messenger? Me? What does Serakh know?
I tried to straighten out my brain, but it was no use. My eyelids drooped, and I curled up on the blanket. Maybe I am the perfect messenger, at least in this wherever-I-am, so far from Portland. Who am I to say otherwise?
I fell asleep with that thought and awoke the next morning with only a moment’s confusion. I watched Serakh lift a square cloth with a hole cut in the center. She fingered the blue thread from my prayer shawl and compared it with an identically colored tassel at each corner of her cloth.
“The threads are the same blue,” I said.
Serakh tensed. It felt good to take her by surprise. For a moment, she seemed more human.
“Good morning,” she said, leaning back on her heels. “When we cross into Canaan, we will make again Joseph’s dye and have blue fringes for our garments. Moshe has told us that everyone must wear tzitzit. Men and women. The fringes remind us to follow the teachings of The One. I see in your place and time that this law is not obeyed.”
I blinked the sleepiness out of my eyes and stretched. “Men still wear prayer shawls at my temple.”
Serakh frowned. “The teachings belong also to women.”
“Well… um…” I thought of Charity, pinning that suffrage bow on my coat, the one I took off as soon as Mama and I had left her hat shop. Blue threads and yellow ribbons—reminders to do the right thing. “Yes,” I said. “They do.”
I braided my hair, which was decidedly straighter in the dry desert air and fell to the middle of my back. We breakfasted on a kind of sour cottage cheese and flat bread. I longed for a cup of coffee and a sweet roll.
Serakh scoured our bowls with sand to clean them. “Today you must be ready to return at any moment. Wear the garments of your Port Land underneath the garments I have given you. You must look like one of the multitude.”
“With my shoes on?”
Serakh saw my point. “How can we hide them?”
I scratched the back of my neck. “I’ll loop the ribbons on my petticoat through my shoe buckles. Thank goodness I wasn’t wearing a corset when we…when we crossed.”
“Corset? What is this?”
“Corsets pinch your waist, push up your bosom, and push out your…derrière,” I said, pointing to mine. “I don’t know how Mama can stand them.”
“Worse than your shoes.” Serakh wiggled her hips and winked.
Laughing, I slipped into my 1912 clothes, hiking my skirt up slightly so the hemline wouldn’t show at the bottom of the shift and robe. When Serakh wasn’t looking, I wiped my breakfast bowl with my cotton stocking, in case I had to eat another meal in the cave. Then I draped my prayer shawl around my shoulders and covered everything with the ochre shift and robe. Had it been the Arctic, or the dead of night in this desert, I might have been comfortable.
Tirtzah appeared at the cave’s entrance as I was trying to lick the scum off my teeth and wishing I had a toothbrush or peppermint. Her hair was still wet and her feet looked thoroughly scrubbed. Her sisters trooped in one by one, in order of height and, I supposed, age. Hoglah stared straight ahead, clenching her jaw. Milcah wiped a tear from her cheek. Noa studied the cave floor. Makhlah bit her fingernails. Their robes were the color of ivory stationery, and all of them except Makhlah wore headscarves to match. They looked grim.
Finally Tirtzah spoke. “We are ready to present ourselves to Moshe and the elders. But we beg you to speak for us. You are wise and we are not. We do not know what to say.”
Serakh shook her head. “I cannot do this for you. Neither can our messenger. It is you who will lose your father’s inheritance. So it is you who must prove that you are wise enough to claim it.”
Hoglah snorted in disgust. She turned to Tirtzah. “I told you they would say no. Now see what you have brought upon us? You will be safe with the Reubenites, but we live by the goodness of the Manassites. If you anger them by asking for our father’s share, we will lose what little we have left.”
Tirtzah’s face reddened with embarrassment. “I am doing this for your sake. Don’t be so stiff-necked!”
“Stop it!” Milcah looked at her two older sisters. Then she looked at the floor and muttered, “They will laugh at us. Mother will be ashamed.”
“No one will be ashamed,” Serakh said soothingly. She turned to Makhlah, who had tears forming in her eyes. “Little Lamb, there’s no need to cry.”
Noa stroked Makhlah’s hair. “Our little sister is afraid to go before the elders.”
Tirtzah shook her head. “Is she not also frightened of becoming a servant in a stranger’s household?”
Makhlah let out a wail. “Hush now,” Serakh said, patting Makhlah’s back. “Come. It is time.” She leaned over to smooth Makhlah’s hair.
Tirtzah stepped closer to me. “My father was a good man, Miriam,” she whispered. “I do not wish to soil his name.”
I wondered whether he was as stodgy and controlling as Papa. “Did he treat you well?”
“He gave heed to my words. He was kind. And he longed for his share of the land. Now his share will be gone forever.”
Tirtzah’s father seemed so different from Papa. He listened to her! “Tell them what you’ve told me,” I whispered. “Tell them that this is not about you and your sisters. It’s about your father’s hope for his land.”
She creased her forehead and bit her lip. Then her face relaxed and her eyes sparkled. “Yes, you are my perfect messenger.”
Serakh urged the sisters toward the mouth of the cave. “Tirtzah, wait with your sisters at the entrance. Our messenger and I will meet you there.”
I watched Tirtzah walk toward the exit with the others. She stood straighter than the rest of them, although I knew she must be as frightened as they were—maybe more so. Dear Tirtzah. She wasn’t a friend like Charity, or even Florrie. She claimed a deeper part of me somehow. She trusted me. She made me want to set things right.
Serakh led me further into the cave. She gave me a long ochre scarf with crimson stripes. “You must not attract attention,” she said. “Cover your head completely, stay close to me, cast your eyes downward, and say nothing.”
“Aren’t we walking with Tirtzah and her sisters?”
“We will remain some steps behind. As I do not show my age, some amongst my people grow suspicious. And you are a stranger. It is better for Tirtzah to be on her own.”
***
On the trek toward the encampment, the sun toasted my head and made the rest of me soggy. At first I saw little of the alien world around me except the sand under my feet. I suffocated in an extra layer of clothes, my chemise thoroughly wet and itchy against my chest. Clutching at my headscarf to keep it on straight, I longed for the silk fan that Mama had bought for me in Chinatown.
Mama and Papa must be frantic by now. Why hadn’t I thought of that before? I touched Serakh’s sleeve. “My parents were away the first time I came here. But this time I’ve been gone overnight.”
She shook her head. “Time has not moved in your Port Land. Your world will remain as you left it—only you will have changed.”
“Are you sure?”
“If we cross carefully, I am sure.”
“I see,” I said, although I didn’t really. I felt even more anxious than before.
Soon there were people all around us, speaking in a language filled with strange rhythms and sounds. The sisters slipped from view as more and more people pressed up against us, their clothes smelling of campfires, animals, and exertion. Serakh placed her hand on my elbow. She guided me through crowds as densely packed and excited as revelers by the Willamette River on the Fourth of July.
And suddenly there we were, standing near a magnificent tent so large it could have swallowed half my house. Animal skins and yards and yards of purple, crimson, and blue material covered the sides.
Wooden posts topped with beaten silver, gold, and copper reminded me of Temple Beth Israel’s two tall, gilt-topped towers. I gasped in wonder. Anxiety gave way to awe.
“The Tent of Meeting,” Serakh whispered. “Inside is the holiest of holy places.”
Tirtzah appeared at Serakh’s side and mumbled something to her. Hoglah and the three younger ones huddled a few feet away, a knot of robes, headscarves, and nervous tension.
Tirtzah grabbed my hand. “Peace be unto you, sister of the heart,” she said.
Sister of the heart. Yes. That’s what she was to me. I brought her forehead to my lips. “I’ll be close by,” I whispered. “I won’t let you down.”
She joined her real sisters and led them toward that spectacular tent. I started to follow them. Serakh grabbed my sleeve and shook her head.
“But I have to see Moses,” I told her. Moses. That was about as fantastical as you can get. In my wildest dreams… But this is no dream.
“I will not deny you, but we must be very careful. Stay well away. They must not see you.” She pointed to several dozen men who stood or sat near the entrance. Two of them carried spears.
Ignoring the spears, I edged closer.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
His hair and beard were auburn. His robes were mostly a blue that nearly matched the thread on my prayer shawl, and there were other threads woven into patterns of crimson, purple, and gold. His chest was covered by a thick square made of cloth and metal with twelve brilliantly colored stones. A blue and gold turban crowned his head. He looked like he belonged inside that magnificent tent. He looked like a king.
“Moses,” I murmured to Serakh, who was keeping a watchful eye on the crowd.
She shook her head. “Eleazar ben Aharon,” she whispered.
I frowned. The name meant nothing to me.
“Eleazar the priest, the son of Aharon the priest, the brother of Moshe and Miryam. Moshe is over there.”
I looked where Serakh was pointing, but didn’t see anyone dressed like a king. Then I watched Tirtzah kneel and kiss the hem of an old man’s robes. They were dyed the same ochre as mine, with crimson stripes similar to my headscarf. The man sat on animal skins, under a huge palm tree that looked twenty times larger than the potted one in our parlor.
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