Judging Noa

by Strutin, Michel;

  “I need . . .” Hur began, then hesitated before admitting, “I need the warmth of a wife.”

  “Take another wife, a softer woman who will bend to your needs.”

  Hur made up his mind to follow his mother’s advice.

  THE MEN SAT together within Boaz’s tent, eating what the women had prepared. The women ate outside, around the cooking pits, gossiping and reining in noisy children. Noa, beginning to wean their youngest, spooned thin wheat gruel into his mouth. Sarai, who Milcah called “my gift,” lay on her mother’s lap, giggling, as Tirzah tickled her toes.

  After dinner, Hur and Noa returned to their own tent where Noa nursed the youngest while the two older children lolled on their bedding.

  “I am taking a second wife,” Hur announced.

  “What?”

  “Yes. Her name is Ahuva.”

  “Like that? Am I the last to know?”

  Noa was so struck she did not know what else to say. With their youngest in her lap, Hur had chosen a time when Noa could not even raise her voice.

  “No. I came to this decision by a difficult path. You have given me excellent children. You are a good wife. But this chasing after justice. And . . .”

  He could not bring himself to speak about his jealousy of Yoela, dead or alive, rumors of sorcery, and Noa’s strange, guilty prayers in the night.

  “ . . . and I need someone to care for me. There. It wounds my pride to say it, but this is how it is.”

  Beyond the still-open tent door, Noa saw tents pitched in a tight and stifling geometry. She wished for a view of the open desert covered by a quilt of stars. She wished she were what Hur wanted. She wanted to cry, not because Hur was wrong. He was not.

  She bent her head to the baby at her breast and, as evenly as possible, asked, “How will we manage this?”

  If Noa had answered with a heart full of love, asking him to reconsider, Hur gladly would have dropped his intention. But her response convinced him that his path was true. Noa said nothing more.

  So they enlarged the tent and hung a wall to provide Hur with private quarters. He married and brought Ahuva into their home. Only a few years younger than Noa, she seemed a child. Malah remarked on her resemblance to Noa, who saw Tamar’s hand in the match. When Ahuva asked Noa how to plait her hair in the style of a married woman, Noa showed her and used the demonstration to look at their images side by side in her mirror. What Malah said was true.

  Noa’s reputation and her coolness cowed the new wife. At first, Ahuva could not do enough for Noa. As she begged to learn her duties, she began to copy Noa’s gestures and the rhythm of Noa’s speech. She pleaded to know the secrets of Noa’s cheeses, causing Noa to remember her terrible deed.

  “If she is the worst penance I must pay,” Noa told herself, “I cannot complain.”

  Ahuva was observant and soon understood why she was chosen. On the nights Ahuva lay with Hur, Noa lay in the dark listening as her husband groaned with deep satisfaction as Ahuva inflamed him with honeyed words and sounds, and with couplings that Noa could not imagine.

  “She is stealing me, as fast as she can,” Noa said to Malah. “Words, weaving, how I walk. What should I do?”

  “She can steal and steal, but she will still be a poor copy. Will she ever be as outspoken? As contrary?”

  “Malah!”

  “Oh, you opened that door for me.” She laughed. “I say things only a sister can say. And, more . . .” Malah softened her voice. “She will never be as courageous, wise-hearted, or so devoted to something outside herself.”

  Noa caught her breath. Before her stood a Malah rarely revealed.

  “That is all you will get from me.”

  Before Noa could respond, Malah had turned and left.

  Strangely, Ahuva’s presence melted the tension between Noa and Hur. Over time they had built enough reserves so, once the bonds of love and sex were loosened, they became comfortable with each other. Noa counseled Hur on how to build leadership in Boaz’s shadow, and Hur came to depend on her judgment.

  Boaz now sat with the Judges of Tens, thus raising Hur’s position. In the hottest part of the day, when labor paused, Hur sat in the shade of his doorway and listened to petitioners: gossip that cost a marital match, a knife for a ewe that proved barren, a set of weights and measures that favored the seller.

  Noa sat out of sight, weaving and listening. Occasionally a case would stump him, and Hur would send the parties away, saying, “Return tomorrow.” Then he conferred with Noa. Rarely did a ruling elude their reach, and a new bond grew between them.

  THE WILDERNESS PROVIDED little sustenance, no matter how hard the Israelites worked to nourish themselves. Some women were so undernourished their wombs withered and they were cast aside. Stories were told of those who became prostitutes, getting wages in lieu of a fruitful womb. Propagation of every sort was an act full of awe and fear of failure. Yet, the tribes increased, but slowly.

  The daughters of Zelophechad were counted as favored by God: five daughters, four with children. Soon after Hur took a second wife, Boaz determined that Tirzah must come to the canopy. Adam was an easy choice.

  At dawn, the day before the wedding, Tirzah came to Noa in a panic. She entered the tent, glanced at Ahuva, and pulled Noa outside.

  “What will I do, Noa, when they come to examine the cloth? They will see nothing. Adam and I, we . . .”

  Noa looked Tirzah up and down, hardly believing Tirzah had already crossed that flesh-and-blood divide. Quickly readjusting, she replied, “I understand.”

  Noa stood thinking, as Tirzah impatiently banged her hands against her sides, looking nothing like a graceful bride-to-be.

  At last, Noa said, “Let us go to the flocks and solve the problem.”

  Leaving her children with Ahuva, Noa made a quick detour to see Nechama, then they zigzagged around tent pegs, donkeys, and women carrying jugs to the well. The breaking light filtered through the palms, fingering them with the promise of warmth. As they left the line of palms, Noa saw women waiting their turn at the well, glad for a chance to share the news of their lives.

  Rarely did Noa’s duties allow her beyond the confines of camp. This day, Tirzah’s need quickened Noa’s step. Tirzah, forgetting her predicament, skipped alongside, excited by the promise of adventure with Noa, colored by the memory of dancing with Noa at the Sea of Reeds. Ahead, they saw a brush pen where sheep and goats milled, waiting to graze the folds of the far hills.

  Nearly there, Noa’s eye caught movement at the periphery. She turned to see a gazelle standing on hind legs, reaching into the branches of an acacia tree to nibble leaves.

  Arriving at the pen, they found the bondsman who slept by the family’s flocks to protect them from poachers, animal and human. He was surprised to see Noa, but it was not his place to inquire.

  Noa urged him, “There, just up the track, at that far tree, a gazelle awaits your spear. She will make a good meal. Quick, before she moves on.”

  The guard rushed off for a chance at easy meat. Noa smiled at Tirzah. “A timely gazelle,” she said, then pointed at a fat ewe. They pulled her down and lashed her front legs together as the rest of the flock edged away nervously.

  “I am heavier,” Noa said, “so I will hold her down. Use this knife to nick her in the fold of her leg, where the blood lies. Feel for the throbbing thread.” She handed a small clay vial to Tirzah. “Here, take my kohl jar to catch as much blood as it will hold.”

  Tirzah did as she was told, filling the vial, then stanching the ewe’s cut until the blood clotted. Noa pulled a twist of cloth from her sleeve and unfolded it to reveal grape seeds she had begged from Nechama. She laid them on a flat rock and carefully crushed them, then sprinkled the fragments into the kohl jar so the blood would stay fresh and flowing until it was needed.

  Then she stuffed the cloth into the top of the jar and handed it to Tirzah, saying, “Take care with this. Your honor depends upon it.”

  Tirzah nodded, as solemn as Noa
had ever seen her.

  As they returned to the tents, Noa said, “When you go into your marriage booth, take the jar with you and pour the blood out on the cloth.”

  “How can I repay you for saving me?”

  “Return the jar to me . . . full of kohl.”

  The next day, after the nuptials, the bride and groom were escorted to the wedding booth. Inside, Tirzah pulled the kohl bottle from her robe, split the sheep’s blood on the cloth and grinned. Adam’s eyes widened at his wife’s clever ruse. He fell on her with a whoop and they rolled together, laughing, and stained with sheep’s blood.

  TO ENSURE TIRZAH’S success, Malah organized a party for her, serving triangular cakes shaped like Asherah’s pudendum. When Tirzah discovered she was pregnant, she laughed so hard that Adam warned her against harming his child, which made Tirzah laugh even harder.

  So the daughters of Zelophechad increased their tents. As did the whole of the twelve tribes, until the camps at Kadesh Barnea could hold no more. Some, living at the outer edges, moved on to other oases, causing skirmishes with Midianites, who now saw the Israelites as competitors.

  In the tent of Haddad, his first wife stooped to hand him a cup of tea and complained, “That Israelite you call your friend, he and his people are bringing trouble to our lands.”

  “Ach. You sound like the Scarface. Few are more upright than Hur.”

  She pinched his earlobe, saying, “Some day you will hear me.”

  Haddad flung his arm out to slap at her. “Leave me be.”

  As she retreated, she muttered, “Your children will hear even if you do not.”

  CHAPTER 23

  WRAITHS

  TIRZAH SOON REALIZED pregnancy was no laughing matter and not to her liking. Consumed by nausea, she lay on her bed in her in-law’s tent, writhing and whining.

  “I’d rather fight Anak and his giant sons.”

  “This is nothing. It will pass and you will live,” countered Noa.

  “Perhaps pregnancy does not suit you, as it does me,” Hoglah said.

  “Do you want to attract God’s displeasure?” Noa hissed, annoyed with both of them.

  Hoglah gathered herself and her two children and left in a huff.

  Milcah sighed and offered, “If you are feeling that bad, I will watch the flocks today.”

  “You cannot manage with a baby at the breast,” Noa said.

  “The rest of you have more to cope with. A suckling child is always right there. Not running. And I am only giving Tirzah a day, two at most.”

  So Milcah relieved the night watchman, who growled about her late arrival. She pointed the sheep and goats toward the hills, Sarai nestled in a sling knotted across her shoulder. Noa walked out a little way with her, one child in her arms and two at her skirts.

  “I wish I could go with you. I long for only the voice of the wind. But grain must be ground, bread made. How many loaves for you and Dor?”

  “Enough to carry us through another day or two. I pray that Tirzah becomes quickly accustomed to her new body. For her sake and ours.”

  They parted, and Milcah drove the flocks forward, a small waterskin slapping against one hip, Sarai asleep in her sling on the other hip.

  The folds of the hills were already dotted with black goats and white sheep. Manasseh’s shepherds had pushed their flocks out earlier than she, so Milcah had to drive hers farther into the desert, toward a trio of hills whose folds were lined with green.

  She found a low stone in the lee of the near hill, arranged Sarai on her lap, then pulled out her drop-spindle and began spinning wool, letting her mind roam where it would. The animals followed their mouths up the slope, their necks bent, their teeth busy ripping at the meager forage.

  Sarai’s pink bud of a mouth began to suck energetically, a dream of milk, then a cry that signaled Milcah’s rush of milk. She laid down her spindle, fit her child to her breast, and felt complete. A soft breeze ruffled Sarai’s dark, silky curls. Milcah smoothed her daughter’s hair and sang a wordless song.

  Sarai slipped back into a milk-stupored sleep, her mouth twitching, almost a smile. With Sarai swaddled on her lap, Milcah picked up her spindle and noticed that a few of the sheep had strayed far up the hill. She would have to climb to retrieve them. A distant stir caught her eye. Near the horizon, she saw a small column of dust. She glanced at the shepherd’s staff leaning against the rock, then chided herself for her nervousness, saying, “Just the daughter of a wind demon.”

  She bent her head to her thread, but could not concentrate. She broke the thread and, while twisting the broken ends together, she looked up again.

  The swirl of dust, now closer, revealed two men on camels. They rode at a lope, like raiders. Milcah looked behind her, to see how far the closest shepherds were. She dropped her spindle and swept Sarai to her chest, remembering the stories of Moloch and his fire-filled, baby-eating belly.

  She stepped behind the rock, lifted her skirts, tied Sarai tightly against her belly, and let her skirts drop. A pregnant woman had no child to seize. Sarai stirred, but briefly.

  “Thank you,” Milcah said for Sarai’s silence, walking quickly toward Kadesh, whose lines of palms were specks in the distance. A broad, dun-colored plain stretched between Milcah and the oasis. It offered no cover. She hoped she would reach people before the camel riders noticed her.

  “Oh, please give us safety,” she begged silently as stones wedged in her sandals, cutting her feet. She feared to stop and shake them loose. She felt the ground thudding. She thought she heard their camels snort, but far off. Milcah rushed on, trying to keep terror at bay.

  Then she heard them shout. Her heart was pounding. Her lungs hurt. She stumbled forward, hoping Sarai would not wake and cry.

  They shouted, words she could not understand, but close enough to hear. Milcah turned, holding her belly with one arm, shielding her face from the sun with the other.

  The riders were closer than the length of a camp circle. Chimeras, their faces wrapped, all but their eyes. Milcah, blinded by the sun and the sweat pouring into her eyes, called out, “Please, I am with child. An unborn child. I have nothing.”

  The camel riders consumed ground, then they stopped. Milcah could see the heat pulsing from the flanks of their camels, trembling the air. One pulled his headcloth free of his face and shouted to her, the same words as before. But she could not understand. She realized, terrified, that as she could not understand them, they could not understand her.

  The other said something to his companion, and the two of them laughed. Salvia dripped from the lip of the first man’s camel, a long thread flecked silver in the sunlight. Milcah locked her eyes on the pendulous thread so she would not see the men. The two laughed again, then wheeled their camels.

  Milcah let out her breath slowly, jaggedly, watching as they started back across the plain.

  “Thank you, my precious gift, for your silence,” she whispered to her daughter. “Thank you, my God, for sparing our lives.”

  Her legs shook so badly she waited a few moments before she felt steady enough to turn toward Kadesh. Her eyes clouded by sweat and tears, she thought she saw one of the riders turn. By the time she was sure, he had beaten his camel to a gallop and was bearing down on her, one fist full of reins, the other wrapped around the haft of his spear as he leaned forward toward the blade cutting through the air.

  Milcah watched him come for her, as if it was happening in a dream. The edges of her vision blurred until all she saw was the point of a spear and a camel the color of desert. She smelled salt then something terribly sweet.

  “DON’T BABY ME.”

  “You were asking for it,” Noa responded.

  She turned to leave Tirzah curled miserably on her bed, a shard of dry bread and a waterskin—all that Tirzah could consume—beside her.

  She stopped by her mother’s tent. Outside the entrance, her mother stirred a pot of soup. Dor, just returned from repairing a section of irrigation ditch, poured water into a
bowl to wash his hands and face.

  “Milcah? Sarai? They are with you?” he asked.

  Noa explained what had happened. Dor thought they were foolish to allow Milcah, with a child in her arms, to take Tirzah’s place, but he held his tongue. He guessed that Milcah had volunteered.

  When evening began to cast purple shadows and Milcah had not arrived, Dor became disturbed. His eyes darkened with anger.

  “How could they have let my wife and my daughter go out by themselves,” he growled to himself on his way to find the night watchman, who was playing the bones with his fellows.

  Mild-mannered Dor, seized by fear, roared, “Up! We seek my wife and daughter.”

  Together they left the safety of tents to find Milcah and Sarai.

  From afar they saw a flock, skittishly circling near the base of three hills. The rising moon colored the milling animals a milky blue. Dor squinted, to see better in the dark, and the flock became a smooth, white whirlpool swirling around a dark center. The watchman feared they found what they were looking for.

  They reached the milling flock and pushed a path through the animals. The sheep and goats were not willing to stray from their shepherdess, but not willing to approach death. A space separated the animals and the body at the center.

  Milcah lay on her back, her limbs splayed at odd angles. Her robe was scalloped with red-brown stains. Sarai had slipped to one side and, there, the robe was dark and wet with blood.

  The men stood above Milcah and Sarai, while they absorbed what had happened.

  Finally, the watchman urged quietly, “We must take them back.”

  Dor nodded, unable to talk.

  Larger than Dor, the watchman assumed he would carry Milcah and stooped, his arms poised to lift her body. Dor stopped him.

  “My wife. My child. I will carry them.”

  The watchman tipped his head in acknowledgement.

  “Let me at least help you lift them.” He gently extracted Sarai. “Look away, sir.”