Judging Noa

by Strutin, Michel;

  A gaping hole ripped her small, still chest. The watchman nestled the body in the crook of his left arm as he tore off his headcloth, then wrapped Sarai’s body in it as Dor struggled to lift the body of his wife. The hair at the back of Milcah’s head was matted and sticky with blood.

  Once he held his wife in his arms, Dor started walking toward Kadesh. The watchman, walking beside him, held Sarai in one arm and drove the flock home.

  NOA AND MALAH stood near the edge of camp, shivering in their robes, sheltering near a saltbush. Malah stamped her feet to stay warm. Noa tore off a gray leaf from the plant, chewed the salt from it, threw it down, then tore off another and another, chewed leaves scattered around her skirts. Their eyes strained from staring into the dark, searching the horizon.

  When Noa spied something moving toward them, she let out a whoop.

  “Shhhh,” scolded Malah.

  Noa’s shout returned an angry response from the nearest tent.

  “May Amalek take you,” someone cursed.

  Noa shuddered at the mention of Amalek. As they waited, the two men moved slowly toward camp. From the way Dor arched backward with his burden, the watchman knew Dor’s arms burned with effort, but he knew that no amount of coaxing would allow Dor to be relieved of his burden.

  When the shapes on the horizon became distinct, Malah gasped. Noa, wild with dread, ran to meet them.

  They laid the bodies of Milcah and Sarai on rugs in Ada’s tent. Knowing Milcah’s mentor would want to help prepare her body, Noa asked Malah to find Rina. Malah was relieved to escape the sight of the torn child.

  A bowl of water at her side, Noa cleaned the blood from Sarai. When the water turned red from rinsing, Hoglah emptied it far from the tent and refilled it with clean water, bowl after bowl. She wiped the tears streaking Noa’s face. They worked without speaking.

  When she was finished washing Sarai, Noa asked Hoglah to fetch their mother’s needles. She wanted to make her niece as whole as possible. Hoglah returned with the packet, untied the cloth, and held out the needles. Noa threaded the copper needle with a length of sheep gut, then gently began to stitch together the ugly hole that split Sarai from belly to backbone.

  Rina ran in, breathless, with Malah behind her. She heard a man sobbing on the other side of the tent wall, and male voices of consolation. As Ada held Milcah’s head in her lap, Malah worked to remove her blood-matted robe. Rina bent to help. When Milcah lay bare before them, Rina noted the gash on her stomach where the sword had penetrated. But it had not penetrated deeply and the blood was already clotted. Rina bent to Milcah’s chest, listening. Then she laid two fingers on the large vein in Milcah’s neck.

  “Bring a mirror,” she whispered.

  Malah ran for hers. Rina grabbed the mirror and held it to Milcah’s lips. A small, barely visible cloud of moisture formed. Rina looked around at the others, rubbed the mirror clean on her sleeve and, again, held it to Milcah’s lips.

  “She lives.”

  THEY BURIED SARAI the next day. Dor wrapped his daughter in fabric stitched with sun colors that Milcah had made for Sarai. Milcah was barely aware, drifting in and out of consciousness as her mother and sisters took turns watching over her. Rina brought food, as did Tamar, Nechama, and Milcah’s close friends. But she ate little besides gruel and bread, the same foods Tirzah could manage, Noa noticed.

  Confused and barely lucid, Milcah sometimes turned to reach for Sarai as she felt her milk let down. Nechama and Rina knew young mothers whose milk was scant, who would be grateful for the extra nourishment. But neither would ask.

  When Milcah became aware of herself and her surroundings, her head throbbed with the horror of what happened. The images flashed in her mind, and she breathed in ragged gasps.

  “Sarai,” she sobbed. “She saved me. I killed her.”

  “No, no, no. You did not kill her. You tried to protect her,” her mother countered, having heard how they found her.

  “If I had not gone out. If I had hidden among the rocks. If I had . . .”

  Milcah choked on revulsion and guilt.

  “At least what they did was swift,” said Malah. “What if you had not hidden her? What if they had taken her? Who knows what greater horrors might have happened.”

  At that, Milcah’s overwrought brain reeled out images even more frightening.

  “Stop, please stop.”

  Nechama glared at Malah for her foolish chatter as she pulled a small pot from her kit and rubbed a smear of dark paste against Milcah’s upper gum. Nechama used the opiate sparingly, in difficult births, because paste from the poppy cost her dearly in trade. She knew it would ease Milcah’s pain.

  THE MOON WANED, then waxed again before Milcah’s wound healed. Though her body was whole, her soul was frayed. The light of her life, a child with silky curls and a smile that warmed her world, was no more for no reason other than the pleasure of two men who played with death and thought nothing of it.

  Milcah’s robe hung on her as if the person within had withered. Her family tried to engage her. They spoke brightly to her, as if she could not hear. She could not.

  “God will redeem you and will avenge Sarai’s death. God will be good to you, I am certain,” her mother said with as much certainty as she could muster.

  Noa revisited her accounting: The Guardians of Truth who killed her father. Hur’s father, buried by Korach’s evil, God’s wrath, or simply chance. Yoela, torn between Barzel and Amalek. Her own awful attempt at vengeance. And Sarai, an innocent infant killed for no reason whatever. In Egypt, at least they could anticipate Pharaoh’s evils. Here, evil had no order at all.

  Noa wondered if God’s order was larger than she could see. Perhaps it spanned generations and existed for their children’s benefit, or their children’s children. How far forward would such an accounting be paid? Should she trust that it would be paid? But who could trust such a cruel and distant accounting? It made her head throb. Few, besides Moses, could see the incremental transformation of a people.

  Tirzah was not one to examine, but a kernel of guilt caused her to conceal herself among Adam’s family, so to avoid Milcah. Guilt over Sarai’s death grew in her like a disease, transforming itself to a deep, calcified wrath, pointing itself outward.

  “The Midianites . . . they are no better than the Amalekites. They would kill us all, if they could.”

  “No one will kill my child,” Adam swore.

  “Hur and this Haddad,” Tirzah continued, hardly hearing Adam. “Befriending the enemy. And Asaf. He spends more time with strangers than with his own people.”

  “Enough,” said Adam.

  For Tirzah, it was not quite enough.

  “We can’t depend on God to avenge us. To be weak is to see the face of death. I will take life.”

  “Tirzah. Sit,” Adam demanded. “Give the child in your belly a rest from your wrath.”

  MILCAH AND DOR passed through their days like shadows. Dor heard the sympathies and the outrage of others at their loss and simply nodded. The edges of Milcah’s sleeves became stained and crusted. When the hem of her robe frayed, she did not bother to repair it.

  “Just do,” her mother urged. “Work until you are weary and too tired to remember.”

  Milcah dutifully followed her mother’s advice, but she worked with her eyes cast inward, to the horrors of her heart. She slept more hours than a child, curled in a corner of the tent.

  Noa sought out Rina and implored, “Please, return my sister to us. You, who are like her second mother.”

  Rina met with Nechama and together they devised a plan. One day, while visiting Milcah,Rina said that Nechama needed the help of someone caring and quick.

  “Nechama immediately thought of you.”

  “That was another me.”

  “No,” Rina urged. “That is your true self.”

  Milcah shrugged. Rina noticed how worn both Milcah and her clothes looked.

  “Perhaps you can act the part of the old Milcah. Nechama re
members her well, and needs her.”

  “Surely there are others to choose.”

  “How many with your skills, with your carefulness . . .”

  Milcah did not respond.

  “Perhaps to help Nechama just for one moon’s cycle? Not long. Her brother’s daughter may be able to help if it does not suit you. But what can a girl know? And Nechama asked specifically for you.”

  Milcah said she would answer her later, but Rina pressed her, knowing that if she left, Milcah would do nothing.

  Grudgingly, Milcah agreed. She feared anything that might take her away from the memory of her beloved Sarai, even from the memory of her murder. But her heart hinted it felt good to be needed. The next day, Rina brought Nechama, who spoke of her needs and how Milcah could help.

  When a birth was at hand, Nechama sent for Milcah, and she learned how to clean babies that Nechama eased from women’s wombs. At first, Milcah saw Sarai in each girlchild born, her loss so fierce she could barely breathe, her arms trembling from the memory and the need to hold her daughter. Too responsible to allow harm, Milcah willed herself to heed the needs of each newborn handed to her. Nechama could sense the struggle, but said nothing, knowing that Milcah’s real work was to tame the pain within.

  The moon cycled through its phases once, twice, three times and still Milcah came when she was summoned. She fetched water, wiped the sweat-drenched foreheads of laboring women, and learned the songs that kept their spirits and their straining bodies focused.

  Nechama taught her where to press to help a new mother bear down. For practice, she used a sheep’s bladder with a gourd sewn inside, showing Milcah how to insert her arm into the bladder’s tight opening and rotate the gourd-child. Using a goat’s intestine for the umbilical cord, Nechama urged Milcah to practice tying off the cord with a strand of dried gut from her birthing kit.

  One evening, after many months and many births, Nechama sat on her low stool before a mother of three, whose fourth was striving to emerge. The woman’s feet were planted on the floor, and she squatted atop Nechama’s birthing stool. The woman knew what she had to do. Her arms akimbo, the woman pressed them against her hips for leverage. Grunting and moaning, she pushed.

  Sitting at Nechama’s feet, Milcah’s view took in a heaving belly and the swollen vulva below. Between contractions, the laboring mother collapsed onto the stool and into the arms of her sister and cousin. As the laboring woman strained again, Milcah watched the slit stretch to reveal a disc of dark, wet hair. Another contraction and the disc pulsed as the mother pushed.

  Suddenly, Nechama slid off her stool and stood, her hand offering the stool to Milcah.

  “This child is yours to catch.”

  Nechama grinned broadly as Milcah, her arms shaking with nervousness and excitement, slipped into place.

  As the mother strained and the baby’s head crowned, Milcah gently pushed her fingers against the edges of the mother’s vaginal opening so it would not tear. Then, in a gush, the head emerged, the tiny shoulders shot forward, and the rest of the body followed. Milcah caught her first newborn, slick with vernix the consistency of soft, white cheese.

  “Like a baby lamb,” Milcah murmured, having helped her share of ewes.

  “Beauty once again enters the world through your hands,” Nechama whispered.

  After the newborn was cleaned and swaddled, the new mother beckoned her sister to bring a basket from the back of the tent. She lifted out an oval egg the size of the newborn’s head and offered it to Nechama as payment for her services. Stealing an ostrich egg from the nest of its mother was a feat, and a feast, as one egg might feed a dozen people.

  Nechama accepted the payment and immediately extended it to Milcah, saying, “It belongs to she who caught your child. But,” she added, as she handed Milcah the heavy egg, smooth and white as marble, “I will feast with you, in honor of this new child.”

  She turned back to the mother, who cradled her newborn in her arms. “Two great gifts, one from Asherah to you, the other from you to us. We are all blessed.”

  Not every birth was as easy and as blessed. Some ended with stillborn children, some with mothers so weakened by effort and blood loss that they died even as their babies were being born. Sometimes both mother and child died. Bearing life in the face of so many deadly possibilities was a miracle.

  Nechama’s skills were recognized as a hedge against death, and she taught Milcah all she knew. She showed Milcah how to make infusions that helped pregnant women hold their pregnancies. She explained which herbs and foods helped mother’s milk. Over time, Milcah, too, became regarded as a life-giver.

  WHEN TIRZAH’S TIME came, she insisted that Nechama, not Milcah, assist her. Tirzah was fierce for her unborn and feared retribution from Asherah or Milcah for Sarai’s death.

  “If you should be the one to help bring out my baby,” she said to Milcah, “and if something bad happened, well . . .” She implied a world of dire possibilities.

  Milcah eased her sister’s mind with a small lie. “Then you will not mind if I assist Rina’s cousin. I did not want to say ‘yes’ in case her time came at the same time as yours.”

  “Don’t set aside an opportunity because of me.”

  Nechama had detected two in Tirzah’s womb and, when her time arrived, Tirzah bore them one after the other during a sweat-drenched, miserable night. She howled in rage at her pain, stretching Nechama’s patience and assaulting the ears of all.

  Tirzah insisted on Gibor as the first twin’s name, before she noticed his right foot was bent, a clubfoot child. When Adam heard how the second boy eased down a moment later, he named him Yared.

  When Adam’s family learned about the clubfooted infant, they asked which foot, knowing that a bent left foot was an ill omen.

  “I told them, ‘No, it is the other foot that is ill-formed,’” said Hoglah, hoping to cheer her sister.

  “Leave me. I don’t want to hear any of that,” said Tirzah, sending Hoglah away in tears.

  Before the twins’ naming feast, Tirzah tried to switch their names.

  “‘Hero’ is not a fitting name for a damaged child.”

  Adam saw how it would be between Tirzah and her clubfooted son.

  His voice shaking at Tirzah’s dismissive attitude, he raged, “You think you can do what you like, but you will confuse God and bring curses down on all of us. I will not allow it. Gibor is his name.”

  Tirzah had never heard Adam push back with such vehemence. She was stunned, realizing her place on the ladder might be challenged by these children. Yet, when Tirzah thought about Yared and how perfect every part of him looked, she promised herself, “He will be mine to make.”

  THE SLAYING OF Sarai opened a chasm between Milcah and Dor. At first, Dor’s pain flashed in every direction. As time passed, the sword of blame steadied on Milcah. He considered putting her aside and marrying again. But he was too poor, and he needed a wife. Milcah felt Dor’s disapproval and poured her energy into saving babies. With no way out, they stayed together, focusing on daily needs and terse notifications.

  “I’ve made your supper. It is ready.”

  “Asaf has shorn our sheep. Here is the wool, ready for your spindle.”

  “For you . . . a fine plough point. The new father’s payment for my services.”

  “Tomorrow I will plough our plot and it will be ready for seed.”

  Despite their distance, they worked to plant seed within Milcah’s womb, each believing that new life would repair the damage. But no seeds were planted, giving Dor another reason to blame Milcah and draw further away, even as he wished for a way back.

  Milcah blamed herself, remembering that she had not been filled with the light of God at Sinai, as had her sisters.

  “Misfortune does not happen for no reason,” she told herself.

  When the bile of self-blame became too great, Milcah found comfort in her “children.” They lived, thanks to her. And she lived for them. As they grew, they ran to her when t
hey saw her coming, pulling Auntie Milcah to show her a palm-leaf doll, a twisted scrap of cloth woven just for her. Her value rose in the eyes of her community and, over time, Milcah learned to value herself.

  Noa noticed the changes.

  “Perhaps I, too, will find what I seek if I make Milcah my model,” Noa murmured to herself as her fingers worked wool in her mother’s tent.

  “What did you say?”

  “I will pursue our inheritance rights again,” Noa began.

  “Oh, my dear, why? Judges high and low accepted Ben Nun’s ruling. You won’t be heard until my generation passes away. Are you wishing I will soon sleep in the dust?”

  “No. But this land is in my dreams, sleeping and waking. It gives me a path and tells me who I am.”

  “Who you are? You are you. You are a daughter of Zelophechad, a leader among the tribe of Manasseh. What more?”

  “That is my family. That is not me.”

  “What is the difference? That is who you are.What more is there to life besides your family?”

  “What makes me different from Malah? From Hoglah?”

  “Malah is older. Hoglah is younger. Malah has bigger breasts.”

  Her mother slapped her thigh and laughed. Noa’s children, napping in the corner, stirred.

  “Malah, Hoglah . . . neither would ask this question. Only you, my difficult daughter.”

  “Perhaps you are right. Am I pursuing justice? Or simply pursuing myself?”

  “Pursue patience,” her mother advised. “Your time will come.”

  And it was as Ada said: crops must be watered, grain ground, yarn spun and woven, children raised. While waiting for her time to come, Noa helped Hur adjudicate for Manasseh. They learned judicial wisdom together as the years passed.

  CHAPTER 24

  FROM GENERATION TO GENERATION

  AS THE YEARS passed, so did many of the generation that had brought their families out of Egypt. Sometimes Noa felt an urge to approach the Judges of Hundreds again, but always her hesitation was compounded by sick children, an argument with Ahuva, a jar of grain eaten by rats, a hole in the tent. Life intruded and time blurred. No one knew when they would leave Kadesh Barnea, or if they would ever leave.