“Do you want me to comb your hair anyway?” asked Bilhah.
“I don’t know why I should take special pains just to go see my sister’s husband anyway,” said Leah.
“I didn’t think you combed your hair for Jacob,” said Bilhah. “I thought you prepared yourself to go before the Lord.”
“God sees me all the time anyway,” said Leah. “So that’s just stupid. He sees me when I’m dirty and sweating and stinking hot. He sees me at my very worst.”
Bilhah knew this was a silly argument. But if Leah wanted to pretend she didn’t know the difference between ordinary life and going to read the words of God, it wasn’t worth arguing with her.
“I’ll go tell Jacob you aren’t coming,” said Bilhah.
“I’m going to sleep again,” said Leah. “My eyes are so tired.”
Yes, you said that already, and I haven’t forgotten, even if I am just the stupid girl who learned to read so that your eyes wouldn’t have to be tired.
Of course Bilhah knew that this wasn’t about tired eyes, or not entirely, anyway. Leah was disappointed in the word of God. She had expected to have the meaning of her whole life spelled out for her, apparently, and was bitterly disappointed that most of the writing was about Enoch and his teachings and experiences. Leah kept trying to turn the meaning of every line of the scripture into some specific reference to her own life, and Jacob kept saying, No, this is the message Enoch gave to the people from God. Now that Leah finally understood that not everything in the books was a private revelation for her, she was apparently getting bored with the whole enterprise.
On her way through camp, Bilhah greeted everyone she passed. When she first arrived, she had thought she could never learn who all these strangers were. Now she knew them all—at least the people who spent their days here in the camp, working. And she even knew some of the shepherds who roamed the hills, because their wives and children were in the camp.
Zilpah detached herself from a group preparing to dye some unusually fine yarn. “Bilhah,” she said.
Bilhah had no use for Zilpah, but she was courteous to everyone. “Peace to you, sister,” she said.
Zilpah smiled—and, as always, the smile seemed to be a thin mask for malice or contempt. “Nice of you to call me sister,” she said.
“I’m on my way to Jacob’s tent on Leah’s errand,” said Bilhah. “So if you have something to say—”
“I do,” said Zilpah. “But not to you. To him.”
“Who?”
“Jacob.”
Bilhah noticed something furtive now in the way Zilpah’s eyes avoided looking directly into hers.
“Then talking to me won’t do the job, will it?”
“I need to talk to him alone,” said Zilpah.
Bilhah didn’t like this. “He’s promised to Rachel.”
Zilpah looked at her like she was stupid. “Don’t you know the meaning of the word talk?” she asked.
“I just wasn’t sure you did.”
“Listen, Bilhah, I didn’t get to choose being born into bondage, or being fatherless, or even having breasts like these when someone like you barely has anything to rub against her shirt. So whichever of those things you hate me for, remember that I can’t help it.”
You can help the way you dress, and that smirk you wear, thought Bilhah. “You’re the only one who thinks of your bosom all the time,” she said.
“Oh, yes, I’m sure I’m the only one who even notices,” said Zilpah, and this time she gave that nasty little laugh of hers.
“Of course we all notice,” said Bilhah. “The way we notice the udders on a nanny goat.”
“You’re such a lovely girl,” said Zilpah. “Everybody’s friend.”
“I’m on my mistress’s errand,” said Bilhah.
“I thought you were a free girl.”
Bilhah felt her cheeks go red. “I used language I thought you would understand.”
Zilpah’s face flushed in turn. “I don’t know why you’ve decided to hate me,” said Zilpah. “I haven’t done anything to you.”
“I don’t hate you,” said Bilhah. “I never think of you.” She started to walk again toward Jacob’s tent.
“Bilhah,” said Zilpah. “Please. Not for my sake, but for Jacob’s and Rachel’s.”
Bilhah waited.
“I need to talk to him. That’s all. But at a time when nobody will notice. While you’re reading.”
“But I won’t be reading today. Leah has a headache. Or her eyes hurt. Something like that. There’ll be no reading.”
“Well … can’t you stay and read anyway? At least long enough that I can talk to Jacob?”
“What’s this about?”
“If I dared tell you I would,” said Zilpah. “Please, Bilhah, do you think I like begging for your help? I can only tell you that it’s not for myself, or at least not entirely. Be my friend today. Be Jacob’s and Rachel’s friend.”
“I’ll tell him you want to see him.”
“Tell him I’ll be coming into the dooryard while you read.”
“Yes, I’ll tell him that,” said Bilhah. “If I read.”
“Please,” said Zilpah. “Read awhile.”
“It’s up to him,” said Bilhah. “He keeps the books.”
Zilpah seemed satisfied with that, and ran back to join the other dyers. Bilhah went on her way, wondering what strange dream Zilpah wanted interpreted. Everybody expected Jacob to be their personal prophet. Bilhah probably would too, if she ever had interesting dreams. But she didn’t, and wasn’t all that interested in her future. The future had stopped being all that interesting to her when she finally realized that girls without parents or possessions had no future.
At Jacob’s tent, the dooryard had already been fenced off. She clapped hands twice to let him know she was there. He came out of the tent and greeted her. “But where’s Leah?” he asked.
“Her eyes hurt her today,” said Bilhah—not adding “she says” because that would be petty and snide.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Jacob. “I wish she’d simply let you do all the reading. Or me.”
“I think she believes that God can only speak to her if she’s doing the reading herself.”
“God speaks to all of us all the time. Even when he’s saying something very specific to somebody long ago, it’s important for us to know that he spoke then, even if the words don’t apply to us exactly in our day.”
Bilhah smiled at that. “Yes, well, you try telling Leah that.”
“I have tried.”
“I know,” said Bilhah. “When she doesn’t want to know something, she really, really doesn’t know it.”
“She carries a heavy burden,” said Jacob, “and she doesn’t understand why God put it on her shoulders.”
His compassionate words made Bilhah feel churlish for having thought so ill of Leah. “I wouldn’t trade my place for hers,” said Bilhah, “even though she’s so pretty and her father is a great man.”
Jacob looked at her oddly. “Pretty?”
“She is,” said Bilhah. “When she smiles. When she isn’t squinting.”
Jacob chuckled dryly. “Ah. I’ve never seen that, so I wouldn’t know.”
“Now who’s being mean?” she said.
He shook his head. “She’s the sister of my wife-to-be. I try to love her, but she makes it hard. I imagine that you know that. So I’m glad you’ve found a way to find beauty in her.”
“And I was just admiring the way you show her such compassion,” said Bilhah.
“She’s young,” said Jacob. “Young people don’t see everything from a perspective of wisdom.”
“Neither do old people,” said Bilhah contentiously.
“There are different kinds of foolishness reserved for every age,” said Jacob. “But part of foolishness is not recognizing your own.”
Bilhah remembered what Zilpah had said. And in truth she liked the idea anyway. To read the holy book without Leah to slow every
thing down. It sounded nice. And far better than any of the other labor in the camp.
“May I read today, anyway, sir?” she said. “Even without Leah?”
“It wouldn’t do for us to get ahead of her,” said Jacob. “I think she might become annoyed with us if we did that.”
That was that. Leah could block things without even being here.
“So,” said Jacob, “I’ll be happy to let you read a different book. In fact, I wonder if you’d like to work on copying one. To let me see how accurate you can be, and whether you can write a good enough hand.”
“You would trust me?”
“No, I wouldn’t,” said Jacob. “That’s why I want to test you first.” He grinned.
She had to smile back. “All right,” she said.
It wasn’t until he came back out and had spread out a book and a scrap of papyrus on a low table that she remembered to tell him, “Zilpah will be coming to talk to you. She doesn’t want anyone to see.”
“Which means it’s very important that you be right here, watching,” said Jacob.
Bilhah looked up at him. He wasn’t smiling. It wasn’t a joke. So he had no illusions about Zilpah. That was good.
She set to her work, forming letters as carefully as she could. But for all her trying, she could not make them as small as the ones on the scroll.
Jacob was patient with her. “You’re working too slowly. You’re trying to draw each one like a picture. If you work a little more quickly, the letters become marks, not drawings. Little twists of ink on the papyrus.” He sat down beside her and demonstrated.
But she could not understand the difference between what he did and what she did—though the difference in the result was obvious. He might as well have been saying, Don’t do it badly, do it well, without conveying the slightest idea about how this was done.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “As you get more practice, you’ll find that it comes naturally to you.”
She looked back over what she had already copied and was dismayed to see that the ink had already faded. “It’s disappearing!” she cried.
“No, I merely thinned the ink. This is for practice, remember? You’ll write over and over again on the same papyrus, so we don’t have to waste any more of it than this while you acquire the skill.”
She understood and agreed that this was wise, but it was still quite disturbing to work so carefully on these letters, only to have them almost vanish.
Bilhah almost didn’t notice when Jacob walked away. She only looked up in time to see Zilpah slipping in between the tent and the dooryard fencecloth. The two of them sat down in the shade of the awning, and for a moment Bilhah was envious—she had to sit out in the bright sun, with only the hood she wore on her head for shade. But that was the price of learning to write small—you had to have excellent light. And instead of straining to overhear their conversation, she redoubled her efforts at copying the text.
And yet she was alert to every sound, and did hear a few snatches of conversation, enough to know that it had something to do with Leah’s brothers and spying.
And because of her heightened awareness, she also knew when someone’s soft footsteps came to a stop at the dooryard fence.
Bilhah looked over her shoulder to see Leah standing there, looking into the dooryard at her, then at Jacob conferring with Zilpah. Bilhah immediately knew from the stricken look on Leah’s face how this must appear to her—that Bilhah had taken advantage of Leah’s absence to study without her. Or perhaps Leah was hurt because Bilhah was doing something that Leah’s eyes would never allow her to do, copy the scriptures.
Either way, Bilhah knew that she had done no wrong; but she also knew that this would not count for much in Leah’s feelings. She was bound to feel betrayed and mocked; and yet what else should Bilhah have done? She was a free girl—why should she spend her life bound by the limitations God had placed on Leah, when she had no such physical limitations herself? It would be unjust; God could not expect that of her; but Leah expected it.
Bilhah thought Leah would fly into a rage, but she didn’t. She lingered only a little while longer, her eyes full of tears, and then she backed away from the fencecloth. To her surprise, Bilhah heard Leah’s footsteps break into a run, and then—as anyone might have expected—she heard her fall and skid on the fine-stoned dirt, uttering a low cry as she did.
At once Bilhah was on her feet, rushing for a gap between cloth and fencepost. She saw Jacob look up in surprise—apparently he had been unaware of Leah’s coming and going. Bilhah ducked through and reached Leah before she could rise.
Leah’s sleeves were torn and blood streaked—her elbows and the heels of her hands had taken a vicious scrape. Her nose was bleeding—she must have fallen so unbrokenly that her face struck the ground with full force. That was hardly a surprise, once Bilhah gave it a thought. Because she never ran, Leah had no experience with falling hard since she was a baby. She would not have quick enough reflexes to catch herself, or strength enough to break her own fall.
Bilhah tried to help her up, but Leah shrugged her away, and then a second time, too. “Get away from me,” she whispered.
“Please, let me help.”
“You’ve helped me for the last time,” said Leah, her voice husky.
She was crying. From pain, of course. But also from grief.
“We only thought not to waste the time or the skill I’ve learned. I wasn’t copying the part we were reading. I wasn’t getting ahead of you.”
“I don’t care what you do,” said Leah. “Get away from me.”
And now Jacob was with them, and Leah did not shrug away his hands as he helped her to her feet. “Let me tend to those scrapes,” he said gently. “Come with me into my tent. I have balm for that—it doesn’t hurt. Bilhah, fetch me some wine, would you? We need to wash this, and wine is better for washing a scrape than water.”
Bilhah immediately rose to her feet and started for Reuel’s tent—the steward kept a close eye on the wine, lest some servant be tempted to seek cheer or oblivion in drink. But she did not move too quickly to hear Jacob say, “When Bilhah gets back, she can fetch new clothing for you and help you change.”
“I don’t want her,” said Leah.
And then, because Zilpah was loitering near the gap in the dooryard fence, Leah pointed. “She can go and get a dress for me from my tent.”
Bilhah got the wine from Reuel, who was suspicious—it was his nature and his job to be so. When she came back and called out softly from outside the door of Jacob’s tent, it was Zilpah who emerged and took the flagon from her.
“How is she?” asked Bilhah.
“How would she be?” said Zilpah. “In pain.”
“I can fetch a dress for her.”
“She said for me to do it, once the wine was here.”
“But you don’t know which one to bring.”
Zilpah shook her head. “How many does she have? How hard is it to choose?”
Bilhah heard the scorn in Zilpah’s voice and it rankled. “I helped you when you asked,” said Bilhah.
“You helped Jacob,” said Zilpah. “As for Leah, her ears are keen. She hears everything we’re saying. I won’t try to deceive her. I’ll fetch her dress myself, even if I bring the wrong one by mistake.”
Then Bilhah understood how it was. Zilpah had seen an opportunity. Leah was angry with Bilhah, so now she would want a new handmaiden. Zilpah was determined to get the job.
Well, you can have it, Zilpah-of-the-flagrant-bosom. I don’t want it. I’m relieved not to have it.
“So I think that means you should go,” said Zilpah.
“I have work to finish,” said Bilhah. Whereupon she walked back to the low table and resumed the copying. Though she suspected that once she was no longer Leah’s handmaiden—and that was surely what would happen—no one would think it a worthwhile use of her time, to come to Jacob and write for him.
But if I can make my writing small enough, I might be ab
le to get work in the city, helping some scribe with his copywork. Of course he’d have to hide me indoors, so no one would imagine that he was using a woman to do a man’s work. But it would be honorable work. I could earn enough to pay my way. I wouldn’t be dependent on the whims of some desert lord’s daughter.
She knew, even as she planned her plans, that it would never work out that way. Hadn’t she already seen how impossible it was to go back to the city alone? And the letters she was learning to write so small were not the kind they used in the city, where it was cuneiform or the Egyptian syllables that the scribes all used. She would have to start learning all over again. No one would hire her for that.
I’m trapped here, where I have no useful skill even now. This is the only one I had, and now Leah will see to it that I never have a chance to write again. It will be Zilpah who helps her with her studies. And I’ll be hauling water or weeding the garden and probably doing even that work so badly that Reuel will urge Laban to send me away, and Laban will only keep me on out of pity.
It was a bleak vision, but Bilhah did not let herself cry. Tears would keep her from seeing the letters she was making, and that would not do. This might be her last hour of writing for Jacob, and she was determined that he see that she would have been able to do the work.
She did not even look up when she heard them emerge from the tent, Zilpah helping Leah limp to the opening in the dooryard. No one said anything and soon they were gone.
Bilhah expected then that Jacob would come to her, take away the papyrus, the book, the table, the brush, the ink.
Instead he went back into his tent and she was able to keep working for another hour, and then another, until at last he came back out and looked at her work and said, “Better.”
“Thank you.”
“Now it’s time for me to go, and I can’t leave the book out here in the open.”
“I’ll be careful with it,” said Bilhah.
“It’s not you I fear,” said Jacob. “There are those who might think it worth stealing something as precious as this book. Do you have strength to prevent them?”
“No one in this camp,” said Bilhah. “They’re all honest.”
Rachel and Leah (Women of Genesis) Page 17