“Like your cousin was?” said Jacob.
She couldn’t argue with that. She watched him reroll the book with despair. This is the last time, she said silently. Farewell, O holy words of God.
It was only then that she realized that she hadn’t the faintest idea what were the words she had spent the morning copying. They had gone from her eyes to her hand without imprinting themselves on her memory. It was as if even this morning’s work had been taken from her, like the ink that faded so the papyrus could be written on again.
Maybe it’s a sign from God, she thought. Proof that he doesn’t think me worthy of this work. His words can’t be held in a mind so small and poor as mine.
Only then did she let herself shed tears, and by that time Jacob was carrying the scroll and the table back inside his tent; so he didn’t see, and she wasn’t shamed.
PART VIII
JEALOUSY
CHAPTER 15
Jacob was troubled, Rachel could see that. He still did his work well among the animals—his hands seemed to know how to untangle wool, where to find a burr or a thorn, the tendon whose soreness caused a young ewe to limp. She tried to learn from watching him, but after all these months she could only conclude that there were things God whispered to him. Or maybe it wasn’t God, maybe it was just the animals themselves whose secret inner voices were revealed to him. This is my complaint, touch me just there and I’ll be healed.
But today he paused between animals instead of briskly moving on to the next. And instead of bantering with her, he was silent.
Rachel didn’t mind his silences. He was a man of thought, and she knew that if she jabbered into his stillness she might break something, some inner thread that he was weaving into an idea. She had her own stillnesses, didn’t she? And alone among men, he seemed to be untroubled by the silence of women.
So she showed him the same respect and said nothing. She did not even sing, as she usually did when alone with the lambs—her voice stilled them, but Jacob’s hands did the same, and so her songs were not needed.
Only when it was noon and time to eat did he seem willing to talk. He had long since established the idea that when they ate out in the open, in the midst of work, he had no qualms about eating with a woman. Rachel dealt with this by sitting with him and conversing, but claiming not to be hungry until his meal was over. She would not let him be criticized for eating with a woman, even if the line she drew was a pretty fine one—for when his food was put away, she would bring out her own and eat in front of him, utterly without modesty. Let them talk about that, if they must, those gossipy shepherds! He would be her husband, she was betrothed to him, and so his word would be her law, not their sense of scandal!
Jacob gave thanks to God for the bread and cheese and wine, but then, instead of slicing off a wedge of tart ewe-cheese, he looked at Rachel and said, “What do I do about Leah?”
“I don’t know,” said Rachel. “Has God given you the power to restore her sight?”
“No,” said Jacob. “And don’t think I haven’t asked.”
“Then has God given you the power to soften her temper and make her more patient in her affliction?”
“That’s the kind of thing that God lets us do for ourselves.”
“Then what you can do about Leah is the same thing all the rest of us do—avoid her when we can, and tread lightly when we must go near.”
“But that breaks my heart. She wants so desperately to be a good person.”
“I’m not stopping her,” said Rachel.
“But am I helping her?” said Jacob.
Rachel appreciated the way he took the burden back on himself, instead of asking if she was helping her sister. Still, Rachel would not accept his generosity. “I’m not helping her,” said Rachel. “We used to be great friends, but once people started talking about how ‘beautiful’ I am, it soured things between us. I can’t help what other people say, can I? I think she’s beautiful, but if I say so, she thinks I’m speaking out of pity. There’s really nothing I can say at all, most of the time, so … we barely speak.”
“She is lovely, when she isn’t sullen,” said Jacob.
“How would you know?” said Rachel.
He looked at her, startled.
“Oh, that is wretched of me, to say such a thing, but honestly, who ever sees her anymore when she’s not sullen?”
“There were times, as she was learning to read, as she was first hearing the words of the books, that she was not sullen. And other times, too. When I can see in her face that she is, truly, the sister of the woman I love.”
“I’m not a woman, I’m a girl,” said Rachel. “I don’t have to be a woman for seven more years.”
“You sound as though it’s something to be postponed as long as possible.”
“Isn’t it? Will a great prince of the desert allow his wife to go out among the shepherds and look after the lambs? No one lets a wife have the kind of freedom I have here, as a daughter.”
“No one lets a daughter have the kind of freedom you have here, either. And while we’re on that subject, I’ve seen you get your way as surely as Leah gets hers.”
That was completely false, and irritating, too. “Well, if you think I’m just as nasty as Leah—”
“I didn’t say that,” said Jacob. “I said you’re just as good at getting your way. Your method is completely different.”
“I don’t have a method,” said Rachel. “I just ask if I want something, and sometimes Father says yes and sometimes he says no.”
Jacob laughed. “Well, that explains why you keep doing it right in front of Leah! You have no idea, do you?”
“No idea of what?”
“Watch me,” said Jacob.
He slid down from the rock he was sitting on, so that, seated on the ground, he was looking up into her eyes. But instead of raising his head to look at her forthrightly, he lowered his head, so he was looking up at her from under his eyebrows. Suddenly a man who had been manly was transformed into something … cute.
“Rachel,” he said softly. “Do you know what would make me really happy?” His voice was small and sickeningly sweet.
“I don’t do that!” she said.
He just grinned.
“Why do you want to marry me then, if I’m so repulsive!”
“It’s not repulsive when you do it,” said Jacob. “It’s only repulsive when a grown man with a beard does it. When you do it it’s absolutely charming. Well, a little childish, too, but as you said, you are still a child.”
She leapt to her feet, embarrassed and angry. “I can see that you really hate me!”
His face at once grew solemn. “I only tell you the truth because I know you’re the kind of person who hates flattery. Besides, it’s not a flaw in you, and I’m not criticizing. If you think such a way of acting is wrong, then stop doing it—but don’t blame me for seeing what you do.”
“But I don’t do that,” said Rachel. “I hate girls who do that. I never treated you that way!”
“No, you never did,” said Jacob. “And it’s a good thing, too, because it wouldn’t work on me. But you talk to your father that way all the time.”
She sat back down. She thought about it. “Not as obviously as you made it look.”
“No—but not as subtly as you seem to think.”
“Father must think I’m horrible.”
“Your father gives you every blessed thing you ever ask for, that he can possibly, decently give. You make him glad to give you your way. While Leah, who does the same thing with tears and petulance, makes him sad as he gives in to her. And it’s not just his daughters. Laban thinks he’s master of his house—and he is the master of his servants, all the men and women. But his children, he indulges them all shamelessly. I haven’t met the youngest boy, Choraz, but from what I’ve seen, Laban has done a much better job with his daughters than with his sons.”
Rachel dared not answer. She knew better than to criticize her brothers. If Fat
her died before she was married to Jacob, she would be under their rule. She feared them in a way she had never feared her father.
“I don’t mean to criticize them,” said Jacob. “And that has nothing to do with what’s worrying me. Not that your brothers don’t worry me.”
“What’s to worry about? Father likes you better than them.” Which was the obvious truth. Jacob probably hadn’t seen it, but Rachel knew quite well just how disgusted Father was with his two eldest boys. Choraz was the only son he was really proud of, which was why he sent him away, to get Choraz out from under the influence of Nahor and Terah. She could not remember Father ever looking at either of them with the same admiration and affection he showed when he looked at Jacob.
“What worries me about your brothers is how worried they are about me. They think I’m here to steal their inheritance by marrying their father’s favorite daughter.”
“I’m not his—that’s just….” But she couldn’t finish the sentence, because it would not have been the truth.
“What worries me is Leah,” said Jacob. “She’s put herself in a box. She wants to learn the scriptures, but now she’s rejected Bilhah as her maidservant—”
“That’s just foolish! Bilhah is the only one of the girls who has the patience to … you know.”
“Put up with her, I know. But Bilhah is not in bondage, and she has a right to study the scriptures on her own. This morning was the first time she ever did, because Leah was pouting about something and didn’t come to my dooryard. So I set Bilhah to work copying. And I’m not going to stop letting her work at that, either. Because I know that’s what Leah wants—to shut Bilhah out. And that’s simply wrong.”
“Well, now you get to find out just how stubborn Leah can be. Because she can keep a pout going forever.”
“It won’t make a difference to me.”
“Just wait till she gets Father upset about how you and Bilhah are treating her.”
“Just you wait till you see how little difference that makes,” said Jacob. “Bilhah will keep up the copywork and the studying because she has a talent for it and because it’s clear she loves the words of God and understands them. The way my mother always did.”
“But that’s no way to run a camp, letting servants pick and choose what jobs they’ll do!”
“She isn’t picking and choosing,” said Jacob. “It’s only an hour or two, and not every day. Besides, what other duties does she have, now that Leah refuses to have her?”
“No one else can put up with Leah.”
“I think Zilpah will,” said Jacob. “Zilpah?” Rachel laughed. “She was assigned to me. Not that I want her, either!”
“Zilpah was assigned to you in order to spy on me,” said Jacob.
Rachel looked at him narrowly. “Is that a guess, or did God tell you?”
“Zilpah told me.”
“Well, she’s a liar.”
“Don’t say that so easily, my sweet girl, when you didn’t see her face as she told me about it.”
“You always call me your ‘sweet girl’ when what you really mean is ‘you stupid girl.’”
“But I never mean ‘you stupid girl.’ Not even when you’re really, really stupid.”
She looked at him sharply and saw that he was laughing silently.
“I don’t know if I’m going to like being married to a man who ridicules me.”
“What should I do, then, just gaze in perpetual rapture at your astonishing beauty?”
“Not all the time. Just whenever you think I’m stupid.”
He laughed out loud this time. But then grew sober at once. “Leah is so unhappy. Our marriage weighs on her as a burden. The Lord showed her the way out of her misery by turning her heart toward the word of God. But now she’s turned away from his word because it didn’t give her the answers that she wanted. And out of envy of Bilhah—and of you.”
That was a disquieting thought. Leah, envying Rachel. Oh, of course, she always did, but Jacob clearly meant something more. Did Leah envy her for having found a husband? Or did she envy Rachel for having found this husband?
“She has to live with her own choices,” said Rachel, though her mind was on something else. “I wonder if Father realizes he has to find a husband for Leah before we marry.”
“I’m sure the thought has occurred to him,” said Jacob. “But marriage isn’t what’s going to make Leah happy.”
“Nothing makes her happy because she doesn’t want to be happy.”
“Everyone wants to be happy, even if everything they choose to do keeps them from happiness,” said Jacob firmly. “The trick is to get them to understand what will make them happy.”
“And what will make Leah happy? I can’t wait to hear, because believe me, this whole camp has been desperate to find out for as long as I can remember.”
“The same thing that makes every other happy person happy,” said Jacob, as if the answer were obvious. “The love of God.”
“Her love for God, or God’s love for her?”
“They’re the same,” said Jacob. “We can’t love God more than he loves us, and we can’t love him in a different way from his love for us. That’s just how things are.”
“Well, then, anyway, that’s between Leah and God.”
“But the only time she’s ever really reached out to God was through these books that have been entrusted to my care,” said Jacob. “And because of how I bungled having Bilhah do copywork for me, I’ve made Leah feel angry and unwelcome. I’ve closed the books to her.”
“She’s closed the books to herself.”
“Perhaps so, but she’s too proud to back down.”
“Then that’s her problem, isn’t it?” said Rachel. “I know that’s heartless of me, but if I hadn’t learned that years ago I’d be nothing but her personal slave by now. She can’t apologize, not really, not and mean it. Once she’s declared she won’t do something, then she doesn’t do it, until you give in to her.”
“And giving in to her only makes her behave even worse the next time,” said Jacob. “This is an interesting contradiction. If I don’t give in to her, she’ll be cut off from the word of God. But if I do give in to her, she’ll be encouraged in her pride and selfishness, which will also cut her off from the word of God.”
“Aren’t lambs easy?” said Rachel.
“Yes,” said Jacob emphatically. “But then, compared to women, everything is easy.”
The discussion took a different turn, then—because Rachel made sure that it did. She was not interested in Jacob’s view of how difficult women were. It seemed unfair to her that Jacob would lump her and Leah together, along with every other female in the world, when the problem they were discussing was of Leah’s making entirely.
How did I come into it?
But Rachel did not say this to Jacob. What would be the use? Whatever it was that men imagined about women, they did not change their minds just because a woman disagreed. Father was that way, and every other man Rachel had talked to in the camp. It’s as if they thought that women were conducting a vast conspiracy to deceive men and make their lives difficult, so that anything a woman might say to simplify things had to be an attempt at deception.
If men would only listen to us, they’d find out that each one of us is different, and we’re eager to teach you how to understand us. But I can’t tell you how to understand Leah—I don’t understand her either. And if you did understand her, poor foolish man, you would think you then understood all the rest of us, and you’d be hopelessly wrong. No wonder you despair of understanding women. The best you could ever hope for would be to understand one woman. And that’s the goal none of you ever seems to try for.
CHAPTER 16
Leah could see that Father didn’t want to talk to her, but she was too upset to wait.
“I’m busy,” said Father.
“Yes, everything in the camp is more important than me.” She walked away from him, and made it a point to stumble as she did.
“Why doesn’t God send me a plague of locusts?” said Father to the servants he was supervising. “Then I’d have a chance of fighting them off.”
When he talked like that, it meant that he was going to give in. And sure enough, in only a few moments he jogged up behind her and took her arm. “Come with me,” he said. “Whatever it is, can it be so bad? You’re healthy, aren’t you?”
“It’s Bilhah,” said Leah. “And Jacob.”
Father stopped walking. “What?”
There was such a tone of suspicion in his voice that she was quite startled. It took a moment for her to realize what conclusion he had leapt to. But no, if she even hinted at such a thing, Father would be compelled by honor to do something dreadful and final. “No, no,” said Leah. “I don’t mean that.”
“You don’t mean what?” asked Father.
“Whatever you’re thinking that made you sound like that. It’s just … this morning I was sick, and I sent Bilhah to tell Jacob that I wouldn’t be coming to read today.”
“That was nice of you,” said Father. “Not to keep him waiting.”
“But then Bilhah didn’t come back and she didn’t come back and—so I went looking for her. I found her in Jacob’s dooryard, reading and copying one of the holy books without me!”
By now they were at Father’s tent. He ushered her inside.
“Well, that’s good then,” said Father. “She found a useful way to occupy her time.”
“I see,” said Leah, her heart sinking. Tears came unbidden to her eyes. “So you think it’s all right that Bilhah’s taken over something that was supposed to be for me.”
“She’s a servant,” said Father. “She was serving.”
“She was taking my place,” said Leah, trying not to cry. She knew her words sounded selfish and foolish, but she also knew how much it had hurt her, to have Bilhah and Jacob treat her with such scorn. “She only learned in order to help me read, but now she’s doing it on her own.”
“I don’t understand why that should bother you,” said Father. “Truly, Leah, I’m sure no one meant any offense.”
Rachel and Leah (Women of Genesis) Page 18