by Mary Burns
I took a deep breath, and realized I had reached for his hand while I was speaking. He pressed his other hand on top of mine, and was silent, thoughtful for many minutes.
“You said there were two things,” he said. “What is the second thing?”
“I want to learn how to write,” I said simply. This, I could see immediately, disturbed him, and he withdrew his hands.
“That is knowledge that is not fit for women to learn,” he said stiffly.
“Why? Why is that so?” Now I was angry. “I learned the marks for keeping track of our accounts, and our household goods, back in Ziklag, and I was good at it! No harm came to me, no lightning bolt from God struck me down!”
“That is not always the measure of doing wrong,” he said sternly, but I saw a flicker of amusement in his eyes.
“You must teach me,” I said suddenly, taking his hand again in my own. “If the Lord wants me to be a prophet for Him, then should I not learn all the ways in which I can serve Him? I know that the writing that is done by the priests is very powerful, and reveals to them the will of our God, so I must learn it!”
“How do you know these things?” Nathan countered in wonder, though he did not pull his hand away.
I searched his eyes, hoping to see a friend and ally there. A long moment passed in silence, and I placed his hand on my heart.
“I know it here,” I said. “Please, Nathan, please help me.”
His eyes showed how momentous a decision this was for him, but at last he nodded his head, and spoke very softly.
“No one must know,” he whispered. “If it is God’s will that you should be a prophet for Him, He will help us.”
“And if not?” I said, trembling slightly at the feel of his hand on my heart.
“Then we will both be as nothing,” he said solemnly. He pulled my hand to his lips, and kissed the back of it lightly.
Chapter 11
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Now the earth was a formless void, there was darkness
over the deep, and God’s spirit hovered over the water.”
Genesis 1:1-2
The very next day, instead of a music lesson, Nathan and I sat at a large table near the window, where he had laid out many little pieces of white cloth with marks on them.
“Tell me what you see,” said Nathan, and he placed before me a small scrap of bleached linen, thin as a leaf but hardened and sealed in the ovens with a light wash of clay and flour. On it was a shape that looked vaguely familiar, like this:
“It looks like an ox’s head,” I said, looking up at him doubtfully. He nodded and asked me to describe the attributes of an ox. I thought a moment.
“Well, an ox is large and strong, very strong,” I said. He was silent, so I thought again. “He helps us in the field, but he is also a sacrifice to HaShem, and then we eat him.” I was puzzled, and it must have shown on my face. Nathan laughed, but pleasantly. He placed another scrap of hardened linen before me with this figure on it:
“That is how a tent is arranged!” I cried out immediately, and was delighted to see him nod. “There’s the door to go in,” I continued, pointing at the opening in the square, “and there’s the drape that divides the women’s side from the men’s. The men sleep by the door, to ward off attacks.” How many times I had heard that explanation, when children asked, over and over through the years, why this and why that?
“Just so,” he said. “And when you put them next to each other, what do you think it means?”
I puzzled it out. Ox tent? Strong tent? I recalled my poor attempt at expressing my feelings about the birds flying up that I showed to brave Didymos, and tried to loosen my thoughts, use my imagination.
“The strength of the tent? The strong house?”
“That’s good, you’re getting close, but think about the ox as ‘the one who is strong’.”
“The one who gives strength to the tent?” It came upon me in a flash. “The father! The head of the house!”
Nathan smiled his approval, and replaced the tent sign with a different one. Now it read:
“This looks like flowing water,” I said, not even looking up to see if he was nodding. “I have the feeling that it means ‘mother’, but I’m not sure why,” I said.
“What is ‘strong water’?” Nathan asked.
Strong water, water that has been strengthened by an ox—of course! One of the domestic chores I detested most was boiling animal skins in water to make a thick, sticky glue that we used to bind things together—wine skins, goat skins for tents, even broken crockery.
“But how does glue mean mother?”
“She is the one—”
I interrupted swiftly. “Who holds the family together, who makes things flow smoothly!”
“Very good, Janaia,” Nathan said. He proceeded to pronounce these words for me by pointing to the written letters: Al (ox) beh (house/tent): Albeh, Father. Al + mah (water), Almah, Mother.
I gazed at the scraps of paper in awe and wonder. Heaven and earth were unfolding before my eyes in a way I had only dreamed could be possible.
I was eager for more, so Nathan and I met as often as we could, and I learned quickly, becoming adept at this mysterious and wonderful skill. At the same time, in order to help keep our great secret, I was rapidly learning how to play music and sing the songs and tales that told of our people from the beginning.
* * *
The great festival day of the New Year was approaching, the autumn feast that opened the ten Days of Awe and would conclude with the sorrowful Day of Atonement and Repentance. Over the ten nights, the entire Story of our People from the beginning in the Garden to the moment they stepped into the Promised Land would be portrayed and sung. The first night was to be my first performance in this tradition, both in singing the story and playing the harp.
A few days before the feast, I was practicing my part in the Story, sitting near an open window that faced out to the far away hills. It was a cool day, and it had rained during the night. Between the words of my song, I could hear the dripping of rain from the leaves of trees outside the window and the plash of fat drops hitting the lower roof jutting out below.
Nathan sat behind me, alternately reading a scroll and staring into the small fire in the brazier, keeping silent. I presumed he was listening to me, though he hadn’t said anything for a while. I was singing about how God formed man of the dust of the ground (adamah), and the wind of life blew through his nostrils and he rose and dwelt in the garden. My voice was strong and low for a woman, and I accompanied myself well on the harp. A sudden noise behind me startled me, and I stopped mid-phrase, turning back to see.
Nathan was leaning into the brazier; the scroll had fallen to the floor, and his eyes were wide, the pupils black and huge. I set down my harp and went to him, kneeling at his side. He did not acknowledge me, so I followed his gaze and looked into the flames with him.
A scene took shape in the dark heart of the fire: a swirling blackness pierced by layers of light, a ball of light exploding into countless stars, which fell into the churning sea. A mighty wave of silver water flowed upward, and a separating wave crashed down. As lightning flashed, here a mountain, there a flat plain, where brown and green and black shapes shot up from the ground, large and small shapes, hairy, feathered, scaled, moving about the surface. Then, a flat ground, dusty and bare, growing damp from an unseen moistness, the dust turning to mud, and the mud moving to form into a shape. Forehead, brow and eye sockets were just visible under the film of mud, a nose stuck out, lips forming. The figure rolled, over and over, like a pot being shaped on a wheel until it becomes fully formed, dark and wet. A wind struck up; the form began to dry, the mud growing lighter as it dried from dark brown to burnished copper. Gently, rain like tears fell upon the adam, made from the ground, mixed with tears from the adam’s eyes, cleansed its body until it was shining, clean, soft, vulnerable. The adam’s eyes flashed and its mouth opened in a fr
antic “O”, a sudden inrush of breath from the mouth of God pierced to its chest, and it breathed on its own.
* * *
The flames in the brazier grew small and vanished into the charcoal, and the vision wavered and disappeared. I had knelt, unmoving, by Nathan’s side, pressed against his knee, and long, long it was before either of us were able to stir. When we came back to ourselves, and it was at the same moment, we turned and looked at each other. We did not need to affirm what we had seen, or that we had both seen it—but I had many questions. Nathan held up a hand to keep me from speaking, and rising quietly, he helped me up from my knees and into a low seat by the fire. The afternoon had faded to dusk, and I felt chilled, grateful for the shawl he brought to me and placed around my shoulders. My head ached and my eyes burned.
Still without speaking, he turned back to the fire, added wood and charcoal, and placed a pot of water over it to heat. I watched him as he added dried herbs and a little crushed powder to the boiling water from a small bag that hung at his waist. After it had steeped a while, he poured two cups of the steaming mixture, and sat with me on the low bench.
“This will help your headache,” he said, and smiled slightly at my questioning look. “And mine, too.” We sat a while, sipping the fragrant tisane, and soon the pounding in my head began to ease.
“What was it that we saw, there in the fire?” I whispered, looking into his mild brown eyes.
“The birth of Adam,” he said. “The very moment we were given spirit by the breath of God.”
“But it’s so, so different from the way the song tells it,” I said, remembering the words I had been practicing for the New Year’s feast. Those words now seemed to me tame and colorless, devoid of the drama and struggle I had witnessed in the flames. At the beginning of God’s creating the heaven and the earth, when the earth was wild and waste, darkness over the face of Ocean, rushing-spirit of God hovering over the face of the waters . . . And HaShem, God, formed the human, of dust from the soil, he blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the human became a living being. I spoke these words aloud, and looked again at Nathan. “The song does not tell the real story,” I said.
Nathan smiled, shaking his head.
“But that’s the way it’s been sung through the generations of our people,” he said. “Perhaps it started out closer to what really happened in the Beginning,” he continued, “but you know how words are lost and changed through time, try as we may to preserve them.”
I pondered this, a growing excitement rising in my breast.
“Why do you think we were shown this vision?” I said abruptly, setting down my cup.
He shrugged. “Perhaps it will be revealed in time.”
“I believe it is because we are meant to do something with it, to describe it anew,” I said, feeling certainty as I spoke. “Maybe we—I—should sing a new song of the People, at the New Year’s feast next week.”
Nathan looked troubled, and shook his head. “I would not advise it,” he said. “People don’t like changes in tradition, especially,” he added more firmly as I started to speak, “especially when it’s done without any preparation, any reason for it happening.” He took my hand in both of his. “I don’t doubt that you could re-fashion the story in a wondrous and astounding way—but not today, not now.”
Something was pushing me from inside: having seen the vision of creation, I wanted to echo the sight with words. I freed my hands from Nathan’s warm grip, and walked over to where my harp lay against the chair near the window. The first stars of evening were piercing through the dark blue of night. I picked up my harp, and began to sing the words that many years later I would write as the story of the Beginning.
Janaia’s Writing of the Beginning
Listen, try to see: black darkness, a fierce wind, black breaks in two, white leaks through the crack, breaks into countless points. Water floods following the light, divides, above and below. Waters gather here, there. Mud oozes, dries, hardens, becomes land.
Morning is named, then evening is named, three times.
From the soggy land, brown and green life covers the surface, sends up shoots from hair-like roots. More life wiggles, slithers, crawls from the mud. Wings, legs, heads and tails, eyes blink. The sun warms the land.
Morning is named, then evening, two times.
The wind rises, plays across the surface of the land. The adam opens its eyes, not knowing it is adamah, not knowing even that it has eyes, and it looks out for the first time, the first one of the adaman opening eyes to see what is there outside the skin in which it is, lives. Some thing flies near, a hand lifts to touch it, the human cries out—this shell enclosing it moves! It tries hands, feet, legs, turns its head to look around. Every thing is bright, reeling, noisy, claiming attention. The skin of its shell prickles, itches, feels cold and hot, wet and tender. It closes its eyes, finds the dark again, bursts into tears.
Morning is named, then evening, the sixth time. And the wind sighs, free of its burden, having emptied life and spirit to other-than-itself.
Night had fallen by the time I stopped singing, and the glow from the brazier was not enough for me to see what was in Nathan’s mind, his face hidden in shadow. But he rose and walked over to me, and knelt by my side. Then I could see the tears on his cheeks. He took my hand and kissed it, gently; then he rose again and left the room without a word. My heart soared and yearned to him, and I felt a rush of gratitude to HaShem who had shown us this vision together, and who had given me the power to sing the Story of our People with such emotion and depth that it moved a man like Nathan to tears.
I put away my harp, though in my mind I could not rest from thinking of the words I had created and sung. I would work even harder now, to learn how to write, so these words would not be lost.
Chapter 12
“The three sons of Zeruiah were there at the battle, Joab,
Abishai, and Asahel. Now Asahel was as swift-footed as a
wild gazelle.” 2 Samuel 2:18-19
One of my father’s most trusted captains, and the fiercest warrior, was Joab—and it soon became clear to me that he was a favored suitor for my hand.
He and his brothers, Abishai and Asahel (called the gazelle because he ran so swiftly), were the sons of Zeruiah, a woman as fierce in her own way as her sons. I thought it strange their father was never mentioned; they were always called “the sons of Zeruiah,” but after becoming acquainted with their mother only a little, I could see how she could easily overshadow all but the most determined and giant-sized of men. She was a tall woman, her black hair thick and pulled back severely from her face. When she walked into a room, everyone fell silent, and yet, when she spoke, her voice was calm and her ways tranquil.
I used to see her and my mother sitting, side-by-side, late in the afternoons, talking quietly. Once my mother hid her face in Zeruiah’s shoulder, and it looked like she was crying. The older woman’s arms were around her, and when she saw me standing in the doorway, the look in her eyes let me know I should leave as quietly as I had come. Her sons, boisterous and aggressive as they were, were subdued in her presence, though they seemed attached to her.
Joab was dark and wiry, with a heavy brow and black eyes that stole the light from the fire, as if he were nothing but sparks banked under charcoal, ready to burst forth without warning, scorching with a leaping flame anything or anyone within reach. He was several years younger than my father, which would have made him in his late twenties when I was almost fifteen. I had grown tall and now my body was becoming curved instead of angular, and my hair shone with a red-gold gleam, like my father’s when he was younger. I didn’t know that I was beautiful; I only knew that I held myself straight, with a pride and assurance that must have seemed like arrogance to others.
I had seen Joab, of course, at David’s councils; it was typical of him to be the first to urge a fight or resent an injury, real or imagined. The talk about him in the women’s quarters centered on his “readiness to u
nsheathe his sword,” the kind of gossip I didn’t care for, though I understood it well enough.
I never imagined any alarm could come to me from that one, but I was wrong.
As I gained knowledge and confidence from my lessons with Nathan, which encompassed many subjects in my quest to learn prophecy and writing, I once again attended my father’s council meetings on a regular basis, often simply sitting just behind his chair and to his left, keeping silent but observing everything and everyone. I think my father was a little surprised the first time I showed up after a long absence, but he did not object. My presence was soon taken for granted by the other men, and few paid attention to me. But I was always alert, studying them—my uncles, cousins, and increasingly, other trusted men in my father’s army.
Men are remarkably easy to read. I learned to discern a man’s thoughts by watching how he sat or shifted position, by the glances exchanged with others in the room, by the changes of light or color in his eyes, the tapping of fingers—all the little things that warn of nerves or excitement or guilty thoughts. They are easier to decipher than women, I think, who are long practiced in keeping close their thoughts and feelings—a matter of survival, perhaps. These observations of his council I would share with my father afterward, rejoicing with an inward thrill when I had noticed something he hadn’t, though that wasn’t often. My insights, he told me, were valuable to him, and I was glad of these opportunities to serve him and grow closer to him.