Slender Reeds: Jochebed’s Hope

by Texie Susan Gregory

  Unable to walk because of her broken leg, Shiphrah did not leave the house. Elisheba taught their guest how to weave plain mats and insisted Jochebed sit with Shiphrah. Soon the girls began to point and share their words. Smiles turned to giggles at each other’s attempt to speak a new language.

  As they learned to speak together, Jochebed told of her betrothal to Amram and the strained relationship with her cousin Lili. Shiphrah listened or nodded in an understanding way but seldom shared her thoughts. Never did she refer to what happened before they found her. If asked, her face closed like a lotus at sunset.

  Throughout the first weeks, the villagers treated Shiphrah with gruff suspicion. They prodded Elisheba with questions of how the stranger came to be in her house and if she would stay after her leg healed. They wondered why no one came looking for the girl. Deborah refused to say her name, calling her “that Egyptian” as if she were a dead animal. Sarah avoided coming to the house, pleasing Jochebed, but referred to Shiphrah as “half-breed,” annoying Elisheba.

  Shiphrah pretended not to understand any Hebrew. She said nothing when the villagers poked their heads through the open doorway and asked where she lived. How could she explain she didn’t live anywhere? She didn’t belong anywhere. This was not her home. These were not her people.

  She doubted her father had sent someone to look for her. Above all else, he valued his practicality. Bothering with her would be more trouble than it was worth. Perhaps his well-tended pride refused to allow him to search for her.

  Did he miss her or ever care for her? Shiphrah didn’t think so. She did not waste time wishing it were so. It simply was not. If he wanted to find her, he could.

  The village—a cluster of houses on the banks of the Nile—proved an impossible place to keep secrets. Everyone seemed to know an Egyptian stranger lived with Elisheba, and the news spread to people outside the village.

  Leaders from nearby villages traveled to meet her, question her, and judge if she brought danger. It became a regular part of each day, someone coming to stare at her. Shiphrah dreaded the attention, dropping her head, refusing to answer their questions—enduring it in hopes of finding her aunt.

  The day Puah found her, Mama Elisheba—as Shiphrah named her—had decided Shiphrah’s leg was healed enough to walk short distances leaning on a stick. She sent the girls outside to rest in the shade of the closest palm tree.

  Shiphrah, leaning her head against the roughly woven bark and watching clouds through a filter of palm fringe, did not notice a woman approaching them.

  “Shiphrah, look. Puah has returned to the village. Didn’t you say she is your mother’s sister?” asked Bedde.

  Shiphrah did not care if she startled Bedde with a flurry of arms and legs and walking stick. Aunt Puah was the one Ati said wanted her. She struggled to her feet and stopped.

  Maybe Ati misunderstood. Maybe Puah came to tell her to leave or to return to her father. If her own father and even Ati didn’t want her anymore, why would an aunt she did not know want her?

  Shiphrah shrank back as the woman stepped closer and studied her face. The bruises had faded, and Shiphrah wished the scar on her face had healed and that she had been able to wash herself.

  “Shiphrah?” the woman murmured. “You are my Shiphrah?”

  Shiphrah blinked in response but could not think of a single word to say—Egyptian or Hebrew. Puah’s scar curved her lips into a lopsided smile. She spoke slowly, softly, and held out her hand. Shiphrah allowed her aunt’s fingertips to rest on her shoulder and nodded at Puah’s words. At last the two turned.

  For the first time since Bedde had known her, Shiphrah’s smile reached her eyes. “It is my aunt. She say I look to be her sister, Jebah. I go now live with Puah.”

  Jebah? Old Sarah said Jebah had asked too many questions and died.

  “Lili, please talk to me,” begged Jochebed.

  “I’m on my way to meet Sissy.”

  “Please?”

  “So now that Shiphrah is with Puah, you have time for me?”

  “That’s not fair, Lili. You stopped speaking to me the day Amram and I were betrothed.”

  Lili crossed her arms, canted her head, and stuck out her chin. “Talk.”

  “I thought we were best friends, more than cousins, more like sisters.”

  “So?”

  “So, I miss you.”

  “You’ll have Amram soon enough.”

  “Yes, but that is still months away. He won’t even be here until our wedding, and Mama said you are marrying Joshua not long after that. You know Joshua has always adored you.”

  Lili sniffed. “Of course Joshua adores me, but you still have Amram.”

  “I don’t know why Amram agreed to marry me instead of insisting on you. I’m afraid I’ll disappoint him.”

  “Probably.”

  “Lili, you are so mean, just like Deborah! Fine, don’t be my friend. I wanted you to know I miss helping you with your sheep and us weaving together, that I wish we were still children and close to each other.” Jochebed did not fight the quiver in her voice. “Soon we will be wives and have children to raise and homes to tend. I didn’t want to lose this last bit of time we have together, but I guess it’s not important to you.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder and turned to leave. “I’m not important to you.”

  “Wait, Bedde! Now that Sissy, I mean Deborah, is married, I might have more time for you.”

  Jochebed blinked back a tear. “Shiphrah wishes you were her friend, too. She said you are the prettiest girl in the village.”

  “Really?”

  “And prettier than Merit-Amun, the princess.”

  “Shiphrah knows a real princess?”

  “They used to sit on the river steps after music lessons at their temple.”

  Lili shuddered. “Near the crocodiles?”

  “She said the crocodiles know not to go there.”

  In a few weeks, Shiphrah returned to visit, limping and still so thin Jochebed thought she could almost see through her. As she gained strength, she came to their village whenever she was not helping her aunt and learning midwifery.

  With Shiphrah’s shaggy black hair hidden beneath a scarf, the three girls might have been sisters—their lives flowing together so effortlessly they seemed extensions of each other. Spoken to as one, scolded as one, directed as one, their names tangled into one, Lili-Bedde-Shiphrah.

  “LiliBeddeShiphrah, watch where you step!”

  “LiliBeddeShiphrah, have you seen my little Jacob?”

  “I need this carried to the widow. LiliBeddeShiphrah, you girls can manage.”

  Together they tended Lili’s sheep. Together they listened to the stories of the Hebrew God as they practiced their weaving skills. Together they shared both the splinters and shards of joy amid the wholeness of enslavement.

  After weeks of work, Mama decided some of their attempts were worthy of trade and suggested the girls attend the Egyptian market of Pi-Ramses and barter for clay cooking pots.

  It started as a day full of expectation. It marked a time Jochebed wished never existed—the beginning of change.

  “I know we won’t be in the city very long.” Lili spoke with the confidence of a twelve-year-old.

  “We won’t?”

  “Our baskets will sell in a hurry because they are just like Aunt Elisheba’s.”

  Jochebed grimaced. Mama’s weaving was the best. No other weavers did such fine work. “Lili, ours aren’t perfect like hers. The weave is not as tight.”

  “We’ll place them so only the best parts show and no one can see our mistakes.”

  “Well…”

  “Trust me, Bedde. No one will notice if we don’t say anything.”

  “But…”

  “Let’s see … if we stack the mats in front of the bowl I made, no one will realize the bottom is not completely flat, and then we’ll stand Shiphrah’s basket on one end so that—”

  “That’s not honest, Lili.”

&nb
sp; “You are as fussy as an old woman. I know! We’ll make up songs about the different weaving patterns and then people would look at that instead of the mistakes.”

  Jochebed shook her head. Lili huffed and pouted for a few steps and then began the latest story about her brother.

  “Benjamin was so hard to wake up this morning, and when I finally got him up, he told Mama”—Lili changed her voice to sound like a five-year-old—“‘I’m not done sleeping, and I’m grumpy, grumpy, grumpy.’ Mama told him he was always grumpy in the morning, and he said, ‘I amn’t either!’”

  Jochebed smiled. Benjamin’s “amn’t” instead of “I’m not” was never corrected because it was so funny.

  Lili continued the Benjamin stories. “And last night he said, ‘If I count all the things I’m good at, it would take me all day and all night … but night is just a dark day, so it would take me two days.’”

  Jochebed wished she had a little brother. Their house was quiet with just Mother and her.

  When Amram returned, that might change. What would it be like with a man in the house? Squinting in the sun’s glare, she wondered what might have been if Papa had lived. Maybe he would have picked her up and called her precious. She might have brothers and sisters to talk and laugh with and help with chores, maybe Mother would laugh more.

  The heat-washed sand swirled in waves so white they drained the sky of color; white sand, white light, white sky, a bright day sharpening shadows and blurring the edges of distant mountains. She breathed lightly, knowing the dry burn of dust.

  Jochebed noticed Shiphrah had begun walking slightly apart from them. “Shiphrah, are you hungry? Do you want something to eat? Mama sent bread for us.”

  “No.”

  Lili sidled closer and wrinkled her forehead at Bedde. “Is Shiphrah getting sick?” she whispered.

  Jochebed shrugged. “I don’t know. She was fine this morning.”

  “If she is going to ruin my day, she should have stayed home, but I’m glad I didn’t. I love market days.” Lili skipped and twirled in a circle. “They are my favorite place to be, except with the sheep. Wouldn’t it be fun to have the sheep here with us? Next time I’ll bring a lamb. Everyone will want to pet him, and then they’ll see my baskets and buy them all. And then someday when I have a house full of grandchildren, I’ll tell them about how I sold all my baskets before anyone else.”

  Jochebed listened to Lili’s chatter. Market day was not her favorite. She did not like being surrounded by strangers or jostled through bustling crowds. Maybe Shiphrah had not wanted to travel to Pi-Ramses either.

  The market, a jumble of shouting merchants with their profusion of wares, displayed everything imaginable, from Cushite gold jewelry and fly-speckled baskets of food to slaughtered sheep hanging upside down and bolts of linen spread on woven mats. The indignant honks of disgruntled geese and braying pack donkeys layered with people yelling and gesturing made her head ache. Air peppered with spices and rotting fruit turned her stomach. Everything was covered with a thick dusty haze kicked up by human feet and animal hooves and paws.

  Chaos puffed its noisy, smoky breath in her face. Jochebed dearly wished the day was over and she could go home. She pushed herself to take step after step farther into the turmoil when she would rather have run the other way or wedged herself into a crack in the wall. Already she longed for the quiet task of seeing a basket take shape.

  They entered the town of Pi-Ramses and looped through the twisting alleys and narrow streets, following the cries of frightened animals to the market area. Lining each side of the street and spilling around the corners, tradesmen crouched under grass mats drooping across poles and hinting at shade.

  Limp cloths covering the stalls hung in the stale air like dingy birds stretching their wings, waiting for a breeze to lift them above the clouds of dust and noisy confusion. Vendors clamored for attention to their wares, boasting of copper from Syria and bracelets of gold, their shouts muffling the pleas of beggars and the plaintive music of sistra and lyres.

  The heavy sweetness of overripe melon and freshly killed fowl soured the air, layered with smells of warm bread and fresh animal dung. Under the lone tree, people waited in a loosely knit line to have one of the two barbers shave their heads and eyebrows.

  As they merged with the streams of people, Bedde dragged her feet—it was impossible to walk three abreast anyway—and fell farther behind until she could barely see Lili and Shiphrah. Frustrated by the crowd, she felt tears blur her sight. Had her two best friends not noticed she was missing? Jochebed stumbled into a man who shoved her into the dirt.

  “Filth.” The man, tall and thin except for his bulging stomach, turned to his companion. “Another one of those worthless Hebrews—Egypt’s pestilence—breeding like rabbits with the stench of sheep.”

  Shame flooded Jochebed’s cheeks. She was not filthy, and didn’t everyone smell like sheep?

  His friend nodded. “Rats overrunning Egypt. Pharaoh will soon see it for himself. This pharaoh is not like his father. He will take action against that shepherd horde. You’ll see.”

  As the men walked away, Bedde scrambled to her feet. From the corner of her eye she saw Lili inch forward through the maze of people. Lili’s chatter reached out to surround Bedde, her familiar voice a comfort even as Lili scolded her for falling behind, explaining how they had come looking for her and returned just in time to hear the man’s words. Lili mumbled her indignation with the stomachy man as she gathered the scattered baskets.

  “Why did he say such things to you?” Lili glared at the men.

  Shiphrah approached slowly, eyeing the man as he strutted past the vendors. “Because he Egyptian and you worthless Hebrew.”

  Jochebed stared at her, starting to shake, trying to grasp her words. The marketplace clamor faded until only the words worthless Hebrew rang in her ears. “Worthless Hebrew”—that was what the man had said. Why would Shiphrah ever say that to her? Did she mean it?

  Stomach knotting, she glanced at Lili, hoping to have misunderstood, but Lili’s eyes were the size of the full moon and her mouth hung open, showing a tooth missing in the back.

  They stood, the three of them, on an island of silence. Jochebed felt the easy comfort of friendship drift into oblivion, its familiar ways shifting like desert sand; their unquestioning acceptance of each other lost in a grain of time; words that could not be recalled; feelings that would not be forgotten.

  Fat tears rolled over the curve of Lili’s face. Stone-faced, Shiphrah stared at them, her face cold—an alabaster sphinx—the scar on her cheekbone a cruel token of her earlier life.

  Jochebed stepped back. She stepped back again.

  And then she ran.

  Darting through the press of sweaty bodies, ignoring Lili’s calls to stop, she ran. Her head pounded with each step as she raced along the path they had just traveled. Jochebed ran. She forgot the baskets and ran without looking back, ran without stopping, out of the city, along the river path, until she reached her sure place of safety—Mama’s arms.

  There she told the story and, weeping, told it again, describing stomachman and trying to make sense of his scorn and Shiphrah’s words. Jochebed knew they were Hebrew and Shiphrah, half Egyptian. And she knew they were little more than slaves, though long ago a pharaoh had favored them, but it had never mattered before—not to the three of them.

  “Mama, why did she say such a thing? How could she look at us so?”

  With one hand cradling Bedde’s tear-swollen face, Mama wiped away the tears that spilled down her daughter’s face and cleaned the blood from her fall in the marketplace.

  “Jochebed,” she began, using the formal name instead of the familiar Bedde, “if I could take your hurt to spare you, I would.” She closed her eyes, and Bedde guessed she was praying, asking the Lord for wisdom to answer.

  She picked up the basket she had been weaving and began to work. Mama’s hands were never still. “Only the weaver knows what the basket will become.
It is after it’s finished that others see the beauty and purpose. When you began to weave your first basket, you told me the spokes were ugly—that you didn’t want them to be in your basket, remember?”

  Bedde sniffled. “I was afraid the spokes would ruin it.”

  “Now you know that without the spokes, the basket cannot take shape. The part that at first seems ugliest is really the strength. The reeds you choose and the work you do before it looks like a basket determines how it will be used.”

  Mama nestled the basket in her hand. “I do not pretend to understand the ugliness in life, but I believe our Lord uses it to shape good things for His people.”

  “But Mama, Shiphrah looked at me as if she hated me.”

  “Hate grows out of fear. The Egyptians fear us, and they fear our God. They know we are different and do not understand it. Jochebed, an Egyptian is not even allowed to eat with a Hebrew. They say we are unclean because we herd sheep.”

  Her words circled in Bedde’s mind like little birds seeking a place to rest and finding none. Not understanding, she probed further. “But she is like my sister. How could she fear us? How could anyone fear us? They have the whips! We serve them!”

  Her mother sighed as she twined the double strands through the spokes. “It will not always be this way. The Lord will send deliverance. As He led us into Egypt, so He will lead us out. Until that time, remember we are His chosen people.”

  Chosen? Bedde did feel chosen—chosen for injustice and unreasonable hatred. If God truly planned to send deliverance, why was He waiting? Did He not know or not care?

  Her mother must have seen the look of rebellion in Jochebed’s face. “Remember the story of Joseph and how we came to Egypt? The Lord’s ways are often hard to understand.”

  Jochebed studied her scraped knees. She’d heard that before.

  And yes, she remembered. The story of Joseph’s brothers selling him into slavery and lying to their father, Jacob, about his death was a story she’d heard from early childhood.