by Sarah Blake
“And then?”
“I guess that was when Japheth came back up. He asked us where Dad was, and when we told him you were both in the water, he rushed to the side. But at that point all we could do was wait until Dad had you both back on the swing.”
“You pulled me up?”
“Yeah. Dad tried to protect you as he walked up the boat, but you got scraped up pretty bad—you know that. Once you were back on deck, we cleaned and dressed the cuts on your arm and leg.”
“Where was Sadie? And Neela and Adata?”
“Trying to quiet the animals. Tossing them feed. They didn’t know that you’d fallen.” Shem paused. “I was scared.”
“I would have been scared if I knew what was happening.”
“Don’t joke,” he says.
“I know.” She looks at him. “I love you.”
“I love you, Mom.”
She hugs him. Over his shoulder, all she can see is water.
FOUR
When the boat was complete, Naamah gathered the family beside it. On land, the shadow of it was intimidating. They could only guess what it would look like in the water. Naamah prepared them for one last chance for supplies, food, anything they might possibly need. They would not be able to risk leaving the boat again or they, too, could be lost to the rains.
“This is the last time you will see a crowd of people,” Naamah said. “Enjoy them. Observe them. Remember what you can. And don’t try to stick together. Soon we’ll all be together more than we can stand.”
Naamah made a gesture for them to head off, and they all did except for Sadie. She walked over to the sunlight right next to the shadow of the boat, closed her eyes, and tilted up her head. Naamah walked over to her.
“We will still have sunlight on the boat.”
“I know. But it feels so good.”
Naamah closed her eyes, too.
* * *
• • •
NAAMAH WALKS UP TO HAM on the deck. “Neela is beginning to show,” she says.
“You noticed?”
“Of course I noticed.”
“We’re in love.”
“I’m not mad,” she says. When he shoots her a look, she adds, “I’m not that mad.” She waits for him to say something, but he’s always been able to wait her out. “And that’s not all it is—both so passionately in love.”
“We’re also bored,” he admits.
Naamah laughs. “How is she feeling now?”
“Less bored.”
Naamah laughs again. “Does she feel sick at all?”
“No, just tired.”
They look out over the water.
“Are you happy for us?”
“Very happy.” She wraps her hand around the back of his head and pulls him down to her, kisses his forehead. “Very happy.”
“Should we announce it?”
“Yes, that’s a very good idea. Let’s have a party. Let’s celebrate.”
“Neela would love that.”
* * *
• • •
WHEN NAAMAH GAVE BIRTH the first time, she was surprised by how large her stomach stayed after he was out. They tried to hand her Japheth, expecting her to reach out, to rest him on her chest. But she was screaming for them to check that another child was not still inside of her, waiting to be born. They gave Japheth to Noah.
They tried to assure Naamah there was not another child. They led her in pushing out the placenta, and they showed it to her. It was floppy in the midwife’s hands, but when she got it angled right, it looked like someone had painted a tree on a decaying bag of blood.
She asked for her son. She held him and stroked his cheek and balanced him on her oversize belly, which she trusted to be empty, like the bladders they used as water bags, which she remembered, as a child, blowing up with air.
In a few days, her stomach shrank back into her body. She tried sleeping on her belly for the first time in months, but it felt like she was sleeping on some object that had been misplaced in the bed.
She arranged blankets around her body to rest Japheth on as she nursed him. They made her hot. She spent most of her time naked in the tent, cool cloths draped around the back of her neck, the baby sleeping, naked in a nest of blankets of his own. She’d tried laying him flat, but he wouldn’t have it. His shoulders rested above the bed, his legs raised as if he were trying to cradle himself. And his legs were quick to move and startle him out of sleep. His body worked against itself, just as hers did.
Because the nest was the solution for him, she wondered if there was an equally simple, physical solution for herself, for what she was feeling. But if there was, she wasn’t sure how to discover it. She didn’t know how to express the question to other mothers, if it was a question. She told Noah how impressed she was with her body, and he was glad for her, but she’d meant in the way one is impressed by God, with a measure of fear, a respectful distance. She understood why some women stopped leaving their beds in this time of motherhood.
* * *
• • •
THE EVENING IS COOL. For the party, they bring up three containers of wine they’ve been saving. Adata prepares fish they’ve kept packed in salt. Naamah disappears downstairs to wrap a few honey candies she’s saved. Then she lets everyone know that dinner is ready.
Like Naamah, Sadie also brings a gift from what she found among the belongings of her room: a little wax pencil, purple through and through. She’d been afraid to draw with it, to use it up. But now she draws something for Neela, a purple figure, an angel maybe. She kisses Neela on the cheek as she gives her the picture and pencil. Her fingertips are marked by little purple stains.
Everyone but Neela has a cup of wine in hand as they sit around chatting. Neela can’t imagine something bitter and dry on her tongue right now.
The boys get out instruments they’ve been making to perform a song, their present for Neela. Japheth has stretched some leather over a bottomless bucket to make a drum. Ham has found some dried-out gourds that rattle. And Shem has cut a bucket in half and tied some strings across it.
They start to play.
The song is simple but pleasant. Sadie dances around Adata until Adata throws back her head in a laugh, and then she puts her arm around Sadie’s waist and spins her, their feet side by side. They step back from each other and switch which direction, which arm is crossing the waist of the other, which hip is touched.
Suddenly Neela squeals, loud as a scream. She’s spotted something in the air by Ham’s knee as he shakes the gourd. Everyone stops. She points, but she doesn’t need to. Fireflies—first one or two, and then suddenly they are everywhere, for the first time since before the rains. Everyone starts hollering and jumping around. Neela cries. She takes them as a sign from God that her child is one He desires to be born.
* * *
• • •
WHEN NAAMAH HAD ONLY JAPHETH, it was easy to lose track of when she’d bathed him, clipped his nails. But with three little boys, everything was such an ordeal, always a series of actions. Every night they lined up naked, and she would check them, finding scrapes, knees covered in dirt, and once a tick, tucked behind an ear.
Once a week, as Naamah clipped one boy’s nails, the other two boys were expected to entertain him. Shem and Japheth always acted out skits, Shem and Ham sang songs, and Japheth and Ham told riddles. Sometimes Ham would get bored and Shem would tell Japheth an endless joke that didn’t make sense.
“Japheth, why did the bird go to the market?”
“Why?”
“Because it wanted to get some seeds that he couldn’t get in the tree where he lived and he knew there would be someone at the market with that kind of seed so he brought a big bag with him to buy as many seeds as he could fit in the bag so he could take it home with him and always have the seeds that he liked whenever he
was hungry and then he pooped out those seeds. He pooped!”
Japheth laughed. He couldn’t help himself. “Hey, does that mean new trees ended up growing by his home that had the seeds he liked in them?”
“Oh yeah!”
Japheth laughed again.
When they were all out at the marketplace, Naamah would count their three heads—one, two, three, one, two, three—as they walked between the stands of fruit and pottery, losing sight of them and finding them again.
* * *
• • •
IT’S GETTING LATE, and all the couples are sitting together, catching fireflies and releasing them, whispering into each other’s ears. Naamah has been drinking, more than the others. She kisses Noah.
“We should go for a swim,” Naamah says.
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Everyone would have to wait around to pull us up.”
“So? They’d do that for us. Wouldn’t you all do that?”
But no one responds. They don’t have much patience left tonight for Naamah’s latest ideas about what might make her happy. They don’t realize it’s harder for her, trying over and over again to dream up ways to be happy, and mostly being wrong.
“Then go to bed!” she says, cheery at first. But then, flatly, “Get out of here.”
“You should come to bed, too,” Noah says.
“No.”
“You should—”
“No. I’m fine where I am.”
They all start to stand up and brush off their clothes.
“That’s not really true,” she continues. “I am not fine where I am. I am on a boat in the middle of a flood that was high enough to cover trees. And wasn’t there a mountain to the east of us? Did it cover the mountain? I haven’t seen anything in months.”
“We saw the fireflies tonight,” Neela says, trying to be helpful. Ham takes her hand.
“That we did! That we did, Neela. I don’t know how, but we did.”
“He calls into being things that were not,” Japheth says.
“Yes! Yes! Why is it, then, do you think, Japheth, that we should usher all these animals, if he could just do that, on the other side of the flood?”
“Naamah,” Noah urges, “not now. It’s late.”
“They did not deserve to die,” Japheth says.
Noah hangs his head.
“Then the others animals did, you think?” Naamah asks.
“Yes,” Japheth answers quickly, but he feels cruel saying it. “In a way.”
“That’s what I’m getting at now! In what way?”
“Their death was merciful,” Japheth says.
“The death itself or the fact that they’re now dead?”
Noah tries again. “Naamah, please.”
“If being dead is merciful,” Japheth says, “they had to go through the act of dying to get there—here—you know what I mean.”
“Yes, I do. And Japheth—”
Adata interrupts. “Leave him be, Naamah.”
Naamah looks at her.
“Nothing he could say would please you.”
Naamah can’t take her eyes off of Adata. Maybe because she’s standing up to her, maybe because of something else.
“Think of the heavens, Naamah,” Adata says. “Their starry host was made by the breath of His mouth. The animals are here. You are here. His understanding has no limit, but yours does.”
Naamah puts down her cup without looking away and says, “I guess I want to know where the limit to my understanding is. Ask me a question, Adata, that I cannot consider.”
* * *
• • •
ON THEIR LAST DAY away from the boat, Naamah didn’t follow her own advice. Instead of going to the market, she went to see Bethel.
“The sun has darkened you,” Bethel said.
“I’ve been working.” Naamah thought she was going to rush into what she wanted to say, but Bethel had a way of slowing everything down.
“You look beautiful,” Bethel said.
“Thank you.”
“What have you been working on?”
“That’s what I came to tell you about. We’re about to leave. On an ark. I’ve been building an ark these last years.”
“Just you?”
“No. My entire family.”
“Why?”
“God told Noah to.”
“That’s certainly a reason.”
“It’s because God is going to send rains—a flood. He wants to wipe the earth clean, start fresh. He’s deemed everything wicked and evil. He’s seen too much violence. He thinks He got us wrong.”
“How does God get something wrong?”
“Right? I . . . I’ve tried asking that, and they all treat me like I don’t make sense. Then I tell you, and it’s your first question. It is the first question, isn’t it?”
“I guess it is.”
“I don’t want to leave you,” Naamah says.
“But God has said you must.”
“Yes, but God has already gotten something wrong.”
“It’s not about whether what He commanded you to do is right or wrong; it’s that He commanded it. And I wouldn’t see you punished for that.” She took Naamah’s face in her hands. “I could not see it.”
“And what about me seeing you punished?”
“Oh, death is not punishment.” She released Naamah’s face and stepped back. “I am ready to die.”
“What if it is a terrible death?”
“If it will make you happy, I will take care of it before the rains.”
“You say that as though it’s some kind of errand.”
“It is an errand. I thought it would have come for me already, but if it still hasn’t when the rains come, I will go to greet it.”
Naamah shook her head.
“Do you still love Noah?”
“I do.”
“Then be with him, and your children. Know that I am well.”
“Don’t you love me more than this? Stow away with us! I will sneak away to see you.”
“If it’s a matter of how much I love you, then I guess I don’t love you enough. But I don’t think it’s that. God sees fit to enact this death. I see my tiredness on the earth in His tiredness of us.”
Naamah began to cry.
“Why have you come to tell me this today?” Bethel asked.
Naamah couldn’t answer her.
“Is this the last time I will see you?”
Naamah tried to turn from her.
“It is, isn’t it?”
She nodded.
“Pull up your skirt.”
Naamah did. Bethel put her middle two fingers in her own mouth, then slid them into Naamah, and pulled her close. Naamah kissed her while Bethel spun her fingers in her, spun them until the tight, circular muscle loosened, and then Bethel slid all her fingers in. Naamah kissed her until she could no longer control her mouth. Bethel pressed on something inside her and Naamah grunted loud enough that anyone nearby could hear. She didn’t care that day. She didn’t care if everyone knew.
* * *
• • •
NOAH STEPS in front of Naamah to block her from staring at Adata. “You don’t have to ask her any question, Adata. Please go to bed. Everyone, go to bed.”
And they did, leaving Noah and Naamah alone on the deck.
“You didn’t have to embarrass me,” Naamah says.
“I didn’t. I mean, you needn’t feel embarrassed. No one is giving it another thought.”
“Why do you worry about me?” Naamah asks. “Aren’t we protected?”
“Naamah, stop trying to goad Him.”
“I’m not.”
“You are. But He doesn’t listen to you.
”
“Then why worry?”
“Because what if you do provoke Him, Naamah? What if you did accomplish that somehow? Then what?”
“Maybe He deserves it.”
“You’re doing it again!”
“I’m tired of being on this boat!”
“So am I!” he yells. “We all are. You can see that, can’t you?”
“I killed a gerbil the other day.”
“What?”
“Two.”
“Okay.”
She looks at him as if she’s just asked him a question.
“What do you want from me?” he says.
“I want you to judge me.”
“It’s not my place to judge you.”
“But you want to?” she asks.
“Not for killing two gerbils.”
“But you do want to?”
“Would that be enough for you?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, then, yes. I want to judge you for things you have done, things you have said, for nearly dying when the wolf attacked you, for having an overall recklessness toward yourself when you could be safe—should be safe. I love you, and I need you to make it through this.”
“You thought I should die.”
Noah doesn’t respond at first.
“You thought—”
“That was a long time ago,” he says.
“Not that long.”
“It feels like it was. That I could never have felt that way.”
“About me.”
“I could never have felt that way about you.”
“Okay,” she says.
“Okay,” he says, and he walks off without looking back at her. “I’m going to bed.”
She leans her back against one of the beams that holds up the roof.
* * *
• • •
WHEN NAAMAH IMAGINED the rains beginning, she thought they would appear far across the desert, giving them all time to take cover as the rains made their way across the land. She imagined the whole family would huddle in a room together until they felt like splitting up. That maybe they’d say how grateful they were for each other.