Naamah

by Sarah Blake

  “Yes.”

  “He’s okay.”

  “Good,” the angel says.

  “And then a ewe had two lambs.”

  “That’s good, too, isn’t it?”

  “No. I mean, yes. But no. One wasn’t doing well, so I fed it to a tiger. I killed it and fed it to a tiger. And now the dam won’t feed the other one. And she’s got a clogged milk duct, and it could get worse. Everything could get worse, I think.”

  The angel swims into a shimmering room. “If these two sheep die, what will happen?”

  “Nothing.” But then she corrects herself. “Well, a bigger animal will be fed.”

  “Then why do you care? Why are you here?”

  “I need your help. I want them to live.”

  “But that’s not up to you.”

  “I mean, it’s kind of up to me.”

  “Naamah.”

  “What? Come on. You’re down here, creating a world for dead people. Don’t tell me.”

  “Naamah!”

  “You’re all like, The angel said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath death, bring them below the earth in the drowned firmament of angel-heaven.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Oh, can you say that?” Naamah says.

  “Yes, I can say that.”

  “You know, because I just wasn’t sure.”

  “I get it,” the angel says dryly.

  “Like, is He still your father?”

  “Shut up now, Naamah.”

  “I mean, what can you do?”

  “I can do whatever the fuck I want, and you know that.”

  “So come help me save a damn sheep.”

  “Two sheep.”

  “Two damn sheep.”

  The angel swims once around the room. “Do you have a plan?”

  “Can you make yourself invisible?”

  “No.”

  “Then come tonight.”

  “I don’t care about these sheep, Naamah.”

  “But you care about me for some reason. So come to the boat.”

  “Why not ask me for help? Why antagonize me? What have I done to upset you?”

  “Just come to the boat,” Naamah says.

  * * *

  • • •

  AFTER FINDING Neela’s room of art, Naamah was overcome by thoughts of other inanimate objects she hadn’t thought to save. Conch shells. Pottery. They’d all had a little jewelry, a few pieces, but they’d made no attempt to buy anything exceptional before the flood. Money had seemed worthless, knowing what would come. She wasn’t sure she could remember the last time she’d even caught her own reflection in something that shined, something that was not the plain surface of water.

  In her bedroom, Naamah ran her fingers through her hair. It felt nice. She wondered what it looked like to have her fingers out of sight, hidden in her hair. Probably nothing spectacular. What would be spectacular is if she pulled her hand away and she had no fingers. What would be spectacular is if her hair were crawling with fingers. Fingers pale as maggots. Fingers dark as the hair they were in.

  Noah walked in and sat behind her in the bed. He moved his fingers up under her hair, up to the top of her skull. She hummed a sigh and lay down beside him. He bent over her and took her head in his hands, ran his thumbs over her forehead, starting them at the top of her nose and then over her eyebrows. Then he pressed his thumbs under her eyebrows, then on the ridge of her nose, then under her cheekbones, push by push, following the cheekbones to the joints of the jaw.

  He dragged his thumbs down her jawline and her mouth slacked open. She remembered the first time he massaged her face, how she’d felt embarrassment at her mouth agape and breathing hot. But not anymore. He paused above her chin, below her bottom lip, pressing again.

  “Good?” he asked.

  She nodded, almost asleep.

  He put his hands on either side of her head, lowered his forehead to hers, and then rolled off to fall asleep beside her.

  NINE

  In the middle of the night, Naamah goes to the deck to wait. As the angel comes out of the water, as her black skin touches the air, she is alight, as if she’d been another thing dampened by the water. But the brightness of her form renders her slightly out of focus just the same.

  “Thank you for coming,” Naamah says.

  “You’re welcome,” says the angel, and then she runs her hand down Naamah’s arm, letting Naamah take her hand.

  Naamah leads her to the room with the sheep. The angel goes over to the dam. The angel doesn’t bend over—she doesn’t even look down—but by the shape of her hands, Naamah can tell she’s holding the dam’s head. Then she lets go of the head and walks back to Naamah.

  “That’s it?” Naamah asks.

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “I made her forget.”

  “You what?”

  “I made her forget the first lamb.”

  Naamah starts to cry. “How could you do that?”

  “How did you think this was going to work?”

  “I don’t know. I thought you could make her feel better. Show her the little lamb in the heavens or something.”

  “Of all people, Naamah, you should know how little comfort there is in that.”

  “You could have made her feel committed to the child she has left.”

  “This was easier.”

  Naamah wipes her eyes with her wrists. “Can you undo it?”

  The angel stares at her.

  “Can you put it back? Her love of the little lamb?”

  “I could, but I won’t. She will die. The healthy lamb will die.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I do.”

  Naamah can’t look at her.

  “I’ll leave it to you,” the angel finally says. “I’ll put it back if you want. And the remaining two will die. Which do you prefer?”

  “Leave it,” Naamah says, so quietly that the angel can barely hear her.

  “You still can’t see them?” the angel asks.

  Naamah shakes her head.

  “You don’t have to stay here. You can stay with me,” the angel says, putting her hand on Naamah’s arm again.

  “You said I can’t. You said it would draw too much attention to yourself.”

  “I’m changing my mind,” the angel says.

  “No. It doesn’t matter. I can’t leave.”

  “Why not?”

  “I have my sons,” Naamah says.

  “I can tell how much they mean to you,” the angel says. “I can make you forget, too.”

  Naamah steps back from her. “Don’t say that,” she says. “Don’t ever say that.”

  * * *

  • • •

  MANY NIGHTS, Naamah would fall asleep with the fat of Noah’s hand between her back teeth, sometimes his last knuckle. It kept her from clenching her jaw as she fell asleep. She never knew when during the night she let go.

  For months, when Ham was a toddler, he fell asleep with his fingers in Naamah’s mouth. He’d put them there when he was nursing and then close his eyes, sleeping that way longer and longer each night. Or he’d wake her in the middle of the night by sticking his fingers in her mouth, and that would settle him back to sleep again.

  Once Ham finished breastfeeding, Naamah put him into bed with the other boys. They all slept together. And sometimes she’d come into the room after they were asleep, after she’d swept the mess they’d left where they’d eaten, and Ham’s small fingers would be in Japheth’s mouth, or on Japheth’s cheek after he’d turned his head.

  If a scorpion found its way into their home, Naamah would bang it dead with a metal pot, and only Shem and Noah would wake. Noah would ask if everything was okay and then fall bac
k to sleep. Shem would say something absurd, like, “Mommy, I was underwater.” Wait, is that right? Shem always used to have dreams about being underwater. Yes. Then he would lie back down and be asleep again, too.

  How had she forgotten?

  * * *

  • • •

  IN THE MORNING, Adata finds Naamah looking out over the water and walks over to her. “It looks like the lamb is doing well.”

  “Yes,” Naamah says, not turning to her.

  “I was glad to see that.”

  “Yes, me too.”

  “Are things okay with us?” Adata asks.

  “Yes.”

  “But you can’t look at me?”

  “I can,” Naamah says, keeping her eyes on the water.

  “When I look at you, I think about your mouth, but I still look at you.”

  “You”—she’s unsure if she should finish—“are one woman of many, Adata.”

  “I was, wasn’t I?” Adata says.

  Despite herself, Naamah laughs. She turns herself around and leans back on the railing. “Do you get no pleasure from sex with Japheth?”

  “We haven’t had sex yet. Because of the ark. But I’ve had sex with men before. I get little pleasure from it.”

  “Are you attracted to Japheth?”

  “He’s a handsome man, Naamah.”

  “No, I’m not asking as a mother.”

  “Then no.”

  “Do you think you can make him feel attractive?”

  “Yes, I think I can. Maybe not in ways he’d expect, but I can.”

  Naamah turns back to the water.

  “What about you?” Adata asks. “Are you attracted to Noah?”

  “Very much so. I always have been.”

  “And also to women?”

  “Yes, though I discovered that later.”

  “I’ve known since I was seven,” Adata says.

  “I only have a few memories of my childhood anymore.”

  “Tell me one.”

  Naamah closes her eyes. “I wanted my mother to lift me up, but she was pregnant and couldn’t lift me over her big belly.”

  “That’s it?”

  Naamah laughs. “It’s the oldest memory I have. I think I was three.”

  “Who was in her belly?”

  “My brother. He died when I was young. When he was young.”

  “Still a child?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “My favorite memory of him was one night, after a dinner when we’d both eaten too much, stayed at the table longer than anyone. And we lifted up our shirts to show each other how much we’d eaten, how stuffed we were. I poked his belly and he felt mine, and he said, ‘I wish I could feel your bones.’ And we laughed so hard.”

  “He sounds like Shem.”

  “Yes! Yes, he was a lot like Shem. I haven’t thought about him in a long time.”

  “Were both your parents dead before the flood?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was the name of the woman you loved?”

  “Bethel.”

  “I think that means the house of God.”

  Naamah laughs.

  “What did she look like?”

  Naamah shook her head.

  “Like me?”

  “No, not like you. You look like you work, like your hands are rough with working. She looked like she never worked, like she never had to pull her hair back, like she never even needed to wash her hands, even though she did work sometimes.”

  “She sounds lovely.”

  Naamah nodded.

  “A good place to worship.”

  Naamah smiled at her, the biggest smile Adata had ever seen on her face. Unlike Naamah’s laugh, which nearly shut her eyes, her smile left her eyes large and sparkling in the sun, as if two golden beetles had been living there all along, flashing back and forth to black, waiting for moments in the sun like this, at the edge of the boat.

  TEN

  In this dream, Naamah is somewhere very cold. In every direction there is snow on the ground and in the sky.

  “Naamah.”

  She looks up. “Hello, Jael.” It feels good to be able to see him.

  “You could not find me,” he says. “I found you. It’s my dream! I knew it.”

  “Aren’t you cold, Jael?”

  “Yes.”

  She lifts up a fold in her clothing, near her chest. He lands on her hand and lets her lead him under the cloth, so that one of his wings is against her chest. He can still look ahead of them, wherever they are going. “If this is your dream, what are we doing here?”

  “That I don’t know,” Jael says. “I’d never come here. Would you?”

  “No.”

  “Maybe it’s not either of our dreams.”

  “Probably not,” Naamah says.

  She keeps walking forward. She can’t make out anything around her. Soon she feels a pain in her shins and she knows she’s walking up a hill. She hasn’t walked up a steep hill in a long time. The steps and ladders and ramps on the ship aren’t like this.

  When she reaches the top of the hill, she stops and the snow stops, too. Below her, the snow tapers into ice banks and water. The water is calm the way the floodwaters are calm.

  The longer she stands there, the more animals reveal themselves: arctic foxes, arctic dolphins, arctic loons, polar bears, penguins, ivory gulls, snowy owls, little auks, even an arctic whale. With their movement, each flapping wing, each dolphin’s spout, they make the place look vibrant, even though they’re only a dozen shades of white. Still, it’s quiet.

  “Damn,” Jael says.

  “Really,” Naamah says.

  “What do they all eat?” he asks.

  “Each other, I guess.”

  As they stand there and watch, the animals begin to behave strangely. The whales and dolphins begin lobtailing, and the sounds their flukes make against the water are loud as they echo against the banks of ice, the hills of snow. And then their bodies rise out of the water as if their flukes were wings and their noses were pointed toes poised on the water.

  Then the birds, all the birds, start flying into the giant flanks of the whales and dolphins and fall into the water. Eventually the birds begin to break the skins of the animals, until the bodies are spotted with blood.

  When the penguins appear again, they each have two heads. The foxes have human ears. The polar bears are disfigured, with short back legs that cannot bend, and they drag their lopsided bodies behind them.

  A hush falls across the scene and the upside-down whales open their mouths wide and their bodies fall down through them into the water. When they jump back out, their bodies are inside out, the grotesqueness of their muscular and cardiovascular systems laid bare.

  The spectacle of it is magnificent, but Naamah retches.

  “Watch the feathers,” Jael says. He squirms out from his warm spot on her chest.

  “Sorry.”

  “I bet, if I focus really hard, I can get us out of here,” he says.

  “Okay,” Naamah says, breathing hard and shaking.

  He lands on the back of her shoulder and raises his wings over his eyes. Nothing happens. He lowers his wings in a huff. “It’s not working.”

  “No.”

  “Well, you try something.”

  She rights herself, takes a deep breath, but still feels like she’s shaking. She closes her eyes, and with another deep breath she understands she is not shaking but buzzing. She feels like she’s going to explode.

  “Jael! Off!”

  He flies high into the air, and she opens her mouth. Thousands of bees pour out from within her, overtaking every gruesome animal in the arctic scene. Every animal turns brown, like mustard seeds, the bees’ transparent wings s
ending off little glints. Every animal is given a new, very busy skin.

  Jael comes back down to Naamah’s shoulder as they watch together.

  The bees make quick work of the bodies of the animals, and as they do, the bodies become even more misshapen than they already were, folding in on themselves. Soon the animals are down to skeletons, some clinging to one tough organ. In one bear, the bees eat its hanging heart from within, the muscle glistening like an oil slick shaking on water.

  Naamah retches again.

  Afraid that the bees will come back to her when they’re finished, she leaves, running away. Jael is startled off her shoulder and follows her in flight. Naamah hears each flap of his wings in the cold air.

  “Where are you going?” he asks.

  “I don’t know how long we will be here. We need shelter.”

  She runs until they come to a snowdrift formed by what must have been a harsher wind in the storm that blinded them before. She starts to dig down at the edge of the small hill of snow. When the snow reaches her knees, she starts to dig forward into the hill.

  This should all take a long time. She should be exhausted and sweating and then nervous about sweating in the cold. But the work is easy and soon the cave is built.

  “This is nice,” says Jael.

  Naamah nods, settling in, trying not to be unnerved by her strength in the dream.

  “Do you think I might be filled with carnivorous bees, too?” he asks.

  “Does it feel like you are?”

  “No.” Jael pauses. “Did it feel like you were?”

  “Yes. Just before it happened.”

  “You wiped out all those animals.”

  “I know,” she says.

  “I can’t tell if I feel bad about that,” he says.

  “Let’s talk about something else. I don’t want to throw up in here.”

  In the cave, the air is beginning to feel warm and thick. If Jael stopped talking, Naamah would surely fall asleep.

  “I miss trees,” he says.

  “Me too.” She’s nodding off anyway.

  Jael comes back to her chest and she folds him up.

  * * *

  • • •