by Sarah Blake
* * *
• • •
THE RAVEN FLIES back and forth for days, until Naamah no longer follows his comings and goings. One night, Noah stays on the deck. He says that when the raven comes back that night, he will return him to his room.
Knowing she’ll be alone for a while, Naamah takes out a long stone, polished smooth and slightly curved. She places it between her thighs to warm it, and until it’s warm, she thinks of it only as a rock.
* * *
• • •
WHEN NAAMAH WAS A CHILD, her mother would peel half a doum nut and give it to Naamah to gnaw on, to keep her busy. Naamah remembers the feeling of her teeth scraping on the pit. It distracted her longer than most things could.
When she was becoming a woman, her mother didn’t have to tell her about sex. Naamah had seen her parents together one afternoon when she was supposed to be out, and another couple under a juniper tree she passed going to the river early one morning, and two men once in a tent near the market.
But her mother did tell her about the desire she would feel. When she should let another person fill that desire and when she should fill it herself. And her mother gave her the long stone that day.
* * *
• • •
WHEN THE STONE IS WARM and ready, Naamah thinks of Bethel. In the desert, Naamah’s neck was so warm that it matched the warmth of Bethel’s mouth. Bethel understood this. She would take Naamah’s neck in her mouth. Then she’d blow on the wet skin until it rose in bumps. Then she would lick it again, and that time Naamah would feel it.
Naamah reaches down and moves her fingers inside her vagina until they’re slick. She rubs them over the stone and then she puts the stone in. She lets it fill her. She takes her other hand and rests the tip of her middle finger on her clitoris. She wants her body to tell her what it wants next.
She goes back to the memory of Bethel and her finger moves—first down the inside of her labia on the left, then down the right. She starts to move the stone and she moves the other hand around to the bottom of her ass, the top of her thigh, and she grabs it hard like Adata had. She imagines both women with her now, and the angel, too.
She doesn’t need to move fast. She just needs to get the placement right. When her body rises to bursting, she stops the stone, raises it toward her stomach, the whole length of it, until she gasps, and then she pulls it out and her body is lost to her orgasm.
She rolls to her side and pulls in her legs as if she could trap her orgasm, observe it in the folds her body can make, thighs against stomach, arms over shins. She imagines it as a glowing thing, like a small globe of honey.
Adata and the angel drop away, but she can nearly feel where Bethel would be, lying in the bed.
* * *
• • •
ONE NIGHT, while walking in the halls, Naamah hears Neela laughing. Naamah tries to open the door quietly, but Neela notices her right away.
“Naamah, Naamah, close the door,” Neela says, waving her into the room.
Naamah closes it. “What are you doing?”
“I took out a jerboa, and boy, he can jump.”
Naamah laughs and sits next to her along the wall. “Have you done this before?”
Neela nods. “When it’s hard to sleep, I walk, and one night I found this room. It gets so noisy at night with the nocturnal animals. I came in and saw the jerboas and their burrows in the sand, and at first I wanted to feel the sand. Just feel sand again. But then one came over to my hand, and it let me pick it up. I took it out and it raised its whole body off the floor, balancing on its tail, and I clapped for it. It jumped to almost the ceiling, and I clapped again, and laughed and cheered for it. It doesn’t give me any trouble about putting it back. I think it likes me.”
Naamah listens, watching the baby moving under the curve of Neela’s belly.
“I don’t think the baby is ever still for even a second anymore,” Neela says.
“I didn’t mean to stare.”
“It’s okay. It’s amazing.”
Naamah smiles.
“It’s been hurting,” Neela says.
“Are you worried?”
“No. No, it’s been hurting the way women say it hurts, low across my belly. But in waves. It doesn’t arrive and leave, like I’ve seen in women who are going to give birth.”
“Your body is practicing.”
“My mother took me to births so I would know what it’s like.”
“It’s normal,” Naamah says.
“And soon I will have them like the other women did?”
“Yes, and then it will really be time. Then the baby will come.”
“I’m so excited, Naamah.”
“Me too.”
“You’re not mad? That I’m having a baby on the ark?”
“No. We will make it work. We’re all so excited, I think.”
Then Naamah feels something land on her head.
Neela starts laughing. The jerboa moves this way and that on Naamah’s head of black hair. Neela laughs harder and harder. “Oh,” she says, “I’m going to pee myself.” She laughs harder and places her hand low on the side of her enormous belly.
“Well, just go over to that bucket and pee if you need to.”
“Right in front of you?”
“Oh, I don’t care,” Naamah says, trying to figure out how to get the jerboa off her head. She leans forward, hoping the jerboa will just jump off, but it doesn’t.
Neela pees, and she keeps laughing, watching Naamah’s efforts, so her pee stops and starts until she’s finally finished. She goes over to Naamah and lifts the jerboa off her head, and then, slowly, untangles the hair that’s gotten caught in the jerboa’s toes.
“Thank you,” Naamah says, wondering what the jerboa looks like in Neela’s hand.
“Thank you,” Neela says, still smiling, still amused.
* * *
• • •
NOAH THINKS it’s time to send out the dove. Naamah has wanted every day to send out the dove but has held her tongue, wary of her own eagerness.
“If it doesn’t return, it has found a place to build a nest,” Noah says.
“I know.”
“I know you know,” Noah says, smiling at her. “I’m nervous.”
“What’s there to be nervous about? If it comes back, we wait a week, we send it out again. The water has to go away at some point.”
“You would think,” he says.
He looks most attractive to her when he’s making small, sly jokes like these. And when they’re having sex.
* * *
• • •
THIS TIME they all go out on the deck together. They release the dove and celebrate. They cheer and dance and drink.
Noah and Naamah leave the children to continue. They go below deck, and it’s warm enough that they undress before they get into bed. Naamah curves her back into his chest, and at first it seems like they will go to sleep. But then Noah begins to move his hand up and down her side.
Naamah takes a sharp breath in and arches her neck to signal to him that she’s ready. He kisses her neck. She can hardly feel the kiss until it’s over and the air touches her skin. She arches her back next, to raise her ass to his groin, where she feels his soft hair and his erect penis. He slides his hand down below her legs and touches her everywhere he can before he lifts her leg and slides in. Noah takes his time, gaining speed.
When Naamah’s close to orgasm she says, “Get on top.”
He comes out and they change positions and she guides him in again and grabs him with her legs, her knees high on his sides. She watches his body move into hers. She doesn’t know why that action turns her on—it’s not much to see—but it does. As he gets faster, she stops watching, brings him closer and bites his shoulder. She slaps the flat of her hand on the back
of his ribs at the same speed as he moves into her, then twice the speed. She feels like she’s going to pee, but she knows she won’t. And he’s about to orgasm. And then he does. And then she does.
Even as he softens, her orgasm continues around him.
“Should I come out?”
She nods.
When he does, her orgasm comes on more strongly, but only for a moment, and then it subsides.
“I’ll pee first,” he says.
She laughs at the waves of her orgasm as they continue to come, if infrequently. Then she gets up. She kisses him on his back as he pees into a bucket. After he finishes, she pees in the bucket.
“I’ll take it out,” he says, and picks up the handle.
“Thank you,” she says, and she crawls into bed, the warmth of sex already starting to leave her.
EIGHTEEN
In the morning, Neela comes to Naamah and Noah’s room. She looks concerned.
“What is it, Neela?” Naamah asks.
“The mucus came out, this morning. And I haven’t been to bed. The pain comes on and ends with—as if it has edges.”
“Then it’s soon now.”
“What should I do?”
“Walk if you can.”
“That’s it?”
Naamah nods and smiles at her.
“Should I wake Ham?”
“If you want to.”
“Maybe not yet.”
“Okay,” Naamah says. “After breakfast, we’ll prepare everything.”
“It will be that long?”
“Yes, I think so.”
But Neela doesn’t leave.
“Do I look worried, Neela?”
Neela looks at her and shakes her head.
“Then okay then. Everything is okay.”
Neela nods. “Okay. See you at breakfast.”
“See you then,” Naamah says.
* * *
• • •
AT BREAKFAST, everyone is excited except Neela. Neela looks like she’s going to be sick. But she keeps smiling at people and telling them she’s all right. Sadie offers her food, but Neela refuses.
Adata and Naamah start to collect water. They stretch a thin cloth over the biggest basin they have, then pull up bucket after bucket of water and pour it over the cloth. The water is the cleanest they can get it. They peel off the cloth, and Naamah takes it down the ladder to the floodwater, rinses it and wrings it out. Adata fills the basin of clean water with smaller cloths.
Japheth and Shem drag clean hay up to the deck to make a soft place for Neela. Naamah never kept birth from any of her boys, so they know Neela will wreck the hay with blood and fluid. They know they’ll need to drag up fresh hay again and again. They are happy to do it.
Noah grabs the little wood stool they leave with the cows and the one they leave with the milking goats. He brings them up to the deck near the hay.
Ham and Sadie stay with Neela as the pains come more quickly. Ham has fallen silent and looks ashen, but he holds Neela’s hand firmly. Sadie encourages Neela to bounce, or to put her knees in the hay and push into one of the stools with her hands. But Neela doesn’t want to move anymore, doesn’t want to move at all.
* * *
• • •
THERE WAS A TIME when Naamah had a cough that made her feel like her only job in the world was to avoid moving, in case it made her cough again. If she hadn’t coughed for a minute, she’d freeze in place. Her breath would grow shallow. And she’d know she needed next to nothing to continue in this world, alive.
But she also knew that taking shallow breaths let the depths of her lungs grow wet. So then she’d try to breathe in, in the same way as her shallow breath, but for longer, until her chest filled up, like a rabbit that had eaten the wrong thing and was swelling with gas. It would work for a few breaths, but then one would catch and she would cough again.
She would feel the cough all around her ribs as if it could change her shape. It made her sweat, and the sweat stank. She didn’t normally smell much when she ran or worked, but this was a sick sweat—like an animal’s, but with the sharpness of an herb.
* * *
• • •
“DO YOU WANT TO LIE DOWN?” Naamah asks.
Neela looks like Naamah has granted her a wish. Ham helps her roll onto her back.
“You still have a ways to go,” Naamah says.
“Do I have to get up again?”
“No, of course not,” Naamah says.
Another contraction comes on, and Neela makes one quick sound before she’s silent with it, clenching everything in her body. Ham runs his hand up her clenched forearm to her fist. She doesn’t look at him. And then it passes and she relaxes. She takes his hand.
“I don’t want to get up,” Neela says.
“You don’t have to,” Ham says. He kisses her.
“Look,” she says, looking over his shoulder. Everyone turns to look.
The dove is perched on the railing.
“That’s got to be a good sign,” she says. “Like a blessing.”
Ham kisses her again, smiles at her.
Maybe, Naamah thinks. But even if it’s a good sign for the baby, it’s not a good sign for the world the baby’s about to be born into.
* * *
• • •
IN THE EARLY DAYS ON THE BOAT, Naamah spent a lot of time with the dogs. They liked to play fetch and other games Naamah would make up. One day, after they tired themselves out, Naamah lay down in the mess of dogs. They all panted, and as she rubbed the belly of the one near her hand, she felt a lump in the fur of its belly.
At first she thought little of it, but the next day she went back and checked the dog’s stomach again. And there the lump was. Naamah worried over it for a short time, and then she decided to trim the fur, to have a better look. As she dragged her sharp bone over the fur, the lump became more pronounced. Without hesitating, she sliced right down the middle of it. She pushed on each side of it and nothing happened. But she noticed then that the lump moved. She could have sworn it moved.
She couldn’t think what else to do but put her mouth to it. As soon as the vacuum was made, the larva came into her mouth and she spit it into her hand. She hated the feeling of its squirming in her hand so much that she grabbed the larva with the cloth of her dress instead. She had to run out of the room, telling herself she couldn’t feel it through the cloth, telling herself she’d done the right thing.
* * *
• • •
NEELA’S WATER BREAKS and it runs down, toward and over her anus. The contractions get worse. “I thought I wanted the baby to come out,” Neela says, “but now I don’t know. Maybe the baby shouldn’t come out.”
“What do you mean, Neela? It has to come out,” says Ham.
“I don’t think it does. No. Does it, Naamah?”
“I think you’ll be happier once it’s out,” Naamah tells her, trying not to laugh.
The next contraction comes, and by the face Neela makes during it, Naamah can tell: “You’re close now.”
“I’m ready,” Neela pants. “I’m ready to try another position.”
Ham helps her get up on her knees. She rests her bent arms on the stool and hangs her head over it until her forehead touches it.
“Does that feel better?” Naamah asks.
“It does. The pressure is down more. Off my back.”
“That’s good.”
“I think I should push now. It feels like I should push.”
“Okay, Neela.” Naamah looks up to Noah. “You’ll have to lift her and help her lie back once that baby starts to come out.” He nods.
Neela looks up at Noah. “Will that be okay?” She looks back at Naamah. “Will that hurt?”
Noah leans down. “Not at all, Neela.”
Another contraction comes. “Push,” Naamah says, holding her hand against the base of Neela’s vulva.
Neela makes a low, steady sound as she pushes. “Did I do it right? What should it feel like?”
“That was a good first push. Really good.”
“I don’t know how it should feel.”
“It feels like shitting,” Naamah says.
Another one comes and Neela pushes again.
“Try to relax, Neela. It’s just that one place you have to push.”
Neela’s embarrassed. “I think I might have diarrhea.”
“That’s okay. That’s normal.”
And on the next push, Neela craps into the hay beneath her. Adata quickly moves it away, pushes it off the side of the boat. Japheth puts fresh hay in its place. Sadie hands Naamah a clean, wet cloth, and Naamah wipes Neela, front to back.
“That feels good,” Neela says. “Can someone put one on my head?”
Ham rushes to grab another cloth from the water. He folds it and drags it carefully over Neela’s forehead and face.
“Just put it on my head. The whole thing,” she says.
So he unfolds it and puts it over her head. He tries not to cover her face.
“It’s fine,” she says. “It feels good.” She closes her eyes beneath it.
Another contraction comes. Neela doesn’t need direction now. She pushes as hard as she can.
“Hold back, now,” Naamah says. “That’s good.” She covers her hand in oil and holds it to Neela’s vulva again. She wants to make sure everything is soft and pliable. She holds firm against the skin that will tear if given the chance.
* * *
• • •
AS THE WEEKS passed on the boat, Naamah returned to the dogs less and less. The dogs grew more sluggish, happy only when they were leashed and led around the deck, and who could blame them. One day she noticed another lump on one of them, and this time she would not risk having to put her mouth against it.