Naamah

by Sarah Blake

  * * *

  • • •

  “WHAT’S HAPPENED?” Noah catches her in his arms as she runs up the last set of steps.

  “I upset the tiger.”

  “How?”

  “I showed it a painting and then it scared me, so I dropped the door and I scared her and she roared and she scared everything else.”

  “What do you mean you showed it a painting?”

  “I . . . I’ll have to show you.”

  “Okay.”

  “Right now?” Naamah asks, still shaking.

  “No. We can wait until they all settle back down.”

  “Thank you,” she says. And they sit down and wait.

  * * *

  • • •

  NOAH AND NAAMAH REMOVE the nails and take down the plank of wood together. They take the painting out and then let the tiger back into her room. They leave the painting in the hall while they clean the eating room as best they can, of blood and feathers and chicken shit, anything that might make the tiger think some new prey is nearby. Then Naamah takes Noah to the room of paintings.

  “Who brought these?”

  “Neela.”

  “Neela?”

  “Yes. She painted some of them herself.”

  Noah pulls a stretched canvas toward him, and then another, and another, looking at portraits and landscapes and scenes from the market and of people bathing—a record of the old world.

  “What is it?” Naamah asks.

  “Will He punish us for these?”

  “Why would He?”

  “People will know of things they might not have known, of a world that no longer is. That was not supposed to be.”

  “He didn’t tell us we couldn’t speak of our past.”

  “But paintings last longer than any story we might tell.” He runs his fingers over a naked figure. “They are nostalgic in a way that cannot be helped.”

  “It’s better to have them.” Naamah tries to catch his eye, but he won’t look at her. “If He doesn’t like them, He can burn them once we’re off the boat. But He won’t burn us. We’re all He’s got left.”

  * * *

  • • •

  THE WEEK CRAWLS ON AS they wait for the day they’ll release the dove again. The tiger is still a mess. Naamah wonders if she should let another tiger in with her. While pacing the narrow halls, she hears Sadie crying in her room. Naamah opens the door without knocking and rushes over to her.

  Sadie grabs onto Naamah and pushes her head into Naamah’s stomach.

  “It’s okay,” Naamah says.

  “I don’t want to die.”

  “You’re not dying.”

  “I don’t want to die ever.”

  “Okay, Sadie. It’s all right.”

  “I don’t want to! I don’t want to!” Sadie yells.

  “It’s not bad, Sadie.”

  Sadie won’t stop repeating, still mumbling, “I don’t want to! I don’t want—”

  “You keep going, Sadie. Even afterward.”

  Sadie stops at that. “Do I?”

  “Yes. Of course you do.”

  “But without my body?”

  “In a way.”

  Sadie is panting. “I like my body.”

  “Let’s go up in the sun.”

  “No!” Sadie finally looks at her. “I don’t want anyone to see me like this.” She lies back on the bed, not touching Naamah, curling away from her.

  “Has this happened before?” Naamah asks.

  Sadie nods.

  “Does Shem know?”

  She nods again.

  “What helps?”

  She shakes her head and hard sobs come for her again.

  “Should I stay?”

  Sadie doesn’t answer, so Naamah lies down next to her and holds her until she stops heaving.

  “Can I do anything?”

  “It just passes,” Sadie says.

  “Okay. I’ll stay with you.”

  * * *

  • • •

  SADIE TRIES TO TAKE a deep breath that doesn’t break on its way out. On the fourth breath, she does it. “Talk about something we’ll do later. Something tangible.”

  “Tonight we’ll have dinner together. You’ll hold the baby. I can make you something hot to drink. You can help peel a carrot. You could swim.”

  Sadie’s calming down.

  “You know, there’s a tiger who’s feeling a lot like you right now.”

  “Really?”

  “I’ve been trying to figure out how to help her, but maybe I should have been asking you all along.” Naamah laughs how she always does. “I’m thinking she might need company. Do you think I should let in another tiger to see her?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Should I let in a male or a female tiger with her?”

  Sadie can’t speak again.

  “I was thinking a male could be nice. They might have sex, and maybe that feels good for tigers, right?”

  Sadie laughs.

  “But a female—maybe they would comfort each other.”

  “She could hurt her, if she really feels like I do.”

  “Do you think so?”

  Sadie nods. “Him too.”

  “You’re right.” Naamah sits up. “Any ideas?”

  Sadie sits up, too. “Valerian root?”

  “I could try that.” She smiles at her. “Are you feeling better?”

  “Yes. It’s over.”

  “What’s it feel like?”

  “Terrible,” Sadie says, “like all of my skin is being pricked. And my vulva feels like it’s on fire.”

  “What?”

  “I know. And it’s not burning or anything. It’s just like the pinpricks are more concentrated there, so concentrated, like it can tell where it’s flesh instead of skin, and if I had time to think any other thought, I would think, What is happening to me? But I don’t have time.”

  “I’m so sorry it happens.”

  “Has it never happened to you?”

  Naamah shakes her head.

  “It doesn’t usually get that bad. I can usually think of something good, something to look forward to, and it will stop. But today it didn’t work.”

  “It’s hard to know what we’re looking forward to right now.”

  Sadie doesn’t say anything.

  “Not that I’m not looking forward to getting off the boat. I am. But I couldn’t describe what it’s going to be like.”

  “I know,” Sadie says. “We shouldn’t talk about it.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  After dinner, Naamah makes a tea for Sadie with valerian root. She pours it into a cup, and Sadie thanks her and takes it off to bed. Naamah knows that’s not strong enough for the tiger. She decides to try to make something with poppy seeds. She gets them from the cold, quiet room at the bottom of the ship. It’s less cold now that the water has receded.

  She brings out two stones, one large and flat and another in the shape of a smooth cylinder. She places the seeds on the flat stone, adds a little water, and starts to work the cylinder over the seeds. As they turn to paste she adds more water, little by little, as it holds together. But she’s worried the tiger won’t eat it.

  She puts the paste in a bucket and adds water to the paste until it breaks. She swirls her fingers through it, checking for clumps in the dark, and then she takes the bucket to the deck to leave it overnight.

  In the morning, the water has begun to evaporate. She tells everyone not to touch the bucket, that she’s making something for one of the bigger animals. She goes below deck and she removes the tiger’s water from her room—that way she might want it more when Naamah returns it to her later. And while it makes the moaning of the tiger worse that day, echoing through the boat, Naamah t
hinks it’s worth it.

  After all day in the sun, the water in the bucket is gone. The residue is thin along the wood, and Naamah scrapes it off with a spoon, not with her bone, so that none of the bucket comes with it. She hopes the tiger won’t notice the flakes in her water. Why would she?

  * * *

  • • •

  NAAMAH DOESN’T WANT TO give the tiger too much, but too little would be a wasted effort. She can’t stand the thought of trying yet another thing and still being left with a tiger clawing and dissatisfied. And haven’t they been accommodating? Couldn’t they have made the animals’ rooms smaller, more cagelike? Made them live on grates so their shit fell through and they’d never have to be moved at all? Let all their muscles atrophy? She thinks, Haven’t we been the miraculous people we were chosen to be?

  So maybe Naamah overdoes it with the flakes in the tiger’s water. Maybe she does. And maybe it’s only that it’s been another long day after so many long days in Naamah’s life. But next she hears the tiger’s body fall down with a soft thud, as if from buckled knees, and soon Naamah can’t hear her breathing.

  She rushes back to the seeds. This time she grabs the ephedra seeds and gets to work on a paste. When she’s finished, she takes the paste and a bowl of water, goes to the tiger’s room, and opens the door. It’s the first time she has opened a door with such a large predator behind it, and she is scared.

  As Naamah moves into the room, shuffling her feet, it crosses her mind that perhaps she should let the tiger die. Enough of the other animals have died for one reason or another. And the other tigers are doing well. In fact, she decides, she should leave. Of course she should leave. That’s when she feels her toes in the tiger’s fur.

  She places the bowls on the floor and finds the tiger’s head with her hands. Then she moves the bowls closer. She opens the tiger’s mouth and puts the paste down her throat. Then she pulls the tiger’s head onto her lap and pours water into her mouth. And then, blind to everything that matters in the room, with the tiger’s head heavy on her bent legs, she thinks she’s killed the tiger. She strokes her under her chin.

  “I’m sorry,” she says.

  But the tiger snaps awake, curls its body, and springs to its feet, clattering the bowls and splashing water. Naamah jumps up, acting on instinct, and runs for the door. She tries to slam the door behind her, but it doesn’t slam. It hits the tiger’s body. Usually Naamah would take pleasure in that kind of sound, new, singular to a door hitting a tiger, this tiger. But she is focused only on running away, on making it to a door she can barricade.

  The tiger reaches her first, tackles her to the ground. Naamah is thrown face-first onto the floor, the tiger’s breath on the back of her head. She uses all the courage left in her to roll over. She wants, at least, to face the tiger when she dies.

  The tiger’s head flashes into her vision and out again. In and out. Never staying. It looks the way the angel looked during sex that day. And then Naamah realizes it: that was a warning, a premonition; the angel is only the angel. Naamah begins to cry. Why did she cling to one reading of the vision? How arrogant she is. And now the angel scorned, and herself brokenhearted. She thinks, How absurd I am to exist at all.

  The tiger places a paw on her head, turns it until Naamah’s cheek is on the wood. Naamah feels the animal’s claws dig into her skin, one behind her ear where there’s no hair, two in her hair above her ear, and one in her cheek, which cuts deepest, with no bone below to stop it. Then the tiger roars so loudly that, even though Naamah’s ears are covered, she feels the sound through her head, feels it shake the roof of her mouth. Other tigers start to paw at their doors and walls.

  “I’m sorry,” Naamah yells.

  At this, the tiger seems to stop.

  “Look around! You’re out now. There’s nowhere to go. When there’s somewhere to go, I will let you go. I’m trying to get you there.” Naamah stops yelling. “That’s what I’m trying to do.”

  The tiger makes her long, low sound, as if she’s trying to throw her voice across a desert. She takes her paw off Naamah’s head, and Naamah turns to face her again, even if she can’t see her. The blood from the cut on Naamah’s cheek runs down to her ear. She hears the tiger’s body shifting above her, shifting her weight so she might raise a paw and strike Naamah.

  Right then the tiger comes into perfect focus, as if Naamah has been able to see her all along.

  The sight of the tiger makes Naamah so happy that she wants to grab her, pull on her fur, scream. The tiger hisses, and Naamah sees the wrinkling above her nose to the inner corners of her eyes, her whiskered face rising over teeth until her cheeks are as perfectly round as a child’s. Naamah likes infantilizing her this way, to make her less terrifying.

  Naamah covers her neck with her arms, knowing the tiger will go for that first, and she hisses back at the tiger. But it doesn’t make her feel powerful. If anything, the sound, sparked from the back of her throat, emphasizes her hopeless body.

  But then, in an instant, the tiger flies into the ceiling above her, whimpering as her back hits the beams. Then the tiger flies backward, toward its door. Then she’s dropped. As if she gets the message, she goes back into her room.

  Naamah sits up, and the little blood that made it to her ear runs to the bottom of it, the thinnest red coating, like a glaze on a cake.

  When she looks up, she sees the angel coming through the wall, rushing toward her. Out of the water, she emits that exceptional light again.

  “Are you all right?” the angel asks.

  Naamah nods.

  The angel looks only into her eyes, as if she might see, through them, any other injury.

  “Thank you,” Naamah says. The angel kisses her, but Naamah doesn’t kiss back—her fear of the tiger hasn’t left her completely. She says, “We should close the door.”

  “The tiger won’t be a problem again.”

  Naamah keeps her eyes on the doorway.

  The angel says, “I promise.”

  “What was wrong with her?”

  “She hates the boat.”

  “She doesn’t care that I hate the boat, too?”

  “No.”

  “Would she have killed me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Eaten me?”

  “Probably not. I think she was planning to make an example of you—tear off all your limbs and leave your headless torso at the bottom of the stairs.”

  “Okay, okay, that’s enough detail.” Naamah laughs and takes her eyes off the doorway, finally looks at the angel. “Wait, what was she going to do with my head?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “And God would not have stopped her?”

  “No.”

  “Did He think about stopping her?”

  “No.”

  “If He had thought about it, do you think He would have stopped her?”

  “I did.”

  “No, I know that.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way. I don’t need recognition. I mean, when I thought about it, I thought to stop her.”

  “How did you know it was happening?”

  “I could feel you both.”

  “What have you done to her?” Naamah asks.

  “I’m distracting her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s like I’m giving her a dream.”

  “What’s the dream?”

  “That she’s in the jungle. That she’s crossing streams. That she is happy.”

  Naamah shakes her head. “She won’t be happy to come back here, after a dream like that.”

  “In the dream, she’ll be called by God to the ark, and she’ll come. She won’t remember the months she’s already been here. And she’ll be thick with His message for long enough.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “She really sca
red you, didn’t she?”

  “My heart is still racing.”

  The angel reaches out her hand. “Do you want me to slow it down?”

  “No. It’s all right,” Naamah says. “Is the water shallow?”

  “Much more shallow. Not where we are, but on my way to you.”

  “You are all okay?”

  “We are.”

  “And you will stay there?”

  “I think I will,” the angel says. “And I want you to come back with me.”

  “When?” Naamah asks.

  “Now.”

  “I can’t come now. Maybe in a few years. Could I come then?”

  “You could still come,” the angel says. “But I can’t know what will change between now and then. Neither can you.”

  “Would you still love me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t you experience time differently? Wouldn’t it all pass more quickly for you?”

  “Yes, but I experience your rejection again and again, don’t I?”

  “And you are so sensitive?”

  “I am. If that is the word you choose.”

  “But can’t you understand my commitment to this? My children and grandchildren?”

  “I understand it. I have turned my back on commitments myself.”

  “If I come with you now, I will not be able to love you. I will worry over what I have left. I will hold it against you.”

  The angel is quiet, but Naamah is getting worked up, taking quick breaths and lurching forward as if she could convince the angel, with only the slant and forcefulness of her body, that the angel wants something different from what she’s already made clear.

  The angel says, “I could give you anything you want. I could take anything you want away from you.”