by Sarah Blake
“Do you want me to paint Jael, too?” Neela asks.
“Whatever you want,” Naamah says.
Every evening Neela insists that Naamah returns home before she returns with the painting. After Naamah passes her, she turns the painting from the direction of the tents.
“I won’t look,” Naamah says, raising her hands in the air.
“Let me have my fun, won’t you?” And Neela smiles.
* * *
• • •
AT LAST SADIE IS PREGNANT. With her pregnancy, her great joy returns. Neela is done with her painting, but she hides it away so that Sadie can be the center of attention for a few days.
In secret, Naamah weaves a giant wreath together from branches she’s collected. She asks everyone to pick wildflowers and bring them to her tent. She has them each tuck the long stems into the frame of the wreath.
Early one morning, after Sadie goes to wash in the river, Naamah and Shem carry the wreath into their tent.
“Do you think she’ll like it?” Naamah asks.
“She’s going to love it,” Shem says. “It’s great, Mom.”
Naamah puts her arm around him. “I’m so excited for you.”
“Me too,” he says.
“Do you like it here?”
“I do,” he says.
She smiles as she steps away from him. “I better go before she comes back.”
“You don’t want to be here when she sees it?”
She shakes her head and walks out into the sunlight. The day has come on strong and hot.
* * *
• • •
WHEN NEELA DOES REVEAL HER painting, the family applauds. It looks just like Naamah. It reminds Naamah she is, in and of her body, a forgettable woman. Beautiful, but forgettable. And though that is a feeling she often yearns for, to be confronted with it like this makes her feel like she might die. She wonders if God guided Neela’s hand to capture her this way. She wonders if she might turn around and see the Metatron there, smirking, as much as a vulture can smirk.
* * *
• • •
THE NEXT MORNING JAEL IS GONE. At first she thinks he might be with someone else, but then she puts her fingers through her hair and feels a spot on her scalp that stings—a small scratch like when they first met. She remembers what he said in their last dream, that he would leave when she was well, and she thinks, Is this well?
She finds Japheth scraping a hide clean.
“When are you leaving again?” she asks.
“Soon.”
“I bet you’d like to follow Jael wherever he is right now, the way he followed you.”
He stops working on the hide. “Jael left?”
She nods.
He returns to her question. “Wouldn’t anyone?” he says.
“I don’t think so. I think most of us like the home we’re making here.”
“The world is nearly empty right now. It will never be that way again. I think I have to see it.”
“And what about being a father?”
“I can do that, too.”
“Okay,” she says.
“You don’t think I can.”
“I do. If you say you can, then you can.” But she wonders if Japheth will feel the same way about exploring the world after he holds his child. And as the child gets older, when the child is so in love with Adata, and they seem to delight in each other and their home—won’t he want to be a part of that?
Or maybe he will always be outside of it. Maybe he has inherited that part of Naamah and will build it out to an extreme. Maybe the wonders of the world will be enough. Maybe he will stand behind a waterfall or at the edge of a canyon and his laugh will be so loud and true that the world will split in two at his mirth and that will make even more places for him to explore.
* * *
• • •
NEXT SHE FINDS Noah collecting eggs from the hens.
“Jael is gone,” she says.
He stops. “I’m sorry, Naamah. I know you love him.”
She reaches her hand into a nest and finds two warm eggs. She places them into his basket. “I do,” she says.
He lowers his head next to her and kisses her cheek.
She takes a big breath and keeps her head straight. She knows if she looks at him she’ll cry, and he knows it, too.
He goes back to the hens.
“I’ll be at the river, then,” she says, and she walks off as if someone might scold her for being late.
* * *
• • •
SHE SITS WITH HER FEET in the pool of the hot spring. She reaches to touch the white crust that’s beginning to cover the rocks beside it, where the water rushes over and evaporates off, leaving its minerals behind. How thick the crust must have been before the flood. And how fully it might return. And how did the geyser understand the flood? And how did the geyser understand the dead? And how does the geyser understand Naamah?
She steps back out of the pool, takes her sharpened bone, and chips away at the crust on the rocks, hacks away at it. Enough to leave a deep mark and change its shape. Enough that she’s covered in sweat. And she promises herself that she’ll return and do it over and over again.
If she is the bearer of this new world, then let everything be touched by her hand.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My partner, my Noah, made me feel this book was possible every time it felt impossible. He is my first reader and one of my two great loves. My other great love is our son, who inspires me every day, who pushes me to be kind and silly above all else.
Eleanor Stanford and Rachel Mennies read the book as I wrote it and helped me see the kind of book it could be. Catie Rosemurgy, Linda Gallant Moore, and Lynne Beckenstein cheered me on every step of the way. I could not have written it without them.
I also have to thank these amazing people: Sandy and Bob Schoenholtz, Rosser Lomax, Natalie Shapero, Sarah Einstein, Stephanie King, Denise Grollmus, Nicky Arscott, Dawn Lonsinger, Tracey Levine, Mariel Capanna, Stephanie Feldman, Nadine Darling, Cecily Wong, Vicki Lame, Cathy Day, and Ayşe Altinok. They supported me in too many different ways to list.
And thank you to my family: Mom (who reads everything I write), Dad, Nick, Vic, Bian, and Kiet. I’m nothing without all of you.
My agent, Sarah Yake, understood instantly how this book could exist outside of me. Her belief and encouragement meant and continues to mean the world to me.
My editor, Cal Morgan, made me admit to myself that this book will be read, and the next draft soared into a version I never could have imagined.
And I never imagined that I could even ask for this type of support and vision for my work. I am eternally grateful to Sarah, Cal, the team at Riverhead Books (including Geoffrey Kloske, Jynne Dilling Martin, Kate Stark, Carla Bruce-Eddings, Michelle Koufopoulos, and Liza Sweeney), and the teams abroad.
Thank you to everyone who brings Naamah to the world.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sarah Blake is the recipient of a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her writing has appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Threepenny Review, Slice, and elsewhere.
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