The Red Tent

by Anita Diamant

I wish I had more to tell of my grandmothers. It is terrible how much has been forgotten, which is why, I suppose, remembering seems a holy thing.

The wheel had turned. And even though Laban retained title as head of the clan, Jacob’s time as patriarch had begun. My mothers, too, began numbering their days with the wisdom of women.

In the red tent we knew that death was the shadow of birth, the price women pay for the honor of giving life. Thus, our sorrow was measured.

After the birth of a boy, mothers rested from one moon to the next, but the birth of a birth-giver required a longer period of separation from the world of men.

So you are Dinah, my last-born. My daughter. My memory.”

When I caught her watching one of her boys walking toward another mother’s tent at nightfall, I would pull at her hand. Then she would lift me up so that our eyes could meet, and kiss me on one cheek and then on the other, and then on the tip of my nose. This always made me laugh, which would in turn always bring a warm smile to my mother’s face. One of my great secrets was knowing I had the power to make her smile.

I wanted to cry, but I realized that I was too old for that. I would be a woman soon and I would have to learn how to live with a divided heart.

It was sweet to be at the beginning of a new life.

I had a thousand questions to ask her about what it was like and

about her ceremony, and whether the world was a different place now that her place in it was different.

“In the red tent, the truth is known. In the red tent, where days pass like a gentle stream, as the gift of Innana courses through us, cleansing the body of last month’s death, preparing the body to receive the new month’s life, women give thanks—for repose and restoration, for the knowledge that life comes from between our legs, and that life costs blood.”

I could not hate Rebecca after that. Although I never saw her show such tenderness to anyone else, I could not forget the way she took that little boy’s pain into her own hands and gave comfort to him and peace to his mother.

“You are safe from that fate,” she said. “Your mother will not let them turn your maidenhood into a prize. She will not permit your blood to be anything but an offering into the womb of the great mother. You are safe in that way. “Some other unhappiness awaits you, though,” she said, peering at me intently, trying to discern my future. “Something I cannot fathom. Just as I could not foresee the end of Werenro. Perhaps your sorrow will be nothing worse than a lost baby or two, or maybe an early widowhood, for your life will be very long. But there’s no use in frightening children with the price of life.”

It seemed I had been waiting forever for womanhood, and yet I did not jump up to tell my mothers. I stayed where I was, on my haunches, hidden by branches, thinking: My childhood is over. I will wear an apron and cover my head. I will not have to carry and fetch during the new moon anymore, but will sit with the rest of the women until I am pregnant. I will idle with my mothers and my sisters in the ruddy shade of the red tent for three days and three nights, until first sight of the crescent goddess. My blood will flow into the fresh straw, filling the air with the salt smell of women. For a moment I weighed the idea of keeping my secret and remaining a girl, but the thought passed quickly. I could only be what I was. And I was a woman.

It sounds comical to me now, and if a child of mine confessed such things to me, I would laugh out loud or scold her. But on that day I was a girl who was ready for a man.

I told him of my father and my mothers and described my brothers, one by one. He was delighted by their names and learned each one, in the order of his birth, and knew which one came from the womb of which mother. I’m not sure my own father could have listed them so well.

She clapped her hands to hear me speak like a bride. “Oh, to love and be loved like this,” she sighed.

Hamor also pledged that the god of Jacob would be worshiped in his temple, and the king went so far as to call him Elohim, the one god of the many gods.

“Jacob,” I said, in a voice that echoed like thunder, “Jacob,” I hissed, in the voice of the serpent who sheds life and still lives, “Jacob,” I howled, and the moon vanished.

I would bury my husband and be buried with him. I would find his body and wrap him in linen, take the knife that had stolen his life and open my wrists with it so we could sleep together in the dust. We would pass eternity in the quiet, sad, gray world of the dead, eating dust, looking through eyes made of dust upon the false world of men.

I had no other thought. I was alone and empty. I was a grave looking to be filled with the peace of death.

She had hope of a grandchild—someone to build her tomb and redeem the waste of her life, someone to live for.

The horror was to remain unspoken, my grief sealed behind my lips. We never again spoke of our shared history, and I was bound to the emptiness of the story she told.

Why had no one told me that my body would become a battlefield, a sacrifice, a test? Why did I not know that birth is the pinnacle where women discover the courage to become mothers? But of course, there is no way to tell this or to hear it. Until you are the woman on the bricks, you have no idea how death stands in the corner, ready to play his part. Until you are the woman on the bricks, you do not know the power that rises from other women—even strangers speaking an unknown tongue, invoking the names of unfamiliar goddesses.

Death does not linger where he is defeated.

There should be a song for women to sing at this moment, or a prayer to recite. But perhaps there is none because there are no words strong enough to name that moment. Like every mother since the first mother, I was overcome and bereft, exalted and ravaged. I had crossed over from girlhood. I beheld myself as an infant in my mother’s arms, and caught a glimpse of my own

death. I wept without knowing whether I rejoiced or mourned. My mothers and their mothers were with me as I held my baby.

That was all I could say. Just as he did not tell me of the pain he suffered at school, I did not speak of how much I missed him, or how empty my heart had been, or how he had taken the light from my life when he left. I looked into his eyes, and he returned my gaze fondly. He patted my hand and lifted it to his lips. My heart beat to the twin drums of happiness and loneliness.

It was a long song, with many refrains. The story it told was unremarkable: a tale of love found and lost—the oldest story in the world. The only story.

“You are not dead.” Her voice betrayed a little sorrow. “You are not like me. Your grief shines from your heart. The flame of love is strong. Your story is not finished, Dinah,”

The painful things—Werenro’s story, Re-nefer’s choice, even my own loneliness—seemed like the knots on a beautiful necklace, necessary for keeping the beads in place. My eyes filled as I bade farewell to those days, but I felt no regret.

His huge hands cupped my body and untied secret knots created by years of loneliness and silence.

Sometimes it is easier for the poor, I thought. Even those without family live in such close quarters to their neighbors that the cries of a laboring mother bring out other women like geese responding to the call of a leader in flight. But the rich are surrounded by servants too fearful of their mistresses to act as sisters.

My son did not move from his couch or say a word, and I took my leave, brokenhearted but free.

After my return, I never fully lost my reverence for ordinary pleasures. I arose before Benia to study his face and breathed silent prayers of thanks. Walking to the water fountain or pulling weeds in the garden, I was overcome by the understanding that I had spent a whole day without the weight of the past crushing my heart. Birdsong brought me to tears, and every sunrise seemed a gift shaped for my eyes.

“We are all born of the same mother,” she said. After a lifetime, I knew that to be true.

Death is no enemy, but the foundation of gratitude, sympathy, and art. Of all life’s pleasures, only love owes no debt to death.

There is no magic to immortality.

Egypt loved the lotus because it never dies. It is the same for people who are loved. Thus can something as insignificant as a name—two syllables, one high, one sweet—summon up the innumerable smiles and tears, sighs and dreams of a human life.