The Red Tent

by Anita Diamant

Leah: sturdy, big sister, capable, eyes, Dinah's daughter Zilpah: Secret keeper of the red tent, not interested in men (saw them for children), likes gods and goddesses Rachel: Beautiful, moon, enchanting, "water", "fertile", spoiled Bilhah: Family orphan, climbed trees, lonely, quiet, black, daughter of a slave

But the other reason women wanted daughters was to keep their memories alive.

Rachel asked me to do what I wanted more than anything in life. So even as I argued, I agreed.”

When Jacob cried out in his final pleasure, she was flooded by a sense of her own power.

The baby healed quickly, as did Leah during her first month as a new mother inside the shelter of the red tent. She was pampered by her sisters, who barely let her feet touch the earth. Jacob came by every day, carrying freshly dressed birds for her meals. Through the hairy wall of the tent they relayed the news of their days with a tenderness that warmed those who overheard them.

Adah beamed that whole month and saw her daughter step out of the red tent restored and rested.

She greeted the acolyte and taught her how to manage the flow of blood, how to rejoice in the

dark of the moon, how to join her body’s cycle with the repetition of life.

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.

“Let me go to Jacob on your behalf,” said Bilhah, in a whisper. “Let me bear a son on your knees. Let me be your womb and your breasts. Let me bleed your blood and shed your tears. Let me become your vessel until your time comes, for your time will yet arrive. Let me be your hope, Rachel. I will not disappoint you.”

Attending her sister’s births made her wish to become part of the great mother-mystery, which is bought with pain and repaid

with an infant’s sparkling smile and silken skin.

She dreamed of giving birth to a daughter, not a human child but a changeling of some kind, a spirit woman. Full-grown, full-breasted. She wore nothing but a girdle of string, in front and in back. She strode the earth in great steps, and her moon blood made trees grow everywhere she walked.

No man knew what happened that night. No child blurted the secret, because none of the women ever spoke of it, not a word, until Zilpah told me the story. By then it was nothing but an echo from the grave.

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. “The second month was such a delight,” my mother told me. “My sisters treated us both like queens. You were never left lying upon a blanket for a moment. There were always arms to hold you, cuddle you, embrace you. We oiled your skin morning and night. We sang songs into your ears, but we did not coo or babble. We spoke to you with all our words, as though you were a grown sister and not a baby girl. And before you were a year old, you answered us without a trace of a baby’s lisp.”

“Better to put your trust in my hands and Jacob’s than in stories made out of wind and fear.”

The sisters sat in silence, considering Rachel’s bold idea. Finally Rachel spoke. “I will take the teraphim and they will be a source of power for us. They will be a sign of our birthright. Our father will suffer as he has made others suffer. I will not speak of this again.”

Synbol of their united feminine strength

I was frightened to hear Leah, the wisest of women, wondering if these powerful friends might be nothing but stories told to calm the nightmares of children.

Function of gods and goddess'--also who led the spirituality of the group

Rachel’s voice saying, “Remember this moment, when your mother’s body heals every trouble of your soul.”

Leah

For the first time, the red tent became a sad place, and I sat outside until I was tired enough to sleep.

The presence of the men presented a more subtle difficulty, as well. The tents were Leah’s domain, and although she was the one who knew what needed to be done, she would not give orders with her husband by her side. So she stood behind Jacob and softly asked, “Is my husband ready to dismantle the big loom and lay it into the cart?” and he would direct his sons to do what was needed.

My home had been dismantled. We were going.

“A woman alone is a danger,” he screamed into the faces of Inna’s neighbors. “Where are your judges?” he hissed. “Who are your elders?”

Jacob smiled at Bilhah as though she were his child. She was the only one he touched, running his hand over her soft black hair whenever he passed. It was an act of familiarity that seemed to express his fondness, but also proved her powerlessness as the least of his wives. Bilhah said nothing, but blushed deeply at these caresses.

“I sit upon them. The teraphim of our family now bathe in my monthly blood, by which your household gods are polluted beyond redemption. You can have them if you wish,” Rachel continued calmly, as though she were speaking of trifling things. “I will dig them out and even wipe them off for you if you like, father. But their magic has been turned against you. You are without their protection from this time forward.”

It was the first time I had heard the distinctions between my brothers, or my aunties, made so clear or public. I saw the sons of the lesser wives whom the world called “handmaids,” and I saw how their heads dropped to be so named.

They were not much older than I, but they ignored me because I still wore a child’s dress, and they were women.

Their song was unlike anything I’d ever heard, and the hair on the back of my neck stood on end, as though Joseph were tickling me with a stalk of grass. But when I turned to rebuke him, I saw that he sat by our father’s side, his eyes shining and fixed upon the singers. They sang the words in unison, yet somehow created a web of sound with their voices. It was like hearing a piece of fabric woven with all the colors of a rainbow. I did not know that such beauty could be formed by the human mouth. I had never heard harmony before.

I closed my eyes. The women sang like birds, only more sweetly. They sounded like the wind in the trees, but louder. Their voices were like the rush of the river’s water, but with meaning. Then their words ceased and they began to sing with sound that meant nothing at all, yet gave new voice to joy, to pleasure, to longing, to peace. “Lu, lu, lu,” they sang.

But when I saw the belt that declared her a woman, my mouth dropped. She had entered the red tent! She was no longer a child but a woman. I felt my cheeks grow warm with envy as hers grew pink with pride. 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.

“The great mother whom we call Innana gave a gift to woman that is not known among men, and this is the secret of blood. The flow at the dark of the moon, the healing blood of the moon’s birth—to men, this is flux and distemper, bother and pain. They imagine we suffer and consider themselves lucky. We do not disabuse them.

“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.”

What the red tent is What it means to become a woman

Even so, I could not stop thinking about the mystery of men and women.

Zebulun’s wife, Ahavah, danced with her pregnant belly to the clapping of hands. I laughed until my sides ached. I smiled until my face hurt. It was good to be a woman!

Men knew nothing of the red tent or its ceremonies and sacrifices. Jacob was not pleased to learn of them. His wives fulfilled their obligations to him and to his god; he had no quarrels with them or their goddesses.

My mother was as surprised as her husband and pressed Jacob for news of her daughter. “The prince of Shechem has claimed her. His father comes to pay the full bride-price of a virgin. And so I assume that she was until she went within the walls of that dung heap of a city.” Jacob was bitter. “She is of Shechem now, I suppose, and of no use to me.”

The importance of virginity and that of having a daughter (bride price is one that is benefited by men)

I wonder if she thought of me at all then, if she suffered over whether I had consented or cried out, if her heart reached out to discover whether I wept or rejoiced. But her words spoke only of the loss of a daughter, gone to the city where she would reside with foreign women, learn their ways, and forget her mother.

A mothers role in these times

But Shalem pressed his father to return as soon as possible. “I love the girl,” he said. Hamor grinned. “Fear not. The girl is yours. No father would want her back as she is now. Go back to your wife, and let me worry about the father.”

“He is good to you, yes?” Bilhah asked, giving me the chance to praise my Shalem. I found myself bursting to tell someone the details of my happiness, and I spilled everything into Bilhah’s willing ear. She clapped her hands to hear me speak like a bride. “Oh, to love and be loved like this,” she sighed.

“The uncircumcised dog rapes my sister every day,” Simon thundered. “Am I to permit this desecration of our only sister, my own mother’s daughter?”

Male egos getting in the way of dina's life and happiness

Hamor replied, his earlier warmth for the man blasted by the insulting lack of hospitality. “My son loves the girl,” the king said. “He will do anything for her, and I will do what my son wishes. Name your terms, Jacob.

Man that listens to his son

But Shalem stepped forward and put his hand on his father’s arm. “I agree to the demands,” he said to Jacob’s face. “Here and now, if you like. I will honor the custom of my wife’s family, and I will order my slaves and their sons to follow me. I know my father speaks out of fear for me and in loyalty to his men, who would suffer. But for me, there is no question. I hear and obey.”

Love

“Do you not find the male member more attractive without its hood?”

Lol

“You have lied and connived, and your sons have murdered righteous men, striking them down in weakness of your own invention. You have despoiled the bodies of the dead and plundered their burying places, so their shadows will haunt you forever. You and your sons have raised up a generation of widows and orphans who will never forgive you.

“You are unclean and you are cursed,” I said, spitting into the face of the man who had been my father. Then I turned my back upon him, and he was dead to me.

The silence was absolute and solid as a wall when I turned away from them. Barefoot, wearing nothing but a shift, I walked away from my brothers and my father and everything that had been home. I walked away from love as well, never again to see my reflection in my mothers’ eyes. But I could not live among them.

I came to dread the sunset the way some men dread death.

Dreams can be a place of processing traumas

She said nothing of Canaan, nor of her husband, nor of the babies she bore him. She did not speak the name of Hamor even once, and it was as though Shalem had never been born, nor loved me, nor bled to death in my arms.

As his arms encircled her, Re-nefer began to weep—not tears of relief and happiness from a woman glad to be reunited with her family, but the raw sobs of a mother whose child had been murdered in his bed.