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It was my first thought of Leah in more than a month. My mother did not know I was pregnant. My aunts did not even know that I was alive. I shuddered with loneliness.
In contrast to her upbringing
The bloody dreams about Shalem were replaced by a joyful dream of his son, whom I called Bar-Shalem.
Growth and hope
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?
They put fruit juice in my mouth, and wiped me down with sweetly scented towels. Meryt massaged my legs. Re-nefer’s eyes shone with tears.
Her mothers are present through these women
The shadowy dog’s head of death moved forward, but then the baby coughed and with an angry cry banished all doubts. The dark corner brightened. Death does not linger where he is defeated. The voices of four women echoed around me, chattering, laughing, loud. I fell back on the pallet, and knew nothing more.
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.
My mothers and their mothers were with me as I held my baby.
I would have stayed forever within the garden of Re-mose’s childhood, but time is a mother’s enemy. My baby was gone before I knew it, and then the hand-holding toddler was replaced by a running boy.
“The midwife’s life is not easy, but that is no reason for it to be unlovely,”
Thus Meryt became famous for “her” exotic herbal cures, and I had the satisfaction of knowing that my mothers’ wisdom was being put to good use.
The bloody, unwashed, squalling baby was passed from hand to hand, kissed and blessed by every woman there.
The little one arrived in a torrent of blood that would not cease. No amount of packing stanched the flow, and within moments of her son’s birth, Hatnuf died, her head on her mother’s lap. The scene in the room was terrible: the mother dead, one baby dead, a scrawny newborn wailing for the breast that would never feed him. Ruddedit sat, bereaved of her only daughter, a grandmother for the first time.
He was merely being polite. He was a prince of Egypt addressing the serving woman who had given him birth. It was just as I feared: we were strangers, and our lives would never permit us to become more than that.
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.
The story it told was unremarkable: a tale of love found and lost—the oldest story in the world. The only story.
As the song began, the man returned the girl’s love, and they delighted in each other. But then the tale took a sorry turn and the lover spurned his lady, leaving her alone. She wept and prayed to the Golden Lady Hathor, but to no avail. The beloved would not take her back. The girl’s sorrow was endless and unbearable. The women wept openly, each remembering her youth. The men wiped their eyes, unashamed, recalling their earliest passion. Even the young ones sighed, feeling the pangs of losses yet to come.
“Perhaps you are, for the living do not ask such questions, nor could they bear the pain of truth without the consolation of music. The dead understand.
“Perhaps she was atoning for some wrong she had done. Or perhaps she had once been abandoned and someone helped her escape. Or maybe no one had helped her when she was in need. She asked me nothing, not even my name. She saved me for no reason other than the goodness of her heart.
“You are not like me. Your grief shines from your heart. The flame of love is strong. Your story is not finished, Dinah,”
I could not see myself living like other women. Despite Werenro’s words, I was sure that Re-mose would tell the next and final chapters of my story.
I filled the box with gifts from my mothers, but covered its gleaming beauty with an old papyrus mat so that it would not remind me of Benia, whom I resigned to the corner of my heart, with other dreams that had died.
“Pervert,” I roared, in the language of my mothers. “Foul son of a maggot, may you and others like you wither like wheat in the desert. This was an unloved girl who lies here dead. The stench of her unhappiness clings to her. For this, you will die in agony.”
On the journey back, I watched the shoreline pass and remembered Inna’s prophecy that I would find my heart’s desire by the banks of a river.
In the days after Re-nefer’s death, I cursed her as much as I wept for her. She had been my savior and my jailer. She had given me Shalem and then stolen his memory. Finally, I did not know the woman at all. I had seen little of her since Re-mose had gone to school and had no idea how she kept busy all those years; if she spun or wove, if she slept the days away, if she wept at night for her son and her husband. If she hated me or pitied me or loved me.
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.
Chapters of life
Lying together was a tender surprise. From our very first night, Benia took great care of my pleasure and seemed to discover his own in mine. My shyness vanished in the course of that night, and as the weeks passed, I found wells of desire and passion that I had never suspected in myself. When Benia lay with me, the past vanished and I was a new soul, reborn in the taste of his mouth, the touch of his fingers. His huge hands cupped my body and untied secret knots created by years of loneliness and silence.
“I have kept myself alive for years on borrowed bread and fruit and the occasional feast at the house of my fellows and family. I did not marry you to be my cook.”
There was such sweetness in deciding where to place a chair, and in choosing what to plant in the garden. I relished creating my own order and hummed whenever I swept the floor or folded blankets.
My house was a world of my own possession, a country in which I was ruler and citizen, where I chose and where I served.
“Until the day I saw you in the marketplace, I did not bother to hope for anything. When I first recognized you as my beloved, my heart came to life,”
The days passed peacefully, and the fact that there was little to mark one from the next seemed a great gift to me. I had Benia’s hands, Meryt’s friendship, the feel of newborn flesh, the smiles of new mothers, a little girl who laughed in my kitchen, a house of my own.
He embraced me, and for a moment I regained the loving boy who had been my son.
I smiled at my own brazenness, shaming my powerful son for his rudeness, insisting on my farewells. Where was the meek woman who lived in Nakht-re’s house all those years?
Growth
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.
She pushed for long hours, supported by women who became her sisters, at least for that day.
“I doubt that my son will listen to my words,” I said sadly. “He hates me, for I am the cause of his unhappiness.” “Nonsense,” said Joseph, with the supreme self-confidence that made our brothers so jealous. “The men of Egypt honor their mothers like no other men in the world.”
“Re-mose, your father was called Shalem, and he was as beautiful as the sunset for which he was named. We chose each other in love. The name I gave you at my breast was Bar-Shalem, son of the sunset, and your father lived in you.
“I am so honored to be the vessel into which you pour this story of pain and strength. For all these years, no daughter could have made me happier or more proud than you. Now that I know who you are and what life has cost you, I am in awe that I number you among my beloved.”
Only at the dark of the new moon was I visited by the mother of my flesh. It was the first time my body failed to give the moon her due. I was past giving life, and my mother, who had borne so many children, came to comfort me.
“Ahatti, this is your last chance to see the fruits of your mothers’ wombs, their grandsons and granddaughters. For those are not only the children of Jacob; they are also the children of Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah.
“You are the only aunt of their mothers’ blood, and our mothers would wish for you to see their grandaughters. After all, you are the only daughter, the one they loved.”
“When I was a child, I was told that I would only find contentment beside a river,” I told him. “But it was a false prophecy. The water soothes my heart and settles my thoughts, and it is true that I feel at home by the water, but I found my joy in dry hills, where the fountain is distant and the dust is thick.”
I was fixed to the earth, trembling, furious that not one of them knew me. But I was relieved, too.
“He said nothing of you. Dinah is forgotten in the house of Jacob.”
Gera went on, teaching me the story of my brothers and their wives, pointing out their children, reciting the names of nieces and nephews, flesh of my flesh, with whom I would never exchange a word.
“The king brought Jacob a handsome bride-price with his own hands, but it wasn’t enough for Simon and Levi. They claimed that their sister had been kidnapped and raped, and that the family honor was demeaned. They put up such a noise that the king, bowing to his son’s great passion for Leah’s daughter, doubled the bride-price. “Still my uncles were not satisfied. They claimed it was a plot of the Canaanites to take what was Jacob’s and make it Hamor’s. So Levi and Simon tried to undo the marriage by demanding that the Shechemites give up their foreskins and become Jacobites. “Now comes the
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“Is her name remembered?” I asked softly. “Dinah,” she said. “I like the sound of it, don’t you? Someday, if I am delivered of a daughter, I will call her Dinah.”
Gera had given me peace. The story of Dinah was too terrible to be forgotten. As long as the memory of Jacob lived, my name would be remembered. The past had done its worst to me, and I had nothing to fear of the future. I left the house of Jacob better comforted than Joseph.
He held out a fist to me. “It was our mother’s,” he said, struggling to speak. “When she died, she called me to her and said to give this to her daughter. I thought she was out of her mind,” said Judah. “But she foresaw our meeting. Our mother never forgot you, and although Jacob forbade it, she spoke of you every day until she died.
“Take this from our mother, Leah. And may you know peace,” he said, pressing something in my hand before walking away, his head hung low. I looked down to see Rachel’s lapis ring, Jacob’s first gift to her.
