The Red Tent

by Anita Diamant

The chain connecting mother to daughter was broken and the word passed to the keeping of men, who had no way of knowing. That is why I became a footnote, my story a brief detour between the well-known history of my father, Jacob, and the celebrated chronicle of Joseph, my brother. On those rare occasions when I was remembered, it was as a victim. Near the beginning of your holy book, there is a passage that seems to say I was raped and continues with the bloody tale of how my honor was avenged.

The more a daughter knows the details of her mother’s life—without flinching or whining—the stronger the daughter.

had four mothers, each of them scolding, teaching, and cherishing something different about me, giving me different gifts, cursing me with different fears. Leah gave me birth and her splendid arrogance. Rachel showed me where to place the midwife’s bricks and how to fix my hair. Zilpah made me think. Bilhah listened. No two of my mothers seasoned her stew the same way.

Daughters eased their mothers’ burdens

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

She was full of joy and anticipation, lazing in the tent for the three days, collecting the precious fluid in a bronze bowl—for the first-moon blood of a virgin was a powerful libation for the garden.

The thought of another pregnancy filled her with dread, and so she took to drinking fennel to keep Jacob’s seed from taking root again.

Fennel as birth control or as morning-after pill. Botanical name: Cyrenian silphium. Went extinct in the Roman times (over harvesting?). The fennel we know and use today is Foeniculum vulgare)

Leah tried an old remedy—soaking a lock of wool in old olive oil and placing it at the mouth of her womb before lying with Jacob.

Years later when I saw pearls for the first time, I thought of Judah’s teeth.

“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.”

At this, Joseph pulled a skeptical face and half-whispered to Reuben, “If my brother is so concerned about the shape of our brother-in-law’s penis, let our father demand his foreskin for a bride-price. Indeed, let all the men of Shechem become like us. Let them pile up their membranes as high as my father’s tent pole, so that their sons and ours will piss the same, and rut the same, and none will be able to tell us apart. And thus will the tribe of Jacob grow not merely in generations to come, but even tomorrow.

Hahaha

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.

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.

My mothers and their mothers were with me as I held my baby.

“The midwife’s life is not easy, but that is no reason for it to be unlovely,”

birthwort and an extraction of hemp, both of which sometimes cause the womb to expel its contents early in pregnancy. I did not know if they would work, and worried that the combination might cause damage, but I knew there was nothing else to be tried, for she was dying. The baby was already dead, but there was no reason to give up on the mother.

“Fear not, the time is coming Fear not, your bones are strong Fear not, help is nearby Fear not, Gula is near Fear not, the baby is at the door Fear not, he will live to bring you honor Fear not, the hands of the midwife are clever Fear not, the earth is beneath you Fear not, we have water and salt Fear not, little mother Fear not, mother of us all”

She stirred, and I could see that even though she was nearing death, Meryt was trying to comfort me. That would not do. I looked into her eyes and managed a midwife’s smile. I knew my task. “Fear not,” I whispered, “the time is coming. “Fear not, your bones are strong. “Fear not, good friend, help is nearby. “Fear not, Anubis is a gentle companion. “Fear not, the hands of the midwife are clever. “Fear not, the earth is beneath you. “Fear not, little mother. “Fear not, mother of us all.”

Indeed, I was treated as the oldest female relative and given the honor of washing her withered arms and legs. I swaddled her in Egypt’s finest linen, which was mine to give. I arranged her limbs in the crouch of a baby about to enter the world and sat with her through the night.

Midwife posed in death in the way that newborn babies come into the world

With Meryt gone, I was the wise woman, the mother, grandmother, and even great-grandmother of those around me.

Of all life’s pleasures, only love owes no debt to death.

In Egypt, I loved the perfume of the lotus. A flower would bloom in the pool at dawn, filling the entire garden with a blue musk so powerful it seemed that even the fish and ducks would swoon. By night, the flower might wither but the perfume lasted. Fainter and fainter, but never quite gone. Even many days later, the lotus remained in the garden. Months would pass and a bee would alight near the spot where the lotus had blossomed, and its essence was released again, momentary but undeniable. 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.

If you sit on the bank of a river, you see only a small part of its surface. And yet, the water before your eyes is proof of unknowable depths. My heart brims with thanks for the kindness you have shown me by sitting on the bank of this river, by visiting the echoes of my name. Blessings on your eyes and on your children. Blessings on the ground beneath you. Wherever you walk, I go with you. Selah.

Beautiful ending!!