Eve (28 page)

The sun would be at its highest point soon. Naava stood at the bottom of the goddess’s steps, waiting for Cain. She pushed aside thoughts of the linen girl and closed her eyes and twirled slowly, steeping herself in this intoxicating new world. Did she love the city because it was fantastically new or because she was certain that her mother and father would not have approved? Of course, they would have disagreed with the pantheon of gods and the strange brick mountain where the people worshipped them, but the astonishing array of goods—how could they not want these wonderful things for their children? It was as Cain had said. They lived in the past, in their dreams. They were stuck in the Garden with Elohim.

“You like, no?” said a voice behind her.

Naava turned, surprised to hear words she comprehended.

It was the prince, and he was alone.

It was hard not to blame Adam for the loss of our baby. In truth he
did nothing to cause it, but I was irritated at his seeing the bear situation differently than I did and his insistence that he alone understood what had happened.

It would be the sad truth that I dove into blaming others—besides Adam, my dear husband—and pushed them away from me. I know this now, and I regret doing so, though at the time I did not know any other path.

Cain was one of them. As a boy, he grew in stature and knowledge, and with his blossoming came the revelation of his true character. He was like kindling perched above a tiny flame, waiting for one spark to set him off. And when he roared to life, he refused to stay within the confines of the pit. His fire consumed the entire forest.

He was more manageable when he was young. Back then, when he became that way, I would take him aside and sit with him, tell him a Garden story, or wipe his brow to calm him. Once we were here, on these plains, Adam would take him into the fields with him and set him to the hard physical work of turning over the ground with a wood hoe or digging holes for the seeds with a stick. This served to tire him out, for which we reaped the benefits in the evening.

I bore no other child who caused as much heartache as Cain. There was
no end to his striving. Then again, he sought it out despite our best efforts to quell the fire within him.

There were times I found it difficult to love him.

Cain was not quite two years of age when I discovered I was with child again. I was delighted—in part because I wanted a girl and in part because I wanted this child to be different. From Cain, that is. Bear with me. I have not yet related the surprise and wonder and pain of Cain’s birth, but I shall rectify this shortly.

Upon the very day of my discovery, which came in the form of a sharp kick to my ribs, I found the air was full of tiger butterflies, flitting about and lighting on the plants we had named milkweed, for when you tore leaves from them, the stalks would weep a sticky milky substance. Some of the butterflies landed, dipping the milkweed low, curling their tails and depositing tiny white eggs on the leaves’ undersides.

I exclaimed over them to Cain; I even came up with a story about them.

“A very long time ago,” I began, “there lived a colony of orange butterflies. They admired one another, the way their heads were black and shiny smooth, the way their orange wings glistened in the sun.”

Cain was distracted at first. He ran this way and that, trying to catch the light airy creatures, but they always floated up and away. His brow was wet with sweat, and his little chest heaved with his efforts.

“Come,” I said.

Reluctantly, he plopped down in my lap, his back to my gently rounding belly.

“All day long they reminded one another how beautiful they were, how important they were.” I made my voice more ominous. “Now, one day, a tiger came along to drink from the river. Several of the butterflies were drinking from the river too, and they did not see the tiger coming.”

Cain looked up at me. “He eats them—
chomp chomp”
cried Cain. He reached for another butterfly but missed.

Adam caught one by the wings and held it for Cain to look at. He had to hold it away from Cain’s crushing fingers.

“No,” I said. “He noticed them and thought they looked good to eat, so he said to them slyly, ‘The water is better over here.’ The butterflies, being selfish and foolish, flew over to where the tiger was drinking. ‘Here,’ said
the tiger. ‘Right here.’ One of the butterflies flew immediately to the spot, and instantly the tiger’s paw came down upon the butterfly’s back. ‘Let me go,’ said the butterfly. ‘Why should I?’ said the tiger. ‘I am hungry’ ‘No, no,’ said the butterfly. ‘My brother is twice as delicious.’”

“Brother,” said Cain, tilting his head back to see my face. “What’s that?”

“If I have a boy,” I said, pointing to my belly, “then you will have a friend, a brother.”

“Oh,” said Cain, worried now. He pondered this a moment, shifting so he could feel my belly. Then his eyes sparkled, and he smiled, as if he had figured out what was wrong with my story. “Tigers can’t talk,” said Cain dubiously.

“This one did,” I said. I continued, “Then the captured butterfly said, ‘If you let me go, I’ll bring you my brother.’

“So the tiger let him go. ‘Ha-ha,’ said the butterfly. ‘Do you think I am stupid? I will not show you my brother, because you will eat him.’ The tiger was very angry and stretched up on his hind legs to swipe at the mischievous butterfly. The butterfly flew up, up, and away, and the tiger never saw that butterfly again.” I reached out and grabbed a butterfly by its wings and brought it close to Cain. “And that is why, in the middle of their backs, they have a black paw print of the tiger, to remind them always to watch for danger.”

Cain bent over the butterfly, straining to see the paw print. “I can’t see it,” he said.

“There,” I said. I pointed to the black dots on the hind wings.

Cain pulled back to examine my face, to see if I was serious. “Nuh-uh,” he said, rejecting my fable.

I laughed then and said, “We’ll never know, will we?”

Adam’s face crinkled into sunshine. He winked at me and said to Cain, “Your mother is very clever, she is. She knows secrets about everything.”

It wasn’t until after a dinner of grilled fish and mulberries that I caught Cain spitting small stones from a rolled-up leaf. He was, to be accurate with my descriptions, absolutely gleeful over his new invention.

My heart sank when I realized what he was doing. As butterflies perched and laid their eggs, or as they sucked unknowingly from the
flower centers, he was attempting to kill them. He was a child, so his aim was not at all precise, but every once in a while he would hit one, and his howls of pride and delight were what had alerted me to his game.

I wrested the leaf from his hand and slapped his bottom.

He cried out indignantly, turning to Adam for support.

“He’s not hurting anything,” said Adam nonchalantly, as though Cain had been picking up nuts off the ground.

“Not hurting anything?” I said. “He’s killing them.”

“Just a few,” said Adam. “Let him be.”

“I will not,” I said, picking up Cain like I would a log for the fire. I set him down on a rock and said, “Listen here. You will not hurt animals if you do not plan to eat them. Is that understood?”

“Why?” Cain asked.

“Why?” I said. “Because they were made for us to enjoy and to take care of, that’s why.” I turned my back to Adam. I was angry at our disagreements, at how differently we saw the world. It was at moments like this, I wanted to be away from him, to be by myself. “You watch him. I am going to bathe in the river.”

“Cain and I will go with you,” said Adam.

“I want to be alone,” I said.

“We won’t bother you,” said Adam.

“Please yourself,” I said. Now, what I really thought was,
How have I borne such a wicked child? One who harms for pleasure and does not heal? How is it that my husband cannot see it?
As I’ve mentioned before, my feelings for Cain were mixed—at times I loved him with a vengeance. At other times I disliked him intensely. This was the first time I had witnessed Cain’s disregard for
right
and felt Adam’s lack of concern.

I did not like it one bit.

Immediately, with the prince surprising her in the marketplace as
he had, Naava lost all sensation in her toes and fingers, and her words shriveled on her tongue.

The prince was more magnificent than she remembered. He laughed and took her by the elbow, her donkey by its reins, and led them through the dizzying ruckus of buyers and sellers. “You swallow words?”

She had felt the sweat trickle down her chest before, in front of the steps, but now she felt her skin grow hotter still. She pointed to the donkey’s back, where the cheese sat, now gooey from the heat.

The prince nodded. He seemed to find her amusing, and she hated him for it. He led her into one of the dim and narrow tunneling streets, and it was as though they had entered another world altogether. Behind them, the din faded. A steep-slanted slab of sunlight grazed the rooftops but did not settle deeply enough to reach the street. The donkey brayed, for water probably, but Naava and the prince did not stop.

It was for this she had come.

A moonfaced boy walked pigeon-toed toward them. He was stuffing something into his mouth, but when he saw them, he stopped, terrified, and ran in the opposite direction, dropping whatever it was that he was eating. A mongrel slunk after the food, wolfing it up and working it down.
The boy’s cries ricocheted off the houses, and Naava had to look, really look at the prince—what was it about him that had frightened the child?

He was a tall man, thinner than Cain or Abel. His skin was lighter and less worn than her brothers’, and he carried himself with ease.
That is it,
Naava thought.
He knows what he wants, and he will get it.

She knew one other man who was at least as self-composed and settled— her father. Adam was impervious to persuasion, no matter how convincing, and although her mother attributed this to bullheadedness, as she did with Cain, Naava thought maybe her father saw or knew more than Eve did, to be so certain of things. There were no shadowy indecipherable areas in Adam’s mind. She knew that her father believed it was important to dispel the clouds of gray in ones mind. One must be continually categorizing, labeling, and structuring, so one did not fall prey to easy blindness and ignorance, which he said was inexcusable. It was better to know, without a shadow of a doubt. Abel was much like him in that way.

Once, in the spring of Naava’s seventh year, Adam had brought home a tulip, like a little flame of fire, and handed it with great ceremony to her. Naava couldn’t remember, for the life of her, where her brothers were at the time. Aya was in her fourth year, but she was probably stoking the fire, bossing Eve around.

“I will take you to where there are fields of them,” Adam had said, as he scooped her up into the air and swung her around.

She squealed, the air whistling in her ears, and when he had set her down, she begged for more. “Please, Father.”

He winked at her. “Tomorrow, after the chores are done.”