Eve (7 page)

When Cain was born, when I was flushed with new creation—
is this how Elohim felt on the eve of the world?

When Adam had come in from the fields to repair his scythe, and as he struck the flinted edge to sharpen it, he caught me staring at him. In truth, I was thinking of him in the Garden, of all the methods we invented to show our love for each other, and I blushed.

When Abel calmed the leopard who had dragged him away from our fire.

When I buried my daughter Micayla in the fertile soil of my garden. She was born with a swollen head and did not last the night. I had so wanted a girl child after Abel and after Daniel, who was born too soon; when I glimpsed her crooked form, I gasped with the pain of loving and losing. I cried out to Elohim, who, I think, caused a great peace to enter my heart.

The first time I prayed to the fertility goddess, the small statue Cain had given me from the new women. There were no lightning strikes or thunderous whirlwinds as punishment from Elohim, but in that moment I felt as one does just before a betrayal, knowing of your error but doing it anyway.

The final time was the fortuitous night when Abel’s offering to Elohim exploded into flames. Elohim had heard our cries, and unlike so many other wordless and empty nights, His answer had come swiftly, upon the wings of a fiery descending star.

Elohim squeezed my hand gently, then took it and placed it in Adam’s. Adam kissed me on the roundness of my cheeks, and a hush fell over the Garden, one not of our doing. It was as though we were all underwater, muffled and lethargic, awaiting the burst of light and air at the surface that would bring life to the lungs and set things aright.

Elohim floated away. I hesitate to say “floated,” but that’s as it appeared, and I do try to stay faithful to my perceptions at the time. Elohim’s absence settled on the Garden like a temporary drought. It was like that every time He departed from our company, even worse when He threw us out of the Garden.

I cannot think of that now—it overwhelms me—but the memories continue to reappear without my bidding.

Upon our arrival here, on the alluvial plains east of the Euphrates, we lacked only one thing. We thought we had grown accustomed to the wide expanse of sky and the endless stretch of sand that surrounded us, but that first night, when we said to each other that this would be
home,
the place we would lay our heads at night, it felt strange and enormous.

Cain, being four then, complained first. “I don’t like it.”

I put my hand on his head, gently. “Things will look better to you in the morning.”

He threw his hands up in the air. “Where are the trees and the flowers? The berries? The leeks?” Already he was growing despondent without the green things that had so fascinated him in the course of our long journey. They were his life, his blood, his breath.

Cain squatted down and scooped up a handful of sand, letting it sift through his small fingers. “So dry,” he said mournfully.

Adam was lost in thought.

“Nothing will grow,” said Cain.

“You still have your seeds?” said Adam.

Quickly, Cain stood and released the basket from his back.

Adam thought some more. “We start tomorrow” was all he said.

And so it happened that, although the following day was blistering hot, Adam woke with a plan. Even before we had gathered reeds for shelter, he made a few preliminary scratches in the sand and laid out the pattern, the sense of what he thought the garden should look like. I told him not to worry, that we had time, but he seemed agitated, almost driven, to have the task done. He and Cain were busy at it all morning, and then finally Adam stood and clapped Cain on the back. “Well done,” Adam cried, and when I asked what they had devised, Cain replied, “No. It’s a secret!” They both were rejuvenated, as though they had bathed in the coolness of the river and dined on dates and figs and warm bread.

It became a fever for both of them.

While I worked on constructing the components of our reed shelter and my little Abel napped, sun-pink and drowsy, under the ibex skin thrown over two baskets, Adam worked at digging a large hole. Although he would divulge nothing, I assumed this would be the pond. It worried me, all this backbreaking work, for the hole was a fair distance from the river.
How was he to fill it?
With our leaky reed baskets, it would be like filling a clay cup with a blade of grass. When I asked him about it, he grunted and said only, “Patience, wife.”

Cain laid out all his seed packets, which we had made by folding the matching leaves into small containers, and sorted through them. He had
amassed quite a collection—from the time he had discovered that seeds made shoots and shoots made plants, he had been enthralled. He had first been riveted by Adam’s success at growing and extracting large, luscious strawberries from the earth in one of our travel baskets. And every step of the way, as we descended from the mountains and into the valleys, his joyful refrain of wonder echoed against the rocks:
Look how the trees change! Look how the flowers are purple!
Adam and I, of course, had collected many seeds from the Garden, and to these, Cain added his.

It was our seeds Cain was unsure of. He queried me about them when he had spread them out upon the ground. “Mama, what’s this?” He held up packet after packet. “And this? Is this a vegetable or fruit? Flower or a tree?” Unfortunately, Adam and I had not thought of cataloging them, because we never considered that we might leave the Garden, so I no longer knew the mysteries of the seeds.

Except two types.

The first were those of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, which I pointed out to Cain. I had wrapped them in a bit of wool because I knew the fibers would hold them fast, and as Cain had heard variations of the Tree Story, I think he was delighted that he held genuine proof of it. Also, I think they held some strange attraction for him, since they had come from the forbidden fruit.

The others Cain would never see. I buried them in a jar, deep in the ground, once we had settled, and I transferred them from hole to hole when we had to rebuild our shelters. They were special seeds, ones that later I regretted gathering in a spirit of rebelliousness on the afternoon of our expulsion from the Garden. Once, early in our wanderings, I had tried to use them, but I will come to that in due time.

While Adam dug and Cain sorted, I cut tall reeds from the marshes and laid them out to dry in the sun. When they had been seasoned, I bundled them together and planted them in the ground, in two rows at even intervals. I bent their tips toward each other and lashed them together—they would form the arched supports for our roof. I waded into the marsh to cut more reeds, and these I wove into mats for the top and sides. The reeds sliced into my fingers as if they were soft fruit, and soon my fingers grew stiff with scabs and calluses.

Still, Adam worked. His shoulders and arms blistered in the sun and withered with exhaustion, but his eyes flickered with determination. When he had finished with the hole, he began to dig a long trench from it toward the river.
Ah,
I thought.
He will not be able to finish such a huge task.

But he persisted.

Abel and I would think of excuses to wander out to where he was toiling. We’d offer up small wooden bowls of fresh water from the river or raw wild onions we’d found in the marshes. The desert was not as vacant as we had originally thought. Cain had caught a duck in one of his traps the night previous—for food this time and not for torture, as it became later—and we had supped grandly.

As soon as the trench was mostly complete, with only a short squat wall remaining between it and the river, Adam began toting mud from the river-banks. Awestruck, I watched him.
What possessed this man of mine to embark upon such a colossal undertaking?
He continued day after day, lining the sides of the trench with wet mud, using his hands, which were now cracked and blistered and looked more like giant paws than hands. Again I urged him that maybe we could start small, grow from there. He became gruff with me. “It must last longer than a fortnight.”

The mud baked in the sun and had a sharp, sour odor. Cracks ran through the length of it, and when I reached down and knocked on it with my knuckles to test its mettle, I was pleasantly surprised. It was as hard as stone.

Adam caught me testing it. “We don’t want the water sweeping everything away.”

I smiled and nodded.

Next came the planting. By then Cain was eager to help and yipped at his father’s heels, ordering him about.
Those seeds go there. Those go over there.
I smiled to see Cain so happy.
He can be charming and agreeable,
I thought,
as long as he’s caring for Elohim’s growing things.

We had a limited number of seeds, so although the planting was tedious, it went by quickly. What took us many moons to understand was that some plants reseeded themselves and others didn’t. Cain took this as a challenge and was soon expanding our fields and crops, even beyond
Adam’s original intention. We would fare well with fruits and vegetables and grains, indeed, for all the time Cain was with us.

A few bunches of seeds were spared for a reason I didn’t understand until later. In fact, I saw the bulge in Cain’s pouch and asked him why he was saving them—shouldn’t he plant
all
the seeds? He shrugged, looked at Adam, then said, “It’s a secret.”

Then, late one morning, I was in our new reed house, patching up the chinks with thatch and mud, when Adam rolled up the mat that served as our entrance and asked me to come—Abel too—and he led us out to where the river ran gurgling into the trench. The pond was full. There was no greenery yet, except for Adam’s lone strawberry bush, but everywhere there were sticks jutting from the sand, with hardened clay disks attached, indicating what he and Cain had planted where.

“Do you like it, Mama?” Cain exclaimed, jumping up and down.

“It’s amazing,” I said. Indeed it was. I could envision it now. Soon it would be full of date palms and willows and poplars. Orchids and lilies and vines. Leeks and spinach and beans. Figs and lemons and melons.

Adam nuzzled my neck and kissed me on the cheek. He squeezed my hand. “All for you, my love.”

Oh, I could not contain my tears. It was like getting the Garden back again. Or at least the possibility of the Garden. I wrapped my arms around Adam’s neck and whispered, “How much do you love me?”

He laughed, and the corners of his eyes crinkled with delight. He was deliriously happy, and it took me back instantly to those quiet afternoons in the Garden. “More than you’ll ever know,” he whispered back. He pulled away from me and grinned. “I should think you are growing a garden on your face as well.” He used the back of his hand to wipe the mud from my cheek. “I think a dip in the river might be needed. Boys, shall we?”

As soon as it was green and thriving, the garden became my oasis. After toiling in the cooler morning hours, I would go to my garden and lie among the grasses and flowers and look up into the wide blue sky with nary a cloud. I would close my eyes and listen to the lilting birdsong, to the hum of crickets and frogs, to the rustling of the grasses, and to the
so
ft
plops
in the pond. There I gave myself over to the finding of Elohim. I talked of
my troubles out loud, as if to etch them in stone. I asked Elohim why eating of the forbidden fruit was so unforgivable, why He had seen fit to toss us from His presence, and why He had not appeared to us again, His children. Had He stopped loving us?

Even in the midst of this vibrant burgeoning haven, my black seeds, hidden under the ground, sometimes seemed the only real connection to the Garden that I had. They were intact, exactly as I had found them.

What I was saving them for, I knew not.

All I knew was that one day I might need them.

I’m invisible. But not so invisible that the strange visiting ladies
didn’t squawk and flutter like ducks when they saw my leg, so naked and exposed under my robes when I bent to pick up my quern, which I had been using to crush barley grain into flour, to go back to my pantry to retrieve some fig and date sweets for their visit. When they pointed their fingers in horror, I shrank into the dark shadows of the house, for that is what they wished. No, I’m mistaken. What they wanted was for me to suffer for my sins. Because I must have done something wrong, sometime, somewhere, to possess a foot that curls inward upon itself.