Rachel and Leah (Women of Genesis) (21 page)

“The Lord told Enoch to do it himself,” said Leah. “So I’ll do it, too.”

She dribbled water onto the clay and kneaded the dampest part of it, then dribbled on a little more water until here fingers were covered with a thick, gloppy mixture.

Then she closed her eyes and smeared the wet clay so it
completely covered her closed eyelids, right up to the eyebrows and down onto the cheeks.

“Have I covered everything?” asked Leah. “Is there any skin showing?”

“Left eye,” said Bilhah. “Upper eyelid, near the outside corner.”

Leah daubed again.

“That’s it.”

Leah sat there for a moment. “I wonder how long before I should wash it off.”

“The book of Enoch didn’t say.”

“The Lord just said, smear clay on your eyes and wash them, and you’ll be able to see.”

“That doesn’t sound like there’s any waiting time at all.”

“Do you think I already waited too long?”

“If it mattered, the Lord would have said,” Bilhah reassured her. “I don’t think the Lord plays tricks on people.”

Leah almost answered, You think not? Well, just look at my life!

But this wouldn’t be a good time to say bitter things about the way the Lord had treated her. What if even
thinking
such a negative thought drove away the Lord’s promise to her? No, no, as Bilhah said, he wouldn’t have given her this promise just to punish her.

She washed it off, and again asked Bilhah to check that it was done completely.

Then Leah opened up her eyes.

Nothing was changed. Bilhah was still nothing but a nearby blur. Faroff things were completely invisible.

“I shouldn’t have waited before I washed,” said Leah.

“We can try it again.”

“Maybe I only get one try,” said Leah. And now tears began to flow. “Maybe I already proved that I’m not worthy.”

“Try again,” said Bilhah. “It can’t hurt.”

Leah tried again, and this time washed immediately. But to no avail.

She cried in earnest now. “I’m a wicked girl,” she said, “and God is showing me just what I deserve.”

“I think you’re
not
wicked,” said Bilhah. “I think the Lord loves you as much as he loves anybody.”

“As much as he loves the girl whose father was crushed against a wall in Byblos?” said Leah.

“At least that much,” said Bilhah.

“As much as a fatherless girl who has nothing to offer a husband except her own body?” asked Leah.

“Maybe a little more than that one,” said Bilhah.

“As much as a beautiful shepherd girl that dreams of a prince coming to her and kissing her at the well, and the dream comes true, and now he has made himself a bondservant in order to earn the right to marry her? Does God love me as much as that?”

Bilhah had no answer.

“I want to be alone now,” said Leah. “I’m not angry. I’m just very sad.”

“Please let me stay with you,” said Bilhah. “Please let me be your friend.”

“You are my friend,” said Leah. “You keep coming back to me after I drive you away. You keep forgiving me after I’m wicked.” And then, because she couldn’t help but say what was in her heart, she added, “You must love me more than God does.”

“Nobody loves you more than God,” said Bilhah, her voice sounding just a little shocked.

“That’s what I was afraid of,” said Leah. “Please. Go.”

“Don’t sit outside here, Leah. Let me help you back inside your tent.”

“Just take away the basin and the clay,” said Leah. “I can find my way inside from here. I’m not helpless at everything.”

Leah got up as Bilhah gathered up the basin and the basket and started off toward the potmaking shed. But as Leah made her way around to the door of the tent, she heard Bilhah stop and then return.

“What is it?” Leah asked.

“I just thought,” said Bilhah. “The thought just came into my mind, and it was so clear I just had to, I just had to come and say it.”

“Say it then,” said Leah. “I won’t be angry.”

“Are you sure that the thing about Enoch smearing clay on his eyes was the part that Wisdom told you was meant for you? That’s all. I just wondered.”

Leah felt her temper flare up. And she was so sad, she wanted to lash out, to scream her disappointment and grief. But she had given Bilhah permission to say it. And the moment’s pause in which she thought of that was enough to remove the desire from her heart.

“I don’t remember,” said Leah honestly. “Maybe all that the Lord ever meant me to hear as his message to me was … Walk with me.”

“But I say that to you every day,” said Bilhah. “Walk with me.”

“And I say the same to you,” said Leah. “It isn’t much of
a message from God, is it? Just something ordinary that we do every day.”

“I guess what matters is that it’s God saying it,” said Bilhah.

“Maybe so,” said Leah. Then she went inside the tent and Bilhah did not follow.

Maybe so, she murmured to herself again, but she did not believe it. She did not believe that Wisdom had whispered anything at all. What she heard was her own intense desire to know that God noticed her. But God did not notice her. She was as overlooked by God as she had been ignored by Father and Jacob when she and Rachel were presented. God, like Jacob, sees only Rachel, and loves only Rachel, and why not? I’m an angry, selfish, wicked blind girl. Which part of that would make me a woman to desire, or a child that God could love?

T
he last assignment Zilpah wanted was to tend babies. They were filthy and demanding and when you were done, the best you could say was that you hadn’t actually killed it, and no one thanked you for it.

Why
should
she be given such work, when there were plenty of old women in the camp who weren’t good for anything else? It’s not as if she could wetnurse a baby, and why else would a
young
woman be wasted on such work?

Yet that’s what Reuel told her that morning. “You, Zilpah. You’ll be needed in Asta’s tent, to take care of the baby.”

Zilpah wasn’t one of those whiners who always wasted Reuel’s time with all their reasons why they should get a different assignment. Sometimes it worked—but the cost was that Reuel thought of them with scorn and kept using them for the most distasteful work. Which provoked more whining, so he simply assigned someone else to tell them their work,
thus moving them even lower down the social scale of the camp.

Zilpah was perfectly happy to have Reuel telling her personally what work he had for her to do. And if on a particular day, it was a nasty job like tending to Terah’s and Asta’s nasty puking crying little girl, she would take the assignment with a smile. For all Zilpah knew, this might mean she was now a particularly trusted woman. Or it might mean Reuel was trying to humble her, in which case she would bear it cheerfully—he was going to rule over her for a long, long time. Unless she could make something happen. And it was a sure thing she would
never
improve her lot if people in camp looked on her as a complainer or, worse yet, a rebellious servant.

So at the time of day when she would ordinarily be laundering or carding or spinning or hauling water or hauling slops, she found herself inside Asta’s tent, trying to keep a smile on her face.

It began so well, with Asta glaring at her when she came through the tent door and saying, “What are
you
doing here?”

“Reuel sent me. To tend the baby today.”

“You! To tend my baby!”

“I only do what I’m told, Mistress.”

“You can tell him that …” But apparently Asta thought better of it and hissed out a long sigh. “Just because my husband is a younger son, Reuel goes out of his way to treat us with contempt.”

Zilpah knew she was being insulted—because to Asta, merely sending someone as lowborn as Zilpah to tend to the baby between visits from the wet nurse was regarded as “contempt.” But she was used to being treated that way, especially
by Nahor’s and Terah’s wives. Nahor’s wife Deloch was even worse than Asta—at least Asta spoke directly to Zilpah, however rudely, instead of acting as if she thought Zilpah had been spawned by a troop of baboons and spoke an unlearnable animal tongue.

“I will do my best, Mistress,” said Zilpah.

“I’m
sure
you will,” said Asta dryly. “Because if I hear you neglected my little Lisset, just because she’s not a
son
, then you’ll wish Reuel had never sent you to this tent!”

I already wish it, thought Zilpah, but of course what she said was, “I will be with her every moment.”

“Don’t just set her down and walk away because she crawls fast as a roach.”

“Where is she?” asked Zilpah.

“In the inner room somewhere,” said Asta, clearly wishing not to be bothered. Zilpah went there immediately, expecting to find the baby being cared for by one of the old women or perhaps the wet nurse. But no, little Lisset was crawling over a low pile of rugs. Just as Zilpah entered, the baby slid off the pile and rolled onto her back, whereupon she burst into tears, loudly.

Asta charged into the room at once. “What did you do to her!” demanded Asta.

“In the dark I couldn’t even see her at first,” said Zilpah.

“So you stepped on her? What an oaf!”

“I never came near her. I saw her just as she slipped off the pile of rugs she was crawling on.”

And perhaps because Zilpah was still in the doorway and the room was dark and the baby was already calming down again, Asta apparently decided to stop being angry. “You just have to watch them
every
second,” said Asta.

Zilpah refrained from pointing out that Asta herself wasn’t very reliable at baby-tending.

Annoying as the baby was bound to be, it was nothing compared to having to keep smiling for Asta, so it was a relief when she finally was satisfied that Zilpah wasn’t going to let the baby smother or choke and left the inner room. Moments later, Asta was out of the tent entirely, and Zilpah could settle down to her long, tedious day, with only the wet nurse from time to time for company.

“Good morning, baby Lisset,” Zilpah said softly, in a voice that imitated the baby-voices she’d heard other women use with their little ones. “You’re going to spit on me when you grow up, so you might as well start today.”

The baby gazed at her like she was crazy and then started looking around frantically.

“Now you’re going to start crying and everybody’s going to think I was pinching you,” said Zilpah.

Sure enough, Lisset began to squall. And picking her up didn’t help. She was crying precisely because her mother wasn’t there, so this horrible stranger wasn’t likely to be much comfort.

If someone came into the tent to find out who was torturing the baby, Zilpah needed them to find her actively trying to comfort the creature rather than doing what she really wanted to do—curl up under a mound of blankets to block out the sound and sleep through the day.

“There, there, now, little whining lovely brat of a baby,” cooed Zilpah to the baby whom she now held at her shoulder. “Please don’t get me whipped.”

A man’s voice came from behind her. “Nobody’s going to whip you.”

She whirled around to see Terah standing in the doorway separating the inner room from the outer.

And right behind him was Nahor.

It took only a moment to realize that Reuel did not assign her this task because he suddenly thought she was the perfect one to tend a baby. Nahor and Terah must have been watching for Asta to leave, they had come so quickly to the tent where Zilpah was by herself.

“What do you want?” she said.

“Listen to the coldness,” said Terah to Nahor, chuckling. “She speaks to us as if she were the lady and
we
were the lowborn illegitimate children of some tribe of nomads who had enough coin to pay her mother.”

Zilpah had heard worse. She was busy calculating. Was holding the baby a protection for her? Or did she need to set down the baby to try to fight them off? If she screamed, would someone come to help her? Or was everything so perfectly arranged that no one would be in earshot.

“Oh, sit down and relax,” said Nahor impatiently. “Nobody’s going to lay a hand on you, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

It was precisely what she had been thinking, but telling her to relax only made her all the more tense.

“If we wanted you,” said Terah, laughing, “we’d have taken you without any subterfuge.
That
would simply be our right.”

As it would be my right to claw out your eyes like any cornered animal, thought Zilpah.

“We want to talk to you,” said Nahor. “And we didn’t want anyone to know we had talked.”

“Except Reuel,” said Zilpah.

“Reuel can think what he wants,” said Terah. Still that nasty smile didn’t leave his face.

So apparently they had implied to Reuel that they had decided to form a little troop to force Zilpah to fulfil all her teasing of the men in camp. And Reuel had gone along. Not that he had a choice. But he could have warned her!