Rachel and Leah (Women of Genesis) (28 page)

“You have done no wrong, but thank you for trying to make a balance between us.”

Leah rose gracefully to her feet. Now that they were on the same level again, Bilhah could see that there was something different about Leah’s face. Had she been crying? No. Her eyes weren’t puffy or reddened. Yet there was some kind of transformation.

“Come, Zilpah,” said Leah. “Our business here is done until Jacob returns.”

“You could stay and wait,” said Bilhah impulsively. “He’s bound to return before noon to put the book away.”

“No, we have work to do,” said Leah.

Zilpah, with an expressionless face, said, “She’s teaching me to read.”

“I’m also working on teaching stones to sing,” said Leah.

For a moment Bilhah looked back and forth between the two girls, trying to understand whether they were quarreling or …

Joking. Leah and Zilpah both burst into laughter.

Bilhah smiled, but she didn’t know what was funny.

“It’s not going very well,” said Zilpah.

“I need better eyes—I never draw the letters the same twice,” said Leah.

“And I need a better head,” said Zilpah.

“But we’re getting there.”

“Letter by letter,” said Zilpah.

“Except the ones that I don’t really remember.”

“Those are my favorites,” said Zilpah. “Because we get to make up new shapes every time, and then guess.”

Bilhah was baffled. Leah didn’t joke with anyone. Bilhah had tried now and then to introduce some kind of playfulness to their conversations, but Leah did not respond to wit, especially at her own expense. Now she was bantering with Zilpah, and it was partly about Leah’s tender eyes, and there was no sign of anger. What, exactly, had happened? Had Zilpah done something to her? No, there was nothing a bondservant could do to compel her mistress.

If Leah had been like this with
me
, we might have become friends, and I would still be her handmaiden.

But the memory of Leah’s tantrums and accusations was too fresh. Bilhah thought of her time with Leah as a failure, a defeat; to see Zilpah now succeeding didn’t make her any happier. If I had been a better friend or servant, perhaps I might have deserved to be Leah’s friend, as Zilpah now is.

“Can I help you with the teaching?” asked Bilhah. “I remember all the letters because I use them every day.”

She inwardly winced at her own words. She had meant her mention of daily writing to explain—to excuse—why she remembered the more rarely-used letters that Leah apparently had forgotten. But her explanation was also a reminder of her work as Jacob’s copyist, and though Leah had just apologized, Bilhah well knew how easily she could be set off on another round of resentment and, if it went deep enough, rage.

But when Leah shook her head, it was without a trace of
snappishness. “No, we’re making slow progress, and in truth I think we’ve got all the letters right, now.”

“Why not show me, and I can confirm it?” asked Bilhah.

“That’s a good idea,” said Leah. “Zilpah, can you write the letters on the ground for Bilhah to see?”

Now Zilpah looked at Bilhah with real anger.

Bilhah thought she knew why. “Everyone who reads and writes was once a beginner,” she said.

Zilpah rolled her eyes. Bilhah noticed that she said nothing, gave no sign of her annoyance, not even with an irritable sigh.

Yet Leah, with her finely tuned senses, knew that something was amiss. Maybe it was just Zilpah’s hesitation. “Come now, Zilpah, even your worst letters are better than the best of mine.”

Zilpah dropped to her knees and arched her back to stretch out her hands. In the process, the cloth she had been wearing around her neck slipped off her shoulders and Bilhah could see that this was one of the least modest of her dresses that she wore. And when she bent over to write in the dirt, she kept her head back, so the view down her dress was as clear as possible. This made no sense at all to Bilhah—there were no men here. It could only be a gesture of defiance; but of what? To whom? Bilhah was the only one who could see.

But apparently that wasn’t true. While Leah named the letters and Zilpah drew them—forming them well enough, for a beginner—Leah picked up the shawl and redraped it to cover Zilpah’s breasts. “Zilpah doesn’t like dressing modestly,” said Leah. “She keeps testing me to see if I’ll notice. She thinks I’m blind.”

“I only have one beauty,” said Zilpah softly.

“Yes,” said Leah. “A good heart.”

“All right, two beauties,” said Zilpah.

And then the two of them laughed again.

And finally Bilhah realized—Zilpah wasn’t showing contempt at all. She was helping Leah learn how to deal with her disobedience as friendly teasing instead of infuriating defiance. It was something that no one had ever dared with Leah, to tease her. Well, Bilhah
tried
, but Leah had quickly taught her that it wasn’t worth the trouble. Now she was getting lessons in being a normal person. But how ironic, to be getting them from someone as strange as Zilpah.

“That one is backward,” said Bilhah. “It faces the other way.”

“I
knew
something was wrong with it,” said Leah, shaking her head.

Zilpah rubbed it out and drew it again, facing the right way.

“You have them all,” said Bilhah. “You’re doing well.”

“Thank you, mistress,” said Zilpah.

Her tone was so offensively snide that Bilhah wanted to say something really vile in reply, but Leah had come to make peace and Bilhah refused to be the one to break it. “I didn’t mean to be condescending,” said Bilhah. “I’m sorry.”

Leah laughed. “Someone else needs joking lessons!” she said. “Zilpah’s helping me learn how to take things as a joke.”

Zilpah also smiled—but there was a sauciness to the smile that made it clear to Bilhah that they were
not
friends.

“It’s a good skill to have,” said Bilhah. “When something is
meant
as a joke.”

“I don’t know,” said Leah. “I’m pretty sure Zilpah usually means the things she says every bit as nastily as they sound.
But if I
take
them as friendly gibes, we don’t have a quarrel, and Zilpah gets the satisfaction of thinking she got away with something.”

Zilpah’s face went stiff. “If my mistress is displeased …” she began.

Leah laughed. “You see?
Everybody
has times when they don’t get the joke.”

Bilhah laughed too, watching Zilpah force herself to pretend to be amused at having been caught at her game. “Humor is so hard sometimes,” said Bilhah. “Nobody’s ever sure whether it’s funny or not.”

“But that’s when it’s funniest,” said Leah. “When the other person isn’t absolutely sure, but still has to laugh so as not to seem spiteful and easily provoked. It lets you be mean
and
get a reputation for cleverness.”

Zilpah put on a half-smile and raised her eyebrows at Bilhah, as if to say, See what I have to put up with?

But Bilhah had no sympathy. Leah had apparently made some kind of vow to avoid having tantrums—but that didn’t mean she’d stopped noticing when someone was being offensive to her. For the first time in a long time, Bilhah rather liked Leah. So whatever she was doing, it worked.

“Well, since you’ve learned the letters,” said Bilhah, “why don’t you both sit with me, and as I copy, I’ll read the book phrase by phrase. Then the two of you can watch me write it out or read it from the original and Zilpah will see how the letters go.”

“Thank you,” said Leah. “If you’re sure Jacob won’t mind.”

“He said that it’s good for people to hear the words of God, with open heart and mind.”

“Maybe that’s why Zilpah dresses as she does,” said Leah, straightening the shawl once again. “To show how open her heart is.”

“Very funny,” said Zilpah. But she soon joined in with Leah’s and Bilhah’s laughter.

Bilhah read, then, phrase by phrase. Since it was a book of sayings, there was no story to explain. Leah began to ask questions, to which Bilhah had no answers; but within a very little while, they were discussing with some animation what Noah might have meant by this or that saying; and Zilpah, too, joined in, though as often as not it was to be skeptical about whether Noah knew what he was talking about. Still, she wasn’t hostile—she seemed to be sincere enough in the things she said.

All in all, it was a good morning.

Then noon came, and with it, Jacob. He came up behind them while they were discussing whether Noah’s condemnation of drunkards was so vehement because drinking wine to excess was really all that bad, or merely because he himself had drunk too much from time to time and saw it as his own vice, and his harsh words were really directed at himself.

“Can’t both be true?” Jacob asked, and that’s when Bilhah first realized he was there, standing just beyond the dooryard fence behind them.

Leah was the only one who seemed not to be startled or even surprised at Jacob’s coming. “I hope it’s all right that Bilhah is reading to us,” said Leah.

“I’m delighted that she is,” said Jacob, “and happy that you came.” He walked to the opening and came into the dooryard. “And Zilpah, are those your letters drawn in the dirt?”

“No, Jacob,” said Leah. “They’re the same letters you and Bilhah use.”

It took Jacob a long second before he realized that Leah was joking. But his laughter, when it came, was all the more generous for the delay. “Well, there wouldn’t be much point in making up your own letters that no one else could read, I guess,” he said.

“We’re trying not to interfere with Bilhah’s copying,” said Leah. “And when we discuss the words of the prophet Noah, I’m afraid it’s the blind leading the blind.”

“No one is blind,” said Jacob, “when the Wisdom leads the way.”

“But this morning, Wisdom was apparently off doing her laundry,” said Leah. “At least as far as
my
understanding was concerned.”

“Even Wisdom needs clean laundry,” said Jacob solemnly.

“That was so wise,” said Leah, “that I hope you’ll let Bilhah write it down.”

“Not in the sayings of Noah,” said Bilhah. “Jacob says it’s absolutely wrong to add things just because we think our words will improve on what the prophet wrote.”

“I think some scribes have done a bit of alteration in the past,” said Jacob. “But we can only copy the words we have. If I started trying to guess which words were genuine, I’d end up guessing wrong often enough that I’d only make it worse.”

“So,” said Leah, “that must mean we need to start writing down a new book. The sayings of Jacob.”

“That would be a book with many words and little wisdom,” said Jacob.

“Good practice for writing, then,” said Zilpah dryly. “We wouldn’t get distracted by trying to understand it.”

Jacob laughed, and so did Leah and Bilhah, and the smile that then crossed Zilpah’s face seemed genuine.

Z
ilpah succeeded in avoiding Reuel for more than a week. It was easy enough—all she had to do was be extraordinarily attentive to Leah. She knew that whatever Reuel had to say, he wouldn’t say in front of Jacob’s daughter.

But it was inevitable that he’d catch her alone. Zilpah expected him to intercept her when she was carrying water, but instead he fell in beside her in the earliest light of dawn, when Zilpah was coming back to the tent from her morning privacy. “You think you’re clever,” said Reuel.

“I think you weren’t so smart,” said Zilpah, “conspiring with Nahor and Terah against their father.”

“Not against their father.”

“Against the man their father trusts better than them,” said Zilpah. “I think it’s pretty nearly the same thing.”

“I’m not a good enemy to have,” said Reuel.

“Better to have you as an enemy,” said Zilpah, “than to trust you as a friend.”

He seized her arm and gripped tightly. Painfully.

“Laban won’t live forever, and then you’ll be in my hands again.”

“Not if Laban sends me with Leah when she marries.”

“Leah will never marry,” said Reuel. “No man wants her.”

“They will,” said Zilpah. “I’ll make sure of it. Especially now that I know you mean to punish me for refusing to betray Jacob by spying on him as Rachel’s handmaid.”

“You can spy on him as Leah’s handmaiden now, if you know what’s good for you.”

“But all that Jacob and Leah ever discuss is the holy books,” said Zilpah. “Find another traitor.”

“I’m not a traitor,” said Reuel. “I’m Laban’s good servant. This camp prospers under my hand. But Laban is getting older, and one day there’ll be a new master here. It’s a foolish steward who doesn’t befriend the heir.”

“But when the heir is an adder, it’s a disloyal steward who puts him near the master’s bed.”

“What a clever saying. Does it come from one of Jacob’s books? Or are you so good at reading the words of God now that he whispers new proverbs to you privately?”

Zilpah tried to pull away. “Leah will be expecting me.”

“Leah doesn’t wake up until well after dawn,” said Reuel.