Rachel and Leah (Women of Genesis) (5 page)

“I don’t know what beautiful looks like,” said Rachel. “Or what I look like.”

“Haven’t you ever looked into a still pool of water and seen your face?”

“The girl in my vision wasn’t all ripply and dark with stones and moss in the middle of her face.”

Father glowered. “Don’t get bratty with me, Rachel. I won’t take it from you.”

Leah murmured, “You always do.” Naturally, Father didn’t hear what she said—and Rachel did. Leah was very good at pitching her voice exactly right.

“What?” said Father.

“I don’t think it was a vision,” said Leah.

Rachel turned and glared at her sister, but they were standing too far apart, so Leah couldn’t possibly see the expression on her face.

“What do you think it was?” said Father.

“I think it was a wish,” said Leah. “I think Rachel is wishing it would happen to her like it happened to Aunt Rebekah.”

“Then why was everything different in my vision?” insisted Rachel.

“What kind of blessing is this?” said Father. “Two beautiful daughters, one who can only see half of what’s there, and now the other sees more than what’s there.”

Neither Rachel nor Leah thought this was a very funny comparison, but Father did, and he chuckled at it for so long that he ended up brushing tears of mirth from his eyes. “Sorry, sorry, I keep forgetting that neither of you has a sense of humor.”

Rachel knew perfectly well that both she and Leah had very good senses of humor—they laughed a lot. They just didn’t think Father’s joking was very funny. Usually, in fact, his jokes were just a little bit cruel, though he probably never meant them to be hurtful.

“Listen, Rachel,” said Father. “I won’t have you telling people you see things and hear voices. Either they’ll think you’re some kind of priestess and you’ll start getting pilgrims and petitioners—and I won’t stand for that!—or they’ll think you’re crazy—”

Leah gave a tiny hiccup of a laugh at that, which of course Father didn’t hear but Rachel did.

“And I don’t think,” said Father, “you’d like to be known as Laban’s crazy daughter.”

“But what if it
is
from God?” said Rachel.

“It isn’t,” said Father.

“How do you know?”

“It’s obvious. First, when God wants to tell somebody something, he speaks clearly. There’s never any doubt. Second, you’re a woman. There’s no reason God can’t talk to a woman, but who would listen to her? So God gives visions to men so that others will pay attention to his message. Third, you even said it yourself, the vision was all wrong. Visions from God don’t
lie
, so if it wasn’t like what happened with Rebekah, then your dream wasn’t from God.”

Father was very convincing.

“Was her vision from the Evil One?” asked Leah.

“Her vision was from her own imagination,” said Father. “She thinks she hears the name of Rebekah, she dreams but the dream gets it all wrong, the way dreams do. It means nothing, but if she blabs about it to everybody it will damage her reputation and mine as well. So, Rachel, you will not tell anyone about this dream or any other dream you get. Except me. If there’s ever a clear message of some kind, then tell me at once.”

Later, Leah reassured Rachel that this meant Father secretly believed in her vision. “Why would he want you to tell him, except that he believes?”

“I never get clear messages,” said Rachel. “So I’ll never tell Father about it. So that’s all over. I hope I don’t have any more visions like that, now that Father has commanded me not to tell anybody.”

“You can tell me.”

“Father said not.”

“I already think you’re crazy,” said Leah. “So what harm can it do?”

But Rachel never told Leah another vision, because the next day when Leah was irritated that she couldn’t go along to watch the shearing of the sheep—too many knives flashing for a weak-eyed girl to be leaning in for a closer look, Father said—Leah’s retort was, “I may not see everything, but at least what I
do
see is
real
.”

That’s how Rachel knew that Leah hated her visions. So as far as Leah heard of it, Rachel never had another.

And she didn’t have many. Most of the time, the visions she saw were empty nothings. The voice only came now and then, and she only understood bits and snatches, and she
never saw that particular dream again. She rarely thought of it, and when she did, she couldn’t even remember what anybody looked like, so what was the point? Mostly she tried to ignore the things she saw that weren’t actually real, and when she did see the patterns she’d dispel them as quickly as possible, and when she did hear that voice—the man or the woman, either one—she’d look for somebody to talk to.

But on this day, returning with the flock she and four older boys and Old Jaw had been grazing up in the southwestern hills, the voice came back to her and would not go away.

She was leading the way—nobody remembered paths better than Rachel, and Old Jaw was always content to lag behind, “watching for strays,” as he said. The dogs knew their business—they were keeping the flock together, right behind Rachel. So there was nothing in front of her except grassy hills and the unmarked path that she knew from childhood on, leading to the little well about four miles south of Father’s settlement.

“What’s the hurry?” called one of the boys—a particularly stupid one who was always showing off for her, even though she made it clear she had nothing but contempt for his stupid acrobatics and races and clowning. She refused even to remember his name.

Only when he spoke to her did she realize that she had quickened her pace and had led the flock at least a hundred paces ahead of Old Jaw and the boys.

“I’m not hurrying,” she called back. “You’re just slow.”

“Doesn’t do any good to hurry!” shouted Old Jaw. “We don’t water the flock in the heat of the day!”

“It isn’t summer yet,” said Rachel. “It won’t hurt them!”

“Well, if you get there ahead of us, who’s going to get the cover off the well?” shouted Old Jaw.

The boys whooped at that. “Rachel’s going to get the dogs to do it!” said one.

“She’s going to give it her prettiest smile and it will open up for her by itself!” shouted another.

Rachel detested boys. They were all despicable. Why the Lord had bothered to make them, Rachel couldn’t guess. They were created in the image of God. But couldn’t he have gone all the way and given them some wits, too?

So she forged ahead even faster, to put their jeers behind her.

And when their voices fell away, she was aware that there was another voice that had been with her for some time, perhaps since they had set out that morning. It was the man’s voice, and it was murmuring, or perhaps chanting, and the one phrase that kept emerging in rhythm with her steps was “to the well.”

By now, she had convinced herself that Father was right and the voice came out of her own imagination. She knew she was heading for the well, so the voice was chanting about it, pushing her along. She wished it would go away. After all, she wasn’t sitting around staring off into space. Why would the voice bother her now?

She followed the pace it set, however, walking so quickly that the sheep seemed to catch some kind of excitement from her. They became noisier, bleating more often, and the dogs yipped and snapped more than usual, until as they crested the last hill and started down into the little vale where the well was, she was almost running.

I don’t want to be late, she thought.

Or had the voice said that?

There were already quite a few sheep in the valley, two separate flocks, but down at the bottom end, almost to where it debouched from the hills. She didn’t recognize the shepherds, but that was no surprise—she knew all the major herdsmen in the area, but this close to Haran, the great houses would tend to send boys and new men … and their daughters.

Still, strangers meant that they might not know who she was, and that she was under the protection of a great house. There might be some danger here. How far behind her were Old Jaw and the boys? Not that they would be much in the way of protectors, but they could convincingly invoke Father’s name and reputation. No one would dare to lift a hand against the flocks of Laban, still less against his daughter.

The last thing she should do, she knew, was to show timidity. So she continued at the same pace until her flock was gathered around the well and the troughs.

One of the strange shepherds called out to her. “It’s the heat of the day!”

She ignored him.

“You going to lift off the cover yourself?” The others thought this was very funny.

But of course it was not funny. She was still too small to lift or even slide the heavy stone that covered the mouth of the well. So she sat on top of it, her back to the strangers, while her sheep milled around the well and tried to lap water from the wet spots in the troughs.

Some of the men in the nearer herd soon began to speculate loudly upon why she had been in such a hurry to get to the well, and what it was she actually intended to do; and as
the men began to get more and more amused at their own wit, their speculations became more and more obnoxious. What was keeping Old Jaw and the boys?

Why doesn’t the voice come
now
and tell me what to do?

Then, suddenly, the men fell silent.

She turned and saw that one of the men from the farther herd was approaching her.

She murmured a prayer for protection.

As if in answer, the dogs ran toward him, barking, warning him away. Loyal dogs!

Then he bent down and spoke to them, in a voice too soft and distant for her to hear. They sniffed his hands; he stroked them, scratched them, and when he arose they were
his
dogs, scampering around him like puppies as he again walked boldly toward her. Treacherous curs!

Then she studied the man a little, and realized that he wasn’t one of the shepherds. The bundle he carried on his back was far more than any shepherd would willingly carry, since you never knew when you’d have to lift a lamb onto your shoulders and carry it. And he wasn’t dressed right. His clothes were too fine for a shepherd—and too dusty. He hadn’t spent the morning on grassy hills, he had been walking along a dry road. A traveler.

“Don’t be afraid, Rachel,” he said. “Be at peace. I won’t come any nearer than this.”

“Who are you, sir? How do you know my name?”

“When I saw you and your sheep coming down the hill, I asked the other men who you were.”

“I don’t know those men.”

“Neither do I,” said the stranger. “But they know
you
. They said you were Rachel, the daughter of Laban. Or rather,
I asked them if they knew Laban of Haran, and they said that of course they did, he’s a great man and his camp is not five miles away, and look, there’s his daughter, Rachel, the … coming down the hill with Laban’s sheep.”

Rachel the what? She knew very well, and she pursed her lips. Rachel the Beautiful. That’s why they knew of her. The one aspect of herself that
she
never saw was the only one that anyone else cared about, while all the things that made up who she was in her own mind, nobody knew. I am surrounded by strangers, and the more well-known I am by reputation, the more alone I am.

“If you get off the stone,” said the traveler, “I can uncover the well.”

“I’m not so very heavy,” said Rachel. “If you can move the stone without me, surely you’re strong enough to move it with me on top.”

“With you and three sheep, if you can balance them all there,” said the traveler. “But I don’t believe in making foolish displays of strength. It makes other men jealous and their wives covetous, and then I have no peace.”

Rachel refused to laugh, and she hoped he did not notice the twitch of a smile that crept to her face before she could stop it.

She got up and lightly leapt to the ground. “I can help,” she said.

“But what if, with my massive strength, I accidently tossed the stone onto your foot? Then you’d be Rachel the cripple, and your father would have to kill me, or at least cut off my leg.”

“My father would never do that.”

“Then you don’t know fathers.”

“He’s never done anything like that before.”

“Only because no traveler has ever cast a huge stone onto his daughter’s dainty foot.”

Rachel looked down at her calloused, toughened feet. “I’m a shepherd, sir. My feet are not dainty.”

“I thought it was a nicer word than ‘dingy,’” said the stranger. “And ‘dung-covered’ would have been rude.” Now he began pushing the stone in earnest, and there was no breath for speech. His word was true: he slid the stone off with no one’s help, and in one continuous movement, too, no pausing to rest.

“That’s a useful skill to have,” said Rachel. “Most wells are covered so heavily that travelers could die of thirst trying to find a well they could open by themselves between here and Salem.”

“Have you been to Salem?” asked the traveler.

“No,” said Rachel. “Father only lets me tend the flocks close to home. But that’s all right. I work with the lambs and kids especially, and I know them better than any of the other herdsmen. Are you going to take the first drink or not?”