Rebekah: Women of Genesis (17 page)

Mother caught Rebekah’s glance. “He’s right,” she said. “If I had raised you, I would have taught you to serve Asherah while pretending to serve your father’s god, just enough to keep him happy.”

“But you still pray to Asherah.”

“I do,” said Mother. “Because she’s the only god I know. This God of yours and Bethuel’s, I don’t know him. He doesn’t know me.”

“But he does,” said Rebekah. “Don’t you see that he brought you here just now because—”

“Please, let’s not discuss this now,” said Mother. “You’ll have to write everything for your father and we’ll never be done.”

Rebekah sighed and wrote a brief explanation for Father. “You have plenty of time to discuss all that,” said Father. “All of this is just trying to lead up to why I didn’t tell you the truth. That
is
the sticking place for you, isn’t it? The bone you just can’t chew up.”

Rebekah wrote, “I understand that you didn’t want me to hate you.”

“No, no,” said Bethuel. “Oh, well, of course I didn’t want you to hate me, but I would have borne that as the consequence of my choice, if that’s what it took. No, I had to lie to you so you wouldn’t grow up hating God.”

That hadn’t occurred to Rebekah.

“Your mother, driven away from her home because she wouldn’t worship God. No, worse, because she wouldn’t worship
only
God. Would you hate your father? No, because your father was merely obeying the Lord. It’s God you would be angry at.”

“Eventually I would have understood,” she wrote.

“And eventually I would have told you,” he said. “But what was the day? When would I know it was time to tell you? That’s when I turned coward. I could have told you when you were old enough to start leading the women of the camp. Surely there was no reason to keep the secret any longer then. But it was easier to let things go on as they were. I didn’t want to see the hurt and anger that . . . that I saw today.”

Father sighed. “But all along, I was punished. Surely you understand that, Rebekah. Because I missed her. She was the joy of my life, and I had sent her away. As you grew, though, you were so much like her. You had her face, her voice. And the way you could outtalk anybody!”

Mother laughed. “Oh, that’s not
just
from me.”

Father did not hear her, of course. “Rebekah, I loved you for yourself, but I also loved you for the echo of your mother in everything you did. And then that wagon fell on me in the stream, and I lost my hearing, and then I understood that God was not going to let me go unpunished for taking your mother from you.”

“It wasn’t God,” said Rebekah, “it was an accident.”

“It was my own words,” said Bethuel. “When your mother was leaving, I acted very stern and calm—now
that
was a
lie!
—and I said to her, like this terrible curse, ‘Your voice shall never again be heard in my house.’ It was meant to be a curse on her, for having deceived me about Asherah. But instead, when my hearing was taken away from me just before your voice changed and became womanly—became like your mother—well, I realized that I had cursed myself. Your mother’s voice was going to be heard in this camp, whether she returned or not, because you were going to sound just like her, the way you looked like her. So I had to go deaf, don’t you see? So my curse would be fulfilled.”

“Do you think God keeps a tally of such things?” asked Rebekah. “I think he has better things to do.”

“What do you think the priesthood is,” said Father, “but the power to bind in heaven with words said here on earth?” He shook his head. “Now your mother herself is back, and yet my curse remains. I will never hear her voice again.”

Rebekah knew that the priesthood didn’t work that way, but she couldn’t see any point in arguing with him any further. The sadness in him seemed like a weight, bending his shoulders. But Mother leaned out and took his hand and kissed it, and some of the weight seemed to lift again.

“She forgives me,” said Bethuel. “She disagrees with me about God, but she agrees that if I was going to raise you to serve him, she could not have been here. Now she can’t change what you believe—she isn’t even going to try.”

“Your god blesses you,” said Mother. “Even though he doesn’t know
my
name, he’s a good god for you.”

“We see the world differently,” said Father. “But we agree on the most important thing—that you and Laban are at the center of it.”

Rebekah picked up the writing stick. “I wish you had trusted me more,” she wrote. “I would have served God anyway.”

“You don’t know that,” said Father. “You never know what
would
have been. And besides, when I made these decisions I didn’t know what kind of child you were going to be. And maybe you wouldn’t have become the woman you are, without Deborah and without your dependence on me and Laban, which you would never have had, not the same way, if your mother had been here. You are today what you became because of choices in your past. If those choices had been different, how can you be sure you’d be the same person now? No, our lives have taken their course. We can’t change where the river flowed yesterday. We can only choose where it will flow today.”

There were a thousand things she might say, arguments against his decision, complaints about how he himself didn’t actually live by those wise words, but was constantly trying to outguess the past. The truth was, however, she did not want to argue. She just wanted to have peace in her family. So that she could get to know her mother as well as she knew her father and brother. So they could be whole.

That’s why she smiled and hugged her father and kissed him and wrote to him words that were only true by intention: “I forgive you. You did what you thought was right.” And then the words that were true indeed: “I’m glad my mother is here. I’m glad that we’re all together now.”

There were kisses and tears and embraces for a little longer, and then she left.

But not to return to her tent in the darkness. No, there was one more apology she had to make.

Laban did not respond to the clapping of her hands, but she was not about to let that stop her. She pulled open the flap of the tent, intending to go inside and
make
him listen to her apology. But even before he could have seen who she was, his voice came roaring out of the tent: “I forbid you to come through that door!”

Startled and a little afraid at the pain that was still audible in his voice, she pulled back and was about to go back to her tent when she realized that she could not, could
not
let him go to sleep tonight still hearing her foolish words in his mind.

So she went to the back of his tent and, careless of how dirty it would make her clothing, not to mention her face and hands, she wriggled under like a snake.

If he heard her he gave no sign. It took a while for her eyes to get used to the darkness—he had no lamp burning, and it was full night, with only a tiny bit more moon than there had been last night. At best all she could make out was a faint silhouette, and even that she found by listening for the sound of his breathing.

“Laban,” she said, “I need to talk to you.”

“I told you to stay out,” he said gruffly. But not shouting. That was a good sign—that when he knew who it was, that it was Rebekah, he did not yell at her.

“Actually,” she said, “you forbade me to come through the door.”

“And you figure crawling under the tent wall makes you obedient?”

“Perfectly.”

“For a sister.”

“Absolutely.”

“I can’t show my face out there, Rebekah. Never again as long as I live. If I could dig a deep enough hole, I’d bury myself so I could skip the whole funeral step. I want to die.”

“Nobody thinks ill of you for crying, Laban.”

“‘Who’s the big baby?’ Someone said that, and it was true.”

“A stupid person said it,” said Rebekah. “Even though you were weeping,
you
were the one speaking sensibly to me.
You
were the one trying to understand and be fair to everyone, trying to get me to stop saying such cruel and unjust things. Not only that, but you were the only one
brave
enough to try to talk to me. Everybody else wanted to run away from the ravening she-bear.”

Laban laughed, but it was still pretty grim sounding. “That’s not what they’ll remember.”

“Who cares what they remember? In the morning, I’ll come by and we’ll go out together. If anybody teases you or even looks at you funny, I’ll beat him to a pulp. I’ll . . . tear his arm off and beat him with it. I’ll rip his head off and spit down his neck. I’ll—”

“Enough!” cried Laban. “How do you think it will restore my dignity here, to have my sister beat people up on my behalf?”

“I have to take Mother around and let her know what all the women are doing. And then we have to teach her to read and write. And meanwhile Father needs someone to write for him. We can’t afford to have you stay in your tent.”

“You can do the first two, and Pillel does the last.”

“Laban, I’m going to go off and get married someday.”

“When somebody
better
than Ezbaal comes along? In thirty years?”

“And
when
I go—”

“Ha!”

“You will be the heir to everything and someday you’ll have to rule this whole camp. Now, how will you do that if you’re still hiding inside your tent?”

“I won’t be by then,” he said.

“So you’re planning to come out.”

“Someday.”

“When?”

“Someday . . . when the slop jar fills up.”

Rebekah laughed. “So you’ll come out with me tomorrow?”

“Yes,” said Laban. “I take it you’re speaking to Father?”

“Oh, I never stopped speaking. I think I spoke pretty continuously through the whole second half of that marvelous wedding.”

“Several townspeople died of old age, had their funerals, and were buried while you were talking.”

“And you need to get to know your mother. She’s really wonderful.”

“She looks so much like you.”

“Or the other way around. But you look like her, too.”

“Not so much.”

“You’ll like her, Laban.”

“You got to talk to her before the wedding.”

“Yes, but I didn’t know I was talking to my mother. She saw me acting like a self-righteous little prig even
before
the grand unveiling this morning. And she liked me anyway.”

“Well, that changes everything,” said Laban. “If she likes
you,
then she’s bound to like
me.
”

“My point exactly.” She sat down beside him and put her arm across his shoulders.

“Oh, Rebekah.”

“Oh, Laban,” she said, imitating him just a little.

“The choices you make can change people’s lives,” he said. “Father did his best, but everybody in camp has to live in the world he shapes for us.”

“We shape it together.”

“But you and I have been pretty powerless.”

“Up to now,” said Rebekah. “We thought the adults had everything under control. Now we know the truth—they have no idea what they’re doing, either.”

“That’s something. At least we know we’re as qualified as anyone.”

“But I’ve learned something,” said Rebekah.

“A remarkable thing, for someone who never stops talking.”

She squished his shoulder till he squawked. Not that it hurt him that much, just that he knew she would squish until he did. “I tell you this, Laban. There is never a good reason to lie to someone who loves you and depends on you. Never.”

“I’m with you on that.”

“I will never, never lie to someone who trusts me. That’s what I’ve learned from Father.”

“But people who trust you are the only ones you
can
lie to,” said Laban.

“So I guess I’ve given up lying forever.”

“Now I can find out the answer to all your deepest secrets.”

She laughed. “Now that I know what a
real
secret is, I realize I’ve
never
had one in my life.”

“You’ve had one,” said Laban.

“What?”

“That stupid veil. You’re not going to wear it anymore, are you?”

“Why should I stop?”

“Because, bonehead,
Mother’s
face is going to be on display everywhere, and since you look just like her—”

“She’s
much
prettier.”

“Since you look
exactly
like her, there’s really no point in hiding.”

She gave in with a sigh. “I suppose you’re right.”

“Of course I’m right. I’m always right.”