The Red Tent (23 page)

I had no place among all of these wonderful things, and yet, this was my only home.

I was barely aware of the child within me those first few weeks. My body looked no different, and I was so occupied with my new surroundings that I didn’t notice the moon’s progress, which Egyptian women marked with little ceremony and no separation. I stayed beside Re-nefer, who spent her first days resting in the garden, and translated when I didn’t comprehend the few words addressed to me.

I was not ill-treated. Everyone in the household of Nakht-re was kind, even his wife, Herya, who suddenly had to share her home with a long-forgotten sister and her two alien servants. Nehesi knew how to make himself useful, and Nakht-re soon sent him to carry messages between the house and the temple and the tombs being built in the western valley.

I was not quite a servant and not quite a niece, a foreigner without language or obvious skills. The lady of the house patted me when she saw me, rather like a cat, but turned away before there was any need of speech. The servants did not know what to make of me either. They showed me how to spin linen so that I might help with the work of the house, but my hands were slow to learn, and since I could not gossip with them in the kitchen, I was left alone.

My main occupation was attending Re-nefer, but she preferred solitude, so I found other tasks to occupy my days. I was drawn especially to the stairways of the house and took any excuse to walk up and down, watching how the room changed with every step. I assumed the task of sweeping them in the evening and washing them in the morning, and took a mindless pride in their maintenance.

Whenever I could, I climbed all the way to the roof, where a northern breeze from the river might lift the tent hung for shade. Much of the household slept up there on hot nights, though I never joined them, fearing to bring my nightmare among others.

From the rooftop, I stared at the sun reflecting on the river and at the grace of the sailing boats below. I remembered the first great water I had seen as a girl, when my family had crossed from Haran to the south. I thought of the river where Joseph and I had been charged by an unseen power and saved by our mothers’ love. When I remembered Shalem’s promise to teach me how to swim, my throat closed in agony. But I fixed my eyes wide, as I had at Mamre, and stared at the horizon to keep from sobbing and to keep from walking off the roof.

The days passed in a blur of new ways and sights, but the nights were always the same. I struggled against the dreams that left me drenched in sweat, soaking the pallet as Shalem’s blood had soaked our bed, gasping for air and afraid to make a sound. In the morning, my eyes ached and my head throbbed. Re-nefer fretted over me and consulted with her sister-in-law. They ordered me to rest in the afternoon. They tied a red cord around my waist. They made me drink goat’s milk mixed with a yellow potion that stained my tongue.

As my belly began to swell, the women of the house doted on me. It had been a long time since there had been a baby in Nakht-re’s family, and they were hungry for a little one. I was fed amazing foods, as exotic to me as the flowers of the perpetually blooming garden behind the house. I ate melons with orange flesh and melons with pink flesh, and there were always dates in abundance. On the many feast days dedicated to gods or family holidays, there was goose made with garlic or fish in honey sauce.

But best of all were the cucumbers, the most delicious food I could imagine, green and sweet. Even in the heat of the sun, a cucumber kissed the tongue with the cool of the moon. I could eat them endlessly and never get full or sick. My mother would love this fruit, I thought the first time I bit into its watery heart. It was my first thought of Leah in more than a month. My mother did not know I was pregnant. My aunts did not even know that I was alive. I shuddered with loneliness.

Herya saw my shoulders tremble and, taking me by the hand, walked me to the vestibule at the front door. We stopped at the wall niche, and she gestured for me to remove the little goddess. It was a water horse standing on her hind legs, with an enormous belly and a huge, smiling mouth. “Taweret,” she said, touching the clay figure and then moving her hand to my belly. I frowned. She squatted down, like a woman in labor, and placed the figure between her legs, and in pantomime, showed me that Taweret would ensure an easy labor.

The lady of the house thought I was afraid of giving birth. I nodded and smiled. She said, “Boy,” and patted my belly again.

I nodded. I knew I was carrying a son. “Boy,” I said, in the language of the house.

Herya closed my hands around the statue, indicating that I should keep it, and kissed my cheeks. For a moment the hoarse rattle of Inna’s laughter sounded so loud in my ears I thought the old midwife was in the room with me chortling over her prophecy that Taweret would take me for her own.

In the next week, I felt a flutter like a bird’s wing beneath my heart. I was thunderstruck at my love for the life I carried. I began to whisper to my unborn son as I lay on my pallet, and hummed the songs of my childhood to him as I swept and spun. I thought of my baby as I combed my hair and as I ate, morning and evening.

The bloody dreams about Shalem were replaced by a joyful dream of his son, whom I called Bar-Shalem. In the dream, my son was not a baby but a tiny copy of his father, nestled in my arms, telling me stories about his childhood in the palace, about the wonders of the river, about life on the other side of this life. In this dream, my beloved protected me and fought off a hungry crocodile that had come for me and the boy.

I hated to wake up and took to sleeping later and later only to remain inside this dream. Re-nefer permitted me my bed and everything else. Before we slept, she and I would watch my belly roll and shake. “He is strong,” she rejoiced.

“May he be strong,” I prayed.

I was not prepared when my time came. Confident of everything I had learned from Rachel and Inna, I had no concerns about giving birth. I had witnessed the arrival of many healthy babies and the courage of many capable mothers. I imagined I had nothing to fear. When the first real pain grabbed my belly and robbed me of breath, I remembered the women who had fainted, the women who had screamed and wept and begged to die, I remembered a woman who died with her eyes wide open in terror, and a woman who died in a torrent of blood, her eyes sunken in exhaustion.

A sob broke from my mouth when my water broke and washed down my legs. “Mother,” I cried, feeling the absence of four beloved faces, four pairs of tender hands. How far away they were. How alone I was. How I longed to hear their voices speaking comfort in my own tongue.

Why had no one told me that my body would become a battlefield, a sacrifice, a test? Why did I not know that birth is the pinnacle where women discover the courage to become mothers? But of course, there is no way to tell this or to hear it. Until you are the woman on the bricks, you have no idea how death stands in the corner, ready to play his part. Until you are the woman on the bricks, you do not know the power that rises from other women—even strangers speaking an unknown tongue, invoking the names of unfamiliar goddesses.

Re-nefer stood behind me, my weight on her knees, praising my courage. Herya, the lady of the house, held my right arm, muttering prayers to Taweret, Isis, and Bes, the ugly dwarf god who loved babies. The cook, on my left side, waved a bent stick carved with birth scenes over my head to ease the pain. Crouching before me to catch the baby was a midwife named Meryt. She was unknown to me, but her hands were as sure and gentle as I imagine Inna’s must have been. She blew into my face so that I could not hold my breath when the pains came, and even made me laugh a little and blow back at her.

The four women chatted over my head when the pangs subsided, and cooed encouragement when the pains returned. They put fruit juice in my mouth, and wiped me down with sweetly scented towels. Meryt massaged my legs. Re-nefer’s eyes shone with tears.

I wept and I yelled. I gave up all hope and I prayed. I vomited and my knees buckled. But even though their brows furrowed in response to my pains, none of them appeared worried or anxious. So I fought on, reassured.

Then I began to push because there was nothing else I could do.

I pushed and I pushed until I thought I would faint. I pushed and still the baby did not come. Time passed. More pushing. No progress.

Meryt looked up at Re-nefer, and I saw them exchange a glance that I had seen pass between Rachel and Inna at moments such as this, when the ordinary passage of life into life became a struggle between life and death, and I felt the shadow in the corner lean toward me and my son.

“No,” I screamed, first in my mother tongue. “No,” I said, in the language of the women around me.

“Mother,” I said to Re-nefer, “bring me a mirror so that I can see for myself.” I was brought a mirror and a lamp that showed me the tautness of my own skin. “Reach in,” I said to Meryt, remembering Inna’s practice. “I fear he is turned away. Reach in and turn his face, his shoulder.”

Meryt tried to do as I asked, but her hands were too large. My skin was too tight. My son was too big. “Bring a knife,” I said, almost screaming. “He needs a bigger doorway.”

Re-nefer translated, and Herya answered her in a grave whisper. “There is no surgeon in the house, daughter,” Re-nefer explained to me, in turn. “We will send for one now, but…”

The words came to me from far away. All I wanted to do was to empty myself of this boulder, to expel the agony, and sleep, or even die. My body cried out to push, but when the shadow in the corner nodded approval, I refused to obey.

“You do it,” I said to Meryt. “Take a knife and open the way for him. Please,” I begged, and she looked at me in uncomprehending pity.

“A knife! Mother!” I screamed, desperate. “Rachel, where are you? Inna, what shall I do?”

Re-nefer called out, and a knife was brought. Meryt took it fearfully. As I screamed and struggled to keep from pushing, she put the blade up to my skin and opened the door, front to back, as I had seen it done before. She reached up to move the baby’s shoulder. The pain was blinding, as though I had sat upon the sun itself. In an instant, the baby was out. But instead of a joyful shout, he was greeted by silence; the cord was at his neck, his lips were blue.

Meryt hurried. She cut the cord from his throat and took up her reeds, sucking death from his mouth, blowing life into his nostrils. I was screaming, sobbing, shaking. Herya held me as we all watched the midwife work.

The shadowy dog’s head of death moved forward, but then the baby coughed and with an angry cry banished all doubts. The dark corner brightened. Death does not linger where he is defeated. The voices of four women echoed around me, chattering, laughing, loud. I fell back on the pallet, and knew nothing more.

I woke in the darkness. A single lamp flickered beside me. The floor had been washed, and even my hair smelled clean. The girl set to watch me saw my eyes open and ran to fetch Meryt, who carried a linen bundle. “Your son,” she said.

“My son,” I answered, dumbfounded, taking him in my arms.

Just as there is no warning for childbirth, there is no preparation for the sight of a first child. I studied his face, fingers, the folds in his boneless little legs, the whorls of his ears, the tiny nipples on his chest. I held my breath as he sighed, laughed when he yawned, wondered at his grasp on my thumb. I could not get my fill of looking.

There should be a song for women to sing at this moment, or a prayer to recite. But perhaps there is none because there are no words strong enough to name that moment. Like every mother since the first mother, I was overcome and bereft, exalted and ravaged. I had crossed over from girlhood. I beheld myself as an infant in my mother’s arms, and caught a glimpse of my own death. I wept without knowing whether I rejoiced or mourned. My mothers and their mothers were with me as I held my baby.

“Bar-Shalem,” I whispered. He took my breast and fed in his sleep. “Lucky one,” I said, overcome. “Two pleasures at once.”

We both slept under the watchful eye of the Egyptian midwife, whom I knew I would love forever even if I never saw her face again. In my dream that night, Rachel handed me a pair of golden bricks and Inna presented me with a silver reed. I accepted their gifts solemnly, proudly, with Meryt by my side.

When I woke up, my son was gone. Frightened, I tried to stand, but the pain kept me pinned to my bed. I cried out, and Meryt arrived with soft packing and unguents for my wounds. “My son,” I said, in her language.

She looked at me tenderly and replied, “The baby is with his mother.” I thought I misunderstood her. Perhaps I had not used the right words. I asked again, speaking slowly, but she touched me with pity and shook her head, no. “The baby is with his mother, the lady.”

Still confused, I cried out, “Re-nefer. Re-nefer. They have taken my baby boy. Mother, help me.”

She came, carrying the baby, who was swaddled in a fine white linen blanket, bordered in gold thread. “My child,” said Re-nefer, standing above me, “you did well. Indeed, you were magnificent, and all the women of Thebes will know of your courage. As for me, I will be forever grateful. The son you bore on my knees will be a prince of Egypt. He will be raised as the nephew of the great scribe Nakht-re, and the grandson of Paser, scribe of the two kingdoms, keeper of the king’s own ledger.”

She looked into my confused and stricken face and tried to reassure me even as she laid me low. “I am his mother in Egypt. You will be his nurse and he will know that you gave him life. His care will be your blessing, but he will call us both Ma and stay here until he is ready for school, and for this, you can be grateful.

“For this is my son, Re-mose, child of Re, that you have borne for me and my family. He will build my tomb and write your name upon it. He will be a prince of Egypt.”

She handed me the baby, who had begun to cry, and turned to leave us. “Bar-Shalem,” I whispered in his ear. Re-nefer heard and stopped. Without turning to look at me she said, “If you call him by that name again, I will have you thrown out of this house and into the street. If you do not heed my instructions in this, and in all matters regarding the education of our son, you will lose him. You must understand this completely.”