Rachel and Leah (Women of Genesis), Page 3

  “Almost twelve now,” said Bilhah.

  “Ten is a very ugly age in girls,” said Leah. “Girls all look like colts for about three years. Except Rachel, of course. She just got cuter.”

  “Colts are cute,” said Bilhah. She refused to believe that her father had been lying to her. She was as beautiful as her mother.

  “Colts are awkward and bony and it’s not how a girl wants to look.”

  “So I’m awkward and bony?” asked Bilhah.

  “I don’t know,” said Leah. “I can’t see that well.”

  “You see everything.”

  “I see that you duck your head a little and slump when you walk, so you aren’t used to being as tall as you are, and you trip sometimes just walking along, which means your feet are bigger than they used to be.”

  “I’m just clumsy.”

  “Not when you’re picking beans you’re not,” said Leah.

  What were they arguing about? Leah couldn’t see very well, and yet she was insisting that Bilhah wasn’t pretty. “So is this a test?” said Bilhah. “If I admit I’m ugly, you’ll choose me to be your handmaiden?”

  Leah giggled. “No, silly, I can’t have a handmaiden till I’m married, or old enough to be married, and I’m not. I mean, I suppose in the city, rich girls might have handmaidens from the time they’re born, but not here. Everybody works here, and so a girl doesn’t need a handmaiden until she needs help dressing in very difficult clothing and needs somebody to carry away her rags and wash them.”

  “Is that what you want me to do?”

  “No,” said Leah quickly. “Well, I suppose so, but I’ll carry yours away and wash them for you when you’re in your time apart, so it’ll be a fair trade.”

  “No you won’t,” said Bilhah. “Your father would never stand for that. And I won’t mind. As long as you know that I’m a free woman, I won’t mind acting the servant in the eyes of others.”

  “Don’t you see?” said Leah. “I don’t want a servant. I want a … a friend!”

  An ugly friend, thought Bilhah. And the word Leah had been about to say was not friend at all. So she knew she wasn’t being kind when she said, “Isn’t your sister your friend?”

  Leah giggled. It didn’t sound as though she was amused. “Rachel is the chosen daughter of God.”

  “Is she a priestess then?” asked Bilhah.

  “No,” said Leah. “She just … doesn’t have time for me. She’s the queen of the shepherds now. She talks to Father about the animals practically all by name, she knows the herds so well. And I’m completely cut off from all that. Everybody always has things to say to Rachel, and Rachel always has things to say to them—and she’s funny and smart, too, so they laugh and nod and pay attention to her as if she were a visiting angel. But when I talk, everybody’s patient and they can hardly wait till I’m done because nothing I have to say is ever interesting.”

  “At least they listen,” said Bilhah. “You should try being the new servant girl.”

  Leah fell silent a moment. “You’re right,” said Leah. “What am I complaining about? My mother’s dead, like yours, but I still have my father, and he’s lord of Padan-aram, and I’m living in my home as I always have, and here you are an orphan, among strangers.”

  “But I might be starving on the street, and instead I have a home here, so I’m well off, too.”

  “We’re the two luckiest girls in the world,” said Leah.

  “No,” said Bilhah. “But we’re not without hope.”

  Leah laughed at that. “All right, that’s true enough. Not without hope.” Leah leaned in close so she was almost eye to eye with Bilhah. “You have beautiful eyes,” she said. “I need someone to read to me so I can study and become wise. And I need someone to talk to me and tell the truth about everything I can’t see—even if it’s about how my nose is a beak and I walk like a hoopoe bird.”

  “I didn’t say that!”

  “But you could, if it’s true! We’ll always tell each other the truth, promise me!”

  “No,” said Bilhah. “The truth is mean and cruel, and besides, nobody ever knows the truth anyway.”

  “Of course they do.”

  “I knew a woman that wanted to marry Papa after Mama died, and she always told the ‘truth’ to everybody—but it was just meanness, because she always said the ugliest thing anybody could imagine, and then she’d say, ‘If you can’t face the truth, then you remain forever a child.’ And Papa finally said, ‘The truth is beautiful. Only ugly people make it harsh and unkind,’ and she was so offended she went away without another word.”

  Leah laughed. “I like your papa!”

  “I liked him too,” said Bilhah.

  And then, to her horror, she burst into tears and bent over there in the garden and wept into the basket of beans. “I miss him so much,” she said. “I want my papa back. I want to go home.”

  She felt Leah’s hand on her back, stroking her shoulders, stroking her hair. “Oh, Bilhah, I miss your papa too, and I didn’t even know him. Think about that! You’re luckier than I am, because you knew him, and he was so good to you for all those years, and I’ll never know him.”

  “But you still have your father,” whispered Bilhah.

  “No,” said Leah sadly. “Rachel has my father.”

  Bilhah could hardly grasp what such a thing might mean. But then, she had never had a sister to be compared to. She had never had even a brother for her father to love more than her.

  “So could I borrow your memories of your father sometimes?” said Leah. “Could you tell me about him and let me pretend that we grew up sisters, and that he liked me as well as you, and always treated us both the same?”

  Bilhah nodded. “I’ll share him,” she said. And then she thought of something funny. “It’s always easier to share what you don’t actually have,” she said.

  They laughed and cried together for another moment, there in the garden, and then they picked beans together till the job was done, and then weeded together till that job was done, and that night Bilhah went to sleep in Leah’s tent, at the foot of her bed, the way the harness maker had once slept at her feet, to be her true friend and protector in the dark of night.

  PART II

  THE GIRL

  WHO COULD

  SEE

  CHAPTER 3

  Rachel could see two things at once. Not all the time. Not when she was talking to someone face to face, or pulling a thorn from a lamb’s foot, or trying to herd a he-goat without getting butted for her pains. At times like that, she saw only the thing she needed to see.

  But other times, sitting on a grassy slope on a sunny day, or huddling by a fire on a cold night, or staring up into darkness inside her tent, then other visions would come to her mind. To her eyes is how it seemed to her, but she knew that what she saw wasn’t really there. If she moved her hand, then the vision would vanish and all that would be left was the nothing-in-particular she had been looking at before.

  Sometimes the visions were meaningless, just strange shapes in the air, constantly shifting. There was a beauty to it, but if she tried to concentrate on any part of the shifting pattern, it would disappear.

  Sometimes the visions were like dreams, with people doing things, events happening, but this kind of vision always ended with waking. Then she would know that she had merely dozed off, and the dream meant nothing. For a time it worried her that she was able to fall asleep with her eyes open, sitting up, but now she was used to it.

  There was another kind of vision, though, which did not end with waking. There was always a voice—though not always the same voice. Sometimes it was a woman, and Rachel used to think it was her mother, though she would have no way of being sure. Usually it was a man, and the voice didn’t belong to any man she knew.

  The voice would start talking to her without her even noticing. She’d be looking at the sheep or the stars or a fire or the darkness and she’d realize that she was hearing someone saying things to her. />
  The first time she remembered this happening, she was five years old, and she thought someone was calling her. “Who is it?” she said, and when no one answered, she went looking for the man, but she found no one. A few weeks later it happened again, and she looked again, but eventually she learned that there wasn’t anybody real talking to her, and instead she tried to listen to the voice.

  It was hard, because the voice was usually just out of reach, like overhearing somebody in a brisk wind, with words being snatched away so that you could catch phrases but never understand anything.

  But when she could understand, then visions would come with the words. She would see things.

  When she was eight years old, she was lying in the dark of the tent, Leah asleep beside her—they shared a bed in those days. The voice was calling a name, but it wasn’t hers. It was saying, “Rebekah” and then something about “drawing water from the well” and then “Rebekah” again and something about the household of Abraham.

  Of course she knew the story of Aunt Rebekah, how she had gone to draw water and found a stranger there, and shared her water with him—and he turned out to be the servant of the great Abraham, who had come looking for a wife for Isaac. The way the story got told, Rebekah was so beautiful that the servant fell in love with her, but because he was only a servant and had given a most solemn oath, he could not woo her for himself, and instead he faithfully discharged his office and led her home to marry Isaac. Some people said the servant killed himself out of grief; others said he went mad; others said he continued to serve Abraham and then Isaac all his life, but he never married because he always loved Rebekah in his heart. Father said these tales were all nonsense, and he should know, because he had carried out the negotiations, and the servant was never in love with Rebekah.

  But Rachel loved the story anyway, every version. Her favorite, though, was the one where the servant kept working in the same household with the woman he loved, never able to speak of his longing. It was a very lovely story, tragic and beautiful, and she cried now and then thinking of it.

  So when she heard those words, of course she began to see the story in her mind as she had always imagined it.

  But it wouldn’t stay. It kept changing. The woman kept not being the beautiful Aunt Rebekah but instead was a gawky girl of twelve or so, and the man was no servant bearing noble gifts, but a lone traveler on foot. And instead of the girl fetching water for the man, it was the other way around. It made no sense. Could it possibly be that everyone had told the story wrong for all these years?

  The voice made no sense to her, the vision made no sense, and yet it was very real to her. So of course she told Leah about it, because Leah was older and understood many things.

  “I don’t know,” said Leah. “It could be a vision from God, or it could be a dream—”

  “I wasn’t asleep,” insisted Rachel.

  “Or you could be crazy,” said Leah. “Probably that.”

  So Rachel went to her father, and of course Leah tagged along, because Leah couldn’t stand to be left out of anything, though of course with her weak eyes she was left out of a lot of things just because she couldn’t see well enough to stay out of the way and not get hurt, which made her furious, and Rachel could understand that, but she hated the way Father always made her stay with Leah, until the day she got furious and said, “Why should I always stay with Leah? I’m not blind!”

  That had been a very bad thing to say—Father gave her a sharp swat and angrily forbade her ever to call her sister “blind” again, and Leah didn’t speak to her for weeks. But from then on, Father no longer insisted that Rachel stay with Leah. However, Leah continued to insist on staying with Rachel, including this time, when Rachel wanted to tell Father about the vision.

  “Girls dream of romance,” said Father. “My sister’s story has become very romantic, the way people tell it. But it wasn’t. It was very complicated. Delicate negotiations. Businesslike, that’s what it was. So of course you have dreams about it.”

  “It wasn’t a dream,” insisted Rachel. “I was awake.”

  “I often have dreams like that,” said Father, and then he went on to talk about dreams so real he didn’t realize he wasn’t awake until he woke up—but the more he talked, the clearer it became that Father had no idea of the kind of dream Rachel had.

  Finally, frustrated that he thought he knew everything when obviously he understood nothing, she stamped her foot and shouted at him—though she was only a few steps away. “I didn’t wake up at the end because I was never asleep!”

  He looked at her, quite startled. Then he replied, softly, “You mustn’t yell at me like that.”

  “I never yell at people,” said Leah.

  Which was such a lie, thought Rachel. But it did no good to argue with Leah, because everybody took her side because they pitied her blindness. Let her say what she wants, and just remember that you can see.

  Why doesn’t anybody ever tell Leah to remember that Rachel can see, and therefore maybe she might know some things that Leah didn’t know!

  “When you yell at me, then I have to punish you,” said Father, “or there’ll be rebellion in the camp.”

  “Father,” said Rachel, “I yelled because you weren’t listening to me. You decided you knew what my vision was, only you were wrong, my vision was nothing like what you were saying. And it wasn’t like the romantic stories of Rebekah, either, because the girl in my vision was too young, about twelve years old maybe, and the man was on foot, carrying a bundle on his back, and he drew water for the girl. So it was nothing like Rebekah.”

  “Then why did you tell me you had a vision of Rebekah?” said Father impatiently.

  “Because the voice said her name,” said Rachel. “At least that’s all that I caught.”

  “What voice?”

  “The man.”

  “What man?”

  “The man who talks when I have this kind of vision.”

  Father got very serious. He led her to the table where the two images of the gods always stood and made her place one hand on each of them. “You’re speaking before God now,” he said. “Who was this man?”

  “I don’t know,” said Rachel. She tried to take her hands off the little stone statues. Father held them there.

  “It’s a terrible sin to pretend that God is talking to you when he isn’t,” said Father.

  “I never said it was God!” said Rachel.

  “She said it was a man,” said Leah helpfully.

  “I know what she said,” said Father. “It’s exactly what a child might say if she wanted people to think that she was getting visions from …”

  He let his words trail off and relaxed his hold on Rachel’s hands. She pulled away from the statues. She didn’t like the statues. They didn’t look anything like God, she was sure of that. God had to be tall and strong, not little and stumpy and rather badly sculpted.

  “Listen to me, Rachel. You must tell me. Was the girl in the dream you?”

  Rachel wondered if he ever listened to her at all. “I said she was older than me. How could she be me if she’s eleven or twelve years old?”

  “But did she look like you?” he asked.

  Rachel rolled her eyes. “How would I know? I’ve never seen myself.”

  “You’re very beautiful,” said Leah. Rachel hated when she said things like that, because of course Leah couldn’t see her all that well, so she was really repeating what everybody else said, and Rachel was sick of hearing it, especially because she knew it hurt Leah’s feelings.

  “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.” Natur
ally, 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.”