The Red Tent

A few days after the fight about the dogs, Ruti came to my mother and threw herself on the ground. “I am lost,” she cried, a sad puddle of a woman in the dust. Her hair was loose and covered with ashes as though she had just buried her own mother.

Laban had lost more than his coins in that Carchemish game. He had gambled away Ruti as well, and now a trader had arrived to claim her as his slave. Laban sat in his tent and refused to come out and acknowledge what he had done to the mother of his sons, but the trader had his walking staff as a bond, and his overseer as a witness. Ruti put her forehead to the ground and begged Leah for help.

Leah listened and then turned to spit on her father’s name. “The backside of a donkey has more merit than Laban,” she said. “My father is a snake. He is the putrefied offal of a snake.”

She put down the jug of milk she was working into curd, and with heavy steps marched to the near pasture where my father was still brooding about his dogs. My mother was so deep in her thoughts she did not seem to notice that I followed her.

Leah’s cheeks turned red as she approached her husband. And then she did something extraordinary. Leah got down on her knees and, taking Jacob’s hand, kissed his fingers. Watching my mother submit like this was like seeing a sheep hunting a jackal or a man nursing a baby. My mother, who never wanted for words, nearly stuttered as she spoke.

“Husband, father of my children, beloved friend,” she said. “I come to plead a case without merit, for pure pity’s sake. Husband,” she said, “Jacob,” she whispered, “you know I place my life in your keeping only and that my father’s name is an abomination to me.

“Even so, I come to ask that you redeem my father’s woman from the slavery into which he has sold her. A man from Carchemish has come to claim Ruti, whom Laban staked in his game of chance as though she were an animal from the flock or a stranger among us, and not the mother of his sons.

“I ask you to treat her better than her own husband. I ask you to act as the father.”

Jacob frowned at his wife’s request, although in his heart he must have been pleased that she addressed him not only as her husband but as leader of her family as well. He stood above Leah, whose head was bowed, and looked down on her tenderly. “Wife,” he said, and took her hands to raise her up. “Leah.” Their eyes met and she smiled.

I was shocked. I had come to watch Ruti’s story unfold, but I discovered something else altogether. I saw the heat between my mother and her husband. I saw that Jacob could cause the glow of assent and happiness that I thought only I could summon from Leah.

My eyes opened for the first time upon the fact that my father was a man. I saw that he

was not only tall but also broad-shouldered and narrow in the waist. Although by then he must have passed his fortieth summer, his back was straight and he still had most of his teeth and a clear eye. My father was handsome, I realized. My father was worthy of my mother.

Yet I found no consolation in this discovery. As they moved back to the tents, Leah and Jacob walked side by side, their heads nearly touching as she whispered the ransom that Jacob could collect from among his wives to redeem Ruti: honey and herbs, a stack of copper bangles, a bolt of linen and three of wool. He listened silently, nodding from time to time. There was no room for -me between them, no need for me. My mother’s eyes were full of Jacob. I did not matter to her the way she mattered to me. I wanted to cry, but I realized that I was too old for that. I would be a woman soon and I would have to learn how to live with a divided heart.

Miserable, I followed as my parents entered the circle of tents. Leah fell silent and resumed her place behind her husband. She fetched a jug of her strongest beer to help Jacob soften the trader’s resolve. But the man had seen that though she was worn out and homely, Laban’s woman was neither harelipped nor lame, as her price had led him to believe. And he was shrewd enough to notice that his presence had caused a stir. He smelled his advantage, which meant it took all of the women’s treasures and one of Jacob’s pups before the trader forgave the debt and left without Ruti. Soon, all the women of the camp knew what had happened, and for weeks afterward, Jacob ate like a prince.

Laban never spoke of how Jacob ransomed his wife. He only became fouler in his use of Ruti, whose eyes seemed permanently blackened after that. Her sons, following their father’s pattern, showed their mother no respect. They carried no water for her cooking pot and brought her no game from their hunts. She crept around her men in silent service.

Among the women, Ruti spoke only of my mother’s kindness. She became Leah’s shadow, kissing her hands and her hem, sitting as close to her savior as she could. The ragged woman’s presence did not please Leah, who occasionally lost patience with her. “Go to your tent,” she said when Ruti got underfoot. But Leah always regretted rebuking Ruti, who cringed at a single cross word from my mother. After she sent her away, Leah sought her out and sat down beside the poor, wasted soul and let herself be kissed and thanked, again and again.

CHAPTER TWO

IN THE DAYS following Ruti’s redemption, Jacob began to plan our departure in earnest. During his nights with Leah and during his nights with Rachel, he spoke of his longing to leave Laban’s tents and return to the land of his father. Jacob told Bilhah that his restlessness consumed his peace and that he slept badly. Jacob found Zilpah on a night when sleeplessness chased them both, separately, to the whispering comfort of the great terebinth that stood by the altar. Even on still, airless nights, breezes hid among the broad flat leaves of Zilpah’s tree. Jacob told his fourth wife that his god had appeared to him and said that it was time to leave the land of the two rivers. It was time to take his wives and his sons and the wealth that he had built up with his hands.

Jacob told Zilpah that his dreams had become ferocious. Night after night, fiery voices called him back to Canaan, to the land of his father. Fierce as his dreams were, they were joyful, too. Rebecca shone like the sun and Isaac smiled a blessing. Even his brother no longer threatened, but appeared as a huge, ruddy bull that welcomed Jacob to ride upon his wide back. And it seemed Jacob had no need to fear his brother anymore, for traders from Canaan had brought news that Esau had become a prosperous herdsman with many sons of his own, and a reputation for generosity.

In their day alone in the red tent, Jacob’s wives spoke among themselves about their husband’s dreams and plans. Rachel’s eyes shone at the prospect of moving to the south. She was the most traveled among them, having attended at births throughout the hills, to Carchemish and once to the city of Haran itself. “Oh, to see great mountains, and a real city,” she said. “Marketplaces filled with fine goods and fruits whose names we do not even know! We will meet faces from the four corners. We will hear the music of silver timbrels and golden flutes.”

Leah was not so eager to discover the new worlds beyond the valley that had given her life. “I am content with the faces I see around me here,” she said, “but I would dearly love to be free of Laban’s stench. We will go, of course. But I will leave with regret.” Bilhah nodded. “I will grieve to leave Adah’s bones. I will miss seeing the sun rise on the place where I gave birth to my son. I will mourn the passing of our youth. But I am ready. And our sons are wild to be gone from here.”

Bilhah gave voice to a truth that had gone unspoken. There was not enough room for so many sons to make their way in Haran, where every hillock had been claimed for many generations. There was no land in the country of their mothers. If the family did not leave together, the women would soon break their hearts watching as their sons turned against each other or disappeared in search of their own paths.

Zilpah’s breath grew louder and more uneven as her sisters turned their faces to the future. “I cannot go,” she burst out. “I cannot leave the holy tree, which is the source of my power. Or the bamah, which is soaked in my offerings. How will the gods know where I am if I am not here to serve them? Who will protect me? Sisters, we will be beset by demons.”

She was wide-eyed. “This tree, this place, this is where she is, my little goddess, Nanshe.” The sisters sat up to hear Zilpah speak the name of her own deity, something done only on a deathbed. Their sister felt herself at the end of hope, and her voice was choked with tears as she said, “You too, sisters. All of your named gods abide here. This is the place where we are known, where we know how to serve. It will be death to leave. I know it.”

There was silence as the others stared. Bilhah spoke first. “Every place has its holy names, its trees and high places,” she said, in the calm voice a mother takes to a frightened child. “There will be gods where we go.” But Zilpah would not meet Bilhah’s eyes, and only shook her head from side to side. “No,” she whispered.

Leah spoke next. “Zilpah, we are your protection. Your family, your sisters, are the only surety against hunger, against cold, against madness. Sometimes I wonder if the gods are dreams and stories to while away cold nights and dark thoughts.” Eeah grabbed her sister by the shoulders. “Better to put your trust in my hands and Jacob’s than in stories made out of wind and fear.”

Zilpah shrank under her sister’s hands and turned away. “No,” she said.

Rachel listened to Eeah’s sensible blasphemy in wonder and spoke, picking words for thoughts she discovered only as she gave them voice. “We can never answer your fear with proof, Zilpah. The gods are always silent. I know that women in travail find strength and comfort in the names of their gods. I have seen them struggle beyond all hope at the sound of an incantation. I have seen life spared at the last moment, for no other reason than that hope.

“But I know too that gods do not protect even the kindest, most pious women from heartbreak or death. So Bilhah is right. We will take Nanshe with us,” she said, naming Zilpah’s beloved goddess of dreams and singers. “We will take Gula, too,” naming the goddess of healing, to whom Rachel made offerings. And then, as the idea grew in her mind, Rachel blurted, “We will take all of the teraphim from our tents and carry them into Canaan with our husband and our children.

“They will do us no harm, surely,” said Rachel, speaking faster and faster as the plan formed in her mind. “If they are in our keeping, they will do Laban no good,” she added slyly. Bilhah and Leah laughed nervously at the idea of Laban stripped of his sacred figures. The old man consulted the statues when he had any choice to make, stroking his favorites absentmindedly, for hours at a time. Leah said they soothed him the way a full breast soothed a cranky baby.