In the few days before our departure, I avoided the Grandmother and stayed near my mothers. I wished only to leave the place, but as we prepared to return to Succoth, Leah came to me with a grim face. “The Grandmother says that you are to stay here at Mamre for three months,” she said. “Rebecca spoke to your father, and it has been arranged without my…” She stopped at the sight of my stricken face. “I wish I could stay or leave Zilpah with you, but the Grandmother will have none of it. She wants you only.”

There was a long pause before she said, “It is an honor.” She cupped my chin between her two hands and added tenderly, “We will be together agaift when the wheat is ripe.”

I did not cry. I was frightened and angry, but I was determined not to weep, so I kept my mouth closed, breathed through my nose, and kept my eyes from blinking. That was how I survived as I watched my mother’s form grow smaller and smaller and then disappear into the horizon. I had never imagined the loneliness of being without her or my aunts or even one of my brothers. I felt like a baby left outside to die, but I did not cry. I turned back to the Deborahs who watched me anxiously, but I did not cry.

Only at night, alone on my blanket, I turned my face to the ground and wept until I choked. Every morning I arose, groggy and confused until I remembered that I was alone in my grandmother’s tent.

My memories from those months in Mamre seem pale and scattered. When I returned to my mothers, they were disappointed that I could not say more of wonders I had seen or secrets I had learned. It was as though I had walked through a cave filled with jewels and picked up only a handful of gray pebbles.

This is what I do remember.

I recall that once in every seven days, the Grandmother made a great show of baking. The rest of the week she did not soil her hands with the work of women, much less the kneading and handing of dough. But on the seventh day, she took flour and water and honey, turned them and shaped them, and sacrificed a corner from a three-sided cake, “for the Queen of Heaven,” she whispered to the dough before consigning it to flame.

I doubted that the Queen would much care for the dry, tasteless things Rebecca offered. “Aren’t they good?” she demanded when they came out of the oven. I nodded dutifully, washing my portion down with water, which was all I was given to drink. Luckily, her servants were far better bakers, and their cakes were sweet and moist enough for any queen. Still, when my grandmother whispered over her small domestic offering, it was the only time I saw her smile with her eyes. It was my job to go to Rebecca early in the morning to assist her morning ablutions in preparation for the pilgrims who arrived at the grove daily. I carried her elaborate cosmetic box, which contained different scents for forehead, wrists, armpits, and ankles, a potion for the skin beneath the eyes, and a sour-smelling concoction for the throat. After the perfumes and creams, she began the careful application of color to lips, eyes, and cheeks. She said that the most important beauty treatment of all was to smell sweet, and her breath was always scented with mint, which she chewed mornina and night.

The Grandmother seemed to burn with some kind of fire. She ate little and rarely sat down. She looked down upon anyone who required rest. Indeed, she criticized everyone except her sons, and although she favored Jacob, praising his good looks and his fine sons, it was clear that she depended on my uncle for everything. Messengers came and went from Seir every other day. Esau was called upon to deliver an extra epah of barley or to find meat worthy of the Grandmother’s table. I saw him every fortnight at least, his arms full of gifts.

My uncle was a good man and a fine son. He made sure that wealthy pilgrims visited the grove and brought rich offerings. He found Isaac the stone hut that afforded Rebecca the luxury of living like a priestess, without a man to serve. The Grandmother patted Esau’s cheek whenever he left her tent, and he would glow as though she had praised him to heaven. Which she never did.

My grandmother never spoke ill of Esau, nor did she say anything good about him. His wives, however, she detested in detail. Although they were dutiful women who, at one time, sent fine gifts in hopes of winning her approval, she dismissed them all as slovenly idiots. For years she had sneered at them openly, so they visited only when Esau insisted.

She was not much kinder about my mothers. She considered Rachel lazy—beautiful, but lazy. She called Bilhah ugly and Zilpah a superstitious stick. She grudgingly admitted that Leah was a good worker and clearly blessed to have delivered so many healthy sons. But even Leah was not good enough for Jacob, who deserved a perfect mate. Not a giantess with mismatched eyes.

She actually said such things in my presence! As though I were not my mother’s daughter, as if my aunts were not my beloved mothers, too. But I did not defend them. When the Oracle spoke, no contradictions were permitted. I was not as bold as Leah, and my nighttime tears often tasted of shame as well as loneliness.

Rebecca saved the worst of her tongue for her husband, though. Isaac had grown foolish with old age, she said, and he smelled—something she could not abide. He had forgotten what he owed her, for hadn’t she been right to make him give the blessing to Jacob? She spoke incessantly about Isaac’s ingratitude, and her suffering at his hands. But it was not clear to me what my grandfather had done. He seemed gentle and harmless when he came on hot days, to enjoy the breezes beneath the great terebinths. I was glad that Isaac had no need of Rebecca’s care. He was well served by his veiled Deborah. It was rumored that her covering hid a harelip, though it was unthinkable that such a one would not have been killed in infancy.

When Esau came to Mamre, he visited his mother first and saw to her needs. He was polite and even fond, but as soon as he could, he turned to the Grandfather and accompanied him back to Arba, where the two men enjoyed their evening wine. They stayed up very late, talking and laughing, served by the veiled Deborah.

I learned this from the other ones who wore white. They were kind to me. They patted my shoulder when they gave me my dinner, brushed my hair, and let me work with their beautiful ivory spindles. But they did not tell stories in the evenings, and I never learned the names their own mothers had given them, or how they had come to Mamre, or if they missed the company of men. They seemed mild and content, but as colorless as their robes. I did not envy them their life with the Oracle.

At the new moon, Rebecca did not permit me to enter the red tent with the women who bled; she was strict about this observance. She who was past childbearing did not enter, nor could I, who was still unripe. One of the other Deborahs stayed outside with us as well. She explained that her periods had never come, but did not complain about her lack of rest. She and I cooked and served the celebrants, whose quiet laughter made me long for my mothers’ tent.

When the women emerged, rested and smiling, on the morning after the third day, I was permitted to follow them as they stood at the highest point of the hill to watch the sun rise. The Grandmother herself poured out a libation of wine, while the women sang a wordless song of quiet rejoicing. In the deep silence that followed, it seemed to me that the Queen of Heaven was in the trees above us. That memory returns to me at every new moon.

I never learned to love my grandmother. I could not forget or forgive what she had done to Tabea. Nevertheless, the day came when I honored her.

The doors to the Oracle’s tent were always open, and from every direction the stranger was made welcome. This had been the decree of Sarai and Abram, who, it was said, gave an equal welcome to princes and beggars. And so, every morning, Rebecca would receive pilgrims inside the beautiful tent. She saw all who came—wretched or resplendent—nor did she hurry with the poor.

I stood with her women as she greeted the guests. First, a childless woman approached and begged for a son. The Oracle gave her a red cord to tie around one of the trees at Mamre, whispered a blessing in the barren one’s ear, and bid her go with the Deborah skilled in herb

s.

Next there was a trader seeking a charm for his caravan. “It has been a bad season for me,” he began. “I am nearly destitute, but I have heard of your powers,” he said, with a bit of a dare creeping into his voice. “I’ve come to see for myself.”

The Grandmother moved close to him and looked into his face until he turned away from her gaze. “You must make restitution,” she said in a way that sounded like a warning.

His shoulders sagged and his swaggering manner melted. “I don’t have the goods to make restitution, Grandmother,” he said.

“There is no other way,” said the Oracle, in a loud, formal voice. She dismissed him with a wave of her hand, and he backed meekly out of her presence and ran down the hillside as though an army were chasing him.

Rebecca saw my open mouth and explained with a shrug, “Only thieves come looking for business miracles.”

The last pilgrim that morning was a mother carrying a child who was old enough to walk—three years, maybe four. But when the woman unwrapped him, we could see why he was still in her arms. His legs were withered and his feet were covered with sores, raw and oozing, and painful to see. From the look in his eyes, it was clear that he was nearly dead with suffering. The Grandmother took the boy from his mother’s arms. She carried him to her cushion, her lips pressed against his forehead, and sat with him in her lap. She called for an unguent used for burns, something that soothes but cannot heal. Then, with her own hands, without flinching or drawing back, she rubbed the stuff into his wounds. When Rebecca was done, she wrapped her perfumed hands around his diseased feet, and held them as though they were precious, delicate, and clean. The mother gaped, but the little boy had no awe of his healer. With the pain eased for the moment, he rested his head upon her shallow breast and fell asleep.

No one moved or spoke. I don’t know how long we stood as he dozed, but my back ached before the child opened his eyes. He wrapped his arms around the Grandmother’s neck and kissed her. She embraced him in return, and then carried him back to his mother, who wept to see the smile on her boy’s face, and who wept again to see the sadness upon the Oracle’s face, which showed there was nothing she could do to keep this one alive.

I could not hate Rebecca after that. Although I never saw her show such tenderness to anyone else, I could not forget the way she took that little boy’s pain into her own hands and gave comfort to him and peace to his mother.

Tags: Anita Diamant Historical
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