The Red Tent

Reuben howled, and Jacob dropped the knife. Quickly, he bound the wound with Adah’s bandage, and swaddled the baby, badly, the way men do. He carried his son back to the women, whispering into Reuben’s perfect ear words that no one else could hear.

The red tent, which had been quiet during the baby’s absence, now burst into activity. Leah dressed the wound with the cumin oil that Inna had left for her own birth wounds. Adah swaddled Reuben properly and gave him back to his mother, where he took her breast with relief and then slept.

The baby healed quickly, as did Leah during her first month as a new mother inside the shelter of the red tent. She was pampered by her sisters, who barely let her feet touch the earth. Jacob came by every day, carrying freshly dressed birds for her meals. Through the hairy wall of the tent they relayed the news of their days with a tenderness that warmed those who overheard them.

Adah beamed that whole month and saw her daughter step out of the red tent restored and rested. She delighted in her grandson’s first yawns and sneezes and was the first to notice Reuben lift his head. Adah held the baby whenever Leah would put him down, and the joy of him lifted years from her face and the pain from her bones. But the illness that had wasted her strength could not be cured by even the greatest joy. And one morning she did not rise from her blanket.

Adah was the only mother any of the sisters had known, and they put ashes in their hair and honored her. Leah washed Adah’s face and hands. Zilpah combed her hair smooth. Rachel dressed her in the finest tunic they owned, and Bilhah placed Adah’s few rings and bangles on the withered wrists, neck, and fingers. Together, they crossed her arms and bent her knees so that she looked like a sleeping child. They whispered wishes into her ears so she could carry them to the other side of the light, where the spirits of her ancestors would greet her soul, which could now rest in the dust of the earth and suffer no more.

They wrapped her in a shroud of unbleached wool lined with sweet-smelling herbs and buried her amid the roots of the big tree where the women often gathered to watch the moon rise.

Jacob dug the grave while Laban stood and watched, ashes on his head to honor his first wife. With Adah, Laban buried his youth, his strength, and perhaps some forgotten better self. He threw the first handful of dirt, then turned and walked away before the four sisters finished tucking her in with earth, flowers, and loud lamentation.

Two months after Adah died, Bilhah entered the red tent. With Adah gone and no other elder to take the part, Leah, nursing her son, became the welcoming mother. She greeted the acolyte and taught her how to manage the flow of blood, how to rejoice in the dark of the moon, how to join her body’s cycle with the repetition of life.

The wheel had turned. And even though Laban retained title as head of the clan, Jacob’s time as patriarch had begun. My mothers, too, began numbering their days with the wisdom of women.

There followed many good years. The rains came in season, and the well water was sweet and abundant. The land was spared pestilence, and there was peace among the surrounding tribes. The herds prospered so that Jacob could no longer manage the work alone and he contracted with Shibtu, the third son of a local shepherd, as a seven-year bondsman. And then he hired Nomir, who brought a wife, Zi-batu, and there was a new face in the red tent.

The family’s good fortune and increasing wealth were not entirely the result of Jacob’s skill, nor could it all be attributed to the will of the gods. My mothers’ labors accounted for much of it. While sheep and goats are a sign of wealth, their full value is realized only in the husbandry of women. Leah’s cheeses never soured, and when the rust attacked wheat or millet, she saw to it that the afflicted stems were picked clean to protect the rest of the crop. Zilpah and Bilhah wove the wool from Jacob’s growing flocks into patterns of black, white, and saffron that lured traders and brought new wealth.

This was also the time of great fertility among the women. Many babies were born, and most survived. Leah wore the mantle of the great mother, seemingly always pregnant or nursing. Two years after Reuben’s birth, she bore a second son, Simon. Levi was born only eighteen months later. Leah miscarried after that, but within another year her sorrow was forgotten in the joy of her fourth son, Judah.

Those brothers, so close in age, were a tribe unto themselves. Reuben, always the heaviest and tallest, was gentle with the younger ones. Simon was a demon—handsome and smug, demanding and rude—but forgiven everything for his dimples. Levi was a meek mouse and Simon’s slave. Judah was a quiet boy, affectionate toward everyone. He was much fairer than his brothers, and Jacob told Leah that he resembled his own brother, Esau.

While Leah was carrying Simon, Laban’s Ruti showed a big belly, too, and bore a boy, Kemuel, who was followed a year later by Beor. The old man doted on his slope-browed sons, who played rough-and-tumble with Leah’s boys at first, but then invented a secret language, which locked them into a narrow world of their own making. Laban thought this demonstrated his sons’ superiority, but the rest of the family saw it as proof of their stunted nature and limited prospects.

The happy noise of children surrounded them, but the blessing of generation was not equally distributed. Rachel miscarried again and again. After the bloody flood washed away her hopes a fourth time, she sickened with a fever that drove her out of her mind for three days and nights. This frightened her sisters so badly they insisted she stop trying to conceive and persuaded her to drink the infusion of fennel seed that seals the womb, at least until she had regained weight and strength. Rachel, exhausted, agreed.

But she could not rest long amid the clamor of her sister’s sons. Although she no longer hated Leah with the full force of the past, Rachel could not smile at her sister while her own body remained fruitless. She was often away from the family’s tents, seeking the counsel of Inna, who had a seemingly endless list of concoctions and strategies to open her womb.

Rachel tried every remedy, every potion, every rumored cure. She wore only red and yellow—the colors of life’s blood and the talisman for healthy menstruation. She slept with her belly against trees said to be sacred to local goddesses. Whenever she saw running water, she lay down in it, hoping for the life of the river to inspire life within her. She swallowed a tincture made with bee pollen until her tongue was coated yellow and she peed a saffron river. She dined upon snake—the animal that gives birth to itself, year after year.

Of course, when anyone, adult or child, found a mandrake—the root that looks so much like an aroused husband—it would be brought to Rachel and handed over with a wink and a prayer. Reuben once found an especially large one, and thought it to his auntie with the pride of a lion hunter. But mandrakes did nothing for Rachel’s womb.

During her quest for a child of her

own, Rachel assisted Inna and became her apprentice. She learned what to do when the baby presented itself feet first, and what to do when the baby came too fast and the mother’s flesh tore and festered. She learned how to keep a stillborn’s mother from giving up her spirit in despair. And how, when a mother died, to cut open the womb and save the child within.

Rachel brought her sisters stories that made them weep, and sigh, and wonder. Of a mother who died and a father who sold the infant before her body was cold. Of a man who swooned at the death of a beloved wife. Of a woman who cried blood for her dead child. She told of potions that worked a miracle upon one woman and seemed to kill another, of an armless monster left out to die in the night air, of blood that carried off and blood that healed.

There were triumphant stories, too, of healthy twins, of a baby born blue, the cord wrapped tight around its neck, brought to life by Inna, who sucked the death from the little one’s nostrils with a river reed. Sometimes Rachel made her sisters laugh with imitations of women who roared like lions and others who held their breath and fainted rather than make a peep.

Rachel became their link to the larger world. Along with tales of life and death, Rachel brought back new herbs for seasoning vegetables, recipes for unguents that healed wounds, and ever stranger remedies for her barrenness, all of which failed.

Often, Rachel returned bearing a bracelet, a bowl, or a skein of wool—tokens of gratitude for her generosity at childbed. The imperious beauty became a tenderhearted healer in the service of mothers. She wept at every birth, the easy, happy ones as well as the ones that ended with keening and whimpering. She wept with Ruti and even with Leah.

When it came time for Zibatu to stand on the midwife’s bricks, Rachel alone—without Inna—led her through the ordeal, tied off the cord, and flushed with pleasure when she held “her” first, the baby that conferred upon her the title of midwife. Leah cooked her a feast that night, and Zilpah poured out salt and wine before her, in recognition of her new status as a servant of women in the name of Anath, the healer.

As time passed, more bondsmen came to live and work for Jacob, and with them came women who bore children and lost children. Zibatu gave birth to Nasi, but then lost her second child, a girl who came two months before her time. Iltani bore twin girls who thrived, though she died of fever before her daughters knew their mother’s face. Lamassi gave birth to a son, Zinri, but her daughter was left out to die because she had the harelip.

In the red tent we knew that death was the shadow of birth, the price women pay for the honor of giving life. Thus, our sorrow was measured.

After Judah’s birth, Leah grew tired. She, who had always risen the earliest and retired last, who seemed most content when doing two things at once (stirring a pot while nursing, or grinding grain as she oversaw the spinning), began to stagger in the afternoons and see shadows where there were none. Inna advised her to leave off bearing for a while, and brought her fennel seeds and also showed her how to fashion a pessary out of beeswax.

So Leah rested. She rejoiced in the sturdiness of her sons, and stopped every day to caress them and play their game of smooth stones. She baked honeyed cake as she used to, and planned a new garden where herbs would attract more bees to nearby hives. She slept soundly at night and rose in peace every morning.

Leah remembered her fallow years as a time of great contentment. She held the fullness of every day in her hands, numbering the sweetness of children, the pleasure of work. She gave thanks for the fennel seeds and the wisdom to use them. Her cake never tasted sweeter than it did that year, and she responded to Jacob’s body with more ardor than she had felt for years.