After Abel and Other Stories

by Michal Lemberger

  Sometimes I talk too much. That’s what she says. It makes my Baba laugh, though, when I tell him all the things I see during the day. He doesn’t laugh too much, so I’ve been working really hard to improve my memory so that I can make him happy.

  This rule about the babies isn’t that old. We all have to be careful. Amma reminds me every day not to say anything if a baby is born in the huts. “I know,” I tell her. “I’m already eight years old. I’m not a little girl who doesn’t understand anything.”

  It’s pretty bad around here these days. We’ve all been forced to watch as women who still walk funny from giving birth get pushed to the edge of the river. An overseer pokes her back with the end of his whip and then forces her to throw her own baby into the water. One lady still had blood running all down her legs. That got mixed up with the cuts from the flogging she got right after. The overseers want to make sure that we all know not to try to disobey the Pharaoh’s decrees.

  I felt really bad for those mothers. They were weeping and shrieking. Baba told me they weren’t crying from the beatings. The grown-ups all try not to cry when those things happen, even the men, who are pretty used to seeing people get beat up by now.

  “You are the fastest runner, Miriam,” Amma says as she takes the basket from Baba and puts it in my hands. It’s big and round and heavier than it looks, probably from all the mud and leaves she put inside. Pitch always dries heavier than I expect, too. I peek inside and see the baby in there. That surprises me. So it’s not the basket that’s heavy, but him, who’s all dimpled and fat because Amma feeds him so much. “You’ll have to run very quickly to keep up with him.”

  It’s true what she says about me. I am a good runner. I’m faster than all the other kids, even the boys. Baba says it’s because my legs are so long. When he wants to tease me, he pinches my calves and says he’s helping me develop my muscles. It tickles and hurts at the same time when he does that, which makes me laugh until I can hardly breathe.

  “Take him down to the river,” she says, “and put him in somewhere safe. Stay with him. The tide may rush in places, and the wind could blow the water even quicker. Run along the bank. Don’t let him out of your sight.”

  I’m not sure how she thinks this baby is going to survive when so many others haven’t, but I don’t say anything, because Amma and Baba are looking at me with such serious faces. Sometimes I think Amma must be the wisest woman in Goshen and that she can read my mind, because she takes the baby out of the basket and puts her nose right to his little head. Her mouth is smashed up against him, so I can’t hear her too well, but she repeats it for me. “This one is special.”

  Well, yeah, but all the grown-ups are always telling us that every baby is special, no matter what the Egyptians say. If that’s true, then why did some others end up drowning in the Nile?

  It’s a tricky thing to be a slave. The men have it pretty hard. They have to go out to the fields or building sites when the sky is still half-black and half-orange, and they work until their backs are twisted. I help my Amma pack down the dirt of the floor in our hut every day so Baba can lie down with his knees bent up when he gets back.

  By the time they come back at night their shadows are really long. That’s a lot of hours to pretend nothing hurts, which they have to do. You never know which overseer is going to decide to make someone do extra work or kick a man he sees scrunch his face up or bend over to stretch. They get cut and scraped all the time, too. The women make buckets of salve to coat their skin, and then use it up in a week and have to make more.

  But the women have it worse. My chest is flat and my hips are still skinny. “Nonexistent,” my Amma calls them. She says, “You’re lucky now, but just you wait.” Even I can see the problems older girls face. Girls my age don’t get bothered by the overseers, but once they start to look like real women, things get really tricky.

  It’s like with the babies. If the Pharaoh tells you that you have to drown all your boys as soon as they’re born, it would make sense just to stop having babies for a while, at least until the Egyptians lose interest in this latest rule. But that’s a not a good solution, because any woman who catches the eye of an overseer can’t let him think she’s barren. The overseers want to take girls off behind a pile of bricks, but they don’t want to have any children with slave women. That would lead to a whole host of trouble for them, and if there’s one thing an overseer doesn’t want, it’s trouble.

  Here’s how it works. If the baby is a girl, they can pretty much ignore everything and pretend nothing happened. But what if the baby is a boy? That’s when the problems begin for him, no matter how long his whip is. He can either claim the baby and try to take him, but the mother and her family will do just about anything to keep a Hebrew baby out of the hands of the Egyptians. They’ll hide him, pass him from hut to hut, or pretend he’s another woman’s child. That could make the overseer angry, which is dangerous.

  Overseers are used to getting their way, mostly because they’re the ones with the whips in their hands. My Amma says the only way they know how to solve problems is by counting out lashes. If he’s admitted that he’s the father of a slave woman’s child, he can’t just walk away and let other people think the Hebrews have tricked him. So he gets angry, which always leads to some of us getting punished. Overseers are really the lowest of the low among the Egyptians, even if they lord it over us. They have bosses, too. If he ruins or even kills any of the slaves he’ll be in really big trouble.

  That’s one option. The other thing he could do is deny that the baby is his. Some of them do that, but it hasn’t always worked out so well, because even though the bosses don’t really care what the overseers do to the women around here, they don’t want to see any more Hebrew babies being born. So they make that overseer personally throw his child in the river. You’d think that would be pretty easy for someone who rejects his own baby, but that’s not usually what happens. Amma says only the most hard-hearted man could do that without a stain spreading on his soul.

  My friends and I saw one of the meanest overseers walk into the very same spot in the river where he had to toss in his own son the day before. He was the kind of man who always laughed when a slave clutched his arm or leg in pain and whipped harder than any of the others just because it seemed like fun to him. He wasn’t so tough in the end, though. We watched him walk out pretty far into the water. That’s when it began to look like he changed his mind about drowning. He waved his hands until he couldn’t do that anymore, but we didn’t call anyone to save him. None of the Hebrews could do anything to help anyway, since we aren’t allowed to learn how to swim. We all stay close to the sides when we go in, and never let the water rise higher than our waists. Some of the bigger boys walk in all the way up to their chests, but that seems like a really bad idea to me. They wouldn’t be able to do anything if they fell down. The water would just carry them away and they’d die.

  Not one slave cried when his body washed up on the shore.

  That’s why the women have to stay pregnant, even if it means they might give birth to boys. It’s the only way to keep the overseers from following them around, sometimes pushing them down onto the ground right there in the open, but that leaves them back where they started. So they just have to hope for girl babies, or that they’ll miscarry or have stillborns. Amma says, “A live birth is a beautiful thing, but not here. It would be better for them not to have lived at all than to be born a slave.”

  Being pregnant only keeps the women safe in one way. Other than making the overseers keep their dirty hands to themselves, being with child actually makes things harder. The Egyptians call us animals, so they expect the women to squat wherever they happen to be when their time comes and push out a newborn like an antelope or cow does, but we’re people, and human women can’t really do that, at least most of them.

  It’s the saddest thing to see a woman who can’t even stand up anymore on her hands and knees in the fields, screaming and writhing, but none
of us can go help her for more than a second or two at a time for fear of being whipped for stepping away from our own work.

  We all find ways to help, though. When we see a woman begin to have her birth pains, all of a sudden the work that day somehow has to be done right where she is. Someone brings her a sip of water when no Egyptian is looking, and the little children who are too young to lift or cut put their warm bodies against her back. It doesn’t really do anything, so far as I can see. She’ll still moan and thrash around, but afterward those mothers always say that having the children up next to them made the whole thing bearable.

  The best thing would be to hide those pains altogether. It’s better that the Egyptians just not know when a woman goes into labor. If it does turn out to be a boy, everyone can lie and say it was stillborn, or swap in a newborn girl to carry around in case one of the Egyptians notices that some lady who was waddling around isn’t pregnant anymore. In the meantime, we all try to hide the boys.

  It’s all pretty complicated, but not for me. Because I’m a fast runner, I’m sent on errands instead of having to work in the fields and construction sites. I run between them, delivering messages and things like that. I get to see a lot of things that go on. At night, I pull up all the things I saw that day and tell them to my Amma and Baba. As I said, I have a good memory.

  Like the day the decree about the babies was read out. All the men were busy making bricks and hauling them. It was so hot, and I had already been sent all over for hours. The overseers didn’t even bother making sure any women were there. They just walked through the site, stopping little groups of men to read off their papyrus and then told them to get back to work. But they couldn’t. Not right away. Each little cluster just stood there, as if someone had grabbed hold of their arms and legs and wouldn’t let them move.

  I don’t understand grown-ups. The overseers started hitting people, which is what got the men back to their tasks, but they didn’t say anything. They didn’t cry or get angry, or anything. The work site got really quiet. The only sounds were of hammers splitting rock and the wet slap of cement. For the rest of the day, they just kept looking at each other. It was as if they were trying to speak without actually talking. When the men met up with their wives and daughters later that night, it was a totally different story. The women made enough noise to make up for the men’s silence. I had to hold my ears closed. It was giving me a headache.

  It didn’t make any sense. The men didn’t say a thing, but then the women shouted or fell down onto the ground. One even screamed at her husband. “It isn’t enough that they took our land and our cattle and our dignity. Now they’re actually trying to kill us, and you can’t even open your mouth.”

  Her belly was huge, so I guess I can see why she’d be upset, but her husband still didn’t say a single word. It was like someone had stolen his tongue. Instead, he rubbed her back, which wasn’t going to help anybody once that baby was born.

  After that the whispering started. Not right away, but over the next few days. I’d be sent to a field with a message for one of the Egyptians, and a Hebrew woman would call me over, tell me that all the girls and women had come up with an idea, and that I should tell the men to start taking bits of mortar and rock dust home with them at the end of the day.

  Then I’d run to the building sites and tell my father or some other man I knew what the women had told me. They’d nod, and tell me to relay the message that some of the women should start collecting leaves and feathers.

  That’s how our huts started sprouting hiding places. The men would come home, as tired and broken down as ever, and build little nooks in the corners or off a back wall. And so many women began to look pregnant. Every day, I’d see someone adjusting a lumpy mound as it shifted under her clothes.

  The tricks mostly worked. The Egyptians couldn’t tell who was really having babies and who wasn’t. Even so, they caught a few. Those were really bad days. We all put ashes on our heads. It was the groans that came from the hut where the baby’s parents lived that were the worst. I don’t know how they did it, because our huts are tiny, but so many women crowded in on those evenings to be with the parents. I couldn’t go. Too loud, and anyway, too sad.

  And all that time, Amma’s belly was getting bigger for real, which made us all very nervous. Even my little brother, who’s only five and can be pretty stupid most of the time, started acting even stranger than usual. He wouldn’t listen to anyone, and for one whole week pretended he was a crocodile. He wouldn’t even eat sitting up, but crawled around sneaking up behind everyone and snapping at their ankles until we’d put his food on the ground. Not in his bowl, but actually pour the food out, even if it was soup.

  Of course, Amma and Baba got mad at him, but they also told me that little children act strangely when they can tell something’s wrong but don’t understand it. I did understand it, because I’m a lot smarter than he is. That’s why I got so frightened.

  I tried to keep it in, because Amma and Baba were upset enough on their own, but I couldn’t do that forever. “What’s going to happen?” I finally asked.

  Amma looked even more tired than usual. Her skin had gotten kind of grey, like the dust of the rock quarry had been rubbed onto it and stayed there. By then, she was tottering from side to side when she walked, so I knew that the baby would be born soon.

  “We’ll figure something out,” she said.

  “But what?”

  “I don’t know.” She sounded tired, too, but she must have done that thing where she read my mind, because she said, “If he’s a boy, we’ll hide him, just like all the others. But we’ll hope for a girl.”

  But he was a boy. We got lucky, because he was born at night, so the midwives could sneak in and out of the hut without anyone seeing, but Baba told me to go to sleep right after he was born, even though I wasn’t tired at all. Amma was crying as she held the baby. Baba, too. I wanted to do something to help, but I couldn’t, so I cried too, only I turned my face to the wall so they wouldn’t see me.

  We did hide him, for a little while, but like I said, he cries a lot, which is bound to call attention to him sooner or later, and that is why there’s this basket in my hands now. It’s good that I’m so strong, because it’s a pretty far walk to the river, and Amma sent me out really early this morning so no one would see me. The baby is staying quiet, probably from all the juggling around as I walk.

  I didn’t say anything to Amma, but I’m more scared now than ever. What if the basket doesn’t float and I have to watch my baby brother drown? What if the tide turns it over and he slips out, or there’s a crocodile nearby? Even running as fast as I can, I won’t be able to do anything if any of those things happen.

  I try to remember what Amma said and repeat it over and over to myself. “We have to have faith. It will turn out okay.” I don’t know if I believe it, but I believe my Amma.

  When I get to the river, I look for a spot along the bank where I can walk in. I think that somewhere with reeds to hide us but also a gentle slide where I won’t have to climb down a steep ledge would be best.

  The basket is getting even heavier. I don’t understand why my arms are trembling. I’m not cold at all. Actually, I’m covered in sweat. By the time I find the perfect spot, I almost can’t hold it up anymore.

  The water feels so good. It’s cold, but I was so hot that it feels really nice to walk into it. I wade in a little bit, hugging the basket the whole time. I’m afraid it will float away before I’m ready, so I don’t want to go too far away from the bank.

  It really is too heavy for me, so I have to put it down. I hold onto it with my hand as I back up until the water only covers my ankles and then my feet. It’s pretty uncomfortable to be bent over so far, my feet in the shallow end, my arm stretched all the way out so that the basket doesn’t float away.

  At the last minute, I pull it back in and unlatch the top to look at my brother. “I may never see you again,” I say. He just looks up at me. He has one foot in h
is mouth, which is what he likes to do when he’s lying down. It’s pretty funny-looking and usually makes me laugh, but not today. Then I get worried that he understood me and will get scared once I let him go, so I say, “Don’t worry, I’ll be next to you the whole time.” I hope that’s the truth.

  Eventually, I have to let go. At first, the basket doesn’t move much. It just bobs up and down on the water and turns around in the reeds. I worry that I chose a bad spot, and that he’ll just stay stuck there forever. I don’t even know what to do. My chest feels tight and I’m not breathing quite right. But I can’t walk into the water to free the basket, because then I’ll be stuck in the same situation I was afraid of to begin with.

  I can’t make up my mind. Now we’re both stuck, the baby in the rushes and me just watching the little basket. It bumps into some reeds, which turns it so that it bumps into some more. Thankfully, the river makes a decision for me, because I see the basket start to edge out to where the current can take it.

  Once it’s past the rushes, I start to follow it. The current must be really comfortable, because the baby doesn’t cry at all. That makes me mad, because he never stopped crying at home, which was the reason we’re here in the first place.

  “Were you trying to get put out here?” I say, even though I know he can’t hear me, and that even if he could, he wouldn’t be able to answer.

  The water moves pretty slowly, so I walk along, not even needing to jog to keep up. It starts to get really boring. Nothing is happening. The basket doesn’t even get pulled into the middle of the river. It just knocks along the banks. Some mud has started to stick to the bottom and sides, which is hard to see because of all the tar, but I can tell, because it looks bumpier than before. Amma had been really careful with it. She had smoothed the pitch out with a giant leaf over and over. At the time, I didn’t understand why, but now I see that she must have thought the basket would float better that way.