It doesn’t seem to be making a difference. The basket keeps floating along. I walk beside it. It floats. I walk. The sun is out for real now. The baby is probably nice and cool in the basket, but I’m getting hot. Flies keep buzzing around my ears and hair, so I spend a lot of time swatting them away. Now I’m bored and irritated. I start kicking pebbles as I walk. I even bend down to pick a few bigger rocks up so that I can throw them.
I’m really good at throwing, and these rocks fit perfectly in my palm. I stop, point to where I want the rock to land in the water, pull my arm back, and fling it over my head. It lands far out in the river with a splash and sinks right away.
I’m about to throw another one when I look around and see that the basket has floated up ahead of me. My chest tightens up again. I lost track of why I was here. Amma and Baba would be so mad if they saw me. I feel terrible and sprint to catch up. The basket hasn’t gone very far, but I drop the rest of the rocks out of my fist anyway. I can’t throw them while I’m walking, and I’m afraid I’ll fall behind again.
It’s a good thing I do catch up, because the current starts to speed up a little. I can see bigger ripples on the surface of the water. The color changes, too. It’s always brown and muddy, but it’s darker now. The basket picks up speed. I’m loping along beside it now, which is better. Not so boring.
That’s when the basket moves away from the bank. I have to run to keep up now. The basket tips from side to side more in the water. I get scared that it will tip so far that the baby will fall out, and then all of my Amma’s work will be for nothing. Worse than that, I’ll have to go back and tell her what happened, and she’ll get mad that I didn’t save him even though she knows that I can’t swim.
All the rocking must be scary for the baby because he starts to cry. I look around, afraid that someone will hear and figure out that this is a Hebrew baby. Then they’d find me and know for sure. I stand on my tiptoes to look around, but there’s nothing to see. The river must have carried the basket, and me, along the shore far enough that we’ve reached a spot that’s completely empty. No houses, no roads, no people. It’s pretty here, with lots of trees. Their leaves hang over the ground and water, so I can walk in the shade.
This place doesn’t look like it does where we live. It’s pretty much always noisy there, because the Egyptians make us live so close together. Practically every hut touches another one. And there are lots of kids running around. That’s in the morning and at night. I’m not usually there during the day. Since most people are out working in the fields or building sites, I suppose it gets quiet then, but I’ve never really thought about it too much.
Here it’s different. What’s that word my Baba uses when he finally gets a chance to lie back and close his eyes? “Peaceful.” That’s how it feels here. All I can hear is the water. The birds, too. They talk back and forth to each other from the treetops. Some of them are on branches so skinny I don’t understand how they can balance up there.
They start to make a racket soon enough, though. It sounds like clack, clack, clack, and a lot more of them than I thought were around start flying from tree to tree. I’m not sure why they’re so nervous and loud, until I hear voices up ahead of me.
Whoever they are, they’ll see me really soon. To make matters worse, they’re all Egyptians. I don’t know what to do. If I keep walking, they’ll see me for sure. They could do anything then. I could get a whipping, or be sent far away from my parents if one of them decides to keep me for herself, but the basket is still moving, and Amma told me not to lose sight of it. Even though it’s shady, I start to sweat again. I wish my Amma was here with me. She’d know what to do.
I glance over at the basket and see that the current has slowed down again. Thank goodness for that, at least. The water bobs the basket along gently. It’s headed for a marshy bit up ahead, which should slow it down even more.
The only thing I can do now is hide and hope those people don’t see me or the basket. I spot a clump of reeds a few steps away and I push right into the center of it and then crouch down as far as I can. From there, I can put my eye right up to a space between two green shafts and see what’s happening, but no one will be able to see me.
The only problem is that I’ve lost sight of the basket. I just hope it’s hidden, too. “What do I do now, Amma?” But I whisper so softly that she wouldn’t be able to hear me even if she was right there beside me. Anyway, I’m old enough to know that she won’t be able to answer. It’s just that she’d know what to do, and I don’t.
The voices get closer. They’re laughing while they walk. Then I see them. Three girls, maybe twelve or thirteen years old. At least I think that’s how old they are, but they look so different from anyone I’ve ever seen that it’s hard to tell.
They’re beautiful. One of them is tall, with long arms. I bet she runs fast, because her legs are long, too. Another one has the kind of rosy, round cheeks that I’ve never seen on a Hebrew child. It’s like her face is trying to laugh even when her mouth isn’t. The last is small. She’s not much taller than I am, but she already has breasts, which is how I know she’s older than I am.
All three of them are wearing gold necklaces that reach from their necks down to the tops of their chests and wink back at the water. Their eyes look really long across their faces, almost as if they touch where the tops of their noses should be, but then I realize that they just have very dark paint around them. Their hair is blacker than any I’ve ever seen and perfectly straight, with beads woven into the ends and some kind of wrap around the tops of their heads. Those hairbands are the most amazing of all. They have beads of all different colors strung together to make patterns of fish and eyes and the symbol of the Pharaoh, which is one that all the Hebrews know well, since we have to carve it into so many of the buildings that get put up.
And their clothes. They wear skirts that open in the front to let them walk and shirts that look like they’re attached to their necklaces. I want to go up to them and put my hand on the cloth because it looks so clean. It’s all white. Really and truly white and not stained with sweat or ripped and sewn back up in places.
I almost don’t believe that these girls are real. I’m so caught up in staring at them that I don’t follow their eyes. So I jump in surprise when one of them points and says, “What’s that over there?” It looks like she’s pointing right at me, and the shivering in my arms starts up again, but then I see them walk down to the edge of the water and peer at another bunch of rushes.
They start to talk to each other, and even though I know Egyptian, their words stumble out on top of each other so quickly that I don’t understand what they’re saying. What I can see is that they seem nervous. They may even be as scared as I am. It’s like they’ve taken over for the birds and are chattering back and forth to each other in fright.
Someone else must have heard them, too, because I hear her ask, “What now, girls?” Whoever she is she sounds a little frustrated, as if this is how they always act and that it gets tiresome for her to listen to it.
The girls’ heads jerk up at the sound of that voice, but they don’t say anything. They look at each other, lift their shoulders, and gesture with their hands as if to ask each other what they should do. The voice comes again, “Well, what’s there?”
One of the girls finally speaks up. “It’s a basket, Mistress. Floating in the water. It sounds like it’s crying.”
“Baskets don’t cry,” the voice says. I can’t see her, and it’s probably true that a person doesn’t have to grow up a slave to know that this lady is the boss, but I figure all Hebrew children would know for sure. In any case, I know she’s the boss, and that the three girls answer to her and are a bit afraid of her, too.
“Yes, Mistress,” the tall girl says, but none of them move.
“Well, don’t just stand there. Bring it over to me.”
I watch the girls as carefully as I have ever looked at anything. I’m wondering what they’ll do to my baby brot
her, when I hear the sound of water moving. The girls have already lifted up the hems of their skirts to wade into the water to get the basket, pushed the reeds aside, and lifted it out. Now I can see the basket again. It looks exactly the same as it did before. I follow the girls’ eyes. I see a woman rise out of the river.
The others are beautiful, but this one makes my mind go silent. I didn’t know people could look like this. The three holding my baby brother’s life in their hands are just copies. It’s just obvious, even though this one doesn’t even have any clothes on.
As she rises, the water falls away from her. She’s like a stalk, long and slender. Her whole body is lit up, like the shiniest bronze. There’s no hair on her, except for the long black strands that fall over her shoulders and back. I’ve seen slave women naked millions of times, and none of them looks like this.
I wonder if all Egyptians are like this, as sleek under their clothes as the statues in their temples. But then I remember the overseers. Some of them have thick, curly hair on their arms and chests. And they all have furry legs. That’s what makes me think this woman must be special.
I can’t take my eyes off of her. It’s like she carries a sun around with her, only this one can be looked at without burning my eyes. My Amma always told me that the Egyptians are no better than us, even if they tell us they are all the time. Amma knows just about everything. I almost can’t believe that she’s wrong, but I’ve never seen a Hebrew like this. It’s dangerous to be a pretty slave. That’s mostly true for the women, but sometimes for boys, too. We’ve all known someone who takes a knife to her own face so that she can save herself. Afterward, we tell her the scars are more beautiful than the smooth skin that was there before. I think the grown-ups really mean it, but the Egyptians don’t agree, which is what Amma calls a blessing.
I’m so caught up in looking at her that I barely hear what they’re all talking about.
“Bring it over,” the woman in the water says as she walks closer to the other girls.
Unlike before, they don’t try to stay dry when they approach her. They don’t even take off their clothes or jewelry before stepping into the water.
“Open it,” she says when they’re finally in front of her. It’s the smallest girl who reaches over and pulls the top off the basket. All three girls step back from it, as if it had a poisonous snake inside, but the one they call Mistress reaches in and picks the baby up. She holds him out in front of her and looks at him for a long time. Even her stare must have something special in it, because he stops crying and looks back at her, as if he’s curious to see who this person is. Babies can’t really do that, but that’s what it looks like.
“We’ll take him home with us,” she says at last, and then lays him back down in the basket.
The girls look scared. “But Mistress,” the one with the pink face says, and then stops as if something was shoved into her mouth.
The tall one just stands there looking at everything but her mistress. It’s the small one who finally says, “Surely, Mistress, this must be a—” and then she stops.
“A what?” her mistress says. My Amma has done that to me, almost like she’s daring and expecting me to answer at the same time. These girls can’t just say “nothing” or “forget it” to her, like I do sometimes when Amma’s voice gets all gravelly like that and I know I’m about to get punished for something.
The small girl looks down and then up at her mistress. She must think she has to be very brave to do it, because she blurts, “Surely this is a Hebrew child.”
Her mistress just looks at her, waiting to hear more.
The tall girl steps in. I think she must be a good friend, even if she is an Egyptian, because it looks like she’s trying to help the other girl. “Won’t your father, the blessed Pharaoh, be very angry if you bring this boy home?”
I jump back. It’s lucky I’m in the reeds where they can’t see or hear me. The daughter of the Pharaoh, I tell myself. The Egyptians say he’s the son of a god. Amma always spits when someone mentions that and says, “Nonsense.” None of the Hebrews believe it, but here’s this golden lady standing right in front of me, every bit of her body uncovered for me to see, and I wonder if there’s more to the story than I know. It seems to me that only a god could make someone like this.
I don’t realize it, but I’ve stood up. I’ll be ashamed to tell Amma this later, because it’s not on account of the baby. I don’t know how I’ll tell her that I just about forgot the baby. It’s as if that woman, the Pharaoh’s daughter, has told me to rise without even looking at me. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know I’m there, and yet it’s like she commanded my body anyway.
They’re all walking through the water to the bank now. One of the girls is carrying the basket with my baby brother in it. All three girls struggle to get out of the water. They had to walk in a lot further to get to where their mistress was standing than they did to pick up the basket. They’re weighed down by their wet clothes and jewelry, but the Pharaoh’s daughter keeps rising, all of her shimmering and gold against the green trees and reeds. The tallest girl rushes as fast as she can to bring a cloth to her mistress and wipes down her arms, legs, back, and stomach. She bends down and lifts each her mistress’s feet and rubs it gently, then puts the whitest looking dress over her head. I thought the other girls were clean, but this makes me almost want to cry it’s so perfectly white, like the clouds that sometimes look like they’re dancing across the sky.
One of the other girls brings a golden stool and she sits. Then the tall girl begins to comb her hair out, bit by bit. I’ve always wanted a comb. I imagine how good that would feel, and how nice my hair would be. Amma tries to run her fingers through my hair to untangle it after I spend all day running. The wind pushes it around, and dust gets all the way into it, but no matter what she does it’s always a wild tangle, like a dust cloud that I carry around with me all the time.
This comb is white and pink and blue all at once. Amma and Baba always tell me, “Slaves don’t have the luxury to believe in miracles,” but they’ve never seen anything like this comb. I can’t believe something can shimmer and change color but stay the same all at once.
The Pharaoh’s daughter must have thought about what her girls said, because she says, “He is not a Hebrew,” and I can’t tell if she really believes that or just won’t hear anyone tell her she’s wrong. “He has no mother and no father. He was born of the water. You saw it yourselves.”
The girls are pretty confused about that, but they all nod. It’s stupid. I know he’s a Hebrew. I saw my Amma’s belly get big and heavy with my own eyes and then watched her bring him into life. She’s his mother, not this river.
“All things born of the river are sacred,” she says, and again the girls look like they don’t understand what she’s saying. I don’t either. I’ve heard a lot of crazy Egyptian things, but I never heard anything like this before. I look closely at her, and then I wonder if she’s making that up, even though her face looks exactly like it did before.
Well, not exactly. As they’re talking, the girls pile gold on her. She’s wrapped in it, over her dress and around her waist, her neck, her ankles and wrists, and on every one of her fingers. They paint her eyes black like theirs, and put red onto her lips so that they look like blood. Instead of one of those bands that each of them are wearing, they put a headdress on her. I watch them do it, and it’s just about the most complicated thing I’ve ever seen. First, they take parts of her hair and pin it to the top of her head, crossing the pieces so that it looks like the basket my brother is in, then they weave golden cloth through it and tie that to the headdress, which they lower onto her whole head. It’s covered in jewels that ring around her head like a crown. I think that the gem in the middle of her forehead must be the biggest, greenest one in the entire world.
All the while, she keeps talking, “We will take him home. He will be our son, and a member of the royal house. My father respects all divinity. He will understand
the miracle of this boy’s birth.”
When they’re done with her she looks like a goddess for real. I see that my hand has reached out, as if to touch her, to feel all that shining gold and know what it means to hold something precious.
I’m still standing in the reeds. I must look like I grew out of them. There’s dirt on my face. My hair is tangled as always. There are tears in my dress that Amma has sewn back up a hundred times. All that usually makes me invisible. I think there must be something wrong with Egyptians’ eyes, because they usually can’t see me until one of them needs to send me on an errand. But the Pharaoh’s daughter must see more than they do, because she looks over at me as if she knew I was there all along. Her blood-red mouth stretches out into a smile. She moves her hand so little that only I see it. I’m not sure how she tells me, but I know she’s calling me over to her, just like she called the other girls. I know that she will save us all.
The sun she carries around with her shines brighter than ever. It sparkles hot and perfect. It’s mine to lay my hand on. I take my first step toward her.
THE WATERY SEASON
“So Sarai, Abram’s wife, took her maid, Hagar the Egyptian—after Abram had dwelt in the land of Canaan ten years—and gave her to her husband as concubine. He cohabited with Hagar and she conceived; and when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was lowered in her esteem.”
Genesis 16:3-4
The signs were all right there in front of her. The wind blew the oak leaves above her head. The white flowers that dotted the hillside had pushed their small heads up. The sun rose higher and higher, reminded her of the purple lilies rising above the water when the god awoke, sinking back down when it was time to sleep. She hadn’t seen those flowers in ten years, and though she didn’t remember the way back, she knew she had been brought north and west to get here. She just had to reverse course, head southeast to reach her home.
After Abel and Other Stories Page 5
