The Sinners and the Sea

by Rebecca Kanner

  “You did not take the time to see your own child’s face. Do you think yours is so much better?”

  “None of those demonths were mine, but if they were, you would be wisth not to crosth me.”

  “It’s not my aim to be wise,” Javan said. And she smothered the man with the full weight of her body on the goatskin over his face.

  The next man was at the bonfire, passing around a jug of wine. Javan sent one of her girls in to offer the man a good price on her comforts. The girl brought him to lie on his back in a ditch lined with sheep’s wool. By this time Javan was tired of talking and she simply rolled a boulder onto the man’s head.

  The third roamed aimlessly, but Javan knew she would catch up with him. It was said she had eyes in her heart and a vengeance the strength of a hundred men in her hands. Even without these advantages, she would have found him. One of her boys saw him on the road leading out of town, struggling beneath the weight of the wine he had drunk and a limp little body slung over his shoulder.

  Javan came alongside him. “You should be running,” she said.

  He looked at her. “I have paid a good price for your whores. Why should I flee from you?”

  “Because I’m going to kill you. Show a little respect for my abilities.”

  He did. “The small young bones will make the best necklaces for your girls,” he said, dropping the body. Then he started running. But Javan had slipped a rope through his belt, and she yanked the man toward herself and a dagger she held level with his back. As he died, he asked her, “Why do you care so much about little demons and so little for yourself?”

  “I do not know,” she said.

  • • •

  As legend of Javan’s march grew, so did the stories of how she had come to be exiled.

  “She took the intestines of one enemy and stuffed them into another.”

  “She killed thirty men and ate their hearts.”

  “She put so many heads on stakes that there were no trees left for a league in all directions.”

  Javan’s march angered Noah more than all of the other transgressions of the townspeople combined.

  I was saddened to see my husband distraught, yet I felt much safer after Javan’s rampage. There was finally some sense of order, however cruel.

  One night when Noah was complaining to the God of Adam about her, I interrupted. “Perhaps, my good husband, she is doing the best she can, just as you are.”

  He was kneeling on his sleeping blanket, mouth moving, eyes closed. He opened them. It looked as though there were little fires crackling inside him. “Doing her best to what?” he asked. He did not usually ask questions; likening his struggle to Javan’s had roused him to anger. He waited for my response.

  I came as close to a good answer as possible: “To avenge those who are too weak to avenge themselves. Is not this what the God of Adam does?”

  He sat for a few breaths with the fires crackling madly in his eyes. Then he said, “I have already told you, only He can mete out justice.”

  “What is He doing now?”

  Noah did not answer this question. Instead, he said, “The God of Adam doesn’t need the help of a woman.”

  I was not so certain.

  CHAPTER 12

  NOAH’S SONS

  Noah begot three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

  GENESIS 6:10

  My belly filled with three sons to make up for the ones Javan and I lost. Because I feared they would have stains upon their brows, I hid my belly beneath a huge tunic whenever I left the tent to relieve myself or go to the well. Only Javan was with me when I gave birth.

  Shem was the first, the one who gave me a new name: Mother. But he did not want to do it. He held fast to my womb. It was not until eleven moons had passed that water suddenly gushed down my legs. Even then, as I squatted and had to bite my lip to keep from crying out, Shem clung to me.

  Finally, Javan reached in and grabbed him. “The next one will be easier,” she said. Which made me wonder how many children she had birthed and lost, or would have had I any strength left with which to wonder.

  When Javan had bathed him and placed him at my breast, I closed my eyes, too afraid to look at his brow.

  “He has a face like his father’s, except hundreds of years younger and without the madness in his eyes.”

  I opened one eye just enough to peek at his brow. When I saw that it was smooth and unmarked, I cried with happiness.

  He always wanted to be held and would cry whenever I set him down. I feared his cries might anger his father, so I held him even as I cleaned and cooked. I rarely squatted at my loom.

  My womb was not as tight after Shem, and Japheth entered the world quickly, screaming with rage. I pulled him from Javan’s arms and took a blanket to his brow. He too was unmarked.

  We were deafened by his screaming as Javan bathed him. When she returned him to my arms, I hurried to silence him with my breast. Already he had a tooth poking up from the bottom of his mouth. I did not reveal this to anyone, not even Javan. I would not chance my son being thought a demon. As soon as he grew others, he bloodied my milk, and Shem would bunch his lips when I brought him to my breast. So I gave one breast always to Shem and the other always to Japheth.

  Ham was born laughing. I could see this not by his mouth but by his eyes, which were crinkled with happiness. His cries did not pound as hard upon my ears as his brothers’ did.

  I was grateful that God sent the boys unmarked one by one, so that the people of Sorum could not argue that they were demon seed. Though if the townspeople had spent any time with them, they would have realized that they still had a case. The boys’ cries shook the dates from the palms and caused the goats to bleat in sympathy or perhaps agony. The boys had the spirit of a large celebration or a small mob. It felt as though there were at least ten of them.

  After Ham was born, if Noah and I accidentally made eye contact as we lay on our sleeping blankets, children screaming around us, we quickly rolled away from each other. Three is enough, I thought. God has repaid His debt, the world is right again. Or at least right enough to go on living.

  And truth be told, in spite of my exhaustion, the boys delighted me. I felt pure joy as I looked at each son and saw his unmarked brow. God has wiped my stain from future generations. It will die with me and leave no trace.

  I even loved my boys’ endless games. Ham would tip over a pot of lentils, and when I went to gather these up, Japheth would hit his hand into his date juice so that it splashed Shem, who would roll back and forth on the ground making farting noises out of his mouth until I picked him up and pressed him to my leaking nipple. He was four, too old to be suckling, but there was nothing he loved more. This would not change much when he became a man, though the breasts he pressed himself against would not usually leak milk.

  Though I missed my father, and regretted that he would not get to see my boys, my first years as a mother were full of joy. I never tired of tickling my sons’ bellies. We slept little and laughed often. At least the boys and I laughed often. Even when Shem was four, Japheth was three, and Ham was two, Noah would come home from tending the goats or riding through town and stand in the entryway to the tent with his shadow cast long before him, onto the overturned pots, lentils, millet, fruits, nuts, and wool scattered over the ground. He waited for the children to be quiet.

  But it was not in their nature to be quiet.

  One afternoon Noah gave up on waiting for silence. I had been holding Japheth, which caused Shem to scream and cry until I put Japheth on the ground and picked Shem up. Then Japheth started to cry, but his cries were not as piercing as Shem’s, so I left him where he was. “The God of Adam has given you much to be grateful for,” Noah told us, flinging his arms out to the sides. Ham was taken with the shadow’s movements and reached for the darkness one of Noah’s long hands cast upon the ground. “Let us pause and give thanks to Him.” He bowed his head.

  Japheth watched Noah, his tears drying and cries going
silent. Already I could see he was going to be astonishingly handsome. He had big yellow-flecked brown eyes with which he watched Noah. He was the only one who ever took an interest in Noah’s sermons. His brothers continued the activities of their day—rolling around, throwing things, cooing, and suckling.

  I watched all of them with insatiable eyes. Outside were the cries of men in pain and sinners in love. Women yelled, children shrieked, and fires raged. My nipples were raw, my loom lay bare. Yet I was never so happy in all my life.

  CHAPTER 13

  HAM

  Though I tried to stop them, my sons got older. They did not like being confined to the tent. They wouldn’t play Knock Over the Pot or Splash the Juice with me no matter how many times I turned my back to give them the opportunity. Their lack of interest in dirtying the tent space must have been a relief for Noah; his sight was growing weaker, and sometimes he walked with his staff swinging across the ground in front of him. I stopped cooking in the tent because I was afraid he might stumble into a pot of hot stew. Poor Noah. It seemed to me that I alone got to enjoy seeing our sons’ first smiles and watching them learn to walk.

  But I worried. Once I had sons, I had sons to lose. If Jank ever made good on his long-ago threat to warn the world of my mark, a fire might be built not only for me but also for them. I kept my head scarf on at every position of the sun. At night I tried not to toss upon my sleeping blanket for fear the scarf would come loose. Whenever my sons pulled on it, I hurried to make sure it had not moved enough from my brow that they could see the stain. Perhaps they saw it anyway but did not know it was worthy of their attention until one day when Ham returned from sneaking off to town.

  He came to stare at me. I was making stew, and at first I thought he was only hungry. “You should not have sneaked into town if you wanted supper tonight,” I told him. I did not like for my boys to stray far from the tent.

  “Is the mark upon your brow really from a demon’s paw?”

  Twelve whole years had passed since I first rode into town and the little boy yanked upon my scarf. And still the one-handed girl’s long-ago shout of “demon woman” had not yet gone silent among my neighbors?

  I let go of the spoon I was stirring our stew with, grabbed Ham by the shoulders, and squeezed. “Never speak of it. Not even when you are alone.” I could not help imagining his little eight-year-old body being carried away by a mob screaming of demons. “Neither should you even think of it.”

  “But Mother, where is the demon now? I want a mark too.”

  “Who told you the mark was from a demon?”

  “I will tell you if you tell me where the demon is now.”

  I pushed him into the tent and called Shem and Japheth to follow. When they were all squatting upon the ground looking up at me, I untied the scarf and let it fall to the ground. Their eyes fastened upon the stain.

  “For this the world has shunned me. All but my father, Noah, and Javan. I almost lost my life because of it, and I might still.”

  “Cannot the demon who put it there defend you?” Ham asked.

  He would get himself in trouble, and his brothers too. I remembered the three boys who had come from their mother all at once. I saw the crushed skull, the glassy eyes, the blood. I shook my head to expel these visions, but they would not be moved. Instead, the dead babies took on the faces of my sons.

  “Cannot the demon who put it th—”

  “Boy,” I yelled at Ham, “there is no demon but you!”

  “What about Japheth?”

  I stood silent and trembling until my rage had washed through me. “Forgive me, Ham. You are no demon.”

  I looked at each of them. Shem, with his big adoring eyes; my scowling second son, Japheth; and Ham, who exhausted me and also caused me to smile and laugh more than anyone else. “You are the greatest blessings I have ever received. I want to be a mother to you, and to be a mother to you for a long time to come, so you must be quiet and listen.”

  “When will you answer my questions?” Ham asked.

  “I will tell you all you need to know, and what you need to know is only this: If the people of the town know for certain that there is a mark upon my brow, I will be burned alive.”

  Six eyes widened, and no one spoke. Ham opened his mouth, then closed it.

  I did not tell them that they too might be burned, but perhaps they knew this. I did not hear them speak of my mark again.

  • • •

  By the time Ham was ten, my boys had taken to wrestling beneath the trees for many positions of the sun. Ham was easily held down in a wrestling match. Perhaps this is why he became more of a talker, and why the things he said were not always kind. He used his tongue to keep his older brothers from pummeling him, or worse, giving him lesser parts to play in their games.

  “You will play the dead man,” Shem told Ham one afternoon, “and Japheth and I will fight for your teeth.”

  “Why must I be the dead man?” Ham asked.

  “Do as you’re told,” Japheth barked. “I could beat you black and blue without causing a single drop of sweat to form upon my brow.”

  “But Japheth! That would be as close as you have come to washing in many moons!”

  I was watching from the tent window, as I often did since Ham had returned from town speaking of my mark. Whenever they started away, I secured my head scarf over my brow and chased them. Giving birth had left me with stiffness in my right hip, and when I ran after them, my joints creaked. This embarrassed them so much that they usually turned around. Also, they had surely not forgotten my mark and the danger I would face if it were discovered. That year a baby with a stain over half her face had been fed to a huge fire. It was said that the flames were red but that they spat thick green blood for twenty cubits in all directions. My sons did not like for me to stray from the tent any more than I liked for them to do so.

  As I watched Japheth and Ham argue from the tent window, I saw Japheth make a fist. Japheth punched Ham in the face often enough that I studied Ham’s nose daily to make sure it was not crooked.

  I ran from the tent. Though I was not as strong as I had been before giving birth, I pushed between my boys quickly enough to stop Japheth’s fist from flying. Despite his rage, I knew he would not risk harming me.

  “Why do you always take up his cause?” he asked.

  “Do not threaten to beat your brother again.”

  He turned his head to spit upon the ground beside us before unballing his fist and walking away.

  “One day you will get yourself a broken nose,” I told Ham. He started to open his mouth, so I clasped my palm over it to keep him from replying. The edges of his smile peeked around my hand.

  Ham used his tongue on the rest of us as well. Of my stew, he said, “What creature’s afterbirth is this?”

  Of his father, he said, “He looks like a man who has just stepped in donkey dung.” I was glad he did not say this when Noah was near.

  To Herai, whom he adored, he said, “I do not know what makes you so slow, but it surely does!”

  I could not bring myself to punish him. I loved Ham so much that every time I looked at him, my heart swelled. How had such a delightful child come from me, a marked and nameless girl? Ham made each day feel like a festive occasion, which must have bothered Noah even more than Ham’s insults. Ham interfered with the spell of gloom Noah tried to cast over us.

  CHAPTER 14

  HERAI AND MY SONS

  “It is a sad day on God’s Earth when His creatures have forgotten their Maker,” Noah said one evening as he entered the tent. Herai was helping me mend tears in the boys’ tunics, and she did not look up. Only Japheth listened respectfully. He was fourteen years old. “The town has become so densely packed with prostitutes that the contagion has spread to the peoples of the surrounding towns. God cannot set His gaze down anywhere among us without getting man’s filth in His eyes.”

  In mock outrage, Ham cried, “The town is knee-deep in man’s rash-infected seed!”


  This delighted Herai, who let out a loud wailing sound—her laugh—which I was sure Noah could hear. I suspected the reason that Ham loved to make Herai laugh was that the sound was loud and strange. People for a hundred cubits in any direction could hear it and know Ham had made a joke.

  Noah narrowed his eyes. He also knew that Ham had made a joke.

  I rushed over to Ham, held one hand against his cheek, and slapped it loudly with the other. Noah could not see well enough to know that I was not really slapping the boy. I often pretended to slap Ham to prevent Noah from actually doing so.

  When I did this, Herai smiled and clapped her own hands together, causing Ham to burst into laughter.

  “Boy!” Noah said. “The Lord can hear you. Your mouth is dirtier than a flesh tent. Take care you do not end up numbered among the wicked.”

  Noah did not chastise Herai. He considered her to be beyond the reach of salvation. At over twenty years of age, she was neither married nor a prostitute. She was the only woman my sons knew besides Javan and me. Her breasts were as large as her mother’s but did not sag. Her face, though flatter than most, was pleasingly round, and she had a trusting nature. I was sure that if it weren’t for Javan, Herai would not be safe from men. I often caught Shem looking at her. I feared that one day two of my sons would desire her, and their desire would tear our family apart.

  CHAPTER 15

  HUMBLED

  Noah did not seem to notice our sons growing to manhood. He thought only of the sinners, who continued to sin loudly and long into each morning. When Noah was not riding through town at night, instructing them to turn their eyes to the Lord and mend their ways, he was tossing and turning upon his sleeping blanket. He was exhausted but often could not sleep.

  Occasionally, I placed my hand upon his back to comfort him. He was too tired to be surprised by this. A couple of times it seemed as though he wanted to say something to me. His gaze started to move toward my eyes but then wandered back to the ground or up to the heavens.