Storm

by Donna Jo Napoli

“Yes.”

  Bash’s mouth twists. He takes a deep breath and looks away.

  My belly turns to rock. “Don’t turn away! Help me!”

  Bash quick looks at me. “What should I do?”

  “Hold my hand.” And I squeeze his hand harder than I ever squeezed fish flesh. My belly relaxes. “Aban saved my life. And then he claimed me.”

  “Claimed you?”

  “I could have refused. Aban would have accepted that. That’s probably the strongest reason why I didn’t refuse. And then I came to love him. But that was later.”

  “Where is . . .” Bash shakes his head.

  “He died in the water.” My belly turns to rock. “Help!” I grab Bash’s hand with both of mine. I think all of me is shrinking inward, smashed from the outside, smashed and smashed. Until my belly finally relaxes. “I didn’t tell you about Aban because I wanted to stay the married woman. Because otherwise . . . otherwise maybe everything that happened with me and Aban would happen all over again with you. And that felt wrong. Unfair to Aban. Do you see?” And my belly is hard again. A rock! A stab of pain! An ice pebble shooting through an eyeball and I am that eyeball, I am pierced! I scream, “Help me!”

  He closes his hand over my mouth. “Tell me how,” he says. “But don’t scream. I’ve got your shift here. If you need to, bite it.” He lifts his hand away and then holds up the shift.

  “Make it stop!” I’m trying not to scream. “Help!”

  He pushes me onto my side and rubs my back. Hard. So hard it almost distracts me from my belly. I kick him.

  My belly relaxes. “When the baby comes out, catch him.”

  “I will.”

  “I need you, Bash.”

  “I know. I need you, too.”

  My belly crushes me. I will burst. I will go up in flames. I want to die! “Help me! Make it stop!” And he’s rubbing me and I’m pushing him away and grabbing at him and curling around my pain and stretching to get away from it, to leave this hateful belly behind, to escape.

  Bash rubs my legs and for a second, one second, I think I have a moment without pain, but then it’s back and it’s stronger. I cannot do this! I cannot! I scream. Bash pushes the shift into my mouth. I bite. Screams fill my head.

  And Bash is pushing my legs apart. I can feel his hands slip in the sweat that I slide in.

  “His head, Sheba! His head!”

  I push with all my might. I push myself inside out. I push till I can’t anymore.

  And he’s crying, this new person. A mewling sound.

  And I’m crying. My belly is soft now.

  “He’s attached to you. There’s a cord.”

  “It’s all right. Let it be. Just wash him.”

  I twist sideways on my back and watch Bash bathe the boy, one big hand serving as a cradle while the other gently douses him with seawater. He lays the boy on my chest. A ruddy thing with spider legs and arms and a pointed head and crazy eyes that I bet can’t see me at all. “He’s gorgeous.”

  “Yes. What now? What about that cord?”

  “You hold him.” I hand the boy back to Bash. And I take the knife I had set in the bottom of the seawater bucket earlier. I cut the cord and tie it. Then I splash myself with seawater and press and press on my belly, tears streaming at the pain, until the afterbirth comes out and it’s finally all over.

  My baby is born.

  I lie back. Bash puts the baby on my chest. He roots around at a breast, then latches on.

  Bash sits on his heels beside the bucket. “Are you still my Sheba?”

  “I am. If you want me.”

  “I do.”

  “Come lie with us.”

  He settles, with one arm around the babe and me.

  “I screamed.”

  “I’m here, Sheba. My Sheba. No one will hurt you. No one will hurt this baby.”

  And so we lie there, too exhausted to talk more, too excited to sleep, under the stars and stars and stars and stars.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Day 303

  Queen and The Male perch on an edge of the roof, arms around each other, just lazily looking out at the dawn. They come up every night now and go down to their cage when they get the signal.

  The signal is Noah, a thoroughly predictable man. He opens the window, declares loudly that the world is not dry enough yet, shouts at the people inside, who protest just as loudly, then slams the shutters with a finality that I can bet cuts off discussion. Noah rules, after all. The Mighty Creator talks to him—not to anyone else.

  At the shutting of the windows, Queen and The Male disappear down the rope. I don’t know what they are thinking—I don’t know if this is just something they’ve become habituated to or if they actually understand that the humans may do something awful if Queen and The Male are not in their cage when the daily chores begin. But I do know that Queen and The Male have minds of their own. They decided when it was time to come up to the roof again. In fact, they forced Bash to let them up.

  The first time Bash went down the rope after the babe was born, he entered my old cage only to find that he couldn’t get out of it onto the deck. Someone had secured the swinging door shut with a rope that then ran across the deck to another cage, and the knot holding it all together was at that other cage. Bash couldn’t reach it, of course. And he would never cut through a rope unless he was forced to. Ropes are too valuable.

  So the humans were not dunces, after all. Whether or not they believed Ham about being hit over the head by a giant, they were cautious enough to make sure that if any strange being appeared in that cage, it couldn’t get out onto the deck again. Bash was stuck.

  Bash fiddled with the poles for a while, trying to figure out another way to get free. By the time he gave up and went out the porthole and up the rope, Queen and The Male had already snuck out before him. They were on the roof, at first all tentative, watchful, jumpy. They whistled and grunted continually, and walked everywhere, touching everything. But then they settled down beside me and simply sniffed at the babe in my arms curiously, but carefully. The best I can figure is that they smelled the babe on Bash—they knew he’d been born. That was enough to make them overcome their fear.

  In the morning, Bash chased Queen and The Male down the rope. Then he pulled up the rope and fished off the other side. We passed the day eating fish, drinking fish water, and catching whatever sleep we could between cleaning and feeding the babe.

  The next night Bash went down the rope on the other side of the ark and entered the middle deck through a new cage. It turned out to house the wolves. But that’s what Bash was hoping. They knew Bash—all the animals know Bash, but some of them seem to have adapted to his presence quickly and others not so quickly. The wolves were quick; they didn’t bother him.

  Bash gave the animals their few hours of freedom and was about to leave when Queen and The Male set to squealing and whooping. They are not loud animals; their calls are high-pitched and sweet, really. But these noises were insistent. And Bash understood. So he went through the wolves’ cage and up to the roof. Then he dropped the rope down the other side of the ark, outside my old cage. Queen and The Male climbed up here instantly.

  They come up every night now. And in the morning, they leave on their own—after Noah closes the shutters.

  They love the babe. They love Bash and me, too. But they love the babe the best.

  I won’t let Queen or The Male hold him. The Male seems all right with that, but I know Queen longs to have him in her arms. She holds her hands out to me, palms upward, begging. But I can imagine her with her own infant, and I’m quite sure her own infant would hold on to her hair with hands and feet and never fall. Queen might not understand that a human baby doesn’t hold on that way. She could drop him. But I often sit in the circle of her arms with the babe in my arms, so that together we hold him. That doesn’t satisfy her; her chattering tells me that. But it appeases her.

  What satisfies her is Bash. He tickles them—both Queen and The Male. He tri
ed it once just out of the blue, and they went mad for it, so he does it often now. They make a hoarse laugh the whole time, and when he quits, they roll away and continue doing it to each other until Queen finally remembers the babe and comes back to watch him. The Male squats behind her.

  Their attraction to the babe is formidable. I know that because there’s something else alluring now, yet they always choose to come up here.

  That other alluring thing is the earth itself. The ground around the ark is now out in the air. It happened two days after the babe was born. Bash said he knew it. He had to throw the rope far out in order for the bucket on the end of it not to hit bottom fast.

  It is clear that we are caught on a mountain peak, as Bash first surmised. There are rocks all around the ark, and they slope downward. Not far below, the sea still laps. Sometimes when the wind blows, waves even spatter against the ark again. But really, there’s no denying that people can walk on the earth again.

  And they do. We have to stay low and quiet whenever we hear them. Apparently they’ve made rope ladders that hang out some of the portholes—I’ve never seen them, but Bash described them to me—and they go down, both the men and the women, to fill buckets with seawater so they can turn it into sweet water. There’s always someone or other fishing, all day long, because it takes everything a person can catch to feed the animals. Others are often scooping up kelp with nets to dry out for the herbivores.

  Bash can’t fish in the day anymore, naturally. So he goes down the rope at night and walks to the sea to fill our seawater buckets. And he took the rope that used to hang in my old cage as his new fishing rope. He attaches a bone hook to the end of it and fishes from the shore, such as it is. He doesn’t let the animals out at night anymore; he has no time to do that. But it won’t be long before they are set free anyway. It can’t be long. Noah can’t stay stubborn forever.

  We hear Noah open the shutters now. Queen and The Male walk over on all fours and nuzzle the three of us under our whale-skin lean-to before going back to the edge of the roof where the rope hangs, ready to go down. Suddenly they jump backward, as a bird bursts past them.

  I sit up, clasping the sleeping babe to my chest. Bash is already on his feet, with a bone ax in his fist.

  It’s a raven! He shines sleek and black against the rising sun. He flaps hard and rises quickly, then he soars, wings spread so wide, five feathers on each tip reaching out like greedy fingers. His joy is visible. Flight. Flight after months and months of nothing. Good heavens, that bird has been locked up more than ten months. He must be rediscovering himself! I clap my hand over my mouth, whether to hold in a laugh or a cry, I don’t know—for I can’t risk those below hearing from their open window.

  The raven circles above us, but only once. He flaps off and away, toward the closest mountain peak. I stand, so I can see farther. The raven circles over that peak, but he doesn’t alight. On he flies, past the next peak, and the next. And he’s out of sight. He was here only minutes ago—certainly only as long as it takes to wring the liquid out of a fish. But he’s disappeared now. Gone. Free.

  The world changes, just like that.

  Flaps come again. A second bird. The mate? But no, it’s a dove. Brown with black-and-white-speckled wings and so small, I’m sure it’s a female. I think immediately of Asherah, the queen goddess who treads upon the sea, the wife of the god El Elyon, father of everything. All at once I understand: Noah is not a dunce at all. He’s asking the gods to tell him when it’s right to leave the ark. Maybe this is what he means by the claim that the Mighty Creator talks to him.

  The dove flaps off in the opposite direction from the raven. That makes sense; the raven might choose to think of her as food, though I imagine him determined never to get near the ark again. Who goes willingly back toward their prison?

  The dove heads for the nearest mountain peak in that direction. Her body hangs round and heavy on those wings, flapping, flapping. She is beautiful, strong, steady. I hear each beat of her wings in my heart.

  Finally she’s there, and she circles the peak slowly, searchingly, but she doesn’t settle. Off she goes, toward the next peak. She flaps hard, but she clearly has far less power than the raven; she has to flap so many more times to travel the same distance. It’s taking her a long time. The morning is passing.

  The babe stirs in my arms. I set him to the breast, holding him in place with one arm while my other hand plays with his ear. But my eyes go back to that dove. All of us watch her—Queen and The Male and Bash and me. She is halfway to the next peak, flying low over the water. The sea is calm. Please stay calm. Please don’t splash her. She seems to move more and more slowly. Is that simply the illusion of distance? She reaches the second peak. She circles it. Again and again. Ever more slowly.

  I don’t know how long we’ve been standing here, but the babe has nursed on both sides and is clasping my thumb, opening and closing his fingers around it, making little noises. Every time I look down at him, he is looking up at my face, and I smile so happy. This babe has made me so happy.

  I look up at Bash and bang his leg with my hip. He bends over me. I kiss his cheek. He smiles, but in a distracted way. He’s already straightened up and is watching the dove again.

  She’s heading back toward us.

  “She’s given up,” I say. “How could she give up so easily?”

  “She won’t land on rocks,” he says. “She wants a branch. A dry, clean one.”

  “Where on earth is there such a thing?” I want to shout at the dove. I want to tell her to make do with what she finds. That’s what we all have to do. That’s what life is now. But then I watch her, pump, pump, pumping her wings, working so hard, and my anger dissipates. Maybe before coming on the ark she could fly great distances; I don’t know. But all that time without flying may have weakened her. She flies so low, I imagine the water reaching up and swallowing her. Courage, little dove. Courage!

  With each wing flap I feel the pain in her shoulders. I feel the panic at the water below, so close her toes must be wet. I feel her heart race.

  She makes it.

  “Alas!” shouts Noah. “No dry land out there.”

  “But the raven! The raven hasn’t come back!” It’s Ham’s voice.

  “The raven can live on rocks. He can eat carrion. The dove needs a tree and fresh leaves. We need no less than the dove.” The shutters slam.

  Queen and The Male immediately go down the rope to their cage.

  Bash puts his arm around me and the babe. “It won’t be long. Look how much it has changed just since the babe was born. It won’t be long, Sheba.”

  I swallow. I am still inside the dove. I am still shouldering the weight of failure. “Even if land appears everywhere, the animals on the ark won’t survive long without sources of sweet water.”

  “Rivers will come back. It will rain again. Rivers. Just think of rivers.”

  “The babe’s father was born by a river. The river Pishon.”

  “Wonderful name. It starts like pistah—like the name of your favorite plant.”

  I look at my pistachio plants. All five of them have come up. That alone is remarkable, for everyone knows not every seed is good. “Pishon.” I caress the babe’s head.

  Bash kisses the top of mine. “Pishon is a good name. Bash, Sheba, and Pishon. They sound right together.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Night 309

  The night is so hot, even naked I pant. I walk slowly, standing tall in order to catch any bit of breeze that might come. At home we would have slept on the roof on a night like tonight. But the roof would not have been so hot as the wood under my feet is now, because we would have strewn it with long grasses to act as padding and to give a bit of air passage under our backs. And even though the grasses always matted down flat by halfway through the night, they still wicked away our sweat and cooled us off a little that way.

  Nothing cools us tonight. Pishon is stretched long on my forearm, asleep, his cheek cradled
in my hand, his legs and arms dangling over the sides, his little rump against the inside of my elbow. He lies there and sweats. Now and then he emits other hot, wet things too—and I simply go over to a bucket of seawater and rinse us both off. He doesn’t even wake. He’s an easy baby.

  I should be sleeping now too. I try to get as much nighttime sleep as I can. But this heat . . . I can’t bear it.

  Queen and The Male seem to be suffering too. As soon as Bash threw down the rope tonight, they climbed up here, like usual. They greeted Bash before he went down, like usual. They greeted me and Pishon like usual. But then they sprawled out on their backs without touching and fell asleep. There’s nothing usual about that. I’ve never seen them not touch in their sleep before. Their arms tend to intertwine. Often they form a single tangle of bonobo, making it difficult to distinguish which parts belong to Queen and which belong to The Male. I look at them now and wonder if they wouldn’t be more comfortable in their cage. I don’t know. Maybe it’s like an oven down there. But maybe it doesn’t get as hot as this roof, this roof that bakes in the sun all day. Could it be that they came up here tonight purely out of loyalty?

  There’s so much I don’t know about Queen and The Male. It’s funny to think you can live with creatures in such close quarters for so long and not know what’s in their heads. I walk past them slowly now, careful not to disturb them.

  I pick a pod and chew on it as I go. We’re so lucky to have these plants. We eat leaves and pods every day. I’m careful to let some plants go to seed, so I can save those seeds. But there are plenty of plants for eating, too. Not much soothes me better than chewing on a pod. I feel strong. Birth left me broken, but, finally, I’m strong again.

  I don’t walk anywhere close to the edge of the roof. I’ve never liked being near the edge, but with Pishon in my arms, I take no chances. The image of him crawling toward this edge flashes in my brain. A spasm shoots up my core. I clutch him tight. That’s a long way ahead, though. And we’ll get off the ark soon. I kiss Pishon’s downy spine. “It’s all right,” I whisper. “It’s all right. You’ll be somewhere safe by that time, I promise.”