Naamah

by Sarah Blake

  “So it is for these people, too.”

  “But they know you.”

  “You know me, too. You haven’t asked me to take you from the boat.”

  “Is that an option?”

  “Technically. But changing your position for the coming years—no, I would draw too much attention to myself.”

  “So you are a selfish angel?”

  “Have you known another kind?”

  A dead person approaches them, nods a hello to the angel, and continues on.

  “Can they see me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do they know I am alive? That I’m different from them?”

  “I don’t know. But it seems obvious to me.”

  “Yes, yes, you’re right.”

  “Oh.”

  “What?” Naamah says.

  “You were asking about their consciousness.”

  “Yes,” Naamah says. “That’s a nice way of putting it.”

  Naamah cranes her neck to look at the structure now, to take it all in, the dozens of arches, dozens of spires. It looks like a palace, and Naamah’s in awe of it.

  “Where did you get the inspiration for this place?”

  “The heavens.”

  “Right. Of course you did.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “No, I do.”

  “Then why say it like that?”

  “Because you’re impossible. This is impossible. I’ve probably banged my head on something in the water and I’m dying alone somewhere.”

  “No,” she says. “You’re fine, Naamah.”

  “And why do you say it like that?”

  “Because you are fine, but you might also be despicable.”

  Naamah’s face gets hot with a shame that she’s not sure she deserves to feel.

  * * *

  • • •

  SHEM PICKS UP a handful of marbles from a divot in the board and starts placing them in other divots. “Congratulations again, Ham.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I was surprised to hear the news. You know, since Mom had said not to have sex on the boat.”

  “We didn’t at first.” Ham takes up a handful of marbles now. “Why? Have you and Sadie not had sex?”

  “Not yet. It’s not so hard not to.”

  “It’s not that I couldn’t control myself.”

  “I wasn’t saying that.”

  “No, I just don’t want you to think that’s why.”

  “Then why?”

  “Neela felt like we were living as if the waters would never go down. And she had to believe they were going to go down, that we would get off the ark.”

  “But God said we would survive the flood,” says Shem.

  “Knowing that to be true and acting as if it’s true are two different things.”

  “That’s what Neela says?”

  “Yeah,” says Ham.

  “Sounds like Mom.”

  “No.” Ham hadn’t thought of that. “No. She’s not like Mom.”

  Shem laughs.

  * * *

  • • •

  A GROUP OF CHILDREN has come up behind Naamah. One asks, “Why is she despicable?”

  Another says, “I think she’s beautiful.”

  “Can I braid your hair?”

  “Okay,” Naamah says.

  She feels the hands of many dead children run through her hair, but one takes the lead, gathering a thick plait of her hair on the left, parting it from the rest, running a dead-girl fingernail along her scalp to make the line neat, and then doing it again on the right, making three neat sections. Then she begins to braid.

  The first child watches the dead girl’s steady work, and asks again, “Why is she despicable?”

  Before the angel can respond, Naamah speaks. “Because I question God’s will.”

  “God made the flood, didn’t He?” the child asks.

  “He did.”

  The child leans over and whispers in Naamah’s ear, “Then I am despicable, too.”

  Naamah feels tears coming on, stinging, salty enough to turn all the floodwaters into a sea. She tries to focus on the small tugging of her hair.

  The angel says, “You could never be despicable, child.”

  “Of course not,” Naamah says.

  The child looks unconvinced.

  “It’s the way I act,” Naamah says, “motivated by my question.”

  “What do you do?” another child says.

  “I have hurt people.”

  “Did you defeat them?” one asks.

  “No. Not that kind of hurt.”

  “Lions hurt other animals,” a child says.

  “That’s true.”

  “I would be okay if there were no more lions.”

  “Would you?” Naamah asks.

  “Yes.”

  “If lions didn’t hunt the animals who grazed, didn’t move them around the fields, then the fields would not yield. Many more animals would die,” Naamah explains.

  “That’s sad.”

  Naamah nods.

  “We don’t need to eat anymore,” the girl says, the girl who has been braiding Naamah’s hair. She peeks out from around her back. “Your braid is finished.”

  “Thank you,” Naamah says. She runs her hand along it.

  * * *

  • • •

  SOMETIMES BETHEL WOULD come over to Naamah’s home and they would bake. Once Bethel wanted to make an orange cake. She’d brought fresh oranges with her, straight from the market. She’d been so excited to see them. She kept holding them up to her nose.

  Naamah set to work combining the ingredients. Soon she realized that the cake would take the last bit of oil in the house, the scraped inside of the last vanilla bean, the last eggs, the last flour. It felt like a small miracle to have all the right remaining amounts of all of the ingredients, but not one of God’s miracles. One that was born of her own past actions.

  * * *

  • • •

  “WILL YOU BRAID my hair now?” the dead girl asks.

  “Okay,” Naamah says.

  The girl moves around and stands in front of Naamah, who runs her fingers through her dead-girl hair. It feels a little like water and yet still like hair, as if water were running over the hair constantly without wetting it. It feels like how she thought the angel would feel—Naamah’s own estimation of holiness.

  When Naamah has finished the braid, she has nothing to tie it with. The angel reaches down and from the water creates a string of crystals around the end of the braid.

  “Thank you!” the girl says, and all the children run off laughing.

  Naamah turns to the angel. “Is that how you made all of this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you show me again?”

  The angel thinks for a second, then constructs a small bird of crystal and places it in Naamah’s hands. The bird looked sturdy in the angel’s hands, but Naamah can hardly feel it. She balances it in one hand and pinches the bird’s tail with the other. The crystal of the tail collapses and lengthens into a thinner crystal.

  But for a second, Naamah thinks that she’s made the tail longer with another crystal, that she has the same power the angel has, to create. And while that second was exhilarating, Naamah feels great relief at not having that power, at having only the ability to deform the crystal.

  Now, knowing her small value in this place, her near worthlessness, Naamah is newly excited to explore it, to run her hand along every crystal wall and doorway. But then she stops.

  “Is Bethel here?” she asks.

  “No,” the angel says.

  * * *

  • • •

  HAM ASKS SHEM, “Does that mean you’ve never had sex
?”

  “I have,” says Shem. He looks embarrassed.

  “But not with Sadie?”

  “No. It was when I was younger.”

  “I’ve only had sex with Neela.”

  “Do you think she cares about that?”

  “I don’t know,” Ham says. “Are you worried about what sex will be like with Sadie?”

  “No.”

  “Like if you can’t please her?”

  “I mean, I already make her orgasm.”

  “Right, but if you can’t please her during sex. From the sex itself.”

  “Then I guess I’ll make her afterward. Or we’ll figure it out. Does Neela orgasm?”

  “I don’t know. How do you know?”

  “I think you’d feel it. Sadie shakes, and she kicks her feet after.”

  Ham considers this.

  “But really you should just ask her,” says Shem.

  “I don’t know. We’re doing okay.”

  “I guess so.” And Shem laughs again. He’s referencing the pregnancy, trying to make a joke, to stop Ham from being so serious. But he’s not sure that’s how it came out.

  * * *

  • • •

  NAAMAH ASKS THE ANGEL, “HOW do you know? Did you know Bethel?”

  “I have been watching you since God has been watching you.”

  “Watching me or Noah?”

  “Noah.”

  “So she definitely isn’t here?”

  “No.”

  When Naamah doesn’t respond, the angel continues, “It’s mostly children here. Most adults knew what to do, how to die.”

  “What will happen to them?”

  “I don’t know. As long as they’re down here, I will remain with them.”

  “I should get back to the boat.”

  “Yes,” the angel agrees.

  * * *

  • • •

  ONCE NAAMAH REACHES THE SURFACE, she yells for Japheth.

  Shem walks to the railing while Ham gets the ladder. “It’s us, Mom,” Shem shouts.

  They lower the ladder, but they don’t watch her climb it. They don’t see the sun catching on the water still on her body, the day turning her more radiant and less human at once. But the angel sees this.

  SEVEN

  Noah runs up onto the deck. “The ewe is lambing, Naamah. I thought you might want to come.”

  “Yes,” she says. “I’ll follow you.”

  They go to a large room where they keep all the sheep together. The sheep, in their small herd, are less anxious than some of the other animals. Naamah spots right away that one of the ewes has a lamb’s front hooves sticking out of its vagina. The ewe panics as Naamah approaches, but once Naamah gets her hands on her, she pushes her down, places a knee on her, and the ewe is calm.

  Naamah holds the lamb’s hooves tightly with her left hand. Then she slides her right hand underneath the sheep’s tail, under a flap of skin, pale pink, a near half-moon. She moves her hand under the flesh, to the right and to the left and to the right again, until the head of the lamb begins to come forward. Then she grabs it, her hand around the back of the neck, under the ears.

  “Now push,” she says to the ewe. And she pulls the lamb from the body of the sheep. From the neck, she runs her right hand over the lamb’s face and clears the nose of mucus. “Come on,” she says, and she pats the lamb on its side. It starts to breathe and sneezes.

  Naamah looks up at Noah, who is smiling. He’s been standing in the doorway with the door open, to let the air circulate. Behind him is Neela. She looks like she might be sick. Naamah motions to Noah to take her away.

  Naamah can see another lamb is coming, so she moves the first lamb to a fresh spot of hay. She then goes through the same actions until the second lamb is out and breathing. She moves the second lamb to be with the first, away from the blood and afterbirth. They are starting to fluff up. They are soft and sweet.

  She turns back to the mother, who is already getting back on her feet. “Good job, mama,” she says. It’s then that Naamah notices that Noah, in tending to Neela, has left the door ajar and some sheep have begun to wander into the halls of the boat.

  * * *

  • • •

  IN THE DESERT, even on cooler nights, Naamah and Noah would sleep naked next to each other. She liked to lay her hand on his chest. His hair was soft, and the skin underneath was even softer. His hands grew rough. Sometimes his lower arms. Always his cheeks, sun-worn. And if she ever had a day where she’d been bothered by little things he did or failed to do—not helping enough with the boys, not asking her how she felt—somehow her feelings were always eased by ending the day next to the soft skin of his chest. The next day he could do just one lovely thing, tell one perfect joke, and she would remember how difficult it was just to get through life at all. She loved him enormously, and she knew she always would.

  * * *

  • • •

  “BOYS!” NAAMAH CALLS OUT AS she leaves the room, closing the door behind her, scanning the hallway for sheep. Neela has found a bucket nearby, and Noah is still with her, standing behind her.

  “What happened?” he says.

  “The sheep got out.”

  “Shit. I’m sorry.”

  “At least they’re all right,” she says. “Are you going to be okay, Neela?”

  Neela nods, stretching one arm behind her and waving them off awkwardly.

  “We’ll check on you,” Naamah says as they hurry away.

  Soon Japheth, Ham, Shem, Sadie, and Adata are all there with them. “There should be fourteen full-grown sheep in the room, along with two new lambs, but four sheep have just wandered away,” Naamah tells them. “I’m not sure how far they got. Let’s split up and get them back.”

  “New lambs! That’s so great, Mom,” says Shem.

  “I can’t wait to see them!” Sadie’s beaming like she’s the mother.

  “After all the sheep are back,” Naamah says, “we can play with the babies for a bit. They’ll probably be walking around by then.”

  “See you back here,” Japheth says, and he heads off. They split up to cover the decks, with Naamah staying on this one. It looks empty, but there are rooms at the ends that aren’t always securely closed, like their bedrooms. She almost expects to find a sheep in her room, chewing on a blanket. But she makes it all the way to the other end of the boat, and all the rooms are empty that should be.

  She turns to walk back down the hallway, dark as night in the middle of the boat, and then she hears something. It sounds like one of the cockatoos, repeating one word over and over: “Jael. Jael.” She stops to listen, and the word sounds familiar to her, but she can’t remember why. She runs her hand along the wooden door. But then she starts walking again, eager to see the sheep.

  Noah, Japheth, and Adata are there, standing patiently in a little arc, and they’re smiling, looking down at an empty floor.

  “What happened? Where did they all go?” Naamah asks.

  “We’re back up to thirteen sheep, Naamah. We’re just admiring the little ones,” Noah says.

  And then she understands—the way they’re standing, their smiles. She feels something bump into her legs, and she instinctively reaches down and shoves away the rough wool of one of the sheep she cannot see. Just when I actually wanted to see them, she thinks. Her chest begins to hurt.

  “I rushed to the deck, just in case, but no sheep there,” Noah says. “Ham is with Neela. Japheth and Adata went one deck down and returned with three sheep. Shem and Sadie went to the lowest deck, and they’re not back yet.”

  Naamah stumbles out of the room, trying to catch her breath. Noah follows her.

  “Are you okay?”

  She feels dizzy. “I need to swim,” she says. The angel can fix this.

  “Right now?” Noah ask
s.

  “Yes. But I’ll just be a minute. I’ll leave the ladder down. I promise.” And she leaves him, his body still leaning toward her in the darkness of the hallway.

  * * *

  • • •

  BELOW THEM ALL, Sadie and Shem search the lower deck together. This level is darker and colder than the rest. Usually Sadie wraps herself in a blanket before walking around down here, but they came so fast.

  It’s not hard to hear where the sheep has headed as they start down the hallway. It’s somewhere down at the end, confused and lonesome, maybe having stumbled into a small room.

  But just as Naamah had unsettled the walrus, the sheep’s sad bleating has awoken some of the larger animals.

  * * *

  • • •

  NAAMAH WADES OUT from the patch of land and gets under the water. She swims to where it gets deep, and the angel is there.

  “Give it back,” Naamah says.

  “Excuse me?” The angel’s voice is calm, almost polite.

  “My ability. To see the animals. Give it back to me.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “When I was on the boat, I had stopped being able to see the animals. Then I met you and I could see them again. And now it’s gone again. I just helped these two beautiful lambs into this world and I can’t see them anymore. You must have taken it from me. You must have taken it back.”

  “Naamah, I didn’t do anything to you.”

  “Yes, you must have—and you can undo it. I need to see them again.”

  “I’m sure you can regain it, if you have before. But it has nothing to do with me.”

  “No—”

  “You’re quick to assign blame where there is none.”

  “No!”

  “Naamah.” The angel’s face drops. “You must get back to the ark.”

  “You can—”

  “Naamah,” she says again, “get back.”

  Naamah realizes something is wrong. The angel pulls her hands back along the sides of her rib cage, pushes forward with her palms, and Naamah flies backward through the water. She spins herself around and swims as fast as she can, to the land, the ladder, the boat.