by Sarah Blake
“I can’t. I don’t want you to do that, like you did to the dam.”
“I won’t ask you again. I won’t save you again. I can’t keep seeing you.”
“I understand.”
“You are okay with this being the last time we see each other?”
Naamah shakes her head. “There’s nothing I can say. Or if there is, I don’t know it. I’m not the woman you think I am. I mean something only here.”
“You think that—do you hear yourself?”
“If you made me feel otherwise, I wouldn’t trust it.”
“You ruin yourself, Naamah.”
* * *
• • •
NAAMAH TAKES THE ANGEL’S HAND. “Won’t I be happy here?”
“You will be. I can’t deny it. You will have so many grandchildren, and you will create nations. You will feel such purpose and you will find a happiness in that purpose because you always do. You will be happy.”
“Will you be happy?”
“My life is not so easily seen.”
Naamah kisses her hand.
The angel climbs on top of her and kisses her. She kisses her over and over again. She takes Naamah’s lips between her teeth. She lets Naamah suck on her tongue. Every kiss is some new ratio of their lips, tongues, and teeth, given and received, removed so they might be given again.
Naamah can’t believe the weight of the angel’s body. And yet she feels no pain from it. She feels for the first time how the angel, despite taking on this female form, is far larger than she appears—massive, in some form of matter Naamah cannot see. She knows she can love the angel, but she’s surprised she’s allowed to kiss her. She moves her hands over the angel’s dry arms. She moves her hands to feel more of her body, to slide her hand down the center of her stomach. But as soon as she does, as soon as she reaches her stomach, the angel is gone. As if Naamah touched a button that released a trapdoor and the angel fell through it, straight down, maybe straight through Naamah. And Naamah is alone. And the animals are silent. As if each and every one of them is dead.
TWENTY-TWO
The day arrives when they want to send out the dove again. The water seems low, and new parts of the mountains have been revealed, with green grass and knotted plants that will surely flower soon into great sweeps of purple and yellow.
They don’t cheer this time. They don’t chant their wishes at the bird. The bird flies off and they all watch until it’s out of sight, even Naamah, who can see every animal again. She wonders if it remembers the way to the olive tree, if it will be happy there.
This time, if all goes well, the bird will not return. And while its disappearance could mean a great many things—that the bird has died, for instance—they will have to take the absence as a good sign.
Naamah can’t think of many times in her life when she has greeted an absence with faith. Perhaps the absence of blood when she and Noah were first trying to get pregnant, when she couldn’t say, before then, if she were a fertile woman.
* * *
• • •
NAAMAH EXPECTS ADATA to start their preparations with purpose, but she keeps to her room.
“What’s wrong?” Naamah asks.
“I made promises to you, Naamah. Promises that were easy to make on the ark and with life on land in the future, some future no one could make out. And I’m worried I can’t keep them. Now that it’s here—all here, all of a sudden.”
“You mean, your life with Japheth?”
Adata nods.
“Have you been happy here with him?”
“I have.”
“Why would being on land change that?”
“I don’t know. On land I could run away.”
Naamah laughs. “Just go one day to the next.”
“There is a safety to the ark.”
“Is there?” Naamah asks. “Listen, Adata, if months from now you are not happy with Japheth, then he will not be happy with you, and the two of you will be unhappy and you will have to find some resolve to that, and it will not be your fault; you will not have betrayed me or this family or God. That is life.”
“That is life.”
“Yes. Now help me figure out what we should eat before we leave and what is worth carrying with us.”
Adata follows her down to the lowest floor of the boat, which still holds a chill. “The tiger is not growling,” Adata says.
“No.”
“Is she dead?”
“No—no, of course not.”
“We have all spoken of the marks on your face, Naamah. But we were afraid to ask. I didn’t think of what could have made them until now. Did you meet the tiger?”
Naamah touches the scab on her cheek with the tip of her middle finger. “Yes.”
“How are you alive, Naamah?”
“I don’t know,” Naamah says.
At the storage room, they lift boxes to see which are the heaviest. They consolidate vegetables that had been stored separately, when there were more of them. They move boxes to the hall, for what they’ll want to eat soon. They don’t remark upon how strange every action feels, in what might be their last days on the boat.
* * *
• • •
AFTER A WEEK, Noah agrees that it’s safe to say the dove will not return. Noah was the last holdout. And while they all knew he would come to think this, their newfound agreement invites a certainty that surprises everyone.
That night Naamah can’t sleep, but to her surprise, neither can Noah.
“We have so much to do,” he says.
“I know.”
“Should we make a list? Should we assign tasks?”
“We can if you want to,” Naamah says.
“Would you do it?”
“Have Adata do it. She needs something to be in charge of right now.”
“Why? Why do you say it like that?”
“Nothing. She’s just anxious, like you are, wide awake when you should be asleep.”
“I guess we’re all on edge,” Noah says.
“Except Neela. She’s too tired to be on edge.”
“Are we not helping enough?” Noah asks.
“I don’t think it matters what we do. She has to eat and her body has to draw on itself to make milk. Even if she were sleeping perfectly, she’d be exhausted.”
“I remember when you were like that.”
“You do?”
“Yes. You could fall asleep anywhere. We would be down by the river washing clothes, and you’d say, ‘I have to lie down for a second,’ and then you’d be asleep in a patch of grass, a baby next to you on his back, looking at the undersides of leaves and swatting at his own legs.”
Naamah laughs.
Noah kicks off the blanket the way a baby would.
“Noah!” Naamah gasps.
He laughs and grabs the blanket and pulls it up over both of their heads and kisses her on the nose. “Remember the tents we would build with the boys, with ropes and blankets in the branches of tamarisk trees?”
“Yes,” Naamah says. “Now let me out of this thing.” And she pushes the top of the blanket down and tucks it under her arm. “I’m going to sleep,” she says, closing her eyes, but still smiling.
“I’m going to do that with our grandchildren,” he whispers.
She puts her hand on his arm and they both go to sleep.
* * *
• • •
LATE IN THE NIGHT, Naamah wakes and lies in bed and wonders whether the boat offers safety, as Adata suggested. A sameness. A containedness. Yes. A vessel that demands a certain repetitiveness of the body. When was the last time Naamah jumped to reach something? Or crawled under something? She cannot remember—everything here is so perfectly made for humans, for herself and these seven other humans specifically. They made so
many decisions so quickly as they built, or as they were surprised by something they’d forgotten. So many adaptations.
Then Naamah hears a note of some kind, almost giggling, as if something delightful might be expected. Yet as she follows the sound, she cannot guess what the delight might be.
She climbs down the ladder to the patch of land, which has grown in size, big enough to hold an entire market. She walks out to the edge of it, to the water, closer to the sound, and spots a glimmer farther out. Thinking it might be the angel, Naamah rushes toward it, still in her clothes. When the water reaches her waist and her clothes begin to float up around her, as if she’s begun to blossom, she realizes it is not the angel but the children who have come to see her.
“Hello, children. What are you doing here?”
But she can’t hear them. All she can hear is the same sound she heard from her bed.
She crouches down under the water, feels the film cover her mouth. She knows the angel will be able to tell she’s entered the water again.
“Naamah! Naamah!” the children clamor. “We heard about the tiger.”
“I see the mark on her face.”
“I see a cut behind her ear.”
One child begins to comb through her hair.
She says, “That’s enough, children,” but she still lets the girl comb through her hair for her scabs. “Please tell me how you’ve all been.”
“We’ve been well.”
She turns to one of the boys. “And you, how is your mother?”
He looks down at his feet. “She is fine.”
“Have you all been to the cave? To see the art she has made?”
“No, we haven’t.”
“Well, you must. Don’t you care for the adults down there at all?”
“We care for you, Naamah.”
“I know.”
The children tell her stories of how they’ve explored the world the angel has made. One has brought a crystal with him and shows how he has learned to change its shape himself. He is so proud, as if he might grow up and be an angel one day, if only he learns how.
“Tell me why you have come,” Naamah says. “The angel must not approve.”
“We didn’t tell her,” one shouts.
“We heard about the baby,” says another.
“The baby?”
“Oh yes! And we wanted to know when we would see a baby, and the angel said we might never see one! So we had to come!”
“I see.”
“So can we see the baby, Naamah? Please.”
“I don’t see why not. If you are quiet and unseen.”
The children nod.
“Come with me, then.”
“No,” the children say, stepping back, deeper into the water. “We can’t leave.”
“You’d have me go get the baby and bring her to you?”
The children nod and move closer again.
“Wait here for me,” she says.
Naamah stands again and feels the air rush over her skin, sees the moonlight. She could simply forget the children were there. That’s how discrete their worlds are from one another.
* * *
• • •
STOPPING IN NEELA and Ham’s doorway, Naamah spots the baby asleep between them, wrapped tightly in a blanket. She goes to the side of the bed where Ham is sleeping, knowing he is less likely to wake, and she lifts Danit from the bed. No one stirs.
On the deck, she wraps Danit to her chest with a swath of cloth, and in this new position the baby snores.
Naamah climbs down the ladder, walks across the new land, and wades into the water. As the water creeps up toward the baby, Naamah unwraps her and tucks the end of the long cloth into her waist belt. It unfurls from her hip. She holds Danit in her arms.
The children motion for Naamah to come closer. She holds the child high and lays her own ear to the water.
“She’s beautiful!” one says.
Another yells out, “Can we touch her?”
All the children pause at that, and then they all repeat it, louder and louder.
Naamah stands up abruptly. She stares down at Danit, still asleep, still swaddled. She doesn’t think the children can hurt her, but she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know if, on her own visits, the angel protects her from the touch of the children. She doesn’t know much about the dead at all.
The night is quiet, the air cold, the children merely a shifting light on the water, as if they reflect the moon more than the surface of the water does. Naamah undoes one corner of the blanket and Danit’s arm falls out. Naamah feels the skin of her arm, softer than any animal on the boat. Danit squirms and her hand reaches out. Naamah thinks just to touch a finger to the water.
As Naamah leans toward the water, the baby’s hand hanging from her body, the undone wrap pouring off her like a song would, if a song were a fabric—it is at this moment that Naamah hears a wild scream, and she stops.
Neela is wailing on the deck, leaning over the railing.
Naamah stands up and walks back toward her. “Neela?” Naamah climbs to her, holding Danit to her chest, letting the wet cloth trail behind them.
When she reaches the deck, Neela bursts into tears and grabs Danit from her.
“Are you okay?” Naamah asks.
“I’m not hurt, Naamah. I’m furious.”
“With me?”
“What were you doing with her?”
“I just—” Naamah tries for an explanation that doesn’t involve dead children. “I was showing her the water before it’s receded.”
“She’s asleep, Naamah. We were all asleep.”
“The water is so different at night.”
Neela shakes her head. “And me waking and not finding her, how did you think I would react?”
“I didn’t think you would wake.”
“Have you taken her like this before?”
“No! No.”
“How can I trust you?”
“Of course you can trust—”
But Neela cuts her off. “There are only so many of us, Naamah!” And she cries harder and shoulders past Naamah, going back below deck.
Naamah goes to the railing and looks to see if there are still shining spots in the water, each the head of a dead child, waiting for her.
TWENTY-THREE
In this dream, Naamah is charged with the care of a baby much like Danit. The infant keeps escaping her somehow—Naamah’s left her in the sun, she’s abandoned her by a ledge. Naamah runs to her, saves her, holds her tight, kisses her on the forehead, promises not to leave her, and then the child disappears again. It would be torturous if not for the nature of dreams.
This time, they are both on the side of a volcano that has erupted, the ash cloud above them, not yet settling, so everything is dark but clear. And while they are both in danger, the baby is closer to the lava, which moves slowly enough that it seems like they have a chance. Naamah lifts her up and runs away, down the slope. Her breath is ragged and her legs tire. She wants to look behind her to see if she can rest, but her head won’t turn.
Her feet kick little rocks, and they bounce out in front of her, hitting other rocks, making sharp sounds for the last time before the lava takes them. Her feet land on rocks in ways that make her wince, that make her muscles spasm. Her feet keep moving despite herself, until she wonders if she is not a machine made only to think that she requires food, water, breath.
Behind her, the lava pushes forward in its red lush. A gray peel creeps up its edge, a reaction from touching the ground below, a brief cooling, and then the gray splits into a dozen thin crescents, one after another, as the red pushes through, as if globular in its essence, or in the essence of its motion.
And then the Egyptian vulture is there. Naamah stops.
He asks, “Do you know why my
head is bare?”
“No,” Naamah says, catching her breath.
“It shows how deep I might insert my head into the dead.” He turns to allow her to admire his head in profile.
“Not as deep as other vultures, then?”
He huffs.
As much as Naamah enjoys that she’s bothered him, she wants him to leave, she wants this thing with him over. “Did you want to tell me something?”
“No. God wants to speak with you.”
Naamah notices that the child is gone from her arms. The baby is at the Metatron’s feet. He lifts a foot and puts it on the blanket wrapped around her.
“Don’t hurt her!”
“I would not.” The Metatron looks straight at Naamah. “Now, if she were dead . . . ”
“She’s not dead.”
“She’s not alive,” he says.
“Yes, she—”
“You are dreaming, Naamah.”
Naamah looks left and right as if that might confirm something. “So what? So what if I am? Is that what God wants to tell me?”
“No.”
“Then tell me already. Tell me!” she shouts.
But before he can begin, everything disappears around her.
* * *
• • •
NAAMAH LANDS in the desert again, and Sarai is there, holding the baby.
“Do you want her back?” she asks.
Naamah nods and takes the baby. “Thank you.” She checks the blanket for signs of the vulture’s talons. “Where did he go?”
“I took you. He is still there.”
“He had something to tell me. Something God wanted to tell me.”
“And you want to hear it?”
“Yes. Of course. Shouldn’t I?”
Sarai doesn’t answer.
“The angel said God didn’t care about me. Was not watching,” Naamah says.
“The angel has been away.”
“So He does want to talk to me?”
“He does.”
“Do you know what He wants to tell me?”
