Jochebed felt the baby kick and rubbed her swollen belly to calm the child. It wouldn’t be long and she’d need Shiphrah to midwife a second time. She’d always known Shiphrah would be a good midwife. Nothing ever seemed to upset her, and it was impossible to know the thoughts behind her obsidian eyes. When Shiphrah wanted to hide her feelings, her face hardened into a stone mask. Lili would have been a horrible midwife, alarming everyone with her gasps of dismay and moans of sympathy.
The baby kicked again. Would it be a boy or another girl? If a girl, would she, too, love weaving?
As she watched her mother teach Miriam how to rotate the basket with her thumb, contentment warmed Jochebed with an awareness of the past flowing into the future. They were woven together by birth and task and tradition.
Miriam was different though. While the child learned the weaves quickly, it was not enough for her to be still and work with her hands. Jochebed sighed. How could she have a daughter so opposite from herself? Miriam exuded confidence that she could do anything she tried. So far it had proven true. Was there anything Miriam couldn’t do … or wouldn’t try?
Miriam ran faster, sang sweeter, and learned more quickly than the other girls her age. Did every mother think her child was someone unique, or was Miriam truly … unusual?
It was hard to tell her daughter the stories of their people and the unseen God. Miriam listened with an unsettling intensity. And her eyes! During the stories, Miriam stared relentlessly into Jochebed’s eyes as if trying to see if what she said was true. Jochebed often busied herself with weaving to avoid looking into her child’s face.
Another daughter like Miriam would be the death of her. Jochebed hoped this child would be a boy. The birth of a boy would bring approval and acceptance. Perhaps then she would be released from hearing how her father allowed an Egyptian, one of their tormentors, to live. Perhaps she would then “be enough.”
Jochebed accepted her newborn son from Shiphrah and lowered him so his sister could see her tiny brother. “Your father said we are to call him by the name of Aaron, Aaron ben Amram. It is a strong name like yours, Miriam.”
Four-year-old Miriam eyed the wrinkled infant doubtfully. “He needs more than a strong name, Mommy. His nose is smashed.”
“As was yours when you were first born. Look at you now, four years later. Your nose is much thinner and straight as can be,” Elisheba answered for her daughter.
Miriam stroked the damp spikes of baby hair on her brother’s head, and Jochebed thought her heart would burst with the joy of seeing them together. She was content. She had given Amram a beautiful daughter and now a healthy boy. She pictured the way her husband’s dark eyes would light up at the news of his son. Surely he would finally be pleased with her. She could hardly wait to present little Aaron to his father. Amram loved children.
“You must help your mother take care of baby Aaron. He will need a big sister like you to help watch over him and protect him.”
“I will be his big sister.” With wide, solemn eyes, the little girl looked from her grandmother to her brother before voicing her promise. “I take care of baby.”
The three women shared their smiles at Miriam’s earnest face and then turned to the job of living. Shiphrah busied herself with afterbirth chores. She cleaned Jochebed after her long labor and disposed of the afterbirth. Elisheba prepared the evening meal while Jochebed cuddled her infant. Miriam knelt close by and watched her new brother sleep.
As soon as her confinement ended, Jochebed resumed the washing chores so her mother would not need to kneel by the water’s edge. Adjusting her grip on the smooth stone, Jochebed listened to the women fretting about the long season of drought as they scrubbed and pounded the dirt from clothes.
She studied the water’s level. The Nile did not appear to be rising. Harvest of the crops was complete, and still the season of shemu lingered. Jochebed knew she probably should worry, too, but inside she was relieved.
When the intensity of the summer’s heat decreased, two other annual events occurred. Jochebed dreaded both of them equally.
First came akhet—the flooding time—the uncertain time. With light flooding, not enough land was fertilized for the needed crops. After several years of low waters, famine seared the land.
If flooding was heavy, the waters receded slowly, shortening the needed growing period. The Nile turned villages into islands, homes into mud, and swept away lives.
Everyone faced the risks.
Jochebed faced fear.
This time of flooding began the season Amram turned away from her. Mired in the memories of his first wife, their life together, and her death in the swirling currents of the floodwaters, Amram seemed to forget he had a living family. He would stop in the middle of a task to look around as if he could not remember what to do or where to go. He did not reach for Jochebed in the night or talk to her in the day.
Jochebed faded like a star against the brilliant sun of his deceased wife’s perfection.
During the first flood after their marriage, Amram had acted so strangely, Jochebed feared he was ill. The next year, in the secrecy of the night, she’d found courage to ask if he tired of her, if she failed to please him in some way. He told her then of his wife being swept away in the currents as she tried to reach their son.
She understood him better and felt relieved until she realized where his thoughts centered each summer. Each time the river rose, so did the wife who lived no more, who would never again disappoint and never again fail. She had held his heart since their childhood, and he faithfully mourned her each year, his first love—the one Jochebed would always fall short of being.
The squeals of children interrupted her thoughts as they splashed fully clothed into the river or jumped feet first from the rocks into the shallow pools. Their dripping hair and soggy tunics would dry quickly in the white heat.
Jochebed shook out wrinkled clothes and wished she could as easily shake off the threatening fears rising to overwhelm her as surely as the Nile would threaten and overrun its boundaries. Would she always live in the shadow of Amram’s first wife, always feel as if she were “not quite enough”?
“Jochebed, if you have time to stare at the water, you could help me. Not that I ever complain, but since I fell and hurt my back, I sure could use a little help.” Sarah’s voice grated. “You’re sure not like your mother.” Sarah wagged her finger. “No, not at all. That woman knows how to work. I never see her standing around like she’s some fancy princess with nothing to do but dream. How old are you now … seventeen? You disappoint me. Guess you take after your father, Levi.”
The words slapped. After so many years, must her father’s name still be dishonored? Jochebed bit her tongue to keep from screaming something she’d need to apologize for later. She hated to apologize to Old Sarah.
Jochebed wrung out the last of the clothes with vicious force and dropped them in the basket. She carried the load downriver and spread them to dry on a rock far enough away to be safe from the still-splashing children. She worked slowly, not wanting to return to Sarah.
The dormant poison quickened and swelled. No one needed to tell Jochebed she was disappointing. She already knew.
She felt it every year when Amram’s thoughts turned to his first wife and how she drowned trying to save their child. She was reminded she was not equal to her mother whenever she carried baskets to market and Mother’s were sold first. She had no special healing skills like Shiphrah, and Lili’s ongoing unfriendliness convinced her she must not be a good friend either.
“Jochebed.”
Startled by the sound of Amram’s voice, she clutched the dripping cloth to herself and turned fearfully. What horrible thing had happened that he would risk the taskmaster’s whip by reporting late to work?
“Are you ill, Amram? Has the quota increased? Are you being sent to the quarries?”
“Woman, you do Miriam a disservice letting her choose her own way. She is headstrong and willful.”
Still clasping the wet cloth, Jochebed spluttered with indignation. “Miriam! You’re here because of Miriam?” She took a breath to still her pounding heart. “What harm can it do if she chooses the tasks she likes? I don’t mind doing the others. She’s still helping me, and the work is done. We never ask you for help.”
“She needs to do as she is told, the work she dislikes as well as the work she enjoys.”
“I know, but she’s such a good girl, Amram.”
“She’s good because you let her have her way in most things. Do you ever tell her no or insist she do something she doesn’t want to do?”
Jochebed did not reply. Amram was right, but did he realize how determined his daughter could be? He did not see her all day. He did not live with the difference between a disgruntled Miriam and a content Miriam. Most days, Jochebed admitted to herself, she felt too tired to battle her daughter’s strong will.
“You are her mother, Jochebed. It is up to you to teach her obedience as well as weaving and the promises of God. Do not fail in this also. I thought you were a worthy woman, but if necessary I will…” Amram knotted the rope around his waist and left without another word.
She watched him go, his feet pumping swirls of dust into the air. The dust disappeared. If only she could disappear as easily as the dust.
Was he threatening to put her aside or take her before the elders? She was not enough; she knew she was not, and she did not need help remembering it.
When had his patience soured to criticism, his tenderness become tension? Had she lost his affection? Would he turn away from her to a needless death as her father had left them? She was a failure not only as a mother, but as a wife.
Hands shaking, she started back, resigned to helping Old Sarah in an attempt to forestall more criticism, but Sarah had cornered someone else. Relieved, and feeling a little guilty, Jochebed bypassed them, sorry for the young girl Sarah was berating.
Jochebed listened halfheartedly to the women’s chatter and watched Miriam outrun the biggest boys to scamper up the jumping rock. She reached the top first and spread her arms to jump. Where did that child get her fearlessness? Not from her, that was certain, and Amram was so steady and quiet. Miriam did not seem like either one of them.
Maybe that was good. Jochebed didn’t want her daughter growing up afraid of everything like she was.
One of the boys climbed to the top of the rock, slipped, and bumped into Miriam. Unprepared for the sudden jar, Miriam lost her balance and landed hard. Jochebed saw one knee and an elbow bleeding, but Miriam, after a quick glance, brushed away the dirt and started again for the rock. Sometimes, Jochebed thought, she’d like to be more like her daughter—fearless. She shifted the basket to her other arm. Did other mothers ever have such thoughts?
Wasn’t the daughter supposed to want to be like the mother?
At home, Jochebed stepped into the yard, scratched the goat’s rough head, and pulled another armful of grass within its reach. She pushed open the door, paused, and waited for her mother to look up from weaving. Mother’s face always, always lit up when she walked into the room, and after what Sarah and Amram said, Jochebed wanted to see, needed to feel, the reassurance of Mama’s constant love and acceptance.
Mama did not stop her work, but she looked up, the lines in her face softening as she saw her daughter.
“Has the time of Akhet begun? Have the floodwaters begun to flow yet?”
Jochebed shook her head. She left the basket near the door, knelt on the ground, and leaned against her mother’s shoulder. “Mama.”
“Yes, dear?”
“Nothing. I just like to hear you say that.”
Her mother smiled. “I’ll say it as often as you wish.”
Jochebed carried the bundle of clean reeds and grasses to where her mother sat rocking Aaron. The fibers, soaked until they bent without breaking, were ready to be separated and woven into baskets—baskets that would keep their skin safe from the overseer’s rod—and if enough were made, the extras could be used for barter.
“Miriam, dear, take Aaron and lay him on the mat by the wall. He can nap while we work. Your grandmother says you have been working hard and are ready to learn a new pattern today.”
Pleased at the look of delight in Miriam’s eyes, Jochebed remembered feeling the same way when she was a child learning to weave from her mother and grandmother, begging to be shown harder and harder patterns. Eager to prove she was a quick learner, which would allow her to take another step into the world of acceptance, Jochebed had listened and watched, intent on absorbing as much as possible from the two master weavers. The hardest part of basketry, they taught her, was keeping the tension consistent so the basket would have a uniform shape.
Miriam’s hands, though calloused and strong, were small, and she struggled to hold the larger baskets in one hand as she twined the reeds with the other hand. Still, she learned new patterns easily and worked hard to perfect her skills.
Jochebed smiled seeing her mother instruct Miriam. A superior weaver, she was also a patient teacher who explained each step with simple directions. If Miriam did not learn these skills well, the tender skin on her daughter’s back and shoulders would bleed from the taskmaster’s displeasure. Jochebed shuddered.
Listening to her mother, Jochebed pictured herself years ago, elbow to elbow with Lili and Shiphrah, as Mama taught the three girls new patterns and wove the Lord’s stories into their lessons. Some things never changed.
“Miriam, as you decide on the warp strand, remember your foundation must be strong,” Mama said.
“This one?” Miriam held up a sturdy reed for her grandmother’s inspection.
“Good. Now, remember how in a plain weave, the weft passes first over and then under the warp. You start that and then I’ll show you how to make it round instead of square.”
The pointy-chinned goat needed to be tended, but Jochebed waited. She knew what was coming next.
“Miriam,” her grandmother began, “why must your warp, your foundation, be so strong?”
“Because it is what the rest of the basket is built around.”
“And what must your life be built around?”
“The promises of the Lord.”
“Right. Why do I teach you these stories and the promises He made?”
“So I can teach my children and my children’s children.”
Her grandmother nodded. “Good. Which story do you want to hear today?”
Jochebed left before she heard Miriam’s answer. The goat must be milked so she could begin making the soft cheese. She had heard those questions and stories until she could say them in her sleep. One did not easily forget stories repeated from infancy even when doubts darkened the remembering.