Jochebed spied another snake hole in the wall of the house and went outside to look for the other entrance. She’d need to stuff onion seeds—known to keep snakes away—in both openings if she could find where the snake had burrowed through. When a quick search revealed the second hole, she returned to the house for a basket to collect onion stalks and started down the path leading to the riverbank.
From her vantage point, she could see women clustered around Deborah. She must be showing off her son again for the others to admire. Jochebed wandered closer, hoping to join their moments of joy. Funny, the women huddled so closely you’d think they’d never seen a baby before.
“She pulled out the knife she’d hidden and…”
Jochebed’s stomach turned. Deborah was telling them her version of the night her son was born. She groaned aloud. Lili must have told her about Shiphrah.
Annoyed, Jochebed dropped the basket onto the dirt. Lili couldn’t think past her nose. How could she betray Shiphrah by telling Deborah?
She stopped short, chagrined. Why had she told Lili?
Cautiously she approached the group. “Doesn’t Deborah have a beautiful son?” she said.
A few women nodded, but several edged away, not meeting her eyes.
“No thanks to your Egyptian friend.” Deborah spat on the ground. “Haven’t you and your family brought enough death to us?”
Shocked by the anger in Deborah’s voice, Jochebed stepped back.
“You know that half-breed killed Elene, and if it hadn’t been for Lili—”
“Lili wasn’t even there.”
“—we wouldn’t know the danger you’ve put us in.”
“There isn’t any danger.” Dismayed, Jochebed tried to reason with her. “You don’t understand.”
“I understand she plotted to kill my baby, and now because of her my baby sister is dead.”
“No, she—”
“I’m amazed she didn’t kill Lili’s son at birth!”
“She’s never—”
“You won’t admit the truth. You’re just trying to protect Egyptians like your mother and Puah did. You are just like your father.”
“Deborah…” Jochebed stopped and surrendered the fight. She turned on her heel to leave. Pleading would be useless.
“Keep your baby-killer friend away from our village.”
Shaken, Jochebed snatched her basket and ran in the opposite direction. Deborah made her so mad, always searching for the worst in others, never willing to hear the entire story, just ready to pounce. Deborah was so different from Elene.
“I feel sorry for Deborah’s husband, being stuck with her. That’s probably the reason he stays in the fields longer than the other men.” Jochebed kicked the sand. “Why did Simon’s father choose her as his son’s wife?”
She knew why. Deborah was determined to marry Simon—probably because she thought she could control him—and even Simon’s father knew Deborah was a dangerous person to thwart. Jochebed knew firsthand how vicious Deborah could be.
“Someday, somebody ought to put a stop to that woman’s slander. Somebody like…”
Kicking a rock, Jochebed scraped her toe against its side. She slammed the basket down, hopped the few steps to the river, and fell to the riverbank. The water cooled her foot and soothed her temper.
She eyed the basket, wanting nothing more than to drop it over her head and hide. If it weren’t for the need to watch for crocodiles, she’d do it, too.
“You just missed the perfect opportunity to stand up for Shiphrah and explain what really happened,” she berated herself. “But no, you turned and left. Coward. Always running away, that’s me.” Jochebed shredded the leaves of the plant by her foot. Why did she always run?
She used to think she ran because she wasn’t pretty enough like Lili, or didn’t have the ability to close down like Shiphrah, and she could never do things as perfectly as Mama or as sweetly as Elene. But these seemed excuses for a child, not a grown woman.
Scooping handfuls of sand and pebbles, she scrubbed her arms and legs, the sharp pleasure of water cutting through her frustrations.
Jochebed rested her chin on her knees and closed her eyes, searching for a memory. When did fear begin? Did it start when Papa drowned? She still dreamed of standing at the door crying as he walked away, even though he’d promised they’d play the butterfly game later in the evening. He would be the wind, picking her up, swirling her around, letting her fly through the air while Mama laughed and pretended to scold them both. But he’d never returned, and Mama didn’t laugh much after that.
Maybe her fear came when one of the older boys pushed her aside in his haste to evade a crocodile. She had fallen and then tripped again before escaping its teeth. Jochebed pulled up her skirt to examine her knee. She still carried the scar from that fall.
No, there was something else, before all that. She twisted her hair atop her head, letting the north breeze cool her neck.
She had gone somewhere late one night with Mother, holding something important. Jochebed closed her eyes. A doll—she’d carried a straw doll wrapped in a ragged piece of blue cloth, and they walked past the tallest mud walls she’d ever seen. They must have been in a town, although she didn’t remember seeing stone gates. Maybe it had been too dark.
It was a noisy place, with people crowded together and shouting. She’d let go of Mama’s skirt to cover her ears and then dropped her doll. When she picked up the pieces of doll, Mama was gone.
Jochebed opened her eyes to block the recurring fear, the taste of terror, but the memory continued to surface, so vivid that she struggled to breathe.
She remembered her throat had ached, tight and raw, and the people towering above had stopped, staring at her, reaching for her, touching her head and shoulders, poking at her as if she were a freshly caught fish. She did not recognize their faces or understand their words.
Backing away from their hands, she had bumped against a pyramid of melons that fell and rolled in a dozen directions; the vendor screamed at her until his face turned red. She had not known what to do or which direction to turn, only that she was alone without her mama.
Determined to quell the flash of remembered panic, Jochebed stood, the tension in her arms and legs a welcome distraction. She shook out her clothes and, lifting the basket, retraced her steps.
Mama had eventually found her, held her close until she calmed, and mended the doll, making everything right—except for the terror even Mother couldn’t see—the terror sowed and rooting deeply within, the horror of being without her mama, the fear of not knowing how to make things right.
She gripped the basket hard. “Mama,” she whispered, “I still need you.”
Jochebed eyed the sky as the sun slunk away, pulling in its warmth and leaving behind a dark foreboding. The women, drawn by their worry, gathered in small groups throughout the village. Where were the men?
Pharaoh’s overseers never kept them this late, not because of any concern for the Hebrews’ welfare, but because they feared the dark and wanted to be safely inside before night stalkers came. Something was wrong.
This morning when Amram touched her shoulder before leaving, Jochebed had silently thanked the Lord for her husband’s tenderness with her. She’d laughed at herself, remembering how afraid she was on their wedding day. She should have trusted her mother’s wisdom and the Lord’s plan. She was blessed with such a good and godly man to care for her.
A child cried and was quickly hushed. Fear snaked silently through the clustered women, its coiling tension broken only by bleating sheep and the honking of geese overhead.
Where were the men?
From the far end of the village, a voice called out, the message relayed. Someone was coming.
Jochebed’s heart thudded, skipped, and thudded again.
Samuel staggered into sight, alone. Mud caked his beard; whip lines of blood laced his back. The women clustered around him, murmuring their pity while their eyes looked past him. Where were the other men?
Jochebed watched Samuel avoid eye contact. He spoke looking at the ground, his shoulders drooping as he answered the unspoken questions, confirmed the silent fears.
“They are prisoners.” Samuel measured his words as if releasing too many would peel away his veneer of control. “Some will be released tomorrow. Some will leave.” His face twisted. “It will be at first light. South to Nubia—a place called Abu Simbel—to build Ramses’s temple.”
“No!”
“My husband? My sons? All? I lose them all?”
“For how long?”
Samuel did not flinch at the spate of questions. “I don’t know.”
“And you? Did you run and hide in the river? Why were you spared, Samuel?”
Jochebed recognized Deborah’s venom.
Lifting his head slowly, Samuel looked upward with tears streaming down his face. “I don’t know.” The trickle of words turned to a flood. “Were to all the gods of Egypt I could be with them.” He clenched his fist and tried to raise it before dropping his hand to his side, as if his arms lacked strength. “The overseer sent me on an errand to the other side of town. When I returned, my brothers were”—Samuel choked on a sob—“chained to each other on a barge, midstream.”
Samuel grasped the neck of his tunic in each hand and ripped the fabric. “I tried to reach them, to join them or to save them, to be with them no matter their fate, but I—could—not—save—even—one.”
In silence, scraped raw by Samuel’s coarse sobs, Lili, holding her son in one arm, pushed to the front. Wordlessly, she slipped her other arm around her brother’s waist.
Eyes lowered; the women gathered their children and stumbled to their homes. Jochebed was the last to leave. She squeezed Lili’s hand, unable to force a word past the knots in her throat.
Would the day ever end? Jochebed kept her hands busy. She swept the dirt floor until Miriam pulled the short-handled broom away from her. She scrubbed holes into laundry, fed the goat tied in front of her house, and sent Aaron out with Miriam.
She measured out two handfuls of grain, sprinkled them on the flat rock, and pushed the quern until the grain was fine enough for bread. She mixed in the yeast and kneaded the bread for so long it almost floated away before she covered it and left it to rise.
At last, having no household chores left to occupy her mind, she turned to what always brought comfort. Settled on a mat with reeds scattered around her feet, Jochebed knew which pattern she would weave. It was her mother’s favorite. Maybe it would help her feel as if Mother were near, telling her what to do.
Jochebed selected the warp, a sturdy foundational reed, and imagined her mother’s voice whispering in her ear. “Your foundation must be the Lord’s promises.” Mother had truly believed in those promises, believed that He mysteriously wove everything together. That must have been why Mother loved weaving.
Methodically, Jochebed plaited the strands with her questions. Was her life still intertwined with Amram’s life? She may have lost him this day, the weave of their lives raveled, unfinished, irreparable. Was that part of the plan?
Her life was interwoven with Lili and Shiphrah. Were three women too insignificant to be in this plan? Probably.
The children—Miriam, Aaron, and the little one—would their lives be woven together, a cord of three strands? Did the Lord even know they were alive?
Throat tight, her foot jiggling, she tried to keep the muscles in her back from knotting, tried to remember the promises. Mother always said, “While it is yet dark, God is at work.” It could not be any darker.
Jochebed wove, tormented by the uncertainties in her life, comforted by the familiar repetition of her work. Stopping only to feed Aaron, Jochebed wrapped herself in the solace of her craft.
Time plodded through the midday heat. Jochebed forgot the bread and burned it, something she had not done in years. Aaron, as if sensing the tension, fussed, not wanting to be held, not wanting to nap. Miriam yelled at him, leaving Aaron in tears, and flounced out of the house when Jochebed sent her to the river to pull rushes from the riverbed.
Jochebed boiled papyrus roots with onions for their meal. She choked down a few bites, only to nourish the child within.
At last the day was over; the hours stretched into misshapen fears.
The sun melted on the horizon, leaving pink promises of the morrow. The women had left their homes to gather in the center of the village, waiting, praying, wondering who would be released to return tonight. Which men would never be seen again?
No one spoke. Jochebed did not look at the others, her own pain so heavy she could not bear the thought of carrying another’s burden. She would splinter. It was best to turn away.
The widower, Joseph, was the first to come home. Zack, Samuel’s twin, did not return. Lili’s Joshua, and Deborah’s husband, Simon, arrived safely. Amram and ten other men from their village had been shipped to Abu Simbel.
The shroud of a moonless night, stained with bitterness, singed with despair, encircled the grief-racked village, fear snuffing the last ember of hope. The Unseen One had turned His back on them, deserted them, forgotten His promise. It could be no worse.
Jochebed dragged herself into the house, sinking heavily onto the mat she had shared with Amram. Without her Amram, she was a broken pattern, the warp without the weft, a night without day. Never again to feel his featherlight touch on her body or to see his dark eyes crinkle in laughter—unfathomable. She could not bear to go on living. But she dared not die and abandon their children.
Turning to face the wall, she stared into the dark. Unshed tears scorched her eyes and throat, but she set her jaw, gritted her teeth, and forced breath through her nostrils to still the quivering of her chin. Covering her swelling belly with one hand, she cradled anger with her fist.
If she stepped into the churning waters of grief, into the current of despair, she would drown, and her babies would be lost. These three children, two in her arms and one in her womb, were all that remained of her Amram. Whatever it took, they must live.
Sleep did not rescue her throughout the interminable night, but near morning she closed her eyes and then jerked upright. Surely that anguished scream had not burst from her? No, she heard it again.
Jochebed stumbled into the sunlight, blinking as the sudden glare blinded her. What was all the commotion about? Had the foremen arrived to remove the other men, too?
Sickened by the sight before her, she dropped to her knees.
Egyptian soldiers swarmed through the town, kicking in doors, knocking over baskets, smashing pottery, and threatening those who blocked their way. Swords raised, they shoved aside anyone who didn’t move fast enough to please them, including children and elderly women.
“Miriam!” Jochebed screamed. “Hold on to Aaron, and come here—hurry!” She clung to her children and buried their faces against her body, shielding them from seeing the destruction.
Baffled, she watched a soldier jerk an infant from its mother’s arms, rip away the swaddling clothes, and then thrust the baby back at her. The mother clasped her child and bolted into the fields. Had the world gone mad?
Across the way, Lili ran from her house toward Jochebed, clutching her son in the folds of her clothes. Two of the warriors stopped her with the point of their swords as a third wrenched the infant away. Shrieking, Lili fought them, bloodying her hands on their swords, kicking, biting, straining to reach her screaming child.
Jochebed stared horrified as one soldier raised his sword, striking the flat side of it against Lili’s head. Lili crumpled to the ground, and the soldiers moved away with the howling child. It was over before Jochebed could move.
The Egyptians threw the captured babies into a rough wooden cart, hauled it to the river, and flung the infants by their ankles into its crocodile-infested depths. Jochebed doubled over and vomited. She saw the guards kick her own door open, heard the crash of tumbling pottery and a ripping sound before they moved to the next house.
When nothing could be heard except the keening of the bereft, Jochebed sent Miriam into the house with Aaron and staggered to where Lili lay unconscious. Jochebed knelt in the dirt and lifted Lili’s head to wipe away the blood with the hem of her tunic. The cuts were not deep. Lili would survive the wound on her head. The loss of her child could destroy her. Jochebed bowed her head in anguish.