SIX

Adata comes back up the stairs. “Are you alone?” she asks, and Naamah wakes up, still sitting with her back against a beam of the railing.

“Of course I’m alone. You are alone, too.”

“You’re still drunk,” Adata says, and she sits beside her.

“I am. And I just discovered we are on land.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know how I didn’t realize it earlier. The ship has felt strange under my feet for a while now—still rumbling, but like an echo of how it was when we were moving.”

“How do you know we’re not moving now?”

“I threw my cup over and it hit the ground,” Naamah says. “I heard it.”

“Naamah—”

“Yes! I heard it!”

“What does that mean for us?”

“Nothing. There’s still only water. You can hear how the wind passes over it. Who knew that sounded so different from wind passing over land, but it does.”

Adata stops to listen.

“What are you doing back up here?” Naamah asks.

Adata takes a deep breath, unsure of how to start. “I saw how you were looking at me earlier.”

“How was I looking at you earlier?”

“Like you wanted to eat me,” Adata says.

“No. I would never hurt you.”

“I’m not saying you would.”

Naamah’s too drunk to follow, so Adata slides her hand onto Naamah’s thigh. Naamah looks at her hand and then at Adata and then at her hand again. She sobers up quickly.

“You are the wife of my son.”

“I am. Because God said it should be so.”

Naamah opens her mouth, but then closes it again.

“Japheth and I are not in love. Ham and Neela are. Shem and Sadie. It’s wonderful. But Japheth and I are not. And we understand our situation. I accept my position gratefully. I’m happy to be alive and with you all. I will be a great wife and a great mother.” As she says these things, she’s arguing for what they might do next.

“And Japheth?” Naamah asks.

“Japheth will find happiness again.” Adata’s making a promise like it’s a trade.

“You are sure?”

“I will make sure of it.” She continues to move her hand higher on Naamah’s thigh. “I want to be happy, Naamah.” She’s in her ear now. Her pointer finger has reached her vulva but lingers just outside.

“Aren’t you too young?” Naamah says, but only because she thinks she should. At this point, Adata can have anything she wants.

“I am old enough.” Adata reaches the rest of her fingers around the flesh of Naamah’s ass, grips her while her pointer finger stays on Naamah’s edge.

But Naamah blurts out, “I left a lover in the flood.” She feels like she might die, having finally said this out loud.

Adata says, “So did I.”

Naamah raises herself up and swings her leg around so that she’s straddling Adata. She kisses her. She kisses her down her neck, and they both slide their bodies down until they are lying on the deck. She pulls down the loose collar of Adata’s dress and takes her breast in her mouth, flicks her nipple with her tongue until it peaks, then sucks on it, swipes her full tongue around it. She pulls her dress back to cover Adata’s nipple, so it doesn’t chap in the night air, then goes to her other nipple.

When her chest is covered again, when Naamah has had her fill of her breasts, she raises her clothing until her full stomach is out. Naamah runs her bent fingers, the flats of her nails, against the inside of her thighs. She licks her from the bottom of her vulva to the top of her clitoris, where she sucks on her. Three times she does this. Then she raises her own clothing, lifts one of Adata’s legs and places it on her shoulder, then lines up their clits. Adata moves how she wants to from there. Her eyes are closed. Naamah knows she is imagining her lover. She watches Adata’s skin and fat and breasts move at the motion of their bodies and thinks of how Bethel’s husband watched Bethel.

Adata’s orgasm isn’t like Bethel’s at all. Once she starts shaking with it, she pulls Naamah on top of her and continues to move her hips gently into Naamah’s thigh. And then it’s over and she raises a shoulder so Naamah knows to get up.

“Will you want to do that again?” Naamah asks.

“I don’t know,” Adata says.

And Naamah is grateful she is an honest woman.


IN THE MORNING, the family tries to understand why the boat has stopped. The boys and their wives run back and forth, looking over one railing and another, calling out what they see. But all anyone can see is water. More and more water. Except for the small patch of earth where Naamah’s cup fell.

They collect all the ladders on the boat and fashion a ladder long enough to reach the earth. Each person climbs down and wades toward the little bit of land. They begin to understand it more, this odd, shallow place the boat has struck, rocky and hidden.

When they reach the land, they jump up and down, testing it under their feet. Eventually Shem laughs. Ham splashes him, and then they all start splashing each other. Naamah falls backward, into the water, laughing hard.

But soon there’s nothing else to do, and they return to the boat.


BELOW DECK, a ewe is about to lamb. Naamah is excited; maybe she won’t have to feed the lambs to a lion or a leopard. She would be happy if the lambs could stand on the earth for even a minute before she had to take them back to another animal’s mouth. She thinks of the bears on the boat, appreciates how well they can survive on seeds and nuts.

But then she looks back down at the patch of land, thinking, If the water is receding, will I lose my chance to see the angel again?


WHEN JAPHETH WAS YOUNG, he was so bullheaded that they wondered if he could hear at all. Naamah would spot him heading toward a big stick, certain that he was going to pick it up and swing it near his little brothers’ heads. “Japheth!” she would cry out. But soon enough the stick was in the air and the little ones were laughing, running off to find sticks of their own. When she yelled at Shem and Ham, they stopped immediately. It wasn’t until Naamah caught Japheth’s eye and stared him down that he’d drop his stick.

So one day, when there was not even the slightest wind, Naamah decided to test Japheth’s hearing. She took him out to a place in the desert where there was not a bird, not a snake, nothing. She brought a bag filled with a flute, a lyre, a small drum, little metal pieces she could clang together, little sticks, anything that would produce an especially low or high sound.

“Japheth,” she said, “if you tell me honestly every time you can hear a sound—if you don’t ignore me, not once—I will get you a whole bag of marbles.”

“Really?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Okay,” he said.

She sat him down in the dirt. “Now you stay here, and I’m going over here behind you. When I start making sounds, raise your hand if you can hear me,” she said as she walked away. “Raise it straight up.”

When she was some distance away from him, she whispered, “Can you hear me?”

He didn’t move.

She started with the flute and blew the highest note it could make. Japheth raised his hand. She went down the notes, and every time, his hand flew up. She plucked the lyre, banged the sticks, struck the metal, hit the drum.

He heard it all.

She walked back to him with her collection of instruments. She crouched down, putting her face very near to his. “You can hear everything I say, can’t you?”

“Not when I’m not paying attention to you,” he said.

She nodded, stood up, and started to walk home, almost laughing.

“Are we leaving?” he asked.

She didn’t answer him. She couldn’t even look at him.

“Do I get a bag of marbles?”

“Yes,” she yelled over her shoulder.

She listened to the slap of his sandals behind her. She tried to listen so closely that she could hear his breath.


NAAMAH ASKS JAPHETH to wait on the deck near the ladder, to lower it when she returns.

“Can’t we just leave it out?” he says.

“What if the boat shifts and the ladder floats away?”

“The ark isn’t exactly the kind of ship that shifts.”

“Do it for your mother,” she says.

“Fine,” he says. He goes to his room and grabs a piece of wood to work on while he waits. He’s been carving it into a fox with a small, sharp knife. When he comes back, he finds only a pile of her clothes; she’s already in the water. He lifts the ladder back up to the deck.

Naamah starts by swimming with her head above water, long sidestrokes, as if nothing’s changed. Something touches her leg, and for a second she’s sure it’s the angel’s hand. But it’s a plant that’s learned to grow in the constant water. She’s too close to the ground here. She’ll have to swim farther from the boat, farther from the rising land, before she dives.

On her first dive, she can’t bring herself to open her eyes. On her second dive, she opens them and the angel is right in front of her face. She screams and the film appears over her mouth again so that she really does scream into the water.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” the angel says.

“I see that,” says Naamah.

“You slept with your son’s wife.”

“I thought that might’ve been a dream.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Well, what do you want me to say?”

The angel stops to think. Then she says, “I don’t know.”

“Show me something,” Naamah says.

“Like what?”

Naamah shrugs.

The angel takes off, and Naamah follows. The sea has a tunneling effect, so Naamah tries not to look around, keeps the angel in the center of her focus.

When they come to the climbing side of another mountain, they start to follow around the base of it. The water gets brighter, but it’s empty of life. And then she sees a manatee, swimming slowly, its large body fitting snugly between the surface of the water and the earth.

“How? What does it eat?”

“Algae, mostly. It would be much larger if there were more food.”

“Is it alone?”

“As far as I can tell.”

The manatee has noticed them and comes over.

“Is it safe?” Naamah asks.

“Yes.”

Naamah strokes the animal’s side as she swims by, and again as she swims back. Then the manatee swims under her and bumps her feet with her soft back. Naamah laughs as she’s thrown off balance, the sense of balance she can have in the water.

But then the manatee seems bored with them and swims off.

“Is there anything else alive down here?”

“It is mostly barren.”

“Do you know what it will be like when the water’s gone?”

“No. But I have been making something. A place for myself. To live.”

“Like a house?”

“Yes.”

“Will it be ruined if the waters leave?”

“I think it is deep enough.”

“Will you show me?”

The angel swims off again. This time she takes Naamah’s hand. It’s the first time they’ve touched. Naamah expected something otherworldly, but it feels like a human hand. If this is not the angel’s true form, she has done an impeccable job capturing it.


JAPHETH GETS TIRED of waiting and whittling. His little fox is as done as it can be without a little sand and paint, a few little whiskers pressed into the wood.

He goes to find Shem and Ham, to ask them to wait for Naamah on the deck. He knows Shem will say yes. Shem is happy everywhere, and he goes through his life somehow knowing this—that he will be happy wherever he ends up. But not Ham. Ham will need to be persuaded.

So Japheth presents them with a wooden board covered with smooth indentations, along with a bag of marbles, so that they might play a game while they wait.

“It’ll be fun,” Shem says.

And Ham gives in.


AFTER SWIMMING FOR a long time, Naamah and the angel come to a structure that looks like it’s made of water, as if the arch of the doorway appearing before them is a trick of the eye.

“This is bigger than a house,” Naamah says.

“Yes.”

Naamah sees people inside, walking alone and in pairs. She squeezes the angel’s hand.

“They are dead,” the angel says.

“That doesn’t make me feel better.”

The angel pulls her on. “Some were not able to move on, were trapped in the water. I built this for them and decided I would stay.”

“If you’re an angel, can’t you take them to where they were supposed to go?”

“Only if I want to be found as well.”

“Do they resent you for that?”

“They don’t know what other worlds there are. They can’t tell whether one would be better than another. They live here now. That is enough.”

“I guess.”

“Do you like where you live?”

“The boat? No.”

“But you remain there.”

“It seems like the only option, doesn’t it?”

“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.