In the middle of the night, Naamah goes to the deck to wait. As the angel comes out of the water, as her black skin touches the air, she is alight, as if she’d been another thing dampened by the water. But the brightness of her form renders her slightly out of focus just the same.
“Thank you for coming,” Naamah says.
“You’re welcome,” says the angel, and then she runs her hand down Naamah’s arm, letting Naamah take her hand.
Naamah leads her to the room with the sheep. The angel goes over to the dam. The angel doesn’t bend over—she doesn’t even look down—but by the shape of her hands, Naamah can tell she’s holding the dam’s head. Then she lets go of the head and walks back to Naamah.
“That’s it?” Naamah asks.
“Yes.”
“How?”
“I made her forget.”
“You what?”
“I made her forget the first lamb.”
Naamah starts to cry. “How could you do that?”
“How did you think this was going to work?”
“I don’t know. I thought you could make her feel better. Show her the little lamb in the heavens or something.”
“Of all people, Naamah, you should know how little comfort there is in that.”
“You could have made her feel committed to the child she has left.”
“This was easier.”
Naamah wipes her eyes with her wrists. “Can you undo it?”
The angel stares at her.
“Can you put it back? Her love of the little lamb?”
“I could, but I won’t. She will die. The healthy lamb will die.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
Naamah can’t look at her.
“I’ll leave it to you,” the angel finally says. “I’ll put it back if you want. And the remaining two will die. Which do you prefer?”
“Leave it,” Naamah says, so quietly that the angel can barely hear her.
“You still can’t see them?” the angel asks.
Naamah shakes her head.
“You don’t have to stay here. You can stay with me,” the angel says, putting her hand on Naamah’s arm again.
“You said I can’t. You said it would draw too much attention to yourself.”
“I’m changing my mind,” the angel says.
“No. It doesn’t matter. I can’t leave.”
“Why not?”
“I have my sons,” Naamah says.
“I can tell how much they mean to you,” the angel says. “I can make you forget, too.”
Naamah steps back from her. “Don’t say that,” she says. “Don’t ever say that.”
MANY NIGHTS, Naamah would fall asleep with the fat of Noah’s hand between her back teeth, sometimes his last knuckle. It kept her from clenching her jaw as she fell asleep. She never knew when during the night she let go.
For months, when Ham was a toddler, he fell asleep with his fingers in Naamah’s mouth. He’d put them there when he was nursing and then close his eyes, sleeping that way longer and longer each night. Or he’d wake her in the middle of the night by sticking his fingers in her mouth, and that would settle him back to sleep again.
Once Ham finished breastfeeding, Naamah put him into bed with the other boys. They all slept together. And sometimes she’d come into the room after they were asleep, after she’d swept the mess they’d left where they’d eaten, and Ham’s small fingers would be in Japheth’s mouth, or on Japheth’s cheek after he’d turned his head.
If a scorpion found its way into their home, Naamah would bang it dead with a metal pot, and only Shem and Noah would wake. Noah would ask if everything was okay and then fall back to sleep. Shem would say something absurd, like, “Mommy, I was underwater.” Wait, is that right? Shem always used to have dreams about being underwater. Yes. Then he would lie back down and be asleep again, too.
How had she forgotten?
IN THE MORNING, Adata finds Naamah looking out over the water and walks over to her. “It looks like the lamb is doing well.”
“Yes,” Naamah says, not turning to her.
“I was glad to see that.”
“Yes, me too.”
“Are things okay with us?” Adata asks.
“Yes.”
“But you can’t look at me?”
“I can,” Naamah says, keeping her eyes on the water.
“When I look at you, I think about your mouth, but I still look at you.”
“You”—she’s unsure if she should finish—“are one woman of many, Adata.”
“I was, wasn’t I?” Adata says.
Despite herself, Naamah laughs. She turns herself around and leans back on the railing. “Do you get no pleasure from sex with Japheth?”
“We haven’t had sex yet. Because of the ark. But I’ve had sex with men before. I get little pleasure from it.”
“Are you attracted to Japheth?”
“He’s a handsome man, Naamah.”
“No, I’m not asking as a mother.”
“Then no.”
“Do you think you can make him feel attractive?”
“Yes, I think I can. Maybe not in ways he’d expect, but I can.”
Naamah turns back to the water.
“What about you?” Adata asks. “Are you attracted to Noah?”
“Very much so. I always have been.”
“And also to women?”
“Yes, though I discovered that later.”
“I’ve known since I was seven,” Adata says.
“I only have a few memories of my childhood anymore.”
“Tell me one.”
Naamah closes her eyes. “I wanted my mother to lift me up, but she was pregnant and couldn’t lift me over her big belly.”
“That’s it?”
Naamah laughs. “It’s the oldest memory I have. I think I was three.”
“Who was in her belly?”
“My brother. He died when I was young. When he was young.”
“Still a child?”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry.”
“My favorite memory of him was one night, after a dinner when we’d both eaten too much, stayed at the table longer than anyone. And we lifted up our shirts to show each other how much we’d eaten, how stuffed we were. I poked his belly and he felt mine, and he said, ‘I wish I could feel your bones.’ And we laughed so hard.”
“He sounds like Shem.”
“Yes! Yes, he was a lot like Shem. I haven’t thought about him in a long time.”
“Were both your parents dead before the flood?”
“Yes.”
“What was the name of the woman you loved?”
“Bethel.”
“I think that means the house of God.”
Naamah laughs.
“What did she look like?”
Naamah shook her head.
“Like me?”
“No, not like you. You look like you work, like your hands are rough with working. She looked like she never worked, like she never had to pull her hair back, like she never even needed to wash her hands, even though she did work sometimes.”
“She sounds lovely.”
Naamah nodded.
“A good place to worship.”
Naamah smiled at her, the biggest smile Adata had ever seen on her face. Unlike Naamah’s laugh, which nearly shut her eyes, her smile left her eyes large and sparkling in the sun, as if two golden beetles had been living there all along, flashing back and forth to black, waiting for moments in the sun like this, at the edge of the boat.