The whole family spends a week taking shifts, bringing the hungry child to Neela wherever she is on the boat, waiting for the child to finish nursing, then taking the child, burping her, holding her over a bucket to shit, rocking her back to sleep. Sometimes not in that order. Sometimes one of them ends up with the runny, yellow shit on their arms, spit-up on their shoulders. Sometimes one of them cycles the baby’s legs until a tiny burst of gas escapes her anus and she settles again.
After a week, Noah wants to send the dove out again. They gather on the deck. Neela lays the baby on the raised beds of grass Naamah has grown. Neela strokes Danit’s cheek and tells her how beautiful she is. Danit’s head turns toward her mother’s hand, her mouth rooting for it. She makes a face as the blades of grass poke her cheek.
“What is that?” Neela says, smiling. “Is that grass?” Then she hears Noah talking to the dove.
“Bring us something back this time,” he whispers.
Neela sits up straight and almost yells, “Bring us something back, dove!”
Naamah laughs, and they all start cheering on the dove. Noah releases it, and Danit cries at their loud voices; they’ve been so quiet around her for every day of her life before this. Now they quiet themselves again.
“Go on,” Neela says, scooping her up. “Don’t stop on our account. I want her to know what excitement sounds like. Don’t I, little girl?”
But no one knows what to say. They can all tell the water is significantly lower now, but they still haven’t seen one tree. They have only their hope to send with the dove. And their desire to get off the boat.
NAAMAH WONDERS how Danit would turn out if they were never able to leave the boat. Before long they would have to let out all the dangerous animals, all the animals whose hungers they couldn’t satisfy, all the birds it seemed cruel to keep. Many would drown. Or some would kill each other and others would drown. Or some would kill each other and some would drown and then maybe one or two would starve on the bloody patch of ground beside the boat. And then Naamah would clean that up, too.
Danit would be like any other child. Naamah admits that to herself. She sees her running up and down the halls of the boat. She sees her hiding in the small rooms and pretending she is somewhere else that she cannot name or describe. She sees her in the connected rooms, playing with the square door, pretending to escape something else she cannot quite picture.
Naamah wonders what they would teach her about the world outside the boat. Together, would they think to spare her from what she would never know? Or would they work to build up the world as it was and as it could be? Maybe they would remake every empty room into a place she might have had on land. One a temple. One a market. One meant for an empress. She can see Noah constructing a bed with ornate posts that reach the ceiling.
It soothes Naamah to imagine the ways they might redirect their energies if they had no animals to care for. But would God be rid of them, too, if they let the animals die? She thinks eleven months has been a long time to tend to the animals, enough to earn their reward, especially if the reward is only to be left alone. But to Him, what is eleven months?
“HOW LITTLE SHE DOES, Naamah,” Neela says, looking at Danit.
Naamah laughs.
“When will she do more?”
“Not for a while.”
“She is darling, though.”
“She is,” Naamah says.
“I thought I’d be so excited to show her everything. Teach her words. Let her touch fur and wool. But none of those things would mean anything to her right now.”
“They will.”
“I have met babies before,” Neela says. “How did I not remember?”
“You said it yourself. What’s to remember? Except maybe exhaustion. And you were so much younger then.”
Neela asks, “What was Ham like, as a baby?”
“He was warm. Always. The other babies needed to be bundled, but not him. He slept easily, with his limbs sprawled, as if he were comfortable in the world from the moment it embraced him.”
“Danit’s not like that.”
“No. Most children need to be wrapped, to mimic where they have been, to transition. To give them time for their backs to grow large and flat, to support the whole of them.”
“But not Ham.”
Naamah laughs. “I guess not. But it didn’t feel strange because he seemed happy. And that seemed lucky to me.”
“I think he will be a wonderful father.”
“I’m sure of it,” Naamah says, though she knew saying otherwise would be admitting a failure on her part.
NAAMAH AND JAPHETH are looking out over the water. Everyone else is asleep. Everyone’s been so tired with the baby on top of their regular chores.
“Adata wants to start trying,” Japheth says.
“Does she?”
“She thinks we’ll be off the boat by then. That the timing will work out well.”
“And you?”
“I’m nervous,” he says. “And not about the boat.”
“What, then?”
He gives her a look. “About repopulating the earth.”
“It’s a lot of responsibility if you think of it that way,” she says.
“How do you think about it any other way?”
“Should I not have had you, knowing I’d be making you the patriarch of a nation?”
“But you didn’t know.” He looks upset.
“I know. You’re right.” She puts her arm around his waist and lays her head against his shoulder. “If there’s anything I wish for you, it’s that you have your family and all the joy you can possibly have in life. To not overthink it. Because no matter what our lives could have been, every version would have been filled with shit we’d have to deal with.”
And then the dove comes back. It flies right to Naamah, landing in front of her on the railing. And she sees only a leaf, floating in the air as if from God Himself.
“What is it?” Japheth asks.
“An olive leaf, I think.” She takes it from the dove.
“Do you grow those on the boat?”
She shakes her head.
“Mom,” he says, “what do we do?”
“Let’s wait for morning. I’ll wake your father when I go down, and if he thinks otherwise, I’ll come get you.”
“It still looks covered in water.”
“I know, but don’t—don’t be that way.”
“What way?”
“I don’t know. You’re forgetting how surprising the world can be.”
“This coming from the person who goes around for days as if you’ve given up.”
Naamah doesn’t respond at first.
“I’m sorry,” Japheth says.
“No. You didn’t hurt me. I know what I’ve been like. But you misunderstand. If you look at all this water and distrust the olive leaf, you’re forgetting how little you know. You’re thinking yourself more than you are, and yet using that to belittle yourself and your life and the world. When I can’t stand the boat anymore, it’s because of how little I know; it’s because of the smallness of my life against the size of the world.”
“You’re contradicting yourself.”
“I’m not trying to,” she sighs. “I use my understanding of the unknowable world to call myself to be unique and wondrous among its wonders. I don’t become arrogant about what my eyes can see and what I can understand. I don’t dismiss myself or my life either. I don’t know, Japheth. I don’t know. Look and see: you’re right—there’s no land to live upon. But also, look at the olive leaf.”
Japheth takes the leaf from her. “The thought of a tree—”
“A tree,” she says.
NAAMAH SHOWS NOAH THE LEAF. He says it’s good news, but as he’s falling back to sleep he also says it means there isn’t a place to stay. “There’s not a better home than the ark. Not yet.”
Naamah falls asleep holding the leaf.
AT BREAKFAST, everyone is buzzing. People start narrating life on land to the baby for the first time. “Stiff shrubs that one day burst into bloom. . . . Stalks of plants with tops like shredded fabrics, except lighter than air, as if they’d fly off if it weren’t for their green stalks. . . . Mud that comes up between your toes, and a river that washes them clean again.” Danit takes it all in, everything and nothing. Her breath is noisy. She snorts and gurgles and wheezes and holds her breath and starts again. She is conspicuous with living.