Chapter 6

Everyone was being so careful of her that Rebekah feared she might live the rest of her life confined to her tent, with no one but Deborah to speak to. Finally, by nightfall, she realized that having lashed out at everyone, if things were to be set to rights she would have to begin.

She began at the beginning. With Father.

Yes, he had lied to her. But that did not erase the love he had surrounded her with, the trust he had shown her. It did not change the fact that he had also needed her, when she and Laban reopened the door of language to him. One lie did not undo a lifetime of love. One lie, told over and over again, did not become a thousand lies. It remained the one, looming ever larger until it threatened to crush them all, but still only one, undone in a single moment of truth.

She clapped outside his tent, in case someone was with him who might hear. And, yes, the flap was opened by Akyas. Mother.

“Oh, Rebekah, thank you for coming. He can’t sleep. You have no idea how unhappy he is.”

“I know how unhappy I am.”

“You were right, Rebekah. To set up a grand moment of unveiling—it was wrong. But Ezbaal and I were afraid that if we told anyone in advance, Bethuel would send me away. We needed his oath first, in order to have a hope of restoring our family.”

“Believe me, Mother, I’ve thought this through a hundred different ways, and bad as this was, I couldn’t think of a better one.”

“This wasn’t my plan, you know. When I came. I really did come here in order to see you. To see what you had become.”

“Well, you saw me at my finest today.”

“You have a sharp tongue, that’s sure. You found exactly the words to shame everybody.”

“Now that I’ve got the punishment down, I need to work on the part about judging fairly.”

Akyas embraced her. It still felt awkward to Rebekah. Their bodies didn’t meld together out of long custom the way hers did with Deborah’s. Still, it was a start. It felt natural to call her Mother. Nothing false about it, the way it had been when Ezbaal’s stepmother tried to get Rebekah to call her by that title.

“Do you want to be alone with him?” asked Mother.

“No,” said Rebekah. “I’m glad you’re here. It’s where you should have been all along.”

“That doesn’t make it easier to have me there when you talk to him.”

“But it makes it right.” Rebekah studied Mother’s face, looking for some trace of the bitterness she must feel about all her years in exile—the bitterness that filled Rebekah’s heart. But then, Mother had had fifteen years to get used to what had happened to her.

Mother smiled at her. “Pillel said you were unusually wise for a child.”

“Pillel said that?”

“Well, actually he said, ‘for a girl.’”

“Was that back when he was still hoping he could get me married and out of here?”

Mother laughed. “So you don’t think he likes you, is that it?”

“Was he steward before? When you were here?”

“Yes. Face like stone. And a hard judge. But if he praises you, it counts. He said you were wise. And he said it this afternoon, while you were in your tent.”

“After I ranted at everybody.”

“I think he was trying to reassure me and Bethuel that we hadn’t created a monster.”

“Let’s not rush to judgment on that one. I’m still angry, you know. And all the other feelings. I haven’t forgiven anybody. I’m just too tired to cry any more.”

“Speaking of crying: poor Laban. He hasn’t shown his face since the wedding, either. I suppose he thinks it isn’t manly, to cry like that. But it was about things that happened to him as a child. A motherless child. That’s who was crying today, don’t you think? The child, not the man.”

“Whoever it was, it’s Laban who has to live it down,” said Rebekah. “But I’ll never goad him about it, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Think of all the years I’ve missed, of the two of you together. Did you quarrel all the time?”

“Not much,” said Rebekah. “Teasing, but little quarreling. I think we clung to each other a little. Not like half the children in camp, who spend their days screaming, either from joy or rage.”

The inner curtain parted, and Father came into the front room of the tent. “I wondered why there was a cold draft,” he said. “Come inside and let the tent flap close.”

At once the conversation between women ended, and both of them sat down with Father. Rebekah took up the writing stick and began to form letters in the dirt patch. She started to apologize, and Father reached out and held her wrist. “No,” he said. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

Rebekah wrote, “You didn’t hear half of what I said.”

“Believe me,” he answered, “I’ve had every word of it repeated to me since, and even though you weren’t very generous in your reading of events, you weren’t wrong, either. You never have to apologize for telling the truth.”

Rebekah snorted and wrote, “Come now, Father.”

“All right,” he said. “Half the apologies we have to make in life are precisely for telling the truth, but right now, anyway, don’t waste time apologizing to me. I’m the one who has to apologize to you.”

She agreed completely, of course, but out of courtesy started to protest that he didn’t need to. Again he stopped her. “It’s late, and I’m a tired old man with a new bride, so let me get straight to the point. I owe you an explanation. More important than a mere apology. You need to know why your father would do the things I did.”

Rebekah nodded, set down the stick, and turned to face him more directly. She would listen, answering with her face instead of written words.

“I loved your mother more than anything or anyone in the world, until you and Laban were born,” said Father. “And then a strange thing happened. It brought me closer to her than ever, but there could be no doubt of it—I loved my children more than my wife, more than anything. And I feared for you, all the things that could go wrong. All the dangers in the world. Wild animals. Marauders. Disease. Famine. Storms. Things I could protect you from, and things I could do nothing about. You could fall in a stream and drown. You could climb a rock and fall. Whatever I did, wherever I went, there it was in the back of my mind, this constant worry about you. I never felt that about your mother. She was a strong, wise woman, even if she was city-born, and she had taken to life in the camp quite naturally. So I didn’t worry about her. I knew she’d be all right.”

Father took a deep breath. “But your mother never understood God. She worshiped with me, as a good wife should. But she couldn’t see why it was any of my business that she worshiped other gods as well. Especially Asherah. It drove me mad sometimes. I wanted so much for her to understand that the God of heaven is real—so real that you don’t have to pretend to see him or make an image to look at.”

Rebekah refrained from looking at the little gods that sat on a low table in the corner.

But he must have seen her stop herself from glancing that way. “Let’s not have that argument again, not right now,” he said. “Let’s just say that even as I took every precaution I could against all the other dangers in the world, the one thing I feared most—that you would grow up without respect for the true and living God—the greatest danger to you came, not from some outside threat, but from your own mother.”

Rebekah glanced at Mother to see how she was taking this. Maybe having her present wasn’t such a good idea. But she didn’t seem to mind hearing Father say these things.

“We argued about it. Back and forth. Wasn’t I going to dedicate my children with the priests in the city? She finally gave up with Laban, figuring that it was men’s business, whether he was to be presented before Ba’al or not. But when it came to you, she wouldn’t let the question rest. ‘She must be presented to Asherah.’ ‘Asherah needs to know her name.’ And I wouldn’t let her take you. And then one day I came in when I was supposed to be away for the whole day, and found her with a priestess she had smuggled into the camp, along with a tiny figure of Asherah to which they were in the midst of presenting you. Of course I was furious, at the deception, at the offering to an idol, and at myself for not realizing that just because I said a thing didn’t mean it was going to be obeyed. If God’s commandments are disobeyed all the time, why should I expect mine to be treated with more respect?”

Again Rebekah looked at Mother. But Akyas continued to gaze steadily—no, raptly—at Father’s face. Had she truly forgiven him completely for all this? Or was she merely pretending, so that she could be back with her family? And what about that very issue—Rebekah well knew that Mother still worshiped Asherah and had brought an idol into the camp. Was Father going to tolerate it? Father was talking about these issues as if they were ancient history, but it seemed to Rebekah that the same problems remained even now.

“I couldn’t see a solution,” Father went on. “At the moment, in my rage, I declared our marriage over and ordered her to pack and leave, taking her dowry with her.”

“It wasn’t much of a dowry,” said Mother. “My family was poor. It was my face that won me such a husband. My face and my prayers to Asherah.”

Father was watching her. Rebekah made as if to translate, but Father shook his head. “She was beautiful, but she still thought it was her goddess that had brought her a rich husband.”

Rebekah laughed. “Fifteen years apart, and he still knows just what you’re going to say? You don’t need to learn to write.”

Mother laughed. “I wish.”

It was the laughter that got to Bethuel. “All right, tell me what was said that made you laugh.”

When Rebekah had written out her summary, Bethuel chuckled, too, but rather grimly. “Well, I’m wrong as often as I’m right, and half the time I’m right, I think I’m wrong, and half the time I’m wrong, I think I’m right, so what do you do? Anyway, all that night before she left, I went back and forth in my own mind. I was not too proud to rescind the divorce and take her back. I didn’t want her to go. I loved her desperately.

“But it came down to this: I had to know you would be raised to love and honor God. And with your mother here, I could never be sure. It wouldn’t take much to raise doubts in your hearts—the very fact that she didn’t believe the same things I did would be obvious even if she never said a thing. I realized that it had been a mistake to marry a woman from the city, no matter how much I loved her. You have to choose a wife who will teach the most important things to the children when they’re small. Little children live in their mother’s world, not their father’s.

“So as much as I loved your mother, I did what had to be done. I sent her away. And much as I’ve missed her, as hard as it has been for you and Laban, I still think that was the right thing. Laban’s a good boy, a true servant of the Lord as I’ve tried to be. But you, Rebekah, your faith goes beyond that. I think God speaks to you. I think that’s why you say things that are wiser than you should ever know, at your age.”

Still Mother sat there, not arguing as he declared himself to be right in their ancient, family-wrecking argument.

Mother caught Rebekah’s glance. “He’s right,” she said. “If I had raised you, I would have taught you to serve Asherah while pretending to serve your father’s god, just enough to keep him happy.”

“But you still pray to Asherah.”

“I do,” said Mother. “Because she’s the only god I know. This God of yours and Bethuel’s, I don’t know him. He doesn’t know me.”

“But he does,” said Rebekah. “Don’t you see that he brought you here just now because—”

“Please, let’s not discuss this now,” said Mother. “You’ll have to write everything for your father and we’ll never be done.”

Rebekah sighed and wrote a brief explanation for Father. “You have plenty of time to discuss all that,” said Father. “All of this is just trying to lead up to why I didn’t tell you the truth. That is the sticking place for you, isn’t it? The bone you just can’t chew up.”

Rebekah wrote, “I understand that you didn’t want me to hate you.”

“No, no,” said Bethuel. “Oh, well, of course I didn’t want you to hate me, but I would have borne that as the consequence of my choice, if that’s what it took. No, I had to lie to you so you wouldn’t grow up hating God.”

That hadn’t occurred to Rebekah.

“Your mother, driven away from her home because she wouldn’t worship God. No, worse, because she wouldn’t worship only God. Would you hate your father? No, because your father was merely obeying the Lord. It’s God you would be angry at.”

“Eventually I would have understood,” she wrote.

“And eventually I would have told you,” he said. “But what was the day? When would I know it was time to tell you? That’s when I turned coward. I could have told you when you were old enough to start leading the women of the camp. Surely there was no reason to keep the secret any longer then. But it was easier to let things go on as they were. I didn’t want to see the hurt and anger that . . . that I saw today.”

Father sighed. “But all along, I was punished. Surely you understand that, Rebekah. Because I missed her. She was the joy of my life, and I had sent her away. As you grew, though, you were so much like her. You had her face, her voice. And the way you could outtalk anybody!”

Mother laughed. “Oh, that’s not just from me.”

Father did not hear her, of course. “Rebekah, I loved you for yourself, but I also loved you for the echo of your mother in everything you did. And then that wagon fell on me in the stream, and I lost my hearing, and then I understood that God was not going to let me go unpunished for taking your mother from you.”

“It wasn’t God,” said Rebekah, “it was an accident.”

“It was my own words,” said Bethuel. “When your mother was leaving, I acted very stern and calm—now that was a lie!—and I said to her, like this terrible curse, ‘Your voice shall never again be heard in my house.’ It was meant to be a curse on her, for having deceived me about Asherah. But instead, when my hearing was taken away from me just before your voice changed and became womanly—became like your mother—well, I realized that I had cursed myself. Your mother’s voice was going to be heard in this camp, whether she returned or not, because you were going to sound just like her, the way you looked like her. So I had to go deaf, don’t you see? So my curse would be fulfilled.”

“Do you think God keeps a tally of such things?” asked Rebekah. “I think he has better things to do.”

“What do you think the priesthood is,” said Father, “but the power to bind in heaven with words said here on earth?” He shook his head. “Now your mother herself is back, and yet my curse remains. I will never hear her voice again.”

Rebekah knew that the priesthood didn’t work that way, but she couldn’t see any point in arguing with him any further. The sadness in him seemed like a weight, bending his shoulders. But Mother leaned out and took his hand and kissed it, and some of the weight seemed to lift again.

“She forgives me,” said Bethuel. “She disagrees with me about God, but she agrees that if I was going to raise you to serve him, she could not have been here. Now she can’t change what you believe—she isn’t even going to try.”

“Your god blesses you,” said Mother. “Even though he doesn’t know my name, he’s a good god for you.”

“We see the world differently,” said Father. “But we agree on the most important thing—that you and Laban are at the center of it.”

Rebekah picked up the writing stick. “I wish you had trusted me more,” she wrote. “I would have served God anyway.”

“You don’t know that,” said Father. “You never know what would have been. And besides, when I made these decisions I didn’t know what kind of child you were going to be. And maybe you wouldn’t have become the woman you are, without Deborah and without your dependence on me and Laban, which you would never have had, not the same way, if your mother had been here. You are today what you became because of choices in your past. If those choices had been different, how can you be sure you’d be the same person now? No, our lives have taken their course. We can’t change where the river flowed yesterday. We can only choose where it will flow today.”

There were a thousand things she might say, arguments against his decision, complaints about how he himself didn’t actually live by those wise words, but was constantly trying to outguess the past. The truth was, however, she did not want to argue. She just wanted to have peace in her family. So that she could get to know her mother as well as she knew her father and brother. So they could be whole.

That’s why she smiled and hugged her father and kissed him and wrote to him words that were only true by intention: “I forgive you. You did what you thought was right.” And then the words that were true indeed: “I’m glad my mother is here. I’m glad that we’re all together now.”

There were kisses and tears and embraces for a little longer, and then she left.

But not to return to her tent in the darkness. No, there was one more apology she had to make.

Laban did not respond to the clapping of her hands, but she was not about to let that stop her. She pulled open the flap of the tent, intending to go inside and make him listen to her apology. But even before he could have seen who she was, his voice came roaring out of the tent: “I forbid you to come through that door!”

Startled and a little afraid at the pain that was still audible in his voice, she pulled back and was about to go back to her tent when she realized that she could not, could not let him go to sleep tonight still hearing her foolish words in his mind.

So she went to the back of his tent and, careless of how dirty it would make her clothing, not to mention her face and hands, she wriggled under like a snake.

If he heard her he gave no sign. It took a while for her eyes to get used to the darkness—he had no lamp burning, and it was full night, with only a tiny bit more moon than there had been last night. At best all she could make out was a faint silhouette, and even that she found by listening for the sound of his breathing.

“Laban,” she said, “I need to talk to you.”

“I told you to stay out,” he said gruffly. But not shouting. That was a good sign—that when he knew who it was, that it was Rebekah, he did not yell at her.

“Actually,” she said, “you forbade me to come through the door.”

“And you figure crawling under the tent wall makes you obedient?”

“Perfectly.”

“For a sister.”

“Absolutely.”

“I can’t show my face out there, Rebekah. Never again as long as I live. If I could dig a deep enough hole, I’d bury myself so I could skip the whole funeral step. I want to die.”

“Nobody thinks ill of you for crying, Laban.”

“‘Who’s the big baby?’ Someone said that, and it was true.”

“A stupid person said it,” said Rebekah. “Even though you were weeping, you were the one speaking sensibly to me. You were the one trying to understand and be fair to everyone, trying to get me to stop saying such cruel and unjust things. Not only that, but you were the only one brave enough to try to talk to me. Everybody else wanted to run away from the ravening she-bear.”

Laban laughed, but it was still pretty grim sounding. “That’s not what they’ll remember.”

“Who cares what they remember? In the morning, I’ll come by and we’ll go out together. If anybody teases you or even looks at you funny, I’ll beat him to a pulp. I’ll . . . tear his arm off and beat him with it. I’ll rip his head off and spit down his neck. I’ll—”

“Enough!” cried Laban. “How do you think it will restore my dignity here, to have my sister beat people up on my behalf?”

“I have to take Mother around and let her know what all the women are doing. And then we have to teach her to read and write. And meanwhile Father needs someone to write for him. We can’t afford to have you stay in your tent.”

“You can do the first two, and Pillel does the last.”

“Laban, I’m going to go off and get married someday.”

“When somebody better than Ezbaal comes along? In thirty years?”

“And when I go—”

“Ha!”

“You will be the heir to everything and someday you’ll have to rule this whole camp. Now, how will you do that if you’re still hiding inside your tent?”

“I won’t be by then,” he said.

“So you’re planning to come out.”

“Someday.”

“When?”

“Someday . . . when the slop jar fills up.”

Rebekah laughed. “So you’ll come out with me tomorrow?”

“Yes,” said Laban. “I take it you’re speaking to Father?”

“Oh, I never stopped speaking. I think I spoke pretty continuously through the whole second half of that marvelous wedding.”

“Several townspeople died of old age, had their funerals, and were buried while you were talking.”

“And you need to get to know your mother. She’s really wonderful.”

“She looks so much like you.”

“Or the other way around. But you look like her, too.”

“Not so much.”

“You’ll like her, Laban.”

“You got to talk to her before the wedding.”

“Yes, but I didn’t know I was talking to my mother. She saw me acting like a self-righteous little prig even before the grand unveiling this morning. And she liked me anyway.”

“Well, that changes everything,” said Laban. “If she likes you, then she’s bound to like me.”

“My point exactly.” She sat down beside him and put her arm across his shoulders.

“Oh, Rebekah.”

“Oh, Laban,” she said, imitating him just a little.

“The choices you make can change people’s lives,” he said. “Father did his best, but everybody in camp has to live in the world he shapes for us.”

“We shape it together.”

“But you and I have been pretty powerless.”

“Up to now,” said Rebekah. “We thought the adults had everything under control. Now we know the truth—they have no idea what they’re doing, either.”

“That’s something. At least we know we’re as qualified as anyone.”

“But I’ve learned something,” said Rebekah.

“A remarkable thing, for someone who never stops talking.”

She squished his shoulder till he squawked. Not that it hurt him that much, just that he knew she would squish until he did. “I tell you this, Laban. There is never a good reason to lie to someone who loves you and depends on you. Never.”

“I’m with you on that.”

“I will never, never lie to someone who trusts me. That’s what I’ve learned from Father.”

“But people who trust you are the only ones you can lie to,” said Laban.

“So I guess I’ve given up lying forever.”

“Now I can find out the answer to all your deepest secrets.”

She laughed. “Now that I know what a real secret is, I realize I’ve never had one in my life.”

“You’ve had one,” said Laban.

“What?”

“That stupid veil. You’re not going to wear it anymore, are you?”

“Why should I stop?”

“Because, bonehead, Mother’s face is going to be on display everywhere, and since you look just like her—”

“She’s much prettier.”

“Since you look exactly like her, there’s really no point in hiding.”

She gave in with a sigh. “I suppose you’re right.”

“Of course I’m right. I’m always right.”

“Ah, there’s the Laban I know and love.”

“It’s the Laban I know and love, too,” said Laban.

“The next few years are going to be interesting,” said Rebekah. “Having a mother and all. I’m looking forward to it, aren’t you?”

“Not as much as I was looking forward to having Ezbaal as a brother-in-law.”

“I’ll try to find you another just as good.”

Laban’s tone turned serious. “I really am looking forward to it. You know the real reason I’m afraid to come out of the tent?”

“Because you’re afraid Mother won’t like you when she gets to know you.”

“Yes.” Then he apparently realized he didn’t want to admit that. “No, that’s not it.”

“Yes it is,” said Rebekah. “And I can promise you—she’ll make allowances for the fact that you’re a boy and stupid, and she’ll like you fine, just as Father and I do.”

“You always know how to buck a fellow up, Rebekah.”

“I spread sunshine wherever I go.”

“Then why is this tent so dark?”

Rebekah didn’t answer, except with a hug and a kiss on his cheek. Then she stood up. “Is it all right if I go out through the door?”

“I insist on it.”

“I love you, Laban. Always and forever.”

“Always and forever. Whatever you need from me, even when we’re both old and feeble, I’ll make sure you have it. That’s a solemn vow.”

“I’ll take you up on it,” she said.

Then she returned to her own tent, eager to sleep and get this awful day behind her. And yet, awful as it had been, angry as she still was about having been cheated out of years that could never be restored, she realized she was also eager to wake up in the morning and begin her new life, not as a wife, but as a daughter to this woman that God had finally restored to her, even though Mother did not believe in him. For if God’s hand wasn’t in it, how could all these things have come together as they did?