Reuben was at the riverbank with Leah before sunrise to greet Jacob, but my father did not appear. The birds’ greeting of the day had stilled and the sun had begun to dry the dew, but there was no sign of him. At Leah’s signal, Reuben, Simon, and Judah plunged into the water to seek their father. They found him beaten and naked in the middle of a brushy clearing where the grass and bushes had been crushed and broken in a wide circle around him. Reuben ran back to us shouting for a robe to cover our father, and then he carried him back across the stream.
Uproar gave way to silence when Jacob was brought, senseless, lying in his son’s arms, his left leg hanging at an awkward angle as though it were no longer attached to his body. Inna rushed forward and ordered my father’s tent raised. Bilhah built a fire. The men stood by with empty hands. Reuben had no answers to their questions, and they fell silent.
Inna walked out of the tent and said, “Fever.” Rachel ran for her herb kit. Inna gestured for Reuben to follow her back inside, and a few moments later we heard the terrible, animal scream as he guided our father’s leg back into its place. The whimpering that followed was even worse.
Unnoticed and unneeded, I sat outside the tent, watching Inna’s resolute face and Rachel’s flushed cheeks as they walked in and out.
I saw my mother’s lips press into a thin line as she bent her head to hear their reports. I listened through the walls of the tent while my father screamed at a blue river demon and marshaled an army of angels to fight against a mighty enemy that rose from the waters. Zilpah muttered incantations to Gula, and Inna sang of ancient gods whose names I had never heard, Nintinugga, Ninisinna, Baba.
I heard my father weep and beg for mercy from his brother. I heard Jacob, the father of eleven sons, call out for his mother, “Ema, Ema,” like a lost child. I heard Inna hush him and encourage him to drink, as though he were a swaddling baby.
On that endless day, no one ate or worked. In the evening, I fell asleep in my place by the tent, my dreams shaped by my father’s cries and my mothers’ murmurs.
At dawn, I started awake and was greeted by the stillness. I jumped to my feet in terror, certain that my father was dead. Surely we would be captured by Esau and made into slaves. But as I began crying, Bilhah found me and held me.
“No, little one,” she said, stroking my matted hair. “He is well. He has recovered his sense, and he sleeps calmly now. Your mothers are sleeping, too, they are so weary from their labors.”
By dusk of the second night after his ordeal, my father was well enough to sit by the door of his tent for the evening meal. His leg was still painful and he could barely walk, but his eyes were clear and his hands were steady. I slept without fear again.
We stayed for two months by the river Jabbok, so that Jacob could heal. The women’s tents were set up, and the bondsmen’s too. Days took on an orderliness, with the men tending the herds while the women cooked. We built an oven with clay from the river, and it was good to have fresh bread again, moist and warm, instead of the dried stuff we had eaten on the road, which always tasted of dust. During the first days of Jacob’s illness, two sheep were slaughtered to make strengthening broths from their bones, so there was meat for a while. The rare treat made it seem like a festival.
But as my father recovered his health, his fear returned even greater than before and changed him. Jacob could speak of nothing else but his brother’s revenge, and he saw the nighttime attack and his struggle with the army of angels as portents of the battle to come. He grew suspicious of any attempt to calm him and sent gentle Reuben away. Instead, he came to depend upon Levi, who let Jacob number his worries endlessly and nodded grimly at our father’s direst predictions.
Among themselves, my mothers pondered the meaning of Jacob’s latest dream, so powerful that it had crossed over into this world. They debated Jacob’s worries and plans. Should he attack? Was it a mistake to send a messenger to Esau? Would it not have been wiser to appeal to his father, Isaac, for help? Perhaps the women should send a messenger to Rebecca, who was not only their mother-in-law, but their aunt as well? But they made no mention of the change in their husband’s manner. The confident man had become tentative and cautious. The affectionate father had turned demanding and even cold. Perhaps they thought it a symptom of his illness, or perhaps they simply did not see what I saw.
I grew to hate every mention of Esau, though after a time my fear gave way to boredom. My mothers did not even notice when I started avoiding their tents. They were too caught up in my father’s unfolding story and speculations about what lay ahead, and there was little for me to do. All our wool was spun, and the looms would not be unpacked, so my hands were often idle. No one called for me to fetch water or carry wool, and there was no garden to weed. I was near the end of childhood, and I was freer than I had ever been or would be again.
Joseph and I took to exploring the river. We walked its banks and watched the tiny fish that swarmed in its eddies. We hunted frogs, vivid green ones unlike any we’d ever seen. I picked wild herbs and salads. Joseph trapped grasshoppers to dip in honey. We bathed our feet in the cool, swift waters, and splashed each other until we were dripping. We dried ourselves in the sun, and our clothes smelled like the breeze and the water of the Jabbok.
One day we walked upstream and discovered a natural bridge over the river—a path of flat stones that made for an easy crossing. With no one to forbid it, we crossed to the far side, and we soon realized that we had found the very place where our father had been wounded. We recognized the clearing he had described—the circle of eighteen trees, the beaten-down grass, and the broken and bent bushes. We found a scorched place on the ground where a great fire had burned.
The hairs on my neck stood on end, and Joseph took my hand in his, which was damp with fear. Looking up, we heard nothing—no birdsong or whispering of leaves in the wind. The charred place gave off no smell, and even the sunlight seemed muted around us. The air seemed as dead as Ruti lying in the wadi.
I wanted to leave, but I could not move. Joseph told me later that he would have fled, too. But his feet were rooted in the earth. We lifted our eyes to the sky, wondering if our father’s fearful angels would return, but the heavens remained empty. We stood like stones, waiting for something to happen.
A loud crash from the circle of trees broke like thunder, and we shrieked, or at least we tried to cry out, but no sounds issued from our open mouths as a black boar ran out of the forest. He ran straight for us across t
he battered meadow. We screamed our silent scream again, nor was there any noise from the hooves of the beast, which moved at us with the speed of a gazelle. I thought we were about to die, and my eyes filled with pity for our mothers and I heard Leah sobbing behind me.
When I turned to find her, she was not there. Still, the spell had broken. My feet were free and I ran back toward the river, pulling Joseph with a strength greater than my own. Perhaps there were angels on my side, too, I thought as I reached the foot stones and found my way over. Joseph slipped off the first rock and cut his foot. This time his voice rang out in pain. The sound of his cry seemed to stop the boar in his tracks, and the animal fell, as though struck by a spear.
Joseph recovered his footing and scrambled back to the far shore, where I held out my hands to him, and we embraced, trembling, amid the sounds of the water, the rustling of leaves, and the terrified beating of our own hearts.
“What was that place?” my brother asked, but I could only shake my head. We looked back to the boar and the clearing and the ring of trees, but the beast had vanished and the scene now seemed ordinary and even beautiful: a bird flew across the horizon, chirping, and the trees swayed with the wind. I shuddered, and Joseph squeezed my hand. Without a word, we swore the day to secrecy.
But my brother was never the same. From that night forward, he began to dream with the power of our father’s dreams. At first, he spoke of his wondrous encounters with angels and demons, with dancing stars and talking beasts, to me only. Soon, his dreams were too big for my ears alone.
CHAPTER FOUR
JOSEPH AND I returned to camp, afraid we would be questioned about our absence and worried about trying to keep what had happened from our keen-eyed mothers. But no one saw us come. All eyes were fixed upon a stranger who stood before Jacob. The man spoke in the clipped accents of the south, and the first words I heard from his mouth were “my father.” As I crept around to see the face of the messenger, I saw someone who could only be a kinsman.
It was Eliphaz, Esau’s oldest son and my cousin, who looked so much like Judah that I clapped my hand over my mouth to keep from blurting it out loud. He was as ruddy and handsome as Judah, though taller—as tall as Reuben, in fact. He spoke with Reuben’s gestures, his head tilted to one side, his left arm wrapped around his waist, his right hand clenching and unclenching, as he brought us the news we had dreaded for so long.
“My father arrives before dusk,” said Eliphaz. “He comes with my brothers and with bondsmen and slaves, forty in all, including the women. My mother is among them,” he added, nodding toward my mothers, who smiled at the courtesy, in spite of themselves.
While Eliphaz spoke, my father’s face was a mask—unchanging and impassive. In his heart, however, he railed and wept. Shattered now were his careful plans for dividing our numbers so Esau could not destroy us in one attack. Useless, all those evenings spent directing my brothers as to which animals would be given as a peace offering and which animals should be hidden from Esau’s grasp. My mothers had not even begun to separate and prepare the goods my father wanted to present to his older brother in hopes of appeasing his terrible anger.
But now he was trapped, and he cursed himself for occupying his thoughts for too long with demons and angels, and clouding his purpose, for now our tents were in an indefensible position, with the river blocking escape behind us.