1997 - The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

his neighbors respected his success. But he was uneasy. Laban owned everything he had attained—the flocks, the bondsmen and their families, the fruit of the garden, the wool for trade. Nor was Jacob alone in his resentment of Laban. Leah and Rachel, Bilhah and Zilpah chafed under the rule of their father, who seemed to grow more crude and arrogant as the years passed. He treated his own daughters like slaves, and cuffed their sons. He profited from the labor of their looms without a word of thanks. He leered at the bondswomen and took their beer as a bribe against his lust. He mistreated Ruti every day.
    The four sisters spoke of these things in the red tent, which they always entered a day before the rest of the women in the camp. Perhaps their early years together when they were the only women in camp created a habit in their bodies that brought on the flow of blood some hours before the bondswomen. Or perhaps it was simply the need of their hearts to spend a day among themselves. In any event, the bondswomen did not complain, nor was it their place to say anything. Besides, Jacob’s wives would always greet them with sweets as they entered to celebrate the new moon and rest on the straw.
     
    Ruti said nothing, but her blackened eyes and her bruises reproached them. No older than Leah, Ruti had grown haggard in their midst. After the birth of her sons, Laban had treated her well—the tight-fisted goat had even brought her bangles to brighten her wrists and ankles. But then she gave off bearing and he began to hit her and call her names so ugly my mothers would not repeat them to me. Ruti’s shoulders stooped with despair, and several of her teeth were broken from the force of Laban’s fists. Even so, he continued to use her body for his own pleasure, a thought that made my mothers shudder.
    For all their pity, Jacob’s wives did not embrace Ruti. She was the mother of their sons’ rivals, their material enemy. The bondswomen saw how the sisters kept themselves apart from her, and they followed suit. Even her own sons laughed at her and treated her like a dog. Ruti, already alone, kept to herself. She became such a ragged, battered misery to look at that no one saw her. When she came to Rachel, desperate for help, she seemed more a ghost than a woman.
    “Lady, I beg you. Give me the herbs to cast out the baby I carry,” she whispered in a cold, flat hiss. “I would rather die than give him another son, and if it is a girl, I will drown her before she is old enough to suffer at his hands.
    “Help me for the sake of your husband’s sons,” said Ruti, in a voice from the other side of the grave. “I know you will not do it for me. You hate me, all of you.”
    Rachel brought Ruti’s words to her sisters, who listened in silence and were ashamed.
    “Do you know how to do that?” asked Leah.
    Rachel waved a hand, dismissing the question as beneath consideration. It was not a difficult matter, especially since Ruti was in the first month.
    Bilhah’s eyes blazed. “We are no better than he is to have let her suffer alone, to have given her no comfort, no help.”
    Zilpah turned to Rachel and asked, “When will you do it?”
    “We must wait for the next new moon, when all the women come to us,” Rachel answered. “Laban is too stupid to suspect anything. I don’t think even the subtlest among them realizes what we know and do among ourselves, but it is better” to be careful.”
    The sisters did not change in their apparent treatment of Ruti. They did not speak to her or show her any special kindness. But at night, when Laban snored, one of the four would find her, huddled on her filthy blanket in a far corner of the tent, and feed her broth or honeyed bread. Zilpah took on Ruti’s suffering as her own. She could not bear the emptiness in her eyes, or the despair that hung about her like a fog from the world of the dead. She took to visiting her every night to whisper words of encouragement into Ruti’s