1997 - The Red Tent by Anita Diamant Page B

“Please,” she asked.
    “Do as I say before I tell Zilpah,” Rachel threatened mischievously. “She will make your life a misery of scorned goddesses if she discovers your plans.”
    Leah laughed and relented, for her wish for a daughter was still strong.
    While I slept in my mother’s womb, I appeared to her and to each of my aunties in vivid dreams.
    Bilhah dreamed of me one night while she lay in Jacob’s arms. “I saw you in a white gown of fine linen, covered with a long vest of blue and green beads. Your hair was braided and you carried a fine basket through a pasture greener than any I have ever seen. You walked among queens, but you were alone.”
    Rachel dreamed of my birth. “You appeared at your mother’s womb with your eyes open and your mouth full of perfect little teeth. You spoke as you slithered out from between her legs, saying, ‘Hello, mothers. I am here at last. Is there nothing to eat?’ That made us laugh. There were hundreds of women attending your birth, some of them dressed in outlandish clothing, shocking colors, shorn heads. We all laughed and laughed. I woke in the middle of the night laughing.”
    My mother, Leah, said she dreamed of me every night. “You and I whispered to each other like old friends. You were very wise, telling me what to eat to calm my upset stomach, how to settle a quarrel between Reuben and Simon. I told you all about Jacob, your father, and about your aunties. You told me about the other side of the universe, where darkness and light are not separated. You were such good company, I hated to wake up.
    “One thing bothered me about those dreams,” said my mother. “I could never see your face. You were always behind me, just beyond my left shoulder. And every time I turned to catch a glimpse of you, you disappeared.”
    Zilpah’s dream was not filled with laughter or companionship. She said she saw me weeping a river of blood that gave rise to flat green monsters that opened mouths filled with rows of sharp teeth. “Even so, you were unafraid,” said Zilpah. “You walked upon their backs and tamed their ugliness, and disappeared into the sun.”
    I was born during a full moon in a springtime remembered for a plenitude of lambs. Zilpah stood on my mother’s left side, while Bilhah supported her on the right. Inna was there, to be on hand for the celebration and to catch the afterbirth in her ancient bucket. But Leah had asked Rachel to be midwife and catch me.
    It was an easy birth. After all the boys before me, I came quickly and as painlessly as birth can be. I was big—as big as Judah, who had been the biggest. Inna pronounced me “Leah’s daughter,” in a voice full of satisfaction. As with all of her babies, my mother looked into my eyes first and smiled to see that they were both brown, like Jacob’s and those of all her sons.
    After Rachel wiped me clean, she handed me to Zilpah, who embraced me, and then to Bilhah, who kissed me as well. I took my mother’s breast with an eager mouth, and all the women of the camp clapped their hands for my mother and for me. Bilhah fed my mother honeyed milk and cake. She washed Leah’s hair with perfumed water, and she massaged her feet.
    While Leah slept, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah took me out into the moonlight and put henna on my feet and hands, as though I were a bride. They spoke a hundred blessings around me, north, south, east, and west, to protect me against Lamashtu and the other baby-stealing demons. They gave me a thousand kisses.
    In the morning, my mother began to count out two moon cycles in the red tent. After the birth of a boy, mothers rested from one moon to the next, but the birth of a birth-giver required a longer period of separation from the world of men. “The second month was such a delight,” my mother told me. “My sisters treated us both like queens. You were never left lying upon a blanket for a moment. There were always arms to hold you, cuddle you, embrace you. We oiled your