Floodwater

Jack Andrew Ferry

When people heard that God condemned us, many started praying. The rest of us carried on as we always had. And yet, the rumors spread to every ear in the city, each one taking the words differently.

I often found Selene in prayer. She would nervously jump when I entered a room, saying that she was asking for forgiveness after seeing a man. Ida would toss her head upward toward His sky and laugh aloud at Him. Ida took as many partners as she was told to. Her regret was never visible in the cracks of her cheek rouge.

Yet this was not the way for many people, who fell onto the streets to pray at the first light of dawn. They did not stop until dusk. Ida called them fools.

“Praying to the air,” she tsked.

There was something beautiful about it; the masses of people with their arms facing the sun, begging for forgiveness from a God they had no proof was there. I could tell Selene wanted to fall next to them, to embrace them, and beg for salvation. Ida

and I would not. To us, truth rarely lied in rumors. Ida criticized those who believed in God. Selene’s face would turn red like clay when Ida spoke to her like this.

“How can you be sure?” Selene would ask. “Because I see suffering and no mercy.” Ida said. We walked without speaking; it was easier than pretending to agree.

At Tovah’s home, where we had lived all our lives, I could hear Ida and Selene through the walls on either side of me. Selene would squeal, sometimes giggle, and other times let out little bursts of pain. I heard the men moan and grunt. Ida was usually as quiet as she could be, except for deep moans she felt obligated to release, like a cat indignantly meows for food.

I would wait in between them, my room unoccupied until Tovah decided to fill it. Men would peek their heads in through the torn curtain, to see if I satisfied them or not. If I did, I would join my sisters in a shared misery. Our fingertips running along the mud wall, outstretched toward each other.

“Have you heard about the flood? About doomsday?” one man asked, his hot breath in my ear. It sent shivers of disgust along my spine, like a river carries driftwood.

I only grunted in reply. It was what he wanted to hear; it would make him leave faster. I didn’t want to think. Not about anything at all. He left bronze coins on the bed, Tovah snatched them up quicker than I could change the sheets.

∙•◊•∙

The room was hot when I woke. I thought it was the heat that woke me, sticky legs under covers of wool. It came again though, leaking in through the window.

It was still dark. A pale blue outside that let a calmness fall over the city. In the earliest hours, when the robbers had fallen asleep, there was a sense of peace. It usually comforted me.

A piercing scream came from the street. I moved from my sweaty position between Ida and Selene’s sleeping bodies. Toward the simple mud window, I crept. The rising sun cast elongated shadows across the short, square mud buildings. The dirt street was empty, except for a stray tabby cat.

Then like a bird flying across the sky, a streak ran past the house. His voice cracking, his throat dry and coarse.

“They’re going to kill me. Help me. Please.”

I ducked low, low enough to watch the man run by, but not to be seen. Sure enough, as he said, three men followed not far behind. In their hands, swords gleamed like morning dew.

He would die, that much was certain. Yet the city slept. We cannot all be good. ∙•◊•∙

Sometimes, when they asked for my name, I liked to lie. Tamar, Jochebed, Helen, Chava, Ruth, or Bilhah. Each day and night, a different name. They never seemed to care what it was though, they never called me by my name. I could be called Foot and it would be good enough. Ida questioned this habit, but I could never explain. I was not myself with them.

I felt busiest at night, when it was cool out and the moonlight fell into the room. Light shone on the men’s faces, only lighting half of their features. It felt easier to love them in the dark.

When the hours had worn us, our flesh still hot, and the last visitor returned to his wife, Tovah put us to bed. She collected her girls, pressed a wet cloth to the back of our necks and our foreheads, pulling thin sheets over our hot skin.

We fell to our cots exhausted before the sun could peek its face above the earth. We slept together, a mound of bruised and tired flesh. Selene liked to be held, so I held her. Ida would push away if she tried, so instead Selene turned to me. Ida was never kind after we had finished our work. She’d just ball herself up, cringe at our touch, and wrap her arms around herself. Neither Selene or I could pass judgement on her. In measures of pain, we were triplets.

Tovah always fell asleep last. When the sun had faded again, and the air was cool and light, she would walk through our bedchambers, counting and checking. She promised lashings to any of us that tried to sneak away. I had never seen such action taken. But girls did not try to run away. Where would we go? If not her home, then another’s.

With Tovah asleep, and Selene and Ida tangled in their own dreams, I would tear away from sticky skin and go out of the house into the cold morning air. When the city was still quiet, people still sleeping, I would see Base. Golden light sprouted upward from the horizon like flowers. I liked when it would touch my skin, and the way it looked against mud houses and the way it gleamed against glazed pottery.

These were things I shared with Base in the earliest hours of the new day. His face would light up to see such beauty. His hair thick with dirt from sleeping on the floor, his body bruised and sore from labor. Despite the battering his body took, his eyes remained unscathed. Hazel like honey and mischievous like a fox.

“Do you like gold?” he would ask. “Yes, I like gold.”

“I will get you some today.” He often took my hands in his own. His hands were always cold from the night before. Mine were sometimes still sweaty in the palms.

“What will Tovah think to see one of her daughters with fine things?” “Nothing,” he said, “because I will steal you away before she can notice.”

“I do not need gold things, Base,” I’d say blushing, “the morning light is my jewelry.”

He would laugh at me. I would too. We both knew it was stupid to say. Perhaps dumber to feel. And yet, in some remote corner of my heart, I felt this to be true.

∙•◊•∙

Oftentimes, sometimes out of boredom, I would watch Tovah delegate chores to the other girls. My sisters washed clothes, scrubbed floors, or fell in love with men to pass the time.

With my hands grinding against a washboard, soapy water lapping against my chapped skin, I looked at Tovah. A cloth pulled over her head, her robes cinched around her large waist, the soles of her shoes worn from scurrying around the house.

She was a worn-out woman, but I could see that long ago she may have been beautiful. In the farthest stretch of my memory, I could remember the way she looked then. Thinner, calmer, her face not so pressed with wrinkles. Ida or Selene could not offer such information, they had not known her as long as I did. No girl here had been here as long as I had.

One of the girls kicked over a bucket of water, its contents overflowing onto the dirt floor. Tovah cursed her, bending over to pick up the bucket. As she reached below her, her robe slipped down her back. In her skin were deep markings, red slashes, like tiger claws. And yet, I knew too well the way skin looks when it’s torn by rope. She placed the bucket onto the table, reprimanding the girl for her foolishness. Tovah smoothed her robe, walking off, toward the front of the house.

Tovah, the subject of my earliest memories. It was she who taught me how to clean, how to dress, how to love. Despite it all, I could find a way to forgive her.

When he was finished with me, he dressed himself. He asked me to tie his wool robe in place. He existed under a cloud of black hair, like a sheep. With nimble hands, I helped him. He left the chamber without another word, and I sat alone on the bed of straw. I went to the water basin to refresh myself.

Before my hands could break the placid calmness of that tiny ocean, I noticed on my neck a coin sized wound. I gasped at the sight. Blood pooled beneath unbroken skin. I moved my fingers gently over that red and blue swirling bruise created of collapsed veins. Tenderness could not mend it now.

I wondered what Base would say, if he would say anything?

I wondered if I would ever see him again, the man who gave me this. Him, nameless, and me as Keturah. Probably not, but if so, it would be in passing as he visited another one of my sisters.

Silently, and for the first time in years, I prayed:

Dear God, please let this bruise heal quickly… And please let this man’s wife never know the pleasures he felt this afternoon. Thank you, amen.

∙•◊•∙

In time, almost accidentally, I forgot the prophecy of doom hanging over our heads like heavy stars. I went about as I always had. Selene, though, acted as though God himself had pulled her by the hair and scolded her to behave.

“I feel guilty,” she cried to Ida and me. “I feel dirty for letting them touch me!”

Ida was unsympathetic. Rolling her eyes and crossing her arms, seated in the chair by the doorway, while I comforted her on the floor.

“Selene, you must forgive yourself,” I said, “None of us asked for this. If there is a God, he must understand that.”

“I am scared!” She shook like clothesline in the wind. “Are we not all scared, Selene?” Ida said.

Selene cried louder. I shot a look at Ida, who groaned. I sent my hand along the back of her head and down her back. Her breathing seemed to soothe itself as I stroked her. She made me feel like a mother.

“Tell me about your mother, Selene.” I said. She looked puzzled, as if she had to think about it for a moment.

“She was sweet,” Selene said after a pause, toying with a strand of her hair, “she used to call me Kilba. But I don’t remember why. I remember her voice, her singing voice, and the lullabies I used to hear.”

“Can you sing one now?”

Quiet fell upon us for a moment, until Selene began humming. It was soft, slow, melodic like the way a bird’s song is pleasant to the ear. She could remember none of the words, but the feeling of comfort was there.

Ida moved from her position near the doorway, coming closer to the floor where we sat. I forgot myself in the moment, wrapped so deeply in thought.

“My father used to play with us,” Ida said when Selene had finished her song, “a game my brothers invented. He was jolly and always made us laugh.”

She sat down beside us. Selene and I exchanged a brief side-glance. “What about your mother?” Selene asked me.

I was blank. Not even the ghost of a face could appear. As if I had fallen from a tree like some ripe fruit.

“She was smart,” I lied, “she always knew how to help me.”

∙•◊•∙

“A man came in today, talking about the flood, saying we were all dirty and doomed,” I said to Base as his finger ran over the etches in my palm. “Tovah had to remove him.”

“That’s awful.” His eyes did not waver from my hand. It rested in his, his boney fingers tracing the riverbed in my skin.

He saw the bruise on my neck. He knew where it had come from. He did not say anything.

“Do you think it’s true at all?” he asked, breaking the silence we shared. I told him that I didn’t. “Sometimes I wonder if we’re good people.”

I saw fine jewels, fabrics, spices, and foods in his goatskin satchel, open where he left it. I knew how he got them. I said nothing.

“I think you’re good, even if you act against His word.” He smiled and we felt the sun warmly on our skin.

∙•◊•∙

My eyes were pulled shut, wrinkled, like cloth in a tight fist. My palms were open, outstretched and facing the sky. I heard clinking as Base rummaged through his satchel. He placed in my hand something cold and heavy.

“Open now.”

Light filled my vision. We were at our spot on a mud rooftop, overlooking the marketplace, and the desert off in the horizon. The dusk sunset was gold and pink. In my palm, curled like a sleeping snake was a gold chain.

“Base” I started.

“Before you refuse me,” he said, “I know that you hate the idea of help. That bracelet is not for you, but for Tovah.” I cocked my head, ready for an explanation.

“Listen,” Base said, running his large hand through his matted curls, “if Tovah has this, maybe she will set you free. This is worth more than anything those men will pay in five years.”

I felt, just behind my eyes, the wet prick of tears. I did not speak, I felt my throat tighten and I knew if I tried to speak, I would cry. I said nothing but put my arms around him. In my hand, the chain was heavy. With his body close to mine, I felt an alien comfort.

∙•◊•∙

In the morning, I dropped the chain into Tovah’s hand. She looked at it was confusion written across her face.

“Am I finally letting you go, daughter?” I shook my head. “No,” I said, “today you are letting go of Ida and Selene.”

I left her room, marching to tell Ida and Selene. They would refuse to go without me, but I would force them. Base would hate me, certainly, for what he would see as a waste. And yet, whatever he may feel, I love him greater now than ever.

I just cannot love a savior.

∙•◊•∙

By the time we knew the rumors were true, it was too late for salvation. Rain came down slowly at first, like little kisses on the tops of our heads, but it was odd

for rain at that time of the year, when the days were long and hot, the nights cool and pale. People knew right away. Panic filled the streets. There were shrill calls for loved ones, crowds of people on foot. Glazed pottery broken, bones crushed and splintered under racing feet.

They knew when they felt the sting of cold rain droplets that this was it, that the rumors were true.

Water bubbled from wells, pouring out over cobblestone onto the dirt roads. It funneled out of hearths and brushed against naked ankles and calves.

I had not seen Ida or Selene in weeks, and I hoped that they were far away, perhaps somewhere safer, if any such place in the world existed.

One of the girls from Tovah’s grabbed my wrist. She was scared, as she always had been. As we all had been.

“What do we do?” Her face was white like death would be. I shuddered to think of corpses battered against rock, chunks of flesh stolen from once-pristine skin. The way we would all look when the water reached our necks and we couldn’t touch the floor any longer.

Tovah says we are born alone; it is only the lucky who die differently.

We followed rushing crowds, people lapping against each other. Rain drenched our robes. The weight made it harder to run. She leaned on me. I thought of Base, somewhere in this panicked crowd. Would he drop his satchel of goods? What use would they be now? I wondered what Tovah was cooing to the girls who huddled around her as water poured in every crevice toward them.

My feet scraped against rough gravel. Rock crunched beneath my bare feet. Hundreds of people climbed for higher ground. Water came from every direction. Soon the entire mountain would be engulfed in salt water. The man with the boat would

be saved, the only among us God chose. The girl squeezed my hand. I did not even know her.

If I had prayed more would it have been different for me? Was He watching now, or had He turned His face away from us?

There was no use thinking of anything now. No use fighting at all.

I thought of Ida and Selene, and of Base, while I held this girl’s hand until the waters pulled us apart.