by Christine M. Du Bois
The sun blazed on her loose, brittle skin. She stood in the courtyard, her emaciated frame clad in a sumptuous, pleated linen gown that mocked her, her bare feet covered in sores. She was beyond sensations of hunger in belly or mouth; she felt only an endless exhaustion that filled every part of her body and spread outwards from her thoughts to paint even the sunshine pewter. Through the thick sludge of her weakness, she still understood that she desperately needed food. Her mind sometimes longed for nourishment in gasping staccato beats, like a frightened dog panting.
She eased herself down to sit on a low brick wall, allowing her arms to fall. She sank inside herself, enduring the heat blankly.
A harsh male voice jolted her alert. Her eyes jerked upwards, quickly taking in tall, muscular legs. As her glance flickered to the stranger’s head, she flinched in terror: his face was a peregrine falcon, utterly fierce and unyielding. “Horus,” she whispered. She bent her head toward her knees, cowering before the god.
Horus pierced her with razor eyes. He spoke again, in tones so loud and guttural they could slaughter a rodent instantly from shock: “Rapheen, you must share wheat—you, Rapheen—or you will be destroyed.”
She dared not look up again, but sat, trembling violently, and cried out in despair, “I—I have no wheat! Please—I—” Her voice faltered.
Implacably he commanded, “You must find wheat.”
Searching her feet without seeing them, she begged, “Where? Where—where can I find wheat?”
His next words scorched her soul, and she curled herself into a tight, agonized ball as his thoughts relentlessly penetrated her. “You will find wheat inside the secret room, but now your room is empty, Rapheen, and your children will die.”
Rapheen awoke shaking, the woven mat of her bed drenched, a trickle of her sweat sliding down the gilded, gazelle-shaped leg of the bed frame. She touched the wall to assure herself that she’d merely had a nightmare. I’m here, she thought, at home, in my room. She touched her breasts to prove to herself that her body wasn’t wasting away. I’m still beautiful. She inhaled deeply, as if bringing in air might erase what she’d just experienced, then exhaled very slowly. Why such a frightening dream? She wondered. Should… should I tell Joseph?
Joseph, she mused. He’d already been here when her father married her off to Potiphar a year ago. She was just 13 then; Potiphar, 38. She wasn’t sure how old Joseph was—the ages of slaves were never very clear to her—but she guessed he was 7 or 8 years older than she. Joseph doesn’t notice my loveliness, she thought. It was a relief to consider even this frustration instead of Horus.
She caressed her right calf with her silky left foot and recalled the day she had first encountered her husband’s brilliant, ever-competent slave. She had been new to the household, pouting in bed with a fever, her middle-aged maid Ebio wiping her forehead and arms with a wet cloth. She’d imperiously told Ebio to get someone to bring her food. Joseph was passing in the hallway and happened to overhear. As the highest-ranking slave, in charge of all the others and of many free men and women in Potiphar’s employ besides, he could have ordered anyone to fulfill her demand. But instead he spoke to Ebio in the doorway with concern, “Madame Rapheen is not well—I myself will bring her food.” Rapheen had glimpsed eyes full of compassion. “Just a little,” she had called out to him. “Something simple.” He had returned two minutes later. Of course he hadn’t entered her room, but she had watched him in the doorway as he handed Ebio a delicate blue faience bowl filled with bread and figs. She’d immediately wished she hadn’t sounded so petulant when he’d first walked by. And she had wished that she could gaze at his tall, well-proportioned figure again.
Ah, and she did. Rapheen smiled at the memories, all attention to Horus’s warning now pushed aside. She closed her eyes and drifted back. She was with Ebio now, and two younger maids. She had just bathed, and the maids were preparing to rub her skin with cinnamon oil, as Potiphar had ordered. Ebio lifted the lid of a violet glass bottle in the shape of a woman; the warm scent filled the room. The maids were chattering amongst themselves, the youngest explaining that she couldn’t understand a dream she kept having, about swimming in a pond full of white lilies. Ebio remarked, “My husband says that Joseph, the foreigner, is very good at interpreting dreams. Would you like me to ask him about your lilies?” Rapheen paid no heed to the girl’s answer, nor to the conversation that followed. As the maids massaged her limbs with oil, she contemplated Joseph, and how she could pull him into her life. She would send Ebio to tell him that Madame Rapheen had had a dream she needed explained. If she couldn’t actually remember a dream—she rarely did—she would just make one up.
Two days later, in the heat of the afternoon, she sent for him. Ebio standing by, she told him a fabricated story about swimming in a pond of blue lilies and finding a thin gold necklace wrapped around the stamen of the most beautiful flower. He studied her face for a long time—was it her full lips that drew him, or her enormous brown eyes?—and at first she flushed with pleasure. But then she wondered—what was that expression on his face? What did he think of her?
At last he answered, gravely, yet with a voice that rose and fell expressively, a voice of sweet red wine: “Madame, anyone would wish for a dream like that. A dream of gold and lilies suggests a life of good fortune and favor from the world beyond.”
Encouraged, she had invented new dreams, regularly, for him to elucidate. Always she summoned him in the afternoon, when Potiphar was away from the house. Always Ebio or another maid was in attendance. Always Rapheen longed for more of Joseph. He listened attentively and gave thoughtful explanations, but despite his rumored fascination with night messages from the spirit world, he never seemed particularly eager to hear more from her. Did he suspect that her stories were contrived?
And so one day she told him a real dream.
Rapheen paused here in her recollections. This was a difficult memory, but worth the journey because it ended so deliciously, like date jam on her tongue. Her sweat already dried, she filled her lungs again with still, warm air.
The night before this dream, Potiphar had come to her. He neither touched nor spoke to her often, and when he did, it was late at night with no attempt to prepare her. He had entered her room, pulled off her clothes, and pushed himself inside her. Quickly finished, he had left without a word, without even noticing her downcast eyes. Forsaken, she had questioned scornfully, This man has been married before, and this is all he knows about being a husband? Yet doubt gnawed at her—maybe she didn’t compare with Potiphar’s late wife—maybe she was inadequate in his eyes. She pondered her father’s pleading words: “This man is so wealthy. If you marry him, you will live well, and men of high rank will want to marry your little sister—men who are better than she ever would have had before. Your beauty is a gift to our whole family, Rapheen.”
But Rapheen rarely saw her sister anymore, or her parents, or anyone from her childhood. What had this marriage done for her? She had so many obsequious servants now—and a solitary bed. She had cried herself to sleep that night. Then she had dreamed: A ravenous crocodile lived in her home, and when her family came to visit, it ripped them apart and devoured them. Blood dripped from its mouth, but the servants ignored it completely as they bustled about, bringing her jewelry for a party.
She had awoken wanting only to forget this dream, but the images pursued her. That afternoon, as she told Joseph a fanciful concoction about rocks magically transforming into palm fruits, her voice broke. His eyes searched her face, and then she blurted out her real dream. With exquisite gentleness, he asked for details about what she had seen; she shook as she described the crocodile’s mouth. For the first time, his face was deeply tender as he spoke to her. “Madame Rapheen, please do not be afraid of dreams. Their images may terrify us, but they are really sent to guide us, to help us. They do not wish to hurt you.” She focused on his face, and her fear, unable to withstand the kindness in his pupils, fled every fiber of her being and was replaced by a sensation of warm honey beginning in her belly and spreading over her torso and limbs.
“Madame Rapheen,” he added, “I think the dream means that your heart is not content with servants and riches. You are ravenous for something, but it is not going well. You feel that your belonging to a family is being destroyed. Do you wish for family?” Blushing faintly, he continued, “Perhaps you will have a baby, Ma’am.”
Color rushed to her cheeks. She thought, A baby. Yes, I wish I had a baby to love. I wish I could be a baby—your baby, Joseph. And then, the forbidden: Maybe I could have your baby, Joseph. Maybe—I wish—maybe I could have you.
In her memory Joseph’s visage, full of understanding and empathy for her—for her—that face, his eyes, made her feel she was the most important person in the world. She had revisited this scene over and over. She saved it for more private moments, as it made her genitals full each time. Yet sometimes now she felt aroused even just to see Joseph walking across the courtyard, or giving instructions to the men digging a new, third pond for the estate. Once she saw him talking to the chief gardener, when suddenly he threw his head back and laughed with abandon, his whole body vibrant with delight. She wanted that delight. She wanted his concern. She wanted his handsome body pressed close to hers.
And now, she thought, she had another genuine dream she could tell him. Would he look at her again with her whole self in his gaze? She closed her eyes and felt blood pulsing through her. She could taste longing on her lips.
But then unbidden, unwelcome, the voice of Horus intervened, echoing in her head, spoiling her reverie. She shuddered to consider telling Joseph this dream, this accusation from Horus. She did not want him to think ill of her, as the god clearly did; the dream made her feel nakedly ugly and ashamed. She wondered what the god meant about her children dying. She had no children. Yet. Would Horus kill any babies she would produce? Why?
No, no, there couldn’t be any truth in this dream. It was just a nightmare. Her mind slipped facilely from Dreams are difficult, and wishing that she could understand them, to concluding that since she couldn’t grasp its meaning, she would stop thinking about this one. This one would not even be for Joseph. She arose, lifted a little earthenware pot contoured to imitate the woven texture of a basket, and began applying her eye make-up.
* * *
Five weeks passed, and the maids were all aflutter because Ebio’s daughter, a grain grinder in the household kitchen, was getting married. Joseph had convinced Potiphar that it would boost the morale of all the slaves and servants if they could attend, and that Potiphar would win their fuller devotion if he contributed substantial food to the celebration. The party was set for tomorrow, a half hour’s walk away upriver along the Nile. To Rapheen, today her domestics seemed as kittens whose master was dangling morsels of fish before them; all were beside themselves with frisky anticipation.
Only one maid, eleven-year-old Sheriti, was unhappy. Sheriti ached to attend the wedding, but she had been assigned to wait on Rapheen at home while the others were gone. Potiphar would not tolerate the unseemly spectacle of his wife’s presence at a servant’s wedding. Sheriti had begged Ebio tearfully to talk to Joseph about her yearning to join the festivities, but Ebio had refused. Ebio knew better than to question Potiphar’s pronouncements, and she had no desire to have Joseph re-assign the task of staying with Rapheen to some other hapless maid. Ebio had caressed Sheriti’s cheek and lightened her chores for the day but would do no more for her.
In the evening Rapheen noticed Sheriti’s misery without any particular compassion. Instead, the pending nuptials pushed Rapheen to bitter contemplation of the amulet on her bedroom table. Her mother had given it to her before her own wedding. In the form of a vervet monkey, it had been carved from limestone with great finesse and was supposed to impart sexual allure to its owner. Her mother had paid more for it than she could afford, to help Rapheen through the years. But what power had the monkey shown her? It sat on her bedroom table, tame, useless. She had stopped touching it long ago.
Rapheen shifted her thoughts. Tomorrow she would be alone with Sheriti. Sometimes because Sheriti was still a child, she interacted with Rapheen playfully, rather than submissively. Ebio always sternly corrected Sheriti when she observed such behavior, but Rapheen secretly enjoyed it. It reminded her of her own childhood with her younger sister, Merit. Under other circumstances Rapheen would have resented being cut off from the party tomorrow, but Sheriti was her favorite maid, and having her all to herself was an unexpectedly worthy compensation. If Sheriti was glum tomorrow, Rapheen mused, she would just order her to act cheerful. Remembering the fun she and her sister used to have in their small garden, Rapheen went to bed with emotions tacking back and forth amongst hope for an entertaining next day, curiosity about her sister’s current life, loneliness, a sudden piercing desire to have a child of her own to play with, and once, a glimmer of concern for Sheriti’s disappointed heart.
The boat of the sun-god, Re, was just peeking over the eastern horizon as it did each morning, bestowing Re’s blessings and his triumph over death, when Rapheen awoke. The household was already alive with preparations. Sooner than Rapheen expected, the rooms all emptied, and Sheriti was bringing her date bread and pomegranate juice.
The wedding and feast proved lengthy. Sheriti made the best of her situation, finding pleasure in a contest she and Rapheen invented to see who could find the prettiest pebble in the garden (out of nostalgia for her own sister, Rapheen let Sheriti win); constructing miniature rafts out of reeds and then sailing them on the garden’s largest pond; spinning until they were both very dizzy; playing the board game senet (Rapheen was the far better player); and juggling Rapheen’s set of wooden balls. After lunch the air felt unusually close and heavy, and they both napped.
Rapheen was abruptly roused by a sound she had heard only twice before in her life—torrential rain pounding the mud coating of the cedar roof above her head. There was no leaking; so far, the tightly woven reed mats between the mud layer and the wooden beams were protecting the contents of her room. But what of the rest of the house? She leapt up, and in the front hall collided with Sheriti, who was similarly rushing about. They conferred and realized that Tefnut, the goddess of moisture and a mighty lionness, was so far sparing the home. Rapheen sighed with relief, but Sheriti cried anxiously, “May I check the servants’ quarters?” Rapheen waved her hand forward in assent.
Rapheen opened the wooden shutters of the hall’s lowest window and leaned out. She surveyed Sheriti dashing across the central courtyard into the back of the house, from where she would make her way to the small buildings at the back of Potiphar’s extensive property. She frowned, noticing that on the south side of the courtyard, rainwater was pooling; the whitewash on the brick floor had begun dissolving and turning the puddles milky. On the slightly higher north side of the courtyard, the brick’s unfired clay was starting to erode, sending long brown ribbons across the white center of the courtyard and around the potted bluets. A small, sardonic smile fleetingly passed over Rapheen’s face: perhaps Tefnut was showing mercy, but Seth, the god of confusion and disorder, still wished to have his say. But then, as she quietly entertained herself with studying the mud patterns the downpour was making, she realized that erosion could cause far more serious damage to the pond enclosure under construction in the garden. This would not be a matter for smiling.
She ran to her bedroom’s side window, threw open the shutters, and peered through gray sheets of water. With a shock, in the distance along a canal she spied Joseph hurrying towards the new pond. His dripping clothing revealed the outline of his muscles.
Rapheen flushed from head to foot. A wild thought invaded her. She clutched the monkey amulet to her mouth, kissing it, sucking it beseechingly. At that moment, Sheriti returned at Rapheen’s back, praising Potiphar for the excellent architecture even of his servants’ homes. Rapheen, oblivious both to Sheriti’s flattery and to the girl’s genuine gratitude, discreetly returned the amulet to her table, wheeled around, and pronounced deliberately, “You can go to the wedding after all.”
“In this rain?”
“I can only allow it if you go now, right now.”
Confused, Sheriti hesitated. “What …?” she began, but her query wilted under the ferocity of Rapheen’s stare. Frightened that she had somehow displeased her mistress, and then, seconds later, remembering with a surge of glee how much she had pined for this very privilege, Sheriti hurried to the storeroom, found a cloth to throw over her head, and raced out of the household compound.
Rapheen watched Sheriti leaving, stretching herself like a cat but never taking her eyes off the scurrying young girl and the approaching slave. As Sheriti and Joseph crossed paths, Joseph stopped momentarily, apparently perplexed, but did not speak to Sheriti. Sheriti called words to Joseph that Rapheen could not make out, and Joseph continued urgently towards the pond. When Sheriti was gone, and Joseph was just within earshot, Rapheen shouted out the window, “Joseph, Joseph, my room, my room!”
“What’s wrong, Madame?” he called.
She screamed with extraordinary passion.
“Madame?” he cried out in alarm.
“A scorpion!” she shrieked with convincing terror, her face in the window so he could see it, yet pointed at the floor.
He changed course at once, sprinting to rescue her. As he crossed her threshold, she threw herself at his torso and wrapped her ankles around his. Instantly his eyes widened, his mouth froze open, and he stood completely immobile, a granite statue. She rubbed her groin against his and tilted her face upwards, blowing softly in his ear. In the last place where his body was still soft, he hardened in spite of himself, just as she wished.
But he would not stay and began pulling himself out of her grip. “NO!” he yelled, panicking. He had to escape, but he could not risk injuring her. “No, no, Madame, your husband has been very good to me. He trusts me. And—and the consequences!”
“But yes, yes,” she purred softly, “you want me. So take me. There’s no one else here. No one will know.” She clutched at his clothing and pushed her tongue forward, licking rainwater off his neck.
“NO!” he repeated, with eyes of a trapped animal. Almost simultaneously she shouted, insisting, “YES!”—but now there were hints of desolation in her voice. He wrested himself away and darted from her presence; she was left holding his best cloak. She rushed to the window, tears stinging her cheeks as she watched him run across the garden, desperate to abandon her. Unable to bear this image, instead she looked down at the cloak in her hands. She suppressed an urge to rip it to pieces with her teeth; the cloth was too thick.
Out of the corner of her eye she noticed new movement outside and glanced up. Without warning she was overtaken by a fear so smothering she had to grasp the window ledge for support: two of Potiphar’s workmen were advancing along the canal, observing Joseph as he left the compound. Had they heard Joseph’s and her voices shouting together? Did they realize that Joseph was missing his cloak? Would they speak to anyone about what they had seen or heard?
She collapsed onto her bed, paralyzed.
* * *
Two hours later, Ebio found her there. “You are not well, Madame,” she clucked and shifted to the window to close the shutters.
“No, no,” Rapheen whispered, “not well.” The feebleness of Rapheen’s tone arrested Ebio, and she turned a deeply furrowed face towards her mistress. “Are you in pain, Madame?” she asked.
“Yes, pain,” Rapheen answered, and her face betrayed anguish.
“I will prepare you a poultice, Madame.”
Rapheen was alone again with her roiling heart. Her thoughts chased and crashed into one another, whirling into malicious shapes, stealing all energy from her defenseless body. They will tell Potiphar that we are lovers, a demon wielding a long, sharp blade howled malevolently, while another wailed, But we should have been lovers. He purposely ignores my beauty and a keening, Why, why? A crocodile with poisoned jaw screeched, He is vile! I will punish him. He is a slave; I can have him punished! Herself as a small child, Please help me someone, I won’t be doing the punishing. I will be the punished. Will Potiphar divorce me? Beat me? Could he—Mommy, could he kill me? Then a mocking vervet monkey, You think you are lovely. But you repulse Joseph and Potiphar both. Then an ancient woman with alabaster skin and long, cold fingers that curled around Rapheen’s neck, Even if they say nothing, and no one ever knows, you will see Joseph every day for the rest of your life, and you will never, ever feel his love. Then her own self, shaking, her fist curled around the smooth top of a broken glass bottle, its jagged bottom facing outward, I can’t live like that. He needs to be far away from me. As far as possible, forever. Then Joseph, imploring, Rapheen, my fate is in your hands. What have I done? The demon with the knife, threatening Joseph, laughing maniacally, triumphantly, They will tell Potiphar that we were lovers! Her father, bound tightly to a chair with linen straps, his groin exposed to a flaming torch in Seth’s hands, screaming, I am innocent! I did not raise her for that! Herself, solitary and clawing at the stone walls of a dark prison cell, silent.
She put her hands to her temples and moaned. Suddenly needles shot through her as she recognized Potiphar’s voice in the hallway; he called, simply, “Joseph.” Was he summoning Joseph to confront him? Had a few sentences from the workmen started a raging fire? Intense anxiety, desperate to put out that fire, any fire, all fires, inundated her, like water searching for the flames.
“Yes, sir?” Joseph sounded completely calm. The lack of even a quaver in his words drew her heart towards him—he was such a reassuring presence—even as, at the same time, an island of resentment formed in the great waters of her fear.
“My brother is expected soon. We will require wine in the Great Hall.”
“Yes, sir.”
Their footsteps faded. Rapheen gasped deeply for air, but her relief was incomplete. She lay unable to speak or move, doubtful that this was more than merely a temporary reprieve. When Ebio entered the room, Rapheen was barely responsive. Worriedly, Ebio inquired, “Madame, where is your pain?”
Rapheen feebly lifted an arm and waved it vaguely over her body. The furrow in Ebio’s brow grew deeper. She began noiselessly applying a poppy-oil poultice to Rapheen’s neck, arms and, underneath her garment, but with a piece of cloth on top of it, to her chest. She touched Rapheen’s forehead. “Madame, did the storm upset you? The household is all fine.”
Rapheen did not answer. An image of herself starving in a prison was flashing across her mind. She remembered her dream message from Horus. Was this what the dream had meant? That Potiphar would condemn her?
Ebio noticed her ragged breathing and promised, “Madame, I will fetch a physician. He will know a spell to put you right.”
Rapheen nodded slightly, and then was alone again. Engulfed by panic, she struggled to hold onto the only dry land her mind offered: This is Joseph’s fault. The island was unstable, untenable, but each time she felt it vanishing beneath her, she grabbed the vines growing there and clung to the thought. It’s Joseph’s fault. He should take the blame. A tiny, little-girl voice inside her threatened to throw her back into the deluge as the girl called plaintively, But I love him. A demon replied with a cruel, almost sexual pleasure in torturing the young maiden, You’ll never, ever have him. Rapheen returned to her little piece of ground, willing it to grow, willing it to give her hope. Joseph will take the blame. He’ll be far away. I’ll be safe.
Voices interrupted her efforts. Potiphar was in the passageway with his brother, who stopped to admire the mural of papyrus stalks and flowers on the ceiling beams. The brother sighed. “My own family is not so harmonious as this painted garden.”
Potiphar answered, “Is it that matter you mentioned before?”
“Yes, my son, he’s disrespectful of me behind my back. I’m told that he has even ridiculed me in front of servants, making scornful faces as he repeated my words. His mother says I shouldn’t be harsh with him; he’s just a child. But he’s 12 years old now.”
“Your wife has always indulged that boy too much. No one should be permitted to mock you, to sully your dignity. He’s undermining your authority as master of the house! The boy should be whipped. And since he uses his face to mock you, he should be slapped there. His cheeks, his forehead, his mouth—let them feel your power.”
Potiphar’s tone was uncompromising. Rapheen heard the two men walk toward the accounting room. A new picture assaulted her—she imagined herself, just a year from now, youthful in body but with a face scarred and horribly disfigured from repeated beatings. She nearly screamed aloud. She tried to push the image away, only to find herself drowning in it.
At last something in her snapped; she could not tolerate even one more minute of this tempest. Without conscious effort, she turned towards her resentment, hoisting herself upon it, feeling its solidity erase her storm. She rose and called out to her husband in loud indignation, “Potiphar, Potiphar, you must punish your slave!”
* * *
Silence—destiny held its breath. Then, annoyed, Potiphar called back, “I am talking with my brother. Joseph can punish the slave.”
“No, sire,” Rapheen cried boldly, “the slave to be punished is Joseph. He tried”—her voice broke and diminished, “to attack me.”
She heard Potiphar hasten to her room. “What, Rapheen? What are you saying?” he demanded. She lifted Joseph’s cloak from a puddle behind her bed. Staring at her toes, she mumbled, “I grabbed his cloak.” She took a deep breath, raised her head and met Potiphar’s hard eyes, adding more assertively, “when he tried to attack me.” She slipped outrage into her voice: “He came in here, into my room.”
Potiphar surveyed his young, trembling wife. She glanced back downwards, and his eyes narrowed as he studied her face. Then he shifted his gaze to the cloak. He grabbed it roughly from her, turning it over and over in his hands, anger gradually building in him with every revolution. It was indeed Joseph’s cloak, a garment that had absolutely no business ever to come into his wife’s possession—ever, under any circumstance, no matter who or what … circumstance.
“JOSEPH!” he roared. Rapheen heard Joseph rush through several rooms in response to his master’s call. Arriving in the hallway outside Rapheen’s door, he took in Rapheen’s downcast face and his own cloak in Potiphar’s arms, and he knew.
Potiphar bellowed, “Is THIS why you suggested I allow all the servants to attend the wedding? And to make it extra merry, extra long? Is THIS why?”
“Master,” Joseph replied faintly, “Master, no, there was the maid Sheriti—your wife was not alone—and the maid was here a long time, but—but she left. Sheriti said that”
“I DON’T CARE WHAT A MAID GIRL SAID! YOU HAVE BEEN WITH MY WIFE—THIS IS PUNISHABLE BY DEATH!” Potiphar erupted. He turned towards Joseph but called beyond him. “Brother!” he yelled, “Gather the menservants. We have a prisoner! And bring me the maid called Sheriti.”
Within seconds the household was in a great commotion. Potiphar’s brother and four men, among them the two who had observed Joseph leaving the compound earlier, came to restrain a defeated, unstruggling Joseph. Sheriti was hauled, weeping, before Potiphar, who accused her ferociously of shirking her duty. Through terrified sobs, Sheriti managed to choke out that Madame Rapheen had given her permission to go. Potiphar’s eyes narrowed again. “Is this true?” he asked Rapheen, shrewdly noting her reactions. Rapheen felt an impulse to cry out that Sheriti was lying. But a picture of her sister flashed across her mind. Confused, she neither looked up nor answered.
Potiphar had seen enough. He seized Rapheen’s arm and threw her on the bed. Blocking the others’ view of her body, Potiphar commanded, “Show me your womanhood! NOW! Is his milk there?”
Humiliated, Rapheen lifted her gown and untied her loincloth. Potiphar growled. He hurled Joseph’s cloak between her legs and snarled contemptuously at her.
“Whip the maid-girl,” he ordered. “And take this man to prison,” he added, gesturing towards Joseph. “But,” he hesitated, jaw set tight, “but tell them I do not require execution. A life in prison will be enough.”
Joseph and Potiphar did not look at each other. As Joseph was leaving, instead he shot Rapheen a piercing glance, which Potiphar did not attempt to stop. Joseph spoke in a fiercely quiet voice: “Your fear does not excuse this wickedness.” His eyes bore through her, gauging all her cowardice and pettiness. She felt far more naked than if Potiphar had ripped off all her clothes.
* * *
The floods of the Nile came and receded. Rapheen sat one morning before Ebio, who smoothed her mistress’s hair with an intricately etched ivory comb. Ebio was working a tangle when Rapheen burst out, “What was the point of last night, anyway? He asked you to put me in my finest gown and my gold-and-turquoise necklace, and the make-up you did for me really was lovely, but for what? For what?” She frowned and stamped her foot. As her head wobbled, the comb caught the knot in her hair and pulled. “Careful, Ebio!” she snapped.
Ebio crooned softly, “You are his wife. He wanted you there.”
“Why?” Rapheen demanded, her voice rising. “He appraised me just once, to see if I measured up,” she added resentfully. “Then he didn’t notice me for the rest of the dinner, or speak to me any more than he has all these months—which is never.” Her voice dropped to a bitter whisper, “He didn’t come to my room last night, either. How does he expect me to give him children if he never comes anymore?”
“You are beautiful, Madame. It was an important business gathering of some sort, and he is proud of you. In the night he was tired.”
“He only wants to show me off. I’m another piece in his art collection.” Rapheen snatched the comb from Ebio and hurled it across the room. “And the whole time—even at that dinner with all those people, I had to have one of my stupid guards with me.”
“They are to protect you, Madame.”
Rapheen whirled towards Ebio and hissed in her face, “So the only male company I’m going to have for the rest of my life is a team of imported,” she spat the word out, “eunuchs. They’re always silent, and they won’t even look at my face!”
“It is their loss, Madame,” Ebio replied.
* * *
A month later, Rapheen awoke at dawn to Ebio’s voice outside her bedroom door.
“Oh! I—but, oh, oh sire,” Ebio stumbled. “It will be very difficult to tell her about a second wife. She is still like a child, really, and I don’t know how—”
“You will tell her, Ebio,” Potiphar ordered. “And you must emphasize that I expect cordial behavior from her. Nothing less.”
“I—I beg your p-p-pardon, sire, but perhaps—perhaps could one of the, the foreigners tell her?” Ebio queried tremulously.
Very deliberately, Potiphar enunciated, “No man shall speak with Rapheen. Not even a eunuch.” He smiled slightly. The eunuch standing guard at the door betrayed no emotion.
Rapheen’s frozen incomprehension at Ebio’s phrase, “second wife,” gave way to wild urgency. She leapt out of bed, threw open her door, and fell partly to the floor, clinging through Potiphar’s pleated linen kilt to his right thigh.
“No, no, sire—no, please,” Rapheen wailed, “I don’t want another wife here. I want to be the only one who bears your new children.” Tears quickly matted her long loose hair around her face.
“Quiet, woman,” Potiphar barked. “It is done already. You have no say in this matter.” He paused. Hinting malice, he added casually, “And you will have no children.”
Rapheen looked up in renewed shock. She stared at him for a full minute. “None?” she asked in a small voice.
“None,” Potiphar insisted. A grim expression of determination—and, fleetingly, of triumph—passed over his features.
Rapheen’s eyes widened further. Her face drained. She shook, then moaned incredulously, “None? None?”
“Let go of my leg, woman,” Potiphar sneered. She released him, collapsing on the ground. He contemplated her with disgust, and then walked out of her life.
* * *
“Please eat, Madame,” Ebio pleaded. “I made duck with honey and fennel—your favorite, remember?”
Rapheen coughed. She sat up in bed. “I’m so tired, Ebio.” Her body was slack except for her clenched right hand.
“Did you have trouble sleeping again?”
“I walked around this room, I think all night,” she croaked, “My dreams—I don’t want to dream.”
“They remind you of …” Ebio’s eyebrows rose as her voice trailed.
“My dreams are desert vultures,” Rapheen answered. “They pick at what’s left of my heart.” She turned her face away.
“Madame, your heart is eloquent. It has not died.”
“Maybe.” Rapheen’s tone was flat, but her eyes briefly flickered light. Then she closed them and lay back down. Ebio set the bowl of thick stew on the side table and studied Rapheen’s gaunt cheeks.
“Ebio?” Rapheen asked feebly.
“Yes, mistress?” Ebio replied hopefully.
“I need you to take something to my sister.” Without opening her eyes, she uncurled her right fist to reveal her monkey amulet.
Ebio nodded gravely. Gently she took the charm. “I will take it to her, Madame. … Will you eat now? … It has been almost two years with so little eating.” Rapheen made no answer. Ebio noticed her slow and even breathing: her mistress was asleep.
* * *
The harvest and the flooding and the emergence of tender new shoots came and went again. In the kitchen Ebio found her daughter, who glanced up at her in surprise, asking, “She wondered about my new baby? Why? I’m just a servant, and she never took any interest in my first one.” Her gaze returned to the grindstone and to the large clay pots filled with cracked wheat that she had to make into flour—but then she lifted her head to catch Ebio’s expression.
Ebio smiled and answered, “I really don’t know why she asked. Ever since her sister had her own child—she’s a playful, cheerful little thing; you should have seen her last time she was here, she giggled for the longest time while she tried to grab her toes—since her birth Madame has taken more of an interest in everything. I don’t have to coax her to eat anymore.”
“You’ve been too good to her these years. You don’t have to be so kind. You could just do your work politely and that would be enough.”
“I don’t know why I do it. I don’t truly enjoy my time with her …”
“She’s another one of the stray doves you feed in the garden, isn’t she?”
“It’s just that her soul was so dry, like her skin became after Master took the new wife. I would rub and rub her with oils, but her skin was still so fragile. Now that she eats more, that’s improved.”
“You waste your time on her.”
“Well, perhaps. You and your children and your brothers are where my heart lives. But she was so pathetic …”
“Rich and pathetic. Oh, mom, you’re incurable!” the daughter laughed.
“Yes, I suppose I am. Now it’s your time that we must stop wasting. You have a lot of work to do before the baby wakes up. Madame wants four loaves to take to her sister. And a loaf for her guards.”
“Her sister is wealthy enough not to need our bread.”
“Apparently she says your bread is better than her own servants’.”
“I’m flattered—but I feel punished by success.”
“Servants are always punished, one way or another, my dear,” her mother remarked wryly. “The question is what to do with it.” She patted her daughter’s strong arms as they resumed their labor. Peeking on her way out at her new grandchild dreaming in a basket by the door, Ebio stepped into the garden courtyard.
* * *
That dusk Rapheen’s chariot returned from her sister’s villa. She had had three guards accompany her, and since she was permitted to have a mere two in her presence when she was awake within the household compound, she ordered the third to take the basket of grapes from her sister’s garden to the kitchen. She proceeded to the shrine by the second pond. Lighting incense, she thanked the inscrutable god Amun for her safe journey, bowing her head slightly at an engraving of a ram—an image that represented Amun without ever being able to embody such a formidable deity. She turned then to relax beside the pond when she noticed Sheriti on her knees, face to the ground.
Curious, Rapheen queried, “What are you doing here at this hour?” Sheriti was assigned to the new wife, and Rapheen almost never encountered her anymore. Sheriti lifted her torso, and Rapheen noted firm young breasts and bloodshot eyes.
“I am afraid,” Sheriti replied. “Madame hasn’t heard?”
“Heard what, Sheriti?”
“Master was talking to—to—“ Sheriti faltered.
“Her,” Rapheen finished. Involuntarily, Sheriti flinched slightly, as though Rapheen might strike her. Detecting Sheriti’s discomfort, Rapheen added, “Go on. It would be useless for me to hurt anyone.”
“He told her that our former slave, Joseph, has been released from prison,” Sheriti blurted.
At mention of Joseph’s name, Rapheen felt a buried wound rupture violently inside her. She looked toward the shrine to hide her startled confusion from Sheriti. She gulped in fresh air. Forcing her voice to remain steady, she questioned, “That makes you upset?”
“Master said that it was Pharoah who released him, and that Pharoah has raised him up to be a very high minister. And, Madame, Master was afraid.”
“High minister?” Rapheen repeated faintly. Her legs were suddenly soft, like raw quail’s eggs, and she had to sit on the pond wall. “High minister?”
Sheriti howled, “Do you think he blames me? What could he do?”
Rapheen felt dizzy and disconnected from the present moment. “What could he do?” she whispered, unaware that she echoed Sheriti’s words. Her upper body swayed.
“Madame?” Sheriti asked.
Rapheen recognized Sheriti’s voice from a great distance: she seemed far away, at the end of a long tunnel. Rapheen forced herself to concentrate on the maid’s features. “Sheriti?” she responded.
“Madame, what could happen to me?”
Rapheen perceived the terror on Sheriti’s face and latched tightly onto it as if to an oar offered to a bather drowning in the Nile. Instinctively she knew what she needed to say.
“Nothing will happen to you, Sheriti.” Rapheen heaved. “I will protect you.” Even as she watched relief saturate Sheriti’s frame, Rapheen dimly understood that her pledge to Sheriti was also very much for her own safety. It was to protect her internally, where an inchoate intuition suggested that she was in the greatest danger of all.
* * *
Ebio located Rapheen on a wooden stool topped with a thick leather cushion, dangling her feet in the large pond. She was twisting and untwisting the locks of hair at her nape.
“Madame, you’ve pulled your hair so much this month that it’s thinning in the back,” Ebio gently warned.
Rapheen dropped her hands to her lap and wrung her fingers around each other instead. She did not meet Ebio’s gaze.
“Madame, please, I thought you’d like to know that since Master has been so … stressed, and we’re all worried, the servants asked an amulet trader to bring his wares.” Ebio searched Rapheen’s face for a reaction but found nothing. “It’s just that—Sheriti especially wanted him to come. She was nearly hysterical yesterday, but she calmed down when we said we would seek him in the marketplace. She said you would agree –” Ebio hesitated, still scrutinizing Rapheen’s impassive features, “Well, we hope his visit is acceptable to you.” She added solicitously, “He is in the front hall now if you wish to see what protection he can offer.”
Rapheen contemplated Sheriti. What was it like to be blameless and afraid? For many long days and nights Rapheen had overheard her husband screaming at the slaves, the servants, his other wife, even at his young son. He lashed out as a cornered mongoose, fighting, fighting. Rapheen had been haunted, too, by the naked fear she encountered in so many eyes—whom would Potiphar hit today? Would their lives ever return to normal? Would Potiphar be jailed or executed, and the household dismantled? Invisible unspoken questions swirled around them all, and Rapheen could not escape the knowledge that these evil spirits had emanated from her actions, grotesquely morphed and then unleashed when Joseph had so shockingly won his freedom. She too was afraid—terrified—but she was also guilty, profoundly silently guilty. Too petrified to speak the truth, yet so smothered by her own silence that she could barely function, Rapheen simply twisted her hair.
She followed Ebio into the hallway. The amulet trader, a short and muscular man of about 25 years, was helping several servants with purchases of simple talismans promising their bearers strength and the favor of the gods. Observing Rapheen enter in fine linen and a lapis lazuli necklace, he stretched his hands out slightly towards her, palms facing downward, demonstrating his respect. He discreetly took in the dark half-moons under her eyes, her cracked lips and tangled hair. “Madame,” he stated with strategic meekness, “I have a powerful amulet of safety and peace. It’s made of red carnelian, Madame.” He picked up a carved stone the size of a fig. “Behold this bull hippopotamus.”
Rapheen shuddered, and he sought to placate. “Ah, you are right to be wary of such a savage creature. But look, his legs have been tied together. And Seth, seeing this in your possession, will not touch you. … It is very old, Madame. This charm has centuries of magic within it.”
Rapheen cautiously reached out and touched the talisman. The salesman, seizing his opportunity, delicately inquired, “Does it interest Madame?” Rapheen closed her hand around the hippo, gestured to Ebio to provide payment, and melted into the shadows towards her bedroom.
* * *
The bound hippo did its work. Joseph did not come. Nor did Pharoah’s henchmen. Potiphar’s household was completely ignored, as if Joseph had never known them. His rise to power had no effect on their outer lives, except that throughout the kingdom twenty percent of all grain harvests were requisitioned into storage silos that Joseph had ordered built in great numbers. Potiphar instructed his workmen accordingly.
Over time Potiphar allowed wine and the birth of two more sons to mellow him. Rapheen avoided these children, spending more and more time at her sister’s villa with her growing family. Slowly, slowly the waters of Rapheen’s soul settled, and along its winding riverbanks a few fragrant Nile daisies dared to send up shoots and flourish.
One evening in the fourth year, as she and her guards returned from an overnight trip, they were startled by the keening of women and the preparation in the courtyard of a canopied sledge carrying a small, elaborately painted coffin. A priest in leopard skins was overseeing the placement onto a second sledge of a sacred miniature armoire. Rapheen knew that this receptacle, inlaid with ivory and ebony, would carry canopic jars for the lungs, liver, stomach, and intestines of the deceased. But who had died? She rushed into the garden to seek Ebio in the servants’ quarters, or in the weaving atelier. She had only gone a few steps when she found her answer. Potiphar’s other wife, a lovely and timid woman about Rapheen’s age, was prostrate in front of the family shrine, unaware of her surroundings, consumed with sobs.
Ebio emerged from the kitchen and lightly touched Rapheen’s arm. “She lost her toddler,” Ebio whispered. “A fever.”
“No,” Rapheen mouthed instinctively. She stared a long time at her nemesis, inconsolable in the dirt. Finally, when Rapheen turned back towards Ebio, her lashes were wet.
* * *
Rapheen dreamed that night that she stood quietly in a doorway watching the walkway to the front gate, where Potiphar slumped on a stool by the coffin. His wife had draped her body across the casket and wept softly. A distant rumble of wheels grew closer and closer. Potiphar looked up. A chariot of gold arrived at the gate, a roar of dust behind it. A servant stepped down, opened a door rimmed with jewels, and assisted Joseph as he alighted. Rapheen recognized him at once, but Potiphar seemed not to. Potiphar merely rose and extended his hands to such a high lord.
As Joseph approached him, Potiphar’s expression swiftly changed from perplexity to horror. But Joseph was steady, and he looked upon Potiphar with compassion. “You lost your wives,” Joseph affirmed.
Potiphar replied, bewildered, “This—this is my son who will cross the Nile to the cemetery.”
“But before … and now,” Joseph answered.
“I—I—my wives?” Potiphar reached inside himself. “Yes, I—yes, my wives.”
Potiphar’s dread of retribution was receding. A question formed inside him, a question for one so knowing, a question born of a different fear. “Will—will this one come back?” He gestured at the tormented young mother of his child.
“Yes. But you will need to wait for her.”
Then another question formed. “You—you are not vengeful?”
“You have lost your wives,” Joseph said simply and kindly. “And,” he added ruefully, “in my family in Canaan, we were many who wished and waited and lost and struggled with bitterness. I chose to learn. … You need not fear me.”
Potiphar stood, dazzled, or perhaps conquered, by the force of Joseph’s personality. Joseph turned his eyes directly to where Rapheen stood, half-hidden. She lurched backwards. “You need not fear me either, Rapheen,” Joseph said clearly. Then he turned lightly, and left.
Rapheen awoke understanding that the feeling she had had at the shrine when she saw Potiphar’s other wife was one that Joseph often experienced, and that it was not in his character to punish them after so many years. It was not the hippo that had protected them, after all: it was Joseph’s heart.
* * *
The entire household attended the funeral to ease the boy’s passage into the afterlife. A sacred boat carried his coffin across the Nile to the embalmer’s workshop, where his little body was presented for mummification. Many in the entourage wailed and prayed while their boats crossed the water, but all were silent and grim as priests recited incantations on the other side. Rapheen felt out of place in the processional, yet willing to endure this discomfort. For her to refuse to support the boy’s journey would have caused more pain, and the suffering in the household pressed and pulled within her, reshaping her instincts.
More than a month later they all returned, this time to the tomb where the beloved mummy awaited the Opening of the Mouth ceremony. Amongst clouds of incense there was much supplication to the mummy-god Ptah, and to the ibis-headed god Thoth, patron of scribes amongst the living and jurist for the dead. A wizened priest intoned holy spells and then reached his two pinky fingers between the mummy’s desiccated lips, opening its mouth. This magically reanimated the body, enabling the boy’s spirit to enjoy the offerings presented to him. His mute, distraught mother laid a silver dish with braised lamb shank, cut in small pieces befitting a toddler, by the mummy’s right arm. Beside it she added two loaves of bread, shaped like a mother and father. Potiphar handed her a polished miniature chariot of ebony, which she placed by the boy’s left thigh. Potiphar himself placed two dozen small terracotta figurines around his dead son’s feet—servants to help him with agricultural work in the next world. Other family members gave grapes and figs, a set of cedar wood balls, a comb, a pot of honey, a scarab amulet made of jasper, and sumptuous cloth colorfully embroidered with sacred designs.
Rapheen proffered a pair of beaded leather sandals with artfully upturned toes. Her co-wife received the shoes quietly, a flicker of gratitude breaking through her vast desert of sorrow. The two women looked fully into each other’s eyes, and Rapheen felt herself being pried apart. She was a carving now, her spirit subjected to a workman’s iron tool. As a carving, she too was being opened to receive offerings—offerings that came not from the hands of those around her, but from their hearts. A sudden rush towards her of others’ agonies and jubilations and nostalgias overwhelmed her. Joseph walked into her thoughts again. He stood as an open canal, a conduit for these inner lives. How could he survive it, she wondered. What kind of stamina was required?
On the boat ride home and for many hours afterwards, Rapheen held herself as still as possible. Her breaths were shallow and quick at first, but gradually became deeper. She could not articulate what had happened to her—but she sensed that she, like the little mummy, had been reborn into an existence both perilous and glorious.
* * *
In the months after the funeral, Rapheen often felt herself a weaver’s thread pulled taut with yearning. She longed to discuss with Joseph the confused ache she experienced whenever she glimpsed Potiphar’s other wife. She longed to show him the perfect new lotus blossoms on a placid pond. She longed to kneel before him, abjectly, weeping, and apologize. She longed to offer him beer and fresh figs and watch his lips part in a smile. She longed to ask whether he believed that the gods fashion our destinies for us, or whether we weave them ourselves. She longed to tell him of the subtleties she was learning to decipher on Ebio’s face. She longed for the chance to beg him to be her friend.
Days of a heart stretched so painfully were punctuated by nights that teased her. Over and over, in many variations, she dreamed that Joseph was almost present to talk with her. She would find herself in a room, or a courtyard, or the marketplace, and unexpectedly he would arrive. In these dreams her guards were never present. But although sometimes he or she would say a few words of greeting, they never both spoke, never held a conversation at all. His demeanor was always kind without intimacy. And he always slipped away, leaving her to awake frustrated, yet eager to dream again. Despite their torture, she cherished these tantalizing near-encounters, craving always that one night actual fulfillment would come. She remembered her dreams more and more. They haunted her daylight hours, and Joseph was everywhere in her thoughts.
Sometimes she was afraid of her new self. She did not know quite who she was or what she stumbled towards. But she also felt cleaner, a baby washed of vernix and unadorned in direct, emotional contact with the world. Now she could lie bare before truth, and survive.
* * *
One afternoon Rapheen’s sister came to visit with her new 5-month-old. Rapheen, who had begun harp lessons, entertained her little nephew with gentle plucking. The baby’s fingers sang along, stubby little petals wiggling in a musical breeze. Rapheen was just guiding them to touch a string lightly when, in passing, Potiphar cawed from across the courtyard, “He can’t play with that! Do you think a fine instrument is just a rattle for a child to break?”
Rapheen withdrew the tiny limb, smooth and cool as polished glass in her hand, and exhaled slowly. To her sister she murmured, “Oh, Merit, he’s irritable lately. He has always turned a face of stone towards me, but at least normally he’s reasonable. Recently he’s like a stone making sparks, and for no reason I can see. None of the servants can explain it to me.”
“Or none of them will,” Merit answered sympathetically. She stretched her palm onto Rapheen’s knee. “Sister, there’s news, and Potiphar must be afraid.”
“Men’s news?”
“Men’s and women’s.” Merit replied. She didn’t elaborate. Rapheen searched her eyes, noticing tiny crinkles around the outer corners.
“You can tell me.”
“But you’ve already endured enough …”
“Please tell me.”
“Well …” Merit took a deep breath. “In ten days, Joseph will marry the high priest’s daughter.”
“Oh!” Instantly Rapheen’s heart was racing, and her glance skittered nervously, as if she expected to find an enormous wasp on her torso. “Oh! He—”
Peering into Rapheen’s face, the baby let out a cry. Merit held him close, rocking him, and placed her arm around Rapheen’s shoulder, gently swaying her body too. Rapheen set the harp down and let her eyelids fall, a curtain of comfort as her sister’s crooning to the baby enveloped her. After a long while Rapheen asked, “Why do you think Potiphar is scared?”
“I’ve been thinking about that for a few days. He must be worried that Joseph will have children, and that he’ll raise them to reach the long, long arm of hatred out towards Potiphar’s own sons.”
“No,” Rapheen responded. Her voice was gentle but very firm. “No, Joseph wouldn’t do that. There’s nothing to fear.”
“Then—then why are you suffering?” Merit asked, perplexed.
“I –” A knot blocked Rapheen’s throat. Her eyes felt hot; she hid them in her hands.
Merit pulled her arm away from Rapheen, contemplating her in astonishment. “Are you … sad?”
Rapheen couldn’t answer. She felt her forehead weighted down to her knees as her breaths turned into wrenching, silent sobs. Finally she gasped, “Merit, don’t leave me!”
The baby was asleep. Merit stared at her sister folded onto herself, struggling for air in a world so arid and lonely. Very carefully, as if handling an eggshell, Merit laid her little son in a linen-lined basket she had brought. Then she reached over and picked up Rapheen’s shoulders. Calmly she looked straight into her sister’s pupils and quietly explained, “I think I understand now. You loved him, and you still do, and Potiphar was angry. And you live all the time with sorrow and—and—“
“Shame,” Rapheen groaned, dropping her eyes.
“Yes, I see that.” Merit caressed her sister’s cheek. “It is all right now. Whatever was, was. I’m not leaving you.”
As husky sound gushed into Rapheen’s sobs, Ebio came to the courtyard’s south doorway. The baby slept on. Ebio glanced at Merit quizzically. Merit simply cradled Rapheen’s head in her lap and gave Ebio a tiny smile. Ebio knew: she should protect them from disturbance. Immediately she shooed the two eunuchs to the courtyard’s edges, insisting that even they must pay honor to the ineffably private wellsprings of trust.
* * *
Rapheen took up weaving. She had learned the basic skills as a young girl in her mother’s home, but now she sat for hours at a time in the cloth-production atelier and watched the women’s deft fingers. She questioned the supervisor, a heavy man in his late thirties, about types of spindles and looms and dyes and grades of linen, and she observed meticulously the differences in technique in working with goat’s hair versus flax. The servants in the atelier found her new passion flattering; the supervisor found it vaguely amusing; and Potiphar barely noticed until she sent Ebio to him with a request for funds to purchase her own loom. Potiphar laughed and replied, “It is cheaper than a eunuch to keep her out of trouble; yes, she may have it.” For a day Ebio wondered if the eunuchs would actually go, but they remained as always, hovering along the margins of Rapheen’s life.
In the first few weeks, Rapheen squeezed into the atelier and worked a small loom alongside a patient elderly weaver named Nebti. But the other weavers eventually found the courage to complain about Madame’s presence. They liked her well enough, but one of her eunuchs was always outside at a window or in the doorway, blocking part of their light. So Rapheen arranged to have Nebti and herself labor just outside the workshop and store their equipment and cloth-in-progress inside at night. Rapheen was a clever and dedicated student and within a few months was tackling more complex designs. She gave her finished creations to her sister for her nieces’ and nephew’s clothes, to the servants, and to beggar children who increasingly arrived at the gate in the evenings as word spread of her largess. Often she had nothing to give them, so she brought out her harp and played a song or two for them instead.
She was determined now. She understood: “Joseph will never hurt me. And he will never love me.” Yet she wanted to live worthy of that absent love; it mattered very much to her relentlessly pregnant soul.
* * *
Rapheen had been weaving for two years when one night, as Ebio helped her prepare for bed, Rapheen sensed an invisible burden pulling down Ebio’s back and shoulders. “What’s wrong? Is everything all right?” she questioned.
Ebio quickly smiled, but her expression was odd, a wooden puzzle piece that didn’t quite fit. “Not to worry, Madame.” Rapheen was tempted to probe but held back. Instead she patted Ebio’s collar bone affectionately and bid her goodnight. When Ebio had gone, Rapheen lay in bed wondering, “What would Joseph have discerned in her eyes, in her posture, in her heart? Joseph would know.” Baffled, she drifted off to sleep.
Joseph did know. At the festival of Renenutet, the cobra goddess of the harvest, Rapheen realized that Ebio’s unease came from her husband, a barley gleaner. This year there was nothing to glean. The scorching east wind had been too severe, and the Nile had flooded much, much less than usual. So preparations for the festival had been transformed to a ceremony of supplication throughout the kingdom, as Egyptians of all classes begged the gods for a better harvest next time. But their anxiety did not sink to despair, because for years Joseph had seen to it that plentiful grain was stored.
Joseph had already set up a bureaucracy, answerable to him, for rationing food to the population, each according to his need. Like all other families, the wealthy would have to register and send someone from their homes to stand in line. Potiphar chose a team of strong and reliable slaves to obtain the portions for their household every ten days. As the months wore on, the kitchen staff struggled to come up with as many creative ways as they could to prepare wheat, barley, lentils, and peas. Dried fruit was a weekly treat. Fish was in short supply, too, and Ebio mournfully cooked the doves she finally allowed the men to trap in the garden. Potiphar ordered what water was left in the ponds to be directed towards a vegetable patch.
The populace grumbled: why should the rations be so parsimonious when such vast quantities of grain lay heaped in the silos? But Joseph had Pharoah’s ear, and he had prophesied that the earth would yield no crops for seven long years. No one dared publicly question Joseph’s commands. Instead the kingdom prayed, and simplified their celebrations, and deemed beer, once so plentiful, a precious gift. The poor, at least, were satisfied that the rich received no extra shares.
The failing harvests wore on. Outside her home, Rapheen found Joseph’s power and renown inescapable. His seal adorned countless granaries and distribution centers, carts and earthen jars. His name floated past her on scraps of conversation she overheard in the market and temples and in the streets on the way to her sister’s estate. People spoke about him casually, impatiently, or with respect, but Rapheen imagined that all these words were cool as they passed through the people’s lips. By the time the words reached her, they had ignited—burning splinters that sought her, sought her, sought her. She found public life increasingly arduous. How could she live so constantly with him, yet forever without him? How could she endure frequent, unceremonious reminders of a yearning that consumed her so carnivorously, so secretly, that it had become holy to her?
Yet she did not pull away from the hive of life. It belonged to her, and she to it, and the imprint of Joseph inside her would have it no other way.
* * *
She faltered when her mother developed fever and a constant bloody cough. Ebio discovered Rapheen sitting in the idle clothing atelier one morning, staring at a mud brick wall.
“Madame?”
“The weaving has died, Ebio. There’s no more flax for linen.”
“I know,” Ebio soothed. She paused. “You still have your music. The children at the gate”
“will die too one day. Maybe soon, if the grain runs out and the Nile continues to fail us.”
“Madame, you’re … distressed.”
Rapheen turned towards Ebio. “My mother is dying. I wasn’t close to her in recent years, and now it’s sort of too late, and it hurts, and I’ll never get any comfort from Jo—“ she stopped, horror-stricken at her slip.
“Don’t fret.” Very softly Ebio added, “I already know about your feelings for him.”
“You do?” Rapheen queried, alarmed. “My feelings for, for—does—does anyone else know?”
Measuring her words like a doctor his medicines, Ebio answered, “No, I don’t think anyone else realizes what Joseph meant to you, and still does. As for me, I don’t pretend to understand your or anyone’s heart fully.” She added drily “—not even my own.” Then melodically she purled, “But I do know about your love. I know, and it’s all right.”
The air was stagnant and sweltering, yet Rapheen shivered. She fixed her eyes on the floor. Ebio boldly challenged, “You’re wrong about something, though.”
Taken aback, Rapheen raised her head. She winced. “I am?”
“I’ll show you.” Ebio left the workshop and was gone for many minutes. Presently Rapheen felt as if a veil of ashes had returned to suffocate her. She was only roused when Ebio reappeared carrying a basket brimming with fresh fragrant bread.
“That’s more than my share, Ebio,” she noted reflexively.
“For today I want you to have my share too.”
“You don’t have to indulge me,” Rapheen answered dully.
“I want you to understand. This wheat is from Joseph. It feeds you. It feeds your sister and your niece and nephew. It feeds me. For as long as your mother remains with us, it feeds her. Joseph gives to us—to you—every day.”
Ebio kissed the top of Rapheen’s hair, set the basket on a bench, and went off to her chores. Rapheen picked up a small round loaf and stroked it. She mused that other high officials would have hoarded scarce grain for their personal profit, but every day Joseph was instead ensuring that it was redistributed to the people. She touched the loaf to her cheek and inhaled its sweet aroma. Did she dare eat it? Reverently, she nibbled on the crust. Joseph’s wheat. Joseph’s wheat was keeping her alive. This nibble—these bites—she vehemently tore a piece off with her teeth—would sustain her. This wheat would infuse her very bones and hair and joints and flesh. I don’t have to starve, she thought. I’m not dying; I have Joseph’s wheat. He is wheat, so I have Joseph himself. I eat him. These pictures in my mind—here, this is where I find him. I find him here. Voraciously, she consumed Ebio’s entire offering and then, to reciprocate, she got up to give her remarkable maid her own share of vegetables and lentils for the day.
* * *
Rapheen’s mother died six months later, weak and wheezing in bed and finally losing her battle for air. Merit bore another healthy son, and soon after, a daughter. When the little girl, Amisi, was four years old, the Nile suddenly resumed its normal yearly overflowing. Like lovers long separated, the river and the land united in a revelry of fecundity. At harvest time, field laborers exhausted themselves with bringing in bountiful crops, and then joyfully exhausted themselves again at beer parties and feasts in honor of the gods.
Rapheen’s father became ill with abdominal pain, sores, and blood in his urine, and Merit took him to live with her. Rapheen traveled often to visit. Merit suspected A-aa disease, so she asked a specialist to assess him. The physician, a tall, middle-aged man with a limp and roving eyes that missed no detail, adroitly moved smooth hands over and under the diseased body. He sniffed everywhere. He listened patiently to heart, lungs, belly, and the old man’s myriad meandering complaints. After this careful procedure, he stood up and pronounced agreement with Merit’s diagnosis. Three days later, in a meeting with all the family’s adults, he offered recommendations and herbal preparations. The case was quite advanced; their father would not likely have much time. The medicines might help, but above all, they should seek the services of priests to prepare his soul for the trials ahead.
Fatigued, Rapheen went afterwards to soak her feet in the courtyard’s fountain. Amisi, normally a merry little sprite, sat morosely on the fountain’s green-tiled edge.
“What’s bothering you, little flower?” Rapheen cuddled up next to her niece.
“What’s A-aa, Auntie? Is Grandpa going to die?”
“That’s a big question for a little girl.”
“My kitten died!” Amisi burst into tears. Rapheen wrapped devoted arms around her.
“I didn’t know.”
“The kitten was gone a few last mornings ago and Daddy found fox hairs with lots of Kitty’s hairs by the gate.” Amisi wailed, “Why was the fox so mean? I hate foxes!”
Rapheen gathered her thoughts. When Amisi had calmed a bit, she cooed, “Sweetheart, I think, well, foxes and kitties both like to go to the wheat fields outside your gate, to catch rats. Kitty must have been on her way there. Sometimes it’s hard to see a fox because his color isn’t so different from the wheat. So I guess he caught her. It wasn’t really that he was a mean fox, just like Kitty wasn’t a mean kitty because she caught rats. They were just doing what foxes and kitties do. I know it’s hard to live with that, but do you understand? Meanness is a people thing, not an animal thing.”
“All right,” she sobbed, “but I’m still so sad!”
“Of course, sweetie. I don’t want to forget that.” Rapheen pulled Amisi onto her lap. “I’ll tell you a secret, little flower.”
“What?”
“It’s all right to be sad … I don’t mind if you’re sad. It isn’t something you have to change or fix about yourself. You can cry right here as long as you want.”
Amisi snuggled in closer. Rapheen’s steady heartbeat consoled her, and she found the courage to ask, “Auntie, will I always feel sad about Kitty?”
Rapheen sighed. Amisi was bright, but still so young. Rapheen struggled to find an appropriate response—how do you tell a five-year-old about the deep cisterns of the heart? She answered, “Maybe. But even if you do always feel sad, you can feel happy too. You can feel different things all on top of each other, and all your different feelings can be like friends to you.’
“How can I feel happy again, Auntie?”
“Remember that your kitty is in you,” Rapheen tapped her niece’s chest, “and will never go away as long as you want her there … And also, Sweetie, it helps to notice the pretty orange shimmer on the Nile in the sunset. And to sing to the scarab beetles—did you ever try that? And to suck on a fig as slowly as you can, so the taste lasts a long time. And here’s another thing—let me teach you how to juggle.”
Rapheen set Amisi back on the tiles and walked over to a yellow sandstone bench at the other side of the courtyard. She found a sycamore box underneath, carved with images of the tree from which it came. She extracted three small, smooth wooden balls from it. She juggled them, tentatively at first and then, as she developed a good rhythm, more boldly, with tosses behind her back and under her outstretched leg. Amisi laughed and stared and laughed again.
A maid appeared with lunch on a tray, which she placed next to Amisi. Rapheen laid the balls next to the fountain, and with a twinkle in her eye, grabbed three wheat rolls from the tray and started juggling them instead. Amisi doubled over with glee.
Rapheen stopped and waited for Amisi to settle down. Then, impishly, she announced, “Your turn!” She handed the rolls to her astonished niece. The girl held the rolls on her thighs, studying them. A reciprocal mischief dawned across her features, and very deliberately, with a huge grin, she broke off pieces of bread and tossed them one by one into her mouth.
“See how I juggle?” Amisi chortled between bites. She swallowed, hugged her auntie, and scampered off to chase a butterfly around the courtyard. Rapheen smiled. Tonight, at last, she would tell Ebio—and Horus—that she had shared the most nourishing wheat she possessed.
© 2023 Christine M. Du Bois All rights reserved.
Click or tap here to see Christine M. Du Bois’s profile.
Use the “Leave a Comment” form below to submit comments on this piece.