Naomi’s voice faded for a minute and I heard her moving. She appeared like an apparition out of the darkness. She sat beside my pallet, facing me in the dark. While I could not see her expression, I could see her form. She reached out and picked up my hand and held it between her two wizened palms.

“If my intuition is correct, what I say may bring back unwanted specters from your past. If at any time the pain my words uncovers is more than you can bear, just squeeze my hand, and I will stop. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Naomi. I understand.”

“I was an only child. My mother named me Naomi because I was her joy. She played games with me. She taught me about Yahweh’s love. She pampered me. Then when I was eight, she became ill. The doctors could not name her sickness, but she began to lose weight. She lost her sunny disposition. She ceased to sing songs to me and tell me stories. After she had been confined to her bed for a long time, she became quarrelsome. She whined and complained and nagged my father. He began to stay away from the house in the evening. Then he started coming home drunk. Sometimes late at night, I would hear screams and curses from the room they shared. Then one night when I was twelve, he came home drunk, but instead of going to torture my mother, he came to my room. He told me I was a beautiful young woman. He told me I looked like my mother had before the sickness took her looks and her disposition. Finally he told me that I could make things easier for my mother by letting him sleep in my room so he did not have to disturb her. When I slid over against the wall, he climbed onto my sleeping couch. He put his arms around me and held me close. I was so starved for love that I snuggled up against him and fell asleep."

"At first that was all that happened. I was happy. I thought my father was showing me the love I had lost when my mother grew ill. Then one night, he put his hand under my dress and rubbed my belly. He said it would help me to fall asleep easier. After that his fondling became more personal. I was young. I did not know what he was doing was wrong, but somehow it did not feel right. One day when I was combing my mother’s hair, I asked her how a man shows love to a woman. I asked her if he touched her on her breasts and between the legs. My mother was shocked. She wanted to know if some man had been touching me in those places. I told her no, but that I had heard older girls talking and giggling. I guess she did not believe me. That night when my father came home, she called out to him. I heard her accuse him of corrupting his own daughter. I heard him call her things that made me shudder. Hateful words flew through the air for what seemed hours. Finally she told him that she needed me to sleep in her room because her health was failing. He laughed at her and slapped her. When he left her, he came to my room and raped me. After that, mama would try to get out of bed every day. She was always awake when my father came home. She tried to keep him away from me. She called a matchmaker and arranged a betrothal. I was married at the age of 13, but the exertion proved too much for my mother. She died the day after I wed.”

For a moment Naomi’s voice faltered. I reached up with my free hand and felt the tears on her face that matched the ones on my own. When I protested that she need not continue to relive the pain, she ignored me and persevered with her story. Somehow I sensed that the telling was as much a catharsis for her spirit as a balm for mine.

“What mama never knew was that I was pregnant by my father before my marriage. In preparation for my marriage, she told me the things I needed to know about sexuality. I learned enough to know that if my new husband suspected that my child was not his, he could divorce me. I did not want to be sent back to my drunken lecherous father."

"There were stories about an old woman who lived like a hermit. They said she could make potions that augmented or impaired fertility. I went to her and asked if she knew how to rid someone of an unwanted child. She examined me and determined that it was not too late. She gave me some foul-tasting, oily medicine. She told me to drink it in the morning. She said it would make the child come out of my womb in a flow of blood similar to my monthly curse. She said if I did not bleed and pass a mass within the day to come back. The medicine made me extremely ill, but it did not rid me of the child. Because I was so sick, my husband would not let me leave the house for some time. It was over a fortnight before I returned to the old woman’s hut. She said I was too far along for the medicine to work. She said the only way to rid myself of the child was for her to puncture my womb. When she did, water and blood ran out of me. Then a thin sack that contained something that looked like a worm with a big head came. She told me that I was free of the child. She gave me a gooey salve to put inside myself for several days. She told me I would bleed a little for several days. She instructed me to tell my husband that I was unclean and to find excuses not to engage in sex for a week after the curse would normally be gone. I did what she told me. My flesh seemed to heal, but my soul did not. I learned to live with sorrow. I do not know if the old woman damaged me or if guilt impaired my ability to conceive. From that day forward I was barren.”

Again Naomi fell silent. Her body convulsed with the renewed sorrow of the soul. Anger engulfed me. I wanted to hunt down this woman’s long dead father and exact revenge.

Somehow Naomi sensed my emotion. Still holding my hand, she reached up and massaged my tight shoulders and said, “It is okay, child. While the telling is painful, Yahweh has already healed my soul. I cried out to Him in my despair. I begged Him to give me a child that I could love and that would love me in return. Yahweh showed me through the actions of my husband’s brother that having a child does not guarantee that one will have a close relationship with that child. The brother was disobedient and wayward. He brought nothing but shame on his household. He broke his mother’s heart. While away from home he contracted a disease from a prostitute. He returned home to die. I watched his mother nurse him by day and cry over him by night. She lavished love on him when what he deserved was to be turned away. God used that to help me understand that He loved me in the same way that mother loved her son. She could not undo the consequences of his actions. While God had the power to reverse the consequences of mine, His just nature would not allow Him to do so. Instead He chose to lavish His love on me and give me the strength to live in my circumstances. I had a husband who loved me despite my inability to give him a child. While I have never had a child of my own, God gave me the gift of healing. He has sent me many broken people through the years. They are my extended family. Now I have Alian who watches over me just as he would his own mother."

“Did your husband know?”

“No,” Naomi admitted with a sigh. “I was always afraid his love for me would die if I told him. I think I probably did him a disservice. Sometimes I think he may have guessed. I had nightmares for years after we married. I had no control over what I said in my sleep. I was always afraid that he would ask me what something I said meant, but he never did. Perhaps he was waiting for me to entrust my secret to him. I have wished for years that I had been forthcoming, but I wasn’t. Now it is too late. Once again I made a choice that may have deprived me of the support and intimacy I desired.”

“If you have kept this secret for years, why did you choose to tell it now? Why not let it go to the grave with you?”

“For years I knew that if Yahweh ever showed me a hurting soul who might benefit from my story, I would share it. I met such a hurting soul a few years ago, and I thought by telling my story then, I would be freed of the necessity of reliving my past verbally ever again. But when you were ill, it was obvious your soul was in agony. You would cry out and beg for mercy. Most of what you said I could not understand, but one sentence was quite clear. It reverberated through my soul. I knew the time to share had come when you repeated the phrase, and again it was understandable, unlike the other things you said. Twice you said clearly in a deep, harsh voice that evidently mimicked your tormentor, ‘Don’t cry out. It will only make your mother’s suffering worse to know you must do all of her womanly duties for her.’”     
   
Tears fell from my eyes unchecked as I raised our clasped hands to my lips. I kissed Naomi’s hand, saying in a strangled voice, “I know how much it cost you to tell me those things.”

For a moment complete quite reigned. Then the sound of a hyena rent the night, sending chills along my spine. I considered my father in the same class as this despised scavenger.

“How can you speak of rape and then talk of a god who loves you?” I choked out, venom filling my voice as waves of anger replaced the sympathy I felt for Naomi. I let go of her hand and began to gesture wildly as I spoke. “Your father was like that Hyena, a scavenger that preys on those who are weak or dying and have no way to defend themselves. Your father was responsible for the child you were forced to destroy. A loving god would recognize that aborting the child was your only recourse. He would not make you suffer from barrenness because you rid yourself of a child that would doom you to the life of a harlot. If your god loves you so much, he would not leave you to suffer for the remainder of your life. He would have answered your prayer with a child, not with a lesson on how ungrateful some children can be.”

“And what of the other blessings He gave me?” Naomi countered. “What about the unconditional love of my husband? What about my healing touch? What about Alian?”

“Could he not have given you those things and a child?” I asked in a malicious tone. 

Ignoring my rancorous speech, Naomi replied lovingly, “I suppose He could have. But, I am not sure I would have understood how unconditional my husband’s love was if I had born him a child. You know, as do I, that a man is justified in divorcing a woman if she does not conceive. He is also permitted to take a concubine or second wife to provide him with an heir. My husband did neither. When I begged him to take another woman, he told me that I was more important to him than a house full of children. He told me that while other men, even Israelite men, had concubines or more than one wife, it was a custom he could not follow.”

“He said to me, ‘I love you with all that I am, Naomi. In the beginning God created Eve to complete Adam and be his helpmate. He said a man and a woman become one when they marry. How can I be one with you and with another? When we come together as man and wife, I believe our union symbolizes the oneness God expects in a marriage. If God wants to bless us with children, so be it. If he does not, who am I to argue with God? Do you not remember the agony caused when our father Abraham took matters into his own hands and lay with his wife’s maid Hagar? Much enmity entered our world because Abraham and Sarah sought to help God fulfill His promise that Abraham would be a father of many nations. We should not make the same mistake, Naomi. Your love is enough for me. I hope that one day mine will be enough for you.’”

“For years, I secretly harbored the belief that my husband said these things only because he expected Yahweh to relent and give him an heir. When it was clear that I had passed the time when a woman can conceive and I still was barren, I assumed my husband was now asking God for a miracle. After all, Sarah conceived at the age of 90. Only when a lion attacked him and his broken body was brought home to me, did I realize that he loved me unconditionally. As I held him in my arms and my tears dropped on his face, he said to me, ‘Do not mourn too deeply, Naomi. We had a good life. You brought so much joy to me. Do not abandon that joy permanently for grief. Do not let guilt ensnare you as the pain subsides. I want you to be happy, Naomi. Always live up to your name, just as you have all these years. I hope my love will sustain you through this time of sorrow just as it sustained you through the sorrow of barrenness.’”

“I was so ashamed, Salome. I had accepted his love but still doubted its completeness. I had not let it take away the sorrow of my barrenness, MN because I harbored a niggling doubt as to its genuineness. Only as my husband lay dying did I understand unconditional love. Like a blinding light, I saw how much I was loved, and I realized the source of that love was Yahweh. My husband loved his God so much that he would not betray God’s ideal for marriage just to gain an heir. God’s loved flowed through him to me, and I was too blind to recognize that until it was too late. Sometimes we as humans can be such fools. I guess that deep down, I expected my husband to betray his love. My father’s betrayal scarred my heart for so long, Salome. I could not believe a man could be as good and unselfish as my husband appeared. Yahweh knew of my secret pain. He chose to heal that pain. His path to healing was not one either you or I would have devised. We do not have His wisdom, His compassion, or His discernment. If Yahweh had granted my wish, I might have tried to protect my child from his father. I might have so smothered him that he would have been an emotional cripple. I do not know what future disaster Yahweh protected me from by giving me a husband after His own heart, but I know that Yahweh knew what was best for me. If he had heeded my prayer, I might not be here now nursing you. Alian might have grown up without my love and support, and perhaps become callous and uncaring like Magog. Without my love, he might have left you lying in the dessert. There are so many possible scenarios, Salome, but God chose this one. I cannot understand, but if I could then I would not need a God to guide my path. I have learned to trust Yahweh, and I knew when I understood only one phrase in your murmurings that He brought you to me. He gave me the chance to make my own healing complete by sharing my pilgrimage with another who had trod a similar path.”

“You have given me much to ponder,” I told Naomi softly as I stifled a yawn. “I have more questions, but they will have to wait for another time. I can barely keep my eyes open.” Then reaching up and touching the wrinkled face I could now make out clearly in the moonlight, I concluded, “Thank you, Naomi, for baring your heart. Perhaps someday I can return the favor.”

“It is not necessary, child,” Naomi replied with a smile. “Someday Yahweh will give you the chance to share with someone whose need is as great as yours. When He does, remember this night and unburden your soul. Pass on the blessing, dear Salome, just as I pass on the blessing my beloved gave me.”

As I drifted into a deep slumber, the thought crossed my mind, “Who is her beloved? Her husband or her God?”