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The Shadow Women
By Angela Elwell Hunt Warner Faith
Copyright © 2002 Angela Hunt Communications, Inc.
All right reserved. ISBN: 0-446-69232-8
Chapter One
EGYPT, THE BLACK LAND Now a new king arose over Egypt, who had not known Yosef. He said to his people: Here (this) people, the Children of Israel, is many more and mightier (in number) than we! Come-now, let us use our wits against it, lest it become many-more, and then, if war should occur, it too be added to our enemies and make war upon us or go up away from the land!
So they set gang-captains over it, to afflict it with their burdens. It built storage-cities for Pharaoh-Pitom and Ra'amses ...
Now Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying: Every son that is born, throw him into the Nile, but let every daughter live.
Now a man from the house of Levi went and took (to wife) a daughter of Levi. The woman became pregnant and bore a son. When she saw him-that he was goodly, she hid him for three months. And when she was no longer able to hide him, she took for him a little ark of papyrus, she loamed it with loam and with pitch, placed the child in it, and placed it in the reeds by the shore of the Nile. EXODUS 1:8-11; 2:1-3
MIRYAM
In my seventh year, as the waters of the inundation rose to cover our fields, I noticed a subtle change in my mother. Yokheved, who usually hurried from one task to the next in thin-lipped concentration, became quiet and dreamy. She hummed the old songs as she worked the dough and cut the reeds, and at night she lit the lamp in our small hut and murmured her evening prayers with renewed fervency.
Neither my father nor my mother explained this change, and my little brother, Aharon, knew nothing of women-at three, he cared for little more than his next meal. My aunt Adah, however, who had always longed for a little girl, drew me onto her lap one afternoon and spoke of the secret my mother carried.
"Your mother, Yokheved, is going to have a baby," she whispered, the corners of her eyes crinkling. "And if the God of our fathers is faithful, this baby will grow to be a man strong enough to deliver us from this bondage."
I knew nothing of bondage then, for we children were as free as the birds who lived in the marsh, but I knew babies were dangerous. Twice in the last month Pharaoh's soldiers had come into our village and taken boy babies away from their weeping mothers. Though no one would tell me what happened to those baby boys, I knew. Once I followed the soldiers to the edge of the marsh, where their boat waited. They climbed aboard the vessel with the crying baby, but as the boat drifted into the river's current, one of them dropped the baby over the side as if it were of no more importance than dung. I heard a splash, then nothing but silence as the baby disappeared forever.
Why did my mother think the Egyptians would not come for her baby boy?
My eyes fell upon my brother, Aharon, whose life, everyone assured me, was a sort of miracle. The midwives who attended my brother's birth had been supposed to kill him in Pharaoh's name, but they would not. Those two old women did not look capable of killing anyone, and they often patted my head when they came to our village. But they always rejoiced more over the birth of boys than the arrival of baby girls, and their obvious preference puzzled me.
Why should boys be more celebrated than girls? Girls did all the work in the village. Girls grew into women who bore the babies and cooked the meals. Women told the stories and said the prayers. Boys grew into men who got up every morning, went away for a few hours, came back, ate dinner, and went to sleep.
So why were they so prized?
Aharon was certainly nothing special. He was like one of the dogs that lived in our village-always following, always rubbing against my leg, always sticking his nose into my things. Yet my mother doted upon him, pulling him onto her lap at night while she crooned the old songs until he had fallen asleep....
I do not remember her ever singing to me.
"This new baby," Aunt Adah said as she fondly patted my leg, "might be the leader for which we have been praying."
This remark caught my attention. Not many of the women in our village prayed at all; a few actually presented offerings to carved statues of the Egyptian gods. But my mother prayed to an unseen God she could not even call by name.
"So you must help your mother more in the days ahead," Adah continued, "and you must keep her secret from the others as long as you can.
And the Egyptians must never, ever know that a new baby has been born in Amram's house."
I nodded, knowing that Adah would take my silence for agreement, while I wondered why things in our house had to change. I did not want another brother; I did not want to have to help my mother keep a secret. Most of all, I did not want my mother to do anything that would bring the Egyptians to our village.
But I was only a girl, and a little one at that. So no one asked what I wanted.
No one seemed to care.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Shadow Women by Angela Elwell Hunt Copyright © 2002 by Angela Hunt Communications, Inc.. Excerpted by permission.
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