Free After Abel and Other Stories by Michal Lemberger Page A

about her.
    After that, her mother would try to teach her something new each day, each week. How to build a fire, which made Hagar swell like a frog with pride, because no one had ever let her come near a flame before.How to cook a full meal. Her father shouted that it was taking too long, that she was too slow to learn anything, that she made too many mistakes. Her brothers threw the food she cooked on the floor in disgust, but her mother stroked her hair, said, “Don’t worry, you’re getting better every day. It takes everyone time to learn,” and then tears would leak out of her eyes, which she’d hide from Hagar’s father. Hagar would watch her wipe them quickly and say, all business again, “Let’s try that again.”
    Then she was here. With these old people who needed help with everything. She had her own knife now, and hardly ever nicked herself anymore. She cooked for them, and slept on the floor next to her mistress, who had bad dreams and needed water brought to her in the middle of the night. In the morning, Hagar would help unfold the old lady into the day, rubbing each creaking joint until it could swing on its own. “You are as slow as the heat of the day,” her mistress would say, “but your touch is full of magic.” Then she’d rise and walk back and forth in the tent, ankles cracking, knees seizing, hips bent over, until she could stand and walk, though she had nowhere to go.
    Hagar didn’t understand how there could be so much life in a place with no river, or how they could all eat so well without the thick papyrus to cook and fish to catch. The trees that grew dark green and broad shadedtheir tents. From there, she could see where the locals had cut away the trees to make room for the neat rows of grain that grew on small farms, and the sheep grazing in empty pastures. Even without flowing water, the beetles had shiny backs. She would watch them crawl across the hard ground, looking for small seams in the crumbly dirt. There were no crocodiles here, but her mistress told her to beware the snakes and scorpions, so she watched for them, stayed back when they raised their fearsome heads, or else tried to hit them with the sharp edge of her knife to see if she could cut them cleanly in two.
    She wondered if her mother thought of her. Or her father, who looked at her hips and thighs, said he could finally find a use for her, and handed her over to the traders. By the time they gave up on the river that year, her father accused her mother of stretching things out, of trying to cheat him out of a decent profit. He declared Hagar ready. Hagar didn’t know what he meant, but she followed her parents out of the house, where she saw a group of men, their heads draped in long cloths, each like a minor pharaoh. She watched one of the men, a long knife tucked into the rope tied around his waist, put a bag of coins into her father’s hand. Her mother stood very still while the men talked, then turned to Hagar, took her now plump shoulders in her hands, told her to be a good girl, and then turned and called her brothers in for dinner.
    One of the men took Hagar by the arm, told her to get into a cart that was hitched to an ugly ass and stay quiet. At first, she was happy to feel the bump of the wheels underneath her. She looked around with wonder at these places beyond walking distance from her small house and so beyond the far reaches of her imagination. She wondered how long this trip would be, grew sad when the hours stretched into sunset, then afraid when they didn’t head back for home. She cried for her mother, thinking the men would understand and turn around, but they just shouted at her to keep her voice down. That her noise was bad for business.
    The caravan traveled for days, picking up other women. They were tied together at the waist by a thick rope, walked in a shuffling line most of the day, but the traders let them sleep in the cart at