Free After Abel and Other Stories by Michal Lemberger Page B

night. Hagar was smaller and younger than the others. None of the other women seemed to notice her, but they made sure she was never pulled into the cart by one or more of the traders at dusk. Each time, Hagar listened as the wheels squeaked, the cart rocked back and forth, and then followed the others into it when the men called for them, felt their hands squeeze her skin, rub up next to her, and then let her be.
    Hagar was lonely on the road. Only the traders spoke her language, and they didn’t talk to the women, except to order them in and out of the cart. The otherwomen didn’t try to talk to her. Each kept to herself, absorbed in her own history of misery as if to guard against the pain of another separation that would come when they were sold off the caravan one by one.
    Hagar still cried for home at night, but she was afraid of the man with the long knife and hid her sobs. She remembered that her mother had told her to be good, and so she choked back her tears, thought if she was good enough, she would be sent home again. She repeated it over and over to herself, “Be a good girl, and you’ll go home,” until, after two days, she went from hoping it would be true to believing it would happen. She believed in it the way her father had believed in his gods, had stepped out of the road when a cow, eyes shining like the goddess’s, sacred udders swinging beneath its belly, was led through the town by its owner.
    By the time they reached this new land, Hagar had lost count of how long they’d been walking. They stayed close to the sluggish Nile, then went through vast, desert caverns, stopped whenever they passed a town or well, and finally reached a city that seemed to fill the entire valley, its ends reaching from mountain to mountain in every direction.
    Hagar had never seen so many people in one place before. She had run back and forth to the local market for her mother many times. When the traders told the girls they’d arrive at the market soon, Hagar thoughtshe would recognize it, but this was nothing like the collection of threadbare men and women, each with a single basket, selling and buying what they could to survive. Here, a person could buy and sell everything. Textiles, cattle, people. She wanted to wander around, touch the colorful spices, look at the strange faces. Some of the men had long braids winding down their backs. She saw others with black markings across their cheeks and, most wondrous of all, boys and girls with eyes the color of the sky. But the traders kept the women tied together in the cart from the moment they entered the town, so Hagar had to settle for watching as the swirl of activity passed around her.
    The traders had sold most of the other women by the time a couple came out to inspect their wares. Hagar’s first impression of the woman who would become her mistress was that she seemed impossibly old. The hair at her forehead where it stuck out from beneath her hood looked like wispy clouds above skin veined with blue. But Hagar had been taught that people who lived to be that old must be wise and protected by the gods, so she didn’t cry out when the woman pinched her cheeks or pulled down her lips to inspect her teeth or her dress to examine her body.
    â€œThat one’s father said she’s a simpleton,” one of the traders said. “But we haven’t had any trouble with her.” When both the man and woman spoke to her inEgyptian, Hagar was happy to be picked. They spoke their own language with each other, though, and Hagar never could form her mouth around the strange round sounds they used. So she waited until they spoke to her, and got used to listening to their gibberish. Sometimes, she could pretend they were the frogs of her home, talking to her like they used to.
    There was much to see here, more things than she thought possible in the world. Without a river, the slave girls had to walk back and forth to the well, and