“No, no,” said Sarai. “Go about your business, I’m all right.”

  “No,” said the boy. “I meant with Mistress Hagar.”

  His words stabbed her almost more than Hagar’s had. Mistress Hagar. The boy was but a child and no one had explained to him that just because Hagar had the master’s baby in her did not make her the equal of Sarai.

  The equal of Sarai? That wasn’t how Hagar had spoken back in the tent. No, she had despised Sarai, treated her as if she had become nothing compared to Hagar.

  I will disappear, thought Sarai. I will become nothing; I will turn to dust without even having to go through the step of dying first.

  Is this what God intended for me? Then why did he bring Abram to marry me in the first place? Better to have let me die a lonely old virgin priestess in the temple of Asherah than to give me a prophet for a husband and then make me nothing in the eyes of his servants.

  Nothing in my own eyes, too.

  For the worst of it was that Sarai agreed with Hagar. It really was the mother-to-be who mattered, and nothing Sarai was doing amounted to anything compared to that great task.

  It got no better over the next few days. Every time Sarai and Hagar were in the tent together and awake at the same time, Hagar was full of snide remarks with stinging little innuendoes. “I know you’re busy, Mistress, but would you send for a servant to mop the sweat from my face?”

  “Ptahmet will be back in a few moments,” said Sarai, “but I’d be glad to do it myself.”

  “Oh, no, it wouldn’t do for the mistress to wipe the face of the slave girl.”

  Sarai wanted to scream at her. I’ve done nothing to deserve your cruel remarks! But she held her tongue and went to mop the girl’s brow.

  Hagar turned her head away and would not permit it.

  At that moment Ptahmet returned with the figs she had gone for, and Hagar at once said, “Ptahmet, please, if you don’t wipe the sweat from my eyes I swear I’ll go mad from the stinging in my eyes.” And Ptahmet came to her, glancing at Sarai as she passed, at the cloth Sarai was holding, and Sarai knew how it must look—that Hagar had asked Sarai for relief, and Sarai had refused her.

  It could not be an accident. Especially because Hagar was not that ill. She could have mopped her own brow. She could have gotten up and fetched her own cloth. She wasn’t crippled, she was just pregnant.

  But Sarai learned that it was easiest simply to stay away from the tent during the day, and do her business elsewhere—near the kitchen fires, usually. And at night she’d come in and ask Hagar how she was feeling and Hagar would rebuff her questions. “Ptahmet does her best,” Hagar would say, or, “not that it matters, but I was sick all day,” or, “Can’t I get any rest without having to report on how many times I threw up today?”

  Sarai could hardly sleep. Until finally she had Eliezer order that the guest tent be put up, and Sarai moved into it, so she could sleep without lying awake enraged at Hagar’s spitefulness.

  It didn’t work. For she still lay awake, wondering whether Hagar had hated her all along, and it was only the pregnancy that had made the girl bold enough to show Sarai how she really felt.

  And then, when she was finally about to sleep, Abram burst into the tent. “What is this?” he demanded.

  “What is what?” asked Sarai, too sleepy to know at once what he was talking about.

  “Leaving Hagar alone in your tent!”

  “Ptahmet is with her,” said Sarai.

  “Well, that’s small comfort,” said Abram. “Hagar is crying her eyes out because you’ve treated her so unkindly and now you’ve left the tent because she displeased you. What can the girl possibly have done wrong? All she does is lie around and throw up, and she can’t help that.”

  The injustice of Abram’s words were the final blow. Sarai burst into tears.

  “Oh, good,” said Abram. “Now I have two tents’-worth of crying women.”

  It isn’t Hagar, Sarai realized. It’s something about me, for Abram has never spoken to me so impatiently, like a disobedient child. What have I done to turn these two against me? Maybe they have only just begun to show what Qira has shown openly all my life—that I’m haughty or annoying or . . . something that makes it impossible to love me or respect me. All these years, has Abram been hiding his real feelings?

  Why doesn’t he come to me and put his arm around me as he has always done on those rare occasions when I cry?

  Instead Abram was pacing back and forth. “It’s causing gossip all through the camp, the way you’ve been getting more and more hostile to Hagar ever since she got pregnant,” said Abram. “And now to reject her completely by moving out of the tent—do you have any idea of how it makes you look in the camp?”

  “Yes,” said Sarai. “It makes me look like whatever Hagar tells people to see.”

  “What do you mean by that?” said Abram. “Is this somehow Hagar’s fault?”

  “No,” said Sarai. “I’m sure it’s mine. Only I don’t know what I’m doing to make her hate me.”

  “Nothing she does is right,” said Abram. “It’s all over camp that you complain about everything she says and does.”

  “If it’s all over camp,” said Sarai, “how do you think it got there? Things that are said between me and Hagar when we’re alone, how could they possibly become known?”

  “I . . . suppose you were overheard.”

  “Yes, I’m such a shouter,” said Sarai. “Always screaming at people. You’ve seen how cruel I am with all the servants.”

  “I don’t think I deserve your sarcasm,” said Abram.

  “Why not?” said Sarai. “You thought I deserved yours.”

  “I wasn’t sarcastic with you,” said Abram.

  “‘Oh good, now I have two tents’-worth of crying women.’”

  “You can’t pretend that my exasperation is an excuse for you to—”

  “Did you come here to condemn me without having bothered to judge me first?” said Sarai. “Is that the justice that Abram’s own wife receives from him?”

  “I haven’t condemned you,” said Abram.

  “Your first words when you came into this tent were accusations. Hagar is crying her eyes out because I’ve treated her so unkindly, what can the girl have possibly done wrong. You start with the assumption that she’s the poor wronged innocent, and why is that?”

  “I didn’t assume anything,” said Abram, “I came in here to ask you for your side of things.”

  “No you didn’t,” said Sarai. “In all the years I’ve known you, I’ve never seen you be unjust to anyone, until tonight, with me. But you have been unjust tonight, Abram. Your questions were accusations, and you spoke to me without respect.”

  “And are you speaking to me with respect?”

  “Yes, I am,” said Sarai.

  “When is it respectful for a wife to rebuke her husband?”

  “If I’m rebuking you, Abram, at least it’s not for something someone else told me about you, but for what I have heard you say to my face. I have been driven from my own tent and treated with despite by a servant who has had nothing but kindness and trust from me. The same servant is spreading lies about me, and even though everyone in camp has known me for years, they all believe her accusations readily. And you believe her accusations without so much as asking me whether anything that Hagar says is true.”

  “But why would I think she was lying?”

  “Because she accuses me of acting in a way that I’ve never acted in my life!” said Sarai. “At least it ought to make you wonder, shouldn’t it?”

  “But of course you’re acting differently,” said Abram. “You’ve never had another woman pregnant with your husband’s child before.”

  It was just too ridiculous. Angry and hurt as she was, Sarai could not help herself. She laughed bitterly.

  “This is funny?” asked Abram.

  “Doesn’t it occur to you,” said Sarai, “that maybe I’m the one person who has not changed? But that everything I do and say is now seen differently because everybody else assumes I’m so terribly bothered because Hagar is pregnant with your baby?”

  “Everybody’s wrong but you?” said Abram dryly.

  “It’s happened before,” said Sarai. “In fact, I’d say you’ve spent most of your life knowing that everybody was wrong but you. And in this case, Abram, I can give you my solemn oath that I have done nothing unkind to Hagar, no, not one thing. Everything I’ve done has been designed to help her and the baby she’s carrying to stay healthy and at peace, and yet no matter what I do or say, Hagar has treated me with spite and has interpreted my every word and deed as some horrible mistreatment.”

  “And it’s not even slightly possible that your words might have been unkind without your meaning it?”

  Sarai shook her head. “All right, Abram, of course it’s possible, I might easily be wrong. So if it displeases you to have me go to a separate tent, and it displeases Hagar to have me there in my own tent, what choices are left? I know, Abram. Why don’t you divorce me and send me back to Ur-of-the-North. I’m sure they’ll find me a place to sleep in the temple of Asherah, and you can stay here and be happy with the woman you love.”

  Abram looked as if he had been lashed across the face. “The only woman I have ever loved is you,” he said.

  “Not at this moment,” said Sarai. “Because the woman you believe without question is Hagar, and the woman you disbelieve no matter what she says is me.”

  “I don’t disbelieve you, I just suggested other interpretations.”

  “Did you suggest other interpretations of my behavior to Hagar?”

  He started to answer, but then fell silent.

  “No, you didn’t,” said Sarai. “You simply told her—let me guess the words—’Don’t worry about a thing, Hagar, I’ll take care of it.’ Am I right?”

  He looked away, his mouth set.

  “And now you’re angry at me, Abram. But I’ve told you the truth. I haven’t lied. And I’m not wrong. Hagar has been insolent with me almost from the first moment she was sure she had a child in her. She has been giving me orders and shouting at me in front of the other servants. She has refused to let me help her and then has made others think that I refused to help. She is telling lies about me and everyone believes them, including my husband. Every time I went into my own tent I was accused of the most awful things so I could hardly sleep for the unfairness of it. And even when I fled from my own tent, she had to lie to you so that you’d think I was somehow mistreating her by coming here. Yes, I can see why you’d be angry with me.”

  Silence fell between them, and lingered.

  Finally Abram spoke. “I’m glad we’ve never quarreled before,” he said. “Because you’re a terrifying opponent in a war of words.”

  So he was going to ignore what she said, and accuse her of simply bandying words. Despair sent tears from her eyes again. But she turned her face away from him so he couldn’t see. She had been humiliated enough.

  “Don’t turn away from me, Sarai, I beg you,” said Abram.

  She turned to face him, letting him see the tears, but saying nothing.

  “I have been unjust to you. It’s as you said—I came here intending to reassure you that I loved you so you’d stop being so resentful of Hagar and would treat her better. It never crossed my mind that she might be lying, that all the gossip in the camp might have come from her. But of course it did—where else could it have come from, considering that every bit of it paints you in the most distasteful color. I should at least have asked for your side of things.”

  “I have no side of things,” said Sarai. “I only want to be left alone while you and Hagar have your baby and go on with your lives.”

  “That’s childish, to talk like that,” said Abram.

  “No, Abram, you mustn’t spare my feelings. Rebuke me plainly.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m doing it again,” he said. “But you know that you don’t want to be left alone.”

  “Abram, at this moment, that’s all I want. To be allowed to lie down and cry myself to sleep because I, who a few weeks ago had a loving husband and the respect and honor of my household now have lost it all, without having done a single thing to deserve it.”

  “That’s the thing that makes it so hard for me to believe you, Sarai,” said Abram. “When you talk as though none of the blame for this problem falls on you—when is a problem like this ever the fault of just one person?”

  “Is that a question, or a lesson you’re trying to teach me?” asked Sarai.

  “I suppose it was a lesson, but why don’t you go ahead and treat it like a question,” said Abram.

  “Problems are often the fault of just one person,” said Sarai. “And you know it. And you also know that when two people come to you with opposite stories, sometimes they’re both exaggerating or both mistaken, but sometimes one of them is telling you the complete truth and the other one is lying or misinterpreting everything. Sometimes, one side has all the right and the other side is completely wrong. Sometimes.”

  “Yes,” said Abram. “Sometimes.”

  “And when you consider that everything Hagar has accused me of has only two witnesses, her and me, I think it’s pretty astonishing that you would believe her completely and me not at all.”

  “It is astonishing,” said Abram. “Because that’s what we’ve all been doing. Maybe just because we all expected you to be hurt by all this, and so anything that happened, we assumed was caused by the pain you were going through.”

  “Well, the pain is real enough,” said Sarai. “And maybe that has changed the tone of my voice or the look on my face without my knowing it. But it hasn’t made me forget to treat the servants with courtesy. It hasn’t made me so disloyal as to do anything that would interfere with the health of the baby that’s growing in Hagar’s womb.”

  “But Sarai, we had some idea of why you might be unkind to Hagar. What no one can figure out is why Hagar would be unkind to you. That’s why no one even imagined that she was lying.”

  “I can’t figure it out myself,” said Sarai. “The best I can come up with is that after all her years in slavery, she’s learned to take advantage of any opportunity that comes up, no matter how much she has to lie. In Egypt, she was assigned to me—as a way of showing the contempt they had for me, she knew that. But she acted like my friend, treating me with complete loyalty because she was betting on my ability to get her out of the shameful place she occupied in the House of Women. And here, she acted like my friend because that kept her in the most advantageous position of any of the servants in the camp. She slept in the finest tent, she had the easiest labor, she had the greatest prestige among the servants. But she never was my friend, in her heart. That was just an act she put on. That’s what I think now. Because the moment she had your child in her, she had the upper hand over me. Now she was the mother of your heir-to-be. And all her hatred can finally come out. Now the way for her to gain the most from this situation is to weaken me, so that she can rise above me in your eyes and the eyes of everyone else in camp. And . . . it worked.”

  “You really think she’s that evil?” asked Abram.

  “No, I don’t think she’s evil,” said Sarai. “I think she’s a girl who had everything stolen from her as a child, and thinks that’s how the world works—you take everything you can the moment you can get it. She hears us talking about God and his commandments, but she doesn’t listen in order to find out the truth, she listens to us talk about God in order to find out how to use our belief in God to her own advantage. It’s not evil, it’s survival. She’s still struggling to survive.”

  “Even if it means crushing you to do it.”

  To hear Abram speak as if he believed her was such a relief that she could hardly answer. “Yes,” she said. “But if you believe in me, she can never crush me.”

  “I do believe in you,” said Abram. “I love you with my whole heart, you’re the best gift God has ever given me.”

  “Until Hagar’s son is born,” said Sarai.

  He had no answer to that.

  “And that’s why you believed her, Abram,” said Sarai. “Not just because you expected me to be upset. You believed her because she has your baby in her and your loyalty is with her, with the mother of your baby. And that’s why I need to leave here. I need to go back to Qira until the baby is born. And maybe forever. What I said about Asherah, that was my anger speaking. I would never turn my back on the Lord. But the Lord has turned his back on me. I have displeased him somehow, and so I’ve lost the respect of my husband and his people. I can’t live here without that respect. It would be wrong of you to ask me to.”

  “It would be wrong, Sarai. But you do have my respect. I’ve been blinded, just as you say. But I’m not blinded now. You are my wife and my friend, closer to me than my brother Lot. I’ve lived all these years without children, and it caused me grief that only you could understand because you felt the same grief. But if I had to choose between you, without children, and any other woman in the world, with a dozen children, I would choose you.”

  He had said it before. And she had always believed it. But she didn’t believe it now. It was sweet of him to say it, and she wouldn’t argue, but it was obviously untrue.

  “Sarai,” said Abram, “I am with you on this. I put Hagar into your hands. You are her judge. Whatever you say, I will do.”

  Sarai was filled with despair. “I don’t want to do anything to Hagar,” she said. “I don’t want to judge her. I just want to go on with my life as it was before. Let her be the pregnant woman with everyone pampering her, and let me go on being mistress of the camp and helping you with your work as I always have.”