Laban didn’t come home from the inn last night. I wasn’t surprised. He usually doesn’t make it home when he goes out with his soldiers, and I wasn’t going to complain—it’s never good when he comes home drunk.
I woke up early the next morning to the sound of someone banging on the front door. The sun was only barely rising in the sky. Who would be at the door at this hour of the day? I quickly slipped on a morning dress and went to the door and opened it. It was two members of the community guard. This wasn’t the first time the guard had come to my home. Sometimes, when Laban had an especially drunk and violent night, they would come to my door with his body in tow. Your husband has been fighting again, they would tell me. As if I didn’t know—as if I didn’t know that he was violent when he got drunk. This visit, Laban wasn’t in tow. In fact, he wasn’t in sight. I looked at the solders again. Their shoulders were rigid, and they were avoiding my eyes. Something wasn’t right.
One of them, probably the captain by the mark on his shoulder, shifted his weight and began to speak.
“I’m so sorry, but Laban was murdered…” his lips continued to move, shaping words, but I couldn’t hear anything else. The words overwhelmed my senses.
Laban is dead…
My legs suddenly felt powerless to carry my weight and I collapsed on my knees. The guards reached out to help me up, but I gently raised my hand to stop them. They looked at me, and then at each other, and mumbled a quick condolence and a commitment to find the murderer. I said nothing to them, so they eventually walked away.
Laban is dead. The words echoed through my mind.
He is gone.
. . .
I saw Laban for the first time on the day of our betrothal. Still young, still naive, he gave me a slight smile with his thin lips and square teeth. He was tall, broad, and strong, but still unsure how to carry it around with confidence. And there were his eyes. Dark brown and deeply set, they seemed to be perpetually cast in shadows regardless of the way he faced the sun. We didn’t touch or talk to each other that day, but I couldn’t keep myself from smiling as I left. I felt lucky to get such a strong—and, in the right light, even handsome—man as a husband.
The year between the betrothal and the wedding felt as long as my ancestors’ 40-year journey to enter the promised land. But when it finally arrived, it was as good as I had hoped. The wedding day was a full-length festival, as is appropriate for a Jew. There was more food, music, and dancing than I had ever seen. I was sure that the whole tribe was there. The crowd made it difficult for the two of us to have time together. However, I’ll never forget the first time he grabbed my hand and squeezed it. It was short, and in a moment his hand was gone, but I couldn’t erase the feeling of his skin on my skin.
That night, I finally understood what it felt like to be wanted by a man.
The beginning of our marriage was simple and happy. We lived with his family and began the process of getting to know each other. Laban was not much of a talker, but he was a fine listener. Early on in our marriage, I remember one night staying up late into the night talking to him. When I was sure that he had fallen asleep because he hadn’t said anything in thirty-minutes, I looked over and saw that his dark brown eyes were still wide open. He gave me another one of his awkward smiles and nodded at me to keep on talking. I did, and in the back of my mind I offered a prayer to God in gratitude for such a thoughtful and kind husband.
. . .
I waited for my monthly bleeding to stop. My mother had always told me to be ready for the baby as soon as I got married. “Our eggs are full of life!” She would say. “Even the scent of a wedding can put a baby in your womb.” Seeing that I had been one of nine, such affirmations weren’t surprising from her, but it did make me all the more confused when my womb never grew.
Every time Laban was in me, I’d think of the baby that would be in my arms in nine-months. I’d imagine his or her light, olive skin, and its folds of fat bunching up at the joints. Yet, no matter how hard I tried, I could never see a face. It, like Laban’s eyes, was always covered with shadows.
As the months went by, Laban became more desperate. It was as if he was trying to force my eggs to break out of their shell and become life. One night, after he was especially fervent, I told him that he was hurting me, and he stopped. Lifting himself onto his arms, he pulled himself out of me and looked at me with his dark eyes. I couldn’t see through the shadows to know if he was making eye contact with me.
“You must be cursed,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “It must be your fault.”
This was the first time he had said it, but I knew he had begun to feel it for months. Even still, the words hung in the air like a noose. You must be cursed…
“It is your fault. I don’t know what you did, but God has cursed us because of it.” The words were sharp and short. Maybe they were a poison he was trying to spit out for the first time in months. His hands were shaking.
“Laban, we need to keep trying…” I said, the words feeling hollow even from my own mouth.
“We have been trying! We have been trying every day since we got married! What’s the point of this if we can’t have a child?”
I didn’t know what to say to that and after a moment he lay down on the bed again, turned around, and went to sleep. As I lay awake that night, images of the baby continued to swirl through my mind, always faceless.
. . .
“I’m joining the army.” His words came out as a statement instead of a question. I considered if I should question his decision, but I decided not to. It was better to not argue with Laban when he made his mind up on something.
“When will you leave?” I asked.
“Tomorrow morning.”
It was sooner than I thought, and my heart did a slight drop into my stomach.
“For how long?”
“One year, maybe longer. It depends on how much they need me.” He was looking at me, but his eyes weren’t focused on my eyes. There was something in his eyes, an emotion he wasn’t revealing with words. Was there sadness in there?
“Can I help you pack?”
“No, they will provide most of what I need.”
“Okay.”
I wanted to reach out to him and wrap my arms around his neck. I wanted to have him hold me the way he used to hold me, the way he held me before he discovered that my womb was as dry and unforgiving as Israel’s desert, before he thought I was cursed. I wanted to beg him to stay because I didn’t want to be alone, I didn’t want to be alone.
Instead, I said nothing and walked away.
The next morning, he went off to war.
. . .
Laban was gone for three years. When he came back, he was a different man. His large frame was filled with honed muscles and his skin was leathery from the sun. He had an air of confidence about him that I hadn’t seen before. He had learned how to carry himself.
Though he had rarely written to me during the past three years, I had heard stories about my husband while he was gone: “Captain Laban is a mighty man!” or “Captain Laban can slay fifty men by himself!” People in the community would come up to me and applaud my husband. “You are such a lucky woman to be married to a man like Laban!” they would say.
A man like Laban. A man who would leave his wife for three years. A man who would stop making love once he realized that the womb would never bring forth a child. A man who didn’t even know how to talk to me since he came home.
I could see that he didn’t know what to say as he stood there across from me in our living room. And I didn’t want to offer him any help. I wanted to make him sit in the distance so he could feel what it was like to be here—alone.
He didn’t stay long.
He cleared his throat and said, “I’m going to the inn with my soldiers. I’m not sure when I’ll be back.”
With that, he left. It was then that I realized that Laban coming home wouldn’t change my solitude. He was too used to being away from me.
He came back later that night. By the swagger of his steps, the lolling of his eyes and head, I knew he was drunk. Laban wasn’t much of a drinker before he left for the military. At least, I had never seen him drink to the point of intoxication.
He stumbled through the door and collapsed on the ground, small hiccups causing his large back to jostle like a small earthquake. He lay there for a moment, and I wasn’t sure if he had just fallen asleep. Suddenly, he lifted his head up, looked wildly around the room, and saw me. Our eyes made contact and I saw something I had never seen in his eyes before. He got up on one knee, steadying himself with his arms, and looked at me again, as if he were double checking that it was me. I noticed that his hands were slowly—though awkwardly—unknotting his pants belt.
“Laban…” I muttered, hoping it would break through his drunkenness.
“I’ve missed you.” The phrase came out in a slur, barely separated into distinguishable words. His hands were still fumbling with his knotted belt. “I’ve missed you a lot while I’ve been away.” The knot went undone and his pants dropped to the floor.
A spike of fear jolted through my back.
“Laban, what are you doing?” The words choked out of my mouth as I stood from the chair I had been sitting on. I tried to begin circling out of the room to get away from him, but he was faster than I thought he’d be, and he stepped in my path, his face now inches away from mine. I could smell the alcohol on his breath.
“I’ve missed you…” he said once more, grabbing my elbows so I couldn’t move. He used my elbows to force me to the hard, cold, dark ground.
“Laban, stop it! What are you doing?” I yelled, trying to pull away from his strong arms and large hands. His smile fled from his face and a scowl replaced it. I didn’t even see his hand coming before pain erupted across my face. The slap stunned me, and I could barely see his face through the tears that involuntarily sprung into my eyes.
“You are my wife so you don’t get to say what I can and can’t do.” Somehow, these words weren’t slurred. Somehow, I could tell that these words were his, even though he was drunk.
He put his weight on mine, pried my legs open, and found me. When he finished, his body went limp, and I heard a snore come from his mouth. My body was shaking even though I wasn’t cold.
. . .
The night Laban died, the night before someone cut off his head, took his clothes, and left him in the alley, his blood draining into a pool by the sidewalk, I prayed to God that he would save me. I prayed to God for help because I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t survive another day of his violence, another day of his rough skin chafing against my own. I needed a redeemer.
When I began my prayer, I felt awkward, like a convict in a hearing before a judge. I hadn’t prayed in years, not since I realized that my womb would never grow a child.
At first, the words crawled out of my lips, hesitantly testing the air. They weren’t sure if they should come out from the cave of my mind and heart. But as I started speaking, the words began to pour out of my mouth. They began to flow and move with the ache in my mind and heart. They voiced the bruises and tears that had been mine ever since Laban had come back from war. They shouted and argued and wept with the God who had cursed me and left me bereft of joy.
I felt my words push their way through the air up to the ceiling. The longer I prayed, the more pressure began to build above my head, as if the words were layering on top of each other in an attempt to break through the thick plaster of my ceiling. When the pressure started to become unbearable, I stopped speaking and strained my ears, hoping that the ceiling would violently split to the thundering sound of God’s voice on Mt. Sinai. I listened and listened and listened.
No voice came. The pressure faded and I looked up at the ceiling. No cracks, no breakthroughs, no God.
Only silence.
. . .
That was the night Laban was killed.
. . .
Is it my fault? Is it my fault that Laban is dead?
The questions whirl through my mind, suffocating me.
I prayed for redemption and that night Laban was killed, murdered by a group of zealots. Did I pray them to his drunken body?
I don’t know. No matter how long I sit with the questions, no matter how long my knees lie on the cold, dark floor, I receive no answers. I often find myself lying on my bed, lost in thought about Laban. I see him on the day we got married, his young, naive face full of shy hope and excitement. I see his thin lips smile so wide that I’m worried they will crack. And there are his eyes. Always covered in shadows, no matter how he is facing the sun.
