MOTHER
When Samson was a child, he ate the brightest grapes first. It did not matter that they were bitter. He ate with his eyes, always.
I saw a lean wisp of a girl, her light green eyes sparkling like the Evening Star against the dark cascading night that was her hair. Though it pained me to admit it, she was beautiful, perhaps even more so because she had no sense of her own beauty. She still moved like a shy girl, with no awareness of her body, no awareness of her effect upon men. Her name was Amara, and she wore an amulet around her neck to ward off evil. A superstitious abomination.
When we left at last, Samson spoke not a word to me. Only after a long while on the way to our lodging house did I look at Samson, a searching look. Why had he done this to us? Why had he chosen a Philistine girl to marry? Had he seen her tonight, seen the careless evil of her people?
My stomach began to roil; blood rushed to my face. The strange blue mist, the mist that had signaled God’s power resting on my son—this mist had settled upon him, now, but Samson did not see it. He smiled to himself and paid no notice to my changing condition as he whistled a tune to himself. I had to duck quickly behind a home so my men would not see me.
I vomited up the little I had eaten.
In his face, I had seen it. He was in love with the enemy. And in that mist, I saw this, too: God was still with him.
I pleaded my case, to Samson and to God, using my native tongue—guilt. I sat in the ashes, tears staining my face. I had not applied my beauty lotion in two days. Samson rolled over, trying to sleep, so I moaned again, loudly.
He sat up, resting his forearms on his knees to watch me.
With one hand resting against my heart, I used the other to scoop ashes from the crockery beside me. I dumped the ashes on my head.
“I think I’ll see if anyone needs help with the plowing,” Samson said. Manoah did not rise up from his pallet. He wanted nothing to do with this battle.
“At this hour? Everyone just went to bed,” I protested.
“I’m not sleeping.” He stood and threw a heavier tunic on before leaving.
Manoah sat up after Samson had left. He cocked his head to one side, watching me.
“No use fighting him,” Manoah said. “Samson’s strength is too much, even for you.”
“She is a Philistine! This cannot be God’s will for our son!”
“Samson says God told him to do this.”
I grabbed my head with both hands to keep it from bursting like a melon. “This is all wrong.”
Manoah got up and dragged a crock of water over to me. Sitting down beside me, he took a sea sponge from the crock and began washing my face. He was slow, holding the sponge over the bowl, warming the water in his hands as errant drops splattered back below. The dripping sound was the only noise in our home, save for our own breaths. Beyond us, a lion roared in the night. I hoped Samson had stayed in the village. He was strong, but strength alone was no match for a lion’s wrath.
“Will you come to bed now?”
I took the sponge from his hands and wrung it out, setting it beside the crock. It needed a good airing in the sun tomorrow.
“When I took you from your mother’s home, could you have imagined any of this?” Manoah asked.
I chuckled. “No.”
“Then you cannot imagine what He may be doing now. Hold onto what is good, and trust God.”
A smile played on my lips, thinking of my belly in those long ago days, that improbable swelling at my age. How the other wives talked of it, and nothing else! At my age, with age spots on my face and hands, my knees sore and a back that was already bending forward, at that age God gave me a child. Syvah, my sister-in-law, the one who would later bear two sons herself, rejoiced with me. She had a full, soft face with a wide blunt nose and sparkling brown eyes. She was not beautiful, but her smile could make you forget that.
“A miracle!” Syvah and the women had said, holding their hands against my belly.
“More than a miracle!” I had told them. “A gift to all our tribes! He is sent for all of them. He will deliver our people from the Philistines.”
Manoah yawned. I lifted my ash-soiled tunic over my head. Manoah rose and took a clean one from next to my pallet and lowered it over my head. I accepted his help quietly. Then I went to our pallet and lay down. As I rested my head against his chest, he spoke.
“I leave for Timnah in the morning.” He was going to make arrangements to get the Philistine girl as a bride for our son.
“Why do you give in to him?”
“Do you remember when the strength first came upon him?”
Wise Manoah. There was one memory that always stayed with me.
It had been an early spring day, just before the wheat came ready for harvesting. The sun was not out. Several tribes had sent warriors to a nearby Danite camp for training. Danites were, of course, the fiercest tribe. We wanted nothing given to us; we preferred to fight for what we wanted. It was our nature.
This day, a mercenary from Egypt was in camp. He was a big man, by our standards, with dark thighs as wide and rippled as tree trunks. He wore a leather shirt that wrapped around his chest, crossing over each shoulder, and a short blue and white kilt tucked in at his waist. He had on more jewelry than all the Hebrew wives combined: a nose ring, bracelets, a necklace with odd dangling amulets, and fat gold rings on his wide fingers.
Our enemies hated the Egyptians, and for good reason. Long ago, the Philistines had left their ancient homeland across the sea and gone into the waters searching for a new home. When they landed in Egypt, it looked good to them, and they made claim.
The Egyptians beat them so badly, all that was left of the Philistines in Egypt was a memory, a little sneering joke. Our men were eager to see what the Egyptian could teach us. If the Egyptians had defeated the Philistines, we could learn their secrets.
We women watched the Egyptian man closely and covered our mouths with our hands as we spoke to one another. Syvah, so young and bold, spoke without covering her mouth. “He has no hair!” I smiled to see her bulging stomach. She was soon to deliver her second child. Her first, Liam, a boy not yet two years old, played near us.
“They shave themselves—everywhere!” another wife answered. We spoke at once, over each other and too fast, as we did when we had a rare moment to sit together.
“Oh!”
“He looks like a newborn!”
“If the wind picks up his kilt one more time, I will run for the hills. It’s too early in the morning to see that much of Egypt.”
We were in for a wonderful day of gossip and laughter and freedom from work. Syvah’s husband, Joash, sat with Manoah. They were brothers. Joash was the eldest. His hair was pure white, and his hands shook when he ate. Syvah married for the birthright, I suspected. He would die not four months after that day, passing quietly in his sleep.
Dark gray clouds, gaping holes in each, hung low in the sky, pink and yellow sun just now beaming to the earth. The men lined up, listening to the Egyptian talk about his weapon, his strategy, his military prowess. I yawned, tired from the walk. We had risen so early for this. I wanted to sleep, but how could I with this suffocating weight in my lap? Though a child, when Samson sat in my lap I was sure he would snap a bone.
The Egyptian called out. “Give me your best man. We will spar. You will see why Egypt has no equal.”
A Danite stood first. Of course.
They had swords of equal length. I would have thought they were evenly matched. But the Egyptian moved with a fierce speed—like lightning, brilliant and fast. He slashed open the Danite’s tunic, an unspeakably rude act. Tunics were expensive. Often a man could only afford one.
Murmurs and low curses rumbled back toward him in response, but he only threw his head back and laughed at us. Before I could stop Samson, he was out of my lap, striding toward the Egyptian with all of the arrogance of a ten-year-old boy who knew nothing of life and war.
Samson bowed to his Danite elder and motioned for the man to bend down and listen. The man did, much to the delight of the crowd. A strange light, a shimmering like the reflection off distant water, hovered over Samson. I glanced around. No one else seemed to notice.
The Danite handed my son his sword. I jumped to my feet just as Samson whirled around, holding the sword up.
“Samson! No!”
Syvah grabbed my arm.
Samson bowed politely at the Egyptian, who looked highly amused.
“A Hebrew girl! She’s lovely!” he exclaimed. A few of our boys snickered. I gritted my teeth at the stupid joke about his hair. All our men had long hair, down to their shoulders. Of course, Samson’s now reached his waist, but they had no right to embarrass him.
“Are you a Hebrew?” Samson asked, with the tender voice of youth.
The Egyptian spat at Samson’s feet. “No.”
Samson swung the sword with a strength and power that no man was capable of. In an instant, the sword rested against the Egyptian’s groin, in a very delicate, particular manner.
Samson glared at the man. “Do you want to become one?”
The crowd roared. The Egyptian sweated profusely as Samson made him apologize and promise to pay for a new tunic out of his fee.
When Samson lowered the sword and walked away, we had all forgotten the Egyptian. We had a new hero. We yelled his name; the men slapped one another on the back. Samson’s young cousin toddled over to stand with the men, who were in awe of their clansman.
The Egyptian, though, he was not happy. He must have been an honest man, because he did take money out of his belt bag and hand it to the Danite, before lifting his sword and lunging at Samson’s back.
My scream was still in my mouth as the Egyptian’s head rolled to my feet a second later. Samson had turned and cut him down in a blinding flash. Only then did I release the scream, hearing it echo across the plains. Birds cried back in fright, flying up through the heavens.
Not a soul moved or said anything else. Samson cleaned the sword by scooping up handfuls of the pale, dry earth and rubbing it across the blade until the blood was gone. When he handed it back to the Danite, the man shook his head.
“You have earned it, my son.”
“I do not like the feel of a sword in my hand.”
I thought, on that day, he meant he would not use his strength for war. I thought he would deliver the people in some glorious new bloodless way.
But there is no deliverance without blood. This is what an old woman knows.
So now, I settled in beside Manoah and waited for sleep. My only prayer was that God, in His mercy, would stop Samson from making this mistake. If He loved my son, He would. God’s will could not include a Philistine wife for my son.
I had so much to learn about God, and my son.
The Day of Atonement had passed. Samson, Manoah, and I had suffered together, denying ourselves food and water from sundown to sundown. We had each repented of our sins.
At sundown I folded my arms and looked at Samson. “Well?”
He shrugged. “What?”
That was how we began the week of the Feast of Tabernacles. We had no bond. We had a truce. Our people were celebrating, though the harvest had been lean. Still, they danced and sang, late into the night, every night for seven days. On the morning of the eighth day, Manoah had departed for Timnah.
I pleaded with Samson to run after him, to stop him.
He pressed his hands to his forehead. “Stop nagging me!”
“I’ll stop nagging you when I stop loving you. They go together.”
My neighbors, the people of the village, even Syvah, young enough that her waist still curved, were bloated and sleepy from the feasting. Only I looked thinner.
“Are you well?” some asked. I wiped tears away, nodding in the direction of my son. He turned away and made new conversation, wherever he was.
But by the end of that day, two evenings after the feast’s end, I sat on a high rock as the sun set, watching Samson in the fields. Manoah had not yet returned. Samson and his cousins amused themselves with the other young men from the village, the same way they had every year since Samson’s strength was discovered. Syvah’s sons, Kaleb and Liam, hitched up two oxen to a plough, then they hitched Samson to one that sat in a trench parallel to the oxen team. With a loud cry, Kaleb signaled the start of the race. Liam drove the oxen hard, lashing them with his voice and his whip. Samson lowered his head and grimaced, charging forward.
I could not help myself. I yelled out his name, urging him to victory. My son was not going to lose to a couple of oxen.
Beyond him, the sun was setting, washed in pale orange. Clouds floated on the horizon, soaked in yellow. Samson won, and there was time for one more race before the sun washed away. Samson reversed direction, and Kaleb and Liam turned the oxen team. I could hear much yelling and laughter from my perch.
Other mothers watched too, though they kept their distance. I pressed my lips together. No matter.
In the morning, we would begin plowing the fields. We had to sow seed after that, each of us. Next winter’s bread started tomorrow. But after the plowing and the sowing, came the rest. Our labors would be done until the spring. The air around me had turned cooler, another reminder that the year had flown by.
I watched my son, muscles straining under the yoke, dust blowing back behind him as he tore up the earth. Though this was the season of celebration, my joy in the harvest was bittersweet, as every year is when you have a child at home. The turning of the seasons reminded me that time was passing. My son was no longer a child, but if I closed my eyes I could still believe that I might again cradle him as a child in my arms. He was young and soft in my mind, a tender boy who hid behind my legs and cried when I refused to cut his hair.
The children’s laughter made me open my eyes again, but Samson was not among the laughing children. He was sitting by himself, watching the children run, witnessing their delight at being set loose to play at last in the fields with no worries of damaged grain. Samson turned to me and smiled. I nodded back, grateful he was no closer. When he looked away, I wiped the tears from my eyes.
His cousins and the other young men from the village were making a bonfire. They all talked to each other with intensity, sharing their petty secrets and jokes.
I looked back at the horizon. The sun was sinking away, its last brilliant burst of orange illuminating the lingering clouds. The day had passed. Time had passed. All that remained now was deepest night and the long watch for dawn.
AMARA
Fall’s gentle sun did not last. Her gold empire evaporated into white clouds and morning mists. Winter was coming fast. We worked late into the night, every night, putting up the last of the harvest, pulling out the olives and grapes and wheat kernels that split during the walk home. We collected baskets of these to feed our goats and went out every morning to check their bedding. Some families let their goats sleep with them inside, on the lower floor, and the family kept their beds on a floor just above. We didn’t do that. Maybe it’s because we kept pigs sometimes too. Mother wanted a separate pen near the house, and we bartered space in it for extra food. Sirena kept two goats of her own in it, but Father made her keep her bucks with another family. He said he didn’t trust males. Our three goats were pregnant anyway; we knew by their swollen backsides and bulging bellies.
Like our goats, we were at the mercy of time now. We did not control our lives. The fields did. They determined when we worked and when we rested. And right now, we were working.
Already exhausted from harvesting in the warm weather, there was still more work ahead of us as it turned cold. We went out into the fields once more, readying them for the rainy season. We turned the dirt over and over, deepening and airing out the rows, working the fertilizer into the earth. Like most Philistines, we used a combination of manure and menstrual blood. Only at this moment did the blood of a woman’s moon cycle have good magic, as the ground cried out to be fertilized. Mother saved the soiled linens, and we worked them deep into the soil, knowing that what cries out for life to us would cry out for life for our crops. This same blood, if brought into the fields after they had been fertilized, brought death, a miscarriage. We had to sow this powerful magic while it favored us. If Mother noticed that she did not have so many rags to suggest Astra had gotten her cycle, she said nothing.
With our field prepared, we hired ourselves out to neighbors in our own village and the rest of the valley. How I loved this last, sweet labor! Seeding did not require me to bend over or lift a tool. All I needed was a basket around my neck for seed. I took off my sandals and stepped into the soft give of the soil, dipping my hand into the silky little seeds, scattering the seed along the rows. I walked slowly and breathed deeply, knowing the end of all our labors was at last here. The blessed rest of winter was coming, when Astra and I could lie under our blankets and tell stories, when Father would nod off to sleep after breakfast and Mother would pat him softly on the shoulder, letting him rest. The fire outside would feel delicious in its warmth, and we would only sweat if we wanted to, by getting close to the flames.
If there was a dark spot on the glorious white mists of winter, it was this: Word had spread through our village that Father and Mother had offered hospitality to Hebrews. Astra and I could endure the insults from other children, but Father had lost business. He had taken a large share of money from his sudden wealth and invested it in another load of rugs from a merchant, yet he had sold not even one.
He was silent at dinner most nights, and not just from exhaustion. Finally, last night after dinner, he had said what we were all thinking.
“That money was a curse. We were happier before we had it. Now we’ve lost both it and our contentment.”
“What can we do?” I asked.
“What should we do? Pretend it didn’t happen?” He sounded exasperated with me.
“You didn’t have to tell anyone that the Hebrew bought the rugs!” Astra came to my defense. Perhaps she felt guilty.
“You think I brought this trouble to our door? Are you so naive?” Father said.
I stood. Rain or not, I would spend my night on the roof.
He grabbed me by the wrist.
“Adon, no,” Mother scolded him.
He became a different man as I watched. The hard lines from all the lean years surfaced in his face as his eyes emptied of all compassion. “I work until I am half dead. I scrape and scavenge like a dog, rent out my wife and daughters to work the fields like they are oxen, and for all this, look at us. Look! Who had enough to eat tonight? Who wears a tunic without patches? Even the wineskins look better than we do, and they’ll get thrown out after one season!”
A cold, hard lump burned in my throat, an agony I struggled to soothe by taking soft, steady breaths. I could not bear to add to my father’s shame with tears of my own.
But Astra was already crying, her head bent toward her lap. She was too young to practice any kind of restraint. I wanted to reach out to her. She would think this was her fault. That was true, but I didn’t want her to suffer.
My father had not released me. He pulled on my wrist, getting my attention.
“Do you know who came to see me today?”
I shook my head. Astra looked up in alarm.
“Manoah, the father of Samson.”
Astra jumped up. “I did it! It’s my fault. I will apologize to him if he will listen.”
Father looked at her as if she was a fool.
“Girls, go up to the roof,” my mother said. “Leave me alone with your father.”
“No. It is done. She should know about our arrangement.”
What had gone on between him and Manoah? What could they have arranged? They were Hebrews. Any pact was an admission of both our poverty and our ambition. We were Philistines, superior in technology, learning, and power. These poor Hebrews worshipped a god that had promised them a land he could not deliver. Whatever Father had promised to them, it was a better deal than they had ever gotten from their own god.
Father didn’t even take a breath or try to prepare me. His eyes looked at me without seeing me, as if his soul had evaporated during the dinner.
“Samson wants you.”
“For what?”
“A bride.”
Astra fell down, crumpling to the floor in shock. Mother jumped up to tend to her.
Father picked his teeth with the long nail of his little finger, as he looked at the far wall, his chin trembling.
“Please tell me this is a joke.” I barely had enough breath to be heard.
“What did you expect me to do?” He looked at me, his brows tightly knotted together, deep lines of anger springing up on his forehead.
Mother helped Astra to sit upright, holding her, before screaming at Father again. “A Hebrew! You pledged my daughter to a Hebrew!”
“Name me one Philistine who wants her.” Father’s voice was cold.
Mother opened her mouth then closed it, her nostrils flaring. She slammed her hand on the table, palm flat, making the bowls jump and clatter. The noise made my heart jump, and I burst into tears. Father was a good man, but a poor one. He had only done what he had to do. I was going to become the bride of the man-beast of the Hebrews, the freak who made everyone stop and gasp in horror. The thought of the Hebrew man-beast reaching for me under the stars on his own roof, while his parents slept in the house below us, made me sick.
“How much did you get for me?”
Astra stopped crying, her eager expression showing me that she was hungrier than she even admitted. Even Mother leaned closer in, anxious to hear a good number.
“Four pieces of silver.”
Mother’s hand flew to her heart. I ground my teeth as the good number burned into my heart. My price was better than I could have imagined.
Oh, Dagon.
MOTHER
Samson and I passed the Sabbath together in peace. We remained in our beds later than we usually did, and when we rose, I made him a big breakfast of his favorite foods. We ate curds and honey and bread in our cool, quiet house. We could hear birds alight on the roof and sing as the sun rose.
I didn’t want Manoah to return. It was a sin to think it, but I did more than allow the thought to pass. I prayed it. I prayed that time would stop, that God would stop His relentless push toward a new day and allow me this one day, this peace, forever.
Samson dipped a piece of bread in oil and handed it to me. “You’re not eating enough. You’re too thin.”
Only he had noticed.
I accepted his gift and ate. The oil spread in my mouth, and strength flooded into my bones again. I swallowed and closed my eyes in relief.
“Here. Eat again.” Samson was holding out another piece of bread dripping with the green oil of our olives.
“You’re still growing. You eat it.”
“No. It’s for you.”
I accepted it and ate. He had soaked it; I could not open my mouth quickly. He had set a clever trap.
Samson settled back and watched me. “I have to do this. I can’t explain why.”
I nodded.
“It doesn’t mean I don’t love you. My path was chosen for me, before I was even born. You have told me that all of my life. And this marriage, it is part of that path. I am sure of it.”
I looked down at my hands with their spots from sun and age, and deep crevices across the knuckles. My life was fading, and Samson’s was beginning its long, glorious burn.
“I have lost many friends because of the prophecy.”
Samson nodded in acknowledgment. “I have never had any friends to lose.”
“Do you hate me? Do you wish I had turned the angel away, or run from him?”
Samson reached across the distance between us and took my hands in his. His hands were warm. I had not realized how cold I was.
A tear slid down my face. I was like a cold, trembling child. Samson was indeed strong. He leaned toward me.
“Do you ever wish you had been made the deliverer of our people, instead of me?” he asked.
I laughed, a deep chuckle from my belly. “You know what I would do? I would start in Ashkelon and work my way to Gaza. I would smash the temples of Dagon into rubble and destroy every altar that had ever held a sacrifice made to him. I would deliver anyone who had ever suffered from this idol.”
“Why do you hate the Philistines’ god so much?”
“You’re too young.”
“Mother.”
I rubbed my forehead awhile before answering. “Philistines believe a man teaches the gods how to act. If you pray to Dagon, you must show him how to answer you, or he will not know. And what do men pray for more than anything else in this world?”
“Money.”
“Yes. And money comes from what?”
“Trade.”
“And what are they trading? Think, Samson.”
“Lumber. Jewels. Wheat, wine, olives.”
“They are trading God’s gifts. They grow rich and do not bless Him.”
Here, I had to pause for a deep breath. To explain such things made the food in my stomach pitch and roll. I wiped my forehead before continuing.
“And there is more. The greatest gift of our God, this one they destroy. The next time you go to a festival, look in the gutters outside the temple of Dagon, and tell me what you see. I did it once, as a child. I have never forgotten the sight.” I narrowed my eyes, willing him to ask me what I had seen. “When we claim that land, we will have to build a lot of graves.”
Samson stood up, needing more distance between us.
Manoah opened the door. Samson and I looked at him but did not speak, the weight of our words holding us back from him.
Manoah frowned, looking between us. “Well, it is done. You have a Philistine bride.”
Samson glanced at me. I was careful to keep my face still, to say nothing with my eyes. I would not give my blessing.
My son walked out of the house, slamming the door behind him as he went.