Below is the first chapter of The Scrolls of Deborah, by Esther Goldenberg.

Minor edits and updates may have occured, resulting in a slightly different final version.
The paperback and ebook contain a family tree.

Enjoy

SCROLL 1

Parchment 1

I am Deborah.

Daughter of Daganyah.

Daughter of Hallel.

Daughter of Sarah.

Yes, that Sarah, the wife of Abraham, to answer your eyebrow’s question. Yes, Joseph, I am speaking of the same Sarah and Abraham who were the parents of your honored grandfather Isaac. Sarah and Abraham were also the parents of my beloved grandmother Hallel. You know me as your grandmother Rebekah’s nursemaid. I have been her companion for more years than we know. And I am more than that. There is much you do not know about me. So, so much you do not know. Keep writing. Even these words. That is your job as the scribe. These scrolls will be your education—and my legacy.

I was born in Egypt, the third and final child of my mother, Daganyah, and her husband, Iwit. As I was the only girl to help my mother, we spent our days together like grapes on a vine. Before I could talk or even understand all her words, she told me stories all day long while my father and brothers worked the wheat fields and at night when she lay beside me on my cushion as I drifted to sleep. I do not remember a time when I did not know of the people in her stories. Far away though they were, they were always present in my ears and in my heart.

Behind my eyelids, I still see the women of these stories: My mother, Daganyah, a young woman, flowing with linens and jewels and smiles. My grandmother, Hallel, tall and beautiful and as noble as a queen, yet still weaving her own belts—the most beautiful in all of Egypt. Sarah the matriarch, glowing with love and beauty, even in old age.

What a blessing it would have been to meet Sarah, but I arrived too late for that privilege. My mother and grandmother are gone now, too. I am older than either one of them ever became. Yet they live within me, for these were the women of the stories my mother told me day and night. Now their stories will be inscribed in these scrolls, along with mine.

When the sun rose on the twelfth anniversary of my birth, my mother shared a brand-new story with me: I was to have a sister in eight months’ time. Mother had had pregnancies after me, but none had turned into babies. Only blood that was put into the soil to help grow the olive tree, not a child.

But the night before she shared the news with me, she had had such a vivid dream of birthing a living girl, that she told me about it. “She will be strong and wise and beautiful, just like you, Deborah. We shall have someone new to share the stories with and another pair of hands to help with the cooking and the water and the weaving.”

“What will you name her?” I asked.

“I shall name her Matanyah, for she is a gift from Yah.”

Mother and I spoke of YhWh as the all-powerful God, Creator of All, only when we were alone. Even then, we used the shortened version of the name—Yah—saving the full name for prayer and ceremony. Father and the other men of the community would not tolerate any mention of gods other than Horus and the king, who was Horus embodied. But Matanyah was not an Egyptian name. Father would not know the meaning, or care. It was the mother who had the privilege of naming daughters.

Matanyah was truly a gift from Yah, but it took me a lifetime to understand and accept that. Her entrance into this world was what changed everything. The color and shape of the blood that stained the floor and the pitch and length of the screams that still echo in my ears are details that I shall spare you. What is important to know is that Matanyah refused to exit her warm womb and was removed by the midwife’s knife through my mother's belly. Before the cut, we all knew what would happen. Either the baby would come out alive or dead, but if she stayed in, both my sister and my mother would certainly die.

It was unheard of for a man to enter the birthing room, but my mother insisted that before the cut was made, my father must come.

“Iwit,” she said. “I shall die soon. Deborah is skilled and can find a wet nurse should the baby survive.” She had not told Father it would be a girl or that she already had a name, and she concealed that at the end as well. I knew the name. That was enough. “If we both die, you must swear to me that you will send Deborah to my mother’s uncle in Haran. You must pay for her journey and necessities so that she is not here alone. You will take another wife.”

In that moment, my father looked at me in a way I had never seen. All these years, he had paid me little attention. He was busy in the fields with his sons or at gatherings with the other men. He came home to eat the meals prepared for him and little more. We had not exchanged a hundred words in my lifetime. Now that my mother mentioned his taking another wife, he asked me my age.

“Twelve,” I answered. Though I would soon be thirteen.

He stared at my chest, where one day my breasts would grow and fill with milk to nourish babies, but on that day my flatness was apparent even under my clothing. Father reached his hand out, just to check if I would soon be old enough to bring him a child, and Mother snapped at him.

“Iwit! You will send her to my uncle in Haran, with good provisions, or I shall send Set to you when I meet him. Swear to me on your life and the lives of your sons.”

Father’s fear was plain. The Egyptians, of which my father was one, believed that the god Set had chopped his own brother Osiris to pieces. What would he do with a little farmer if Mother sent him from the next world?

“I swear,” he said, loudly enough for her to hear, even though he was already exiting.

She stopped him before he left the room. “And you will pay the midwife now.”

“She will leave here, and I shall have a dead wife and dead child. Why throw my money at such incompetence?”

“Because it is your safest option if you wish to remain alive in this house with your sons,” she hissed. Her voice was raspy and weak from screaming during so many labor pains, but she was composed when she made her threat. “The fee is twenty pieces of silver. I shall watch you place them on the table while I still breathe, as a witness who will report to Set.”

I knew the price to be half what she claimed, but my father paid the midwife before stomping out.

“Deborah,” she addressed me now. Her voice was softer. She was clearly in pain, though she had hidden it from Father to deliver her commands. I went to hold her hand and put my ear closer to her mouth. The stench of her sweat from her efforts at pushing nearly sent me away, but I wanted to be close. “You are my precious daughter. My one and only. Matanyah has stopped moving. She will go under the olive tree with the others. Yet another baby of mine has died.” A long time passed while we both cried.

I could see that it was more than the sobs that kept Mother from saying more. She was also struggling to breathe deeply. As soon as she could, she continued, “You will find someone else to share our stories with. The best I can give you is passage to Haran, so that your father does not take you to wife. You are too young.” I grabbed Mother’s hand and held tight. I wanted to comfort her while she gasped, but I too was gasping. “I bless you with strength, courage, determination, and love,” she said. “These are all the things that Yah has already blessed you with. You are my heart. As long as you are in this world, so am I.”

My tears flowed in rivers down my face, my arms, my lap. I was covered in a little Nile that I had not known had been in my body.

As Mother and I held hands, she addressed the midwife. “I know I shall require much of your drink supply so as not to feel too much pain. I trust you will do your best. I know it is the rare woman who”—Mother screamed in pain and clutched her side before continuing—“who lives when the life inside her has already died. I hope to be one of those women. But if I am not, please do not spare any amount of strong drink that you have. The extra coins should be more than enough to replenish your supply. Once you have done so, I ask that you give the remaining coins to Deborah for her journey.”

Tanqo, the midwife, nodded her consent. She had been deep in prayer the whole time; even while she listened she was whispering prayers. She kissed my mother on the forehead and brought the clay cup to her lips. Mother drank and smiled at me once more before she closed her eyes. Slowly, deeply, she breathed Yah into her body. Yhhhh. Slowly, deliberately, she exhaled herself into Yah. Whhhh. She squeezed my hand, and I breathed with her in the way we had done so many times. Inhale: Yhhhh. Exhale: Whhhh. Yhhhh. Whhhh. In a short while, my mother’s jaw became slack and her breaths became shallow.

Tanqo raised her voice in prayer. I opened my eyes to look at her, but Mother did not. She lay peacefully, unaware. It was then that Tanqo took the knife to her.

I screamed until I had no breath left myself, then fell to the floor. When I awoke, Tanqo had already cleaned the blood and placed the baby—my sister, Matanyah—in a shallow grave under the olive tree. My mother had a blanket draped over her. I could not even see her face. My brothers came and carried her body away. Their strong arms carried her with ease, but I saw them shaking from the sobs they held back. As soon as they were beyond my sight, Tanqo put her arm around me and guided me to her house. I slept there on a pallet for two days and two nights before I had enough strength to drink a cup of broth and cry myself back to sleep.