As the dawn poked through the window, Emzara threw back the animal skin that had covered her. What is that smell, she asked herself, as she rustled from her hay mat and crawled up to her knees. She sighed deeply when she remembered, we’re still here. She grabbed onto the wall of the stable and pulled herself the rest of the way up. Dizziness encompassed her, and she turned her head to vomit.
Emzara inhaled again, coughed, and walked over to the window. Rain. Rain and sea waves. Constant rocking. How long is this going to take? Why…she stopped herself. She looked again at the sea and remembered her neighbors who had been swallowed up by the water and dragged away. Ok, she thought. Better to be here on this floating zoo, than out there—dead.
Emzara walked down the hallway; feathers from the chickens and ducks swirled past as the wind and wave picked up speed again. “Good morning, Noah,” she mumbled to her husband. She blamed him. It wasn’t really his fault, he was just obeying God. He built the ark faithfully, even when she had told him he was crazy. But hers was just another voice in the crowd which he had learned to ignore. God’s whisper was louder to Noah than the voice of men. But Emzara was resentful. All those years, she watched her friends– well her former friends–go about, buying and selling, laughing and talking. She had been excluded from their clique. They had a good life, while she was ostracized as “the wife of that crazy man.”
But wait a minute, she told herself, they’re all dead now. I’m still here. And we can’t float around forever. It’s got to stop raining eventually, and the land will dry up and we will start over.
Emzara sat down to some biscuits and tea that her daughter-in-law had made for her.
Women don’t live by bread alone either, she thought, as she looked up at Noah and smiled.
SueAnn Porter 