| SHARED SACRIFICE THE JOURNAL OF PROGRESSIVE THOUGHT 30 April 2009 |
UNDER THE SHADOW OF MY ROOF: THE STORY OF LOT'S DAUGHTERS
30 April 2009
by Caitlin Myer
30 April 2009
by Caitlin Myer
Part I: Dinner Guests
Behold now, I have two daughters which have not
known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you,
and do ye to them as is good in your eyes: only unto
these men do nothing; for therefore came they under
the shadow of my roof.
~Genesis 19, 5-8
Are they listening from upstairs, crouching in the dark,
Lot’s virginal daughters? Do they hear their father offer
them to the crowds clamoring outside the house for the
two strangers that sat with them at dinner? Does horror
creep over them at his words, their hands turning cold
against the stone wall, their breath held in their chests?
Do they wish they had brothers to be offered instead of
them? Or do they know that sons are not made to be
offered to men as daughters are, do they know that
their place is to be offered — and refused — as a
distraction to men who in less than a day are to be
roasted alive with fire and brimstone from heaven?
We can assume they know their place in this world. We
can assume they know that, if their story is to be written,
their names will not appear; they are Lot’s daughters,
and that should be enough.
But we need names in these modern days; today we
look for names for everyone, women no less than men,
so we will give Lot’s daughters names of their own:
Abigail for the elder, and Jerusha — which means
“possession” in Hebrew — the younger, for Jerusha was
her father’s possession, and fated to belong to no-one
else.
So Abigail and Jerusha are home with only each other
and their servants, braiding each other’s hair for dinner.
To be historically accurate, we can assume that both
girls have brown skin and dark hair that curls, especially
in damp weather. In a hail of fire and brimstone, their
hair would lose all its curl, standing straight up from
their heads — from fright or the heat doesn’t matter —
but tonight it is just curly, and Abigail, being the elder,
and the one in charge, is braiding Jerusha’s curly hair,
and slapping at her hands.
“What’s your problem, Abby? I want to wear the green
comb Mom brought home for me last week.”
“I’m not in the mood to mess with combs. Jesus, will you
hold still? You’d think you had no idea how to sit in a
chair.”
Jesus, or Jesus Christ, or Jesus, Mary and Joseph, or
even the tamer Jeez would, of course, not be part of
their conversation, Jesus not being born yet for
generations to come, but take it as a stand-in for
whatever expression a rich young woman of Sodom
might utter when taxed with a restless younger sister.
This wrangling over a pretty comb might have been the
height of the evening’s excitement except that just now
their father bursts in, out of breath:
“Girls, put on your best dresses — a pair of angels are
having dinner with us!”
At which Jerusha takes her chance to present the green
comb to her sister, smirking at her unlikely victory.
Should the girls be shocked that two angels of the Lord
have deigned to sup with their family? Surprised maybe,
but in these days, God and his angels live closer with
men than they do in modern times. This is not
necessarily an advantage, God not being housebroken
and just as likely to strike you with lightning, or leprosy,
or blindness, for offering the wrong lamb for sacrifice as
he is to suddenly give you your heart’s desire fifty years
after you stopped wishing for it, like He did for Lot’s aunt
Sarai — or Sarah as she came to be known, one of the
few women in these days privileged to have a name,
she was given two — after she got knocked up at the
ripe old age of a hundred, as sure a sign of God’s
power as turning the moon to blood. There are
generations yet to come, and a load of begatting and
exile and wars before Jesus is to domesticate God,
make him into the benevolent Father who stays on his
throne and saves heaven and hellfire for the next life,
rather than the bloodthirsty meddler that plagues the
Jews now.
Who would be shocked, then, in times like these, at the
appearance of two angels — nice enough looking guys
in their own way, Abigail thinks — just in time for dinner?
“They said they’d be happy staying in the street, but I
was having none of it,” says Lot, fetching a chair for the
taller one and taking their cloaks himself.
The story tells of Lot himself, wealthy landowner
notwithstanding, making dinner and baking unleavened
bread for the visitors. Lot knew when he first saw them
at the gate that they were angels of the Lord, and with a
God like the God of the Old Testament, it is wise to do
what you can to keep Him happy.
Abigail and Jerusha are privileged to sit at the same
table as the angels, though their mother fixes them with
a stern look lest they start to babble out of turn; not
being girls of the world, they might let their curiosity
overtake their manners. As it is, they have to satisfy
themselves with simply listening to the men, Jerusha
whispering to her sister that they don’t look like she
expected angels to look — not that she is disappointed,
far from it, the one on the left with the hooked nose will
keep her imagination company for many nights to come
— for as girls without even names, they couldn’t expect
to converse freely with angels.
It is while the servants are clearing the dishes and Lot
putting up his feet and offering his guests some dessert
wine that the family hears the commotion growing just
outside the doors of the house.
Lot goes out to see what’s up, sending the women
upstairs, for out of the way is where women belong
when anything exciting happens. But upstairs, Abigail
and Jerusha are able to crack their window and hear
everything from the darkness of their room.
... the men of the city, even the men of Sodom,
compassed the house round, both old and young, all
the people from every quarter: And they called unto Lot,
and said unto him, Where are the men which came in to
thee this night? Bring them out unto us, that we may
know them.
This is the passage, just two words of it really, that
causes so much confusion about this story. The two
words are “men” and “know”. Biblical scholars will
contend that the word used for “men” could also mean
“people,” and in fact is a mixed crowd of Sodomites
surrounding the house: men, women and children.
Again, “men” when referring to the angels. This is yet
another word that means only “mortals,” which might
indicate the crowd didn’t know the gender of the two
visitors. And “know,” while used elsewhere in the Bible
to mean “have sex with,” it is by no means its exclusive
meaning. The people of Sodom may have meant to say,
“that we may torture them to know if they are enemy
spies,” which isn’t particularly hospitable, but there you
are.
It is from these two words that a world of assumptions
was born about the nature of Sodom’s wickedness in
God’s eyes, when it may actually have been a case of
inhospitality, for which God had destroyed cities other
than Sodom. The term “sodomize,” then, might more
properly refer to one’s ill treatment of a guest, as in “I
really sodomized my cousin when I gave him the rattiest
towel in the house.”
Whatever the crowd’s makeup or intentions, they aren’t
kindly toward the strangers, unless they really do simply
want to have sex with them, no rape involved, just a bit
of friendly sodomy, in which case reports of the men’s
physical beauty must have spread like wildfire, or even
brimstone raining from heaven, to get almost the whole
town battering at Lot’s door.
To Abigail and Jerusha, crouching in the dark, listening
to the rabid mob just outside their door, it doesn’t really
matter the meaning of “know,” or whether the chilling
sounds come from men alone, or include the women of
the city. What sudden horror, what panic must overtake
them at hearing their father, their own flesh, their
patriarch and guide, the consummate host, offer them
up, Abigail and Jerusha, virginity intact, in exchange for
leaving his houseguests alone?
Jerusha, being the younger, can’t contain it, her daddy
having offered her to the beasts outside the door, and
she starts from her place below the window, a scream
jumping in her throat. But practical Abigail, quick on the
uptake, clamps a hand over her sister’s mouth, and
listens as the crowd makes its reply, with almost one
voice:
“No. Give us the strangers!”
The girls let out their breath.
“Dad knew they wouldn’t take us, Jerue, he knew it all
the time,” Abigail, shaking, not as certain as her words
make her sound, whispers soothingly in her sister’s ear.
The girls hear the door close, and their father’s voice
below, talking to the strangers. Jerusha creeps closer to
the window, on her knees, and peers out to the street
below. The crowd is greater than she had imagined,
angry people pressing in on the house, pounding at the
door, and a single boy, about eight years old, looks up,
the whites of his eyes showing against his dark skin,
against the dark of the night.
He sees Jerusha. She is unable to move; her mouth
open, she watches the child as he bares his teeth at her
and fills his lungs to call out...and then a milky film slides
over his eyes, whatever he’d planned to say comes out
strangled, the sound of a dog caught in a snare, the cry
taken up by the entire crowd; a darker night has fallen
over them, they wander like blind men, for that is what
they are, struck blind in a breath, lost in rapacious
darkness, blind for the few remaining hours of their lives.
Behold now, I have two daughters which have not
known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you,
and do ye to them as is good in your eyes: only unto
these men do nothing; for therefore came they under
the shadow of my roof.
~Genesis 19, 5-8
Are they listening from upstairs, crouching in the dark,
Lot’s virginal daughters? Do they hear their father offer
them to the crowds clamoring outside the house for the
two strangers that sat with them at dinner? Does horror
creep over them at his words, their hands turning cold
against the stone wall, their breath held in their chests?
Do they wish they had brothers to be offered instead of
them? Or do they know that sons are not made to be
offered to men as daughters are, do they know that
their place is to be offered — and refused — as a
distraction to men who in less than a day are to be
roasted alive with fire and brimstone from heaven?
We can assume they know their place in this world. We
can assume they know that, if their story is to be written,
their names will not appear; they are Lot’s daughters,
and that should be enough.
But we need names in these modern days; today we
look for names for everyone, women no less than men,
so we will give Lot’s daughters names of their own:
Abigail for the elder, and Jerusha — which means
“possession” in Hebrew — the younger, for Jerusha was
her father’s possession, and fated to belong to no-one
else.
So Abigail and Jerusha are home with only each other
and their servants, braiding each other’s hair for dinner.
To be historically accurate, we can assume that both
girls have brown skin and dark hair that curls, especially
in damp weather. In a hail of fire and brimstone, their
hair would lose all its curl, standing straight up from
their heads — from fright or the heat doesn’t matter —
but tonight it is just curly, and Abigail, being the elder,
and the one in charge, is braiding Jerusha’s curly hair,
and slapping at her hands.
“What’s your problem, Abby? I want to wear the green
comb Mom brought home for me last week.”
“I’m not in the mood to mess with combs. Jesus, will you
hold still? You’d think you had no idea how to sit in a
chair.”
Jesus, or Jesus Christ, or Jesus, Mary and Joseph, or
even the tamer Jeez would, of course, not be part of
their conversation, Jesus not being born yet for
generations to come, but take it as a stand-in for
whatever expression a rich young woman of Sodom
might utter when taxed with a restless younger sister.
This wrangling over a pretty comb might have been the
height of the evening’s excitement except that just now
their father bursts in, out of breath:
“Girls, put on your best dresses — a pair of angels are
having dinner with us!”
At which Jerusha takes her chance to present the green
comb to her sister, smirking at her unlikely victory.
Should the girls be shocked that two angels of the Lord
have deigned to sup with their family? Surprised maybe,
but in these days, God and his angels live closer with
men than they do in modern times. This is not
necessarily an advantage, God not being housebroken
and just as likely to strike you with lightning, or leprosy,
or blindness, for offering the wrong lamb for sacrifice as
he is to suddenly give you your heart’s desire fifty years
after you stopped wishing for it, like He did for Lot’s aunt
Sarai — or Sarah as she came to be known, one of the
few women in these days privileged to have a name,
she was given two — after she got knocked up at the
ripe old age of a hundred, as sure a sign of God’s
power as turning the moon to blood. There are
generations yet to come, and a load of begatting and
exile and wars before Jesus is to domesticate God,
make him into the benevolent Father who stays on his
throne and saves heaven and hellfire for the next life,
rather than the bloodthirsty meddler that plagues the
Jews now.
Who would be shocked, then, in times like these, at the
appearance of two angels — nice enough looking guys
in their own way, Abigail thinks — just in time for dinner?
“They said they’d be happy staying in the street, but I
was having none of it,” says Lot, fetching a chair for the
taller one and taking their cloaks himself.
The story tells of Lot himself, wealthy landowner
notwithstanding, making dinner and baking unleavened
bread for the visitors. Lot knew when he first saw them
at the gate that they were angels of the Lord, and with a
God like the God of the Old Testament, it is wise to do
what you can to keep Him happy.
Abigail and Jerusha are privileged to sit at the same
table as the angels, though their mother fixes them with
a stern look lest they start to babble out of turn; not
being girls of the world, they might let their curiosity
overtake their manners. As it is, they have to satisfy
themselves with simply listening to the men, Jerusha
whispering to her sister that they don’t look like she
expected angels to look — not that she is disappointed,
far from it, the one on the left with the hooked nose will
keep her imagination company for many nights to come
— for as girls without even names, they couldn’t expect
to converse freely with angels.
It is while the servants are clearing the dishes and Lot
putting up his feet and offering his guests some dessert
wine that the family hears the commotion growing just
outside the doors of the house.
Lot goes out to see what’s up, sending the women
upstairs, for out of the way is where women belong
when anything exciting happens. But upstairs, Abigail
and Jerusha are able to crack their window and hear
everything from the darkness of their room.
... the men of the city, even the men of Sodom,
compassed the house round, both old and young, all
the people from every quarter: And they called unto Lot,
and said unto him, Where are the men which came in to
thee this night? Bring them out unto us, that we may
know them.
This is the passage, just two words of it really, that
causes so much confusion about this story. The two
words are “men” and “know”. Biblical scholars will
contend that the word used for “men” could also mean
“people,” and in fact is a mixed crowd of Sodomites
surrounding the house: men, women and children.
Again, “men” when referring to the angels. This is yet
another word that means only “mortals,” which might
indicate the crowd didn’t know the gender of the two
visitors. And “know,” while used elsewhere in the Bible
to mean “have sex with,” it is by no means its exclusive
meaning. The people of Sodom may have meant to say,
“that we may torture them to know if they are enemy
spies,” which isn’t particularly hospitable, but there you
are.
It is from these two words that a world of assumptions
was born about the nature of Sodom’s wickedness in
God’s eyes, when it may actually have been a case of
inhospitality, for which God had destroyed cities other
than Sodom. The term “sodomize,” then, might more
properly refer to one’s ill treatment of a guest, as in “I
really sodomized my cousin when I gave him the rattiest
towel in the house.”
Whatever the crowd’s makeup or intentions, they aren’t
kindly toward the strangers, unless they really do simply
want to have sex with them, no rape involved, just a bit
of friendly sodomy, in which case reports of the men’s
physical beauty must have spread like wildfire, or even
brimstone raining from heaven, to get almost the whole
town battering at Lot’s door.
To Abigail and Jerusha, crouching in the dark, listening
to the rabid mob just outside their door, it doesn’t really
matter the meaning of “know,” or whether the chilling
sounds come from men alone, or include the women of
the city. What sudden horror, what panic must overtake
them at hearing their father, their own flesh, their
patriarch and guide, the consummate host, offer them
up, Abigail and Jerusha, virginity intact, in exchange for
leaving his houseguests alone?
Jerusha, being the younger, can’t contain it, her daddy
having offered her to the beasts outside the door, and
she starts from her place below the window, a scream
jumping in her throat. But practical Abigail, quick on the
uptake, clamps a hand over her sister’s mouth, and
listens as the crowd makes its reply, with almost one
voice:
“No. Give us the strangers!”
The girls let out their breath.
“Dad knew they wouldn’t take us, Jerue, he knew it all
the time,” Abigail, shaking, not as certain as her words
make her sound, whispers soothingly in her sister’s ear.
The girls hear the door close, and their father’s voice
below, talking to the strangers. Jerusha creeps closer to
the window, on her knees, and peers out to the street
below. The crowd is greater than she had imagined,
angry people pressing in on the house, pounding at the
door, and a single boy, about eight years old, looks up,
the whites of his eyes showing against his dark skin,
against the dark of the night.
He sees Jerusha. She is unable to move; her mouth
open, she watches the child as he bares his teeth at her
and fills his lungs to call out...and then a milky film slides
over his eyes, whatever he’d planned to say comes out
strangled, the sound of a dog caught in a snare, the cry
taken up by the entire crowd; a darker night has fallen
over them, they wander like blind men, for that is what
they are, struck blind in a breath, lost in rapacious
darkness, blind for the few remaining hours of their lives.
Part II: Flight
It is night: the angels have hurried the family away
from home with predictions of the city’s doom, urging
them on while they still had feet to carry them. There
was little time to pack, a few essentials, maybe some
of the animals, but none of the servants. Even
Abigail and Jerusha’s intended husbands stayed
behind, figuring they could find more reasonable in-
laws there in the city; Lot had seemed like a decent
prospect, a rich guy and a hero to boot, but you
never can tell, a wild-eyed lunatic was lurking all the
time.
It would be comforting, in such a strange and
uncertain time, to think they at least were able to
bring some of the animals. Animals are dumb and
incapable of sin; no need to wipe them away, too,
and they can be so useful for a family on the run.
It is night, then, and the family has slipped out of the
city walls, making for safety for all they’re worth, not
about to question the words of the heavenly
messengers: Get out and don’t look back.
It’s possible that Abigail and Jerusha’s mother took
that injunction metaphorically, as in: Don’t get all
nostalgic for a city that’s about to be reduced to
ashes, is at this moment, as you rush into the night,
being consumed in fire; and maybe already Lot’s wife
can smell the sulfur and burning flesh, can hear the
screams and half-human gurgles escaping from what
were an hour ago healthy and beautiful throats,
maybe she can even pick out the voices of friends or
her sons-in-law-never-to-be.
But emissaries of the Lord should always be taken
literally. Something pulls at her heart, dares her. Just
a glance, it isn’t really a look, not a proper one, just a
bit of flame catching her eye, perhaps; but the Lord
will not be deceived, no matter how infinitesimal the
measure of time that her eyes rest on the dying city,
when God says Don’t look back, He means it, and
Jerusha, following close behind her mom, sees her
head begin to turn and reaches out, not realizing it’s
too late, it’s already done and a shock goes through
her body, straight into the soul that God sees as
clearly as the lips on her face, when her fingers meet
not the warm flesh of her mother’s shoulder, but
crystallized salt – how Biblical, how creative, that Old
Testament God is full of surprises – and Jerusha
bruises her tender fingers on what was her mother,
what still shows the outlines of her mother’s face,
eyes wide open, blindly witnessing the destruction of
their former home.
It is night: the angels have hurried the family away
from home with predictions of the city’s doom, urging
them on while they still had feet to carry them. There
was little time to pack, a few essentials, maybe some
of the animals, but none of the servants. Even
Abigail and Jerusha’s intended husbands stayed
behind, figuring they could find more reasonable in-
laws there in the city; Lot had seemed like a decent
prospect, a rich guy and a hero to boot, but you
never can tell, a wild-eyed lunatic was lurking all the
time.
It would be comforting, in such a strange and
uncertain time, to think they at least were able to
bring some of the animals. Animals are dumb and
incapable of sin; no need to wipe them away, too,
and they can be so useful for a family on the run.
It is night, then, and the family has slipped out of the
city walls, making for safety for all they’re worth, not
about to question the words of the heavenly
messengers: Get out and don’t look back.
It’s possible that Abigail and Jerusha’s mother took
that injunction metaphorically, as in: Don’t get all
nostalgic for a city that’s about to be reduced to
ashes, is at this moment, as you rush into the night,
being consumed in fire; and maybe already Lot’s wife
can smell the sulfur and burning flesh, can hear the
screams and half-human gurgles escaping from what
were an hour ago healthy and beautiful throats,
maybe she can even pick out the voices of friends or
her sons-in-law-never-to-be.
But emissaries of the Lord should always be taken
literally. Something pulls at her heart, dares her. Just
a glance, it isn’t really a look, not a proper one, just a
bit of flame catching her eye, perhaps; but the Lord
will not be deceived, no matter how infinitesimal the
measure of time that her eyes rest on the dying city,
when God says Don’t look back, He means it, and
Jerusha, following close behind her mom, sees her
head begin to turn and reaches out, not realizing it’s
too late, it’s already done and a shock goes through
her body, straight into the soul that God sees as
clearly as the lips on her face, when her fingers meet
not the warm flesh of her mother’s shoulder, but
crystallized salt – how Biblical, how creative, that Old
Testament God is full of surprises – and Jerusha
bruises her tender fingers on what was her mother,
what still shows the outlines of her mother’s face,
eyes wide open, blindly witnessing the destruction of
their former home.
Part III: Making do
In the end, the girls may have reason to suspect their father
has turned into the very paranoid wacko their burnt fiancés
believed him to be, before they were turned to charred
flesh, then bits of bone, then running fat and ashes blowing
in the wind that chased the family, now only three, into exile.
For Lot decided that any city was too dangerous, best to
hole up in a cave, and there the three of them live while Lot
grows old, they must have brought along some of the
animals, otherwise what else could they have lived on for all
these years?
So Lot grows old, his beard grows long and his skin hangs
loose from his bones, while his daughters mature, their hips
filling out while his sink in, they are rounder and slower
moving, and Jerusha dreams every night of the angel with
the hooked nose and long hands that might have known
what to do with a virgin, how to bring her into her womanly
power, for in those days, all a woman’s power lived between
her legs.
So it is that Abigail, ever aware of her familial duties, turns
to her sister and says,
Our father is old, and there is not a man in the earth to
come in unto us after the manner of all the earth: Come, let
us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that
we may preserve seed of our father.
It’s as good an excuse as any. What other prospects do
they have, women now, no longer girls, living in a cave on
the edge of the wilderness? So they get their father drunk,
and Abigail, being the eldest, takes the first turn.
The scriptures here say “he perceived not when she lay
down, nor when she arose,” which we might suppose was
meant to spare him blame for any incestuous act, but
nothing is mentioned about what happens between Abigail
lying down and arising, and he must participate to a certain
extent, biology being what it is. The world has never seen a
man that insensible, that falling-down drunk, whose little
man can still stand up long enough to complete the job, but
this is a time of miracles, and if a mother can become a
hunk of salt between one breath and another and
everything she had ever known burnt in a night, then why
can’t a father be so blind drunk he doesn’t know he’s
impregnating his own daughter?
But Abigail can’t keep all the fun for herself; the next night
it's Jerusha’s turn, so they offer Pops the hair of the dog —
occasional drunkenness, even two nights in a row, not
being a sin in these days — and again Lot is legless but still
well-equipped with the limb that will father two entire tribes
on his daughters’ bodies, and Jerusha creeps into the cave
while Abigail waits out front, serene in the knowledge that
she has fulfilled her duties.
Jerusha finds her father in the dark, blessing that dark and
picturing the angel, she climbs aboard his skinny frame and
does what she can. It isn’t like her dreams and she isn’t
sure how to tell the job is done until she feels wet running
down her thighs and unbecomingly dismounts, hitching one
leg up to bring herself free of the still warm cock, standing
tall for a few seconds longer, slower than she to realize its
work is done. She leaves her father where he lay, a
besotted smile on his face while he dreams of his wife who
no longer exists, or perhaps he dreams that his daughters,
round and smiling, come to him in his blameless stupor.
Maybe he dreams on, of his ripe daughters’ sons, rounding
out their bellies to full moon before bursting out, sons and
grandsons in one, Moab and Benammi, dreams further of
them growing strong and taking wives of their own, fathering
hordes of children, Moabites and Ammonites, into
generations and generations.
And his daughters can set aside the names we’ve lent
them, and lie down in the earth; they’ve fulfilled their
purpose, mothered two races of people; they can rest until
the Lord wakes us all at the end of the world.
Caitlin Myer lives in San Francisco and writes short fiction,
blogging at Chemical Billy.
In the end, the girls may have reason to suspect their father
has turned into the very paranoid wacko their burnt fiancés
believed him to be, before they were turned to charred
flesh, then bits of bone, then running fat and ashes blowing
in the wind that chased the family, now only three, into exile.
For Lot decided that any city was too dangerous, best to
hole up in a cave, and there the three of them live while Lot
grows old, they must have brought along some of the
animals, otherwise what else could they have lived on for all
these years?
So Lot grows old, his beard grows long and his skin hangs
loose from his bones, while his daughters mature, their hips
filling out while his sink in, they are rounder and slower
moving, and Jerusha dreams every night of the angel with
the hooked nose and long hands that might have known
what to do with a virgin, how to bring her into her womanly
power, for in those days, all a woman’s power lived between
her legs.
So it is that Abigail, ever aware of her familial duties, turns
to her sister and says,
Our father is old, and there is not a man in the earth to
come in unto us after the manner of all the earth: Come, let
us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that
we may preserve seed of our father.
It’s as good an excuse as any. What other prospects do
they have, women now, no longer girls, living in a cave on
the edge of the wilderness? So they get their father drunk,
and Abigail, being the eldest, takes the first turn.
The scriptures here say “he perceived not when she lay
down, nor when she arose,” which we might suppose was
meant to spare him blame for any incestuous act, but
nothing is mentioned about what happens between Abigail
lying down and arising, and he must participate to a certain
extent, biology being what it is. The world has never seen a
man that insensible, that falling-down drunk, whose little
man can still stand up long enough to complete the job, but
this is a time of miracles, and if a mother can become a
hunk of salt between one breath and another and
everything she had ever known burnt in a night, then why
can’t a father be so blind drunk he doesn’t know he’s
impregnating his own daughter?
But Abigail can’t keep all the fun for herself; the next night
it's Jerusha’s turn, so they offer Pops the hair of the dog —
occasional drunkenness, even two nights in a row, not
being a sin in these days — and again Lot is legless but still
well-equipped with the limb that will father two entire tribes
on his daughters’ bodies, and Jerusha creeps into the cave
while Abigail waits out front, serene in the knowledge that
she has fulfilled her duties.
Jerusha finds her father in the dark, blessing that dark and
picturing the angel, she climbs aboard his skinny frame and
does what she can. It isn’t like her dreams and she isn’t
sure how to tell the job is done until she feels wet running
down her thighs and unbecomingly dismounts, hitching one
leg up to bring herself free of the still warm cock, standing
tall for a few seconds longer, slower than she to realize its
work is done. She leaves her father where he lay, a
besotted smile on his face while he dreams of his wife who
no longer exists, or perhaps he dreams that his daughters,
round and smiling, come to him in his blameless stupor.
Maybe he dreams on, of his ripe daughters’ sons, rounding
out their bellies to full moon before bursting out, sons and
grandsons in one, Moab and Benammi, dreams further of
them growing strong and taking wives of their own, fathering
hordes of children, Moabites and Ammonites, into
generations and generations.
And his daughters can set aside the names we’ve lent
them, and lie down in the earth; they’ve fulfilled their
purpose, mothered two races of people; they can rest until
the Lord wakes us all at the end of the world.
Caitlin Myer lives in San Francisco and writes short fiction,
blogging at Chemical Billy.
Lucas van Leyden, 1509
| The world has never seen a man that insensible, that falling-down drunk, whose little man can still stand up long enough to complete the job, but this is a time of miracles, and if a mother can become a hunk of salt between one breath and another and everything she had ever known burnt in a night, then why can’t a father be so blind drunk he doesn’t know he’s impregnating his own daughter? |
 | |  | |  |
| ALL CONTENT COPYRIGHT 2009 SHARED SACRIFICE MEDIA |