Read this Hilariously Inventive Biblical Epic by Author Sam Cohen
Author Lorrie Moore once said, “A short story is a love affair, a novel is a marriage.” With Sunday Shorts, OprahMag.com invites you to join our own love affair with short fiction by reading original stories from some of our favorite writers.
Sarahland, Sam Cohen's ingeniously cheeky collection of short fiction, features stories mostly centered around different people named Sarah. The result is a voluptuous volume of various origin stories, ranging from magical to wonderfully mundane, linked not only by the characters' names but by Cohen's coy, audacious storytelling.
It's only fitting that one story takes us back to the very beginning—like, we're talking the Old Testament—where we meet the first Sarah. Here, Sarah had been born "an unremarkable boy" with a warrior's name, Sarai, but she never really vibed with that and so became Sari. She eventually marries Abey, a guy she grew up with (who happens to be her half-brother) whose God-given destiny is to be "the father of many nations."
The problem is that Sari and Abey can't even produce a child of their own. Enter Hagar, a handmaiden gifted to them by the Egyptian king. The three of them become an unlikely family unit, complicated by the burgeoning amorousness between Hagar and Sari.
"The First Sarah" is a divinely hilarious religious romp, as epically thrilling as the best tales in The Good Book, a flirty-fun feminist fable for the ages.
"The First Sarah"
The first Sarah wore her dark curly hair loose to the waist and when she spun, it caught wind and became a parachute of hair, buoyant and rippling. This is how she looked when Abey first fell in love with her, mid-spin, gawping up at an outstretched tree limb, fuchsia petals raining down: a vision. Sarah wasn’t even called Sarah yet; she was still going by her birth name Sarai, but that name’s warrior vibes didn’t suit her and so mostly everyone just called her Sari.
Abey and Sari shared a daddy and so Abey had of course known Sari since she was a born, but as a child, Sari had been dressed in little pants and a kippah and her curls were shorn except payos. Abey had been off studying and when he returned after many years, Sari had grown from an unremarkable boy into a beautiful girl, which is why Abey didn’t recognize his half sibling spinning under the flower tree; he simply thought, this spinning girl will be my wife.
Sari was from before God created the gender binary. We know: in all the paintings, everyone’s got perfect dicks and muscles or else curves and neat slits, but that’s not how it was. How it was was genitalia could look budlike or bloomed, zucchini-ish or more like a berry cluster, like an anemone or a starfish or a pair of sea cucumbers. Bodies came in all different combinations of planar and bumpy. People identified with masculine or feminine dress in ways that matched their genitalia and body type or in ways that did not and no one was mad about it yet.
Sari had genitalia like a young summer squash and Abey like an overripe zucchini, and while this was perhaps not the most common combination of genitalia for a couple in love to have, it was also no big deal. They married.
It was strange, Sari thought, that girls’ joy in their own freedom was so often the thing that made men want to turn them into wives. Sari wasn’t particularly itching to get married, but she knew it was inevitable and Abey was a nice boy and her mother approved, which Sari cared about. It wasn’t a big deal to marry your half brother in those times; there just weren’t enough people on earth for people to start getting picky about incest.
Sari was so pretty, and she delighted in the world around her, making Abey delight in it, too. Sari and Abey honeymooned for years, wandering through the desert enjoying the feel of sun on their skin. They scooped up sand and let it run sparkling through their fingers. They sliced cactuses and grilled them on a fire and fed these sliced, grilled cactuses to each other under the stars. Sari pulled her legs into the air and Abey hardened seeing the little pink star between Sari’s cheeks and he pushed Sari’s knees behind her ears and Sari’s hamstrings smarted so good and she gasped in pleasure and Abey entered her and she felt so full so full. Abey and Sari pushed their fingers, then their squashy parts into each other’s mouths and fell asleep in a dreamy layer of cum and slobber and glittery sand. They rode camels and located constellational shapes the stars made—cacti and castles and clouds. Abey and Sari were the first charters of stars.
Eventually Abey and Sari returned from their outdoorsy adventures. It was time for them to settle down. Their father said so, and so did God. They couldn’t spend their whole lives traipsing around and plucking fruit off trees and coming all over each other; they were Special, or at least Abey was—he was destined, God told him, to be the father of many nations. This confounded Sari a little—how was she going to give birth to the many nations?—but Abey kept insisting that God was going to do a miracle. Sari believed Abey—God did miracles around them all the time. Plus, anatomy wasn’t totally figured out yet and so no one quite knew what internal compartments babies grew in and so Sari and Abey had a different sense than we do of what is possible. They just knew that external holes connected mysteriously to internal tubes and chambers and so it seemed not impossible that a tiny baby could take root in one of Sari’s chambers. Sari had a rounded little belly and at least one non-mouth hole from which outside things could enter into and emerge from the belly, transformed, and that seemed like maybe enough.
So Sari and Abey moved into a nice house with cool stone floors and thick braided rugs and abundant fruit trees and animals. They had servants to scrub the floors and bring fresh water and tend to the animals and help with cooking—Sari liked to cook still; transforming bits of the land into something edible brought her joy.
Sari loved the idea of getting pregnant. The truth was, after a couple years, she was feeling restless inside this settled life. Abey went to work, and Sari stayed home and lounged and cooked a little and felt like each day had too many hours. A baby, she thought, would give her reason to explore again— to sing, to traipse, to whirl, to pluck fruit from trees. She’d visit Abey’s room in the creamiest and silkiest of nighties and cat-pose on the bed or pull her knees to her chest and purse her lips seductively. After Abey finished, she’d put her feet up on the wall in Abey’s room as Abey davened and chanted his Baruch atahs.
But the davening never worked. No child rooted in Sari’s mysterious internal chambers. Abey grew increasingly frustrated. He ate too much cake and drank too much wine and slept poorly. He resented Sari for being an impediment to his destiny. “I’m supposed to father many nations,” he whined.
“What does God say, babe?” Sari asked, as sweetly as possible, rubbing Abey’s back.
“I’ll talk to ’im,” Abey said, macho-ly.
Meanwhile, it was winter and the rains never came. The land grew fallow. Wheat never sprouted, leafy greens shriveled up yellow just as soon as they appeared.
The sheep were growing sick and thin and the dried grain used for chicken feed was running out. Sari was frying eggs the servants had brought from the chicken coop when Abey came into the kitchen.
“I talked to God,” Abey announced.
“Oh yeah, what’d he say, hon?” Sari asked, flipping an egg.
“He says we should go south into Egypt, where we can stock up.”
“What does that mean, stock up?” Sari asked, plating their food.
“I’m not sure,” said Abey. “Anyway, a trip would be nice.”
“I think so, too,” Sari said.
Camels pulled the wagon that led Abey and Sari south to Egypt. On the wagon, the sun shone all over them. Sari sat behind Abey, straddling his back with her long naked legs as he drove, kissing sweat off his bare shoulders. The sun beat down; their bodies slipped and glistened. At night, Sari made a fire and Abey cooked potatoes and goose over it and later at night Sari and Abey gazed at the tiny tiny stars in the dark dark sky and Sari said, “I see a deer’s head” and Abey said “I see it, too,” and even later at night Sari draped her body over the hump of a sleepy camel and glanced seductively back at Abey; Abey slid into her from behind and held her hips and pushed like he was trying to live inside her body. In the nights of their desert travel, no one thought about babies or their legacy or the future nations and their love felt fresh again.
In Egypt, Sari and Abey were received at the palace of a king. “I’m Abey and this is my sister Sari,” Abey said. He didn’t know why he introduced Sari as his sister. It wasn’t untrue, but it seemed it should be more true that Sari was his wife. He wondered whether “wife” made her seem too much like property in his mind, if “sister” cast her as a separate and equalish individual. Somehow, he realized, he liked better to think of them as brother and sister than as husband and wife. “We are in a famine,” Abey explained, “and God instructed us to come to you. We’ve brought rugs and spices.”
The king ordered that a feast be cooked, duck and rice and cucumber salad, za’atar flatbread and wine in goblets, chocolate baklava. A great staff of servants brought gleaming plates and took them away. The men talked about cures for famine and international politics while Sari sat in silence trying to eat her duck and rice daintily even though she was ravenous after many days of desert travel. Abey watched the way that the king and his son looked at Sari during the meal, as though it was her they’d rather be eating.
“It was brilliant that you introduced me as your sister,” Sari whispered later, in the hallway outside their adjacent sleeping chambers.
“Brilliant?” Abey asked.
“Well, I am very beautiful,” Sari explained, batting her eyes campily, realizing that Abey was pure-hearted and not so crafty and probably did not plan this out after all, “and now that I’m single, they’ll almost definitely want my hand in marriage for one of the king’s sons. They’ll give us gifts to convince Daddy and we’ll survive the drought.”
“This is why God sent us here!” Abey realized. While many people believed in a God who cared about all his babies equally, Abey knew that he was Chosen, Special, like a true son to God. God had chosen him to father many nations, after all, and would have no problem tricking some less important king out of some animals and grain in order to get those nations birthed.
Indeed, the next morning the king asked Abey whether he would give Sari to be married to his son. “I’m honored,” Abey said. “But it isn’t for me to give that permission. Send us with gifts to present to our father. He is searching for a husband for Sari, and he’s very picky. But I know my daddy. He’ll be convinced by gifts that show him Sari will have a healthy, prosperous life. Send us back with gifts that assure him of this, and he’ll say yes.”
“Go right away then,” said the king, “so that we might get an answer soon.”
The king ordered servants to load Abey and Sari’s wagon with foods that might carry them through their drought: dried figs and apricots, sacks of rice, wheels of cheese, pomegranates, two lambs for slaughter, two baby goats for milk. The king gifted an extra camel, too, to pull the now quite heavy wagon.
When the wagon was loaded, the king’s son emerged from his chambers with a girl, barely teenaged, whom he directed by the shoulders. The girl walked shyly, doe-eyed and long-lashed and dark. “This is Hagar,” the king’s son said. “She is the daughter of my mother’s handmaiden. I’d like to gift her to Sari.”
Hagar knelt to the stone floor, bowed her head, and kissed Sari’s feet.
“Oh, honey,” Sari said. “That kind of subservience isn’t necessary. We’re very casual people. Come on, stand up.” Sari reached for Hagar’s hands and pulled her to her feet. “Thank you so much,” Sari said to the king’s son, putting her arms around Hagar. “I’ve never had my own girl before.”
On the road back, Sari resumed her position with her legs behind Abey and Hagar sat in back with the baby animals.
“What will we tell the king?” Sari asked.
“We’ll just tell him Dad found a boy for you back home while we were gone and we’re so sorry,” Abey shrugged.
Watching Hagar climb down from the wagon in front of the stone house, Sari felt newly struck by how young Hagar was, this child who’d been sent so far away from everything she knew. “Come on, baby doll, you’ve had a long journey. Why doesn’t everyone have some supper and then we’ll have someone show you the servant’s quarters.”
Hagar’s presence rejuvenated Sari. Sari showed Hagar how to slice and grill cactus, she went walking with Hagar and collected dates and figs. Sari taught Hagar to accentuate her eyes with kohl and showed her how nice it is to spin under flowering trees in springtime. They spun side by side in the blue blue sky. Hagar bathed Sari in a large metal tub, pouring cups of water onto Sari’s neck and shoulders, rubbing soap under Sari’s arms. Hagar braided Sari’s curly hair and rubbed floral creams into Sari’s skin. Neither Hagar nor Sari could read, but they made up stories about girls and frogs and princes and witches and scary cats and told them to one another again and again, promising to remember the details the other forgot, filling in gaps for each other until eventually it was unclear who’d invented the story and who’d filled in the gaps.
On walks, they invented names for all the unnamed flowers.
Flipsissirilla, cupthula, wisteria, pudus.
In the tub, Hagar soaped Sari’s back and rubbed the dead skin off her heels with stones. One day Sari asked Hagar to get in the tub with her and on that day, she first saw what was between Hagar’s legs, saw what looked like two nestled slugs.
When Sari couldn’t sleep, she called Hagar in to hold her: it wouldn’t have been appropriate to enter her husband’s room to rouse him just for this; Abey had such important work to do, but this was Hagar’s whole job, she justified. Hagar spooned Sari from behind and rubbed her shoulders and whispered sweet words like “You are drifting off on a puff of cloud shaped just like a dragon, Mistress, and your hair is made of long feathers” until Sari slept and Sari knew that this was what she wanted a girl for, all of this.
As the years passed, Abey grew despondent. “I’m supposed to father many nations,” he sighed, as if in a daze.
“There, there, sweetheart,” Sari said. She was experiencing a new youth with Hagar, baking experimental fruit pies and drinking tea under the moon. She wasn’t thinking much about future nations.
Still, Sari was sad about her marriage. She wished Abey would just explode at her, some outpouring of emotion that at least meant they were connecting, but instead he greeted her distantly, absorbed in his work. Abey began to retire to his room at the end of the day to take his supper alone. Sari visited Abey’s room once weekly, on Sabbath eve, for rote, baby-focused sex, sex during which Abey pumped mechanically and kept his eyes on the wall.
Sex grew worse and worse as the years and the trying went on. Abey used to rub and suck Sari’s baby squash until it spurted in overwhelming delight, used to bite her nipples and caress her butt at generous length, but lately Abey only paid attention to Sari’s hole, to the part that seemed necessary for child production. And since Sari was not producing any children, she found this extremely un-hot.
Eventually, the magic of having a girl around wore off a little, too.
“I’m bored,” Sari said.
“I’m bored, too,” Hagar confessed.
“I wish we had a baby,” Sari said. She hadn’t meant to say “we,” but once it was out of her mouth, new things became possible. She looked at Hagar’s face and saw a glimmer, Hagar’s recognition of the possibilities, too.
“Yes,” Hagar said, “I wish for that, too, Mistress.”
“We’ll have to convince Abey it’s his idea,” Sari said.
The next Sabbath eve, Sari visited Abey’s chamber.
“Do you think it’s hopeless?” Sari asked, after Abey finished. “We’ve been trying this for so many years.”
“We have to keep trying,” Abey said, but his eyes were just squints with eye-sized bags underneath and he sounded defeated. “You know we do, Sari.”
“Ugh,” Sari exclaimed, tossing her fists down at her sides. “I just feel like it’s all my fault, like my body’s wrong. Like, I’ve seen what Hagar has and you know what it looks like down there? It’s two fat little slugs, nestling together, and I just feel like those slugs are nestling to protect a hole, the hole that goes up to where the baby lives, and maybe I just don’t have that hole.”
“Of course you do, babe,” Abey said, rubbing Sari between her shoulders. “It’s right here,” he said, tenderly pushing her little pink star.
Sari began to cry and cry, real tears. It wasn’t until she described Hagar’s slugs out loud that she knew for sure she did not have what it took to make a baby. Abey held her while she cried for her inadequacy, for her own stupidity all these years, for ruining Abey’s destiny, for her dissolved marriage, etc. until she fell asleep in Abey’s bed.
The next day, Abey requested to have dinner with Sari. It had been a long time. Lamb and rice tabbouleh were prepared, red wine poured.
“So, I talked to God,” Abey said. Sari raised her eyebrows expectantly.
“He wants that I should ask you something.” He looked deeply into Sari’s eyes and touched her hand. “Would you lend me Hagar? To carry our child, I mean?”
Sari feigned surprise. She set down her wineglass. “Wow,” she said. “I have to think about it. It would be hard,” she said, realizing it was true.
“She’ll just be an external baby cooker,” said Abey. “For our baby.”
“Right,” Sari said.
“Honey, look,” Abey said, rubbing her hand. “Hagar is our property. We can put her to use in whatever way best serves us. Plus, it’s what God suggests.”
“It’s a suggestion that makes a lot of sense,” Sari said. “Baruch ha shem,” she added, feeling like maybe it sounded disrespectful for her to determine whether God’s suggestions made sense or not.
“Spend a night and think about it,” said Abey. “It’s your decision.”
Sari slept alone that night. This was her idea that she’d planted into Abey’s brain and now she kind of hated it. The next morning, Sari was sitting at her vanity, pinning her curls up in scorpion-shell combs and thinking when Hagar came in with fresh sheets. “Abey’s agreed to the plan,” Sari said coolly, eyeing Hagar in the mirror’s reflection for part of a second. “You’ll come with me next Shabbas to Abey’s room and he’ll try to put our baby in you.” The “our” was vague and Sari liked it that way. It left open that Hagar might be included in the baby’s parentage or she might not.
Hagar clutched the sheets she was holding, stopped still. “That wasn’t the plan,” she said slowly.
Sari kept gazing at Hagar in the mirror as she coiled a chunk of hair around her finger and pinned it back. “We didn’t make a plan,” Sari said. “Anyway, plans are not ours to make.”
“The plan . . . ” Hagar started. “Never mind.” Hagar could see that Sari seemed distant and vexed. She lowered her head and made a hospital corner.
Hagar’s plan, which she thought Sari understood via their psychic connection and subtle communication, came from Mother Nature. Mother Nature, herself a fat, furry, and oozing dyke, was sick of God always having the upper hand. “I’m not a fan of that God,” Mother Nature told Hagar. “He’s always trying to shrink things to fit his ego. The earth is magnificent, fruit everywhere, flowing water, continuous joyous eating and fucking on every level of existence, a never-ending cacophonous gorgeous throbbing of attraction and pursuit and swallowing and merging and birthing but that God, he wants everything contained and organized,” Mother Nature said. “He will kill me eventually, run the waterfalls dry and sterilize the soil and kill all the tiny creatures that make the fruits grow, kill all the mushrooms small and great that enable plants to talk to one another and to the creatures who eat them. If it were up to God, no one would get any messages from the plants, and voila, I’m dead.” Mother Nature wanted Hagar and Sari to make the baby, she said, and to leave Abey out of it. “I am not in favor of nations,” Mother Nature told Hagar. “Lesbians should be the mothers of the future humans of this earth. And you and Sari will be able to make a baby.”
Once Sari agreed to lend Hagar, Abey warmed to her again. With Abey’s affection, Sari began to look at things differently. I love Hagar and I love Abey, Sari thought. Maybe it would be nice to see them love each other.
We know the sex scene with Abey, Sari, and Hagar was sterilized in that book that’s in every hotel nightstand drawer and then copied to very creepy effect in The Handmaid’s Tale, but look: Sari was not standing behind Hagar chastely holding her hands. We’re not going to describe it all here, but we can tell you that it started with Hagar in cat pose with Abey behind her and Hagar and Sari face-to-face, and ended with all three passed out in a haphazard pile with limbs everywhere extending to all corners of the bed.
From then on, they all dined together, Hagar at Sari’s side and Abey across the table.
“Hagar is like an extension of you now, babe,” Abey said. “She’s your womb.”
This statement grossed out both Sari and Hagar who, for different reasons, were invested in seeing Hagar as a separate person.
After dinner, Hagar followed Sari into her room to unpin her hair.
“Do you think you’re pregnant, darling?” Sari asked as chunks of curls shook loose from their pins.
“Of course not,” Hagar responded. “A child can only take root when the moon is new, when it’s dark, I mean, or the tiniest sliver of a crescent.” She unclasped a hairpin. “Our activity took place under a half moon.”
“If you knew your body wouldn’t conceive under the half moon,” Sari said, clearly irritated, “why would you have us engage in such activity at all?”
“Did you not have fun?” Hagar asked, a corner of her lip turning into a smile, which Sari could see in the mirror in front of her.
Sari sighed. “It complicates the dynamic.”
“Or it could simplify the dynamic,” Hagar said, beginning to brush Sari’s hair. “Mistress?” Hagar said. “I have a plan, is the thing. I would like to tell you, but I hope you won’t be angry.”
“I’m sort of angry already, honey,” Sari said.
“I thought you and I could do it,” Hagar said quickly, with childish enthusiasm she couldn’t contain. “I thought we could make the many nations together. I think we can.”
Sari felt stunned. She hadn’t considered that the two of them could make a baby. But she liked the idea of no longer being left out of the very Special baby-making. “It’s not what God wants,” Sari said.
“Well, Abey would never have to know,” Hagar tried nervously.
Sari chewed on a hairpin and thought about this. “It’s a good idea,” she said. “Please be in charge of making it happen.”
When the moon was empty, Hagar laid Sari out on the bed like a beautiful virgin, in a cream silk robe and squatted over Sari’s center. The slugs at Hagar’s own center parted in order to suck on the little pink summer squash between Sari’s thighs and the muscular cavern Hagar’s slugs protected swallowed and Sari moaned and Hagar bounced her hips and shouted as if possessed. Sari screamed out and Hagar extracted out the seawaterish potion that she knew was there, that she knew could make a baby under the dark moon.
During the pregnancy, Sari rubbed Hagar’s feet and ordered her special teas. She invited Hagar to sleep beside her, so she could hold her around her center and whisper to their baby, so she could feel its first kick.
“The two of you truly are as one flesh,” Abey remarked biblically, seeing Hagar and Sari huddled together over Hagar’s eight-month belly.
“Ew,” Sari whispered when he walked away. Both women giggled.
When Ishmael was born, Abey said that he looked just like Sari. He was trying to be kind, only, but it was true. Ishmael had Sari’s loose curls and clear cattish eyes, Hagar’s straighter nose and plumper lips. Sari and Hagar each felt a deep sense of connection to and even ownership of the baby. Of course, Abey did, too.
“God is so happy you’ve finally given birth to my baby that he would like to change your name,” Abey said to Sari. “Because of your great sacrifice, God wants to give you a more womanly name,” Abey said. “He’d like to rename you Sarah.”
Mother Nature was thrilled upon Ishmael’s birth. She believed that lesbian mothers would thwart the building of nations, that from here on out, humanity would be gawping up at tree limbs, slicing and grilling cacti, cumming all over each other in the sand, eating the magical mushrooms she’d strewn around for them so that they could talk to the plants. Mother Nature’s waterfalls surged foamily in celebration; her mud pits burbled wetly; her cicadas cast off their shells and sang; the tiniest soil creatures stirred with desire to merge and swallow and birth, a volcano somewhere erupted in joy.
For the first couple of years, more fruit grew, more rains came and Hagar and Sarah were happy. Each felt the dissolution that comes with new motherhood. They felt blurred at the edges, with the baby, the fruit, the sand, each other. Sarah got Hagar her own maid so that both women could lounge, make up stories and tell them to the baby, cuddle, present Ishy with different fruits and desert flowers, watch and laugh as he smashed the fragrant colors into his face. Hagar breastfed and Sarah rocked the baby to sleep. They all three spooned.
Abey loved to see the bond between the baby and his mom and his nursemaid. He and Sarah were on a post-baby sex break. Sometimes Sarah and Hagar would plot out how to get Abey to come over and sexually service each of them, but instead they’d end up laughing and then kissing and cuddling and sometimes lazily rubbing each other to orgasm while Ishy slept in his cradle.
But after Ishmael began to talk, Abey invited Sarah to a serious dinner. Sarah got out of her floral robe and into a fitted dress, and joined Abey for duck and tubers and wine.
“It’s been so wonderful that Hagar has been able to be so present in the baby’s life,” Abey said.
“It totally has,” Sarah said.
“And that you’ve been so comfortable with her and Ishmael’s connection,” he added.
“I have,” Sarah said, nervously swooshing her wine in the glass.
“Really, it’s beautiful to watch,” Abey said, serving Sarah some duck from a large platter. “But now that the child is weaned, I think it’s time for Hagar to return to the servant’s quarters, and for Ishmael to get his own room.”
Sarah didn’t want things to change, but what could she say? She had known, throughout the idyll of Ishy’s infancy, that this couldn’t last forever, this mushy time of flower-smelling and afternoon naps, this blur of day and night. She hadn’t thought about it a lot, but she had known.
“I’ve gotten Ishmael a tutor,” Abey said. “He’ll begin his training next week.”
Sarah balked at the word “training.” Like a dancing bear, she thought. “I’m sad to realize he’s growing up so fast,” Sarah admitted. “But you’re right, he has to be schooled.”
“Sar?” Abey asked, placing a hand on Sarah’s shoulder. “Please see that Hagar’s time with Ishmael is limited. I love that you’ve all been close during Ishmael’s babyhood, and it made sense, since Hagar was nursing, but a growing boy really shouldn’t be too attached to his nursemaid.”
Sarah squirmed away from Abey’s hand and glowered at her duck. “I wish I had known you felt this way before Hagar and Ishy were practically inseparable,” she said.
“Babies are taken from maids all the time,” Abey said. “Both acclimate. Ishmael needs to be clear that you are his mother. Don’t you want that?” He parked his fork in the duck and used his knife to lob off a piece. “You don’t want Ishy to be confused.”
Confusion didn’t seem like the worst imaginable thing to Sarah who, herself, felt confused. But then she understood that this was the way things happened. Ishmael was supposed to be the beginning of the nations Abey was supposed to father, and nation-founders probably weren’t flower-sniffing daytime snugglers.
“Okay,” Sarah agreed, “I’ll move Hagar out.”
Sarah spoke coldly when she announced the news to Hagar. It would have been too painful to do it any other way. “We have to get real, honey,” she said. “Ishy’s going to be a prince or whatever, and we have to let Abey get him groomed for that. I mean, that was the whole point of all of this.”
“God’s nations,” Hagar said. She didn’t really have an argument to make in response, at least not one she thought would be well-received.
Hagar packed a bag and walked the one hundred and seven steps from Sarah and Ishmael’s room to her own long-abandoned hut calmly, closed the door behind her, and then collapsed on her lumpy mattress thrown in the corner of the cold stone floor and wept.
But soon they settled into a new routine: Ishmael was tutored during the day, supped with Sarah, and was put to bed by Hagar just before Sarah was put to bed by Hagar.
“Shouldn’t you put Ishmael to bed?” Abey asked Sarah. “I’m tired,” Sarah said, but the truth was she felt giving
Hagar a little bit of daily solo time with Ishy—a chance to tell him her stories and kiss his face—was the least she could do.
All three learned the feeling of sleeping alone. Sleeping alone, all three dreamed more vividly, but no one was there to hold them tight when they made little nightmare sounds. Occasionally, Ishmael would run down the hall to Sarah’s room and climb into bed with her. Sarah feigned irritation but was happy to have Ishmael’s little limbs clutching her, happy to run her fingers through his soft baby hair until they both fell asleep again. Occasionally, too, Sarah would creep out the door, careful not to let it creak, and walk the one hundred and seven steps through the sand to Hagar’s hut where Hagar pretended to acquiesce to Sarah’s needy caresses, but was mostly thrilled to receive her. On these nights, they rubbed against each other like they were starving, inserting fingers and tongues every- where. And then Sarah was gone.
One night, when Ishmael was five, Sarah and Abey hosted a feast to show off their tiny future leader. All kinds of Special people from neighboring clans attended. Hagar served at the feast, carrying platters of various kinds of fowl, sliced figs, rice, and green vegetables. She couldn’t help thinking about planting those vegetables side by side with Sarah, with the baby on her hip, about letting Ishy pick figs and smush them into his mouth.
Because she was perceived as background, Hagar heard people whisper about how dark the young child was, darker than both Sarah and Abey, and this pleased her, but everyone also commented on how poised Ishy was, how serious and quiet. Ishmael looked so natural in formalwear, they all said, you could see that he was indeed going to be a leader.
For her part, Sarah found great pleasure in dressing up in gowns, in having Hagar pin her hair up glamorously like old times. She loved being pulled in a wagon by camel for the several acres to the tent that had been set up for the occasion and feeling Ishmael’s little body fall asleep against her during the ride. She loved being admired by so many strangers, being called beautiful, being told her child was beautiful.
Hagar went back to her hut early—there were lesser servants to pour late-night wine, to clean up the mess.
Sarah appeared, drunk and far past midnight, at Hagar’s bedside. Hagar invited her to lie down. She held Sarah and stroked her hair and then said plainly, “Sari, I’m going to leave.” (She had never gotten used to calling Sarah by the name God chose.)
Sarah’s first response was to laugh, as though Hagar was playing a fantasy game. “Where will you go?” she asked.
“I’m not sure,” Hagar answered. “But I hate this. I want to be a mother to our child. I want our child to call me mother and I want to be presented as his mother and I want to choose how he is raised. I don’t even know who Ishmael is now—he’s like a dancing bear, all the wildness trained out of him. And I’ve just been forgotten. Now that he eats food that doesn’t come from my body, I have no purpose here.”
Sarah recoiled a little despite herself. It’s easy to feel disgust with desperation when you have mostly everything you want.
“I haven’t forgotten you,” Sarah said.
“That’s great,” said Hagar. “Because I want you and Ishmael to come. We can go where we can be a family.”
“Where do you propose we go?” Sarah asked, sounding more amused than she would have liked.
“We’ll take the carriage and go until we find somewhere we can live. We’ll take animals and skeins of water and seeds and a tent. People have been doing this for all of time.”
“We can’t,” Sarah said. “Why not?” Hagar asked.
The truth was Sarah had grown accustomed to luxury. She still enjoyed desert strolls and short journeys, but she loved her bed, her silk dressing gown, her floral creams, her vanity, her chickens. She relied on having servants to cook her goose when she wanted.
“I can’t,” Sarah clarified.
“Oh,” Hagar said. “I see.”
“I’ll help you get back to Egypt if that would suit you better. You’ve served me well and I would miss you awfully, but I want you to be happy.”
“I hadn’t thought about that,” said Hagar, “but I guess Ishmael and I could go to Egypt.”
“Ishmael?” Sarah said. “You literally cannot. Ishmael is mine and Abey’s according to law. You know that, honey.”
And this is how Hagar came to kidnap her own baby in the middle of the night and wander out into the desert, disappearing for years. She was not about to make decisions based on notions of people as property according to law. She followed the laws of Mother Nature, which were governance only by hunger and love. Hagar felt she was not abandoning Sarah, but that Sarah had abandoned her, had become someone totally unknown to her, someone who failed to recognize who she was, who they had been together, who they and their child could be. It was easier than she thought it would be, to enter the house quietly, to pack up food and water, to rouse Ishy, to take his hand and leave.
Sarah sunk into a loneliness like she’d never known. The trees no longer brought her joy and nothing else did either, not sex nor affection nor roasted goose. She was so old. Publicly, out of simple exhaustion, she endorsed the gossip about her evil maid who stole her only child and fled, nodding along and making noises of lazy assent to whomever was speaking. Privately, she ate very little, braided and unbraided her hair, began to visit Abey’s room on Shabbas again for sweet and lazy or rote and disconnected love, depending on her mood.
You know the rest of the story: God decided Sarah had proved her loyalty to him and somehow therefore proved her femininity, too, and so he finally did the miracle Sarah had wanted so long ago, but which she had given up thinking about entirely. Sarah became pregnant. She named the baby Isaac so that she could call him Izzy, which was close to Ishy.
Hagar and Ishmael, meanwhile, camped, foraged, and made fires at night to stay warm. Hagar told Ishmael stories she’d grown up on and stories she’d invented with Sarah. They developed skills by eating plants and mushrooms and listening to the voice of Mother Nature, and they collected rainwater to drink.
One day, the rainwater ran out. Hagar and Ishmael grew sick and weak. Hagar began to see visions of the angel of death. She did not want to die, but more than that, she did not want Ishmael to die. She called upon Mother Nature. I do not do miracles, Mother Nature shrugged. But lucky for you, there is a spring a little ways up. Walk directly toward the sun and soon you’ll get to drink.
Hagar walked and walked toward the sun with Ishy, now a tall child of uncountable wild years, beside her. Eventually she collapsed in a bawling heap, unable to go further, sure they would both die. It was God who spoke to her then.
“Congratulations, Hagar,” God said, in the voice of a game show host. “You have made it to the spring. However, I have hidden the spring from you.”
Hagar wanted to scream that God was a fucking prick but instead she asked, “Oh God, whatever can I do for you to make the spring reappear?”
“If you agree to return to Abey’s house, so that Ishmael can fulfill his destiny of fathering a great nation, I will unhide the spring.”
Forced between allowing her child to father nations and allowing her child to die, Hagar agreed. There was time, she reasoned, to get out of nation-fathering later. So God unhid the spring and they drank and Hagar returned to the stone house in terror for her child.
Sarah’s heart leapt at seeing Hagar, but she acted reserved. She couldn’t risk being abandoned again—her pain was too great. The two never shared a bed again, except very close to the time of Sarah’s death.
Izzy and Ishy lived under the same roof as brothers. Izzy was studious and prissy and well-kept; Ishy had regained his wild-ness in the desert and was outdoorsy and muscular and could talk to plants. Sarah spent her attention on Izzy but watched Ishy longingly, with love and pride—he seemed truly like her and Hagar’s child. Their love still mingled in him and seeing it there made Sarah’s heart swell.
Ishy resented Izzy’s prissiness and mocked him for it. Izzy resented Ishy’s strength and wisdom and tried always to engage him in the sorts of competitions he was certain to win. Privately, Ishy studied, and he learned quickly and began to surpass Izzy. Privately, Izzy went out to the desert to try to regain his wildness—he would feel Mother Nature’s power for a moment, witnessing a yellow flower emerge from the top of a cactus or a leaping baby jackrabbit with ears shaped like the succulents around him, but ultimately, Izzy was too close to God. In some ways, it was an average sort of sibling rivalry, but the nations they birthed are still warring. “That’s how it is with nations,” we can hear Mother Nature croak from her deathbed. “Nations war.” God has of course vanquished Mother Nature; many of her rivers are trickles and most of her plants are mute, but sometimes we find the ones that aren’t, and then, in the creakiest and most staticky of voices, we can hear her.
She told us this story after we ate some foraged mushrooms in aquafaba cream sauce over orecchiette but she cut out every two seconds and we had to fill in the gaps and in the end we’re not sure if we’ve transcribed it faithfully, or if we’ve made it all up.
Sam Cohen is the author of the debut collection Sarahland, forthcoming in March from Grand Central Publishing.
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