Rebekah: Women of Genesis by Orson Scott Card Page A

tired.”
     
    Rebekah got up at once and kissed her father, then embraced him tightly. He could not hear her voice, but she knew he would understand how she was thanking him. He was not going to make her marry Ezbaal. He was even considering taking a wife he didn’t want, just to spare her the unhappiness of having children with a man who did not serve God.
     
    Rebekah was the first one out of Father’s tent, and suddenly she found herself being shoved forward—and not gently, either. She turned around, furious, to find that Laban was just as angry. “How dare you! You selfish halfwit!”
     
    “How dare I what?” she said. “I didn’t hear you volunteering to marry Ezbaal’s sister!”
     
    “Do you know what it would mean to me, to have Ezbaal’s sons as my nephews? We could have raised our sons together to be friends, and who would stand against our families through all the grasslands?”
     
    “Who cares?” said Rebekah. “If they don’t serve God, they’re no different from any other desert herdsmen.”
     
    “They’ll serve God, under one name or another.”
     
    “I can’t believe you would say something that ignorant.”
     
    Pillel stepped between them. “Your voices can be heard.”
     
    They both knew that it was disastrous in a negotiation to let your opponent know what you really wanted. They fell silent at once, but Laban gave her one last look of distaste before he stalked off toward his tent.
     
    Rebekah looked at Pillel, but he, too, was already walking away. Whatever he thought of her, at least he had agreed that her idea of Father marrying Akyas was a good one. No matter what stupid plans Laban might have had—easy for him to plan, he didn’t have to do the marrying right now—she had found a way to obey God without causing the family to have an enemy.
     
    Back in Rebekah’s tent, Deborah had been dozing, but she woke up when Rebekah came inside. “What, what? Tell me!” she demanded.
     
    Rebekah put her finger to her lips. “We have to speak very quietly. Voices carry at night, and Father has a lot of negotiation to do tomorrow.” She sat down beside Deborah and leaned in close. “I won’t have to marry Ezbaal.”
     
    She expected Deborah to be delighted, but that would have been too simple. “You mean we don’t get to go off together and have babies?”
     
    “Someday we will,” said Rebekah. “When God wills.”
     
    “Oh all right,” said Deborah. “But don’t make me wait forever. I want to hold your babies and take care of them.”
     
    “You’ll have plenty of chance to do that.”
     
    “How?” said Deborah. “Everybody said there was no better husband in the world than Ezbaal, so who will you marry now?”
     
    “Hush now, everybody might say that but it doesn’t make it true. A man who doesn’t serve the Lord can’t possibly be the best husband for me. ”
     
    “You could teach him,” said Deborah.
     
    “Hush, now, hush, I need to sleep. And aren’t you just a little bit glad we don’t have to leave home right now?”
     
    Deborah shrugged fretfully and turned over to go back to sleep.
     
    Rebekah lay down on her bed and stared upward into the darkness above her. Everything had worked out after all. She had figured out a way to serve God and still keep the family safe and Father happy. The curse of being pretty and having a rich father wasn’t so bad if you were also smart enough to figure things out.
     
    She was just dozing off with these thoughts spinning in her mind when all at once she realized what she was actually saying. At once she leapt from her bed and knelt in the tent, looking upward toward heaven. “Oh Lord,” she said, softly and miserably, “is there anyone more foolish and ungrateful than I am? All this was thy doing, and not my own at all. Thou gavest me the courage to say no to the marriage, and thou didst soften the hearts of my father and Pillel so they could hear me. Surely the plan that came into my mind was