STORY: When I Named the Kangaroo

     "The woman took of its fruit and ate and tried to give some to her husband also but he would not eat. . ."

     "Adam?" The soft voice came again, a little less confidently.
     Before his eyes the purple fruit trembled, its surface slick with dew as she held it out to him. Shiny trails of juice ran down her hand to her elbow and purple pulp was under her fingernails.
     "It's all right," she urged. "I ate some. It was good." Her wide, earnest expression contrasted with the absurd goatee dripping from her chin to the ground.
     With an effort, he raised his stunned eyes from the fruit in her extended hand, pulling hers into focus. "But God said--"
     "He said it was good. And it is."
     "Everything He made is good," he agreed, seeing behind her the great leafed dome, weighed down with purple spheres. He became aware of the breeze softly riffling its branches, bees purring among its white blossoms. "But the fruit is not for us, Eve."
     "It tastes good," she insisted. "If it tastes good, He would want us to eat it, wouldn't He?"
     He reached out to touch her sticky hand. "Why, Eve? Why would you want it, when we have so much?"
     She drew her hand from his and took another bite without speaking.
     "He gives us mangoes and papaya and pineapple. We have aspens that tremble in the lightest air and sunlight through maple leaves. We have the smell of the moist earth after a rain and of jasmine at twilight and a thousand shades of color reflected in the sea at sunset. Only this tree, only this fruit, He has forbidden us. Is that so much to ask?"
     "But knowledge is good," she persisted. "What is wrong with knowing good and evil and deciding for ourselves?" She turned and jerked more fruit from the tree, leaving the pits, coated with shredded fruit, dangling from their stems. "Have some!"
     "We don't need that knowledge," he reasoned. "If something is good, He will tell us. Why would we want to decide for ourselves when the One who is wise can decide for us? You have done what He said brings death and I am afraid for you."
     "You are stupid," she said, making up the word. "Maybe death is good, how do you know? Besides, we won't die. Look at me! I didn't."
     The implications of this were too much for him.
     "The Lord said--"
     Her eyes, her outstretched hand, waited. In the silence, she could not say, "He was wrong," and Adam would not think it. He turned away.
     Then she was angry.
     "Don't you believe me?" she argued. "I tell you, I ate some and nothing happened."
     "I believe you," he said uncomfortably.
     "Well?"
     Because he didn't know what else to do, he covered his ears and ran away.
     Then she pouted. She would not speak to him and when he brought her the choicest of the sugar cane and the artichoke, as he always did, she flipped her head away and gave her attention instead to a lamb, crooning over it and scratching its back through its thick wool.
     For the first time, he couldn't understand her.
     When he heard the rustle of day settling into dusk, he was relived to see the Lord coming toward him as He did every evening.
     "Where is she?" asked the Lord.
     Adam looked around. Eve had crouched behind a sleeping emu, trying to pull some of its feathers up around her neck.
     "Leave me alone!" she shouted defensively. "I don't like You anymore!"
     "Have you eaten the fruit I commanded you not to eat?" The Lord's words were thunder but His look was rain.
     "The serpent told me to," she said, her voice loud and tense. She avoided His gaze. "He said my eyes would be opened and I would be wise, like You." She stood up abruptly, looked the Lord in the face and hurled her words at Him.
     "The serpent was right! You said I'd die--but I didn't die! I am wise! I'm like You! I can decide for myself what is good and what is evil. You wanted to keep me from knowing, didn't You? But I have the right to know!" Her eyes narrowed. "Yes, I ate the fruit--and I'm glad I did!"
     The Lord turned to Adam. And you? He asked with His eyes.
     Adam gazed into the Lord's face. "You told us not to," he said simply.
     Turning back to Eve, the Lord said, "Because you have disobeyed, I will put alienation between you and your husband. You will hunger for his love and never be filled by it. You will long for his touch and never permit it."
     The woman looked at the ground as He spoke, her arms crossed in front of her body. Now her voice was barely audible but edged with resentment. "Why didn't You tell me I was naked?"
     Without answering, the Lord took the lamb Eve had been petting and with a motion wrung its neck. He severed the woolly pelt from its warm body and held it out. She shoved it away. He waited a moment but she kept a guarded distance. The Lord gently laid the skin on the grass. Then He was gone.
     Night was falling and Adam felt an unaccustomed chill. He saw Eve reach out slowly, shivering, and pull the skin to her. She wrapped herself in it and hunkered down in misery. Adam went toward his wife and started to squat beside her but she jerked away, tightening her hold on the sheepskin.
     "Cover yourself!" she said accusingly. "You are naked, too!"
     "I am just as the Lord made me," he said, trying to reassure her, "and He called it good."
     She covered her ears, as he had earlier. With the love and closeness he always felt toward her, something new was stirring inside him, a sadness. He wanted to take her into his arms and hold her against him but when he reached out, she knocked his arm aside. His bewilderment increased.
     He sat silent for a few minutes, darting glances at her now and then as she continued to squeze herself tight and motionless. Then, not knowing exactly why, he said, "When I named the kangaroo, it wasn't you."
     She didn't respond. He tried again. "None of the animals was right for me. The Lord put me to sleep and formed you and you were right." Again he stretched out a hand toward her.
     Instantly she seized it and bit him hard on the thumb, then scrambled to her feet holding the sheepskin to her and ran from him.
     In the darkness he could not see the blood but the bite hurt. When she was gone, his confusion gradually subsided. The donkey had bitten him once, when he offered it grain, but it didn't mean to. The breeze in the tops of the palms was familiar and comforting. The lion was rounding up its family with little approving grunts and from across the lake a parrot screeched a last goodnight.
     Despite the heaviness in his heart, these things soothed Adam. Surely she would come back tomorrow and everything would be all right
    It was good, it had to be good. That was how the Lord had made it. He curled up in a shallow indentation he had scraped in the dirt but it was a long time before he fell asleep.
     The next morning he did not see the woman at all. She did not eat with him. They did not laugh together over the coyote cubs tumbling with their mother. They did not collect dewdrops from the giant pandanus leaves and let them slide into each other's mouths. They did not rub each other's backs or comb each other's hair with sticks or watch the shadows make patterns across each other's bodies as they rested lazily after making love. Adam was restless and the garden seemed lonely again, as it had before she was created.
     In the late afternoon he saw her by the river. She had fastened the lamb's skin to her body somehow and she was washing her hands. When she saw him she threw stones at him.
     When the Lord came that evening, Adam was glad to see Him. He tried to tell the Lord how he felt. "Feeling like this can't be good, can it, Lord?"
     "It is what has happened that is not good," said the Lord.
     "I don't like feeling like this," said Adam bluntly.
     "I know," the Lord told him. "I hurt too, Adam."
     Adam burst out, "Isn't there anything we can do?"
     "Only if she lets us."
     For several days and nights Eve avoided them but sometimes he caught her watching him. Whenever she realized he was looking at her, she would throw stones at him. Her hair was no longer beautiful. She had let it become tangled and matted.
     One night he found part of a vine tied to a branch that overhung the ravine. Looking down, he saw her body, pale in the moonlight, lying crumpled at the base of the cliff.
     He climbed down to her and removed the piece of vine that was wrapped tightly around her neck. He held her and sang to her and rocked her all night and all the next day until the Lord came again.
     Then he looked up and asked in distress, "And this, Lord--surely this can't be good?"
     "No," said the Lord with great sorrow. "This is not good. It is what I told you about, Adam. This is death."
     "When will it be over?"
     The Lord did not answer. Adam found the Lord's face blurring before him. He shook the water from his eyes and looked up again. The Lord was stooping down and there was moisture in His eyes, too. He took Adam, still holding Eve, into His strong arms and held them both tightly without speaking and the two wept together for a long time.
     And so Adam lived forever in the garden alone and the Lord God walked with him in the cool of the day. But no helper was ever found for him.

    





(First published in Inklings, Fall, 1995)