Companion to Biblical Transgressions "Jacob wept over the body and prayed for the soul of the poor girl who could not help but be a sinner."
The first time Esau entered a church he was awed by the windows. They were stained glass, colorful and yet dominantly red to him. The shapes were so geometrical, so simple, that he could not help but wish to reach out a hand to touch what he imagined would be a smooth and cool surface. Perhaps, he reasoned, if he leaned into the scene he could fall into it and become part of the glass, part of the beauty.
It was not just the stained glass that fascinated the twelve-year-old boy. The crucifix on the wall was gorgeous, a true symbol to the lie of faith that his mother kept. After his awe over the windows was over, he stood, hands to his side, staring longingly at the glorious interior of the tall, gothic building. Where the striking edifice had sprung from in the small city he had no idea, but the location was almost idyllic. It was as if he had wandered away from the pain and the dirt into this land where none of that existed.
He walked among the pews, conscious of the people around him smiling and himself smiling back. Esau had the feeling that these were truly good people: people of the sort one would wish to meet if waylaid by a flat tired when traveling a dark road. There were children there, sitting near the front, clothed nicely and hair brushed into braids or gelled into an uneasy truce between unruly and combed.
His jeans, clean but old, seemed to mold themselves into him. This was his lot, he rationalized. He would come and watch the beauty in old jeans while the others participated, became part of it, in their fancy clothing and clean faces, clean hearts. His own heart felt too leaden to be truly part of what he was seeing.
Esau heard someone moving slowly toward him, behind him. He wasn't certain how he knew that the even steps were directed at him, but he did, as surely as he knew that he had found a place to love. Without blinking, taking in all the wonder that he could, he slowly turned. Esau saw a man in long black robes and a smiling face looking at him. He smiled tentatively. They were priests, weren't they? In the robes? They would be fathers, then, if they were priests. He waited for the man to speak.
"Hello," the man in the black robes said. He held out a hand to be shaken and, much to Esau's surprise, the boy took it firmly in his own. "I'm Father Kendris. You're new here. I've not seen you visit our church before." He gave Esau a warm smile. "And what might your name be, hmm?"
Esau paused before replying. "Jacob."
"Well, Jacob, are you the only one of your family here? Or do I have a mother and a father to meet?"
He bit his lip hesitantly, then spoke boldly to the priest. "My dad died before I was born. My mom's been raising me by herself for a long time. She's ill, though, and I have nothing to do when she's in the hospital. I was wandering around the city when ... when I saw this place. I hope I'm not doing anything wrong."
The priest laid a kind hand on Esau's shoulder, and he wanted to cry for the unfairness of it all. Why had he never had this before? His emotions surged and his mouth tasted bitter with adrenaline. Tears overcame the barriers and slipped down his cheeks unchecked and unwanted. It was shameful, to cry in front of this stranger, and over such a silly matter.
"There, there," the priest said heavily. "It's okay. It'll be okay. I'll help you. Why don't you come and visit me every time your poor mother is in the hospital. You shall keep me company. Then we shall be able to talk. Are you Catholic?" Off of Esau's look, Father Kendris clarified, "This is Catholic church, though I welcome to all Christian faiths."
"Oh," Esau said, feeling foolish. "My ... my mother named me after the Jacob in the Bible. She said she had a vision that God would love me, and this was the first passage she opened up to. She sometimes says that, uh, it's quite Irish enough for her, thank you very much, and much better than what her parents stuck her with. She's Mary Katherine, you see." Esau was babbling, trying to fill in the gaps of lies with chunks of truth, trying to make the road traversable. "She had priests. I remember. She went to a school where there were priests."
"Catholic then," said Father Kendris, smiling. Was he Catholic, like the father assumed? Esau paused, then thought: Sure, why not? He smiled back genuinely. The father wasn't disbelieving him. Maybe, just maybe, Esau could be Jacob here, and could forget that he was Esau and that God hated him. Perhaps as Jacob he could learn to earn the love of his mother, and maybe even changed her ways.
Esau's dreams would never materialize, though, he realized. His mother was too much entangled in the life she was in to ever be fully cut away from the strings. Those same strings had strengthened over the years she had spent as the pleasurer of men.
"Aren't priests celibate?" Esau inquired suddenly. The priest nodded gravely. "Cool," he said sincerely.
Esau would come back at later dates, bringing school work and questions with him as offerings to the sage man of the cloth. Help was dispersed freely from all that he encountered and Esau began to truly feel that, as Jacob, he had eked out a place for himself, somewhere to belong and to own. There were always people there to speak to when he was lonely, and he began to spend more and more of his time in the simple yet awe-inspiring place.
"Is your mother in the hospital often, Jacob?" Father Kendris inquired one afternoon as Esau munched on an apple and tried to cross-multiply on his math homework. Esau didn't answer immediately, and Father Kendris repeated the question.
"Yes, sir," Esau said quietly. "She's very sick. Very, very sick." To himself he added, Her sins eat away at her soul and cause it to be more sickened than ever her body shall be.
"Who takes care of you?"
"My Aunt Kay. She takes care of me when she isn't busy. Otherwise, I stay in the apartment and do my homework. It gets very lonely there. Can't I come anymore?
"No, Jacob, it's okay. You may still come here. I was just worried that perhaps your mother, being so ill, hadn't found someone to make certain that you were fed properly and off to school. Is your Aunt Kay living with you, Jacob?"
"Well ... she lives next door, actually. Sometimes she comes to our apartment and sleeps on the couch if her heat gets turned off. She's kinda bad about remembering to pay bills and such. It isn't really her fault. I make certain that Mama pays the bills, though, so that we always have heat and gas to cook food. You know, because Mama is always so ... sick."
"I'm very sorry that a boy so young has such responsibilities as you do, Jacob. However, I am glad to see that you have embraced them and worked very hard to make certain that everything is working smoothly in your life. You are doing so well in your schoolwork, I can imagine that you will be able to go to any school that you wish to go to."
"I want to be a priest when I grow up, Father."
"It takes more than a child's whimsy to become a priest, Jacob. But I think you have the patience to wait to see if that is what you truly want."
Esau smiled.
At home that night, his mother met him with a slap and an angry scowl; she had arrived home early and discovered that he was not sleeping in bed. The slap was not rough, nor was it done unkindly, and Esau did not mind it. The scowl hurt him far more than any physical harm his mother might have thought to inflict.
"Where were you?" she inquired, her voice dangerously low. Was she drunk, then? She got angry and stupid when she was drunk.
"I was at church," Esau told her boldly, his voice quivering only slightly.
His mother looked at him searchingly for a few moments. Her gaze was penetrating and Esau felt as naked as the men who frequented his mother's bed at the motel she preferred. He shifted nervously on his feet, trying not to look into her eyes. They were not cruel eyes, but they were bad eyes all the same and he did not wish to tarnish himself with them.
"What sort of church?"
"With priests and nuns."
"Oh." A softer tone. She was not that drunk. "I went to those."
"I know." You don't anymore, he added. You don't because now your body and soul are vile and riddled with the marks of evil men.
She continued to stare at him. He grew uncomfortable under her scrutiny and excused himself to his homework. He could feel her eyes on his back as he walked, slowly, steadily, to the kitchen table, passing the sofa that folded out to accommodate him.
Three days later, she soiled the clean linen binding him to the church. It would be washed, carefully, but it would never be quite the same.
Esau worked quietly on his state history homework with Sister Jena. She was always quite helpful with history and English work, especially on the nights, like that night, when Father Kendris was not there. When that happened, Esau generally spoke with the other priests and with the nuns, finding out information about them.
Sister Jena, for example, had had a dog name Morphis who, whenever he sneezed, would fart quiet loudly but without terrible smell. Esau found small anecdotes like that amusing. He liked to listen about their childhoods, liked to mix them in with his own version of his childhood that he was creating in his head.
"When I was a child," Father Stuart always started, "I had to walk to school." Esau would nod. "Uphill."
"Oh, I agree with you, Father. Uphill, of course."
"In the snow."
"Without shoes?"
"Both ways."
"Both ways without shoes? That's shocking."
"You saucy boy! Both ways uphill."
"Did you enter and exit at different entrances to accomplish that feat?"
"We only had one entrance. It was a one-room school house."
"Did they seat the boys on one side and the girls on the other, Father?"
"Of course."
"Was your dog's name Rover?"
"And he waited outside the church for us every Sunday."
"Did your father have him buried by the gate to the church graveyard?"
"No, that was a character in the Anne of Green Gables series."
"Of course it was. My mistake. Where was the dog buried?"
"Under the apple tree where he used to play."
"I wouldn't eat any more of those apples if I were you. Don't you think it's creepy, eating the apples where your dog is buried?"
"I do now."
"I was just pointing out a fact."
"Don't you have some homework that Sister Anne can help you with?"
When he came home, quietly letting himself in the apartment that night, he noticed that his mother's bedroom door was closed and upon the doorknob a bright red bra was haphazardly thrown. It was an uncommon but not unheard of practice of his mother's: she had special customers whom she allowed into the privacy of her home, her bedroom, where she did business with them. Esau had grown accustomed to that, and he simply laid on the couch quietly on those nights, trying not to listen.
His mother came out disheveled, a robe barely covering enough of her body to be decent. He saw her through heavy lids, standing silhouetted in the hallway. She walked wordlessly to him, beckoning with her fingers. Esau climbed out of the covers, also silent, and walked toward her. She put a finger to her lips, turning.
She put a hand on the doorknob, colored in the dark like an aged photograph, inviting him in. With trepidation, Esau followed, his hands holding each other as tightly as possible. Shoving him roughly into the shadows amidst a pile of sweaty clothing, his mother went over to the man splayed across the bed like a puppet without the strings and tapped him on the shoulder.
"You've got to go," she said in a large, bold whisper. The man muttered incoherently and something startlingly white on the floor caught Esau's eye. He stared at it, his breath hitched in his throat. It could not be. He drew in air, his windpipe feeling the slash of it as it rattled down raggedly like a knife to the very flesh. "My boy, my boy will be getting up to use the bathroom. I don't want you in there when he's there."
The person on the bed begrudgingly moved up into the light, his naked body white as virgin snow, but Esau didn't edit his gaze, fascinated as he was by the piece of bright cloth on the floor. Slowly, like a tear making its way down a face, his hand inched forward while the man lurched and lumbered his way to the door and into the hall, his breath stinking of alcohol. He shut the door loudly behind him.
Esau's mother turned to him triumphantly. Esau clutched in his fingers the cloth, touching it in its stiffness, broken in spirit. He could hear the man losing water in the bathroom across the hall. Esau's mother opened the door, letting in the harsh yellow light, and he saw from his spot dark bundles of cloth, cloth that could be a robe thrown carelessly to the floor.
"This is a lesson for you, Esau. Nothing is perfect. Not even your precious priests."
The man stormed back into the room, Esau sank into the shadows, and the woman gave a mirthless laugh. After a moment, a soft snoring came from the bed.
"You saw him."
"No."
"Yes, you did."
"No."
"You saw him, Esau. Saw him in all his glory."
"No, I did not." Didn't see anything. Not a thing. Didn't see anything.
"Don't play dumb with me! I'm helping you! I'm trying to save you from thinking that if you go out and become some sort of religious nut that all will be right with the world. This man speaks for God, Esau, he speaks for Her, and ya know what? I just screwed his brains out. He was moaning my name and, gracious, did he invoke the Lord's name. You should have heard him. Maybe you came home too late. Let me tell you, though, Esau, he was real vocal."
"Shut up!" Please. It hurts.
"I'm saving you! I'm breaking the lies, Esau. I'm breaking the lies."
"You can't destroy this for me," he said vehemently. "You cannot ruin this purity I have."
"Do you know him?" Esau's mother asked.
He shook his head decisively, but the truth was that he had not looked at the man's face but rather at the clothing strewn out on the floor and night table. If he had looked, he would have seen something he did not want to see, could not stand to see, and it would have torn him from the very soul to his flesh until he was bleeding and weeping at once, a crumbled heap upon the floor of the room where his mother and his mentor had fucked.
Esau closed his eyes and refused to open them, walking blindly out the door of the apartment, his hands clenched tightly at his sides.
Kate carefully applied a thick layer of dark color that would stain skin wonderfully to her tired lips, frowning. Her hair was swept up off her neck in a high bun that she thought made her look beautiful and more approachable. Her clothing was simple enough, and needed no explanation to be given as to the occupation of the wearer.
Under her arms he knew that he'd see the marks. Faint red scars up your arm don't make you as pretty but more able than the younger ones out there with nothing but themselves.
Esau watched from the sink, his hands under the warm water as it ran from the metal above it. He frowned, waiting, while Kate stood up, went to the refrigerator, opened it, and stared forlornly into the brightly lit machine. Her back, tattooed with roses, rainbows, and crucifixes, glared at him from around the cloth covering it.
"You're a sinner," Esau finally remarked simply.
Kate laughed. Esau didn't understand where the joke was, and asked her to clarify her mirth. "My sins," Kate explained, "have kept you alive for sixteen years. If I didn't do what I do ... you wouldn't be fed, you wouldn't be clothed. You'd be living on the streets, probably the gopher for some pimp who's grooming you to be his boy-wonder. You're lucky I work to get the dough to take care of you."
Esau looked expectantly around their dank apartment. One bedroom, a living room, a kitchen, and bath with no tub but a shower. There were seven windows in the house, four with drapes, two with blinds, and one in the kitchen that faced a brick wall. The couch in the living room folded out, completely taking up the room, so that Esau could sleep on it. His mother took the bedroom as her sanctuary. In it one could find odds and ends, pieces that she had picked up over the years to decorate the nine by ten foot space.
"I don't know anything else, Esau," Kate continued, trying to explain herself needlessly to her son. They both knew that he would never could never see her side. "That's why you're going to school and studying. You, you're becoming what me and Jake could never be."
Did she love him? Or was she truly trying to live out her life and Jacob's through Esau? Couldn't Kate see that he was too brimming with his own soul to take on the souls of his mother and his twin? He dropped the subject after she told him that, but only for a minute. He watched as Kate brought out a beer and sat down at the table with it. He walked the three steps it took to cross the kitchen and looked at her, frowning.
"You know when you drink you take the wrong sort to your room." His frown deepened when Kate took a large swig of beer.
"Michael left today," she said between her first and second drink, as if that explained everything. "He's acting single, and me? I'm left drinking double." Kate laughed, the sound clawing at the air desperately. She looked down at the table, at the cracks in the plastic table setting from where Esau had tried to snap it in half and hadn't succeeded. "I thought, hey, he knows what I do and he's trying to help me. But all he was looking for was a free piece of ass, you know?" Kate turned to Esau suddenly and cried savagely, "Don't you ever treat a woman like this, you hear? Don't you ever go with no hooker, Esau. You gonna be a gentleman if it kills you."
He turned from her, tears in his eyes, and didn't turn back until he heard the door to the apartment close. Before he was completely around, he heard his mother say through the wood, almost as if she was afraid of him hearing, "I never wanted to be a whore, Esau. It just sort of found me. But I wouldn't have had Jake otherwise." Her footsteps echoed in the stairway until she reached the bottom.
"I read the story," he whispered quietly to himself. "Jacob took away Esau's birthright. Jacob was not the first twin, not the twin that came to it all because he earned it. Jacob tricked his brother and stole it all away. Jacob's mother loved him, but Esau's father loved him. I am the second twin, Jacob, not Esau, but my mother doesn't love me as in the story. Who am I, really?"
It was a whirlwind of emotions that overtook him then, causing him to shake so badly that he nearly placed the knives aside to be washed once he had calmed down. There was a certain amount of inequality in life that made fair, for some people, seem an abstract thing. Esau knew he had never in his life witnessed a day pass by when his mother hadn't wished that he was Jacob.
He began to pray to God. Not the God that his mother had told him about, a woman-child wearing dirty sneakers. No, Esau prayed to the God that Father Kendris had introduced him to, the God that had inspired the beautiful images and stories of the Church. Esau prayed that the sins of his mother would be washed away from her, from the flesh that she gave nightly to others, and from the soul that she still clutched carefully to that tainted and tangible self.
Kate touched his shoulder softly and Esau turned, angry, startled, hurt. Where had she come from? He went to grab her, went to shake her, to ask her why, why, why? when he realized that his hand felt heavy, that his fist had something inside of it, and there was the sickening feel of wetness upon the pads of his fingers as he blindly groped the opening in his mother's chest, a small cut, really. There was a clatter and something fell to the floor like an anvil thudding to Earth.
Kate's hands flailed wildly, without sound, against his chest and Esau watched as they sullied his clean shirt with their scarlet imprints. Esau stared, shocked, and she brought her hands to her own chest and gasped, her eyes wide with fear. She opened her mouth to say something perhaps to berate him for hurting her, for doing such a thing but he gave her no time, gave the woman who sinned no chance to accuse. With an impulsive lunge, he had the knife in his hands and to her throat. Esau did not hesitate when he pulled back, slicing through flesh in a way that thrilled him to his very marrow. He pulled the knife out, tossed it to the floor, turned his mother to him.
She coughed once and something dark beaded at the corner of her mouth.
Kate fell back onto the cheap tiling, her impact making such a soft thud that Esau almost didn't notice it. He leaned over her, his eye as large as her own, and placed a hand on either side of her. It was the sound of flesh on flesh that caught his attention, not the pressure of her hands on his wrists, and he looked down for half a second at her grasp. Kate's gurgled breath was ragged, she was afraid.
"Don't be," he whispered softly, touching her hair, smoothing it.
The blood was pooling around her body now, gelatinous, like chocolate syrup. Her lips moved wordlessly, the thin red line coming from the corner of her mouth beading and continuing, stopping, and repeating. He grabbed a wash cloth and began working on the tiling around her. The rag turned the color of grapefruit, then ruby, then mahogany, as he swiped it through the life's liquid. Three times he rinsed it in the sink, using liquid soap to get the wash rag vaguely pink, and then returned to the stain in the making.
She was still moving, so he gently held her head still as he took a new damp cloth to drag it through her hair, and across on her face, to get her clean, to make sure that she was beautiful. Almost piously he washed the severely applied color from her lips, the dusty-stains from her tired, peaceful eyes, the liquid foundation that gave her a false glow of health.
Then Kate was still.
He whispered, over and over, "Mama, I take your sins and I damn my soul so that you may rest freely in Heaven. I forgive you, Mama. I forgive you." He wept for himself, Esau, the sinner who never committed a crime against God, and prayed for his mother's soul in Heaven.
"Jacob loves Mama," he said quietly into the darkness of the kitchen. "Jacob loves Mama."
Esau took to frequenting college campuses, oftentimes dropping in on a class to listen to teachers as they spoke on whichever subject he had chosen for that day. Never did he appear more than two or three times in any class, mostly because he was moving around so much that he would be gone by the time the fourth class rolled along. Esau picked up a myriad of information as if it were nothing but dust to gather. Mostly, though, he would stay after class and talk about the day's topic with a young woman, watching her and studying her, looking for the one.
Esau knew women. He knew how to charm them. He knew what they wanted, and how to play on their wants so that it seemed that they needed them. Once they were they under his spell, he could carefully give them what they wished for and be seen as the gracious young man. Esau would escort girls to their next class, smiling at them before giving them a flower and disappearing in the crowds.
They would ask his name, he would smile, and give a name to them that fitted his mood. In San Francisco he was Abraham, but confided in them that such a long name truly was not him and would they please, if they didn't mind, call him Bram? Pleased at being spoken to so honestly and so freely, the women would smile and draw closer to him, invite him home.
Esau always declined, though, because he was saving himself for the perfect woman, for the one that would define his life. He gave excuses, ones that they found both oddly attractive and sadly repelling at the same time. He knew that because of the way their eyes would flash in half-mirth, half-question when he explained that he was supposed to drive down and pick up his mother at the airport at eleven, she was visiting for the week.
It always struck him as strange that people had such strained relationships with their mothers, especially men. He had always assumed that no matter what there was on the surface, if one could dig deep enough there would always be an underlying current of love, both for and from the mother. Even he, as soon as he found how much he was like Jacob, came to find how much he and his mother loved each other. Why, in some ways, Esau reasoned, he was Jacob, more than just in birthright.
In Seattle, however, he was Rubel.
He sat in a criminal profiling class. He found that most young women in that class were very passionate about it. They would talk on and on about whatever subject matter had been discussed, dissecting it and painting it in their own way. These women would be the most careful when they spoke to him, he had found out. They would be charged with the adrenaline of what they had learned and be doubly on alert. The women would learn forward almost menacingly and whisper out statistics on rape victims and serial killers like it was a sort of pick-up line.
Esau preferred these type, because once they calmed down, had some ice cream with him in a shop or walked along the lake's shore, they would be the most earnest in their own personality. They would have the most to say about other things that interested them, not just the class, and he could discover the type of person they were without prodding too deeply with his questions. They were easy and yet so very difficult.
Esau's life changed irrevocably the day he met her. She was standing just outside an animal shelter with a small cat in her arms, looking positively lost in the beginning rain. Her hair whipped around her head from beneath her hat like the skirts of Mexican folk dancers. He stepped up to her and offered her his umbrella.
"Hello," he said, not expecting at all to find the woman he had been looking for in all his travels. She turned two almond eyes to him and, biting her lip in embarrassment, looked up at the hand that was holding the cover over them. "Where're you going with that fine fellow?"
She laughed merrily, scaring the cat, who dug his claws into her sweater and tried to burrow in from the neck. "I parked my car about two blocks down the street. I didn't expect it to rain."
"And how long have you been living in Seattle?"
"Really, the forecast mentioned a clear day!"
"Again, I repeat, how long have you lived in Seattle?"
"Okay," she said shyly, "you caught me: I'm new to the city. Why don't ya show me around this fair town of yours?"
"I would," Esau said, "but I'm a recent immigrant myself." He stuck out his free hand and she took it awkwardly, balancing the cat with the other. "Rubel."
"Rachel," she offered.
"Now, see, we've got an alliteration thing going on. I think we need some ice cream to celebrate that."
"Ice cream?" It was said doubtfully, amused.
"Yes."
"In this weather?"
"What other sort do you find in Seattle this time of year?" he asked teasingly. "Come, I know the best place just across the street. We may even wait out the rain, if you're skittish about a strange man walking you to your car."
"Well, if I meet any strange men, I'm sure I'm going to have to take that under advice. But I think I'll be okay as long as you're here to protect me from any unwanted suitors. Or, ya know, wanted suitors, because sometimes they look okay, but then there's this whole non-okayness that comes out in the middle of the conversation that really makes you regret your thinking he was okay in the first place. You're gonna protect me, right? Or am I gonna hafta beat them off with this umbrella? Which, actually, would fall into the category of your protecting me, as the umbrella does belong to you."
Esau smiled.
"I think I can lend my umbrella to such a good cause."
"I'm glad."
"Me too."
They ate chocolate ice cream together before walking to her car. He confessed he was only in Seattle on a lark, trying to decided where to live. She confessed she was a transfer student looking at Washington State. He whimsically said he'd follow her to whichever college she wished. They laughed and parted.
And met again. And again. Soon, she was all that he could think about. He searched the classifieds and, for the first time since he was a teenaged boy, he found himself an apartment to live in, not merely a hotel room where the breakfast rolls always tasted stale and the cold coffee burned the lining of his stomach like acid.
Rachel came over and listened to records with him in his empty living room and laughed at the number of boxes he didn't have. He silenced her laughter with a kiss, their first kiss, and he couldn't stop himself from running his hands through her dark black hair. They broke off, and he stared into her brown eyes for moments that passed like years.
She was the sun and the moon and the flowers in early spring and life, and most of all, she was purity in the form of a woman-child with blazingly green eyes that could catch the snow on fire if they so desired. She was, as Lord Byron said, walking in beauty.
"Do you like the stars?"
"I love the stars. I think they're gorgeous. It's like somebody took your eyes, gathered the dust from them, and placed them in the sky. Not as pretty by far, but they do quite nicely for those who can't stare into your eyes."
"Stop it, you're making me blush with your pretty words."
"They're not merely pretty words. They are the truth. I never say anything that I don't believe one hundred percent. Right now, right here, I think you are the most wonderful creature that was ever created."
"Do you know any constellations? I used to know some as a young girl, but I've forgotten many. I know Orion's Belt. Do you know Orion's Belt? It's, like, those three stars. I've always thought of Orion as a very small man in a large uniform. Sort of like a football player. Do you watch football?"
"I like the '49ers."
"The Niners are cool. I like what they have. I like college football a lot, though. I think that's where all the really awesome people are. The ones that are just about to be discovered. Their entire lives are looming large ahead of them and they have nothing to look back at and think they could have done better at. They are just kids, like us. Ya know?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah?" Shyly.
"Yeah. Just like us."
"Except a lot bigger."
"A lot lot."
"Yeah."
There was something so perfect, so pure, about her that he could not contain his love. It spilled out of his eyes like children rushing to parents after a long day of school. Esau's voice would dance when he uttered her name. Rachel herself was no less in love than he. And, one night, they professed that love to each other.
"Ya know, Rube," she started, "what we have here could be love."
"I think you might be right, Rach."
And that was that.
The night he decided he was going to give himself to her was planned over very carefully. The music selection was a grouping of her favorite records. He went out and bought an inordinate amount of candles, because he remembered someone saying that women liked candles. He made her dinner, never burning a thing. It was perfect.
And leading her into the bedroom, his eyes brimming with love, he whispered her name over and over again. Undressing her, he couldn't keep his lips from forming the two syllables. Ra-chel. Ra-chel. Ra-chel. And in the very act of love itself, her name was said from a deep place within himself.
The noises she made were sensual but otherwise indescribable and he tried to figure out what he had done so that he could replicate those sounds. They reached his ears and sank into his soul, knitting themselves there as if they'd been a part of the fabric all along. The wordless syllables raced and ran through him and he had to ... just ... be ...
And there were pillows and clouds and something so good, so wonderful, that he could not ever hate the act of sex again. He kissed her nose and touched his forehead to hers, then settled himself onto his side, watching her. She leaned over, stretching luxuriously in the glow of it all, and smiled.
"You," she whispered, "are the best lover I've ever had."
It was like a knife.
There was cold slicing through his flesh so deeply it tore into his heart, ripping it to shreds. Esau's breath quickened, he reached over, touched the skin on her throat. It did not feel the same, did not feel like silk, but felt like rough cotton, plain, wrong against his fingers. He leaned over, pressing his entire body to her, crushing her into the bed, furious. She had betrayed him. He brought both his hands to her neck and squeezed.
Her face flashed in and out of focus and for a few moments he was convinced he was laying, naked, on top of his mother. His grip tightened.
Rachel quivered underneath him like she had just done only minutes beforehand and he could not help but touch her lips, her breasts, gently, reverently. Already her lips were turning purple, spreading across her face in a lighter blue that reached her red eyes and screamed. For a moment, he felt as though he should scream, should voice his displeasure, but instead he merely touched his lips to hers softly, waiting. On her shoulder, where he had roughly shoved it against the wall, he could see twin bruises, one from his hand, one from the wall, and he leaned over to kiss them, to nudge them with his nose, feel her satin-like skin on him. She had stopped fighting some time ago, but he held her firmly still.
Jacob wept over the body and prayed for the soul of the poor girl who could not help but be a sinner.
The Lord still loved him. Esau would earn the love as Jacob. Esau would fall into the cracks; Jacob would become known for his never ending loves. For even as he cleaned the sin off of his hands and cleaned the death of his mother and his love off his soul, he knew that he was earning God's love and doing the right thing. And he knew it was the least he could do.
He wandered slowly out of the room, nameless, and stared at the blue sky with a wry smile on his face, content.
THE END
Esau I Have Hated can also be translated into 'Esau I Have Loved Less' meaning that he was loved, but that Jacob got more of the love.