When I experienced the second month without my impurity, I was certain I carried new life. I knew I should tell my husband, but I wanted to wait for just the right moment. It isn't everyday that a woman has the pleasure of announcing that she carries her firstborn.

However, as I slept that night, I awakened in a pool of blood. At first, I felt no emotion at all. I just stared, unable to believe or fully understand what I was seeing.

Sensing my motion, Uriyah asked drowsily, "What's wrong?"

I was unable to answer.

"Bathsheva, are you ill? You look a bit sallow."

I wasn't even able to blink. I just continued to stare at the darkened mass, its red color indistinguishable in the blackened room.

Fearful of my silence, Uriyah left the bed to light a lamp. When he saw the red stain, he frowned.

"What is this?" He leaned in closer to the bed. "It looks like a misshapen olive."

At these words, I began sobbing uncontrollably, holding out my hand. Since Uriyah was unable to understand what I wanted, I scooped up the olive shape in my hand, no longer caring about laws concerning cleanliness.

My tears fell into my cupped hand, washing some of the blood from what I held. I was able to see something the color of flesh. If I held it very close to my eye, I could see very tiny fingers and toes. I could not yet see the ears, but it was easy to tell where the nose had been developing. It was especially easy to see the eyes on the enlarged head, and the nearly transparent abdomen showed the beginning stages of internal organs.

Still unable to comprehend the situation, Uriyah peered into my hand. I saw his face grow pale when he finally realized what I was holding.

"Were you…?" he queried.

I nodded, still weeping into my hand. I wondered if this precious miracle would have been male or female, so I decided to give it a name that would suit both genders.

"Malka," I whispered.

Uriyah sighed deeply. "Malka."

He left the room, and I soon heard soft scraping outside. I knew Uriyah was digging a grave for Malka. I didn't understand why this unpleasant duty couldn't wait until after sunrise, but perhaps it was simply Uriyah's way of dealing with his grief.

When I placed Malka in the grave under the olive tree, it became even more real to me that my baby was gone. I would never embrace my dear child in my arms or have it sleeping on my shoulder. I would always wonder what a fine young man or young woman my lost baby could have become.

"We'll always remember the one we lost when he or she was only the size of an olive," Uriyah remarked, seeming to choke over his own words.

I was unable to rise. I simply remained on my knees, throwing myself over the grave as I wept. It was nearly an hour before my husband managed to convince me to come back inside our house.

We both helped clean up the mess on our bed, but we didn't speak to each other. What was there to say?

Uriyah finally broke the silence. "You failed me!"

He had a wild look in his eyes, as if he had taken leave of his senses. He was responding to his grief in anger.

"Why did you lose our baby? You could have at least had the decency to tell me you were with child! How long were you going to keep it a secret? I'm beginning to think you never wanted this baby in the first place!"

I have no memory of what happened next, but Uriyah later told me I became a madwoman. I kept screaming and beating my husband's chest with my fists, cursing him and saying even fertile ground could grow nothing from bad seed. I even slapped him in the face. I was looking for something to throw at his head when he seized my wrists and pinned my arms.

"No more!" he ordered, his face reddening more by the moment.

When we finally calmed, we turned out backs to each other. I lay awake for the longest time, noting from the lack of snores that Uriyah wasn't asleep either. What I had hoped would cause us to love each other was becoming a strain on our marriage.

Just when all hope seemed lost, Uriyah turned and put his arm around me, so I turned to face him. He wiped away my tears and moved a strand of my hair behind my ear.

"We'll get through this together," he consoled. "In a way, it's a blessing that the child was taken so early. Imagine how much worse our grief would be if we had smiled at the living baby in our arms before it died."

I nodded. Just before dawn, I fell into a fitful sleep in my husband's arms.

I said nothing to my mother about my pregnancy. She would have claimed that a baby is not alive until it is born. I disagreed entirely. A plant is considered alive, and a plant does not move like an unborn baby does. Even before the mother can feel the baby move, the infant is developing new parts of its body, like a plant develops flowers and leaves. Surely a baby is alive at the moment it begins to grow inside its mother, a precious gift of Elohim.