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“And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.”
The shade of the orange tree does not help much with the heat, but it at least gives Gabriel enough cover to be able to read the words without squinting. With thin fingers oily with heat, she turns the page of the miniature scripture, a copy of the bible no smaller than her hand that the Sisters had gifted her when she had come of age. With their pooled allowances, it was an expensive, sturdy old thing, lined with leather and carved with her name. Its pages, once pristinely white, are now faded with age and dark with the old stains of tears. It had been her first ever gift and remains a comfort that to this day still grounds her. In times of anguish, she’d turn to this very book for answers.
Nowadays, it feels as though she does nothing but turn to it.
Even amidst the humidity that causes her clothes to stick to her back and strands of her hair to cling to her neck, she leans against the bark of the tree and mouths with her lips.
“She shall be called Woman, for she was taken out of Man. “
“You’re going to give yourself a headache.”
Gabriel does not flinch, but the lungs within her chest do briefly stop working. She does not look up, though her brain has ground to a sharp halt. She finds herself reading the same word over and over again. That word is Woman.
She feels Uriel before she sees her. That is to say, she feels her hair – billowing strands of glistening gold – tickle her face before the girl settles down beside her.
A plate of neatly cut apple slices slides onto her lap.
“You didn’t have breakfast.” Uriel sits cross-legged, leaning an elbow against her knee and propping her chin up. Gabriel smothers the instinct to yank those knees closed, because it is inappropriate for a lady to sit like that. That was the first of many tenets the Sisters had drilled into her.
“I have no appetite.”
Uriel hums, “I got them just for you so you ought to be a little more grateful. Can’t you eat just one slice?”
Gabriel turns the page, though the words still wobble under the sunlight-soaked air. “If Brother Michael finds out you’ve been sneaking into his garden and stealing his apples, he’ll whip out his cane again. And I don’t think your arms have quite recovered from last time.”
Any other person would cover these disciplinary marks out of shame, but not Uriel. Her dress is long and light and white as purgatory. The sleeves lift up easily. Gabriel can see the dark, reddened marks covering the span of her arms, and when Uriel catches her staring, she only pulls the fabric up higher to give her a better view.
“If he does,” says Uriel with a toothy grin, “will you take care of me again, Gabriel?”
Gabriel had been the one to stay by Uriel’s side after the beating, applying a soothing salve to her skin once Brother Michael had disappeared with a sweep of his robe through the heavy double doors. Uriel hadn’t cried out even once during the punishment nor when Gabriel rubbed her palms over her newly chaffed and sensitive skin.
Gabriel stares a little too long at the girl’s exposed arm before tearing her eyes away, “no. The pain is meant to serve as a deterrent. Seeing as how you have returned to your old habits not even forty eight hours after, I see now it was an err on my part to pamper you like that.”
Uriel throws her head back in unrestrained laughter. The sound is like a needle poking endless holes through Gabriel’s heart.
She tightens both her jaw and the grip on the scripture in her hand. She forces herself into focus so she can read the words:
“God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.”
Something damp and fragrant pokes her cheek.
“Say ah~”
Gabriel purses her lips tightly shut.
“Would you look at that? I have a young nephew less fussy with food than you!”
“I told you I’m not hungry.”
“Just one bite of this delicious apple. Please?”
Gabriel sighs. She shuts the book with one hand. It’s always difficult to fully concentrate on anything else in Uriel’s presence.
Sinful, her mind reels, putting the voice of Uriel over the voice of your Lord.
Gabriel swallows back the nausea and pops a slice in her mouth. It crunches between her teeth. It’s also very sweet.
“Happy?” She says after swallowing.
Uriel grins at her through half lidded eyes, “immensely.”
Sudden heat pools behind Gabriel’s treacherous cheeks. She looks away.
“Gabriel.”
“Yes?”
When she glances back, her companion’s smile has disappeared. A faint, tentative breeze fills the air around them, lifting up Uriel’s hair and masking half of her face.
“It is not long before you turn eighteen. Do you know what you will do after that?”
The question startles Gabriel. She hadn’t thought Uriel would be one to care for such things. Where Gabriel is considered the paragon of virtue of all the students of the Church, Uriel is, in the eyes of all the Brothers and Sisters, the embodiment of human vice encompassed in the body of a young girl. She skips lessons, therefore she is lazy. She steals food, therefore she is greedy. She reads sinful stories instead of the holy Parables, therefore she is too worldly.
Even God would reach the ends of His limitless mercy with her, Gabriel had once overheard Michael saying to another Brother, she is a wayward child, just look how she has turned her back on Him.
Gabriel does not share everyone’s sentiment. For although Uriel hates bible study, and she likes playing pranks and stealing and causing a ruckus, she has seen the way the girl prays, with hands raised high and face upturned towards the sky. With a reverence no Brother nor Sister has ever matched. It’s telling enough. Uriel adores her Maker, perhaps more than anyone here. No one loves God more than her.
Whereas no one fears God more than Gabriel, she’s quite sure of that. She thinks she feels the book under her palms hum in perfidious wrath. The apple slice churns in her stomach.
She’s grateful that when she speaks, however, her voice comes out even, “I will probably further my education with the Sisters. Why do you ask?”
Uriel releases her crossed legs as she pulls her knees up to her chest instead, hugging them. The knot in Gabriel’s chest releases at the action, though a bigger one takes its place once she catches the look on the girl’s face.
“If I asked you to do something for me, Gabriel, would you grant my wish?” Her voice comes out a low whisper.
“It depends.”
Uriel chuckles. It’s a painful, hollow sound. “Mother and Father have found a boy. He’s a Brother and clergyman in a neighbouring town. Four years my senior. We are betrothed and set to be wed one week after my birthday.”
Gabriel stops breathing. She now definitely feels the apple rising from her throat, along with bile and every other emotion that had manifested and been locked away to rot inside her body for years.
She swallows. And when it doesn’t do much to clear the nausea and ringing in her ears, she swallows again.
“Congratulations.”
Uriel shoots her a wry smile, “what, eager to be my flower girl?”
Gabriel doesn’t reply because she doesn’t know how. She’s quite sure her heart has stopped functioning all together. The scars on her body tingle all at once. They’re weeping in pain. They’re mourning. They urge Gabriel to say something, say something, say something.
“You don’t sound too keen yourself.” It comes out feebler than she’d have liked.
The girl shrugs, “I’m not. I think it’s rather cruel.”
“For your parents to do this?”
“For the Almighty.”
It’s not that Gabriel is unused to Uriel’s insolent musings, but a chill washes over her all the same. Not least because blasphemy is one of the only sins the girl never once transgressed.
“The Almighty works in mysterious ways.” Says Gabriel with a frown, “this is his Will that is borne out of love, not cruelty.”
“Ah, yes. He loves us all, doesn’t He? Although I do believe He distributes this love disproportionately–”
“Uriel.” It comes out as a warning. “What are you–”
“You know all too well, Gabriel, you were just reading it, were you not? God created Woman from Man’s rib. And Woman was made to be the bearer of Man’s children.”
Gabriel’s throat constricts. She’s never seen a look quite like this on Uriel’s face.
“So I just think it’s cruel,” the girl shrugs, “that I was cursed to be born as a woman. Because it means soon I will be wedded to a man who will become my new husband and my new owner. And I will be made to lie under him with open legs and deliver him sweet bliss. And then I will go through nine months of pains to push out a son for him. If not a son, another cursed child.”
Gabriel’s skin itches. Her faded scars feel as though they have burst to life, thrumming with pain and damp with blood. She shivers as the dread settles deep in her gut, “don’t say such things, Uriel. What has gotten into you? No one–” she cuts herself off.
No one loves God more than you, is what she was going to say. That was what Gabriel had always believed. Even when the Sisters whispered otherwise. Even when the Brothers beat her senseless for her sins.
And no one fears the Lord more than Gabriel.
These words coming from Uriel’s lips are pure blasphemy. Gabriel can feel His ubiquitous presence searing her skin. Her scars are burning, they’re burning–
“Gabriel.” A hand cups her cheek.
She slaps Uriel’s hand away and tries to steady her breathing. Repentant prayers swim through her ears like a turbulent swarm of locusts. Begging the Almighty to forgive her, to forgive Uriel, to forgive the sins that caused her to carve her skin.
Gabriel is no a paragon of virtue, for God created Woman for Man, yet only one Woman has ever occupied the space of her sinful thoughts over the years. It started when she was fourteen. It had been going on for six months before Gabriel decided to carve her first scar. Six months of imagining what Uriel’s lips would taste like, how her palms would feel scouring Gabriel’s back and shoulders, what it would be like to be so close their hips would press against each other. What it would be like to hold her hand, to dance with her under the moonlight, to devote her life to Uriel instead of the Almighty.
She knew it was the hissing of Satan’s snake whispering wicked Temptation into her ears. She would not act on the impulses, nor would she allow the transgressions to go unpunished.
But the sinful thoughts did not go away. And so, in consequence, the scars multiplied in number. She’s lost count – a myriad of long, thin lines that span the areas around her thighs, her calves, her stomach and her arms. It’s become both a mural representing every unholy thought she’s had about the girl before her and a graveyard for every time she’s forcefully killed it.
“If I were born a man,” Uriel finally speaks up again, “do you suppose you could have been my betrothed instead?”
“Don’t say such things.” Gabriel replies harshly, “God gave you this body. Yearning for anything else is sinful.”
“I don’t wish to be a man.” Replies Uriel, “I just wish you are who I am marrying instead.”
Gabriel covers her ears, “don’t say such things.”
A million prayers swim through her head. My Lord, please forgive Uriel’s words. My Lord, she is not in her right state of mind. My Lord, we alone worship You and it is You who has created Man and Woman–
“You didn’t answer my question, Gabriel.” Uriel grabs Gabriel’s chin and forces her to look at her. “Will you grant my wish?”
“I said it depends.” Gabriel croaks out.
“Will you kiss me?”
Her world tilts on its axis, “it won’t change a thing.”
“I know.”
“Then why?”
“I simply want to,” Uriel breathes, “before I won’t be able to.”
Gabriel’s heart hammers in her chest.
Uriel continues, “but you don’t have to. Because it’s a sin and–”
Gabriel seizes the girl by the shoulder and presses her lips against Uriel’s. They’re soft. And in this heat, slightly dry. Without thinking, she licks the bottom one to moisten it up, and when that elicits a low whine from the back of Uriel’s throat, panic seizes Gabriel’s gut. She lets go. Her body protests at the separation.
Uriel’s cheeks are dusted a fresh pink, but she’s laughing. Laughing with tears prickling the corners of her eyes. “Perhaps this was a mistake.”
It stings like a thousand cuts. “Was it?”
Uriel nods. “Yes.” She lifts a palm to cup Gabriel’s cheek, “because now I want another. And I’m afraid I won’t ever want it to stop.”
Gabriel’s heart lurches. A small part of her realises she’s misplaced her bible somewhere – it has probably fallen nearby, and she knows that she should pick it up, repent, carve another one or two lines into her skin as penance rather than indulge further.
But instead she allows Uriel to connect their lips again, and this time doesn’t hold back on all those years of sinful yearning. She traps the girl against the tree and devours her like sinful Eve knowing she’s tasted the forbidden fruit and will be kicked out of Eden anyway.
This evening, she will rinse her mouth with holy water.
This evening, she will get down on her knees and repent in tears.
This evening, she will carve three cuts to atone what she is doing right now.
But for now, Uriel’s hands are in her hair, drawing all her thoughts to a blank stop. Her cheeks are damp under Gabriel’s palms. And she tastes like apples.