Half the Blood of Brooklyn

He sits her on the bench with Lydia.

– The Tribe of Benjamin, the tribe we descend from, was cursed, yes? You know this?

I scoot so I face him.

– Christ, no.

He drops his head.

– About being a smartass, what can I say? Other than it is rude, what can I say? It is rude, yes?

– Sure, yes. Doesn’t mean I’m gonna stop.

– Yes, I’m not surprised. Yes. Benjamin. Cursed. The whole tribe. It’s a story from the Bible. Well known.

He places the knife to Rachel’s skin and slices deep and she gasps and he presses the open wound to Lydia’s mouth and Lydia’s lips wrap around it and she begins to nurse; a baby at her mother’s tit.

I flinch when the scent of the blood hits the air. Sweat on my brow, a small erection in my pants, I watch Lydia feed and think about ripping free of the straps binding me and tearing her from the girl and clawing the wound in her arm wider and filling my belly till I vomit blood.

The Rebbe places a hand on Lydia’s throat, feeling the contractions as she swallows.

– Not too much, Rachel. Just what she needs.

Rachel has her eyes closed.

– Whatever I can give is yours, Rebbe.

He looks at me, and then at his son and the boys and Stretch and Vendetta and Harm.

– See, this is instructive, what she says. The story I mentioned, from Judges nineteen and twenty and twenty-one: a man travels with his concubine. Coming to Gibeah in the land of the Benjaminites they could find no lodging. No one would take them in, you see? All doors were closed. Windows sealed. No welcome as night came. None would even speak to them. None but one old man. He took them in, yes? And that night, men of Gibeah, they came to the old man’s house and demanded the stranger. The old man, fearing for the stranger’s life pleaded for them to leave. They refused. And the old man he offered them his daughter to do with as they pleased if they would leave the traveler in peace. But the men would not harken to this. Then the traveler offered to the men of Gibeah his concubine, and the men of Gibeah knew her and abused her all night until the morning. Our tribe, the Tribe of Benjamin did this.

He looks in Rachel’s eyes.

– And she died of it, the concubine. But she did not complain. Sacrificing herself. And because of this sacrifice, the traveler took the body of his concubine, a woman who, it must be noted, had been infamously unfaithful to him, and he divided her, together with her bones, into twelve pieces, and sent her into all the coasts of Israel.

He looks away from the girl’s eyes.

– And the message was not lost on the other tribes.

He looks down, takes a firm grip on Lydia’s jaw and on Rachel’s wrist and pries them apart, Lydia’s throat continuing to work, her tongue swiping blood from her own lips.

– Four hundred thousand men they sent to Gibeah. A city whose men numbered seven hundred. Seven hundred chosen men left-handed; every one could sling stones at hair breadth, and not miss. And beside these seven hundred stood twenty-six thousand other men of the Tribe of Benjamin.

He’s gone back into his bag for more gauze, and begins to bandage Rachel’s wrist.

– So, twenty-six thousand, seven hundred against four hundred thousand, yes? Not good odds. Roughly, it’s what, sixteen to one, yes? Not good odds.

He ties off the ends of the bandage.

– In the first battle, just the first, the men of Benjamin killed twenty-two thousand of their enemies.

He pulls the sleeve of Rachel’s blouse back into place.

– Somewhat better odds, now, but still not good. Not a betting man’s odd, I think. Not at all. And, on the second battle, after the men of Israel had prayed to God for guidance and drew the sword, the men of Benjamin destroyed down to the ground of the children of Israel again eighteen thousand.

He rises.

– And the children of Israel, not surprisingly, were troubled. But they went up to the house of the Lord and they fasted and they burnt offerings and they prayed for what they should do and God said, Go up into battle; for tomorrow I will deliver them into thine hands.

He steps into the aisle.

– And God kept his promise, yes? Of course he did. And the children of Israel destroyed twenty and five thousand of the Benjaminites that day and a hundred men more.

He walks toward the arc. -All these drew the sword.

He reaches the arc, opens it, touches the scrolls of the Torah.

– There was more killing, of course. No surprise again, yes? The children of Israel chased the Benjaminites to the walls of Gibeah and trod them down. And they entered the city and put it to the sword and burned it.

He turns, his hand still on the Torah.

– In the end, six hundred men fled to the rock of Rimmon in the wilderness. And that was all that remained of the tribe. And it would have died, the Tribe of Benjamin. Except that the children of Israel knew this would have been a great sin. An unpardonable sin, yes? There is such a thing. So, they were driven out, they had no kingdom, but four hundred virgins were taken from the slaughtered tribe of Jabesh-Gilead and given to the Benjaminites as wives. And more were taken dancing in the fields from the daughters of Shiloh. To keep their tribe alive, yes? You see it, yes, the women? The women. How precious. Some few were descended from Benjamin, children of mothers who had married into other tribes. And so the Benjaminites survived.

He looks at me.

– But none of the men of Gibeah.

He comes toward me.

– The men who at night encircled the old man’s home and demanded the stranger. The men who knew and abused all night the two innocent girls and went away with the dawn, yes? The seven hundred chosen men left-handed; and everyone could sling stones at an hairbreadth, and not miss. The seven hundred men of Gibeah who led the Benjaminites against the four hundred thousand children of all the rest of Israel and killed in two battles forty thousand men.

He spreads arms to take in his son and the other boys.

– But the men of Gibeah are here. Their blood is here in our veins. You see that, yes? The blood of Gibeah is in you. Not the blood of Benjamin, but, yes, Gibeah is even in you.

He waves Rachel over and she comes to him.

– A child of Benjamin, the blood of Gibeah is owed to her, for her fathers came to our assistance when we needed them. But she for-goes having Gibeah in her. To sacrifice her blood to Gibeah. To keep our tribe alive. The lost Tribe of Gibeah.

He comes to my pew and looks down at me.

– The descendents of the seven hundred.

He puts a hand on my shoulder.

– So if you are from the Coalition, yes? If you are truly one of the spies we have seen at the edges of our land, one of the skulkers hiding in Queens? Yes, if you are one of them?

He takes the freshly healed skin on my mangled ear between his fingers and rips it off.

– You would do best to remember we were defeated only once.

He drops the bit of skin in my lap and wipes his fingers on my shirt.

– And only then when God intervened.

– Holy hell, will you can it with all that superstition?

We all look at Lydia, sitting up on her pew, a hand massaging her throat.

– It’s like I’m with my dad talking all that crap at Seder all over again.

– The little person is lying. We’re from the Society.