By Hannah Kenner

Word Count: 554

Rating: PG

Summary: A riff on the Biblical story of Leah and Rachel.

Inspired by Genesis 30: 14-16

One day, during the wheat harvest, seven-year-old Reuben found some mandrakes growing in a field and brought the berries to his mother, Leah.
Leah’s sister, Rachel, begged Leah to give some of them to her. But Leah angrily replied, “Isn’t it enough that you stole my husband, Jacob? Now will you steal my son’s mandrake berries, too?”
Rachel replied, “I will let Jacob sleep with you tonight in exchange for the berries.”
So that evening, as Jacob was coming home from the fields, Leah went out to meet him.
“You must sleep with me tonight!” she told him. “For I have paid for you with some mandrake berries my son has found.”
And so, Jacob slept with her.

The mandrakes had a song, one that started with the world on the third day. They sang of secret places, where the seeds sprouted, where the young would grow.
Reuben had heard the song, and reached for the berries. They sang of sadness then, wanting to stay in the ground, not wanting to meet their destiny, but still he took them. For the boy knew that his mother was the unwanted one, and he wanted to gift her the mandrake berries to help lift her sadness.
When Leah accepted the berries from her son, they sang to her.
“What will you do with us?” they asked.
“I will eat you, sleep with my husband, and conceive,” she replied with determination.
“Does it prove you are loved that you eat us and sleep with your husband?” They whispered.
Leah only sighed. “I know that I am loved…if not by him, nor by you, then by God.”
The berries laughed. “Your sister is the one he loves.”
“Do you think I don’t know that? I need to bear children,” she said. “And my sons will be great men, this is our song always, but they will be like stone statues standing forever and I will not touch them.”
“You wish you could bear sons who were not chosen?” they asked.
“Perhaps I do. Perhaps I do not like losing them to destiny. As for Rachel, I do not know what she wants.”
“You, yourself, will be great,” they said.
“For some it will seem that way,” Leah replied. “Because they will not know how I cried when I held my babies and knew that they were chosen.”
“You will be The Mother,” they insisted.
“I will always be the one who was unwanted, who was second, who loved a man who did not love her. No one will know what I really was, that I had other thoughts besides Jacob and my sons.”
“Your sister wants us, be fair, give us to her. She too will have great children.” The berries whispered.
Leah was crying openly now. “Perhaps I only want to spare her the pain of bearing the twelve sons?”
“Give us to her!” They insisted.
And so Leah gave the mandrake berries to Rachel. Still crying, she told her sister that in doing so, she only thought of Jacob. But in truth, she thought of the sons, who would always love God more than her.
Leah and Rachel each had their nights with their husband, but Leah was the one who prayed for a daughter.
And the song went on.