Written By: Abbie Teal
The tree of knowledge was not so tempting at first.
In the beginning, I felt content with the Garden of Eden in the blissful kind of way which ignorance permits. I had what I had and was perfectly satisfied with it, which I suppose included Adam.
He was subdued that morning, hovering by the forbidden tree with a look of confusion shrouding his features. These moments, happening more frequently as of late, were regularly followed with “ingenious revelations” as he liked to describe them.
Adam enjoyed naming things: first the animals, then the plants.
He’d begun to delight in labelling that which did not belong to us, perhaps hoping his names would grant him the possession he craved over the uncontrollable.
I suppose the child is not so different from the father in this respect.
“We have no name for these yet.” I gestured to the drying streaks on my face one evening. “How about tears?” I suggested, playing along with his game in the hopes of bridging the cracks forming between us. He shifted uncomfortably, removing his arm from my shoulders,
“There is little point in me naming a thing like that.” Perhaps I should’ve reminded him of the times he too had cried. “I suppose if it delights you, do as you please,” he concluded.
So it was with apprehension that I approached him that morning by the tree.
“What are you thinking?” I settled myself down under its shade and watched him pace around the edge of the pond, his restless movements so at odds with the still of the garden around us. He stopped abruptly and turned to me, with the air of an individual about to bestow great wisdom upon a person. Adam did this a lot.
“It has dawned on me that we ourselves do not have names,” he remarked, and I returned him a frown.
“Why do you say this? I am Lilith and you are Adam, children of God. What other names could we need?”
He approached me under the tree.
“God has spoken to me,” he whispered, and my stomach twisted as he paused for effect. “Lilith and Adam will no longer suffice. It fails to highlight the differences between us. It implies we are equal, made of the same.”
My silence in this moment seemed to please him; perhaps he mistook my alarm for awe.
“From my rib you were created. It is from my body which God has fashioned you.” He said this with such conviction, as if he was revealing a great truth in which I should be perpetually thankful for. It was all I could do not to scoff before I clasped his hands in mine.
“Adam, my love, you must be mistaken.” I placed a hand on my lower abdomen, “You suggest I am created from you when it is I who holds the power to create?”
This, in hindsight, was the wrong thing to say, but what use is hindsight when it frustrates more than it enlightens. His features twisted in anger as he ripped his hands from mine. My gift to create had always been a source of jealousy for him, a power he could never possess. Not that he didn’t try.
“You dare to question the words and will of God? Born from my ribs you were fashioned. We are not equal, and we are not the same. Henceforth I shall be known as man and you shall be known as woman: born from man to serve man, as is the will of God.”
I would later wonder if he too felt the palpable break between our kind in that moment; the lasting, dividing effect his words would have on the human race henceforth. Maybe he was too far gone to care.
“From where have you pulled these ideas of superiority?” I spluttered, though his expression was one of utmost conviction, and I feared there was no convincing him. I would not go down without a fight, however.
“You claim superiority over my kind based on what? Our differences are-”
“These are the words of God and they shall not be questioned,” he interjected. “You will serve me or you will defy the word”. His voice echoed in the garden, bouncing off the walls of trees I had once found comforting, until nothing but a ghostly silence remained.
It seemed there was a choice to be made, and I had no intention of confining future women to this life of imprisonment he proposed. I would at least ensure our eyes remained open to it, even if I couldn’t maintain the balance he had disrupted.
It was with this thought that I grasped the forbidden fruit above my head, biting down on it hard, feeling its knowledge and truth course through my veins.
“A God like this is no God of mine. Not anymore,” and I fled.
I fled from my terrestrial torment, leaving Adam spluttering and spewing his dutiful nonsense to an empty garden, our broken paradise.
My choice ripped the fate of my story from my hands, though I question whether this was inevitable, regardless of my decisions. They say the winner’s write history, and it is clear I was no winner in the eyes of Adam or God. Nor the generations of mankind that would proceed them, joyfully morphing me into the devilish character needed to enforce and validate inequalities.
The wife before Eve. The Mother of Demons. The serpent in the garden.
The names mattered less to me than the motives which drove them.
Retrospect Journal 