The Seventh Day Read Online Free PDF

who had survived the ocean’s flood and the plagues, now starved.
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    And the women became the gatherers and they searched amidst the rubble and they fed their gatherings to the men. And the women squeezed the last of their milk from shrunken breasts and they fed it to their sons.
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    And their daughters cried: ‘What about me?’
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    And they died.
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    And the skies opened and for one hundred days the clouds sent forth a deluge of black rain upon the land and there was great flooding.
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    And the men saved their brothers. And the women saved their sons.
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    And their daughters cried: ‘But what about me?’
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    And they died.
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    And still God rested .

GIRL
    I am making a painting when Lenny comes to my door to cast his shadow across my work. He stands watching. Tonight I am painting the foetus from Granny’s book. It has no life in it, poor unfinished thing, but it obsesses me with its swollen eyelids, its large head and undergrown limbs that lie flat on my painting board.
    â€˜Take your pill.’ Lenny offers a small blue disc. I ignore him, and make another line. I do not like the fat belly and large breasts, so I have freed the foetus and placed it in a crib.
    Perhaps Lenny likes the breasts and belly of the book. Certainly the page has more colour and life than my painting. He turns a page, looking at the colours, then turns back to the foetus and the breasts. I do not look at him. He waits long for my brush to still and when it does not, he scratches at his jaw and says: ‘Take your pill, girl.’
    Granny always called me girl.
    I found a small rabbit once. I called it Tinything. The dogs ate it, and though I still remember its name, does it matter to the dead rabbit? What is a name after all? I come when the men call ‘girl’, as their dogs come when they call ‘dog’.
    Why? It is a question which I can not answer. I shrug, and colour the foetus eyelids a darker grey.
    Lenny leans closer, places the pill and the mug of water down. I turn, look up at him and see he is not now studying my painting.
    Although I eat little, the fastenings of my overall will not now remain closed at my breasts. This is the place where his eyes feast. His hand, finding a mind of its own, reaches out to touch, but he controls it, withdraws it and turns his back.
    â€˜Take your frekin pill, like I tell you!’
    â€˜Why?’ I say the word to him, and I too look down at my breasts.
    â€˜Because they left them for you to take. And they told me to watch you take them, so take the frekin thing.’
    â€˜Why? Is my leg crippled like old Pa’s? Do I feel pain like old Pa?’
    â€˜Because Y is a frekin crooked letter and it can’t be straightened,’ he says, and I laugh at him. He does not know the letter Y. He only mimics old Pa’s words.
    And whose words does Pa mimic? He also does not understand the letter Y.
    Lenny likes my laugh, or the way it makes my breasts shake. He stares at them, and I think of Jonjan, my breasts pressed hard against his, and, Oh Lord, there comes to me that painful weakness in my flesh, and my hand shakes as I try to close the fastener.
    Lenny swallows hard as he watches my hands struggle. Then thunder’s stockwhip lashes the clouds, so close that thunder and lightning are one and the old house shakes with it and we hear glass fall from the burned rooms.
    â€˜Learn to cover yourself,’ he screams and he leaves me. I hear his footsteps running down the stairs and I smile. I believe he fears my breasts more than he fears the grey men’s collective tongue; yet I think he does not fear them when I lay like dead wood on the bed after the grey men have gone; I believe he has studied them with his battery light as he studied the newsprint breasts of the 172 February female and those in Granny’s doctoring book, for I have seen that light creep into my room while I drift in the place of no