That tent has long since shredded away, but it still appears to me in dreams, standing the way it seemed to me the morning alter, slack and empty like an old woman, her skirts blowing idly in the wind.

I knew I shouldn't have gone in there, but my father had ordered me -- what could I do? Could I have pretended I was sick, Could I have pretended that my period had come early? My sister and I had the same cycle; how could I have gotten away with it?

For my father had said, "Look, don't you want to be married? This way I can marry off the both of you--and get twice the dowry in the bargain. Go get ready."

"But father...," I began.

My mother took me by the shoulders and said, "Your father is talking to you. There's nothing more to say. It'll be all over soon."

And as the women led me away from my father's tent, I heard laughing and toasting in the yard, and I kept telling myself, "I have no choice in this; there's nothing I can do; nobody can blame me. Can they?"

The air was close inside my mother's tent; all the flaps were down, and in the gloom, the hides of the tent walls glowed a dirty orange as the late afternoon sun beat against them. One thin shaft of light stabbed in through a crack, striking my sister's breast--the rest of her was in shadow.

"Rachel, this isn't my idea. I don't want it!"

"Really?"

She turned away, tossing that long black cascade that was her hair.

I felt faint.

"Watch her!" I heard someone saying, and I was half carried to my mother's long, leather covered bench, her precious bench, which had been a gift from my father, years ago, when he still loved her. My clothes were stripped off, and though it was oppressively hot in there, I felt chilly. They bathed me, and combed my hair, carding it, it seemed, as if I were one of father's prize sheep....