Everyone was ill at ease. But the work of the household went on, day after day, week after week. People get used to anything, if it just goes on. Rebekah didn’t like the way things were, but she expected this new order to go on unchanged.

Until, a year after her father’s deafness began, she happened to come up behind several of the servant women boiling rags, and overheard them talking about Father.

“He’s an old lion, with all that roaring.”

“A lion with no teeth.”

And they started to laugh until one of them noticed Rebekah and shushed the others.

Rebekah told this to Laban, and at first he was all for telling Father. But Rebekah clutched at Laban and held him back. “How will you even tell him? And if you make him understand, then what? Should he beat the woman for saying it? Or the others for laughing? Will that make them love him better?”

Laban looked at her. “We can’t let them laugh at Father behind his back. Soon they’ll laugh in his face, and then they’ll do what they want. Already the servants don’t even try to tell Father half the things that happen. Pillel makes decisions all by himself that he used to never make, and Father knows it but what can he do?”

“We can pray to God for him to hear again,” said Rebekah.

“And what if God answers us the way he answered Abram and Sarai when they prayed for a son? Can Father wait ten years? Twenty? Thirty?”

They knew well the tales of their father’s uncle Abraham, the great lord of the desert, the prophet that Pharaoh could not kill, and how his wife Sarah bore him a baby in her old age.

“But what else can we do?” said Rebekah. “Only God can let Father hear again.”

“We can be his ears,” said Laban. “We have time to explain things to him. Let the men tell us, and we’ll tell Father.”

Rebekah had her doubts about this. She had tried talking to Father many times, speaking slowly so he could read her lips, and at first he had tried to understand her, but most of the time he failed, or got it only partly right, and the resignation in his eyes when he looked away from her and refused to try anymore made her so sad she couldn’t even cry. “What, you’ll press your mouth into his ear and scream?”

Laban rolled his eyes as if she were a hopeless simpleton. “Writing.”

“That’s a thing for city priests.”

“Uncle Abraham writes.”

“Uncle Abraham is far away and very old and spends all his time talking to God,” said Rebekah.

“If the priests in the city can write, and Uncle Abraham can write, then why can’t Father and I learn to write?”

“Then I can, too,” said Rebekah, daring him to argue with her.