Noah’s Wife Emily Schultz (bio) Noah’s Wife So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. This is how you are to build it: The ark is to be three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide, and thirty cubits high. genesis 5:32–10:1 i It was almost a relief when the sky threatened to engulf us. I could say I believed in your dream of a hulking boat, made from salvaged wood, broken boards, one that would hold everything inside it. The hundred years you spent collecting splinters, hammering away at an eyesore. A century-long headache. So many questions. Where were the neighbors supposed to walk? How were they to sleep? Really, I could have gone around town, jawing about how you’d become an old door off its hinges—I didn’t. I nearly left many times. The hungry mouths of our three sons, eyes like angry stones in tiny faces. When people asked your trade I learned to say shipbuilder. It sounded like a real job. They looked at me less piteously. At night when I kissed you, you smelled of sawdust, cypress, and tar. You reeked with the dirt of future disasters. I tried not to choke, but then my skin found your skin— beneath your shirt, the music of new muscle. And your conviction was so . . . persuasive. You asked me to trust. I clung to you, murmured, Okay, then a litany of yes. [End Page 78] ii When the construction was done I admired the enormity of it, the way you admire a piece of art you don’t quite understand. Fingers flexed to lips, eyes moist, forehead furrowed, and a tight triangle of shoulders. You put an arm around me, squeezed my ass right there in the road. All right, you’d worked hard, I’d allow that. You pulled my neck to your stubbled chin and exhaled the smile of an animal. But exactly what were we to do now? Just then, a yes-and-no rain began. We tilted our heads back and tasted it. iii If you have a channel to God, I said, dial it now.Ask where the birds will take shelterwhen the rooftops and trees are sunken? You said, They’ll come with us. Reporters were sent down to the water. They destroyed their shoes showing the depth of the rising tide. They warned others to stay home. The horizon blackened and spat. Still, they were there as if to anchor us—bright yellow slickers like small suns in the encroaching dark, water eating them from the legs up. iv The rain sang now like an old woman weeping over the dead. Go get the coyotes, you said. I balked. The coyotes, really? I wanted you to leave behind the mice and the snakes too, but you said: One will feed the other. I cocked my head. Who will feed on the snakes though? But I brought them. All of them. Do you think it is easy to tether two wild red coyotes with a leash of twine? Before we finished loading, all the animals bellowing couldn’t cover the din of the thickening, driving rain. My hair streamed and my clothes sailed like ghosts. [End Page 79] v The deluge swallowed everything I loved. And you watched, a self-righteous grin lighting your face. Our home and all our possessions downed in a twist of water. The three beds where our sons had so recently slept. Imagine an open mouth with no ending. The drilling stream dug up the scent of raw earth, like damp tea leaves, roses, and rhubarb, then soured to sewage and ruin, all while we bobbed to the top of the dusted surface. The wreckage slapped the sides of the ark like hundreds of hands on drums. vi We floated up, above the windows, then above the buildings, above the cloud of freshly made sea. The smell within was musky and the boat tighter now that we were all inside, its caverns diminished by breathing. The wood groaned and I grasped tight to your chancered hand, hoping...