Session Two: Jael and the Tent Stake at Home Depot
JAEL
(into a stemless wine glass filled with oat milk and unresolved power):
Not everyone who says “I have a headache” is accusing me of murder. Let’s just start there, Barbara.
Yes, it was a tent stake. Yes, it was pre-owned. No, it was not premeditated. I’ve told the story so many times it has its own Goodreads page. “Oh Jael, you’re so brave.” Brave? I was trying to keep the guest room quiet. Heber had just installed the reed mat flooring. Do you know how long it takes to vacuum blood out of sisal?
And ever since… it’s the thing. My thing. I try to host a simple gathering—just women of the clan, a touch of hummus, a splash of hyssop, no bloodshed—and someone always brings up the incident.
I am more than my tent stake, Barbara. I am a woman of layered interiority and three Pinterest boards. But Heber? Poor man flinches if I so much as open a drawer. We haven’t used our cast iron skillet in 15 years. Fifteen. I make pancakes on a rock outside like some Bronze Age feral woman.
The children? Precious. Traumatized. One of them wrote an essay called “When Mommy Made History (And Daddy Slept in the Goat Shed).” Their friends aren’t allowed to sleep over. The village newsletter still refers to me as “Jael (comma) Local Hero (comma) Slight Risk.”
And I try—I do—to be normal. I wear cream cardigans. I label my spices. I have deep thoughts about saffron. But some days…
(She stares into the middle distance, tightening her grip on the latte like it’s a sacred artifact of pre-caffeine diplomacy.)
Some days… I see a tent peg at Home Depot and I ache.
Not for the violence. Not for the fame.
For the silence that followed.
Because in that moment—when the war ended, and everyone clapped, and I got my own entry in the Song of Deborah—I felt something I haven’t felt since.
Useful.
And now I just alphabetize the teas and try not to think about how many of us women are one dusty tent peg away from finally being heard.