Tamar and I climbed trees together. She would climb high and hang by a single hand like a cluster of grapes. I was content to watch her climb. You don’t have to deny your sister’s beauty. You can enjoy it in a nice, distant way, like it’s a sunset. You don’t want to sleep with a sunset.
Amnon always grasped, an extra fig, an extra rib, greasy-thumb and face. No one talks about how fat he was. Recently, while I was in the stables checking in on Sara, my mule, I saw a mother goat screaming. She couldn’t pass the second kid. They slit her and a squirming mass rolled out, wobbled on the floor. I almost stepped on it, just in memory of Amnon.
When I heard of the way he’d done it, with the believable lure of illness — perpetually sick — I broke a limb off an almond tree, and nearly went that night to kill him. The grasping was something he wouldn’t quit. I almost went then and shoved the stick down his throat, but I thought, “My father will deal with him. David won’t ignore the grabbing.” Two years later and Amnon was still kicking, and it fell to me. I set it all up, my men struck him once, brothers scattered, avenged Tamar, done. I didn’t regret it. I know the law. I have it bound on my wrists. It’s been stamped into my head.
A Fruit Salad of Harm 