They scream.

The sound deafens Girl every day, serves as the soundtrack of her nightmares and waking dreams, makes her plug her eyes in an attempt to get away from it.

The screaming started long ago. Girl traces it back through history in her mind. She knows what she’ll see; she’s done this many times before. The history of the world begins to play, like a reel movie, in her head. At first, she sees only darkness, but then Girl sees God creating the world: light and dark, heaven and earth. Then, people.

It begins with Lilith, the real first woman, made of the same clay as Adam. Girl sees God shape the two bodies and breathe life into their souls, watches the two frolic in the grasses of Eden, avoiding that tree in the middle. Girl has seen this often enough to know when Adam will half-attack Lilith with lust, but she still hates seeing him above her, hates hearing Lilith cry out in God’s name. Girl mostly hates knowing that Lilith is silenced by history, her true story forgotten, blamed for her own near-rape. What hurts most is that she knows that Lilith was abandoned by her own sex, women turned against her by superstitious men.

Generations are born and die, from Eve’s children to the Matriarchs. These women hurt and heal Girl at the same time, show her that women can be strong but so very weak, all at the same time.

From the inside of Potiphar’s palace Girl sees his wife, Zuleikha, the woman who was stripped of her own name, sit and cry. Potiphar was a physical and emotional eunuch, unable to love Zuleikha, unable to fulfill her bodily needs. Joseph was a young, beautiful boy who fell in love with his mistress, paid attention to her, gave her emotional support, made her feel loved. She thought he wanted more. He did; they were in bed together when he changed his mind. Girl knows Zuleikha is angry and hurt, feels abandoned and used, wants to wound Joseph as much as he wounded her. The irony of the fact that Lilith and Zuleikha are so similar, yet such opposites - hushed near-rape versus publicized non-rape - is not lost on Girl.

The Hebrews are enslaved in Egypt for centuries, then they are freed; they receive the Torah on a mountain in the wilderness, wander for forty years, and enter the land their foreparents were promised, Israel. After centuries of peace, the Hebrews split into two kingdoms, Israel and Judah.

Girl then observes Jezebel, the Phoenician princess married to Ahab, a king of Israel. It interests Girl that jezebel is now synonymous with whore, but the woman never was one; despite an arranged marriage, she loved her husband, to the point that she got him the field he wanted even though it meant committing murder. Ahab deferred to his wife’s intelligence, but never loved her. Girl watched her unsuccessfully try to “improve” herself for his sake: she danced with brides to keep herself young and lithe, wore make up every day. Even when men were coming to kill her, she patiently applied her face paints. She knew she was going to die, and she wanted to do it in style.

The Jews of Israel are exiled, and so are the Jews of Judah, their Temple destroyed by the Babylonians. All they want to do is return to their homeland.

Vashti was the great-granddaughter of Nebuchadnezzar and the daughter of Belshazzar, two evil men who kept the Hebrews in exile. Girl knows Vashti was not like them. She too felt like a stranger in a strange strange land, taken from her home in Babylon and forced into marriage to Ahasuerus, a Persian nobody who became king through luck and her lineage. She hated this man who usurped her throne, who treated her like he was better than she was. Vashti wouldn’t take that. He would make a party for the men of Persia? She would make one for the women, in his private chambers, no less. He got drunk and wanted her to dance naked for his friends? He could wait forever for that to happen. Girl loves Vashti’s rebellion, but hates Ahasuerus’s reaction: executing the upstart wife.

Girl stops watching after Vashti; she’s seen enough for now.

They scream at her, these women, these unsung heroines, these slandered figures. Only Girl knows their stories; only she can spread the truth. Only she can redeem their names, reveal how history actually went down.

Because so far, the past has been recorded by men, upper class white men who neither knew nor cared about women until they got feisty and rebellious and in their way: Lilith wasn't even put in the Book. Zuleikha's name was taken from her. Vashti only makes an appearance in one chapter. Jezebel only comes up when her actions impact men.

Nobody knows these women, not really. So it's Girl's responsibility to teach her generation about them, so that their children and their children's children will learn from their lives and create a better world. Girl has to, because it's messed up that society hasn't already. Girl has to, because these women will scream at her until she does.