Song of the Magdalene (2 page)

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I must have slept. For when I knew again where I was, the sun was high overhead. My lips were hard and cracked. I opened my mouth and the tight crust of saliva on my chin and cheeks pulled at my skin. I was warm, like on the
hottest days of summer. I was weary, as though I'd run for hours. I stood up and looked down at my shift, grass-stained but whole. I stared at the cloth as the realization came.

It was wrong that my clothing should be whole, it was terribly wrong, for I knew my soul had been rent. I had struggled on the ground, locked in a grip I could not break. Had I really had a fit? Oh, I had! I had. Tears streamed down my cheeks. I doubled over in sobs, yielding to the huge, merciful grief that drowned thought.

But reason gradually returned, inevitable and cruel. I took stock. I knew the source of such fits. Everyone knew. A demon had taken up residence in the shell of my body. Just as a demon lived in Abraham. But this was my own personal demon of fits. In me. Inside me.

I wiped away my tears and waited to see what would happen next. I waited many hours. The sun moved through the afternoon. My neck strained like a coreopsis turning to the light.

I looked down at my long toes. If I were to die in the valley now, I would die barefoot, like one of the common children. Would that matter?

As evening came, I walked back in a daze. My sandals awaited me safely at the lentisk bush. I went home looking no different from how I had always looked.

The sky was still blue.

As I lay on my bed mat before the next dawn, I touched my ears, my eyes, the tip of my tongue. I traced the creases of my hands. These things that had always told me about the world, did these things serve me still? Would the demon within lie to me about the world I walked through? Would this demon betray me with my own senses?

I was aware of each rise and fall of my chest. I felt the darkness of our home, springtime damp, like the darkness of a cave.

I thought of the caves at Qumran, far to the south, on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. On the first anniversary of Mother's death Father had gone on a private pilgrimage. He went all the way to Qumran to see a community of Essenes who lived near dry, white caves. When he returned,
he talked late into the night with the village men, telling what he had learned, saying how these Qumran people believed that self-denial led to purity.

That was it: I was impure. Why else would this moment have brought the image of those caves? I had invited the demon of the fit into me with the power of some inner impurity. I was in need of being purged. The thought transfixed me. The happy girl who danced through the house and up the steps to our roof, who wove herself a path in and out of the laundry line, the girl who chattered stories to Abraham on rainy days and who had been Mother's treasure, that girl was filthy.

I hugged myself tight and opened my eyes.

I could not go to Qumran. I was a woman. I would not travel anywhere alone.

I rose from my bed mat and stood in the dark, patted by the breaths of Father and Hannah and Abraham, all asleep. My stomach growled. I hadn't eaten since breakfast the day before. The thought of a spring fig, immense and dark, made me swallow hard. Those figs would be ready just days after Passover. Soon now.

An old fig tree stood near our house. Father
pruned it round so that it shaded our home all through the summer and fall. He said fig trees were good for meditation; their thick foliage gave calm. I went outside and sat beneath the tree. Not a wasp buzzed. I opened my mind to whatever would come. An answer would surely come. Before long Hannah called me in to help start the day's chores.

After that I no longer expected sudden revelation or damnation. It was as though a heavy cloak had been draped across my shoulders and even a soul as impatient as mine couldn't but recognize that every step had to be measured. Every thought came wrapped.

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For months I went to the valley any time I could. I had decided that it was my deception in going to the valley alone that had invited the demon. That was my impurity. So the valley should have been the last place I'd go. But the valley was the only place I could go. It was the only place I could be sure no one would see me if a fit came again. And I had to make sure no one saw me in a fit. For if they did, I would join the outcasts of society.

Oh, Father would let me live with him still; I wouldn't wander the streets with the lame and those who babbled nonsense, my hand open for the alms that every Jew gave freely to the beggars. But the eyes of the villagers would look upon me with pity. Some might even carry a locust's egg or a fox's tooth in my presence — a charm to keep my demon from entering them. I refused to suffer such treatment. They would never see me in a fit.

My behavior showed a lack of faith, I knew. I should have gone directly to the mikvah and immersed myself completely in the ritual bath. After all, that's what women did after their monthly blood came. Hannah had told me about it. The blood would flow from me within a few years, making me unclean. While the blood flowed, I would be restricted in what and whom I touched. And soon after it stopped flowing, I would go to the mikvah and come home again pure. But it wasn't just women after their monthly blood who went to the mikvah — anyone who felt the need of cleansing could go. I had gone once myself, three years before — after Mother's funeral. If I went there now with my
heart open, maybe the Creator would have mercy on me. Maybe the Creator would cleanse me of my demon.

But if I went to the mikvah, all would know I was unclean. They would wonder. They would ask. And if the Creator did not choose to cleanse me, I would have exposed myself for naught.

I thought of telling Father. I could ask him to take me to a healer. I was ready to drink the water of Dekarim, extracted from the roots of palm. I was ready to walk to the hot baths at El Hamma on the Sea of Galilee. I was willing, oh so willing. I would even go to an exorcist. Hannah had taken Abraham to an exorcist in Capernaum long ago.

I approached Father once. “Father, may I speak with you?”

Father smiled. “Yes, Miriam. Later.”

I watched as he took off his shoes, washed his hands, and unfolded his tallith — the prayer shawl — carefully. Of course it was prayer time. I knew that. I just hadn't been thinking, I'd been so enveloped in my own need. I put out my fingertips and touched the feather tassel tips of the tallith. Mother wasn't clever at embroidery, so
Father's tallith had been bought. But Mother had added these tassels. They were white, like the original tassels. The only difference was that she had counted out the threads herself and knotted them. Each corner had a tassel of eight threads, totaling thirty-two — the number that matched the word for “heart.” When Father prayed, knots of Mother's love brushed his arms.

I didn't wait for the end of his prayers. I couldn't bear witnessing my parents' love in that tallith — a love that seemed to swathe Father and distance me in my present isolation. I left.

I thought often of trying again to talk with Father. But every time the thoughts came, the knowledge followed: The Creator was the only true healer for a malady such as mine. After all, when Abraham went to the exorcist, no good had come of it. And last year when Shiphrah and Jacob brought their deformed baby girl to a traveling exorcist, the baby died in his hands.

So I didn't tell Father. And I hardly saw him, anyway. The long, hot season was always his busiest time for arranging trade. He stayed away for two or three weeks at a time.

When Father returned from a journey, he lingered
around the house for a day or two, praying thanks to the Creator and renewing himself. On those days, I tended our kitchen garden. This could not be a sham. If Father was to find me at home, I would be home as a righteous woman devoted to the details of daily family life.

I grew lentils, beans, cucumbers, peppers, lettuce. I dug the earth with a vengeance new to me. The perimeter was onions and shallots and leeks. The area most in the sun was reserved for eggplant. The area most in the shade overflowed with chicory, endive, cress, and parsley. Everything thrived. The irony spurred me on. I reserved a section for a rock garden and the purslane spread there as though it were on the naked shores of the Dead Sea, the shores Father had described. Everything, everything thrived.

Hannah didn't mind it when I wouldn't go with her to the well, for the garden this year did much better than it had ever done under her care. No weed strayed into this dirt without being plucked mercilessly. No beetle nibbled on a lettuce leaf without being crushed by my thumbnail. If I kept vigilant, if I worked assiduously, a fit could not take me by surprise.

When Father was busy with trade, however, I went to the valley early in the morning and came home late at night. Hannah said it wasn't right that I should spend so many hours alone. She invited me to join her in making bread and spinning wool. She looked at me with eyes that longed to help me solve the secret problem she sensed growing within me. I tried to soothe her, but I failed. Hannah had lived with us too long not to recognize my wanderings as flight. But in one thing I succeeded: Hannah swore to keep my confidence. She told Father nothing of my visits to the valley.

Each silence on her part, each confidence on my part, while they didn't make us grow closer to one another, made us grow separate from Father. There were days when I feared the loyalty of Hannah — when I questioned for the first time the need for the separateness of women.

And the claws of my deception tore at my soul. I was mindful to watch Father and Hannah for signs of vulnerability. I didn't worry about Abraham. He already knew a devil. Father and Hannah, however, might need protection. And so when Father raised his hands and said firmly,
“Shema yisra'el,”
calling upon Israel to listen, when Hannah inspected the meat carefully to make sure it had been completely bled, I rejoiced inside. They followed the laws; they were pious. Neither of them would become the host of a devil. Neither would need refuge.

The valley was my refuge. I climbed the sycamores and in the very treetops I sang. I begged the Creator to look upon me. To do what I could not bear to have any human do — to pity me. I begged the Creator to forgive me for not going to the mikvah, for coming to the valley, for whatever impurities I hid from myself. When I climbed down, I did not dance. I had given up dancing. This was my own kind of atonement. The Creator knew how much my feet had rejoiced in dancing before. The Creator knew that I atoned.

I hung my shifts in the brightest sunlight and watched them fade. And I never mentioned pomegranates. No more crimson for me. Mother's colors faded away.

No more fits came. But I didn't know whether that was because the Creator had heard me and answered my song prayers, or because the demon
within was waiting quietly. In the absence of fits, there was no way to know. I sang, day in day out, week in week out. I walked and walked and walked. Each night I slept the sleep of exhaustion.

This self-imposed exile in the valley might have gone on forever if it weren't for Abraham. One day as I was leaving the house, he called to me.

Hannah had gone to the well early, as usual. She drew the water and returned before the women with children gathered there. She would indulge in talk with the older women, but never with the young mothers. Most days Hannah took Abraham with her. She pushed him in a handcart Father had fashioned. It was because of Abraham that Hannah left when the women with children came to the well; I knew this. No mother ever had to tell her child not to go near Abraham, for Hannah whisked Abraham away before there was any need. No mother had to fear Abraham's demon.

I was allowed to stay behind at the well and
play if I liked. And in the old days, before my first fit, I had done that often. Now I never did. Now I usually didn't even accompany Hannah and Abraham to the well.

On this morning, however, Abraham was at home. The night before he had slept poorly. He woke cranky and complained of the heat. He said he couldn't bear the women's busy voices at the well that day. So Hannah left Abraham behind, propped outside the door, where he could catch a bit of air.

And he called to me.

At first I wasn't sure I had actually heard him. But he repeated, “Come here.”

When I was small, I'd talked with Abraham many times, naturally, of nothing in particular. Other people found him hard to understand because his lips didn't move the right way. But I had no trouble knowing what he meant. Only these days we didn't have much to say to each other.

Still, I knew many things about Abraham. I knew he had little control over his legs and left arm. I knew his head stayed to one side because he couldn't right it. Had some flaw within Abraham's
soul invited his demon, just as a flaw had invited mine?

I stood beside him and spoke gently. “What is it?”

He looked at me with steady eyes and I was afraid for a moment that he was unable to speak right then. I felt sure his eyes were telling me to pay attention.

My first thought was that he was in pain. He needed Hannah. “How are you?” I leaned close over him as I spoke.

“Afflicted.”

I straightened up quickly.

Abraham showed his teeth. His shoulders moved. And I realized suddenly he was laughing. Abraham was making a joke of himself.

“You shouldn't talk that way.”

“You shouldn't go off alone.”

I suppressed a gasp and clasped my hands together. Of course Abraham would know I'd been off alone. We had no relatives hereabout, so there was no one's house that I could pass the day in. I should have expected Abraham would figure it out. He might have even overheard me tell Hannah I was going to the valley.

I pulled on my fingers, one after the other. “If you tell, it will be awful for everyone. Father will make Hannah go away.”