Song of the Magdalene (3 page)

“I won't tell.”

Abraham was older than me. Above his lip a fine fuzz held bits of crumbs from his morning bread. He wouldn't tell. He knew what it would mean for his own life if he did. I folded my hands together and spoke with forced calm. “Why did you call me?”

“Take me with you.”

“With me?” The words made no sense. “Where?”

“Wherever you go.” Abraham moved his lips with care, working to make each word clear. “You're strong. Push me in the cart.”

It was true. Though Abraham had to be at least thirteen, I was sure I weighed more than him, much more. Perhaps if he could stand, he'd be taller than me. But, then, Abraham had never stood. He never would. Abraham would never stand with the men in the holy services reciting prayers, though I knew he had memorized many of them. I had heard him mumbling holy words to himself as he sat before the fire on a winter's
day. I had even heard him cry out passages from the scriptures in dreams sometimes. This youth who held the Talmud so dear would never make the traditional pilgrimages to Jerusalem with the other men, would never stand in the court of men in the Temple.

I considered his frail body now with dismay. “What would you do?”

“The same thing I do here.”

I looked around. The late summer sun would grow too fierce for Hannah before long. She would return. If we were to go, we had to go fast. Could I push Abraham in the cart all the way to the valley? And how could the cart move among the tree roots? “I don't know. It would be hard.”

“Lonely.” Abraham spoke loudly. “Your feet used to fly around the room, graceful and light. Now you are anchored like a boat at midnight. You must be lonely. I am.” His blue eyes sparkled. My own eyes were so dark, they bordered on black. But Abraham's eyes were like the Sea of Galilee. They were like the heavens. They compelled me.

I went to the side of the house and fetched the handcart, wondering whether I could really do it.
Hannah did it, and I was already almost as large as she. Still, I was only ten. I leaned over Abraham, hooked my arms under his armpits, and pulled him into the cart. He was even lighter than I'd thought. Hannah often lamented the fact that he barely ate, but now I was grateful for it.

His right hand managed to grasp the side of the cart. He struggled to get comfortable. I knew the position he preferred. I tucked his legs under him and rested him against the two logs Hannah kept in the cart for that purpose.

Abraham smiled. “Hurry.”

A sudden thought stopped me. “Hannah will worry.”

“Wonder.”

I shook my head. “What are you saying?”

“Hannah will wonder, not worry. There is nothing to worry about for me. What more harm could come to me?”

I stared at Abraham. It was true that no one would harm him. Those who had palsy were ignored, not tormented. “You could have an accident. You could die.”

“Is not death welcome?”

When Mother was dying, when she knew there was no chance left, she called me to her bed mat. She told me that the true calamity is not that we die, but that we must travel through life. I saved her words. No one before or since ever said such words to me. As I grew older, I came to see she had told me that to comfort me, so that I wouldn't fear for her as she passed from life. My mother died days after giving birth to Father's only son, who died as well. I remembered her voice, low and rich, full of whispers. I remembered her thick hair and long fingers. I slept under the gaze of her night eyes.

I respected Mother's last words. But now I reexamined them from my new position in life. I had been cast out from the holy, cut off from Israel and Israel's rewards. What did death promise me, the host of a demon?

Yet Abraham might be a sinner, too, and here he was, still believing that death was welcome. He must know fully the fate of sinners, for Abraham was knowledgeable. His uncle Daniel had taught him well, even though others behaved as though Abraham didn't exist. And Father had taken over Abraham's education after Daniel
left. He taught him geography and history and so many things I'd never know. I looked at Abraham's intelligent eyes. Maybe Daniel and Father had been compelled by those eyes as much as I was now.

I folded Abraham's left arm across his chest and pushed the cart down the street. We turned off quickly at a path that led away from the well. It would be longer this way — much longer. But we couldn't risk being seen by Hannah or the watchful Judith or anyone else.

The cart went easily over the low grasses, but as they got higher, the going got more labored. Still, we were already out of sight of anyone going to or coming from the well. I slowed my pounding heart. I stooped and took off my sandals, slipping them into a corner of the cart. I would go before the Creator on feet that knew His earth. I pushed steadily, keeping my mind on the job at hand.

Abraham made small noises of appreciation, and before long I found myself looking around as though through his eyes, seeing the valley as though for the first time. The undergrowth was still free of roots, for the land didn't turn instantly
to forest. Instead, it seduced with almost a casualness, beginning with the sparse olive groves, ashy gray and blue. These were the main source of our wealth. The fruits were pressed for oil that served in cooking, lighting, medicine, even in anointings in holy services. Next we passed the fruit orchards, plum and pear, branches bowed with almost-ripe fruit.

Abraham's moans grew louder. I knew he was marveling at the beauty, for our valley was indeed beautiful. Not all the world was beautiful. The year I turned seven, the year Mother died, I convinced Father to take me along on his travels. Had Father always gone alone on business like most of the men in our village, he'd never have even thought of taking me. But, like the Roman men, he brought his wife with him everywhere. It wasn't that he adopted Roman ways. It was just his own way: He wanted Mother by his side. I knew my presence on that journey would help to fill the void that Mother had left. Even at seven, I knew.

I traveled with Father southwest to Nazareth and then much further south to Jericho. I saw the red sands and the baked clay. I saw stony soil
where only olive trees grew. I even saw date palms outside Jericho, though most of the date palms grew even further south in the great Ghor basin.

So I had learned that land could be barren or rich; ugly or beautiful. I looked around now with grateful eyes. Pride strengthened my step. In the valley here the trees stood so thick in spots that now, in midsummer, the sun could not penetrate between the leaves, such was the glory of this land.

It was midmorning by the time I lifted Abraham from the cart and helped him stretch out in the grass, protected from the searing summer sun by the shade of a plane tree.

I sat beside him. Abraham groaned and thrashed around until he was lying on his side. He looked at me.

My mind raced. Immediately I wished I hadn't brought him here. I hadn't been thinking clearly at all. What would happen if I had a fit while Abraham was here with me? He might tell.

The burden of secrecy was heavy. I was suddenly exhausted with it. People would find me out sooner or later. And I was already isolated —
by my own trips to the valley. What did it matter if Abraham told them?

Only I shouldn't have brought him along. What would happen to him if I had a fit and died here? He would starve to death. And starvation was the cruelest of deaths.

“I'm taking you home.” I stood up.

“Sit down, Miriam.” Abraham's voice was stern.

I sat. Abraham had never ordered me before. But it was his right: He was male and he was older. Yet the strangeness of this sudden turn of events confused me. My heart was loud in my ears. Abraham was the son of our servant.

He clutched my shift with his right hand, that hand that seemed to do part of his bidding. His hand was long and slender and white. My eyes moved from his hand to his face once more. If he were a girl, he would be beautiful. Only no one would see his beauty because he was twisted.

“Do whatever it is you do here. Ignore me.”

I nodded. “All right.” I gently unfastened his fingers from my shift. Then I stood and went to the nearest sycamore. I climbed high and sang. Every time I looked at Abraham, he seemed to be
in a new position. He never looked comfortable, though. But he didn't call to me. He didn't seem to need me. I sang until my throat was hoarse. Finally, I climbed down.

Abraham didn't acknowledge my presence at his side for a long while. This was odd. The Abraham I knew, for all his lacks, was alert and aware. I scratched my arms restlessly. The tension between us mounted. I refused to be the first to speak. Incipient anger pecked at my neck. The boy was contrary.

“So this is meadow grass.” Abraham plucked a blade with his right hand.

“You know meadow grass. Hannah and Father have taken you places. And Daniel did, before them.”

“They never laid me on the ground.”

So that was it. Abraham was angry with me! I stood up quickly. “I'm sorry. I thought you'd prefer it to the cart.” I bent to lift him.

“I do. Sit, Miriam.”

I sat on my heels, ready to jump up again.

“Is that mint over there?”

I went and picked him some leaves. “And
here's chamomile, as well.” I added a few curls of the spice.

“And the yellow flowers?”

I smiled. “Dandelions. But they are nothing compared to what else grows here.”

Abraham chewed on the mint leaves. “What else?”

“In the spring this meadow is strewn with red anemones.”

“Spring is brief in Galilee.”

“Brevity makes it that much more beautiful. The yellow jasmine winds through the trees behind us in such profusion you think they are the sun itself.”

Abraham didn't answer.

“And that hill,” I pointed, “the narcissus are so thick, you can't walk there without trampling them.”

“You know the flowers by name.”

“The herbs, too,” I said, hearing my mother's voice come from my own mouth.

Abraham closed his eyes.

I waited. Then I cleared my throat. “Do you want to go home?”

He opened his eyes. “No.” He looked at me and mischief crept into the smile lines around his mouth. “When you were singing before, I never heard anything like that. Do you imagine you're at a funeral?”

“A funeral?”

“The words are hardly appropriate for the dead, though you do wail them with sadness.”

I tossed my hair over my shoulder. “I sing wherever and whenever I want.” My voice was defiant, though I knew he was right. In Magdala the only place I had heard women sing was at funerals.

“Where did you learn the words?”

“I made them up.”

Abraham laughed.

My cheeks went hot. “You're rude, which hardly becomes you. ”

Now he laughed harder. “You have spirit, Miriam. And you sing well. But there are better songs to sing. Songs that heat the blood.” Abraham rolled onto his back and looked up at the sky. “Do you want me to teach you the words?”

I scrambled to my knees and leaned over Abraham, hardly daring to believe what he'd just said.
“Would you?” He had scrolls with all the songs I yearned to know. He could do what he said. “Would you teach me?”

He smiled. “I'll do more than that. I'll teach you to read. Then you can read the songs whenever you like. You won't have to memorize them.”

I sat back on my heels, stunned, my mouth open, my whole body tense. No women in our village read, not even the richest. There was no need to. The educated men kept the Torah and all the holy scriptures. They told the laborers and the servants and the women all that was necessary to know.

But I had heard of women elsewhere reading. Once I listened when Father came back from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He told Abraham of a woman scholar and teacher, whom people flocked to, just like they used to flock to the woman Huldah of centuries before. I had listened with wonder, but nothing more. I had never even dreamed of reading.

“Don't you want to?”

“Yes,” I breathed. “Oh, yes.”

“Then we will come here every day to this
very valley and you will introduce me to the plants of every season, each of them by name, and I will teach you to read.”

As we went home, I didn't speak. My head spun. The world kept changing. A few months ago, I was one person, the person I had always been, the person I felt sure I would always be. Then the fit came, and I became the person who hid in the valley all day alone. And now I was different again — now I was going to learn to read.

Me. Miriam. A girl child from Magdala. A girl child who would read.

I learned quickly. Partly because I was eager, but mostly because Abraham was a good teacher. Where I wanted immediate results and grew quickly frustrated, he was patient and ever encouraging, saying it would all come in good time. No one could have been a better teacher than Abraham.

I called him
peh rabboni
— teaching mouth — an unlovely and odd name, but one that suited him, for he was like the mouth of a rabbi, my own rabbi, my teacher and master. He liked it when I called him that.

We read together daily, always the songs, and always in private. Abraham said our reading wasn't secret, only private, just between us. He offered to help me read the Torah. We were the only family I knew of that had a Torah at home.
I never held it. Indeed, I had touched it on occasion, when I'd unroll it a bit for Abraham. But I never bore it in my hands. The idea made me anxious. Hannah never carried it either. It was always Father who placed the Torah before Abraham's hungry eyes.

So when Abraham spoke of the Torah, when he offered to teach me directly from the holy words, I shook my head and held out the scroll of songs instead. Not the
Song of Miriam
or the
Song of Deborah,
songs of women who were distant from me, whose words didn't stir the life within me, but the open passion of the
Song of Solomon,
the song called rightly the
Song of Songs.
Songs were what had made me dance when I was innocent, before my first fit. Songs were what made me still feel alive now. I could almost believe my breath was pure when it was transformed in a song.