The Book of Longings: A Novel (19 page)

Judith complained of me even more vociferously when others were about, notably my husband, telling him once that I was less useful than a lame camel. She not only disparaged my domestic skills, but I half suspected her of efforts to disrupt them. When it was my turn to pound the wheat, the pestle went missing. When I laid the fire, oddly, the dung was wet. Once when Mary instructed me to latch the gate, it miraculously unlatched itself and the chickens escaped.

The only task I excelled at was caring for the goat, whom I named Delilah. I fed her fruit and cucumbers and brought her a little basket that she liked to toss about with her head. I talked to her—Hello, girl, do you have milk for me today? . . . Are you hungry? . . . Do you want your ears scratched? . . . Do you find Judith as annoying as I do?—and she occasionally responded with a string of bleats. Some days, I tied a piece of rope about her neck and fastened it to my girdle and she accompanied me as I went about my chores and waited for the sun to slope toward the hills and Jesus to return. At the sight of him, Delilah and I would rush to the gate, where I embraced him, oblivious to the stares of his family.

James and Simon took fun in mocking our devotion, which Jesus took in stride, laughing with them. There was truth in their teasing, but I didn’t find it as good-natured as my husband. They taunted him out of jealousy. Simon, two years from having a wife, was eager for the intimacies of marriage, and James and Judith’s union was like that of two yoked oxen.

One hot day in the month of Elul, while the courtyard baked, I milked Delilah in the stable, then placed the ewer of frothy milk outside the gate, where the sheep couldn’t capsize it. When I turned back, Delilah was in the water trough again. She’d taken to standing and sometimes sitting in it for long periods. I made no effort to deter her. I thought of climbing in myself. As Mary approached us with a basket of grain, however, I tried to lure her out.

“Leave her,” she said, chuckling. She looked tired and flush with heat. Now that Judith’s time was near, we’d taken over her portion of the chores, the bulk of which fell to Mary, since I was still an apprentice.

I took the basket from her. Even I could toss grain to chickens.

She leaned against the gate. “Do you know what we should do, Ana? Just the two of us? We should go to the village mikvah and immerse ourselves. Yaltha can remain here with Judith in case the baby decides to come.”

I gestured at Delilah. “I know, I envy her, too.”

She laughed. “Let’s shirk our work and go.” A lovely impish light had come into her eyes.

A
LINE OF WOMEN
had formed outside the stone enclosure that housed the pool, not because they’d suddenly grown devout, but because, like us, they craved a respite from the heat. We joined it, clutching our drying rags and clean tunics. Mary called out a greeting to the toothless old midwife who would soon attend Judith, and was greeted in return, but without enthusiasm. The women ahead of us stole glances at me, whispering and holding themselves stiffly, and I realized that my ill repute had followed me from Sepphoris. I couldn’t tell if Mary noticed or if, for my sake, she pretended not to.

When we stepped inside the cool dwelling and descended into the mikvah, the women’s undertones grew louder.
Yes, it’s the chief scribe’s daughter, the one sent away for promiscuity. . . . They say she was nearly stoned for thievery. . . . What reason could Mary’s son have for marrying her?
Overhearing their gossip, the women behind us, including the midwife, refused to enter the water after me, preferring to wait until I’d vacated.

My cheeks stung with humiliation. Not because I cared what this puerile gaggle of women thought but because Mary had witnessed the indignities. “Pay them no mind,” she told me. “Turn the other cheek.” But the lovely light had gone from her eyes.

As we walked home, she said, “Jesus and I have also been the recipients of this kind of malice. They called me promiscuous, too. They said Jesus was conceived before my marriage and some said he didn’t belong to Joseph.”

I didn’t tell her Jesus had spoken to me of these things. I waited for her to refute their accusations, but she said nothing, refusing to defend herself.

She took my hand as we walked and I felt how difficult, how bold, how loving it was for her to bare herself to me like this. “Jesus suffered more than I,” she said. “He was branded as a child who was born outside of marriage. Some in the village shun him to this day. As a boy, he would come home from synagogue school with bruises and scrapes, always getting into a fight with his tormentors. I told him what I told you, ‘Pay them no mind and turn the other cheek. Their hearts are boulders and their heads are straw.’”

“I’ve heard Jesus use those same words.”

“He learned well, and his suffering didn’t harden him. It’s always a marvel when one’s pain doesn’t settle into bitterness, but brings forth kindness instead.”

“I think the marvel has a lot to do with his mother,” I told her.

She patted my arm and turned her concern back to me. “I know you
suffer, too, Ana, not just from gossip and scandal, but daily at the hands of Judith. I’m sorry she makes it difficult for you.”

“I can do nothing right in her eyes.”

“She envies your happiness.” Abruptly, she guided us off the path to a fig tree and motioned for me to sit in the green shade. “There’s a story I must tell you,” she said. “Last year, when Jesus was close to twenty, well before you came along, Joseph attempted to betroth him. My husband was ailing then—weak and short of breath with a blue hue about his mouth.” She paused, closing her eyes, and I saw the freshness of her grief. “I think he knew he would die soon, and it spurred him to fulfill his duty and find his first son a wife.”

A memory stirred. That evening Jesus had asked me to become his betrothed, he’d said his father had tried to arrange a marriage for him, but he hadn’t agreed to it.

“Judith’s father, Uriah, owns a small parcel of land and keeps sheep, even hiring two shepherds,” Mary said. “He was a friend to Joseph, one who paid no attention to lingering stories of Jesus’s birth. Joseph intended to seek a betrothal for Jesus with Judith.”

The revelation dazed me.

“Of course, it never happened,” she continued. “Our son had some notion he wouldn’t marry at all. That was a great shock to us. Not to marry would’ve made him even more of a pariah. We pleaded with him, but his reason had to do with God’s wishes, and he asked his father not to approach Uriah. Joseph complied.”

The sunlight broke through the limbs and I frowned, more from confusion than the glare. “Why should Judith be envious of me if she knows nothing about this?”

“But she does know. Joseph had been so assured of the betrothal, he had already hinted his intention to Uriah. Judith’s mother came to me, saying her daughter was pleased at the notion. Joseph, poor man. He felt
to blame and was relieved when James offered to betroth Judith instead. James was barely nineteen, so young. Naturally, the story spread throughout Nazareth.”

How embarrassed Judith must’ve been—getting the second-born because the firstborn declined. How hard it must have been for her to see me ride through the gate only months later.

“Jesus believed his decision was right,” Mary was saying. “Still, he felt sorry for the shame it caused Judith’s family and he went to Uriah and humbled himself, saying he meant no disrespect, that he was uncertain if he would marry at all, that he still wrestled with God over it. He praised Judith as worthy, her price far above rubies. This satisfied Uriah.”

It didn’t, apparently, satisfy Judith.
I was squeezing a handful of my tunic so tightly that when I let go, my knuckles throbbed. Jesus had told me nothing of this.

Mary read my thought. “My son didn’t want you burdened with this. He believed it would make it more difficult for you, but I thought it would help you understand Judith better, and perhaps make it easier.”

I said, “I’m sure you are right,” but all I could think was that my husband had a separate place inside himself where he kept certain privacies that I would never know. But did I not also have such a place?

Mary got to her feet, and when I stood, too, she faced me. “I’m glad my son changed his mind about marriage. I don’t know if it was God who changed it or if it was you.” She cradled my cheeks in her hands. “I’ve never seen him so glad of heart as he is now.”

As we walked on, I told myself I would let Jesus have his hidden place that was his alone. We had our togetherness—why should we not have our separateness?

I began to slip away from the straw mat while Jesus slept, light a lamp, and creak open my chest. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, trying to make no sound, I would stretch out one of my papyri and read.

I often wondered if Jesus had ever opened my cedar chest and peered inside it. We’d never spoken of the contents, and though he’d read the prayer in my bowl and knew the depth of my desire, he hadn’t broached the topic again.

One night he woke to find me huddled in the small spout of light, poring over my half-finished story of Yaltha’s travails in Alexandria, which I’d embarked upon during those last insufferable days before leaving Sepphoris.

Coming to stand over me, he gazed into the open chest. “These are the scrolls you buried in the cave?”

The question stopped my breath. “Yes. There were thirteen of them buried there, but shortly after digging them up, I added several more.” My mind traveled to the three scrolls that contained my tales of terror.

I held out the scroll I’d been reading and felt my hand shake. “This one is an account of my aunt’s life in Alexandria. I regret I wasn’t able to finish it before running out of papyrus.”

As he took it, I realized this text, too, was replete with brutality. In it, I’d progressed no further than describing the mistreatment my aunt had endured at the hands of her husband, Ruebel, and I’d spared no detail of his cruelty. I suppressed an urge to take the scroll back—no one had ever read my words but Yaltha, and I suddenly felt bared, as if I’d been lifted out of my skin.

Jesus sat beside me, and leaned into the lamplight. Upon finishing, he said, “Your story caused your aunt’s suffering to lift off the papyrus and enter inside me. I felt her suffering as my own and she was made new to me.”

Heat started in my chest, a kind of radiance that spread through my arms. “When I write, that’s what I most hope for,” I told him, struggling to remain composed.

“Do the other scrolls contain stories such as this one?” he asked.

I described my collection of narratives, even my tales of terror.

“You will write again, Ana. One day you will.”

He was saying what had never been acknowledged out loud, that the privilege was not possible now. Even he, the eldest son, could not make a way for me to write and study, not in this poor compound in Nazareth where there were no coins for papyri, where men scrabbled for work and women toiled from daybreak to day’s end. Women’s duties and customs were inviolable here, more so even than in Sepphoris. The leisure and affront of making inks and writing words were as unthinkable as spinning gold from flax, but doing so would not be lost to me forever—that’s what he was telling me.

He blew out the lamp and we returned to our mats. His words had flooded me with an odd mixture of hope and disappointment. I told myself I would put aside my desire, that it would wait. The thought saddened me, but from that night I did not doubt he understood my longing.

On the day that Jesus and I had been married a full year, Mary patted my belly and teased, “Have you got a baby in there yet?” Overhearing this, Jesus cast his mother an amused look that cut through me. Was he, too, waiting and hoping for a child?

We were in the courtyard huddled over an inventive new oven Jesus had made out of clay and straw, the three of us staring inside at balls of dough clinging to its smooth, curved walls. Mary and I had taken turns throwing the fistfuls of dough against the sides while Jesus praised our efforts. Unsurprisingly, two of my dough balls had refused to stick and
landed in the hot coals at the bottom. The smell of burned bread was everywhere.

Across the compound, Judith stepped from her doorway and wrinkled her nose. “Have you burned the bread again, Ana?” She glanced sideways at Jesus.

“How do you know it was I who did so and not my mother-in-law?” I asked.

“I know the same way I know it was your goat who ate my cloth and not the chickens.” Of course, she would bring
that
up. I’d let Delilah roam free in the compound and she’d eaten Judith’s precious cloth. You would think I’d put the cloth on a plate and fed it to her.

In a perfectly timed moment, Delilah emitted a forlorn bleat, and Jesus broke into laughter. “She overheard you, Judith, and wishes to be forgiven.”

Judith huffed away, her baby, Sarah, tied onto her back. The child had been born seven months ago and already Judith was pregnant again. I felt a wave of pity for her.

Mary was removing the small loaves from the oven, tossing them into a basket. “I’ll pack these for your journey,” she said to Jesus.

He would leave tomorrow as a journeyman, traveling from village to village as a stonemason and woodworker. The theater in Sepphoris was finished and jobs there had disappeared as Herod Antipas erected a new capital to the north, named Tiberias for the Roman emperor. Jesus could’ve found employment there, of course, but Antipas had stupidly, wantonly built the city atop a cemetery, and only those who cared little for the purity laws would work there. My husband was an outspoken critic of the purity laws, probably too outspoken for his own good, but I think he’d been relieved to have a reason not to be part of the tetrarch’s ambitions.

I slid my arm about Jesus’s waist as if to tether him. “Not only will Delilah and I remain unforgiven, but my husband is leaving with all our bread,” I said, making an effort to disguise my sadness. “I wish you didn’t have to go.”

“If I had my way, I would stay, but there’s little work for me in Nazareth, you know that.”