The Book of Longings(101)

We went on asking questions while she basked in the genuineness of our attention, but after a while she begged Yaltha for knowledge about the two years they’d spent together before being separated. My aunt told her stories about her fear of crocodiles, her favorite lullaby, how once she’d dumped a bowl of wheat flour on her head.

“You had a little wooden paddle doll,” Yaltha told her. “A brightly painted one I found in the market. You called her Mara.”

Diodora sat up very tall, her eyes widening. “Was her hair made of flax threads with an onyx bead on each end?”

“Yes, that was Mara.”

“I still have her! She’s all I have from my life before I was bought by my master. He said I arrived clutching her. I didn’t remember her name.” She shook her head. “Mara,” she repeated.

In this way, she took the bits and pieces Yaltha offered and began to piece them into a story of who she was. I’d stayed very quiet, listening—they seemed to inhabit a realm of their own. But after a while, Diodora noticed my reserve and said, “Ana. Tell me of yourself.”

I hesitated a moment before telling her about her family in Sepphoris—Father, Mother, and Judas—but said what I could, leaving out a great deal. I described Jesus and my heart pined so badly that I resorted to tales of Delilah standing in the water trough, just to have the relief of smiling.

Darkness came, and in that softening, Diodora turned to Yaltha. “When you told me who you were, I didn’t know if I should believe it. That you could be my mother . . . it seemed impossible. But I saw myself in you. Deep inside, I knew who you were. After I heard your confession, bile rose in me. I told myself, she left me once, now I will leave her, so I walked away. Then you called me daughter. You called out your love.” She went and knelt beside Yaltha’s chair. “I cannot forget that you left me. That knowledge will always remain in a corner of me, but I wish to let myself be loved.”

There was no time to ponder or rejoice in what she’d said. The door flew open. Haran stepped into the room. Behind him, the obsequious servant.





xviii.


Yaltha, Diodora, and I stood and edged together, shoulders touching, as if to make a tiny fortress. “Since you didn’t knock, I assume you’ve come on a matter of urgency,” Yaltha said to Haran, sounding remarkably restrained, but when I looked at her, she gave the impression of little bolts of lightning flashing around her head.

“I was told you received a visitor,” he said. His eyes were fixed on Diodora. He searched her face, curious, but as yet unseeing, and I realized that was all he knew—a visitor.

“Who are you?” he asked, coming to stand before her.

I was desperately searching for some scenario to explain her presence—something about Diodora being Pamphile’s sister who’d come regarding Lavi’s marriage. We shall never know if my fabrication might’ve convinced him, or if Yaltha, who was also readying to speak, might’ve distracted him, for just then Diodora pulled the vulture bracelet from her pouch and offered her clumsy story, too frightened to grasp that it made little sense now. “I’m an attendant at Isis Medica. One of your servants left this behind in the healing sanctuary at Isis Medica. I’ve been sent to return it.”

He glanced at the cups of wine and gestured toward Yaltha and me. “And are these the servants who left the bracelet?”

“No, no,” she sputtered. “I was only inquiring if they knew who it belonged to.”

Haran was looking at Yaltha now, a burning, triumphant look. His gaze returned to Diodora. He took a step closer to her. He said, “Chaya, I see you’re back from the dead.”

We stood motionless, as if blinded by an inexplicable burst of light. Even Haran did not move. The room was silent. There was only the smell of the oil lamp, a cold tingling in my arms, heat shoving through the courtyard door. I looked out toward the garden and saw Lavi’s crouched shadow.

It was Yaltha who broke the thrall. “Did you really think I would not seek out my daughter?”

“I thought you smarter and more prudent than to try,” he answered. “Now I shall ask you: Did you think I wouldn’t fulfill my promise to go to the Romans and have you arrested?”

Yaltha gave him no answer. She glared at him, defiant.

I, too, had a question, but I didn’t voice it: Would you like it known, Uncle, that you declared your niece dead, then sold her into slavery? The disgrace of it would cost him. He would be thrust into scandal, public shame, and banishment, and I saw that this was his deepest fear. I decided I would remind him of what was at stake, but delicately. I said, “Won’t you have mercy on a mother who only wants to know her daughter? We don’t care how Chaya came to belong to the priest at Isis Medica. That was long ago. We’ll say nothing of it to anyone. We care only that she is reunited with her mother.”

“I’m not so great a fool as to trust three women to hold their tongues and certainly not the three of you.”

I tried again. “We don’t wish to reveal your sins. Indeed, we’ll return to Galilee and you will be rid of us.”

“Would you leave me behind again?” Diodora cried, turning to her mother.

“No,” said Yaltha. “You would come with us.”

“But I don’t wish to go to Galilee.”