The Book of Longings(37)

I waved my hand at her. “Let them think what they will.”

Anger seared across her face, then fell away bit by bit in little crumbles. In the sullen gray light of my room, her shoulders sagged, her eyes closed; she seemed very tired. “Don’t be unwitting, Ana. Being a widow is deterrent enough, but if you’re also thought to be defiled . . .” Her voice trailed off into the doom and gloom of having a husbandless daughter.

I thought of Jesus then, that day in the cave, rain-soaked hair, the crook of his grin, the ragged portion of bread he offered, the things he said while the storm raged. It caused a tipping over in my stomach. But perhaps he would not have me now either.

“Husbands may be loathsome creatures,” she was saying, “but they’re necessary. Without their protection, women are easily mistreated. Widows can even be cast out. The young ones resort to harlotry; the old ones, to beggary.”

Like Sophocles, my mother was capable of tragic sweeps of imagination.

“Father will not cast me out,” I told her. “He takes care of Yaltha, who’s a widow—do you think he would not take care of me, his daughter?”

“He won’t always be here. He, too, will die and what will happen to you then? You cannot inherit.”

“If Father dies, you will be a widow as well. Who will care for you? You cannot inherit either.”

She sighed. “My care will fall to Judas.”

“And you think he would not provide for me? Or for Yaltha?”

“I don’t think he will be able to provide for any of us,” she answered. “He does nothing but seek trouble. Who can say what means Judas will have? Your fool of a father has disclaimed him. He went so far as to write his disownment into a contract. Now on his death, this house and everything in it will go to his brother, Haran.”

It took a moment to grasp the magnitude of what she was saying. Haran had cast out Yaltha once. He wouldn’t hesitate to cast her out again, along with me and Mother. A wave of fear passed through me. Our lives and fates left to men. This world, this God-forsaken world.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Yaltha standing in the doorway. Had she heard? Mother spied her as well and left us. As my aunt stepped inside, I took a mocking tone; I didn’t wish her to see how Mother’s words had disturbed me. “It seems the entire populace has picked over the state of my virginity like a flock of scavengers and has determined it’s missing. I’ve become a mamzer.”

Mamzers were of all varieties—bastards, harlots, adulterers, fornicators, thieves, necromancers, beggars, lepers, divorced women, cast-out widows, the unclean, the destitute, those possessed of devils, Gentiles—all of them shunned accordingly.

Yaltha wove her fingers through mine. “I’ve been without a husband for many years. I will not mislead you, child—you will live even further on the outskirts now. I’ve spent my life there. I know the uncertainty Hadar spoke about. And now that Haran will inherit the house, our fates are threatened even more. But we shall be all right, you and I.”

“Will we, Aunt?”

She tightened the hitch of her fingers. “The day you met Nathaniel in the market you returned home bereft, and that night I came to your room. I told you your moment would come.”

I’d thought Nathaniel’s death would be that moment, a portal I could step through and find some measure of freedom, but now it seemed his dying would only leave me scorned and my future would leave me destitute.

Seeing my dejection, Yaltha added, “Your moment will come because you’ll make it come.”

Even though my window was boarded over until the spring, I went and stood before it. Cold air seeped around the wood panel. I felt incapable of making any moment come that would change my circumstance for the better. The longing of my heart was for a man I scarcely knew. It was buried with my bowl and my writings. God, too, was hidden from me now.

Behind me, Yaltha spoke: “I told you how I came to be rid of my husband, Ruebel, but not how I came to marry him.”

We went to sit among the bed pillows, which only a short time ago had been plump with my laughter. Settling herself, she said, “On the fifteenth of Ab, the Jewish girls in Alexandria, the ones who were not yet betrothed, the ones with little appeal, went into the vineyards during the grape harvest and danced for the men in need of brides. We went late in the day before the sun set, all of us wearing white dresses and bells sewn on our sandals, and the men would be there, waiting. You should’ve seen us—we were scared, clinging to one another’s hands. We carried drums and danced in a single line that moved like a serpent through the vines.”

She paused in the telling and I could see it clearly—the sky singed red, the girls twittering with apprehension, the sway of white dresses, the long, serpentine dance.

As she resumed her story, her eyes seemed to darken at the edges. “I danced each year for three years until finally someone chose me. Ruebel.”

I wanted to cry, not for myself, but for her. “How would a girl know she was chosen?”

“The man would come and ask her name. Sometimes he would go to her father that very night and the contract would be drawn.”

“Could she refuse?”

“Yes, but it was rare. She would not risk displeasing her father.”

“You didn’t refuse,” I said. This both captivated and dismayed me. How different her life might have been.