The Book of Longings(49)

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?





iv.


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.





v.


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.