The Book of Longings(56)

xiii.


One fall morning, I vomited my breakfast. Even after my stomach emptied, I remained bent over the waste pot retching plain air. When the heaving subsided, I washed my face, cleaned the spatter from my tunic, then went on slow, solemn feet to find my aunt. The blackseed oil had finally failed me.

Over the past few years, the compound had begun to spill over with people. Salome’s husband had died, and we’d all traveled to Besara for the funeral banquet, then brought her home, childless and bereft, her husband’s meager properties having gone to his brother. The following year, Simon’s wife, Berenice, had arrived, and then came a baby, to which Judith had responded by producing her third. Now there would be one more.

It wasn’t long past daybreak, and Jesus was off in the hills with his prayer shawl. I was glad he was absent—I didn’t want him to see my stricken face.

Yaltha was sitting on the floor of the storeroom eating chickpeas and garlic. The smell convulsed my stomach and nearly sent me back to the waste pot. After she set aside the bowl and its vile-smelling contents, I lay down beside her, resting my head in her lap. I said, “I’m with child.”

She rubbed my back and neither of us spoke for a while. Then she asked, “And you are certain?”

“My bleeding is late, but I gave it little thought—it has been late many times. It wasn’t until I retched my breakfast that I knew. I’m pregnant, I know it.” I sat up, suddenly a little frantic. “Jesus will be back from his prayers soon, and I can’t tell him, not yet, not when I’m like this.” I felt possessed by a strange, almost debilitating numbness. Beneath it, though, disappointment, fear, and anger rattled against some lid inside me.

“Give yourself the time you need. If he questions your demeanor, say your belly is unsettled. There’s truth in that.”

I got to my feet. “For six years I’ve swallowed that hellish oil,” I said, the anger leaking out. “Why would it fail me now?”

“No preventative is perfect.” She gave me a mischievous look. “And you have certainly tested the limits of it.”



* * *



? ? ?

JESUS TRAVELED TO TABOR the following day to find work, returning four days later. I met him at the gate, kissed his cheeks and hands, then his lips. “You are in need of a haircut,” I said.

The sun was going down, a tiny rampage of color in the sky—red, orange, indigo. He squinted at it and the smile formed, the one I loved. “Am I?” he said. His locks hung about his shoulders. He combed through them with his fingers. “I thought my hair was just right.”

“Then I’m sorry to tell you that tomorrow morning I will accompany you into the hills and wait while you pray, and then I shall cut your hair.”

“I’ve always cut my own hair,” he said, giving me a curious look.

“Which explains why it’s so unkempt,” I teased.

I wanted a way to steal him away from the compound, that was all—away from all the people and the busyness so we could be alone and uninterrupted. I felt like he guessed this, that he sensed I had some other intention besides his hair.

“I’m happy you’re home,” I added.

He lifted me up then and swung me about, which precipitated a wave of nausea. My unsettled stomach, as Yaltha had called it, didn’t confine itself to the mornings. I closed my eyes and pressed my hand to my mouth, letting the other one float instinctively to the new little mound of my belly.

He watched me in that deep, probing way of his.

“Are you well?” he asked.

“Yes, only a little tired.”

“Then we’ll go and rest.” But he lingered, gazing at the bloodshot sky. “Look,” he said and pointed to the east, where a slivered moon rose, so pale it seemed like nothing more than a winter breath. “The sun is setting while the moon rises.”

He said the words in a deliberate way, and I felt like I knew what he was saying, that this was a sign to us. My mind flashed to the story of Isis that Yaltha had told Tabitha and me so long ago. Think of it, she’d said. Some part of you might die and a new self will rise up to take its place.

It seemed I was seeing my old life die before me in a splurge of color and a faint new life rising up. It was a thing of wonder, and the anguish I’d felt over having the child left me.



* * *



? ? ?

“DON’T TRIM TOO MUCH,” he said.

“Like Samson, do you believe your strength lies in your hair?” I asked.

“Like Delilah, are you bent on shearing me?”

Our banter was trifling and playful, but there was a thin layer of tension beneath it, as if we were both waiting to let out our breaths.

Earlier, we’d found a grassy hillock on which to sit and he’d left me while he went apart to pray, but he’d come back sooner than I’d expected—I doubt he could’ve repeated the Shema more than a dozen times. I’d brought Yaltha’s Egyptian scissors. I held up the long bronze blades.

“I trust you know how to work this thing,” he said. “I’m at your mercy.”

Kneeling behind him, I squeezed the blades, snipping off the ends of his hair. They drifted down like dark, curled wood shavings. I could smell his skin, brown and earthen.