The Book of Longings(59)

I asked Salome to summon James. He appeared hours later, standing beyond the doorway so as not to become fouled. Seated on the bench across the room, I said, “I beg you, James, send for my husband. He must come and mourn his daughter.”

He spoke not to me but to a scrim of sunlight on the window. “We all wish for him to be here, but it’s better he should remain in Capernaum for the entire month as he planned. We are desperate to resupply our food stores.”

“We don’t live by bread alone,” I said, repeating words I’d heard Jesus speak.

“But still, we must eat,” he said.

“Jesus would want to be here to grieve his child.”

He would not be moved. “You would have me force him to choose between feeding his family and grieving his child?” he said. “I would think he’d be glad to have the burden removed from him.”

“But James, it’s his decision. His child has died, not yours. If you take the choice from him, he will be angered.”

My words struck.

He sighed. “I’ll send Simon to him. We’ll let Jesus decide.”

Capernaum was a day and half walk. I couldn’t expect to see my husband for four days, three at best. I knew Simon would press him with news of the tax collectors and describe our food stores with direness. He would urge Jesus to delay his return.

Surely, though, he would come.





xv.


The following day, Yaltha came to my room carrying the broken pieces of a large clay pot in the folds of her robe.

“I broke it with a mallet,” she said.

As she spread the fragments across the rug, I gaped at her in astonishment. “You did this on purpose? Why, Aunt?”

“A broken pot is almost as good as a stack of papyrus. When I lived among the Therapeutae, we often wrote on the shards—inventories, letters, contracts, psalms, missals of all kinds.”

“Pots are precious here. They’re not easily replaced.”

“It’s only the pot for watering the animals. There are other pots that can replace it.”

“All the rest are stone pots, and they are pure—you can’t use them for the animals. Oh, Aunt, you know this.” I gave her a stern, baffled look. “For you to shatter a pot just for me to write upon . . . they’ll think you’re possessed.”

“Then let them take me to a healer and have the demon cast out. You just make certain I didn’t break the pot for no reason.”

For the past two days, my chest had been bound with tight rags, but now I felt milk engorge my breasts, followed by a thick clot of pain. Dark, wet circles appeared on my robe.

“Child,” Yaltha said, for even though I was a woman, she still sometimes called me by her pet name. “There’s no worse feeling than one’s breasts filled with milk and no one to suckle.”

The words opened a raw, furious place in me. She wanted me to write? My daughter was dead. My writing was dead, too. One day had never come. I was the shattered pieces on the floor. Life had taken a mallet to me.

I lashed out. “How would you know how I feel?”

She reached for me, but I wrenched away and dropped onto my bed mat.

Yaltha knelt down and cradled me with her body as I wept for the first time since Susanna had died. When I was spent, she rebound my breasts with clean rags and wiped my face. She brought a wineskin and filled my cup and we sat awhile in silence.

Out in the courtyard the women were in the heat and throes of work. Curls of smoke from the dung fire drifted in through the window. Berenice was shouting at Salome to return to the village well for more water, blaming her for the parched plot of vegetables. Salome yelled back that she was not a pack donkey. Mary complained that the pot used to water the animals had gone missing.

Yaltha said, “I do know what it’s like to have full breasts and no baby.”

I remembered then the story she’d told me many years ago of birthing two sons, neither of whom had lived, and of her husband, Ruebel, who’d punished her for it with his fists. Remorse scorched my cheeks. “Forgive me. I forgot your dead sons. My words were cruel.”

“Your words were understandable. I remind you of my loss only because I wish to tell you something. Something I left out of my story.” She drew a deep breath. Outside the sun dipped and the room guttered. “There were two sons who died in infancy, yes. But there was also a daughter who lived.”

“A daughter.”

Her eyes brimmed—a rare sight. “When I was sent to the Therapeutae, she was two years old. Her name is Chaya.”

All at once a memory unwound. “Back in Sepphoris when you contracted the fever sickness, there was one night when you were lost in delirium and you called me by her name. You called me Chaya.”

“Did I? I can’t say I’m surprised. If Chaya is alive, she would be twenty-one years, almost as old as you. She had unruly hair like yours. I often think of her when I look at you. I’ve dreaded telling you about her. I feared what you would think of me. I left her behind.”

“Why do you tell me about her now?” I didn’t mean it cruelly. I truly wished to know.

“I should have told you long ago. I do so now because the death of your daughter has made my loss fresh again. I thought it might be a small solace for you to know I’ve suffered in a similar way, that I comprehend what it is to lose a daughter. Oh, child, I want no secrets between us.”