The Book of Longings(63)

“Go, be fruitful again,” the rabbi said as we turned to leave, and I saw Yaltha look at me and lift her eyes.

I pulled my scarf low on my forehead, thinking of Susanna, of the beauty and sweetness of her. My confinement was over. I would take my place once more among the women. When Jesus returned I would be wife to him again. There would be no ink and potsherds. No papyri from Jerusalem.

Walking home from the rabbi’s oil press, Yaltha and I trailed far behind Simon. “What will you do?” she asked, and I knew she referred to the rabbi’s parting words about being fruitful again.

“I don’t know.”

She studied me. “But you do know.”

I doubted this was true. All those years I’d used herbs to prevent becoming pregnant, believing I belonged not to motherhood but to some other amorphous life, pursuing dreams I would likely never realize—these things embarrassed me suddenly, this endless reaching for what couldn’t be reached. It seemed foolish.

I thought again of Susanna and my hands slid to my belly. The weight of emptiness there seemed impossibly heavy. “I think I will choose to be fruitful again,” I said.

Yaltha smiled. “You think with your head. You know with your heart.”

She doubted me. I stopped and stood my ground. “Why should I not give birth to another child? It would bring my husband joy, and perhaps to me, as well. Jesus’s family would embrace me again.”

“I’ve heard you say more than once you don’t wish to have children.”

“But in the end, I wanted Susanna.”

“Yes. That you did.”

“I must give myself to something. Why shouldn’t it be motherhood?”

“Ana, I don’t doubt you should give yourself to motherhood. I only question what it is you’re meant to mother.”

For two days and nights I pondered her words, so vast and inscrutable. For a woman to birth something other than children and then mother it with the same sense of purpose, attention, and care came as an astonishment, even to me.

The evening before Jesus was due to arrive, I gathered up the potsherds, all of them covered now with words, placed them in a wool sack, and set them in the corner. I swept our room, filled the clay lamps, then beat our bed mats.

When darkness fell, I heard the others climb to the roof, but I didn’t join them. I slept in the fragrance of the mat and dreamed.

I am giving birth, squatting over the hole in the corner. Susanna slips from me into Yaltha’s hands, and I reach for her, surprised that this time she cries out, that her tiny fists wave in the air. When Yaltha places her in my arms, though, I’m startled to see the baby is not Susanna. She is myself. Yaltha says, “Why look, you are the mother and the baby both.”

I woke in the dark. When first light arrived, I stole to Yaltha’s bedside and gently shook her awake.

“What is it? Are you well?”

“I’m well, Aunt. I’ve had a dream.”

She pulled a shawl about her. I thought of her own dream of Chaya on the summit calling for her, and wondered if she thought of it, too.

I told her what I’d dreamed, and then placing my silver headband in her hands, I said, “Go to the old woman and trade my headdress for blackseed oil. And for extra measure, wild rue and fennel root.”



* * *



? ? ?

I SET OUT THE HERBS on the oak table in our room. When Jesus arrived late in the day, I greeted him with a kiss, and watched his eyes pass over my collection of preventatives. It was important to me that he understood. He acknowledged the herbs with a nod—there would be no more children. I sensed relief in him, a sad, wordless relief, and it came to me that if the time ever came for him to truly leave, it would be much simpler for him without children.

As we lay together, I clutched him to me, feeling my heart would break open and pour itself out. His fingers touched my cheek. “Little Thunder,” he whispered.

“Beloved,” I answered.

I rested my head on his chest and watched the night slipping past the high window. Pale-fringed clouds, floating stars, wedges of sky. I thought how alike we were, both of us mutinous, venturesome, shunned. Both seized by passions that needed to be set loose.

When he woke, even before he prayed the Shema, I described the dream to him that had caused me to trade my silver headband for the herbs. How could I keep it from him? “The newborn was myself!” I exclaimed.

A tiny shadow passed over his face—concern, it seemed, for what the dream augured for the future—then it passed.

He said, “It seems you will be born again.”





xix.


Haul water.

Card flax.

Spin thread.

Weave clothes.

Mend sandals.

Make soap.

Pummel wheat.

Bake bread.

Collect dung.

Prepare food.

Milk goats.

Feed men.

Feed babies.

Feed animals.

Tend children.

Sweep dirt floors.

Empty waste pots . . .



Like God’s, women’s toil had no beginning and no end.

As the burnt summer gave way and the months passed, weariness hung along my bones like loom weights. It was hard then to imagine how my life could ever be different than it was now. Rising in the early hours to take up my chores, my fingers raw from the pestle and the loom. Jesus crisscrossing the towns and villages around the Sea of Galilee, home two days of seven. Judith’s and Berenice’s sharp judgments.