The Book of Longings(72)

He said, “Little Thunder, I’m on your side. I was going to say, the reasons that prophets have no female disciples are flawed reasons.”

“Yet you will follow John anyway.”

“How else can we hope to alter this wrong? I will do what I can to convince him. Give me time. I’ll come back for you in the winter, or early spring before Passover.”

I looked at him. I’d held the world too close and it had slipped from my arms.





xxvi.


Jesus returned me to Nazareth as he had said he would, and there, with unnecessary haste, he bid us farewell. Those first terrible weeks of his absence, I remained in my room. I didn’t care to witness his mother crying with bitterness or hear the exclamations and questions his brothers and their wives hurled at me. Was Jesus struck on the head? Is he possessed? Does he mean to follow a madman and leave us to ourselves?

I imagined my husband alone in some dust pit in the Judean wilderness fending off wild boars and lions. Did he have food and water? Did he wrestle with angels like Jacob? Would he come back for me? Was he even alive?

I had no strength for chores. What did it matter if the olives weren’t pressed or the lamp wicks went untrimmed? I took meals in my room, abetted by Yaltha.

I came out of my seclusion only at night and prowled about the courtyard like one of the mice. Worried for me, Yaltha moved her sleeping mat to my room and brought me hot wine spiked with bits of myrrh and passionflower to help me sleep, the same brew she’d given Shipra long ago when Mother had locked me in my room. The draft had sent Shipra into an unshakable sleep, but it did little more than dull my senses.

One morning I found I could not force myself from my pallet, nor swallow my fruit and cheese. Yaltha felt my brow for fever, and finding nothing, bent to my ear and whispered, “Enough, child. You’ve grieved enough. I understand he has abandoned you, but must you abandon yourself?”

Soon after, Salome appeared in my doorway with news that she would be wed in the spring. James had signed a betrothal contract with a man in Cana, someone who was an utter stranger to her.

“Oh, sister, I’m sorry,” I said.

“It isn’t a sorrow to me,” she replied. “The bride price will help keep our family fed, especially with Jesus . . .”

“Gone,” I said for her.

“James says my new husband will be kind to me. The man does not mind that I’m a widow. He’s a widower himself, having lost two wives to childbirth.” She made an effort to smile. “I must weave some bridal clothes. Will you help me?”

It was the thinnest of ploys, obviously meant to lure me back to my duties and to life itself, for who in her right mind would ask me to help with spinning and weaving—even ten-year-old Sarah could do it better. Somehow, though, her tactic worked. I heard myself say, “I’ll help you, of course I will.”

I went to my chest of cedar and dug out the copper mirror, the last possession of value I owned. “Here,” I said, placing the mirror in her hands. It caught the sun that slanted through the window, a flash of ginger light. “I’ve looked upon myself in this mirror since I was a child. I want you to have it as a betrothal gift.”

She lifted the mirror to her face. “Why, I am . . .”

“Lovely,” I said, realizing she may not have glimpsed her image this clearly before.

“I cannot accept something so treasured.”

“Please. Take it.” I didn’t tell her I wished to be rid of the self I saw reflected there.

After that, I returned to life within the compound. Salome and I spun threads from flax and dyed them in a rare solution of alizarin red, which came from the roots of a tincture tree. Yaltha had procured it through means I wished not to know. It was possible she’d traded for it with Judith’s carved spindle, which mysteriously went missing around this time. We wove sitting in the courtyard, sending our shuttles back and forth, creating bright scarlet cloths that Judith and Berenice found immodest.

“There’s not a woman in Nazareth who would wear such a color,” Judith said. “Certainly, Salome, you won’t get married wearing it.” She complained to Mary, who must’ve had misgivings of her own, but she ignored Judith’s grievances.

I sewed a red head scarf and wore it every day as I went about my duties. The first time I paraded into the village in it, James said, “Jesus would not want you to go about in such a scarf.”

“Well, he isn’t here, is he?” I said.





xxvii.


Winter came slowly. I marked the months of Jesus’s absence on Yaltha’s calendar. Two full moons. Three. Five.

I wondered if by now he’d convinced John the Immerser to let me join the disciples. I kept thinking about the image that had come into my mind near the end of my confinement. Jesus and I had been on the rooftop trying to sleep when I’d envisioned him at the gate wearing his travel cloak and pouch, and I was there, too, crying. It had seemed such a gloomy omen then—Jesus leaving, while I wept—but my visions could be unpredictable and cunning. Wasn’t it entirely reasonable that I’d pictured myself at the gate because I was leaving with Jesus, not saying goodbye to him? Perhaps I was sorrowful over my separation from Yaltha. The explanation gave me hope that Jesus would sway John to accept me. Yes, I thought. He’ll appear soon, saying, “Ana, John bids you to come and join us.”