The Book of Longings(98)

Uncertainty wrinkled Diodora’s face. “I’m only an attendant,” she said and took a step backward.

“Do you also serve in the healing sanctuary?” Yaltha asked.

“That’s where I attend most often. Today, I was required here.” She picked up the cloth and wrung it out in the bowl. “Have I attended you there in the past? Do you wish to seek another cure?”

“No, I didn’t come for healing.” Later I would think Yaltha was wrong about that.

“If you have no need of me then . . . I’m tasked with removing the offerings. I must see to it.” She hurried away, disappearing through the door at the back.

“I didn’t think she could be so beautiful,” Yaltha said. “Beautiful and grown and very much like you.”

“She’s also puzzled,” I said. “I’m afraid we made her ill at ease.” I moved close to my aunt. “Are you going to tell her?”

“I’m trying to find a way.”

The door opened and Diodora emerged carrying two large empty baskets. She slackened her pace when she saw we were still there, the two peculiar strangers. Without acknowledging us, she knelt and began placing the Isis figures into a basket.

I lowered myself beside her and picked up one of the crudely fashioned carvings. Up close, I saw it was Isis cradling her newborn son. Diodora cast a sideways glance at me, but said nothing. I helped her fill both baskets. In my soul, I was a Jew, but I closed my fingers around the statuette. Sophia, I whispered to myself, calling the figure by the name I loved.

When all the offerings had been gathered, Diodora rose and looked at Yaltha. “If you wish to speak with me, you may do so on the portico of the birth house.”



* * *



? ? ?

THE BIRTH HOUSE was a shrine to honor the motherhood of Isis. The small columned building sat near the courtyard, which was still and quiet now, the dancing women gone.

Diodora led us to a cluster of benches on the portico and sat facing us, her hands clasped tightly and her eyes shifting from Yaltha to me. She must have known that something momentous was about to occur—it seemed perched in the air over our heads like a bird about to swoop. A hundred birds.

“My heart is full,” Yaltha told her. “So full it’s difficult for me to speak.”

Diodora tipped her head to the side. “How is it that you know my name?”

Yaltha smiled. “I once knew you by another name. Chaya. It means life.”

“I’m sorry, lady, I do not know you or the name Chaya.”

“It’s a long, difficult story. All I ask is that you allow me to tell it to you.” We sat a moment with the rustling in the air, and then Yaltha said, “I’ve come over a great distance to tell you that I’m your mother.”

Diodora touched her hand to the gully between her breasts, just that small gesture, and I felt an unbearable tenderness come over me. For Diodora and Yaltha and the years stolen from them, but also for myself and Susanna. My lost daughter.

“And this is Ana, your cousin,” Yaltha said.

My throat thickened. I smiled at her, then mirrored her gesture, placing my hand to my breasts.

She sat terrifyingly still, her face as unreadable as the alphabet ash we’d created in the oven. I could not imagine myself hearing such a thing as she’d just heard. If she lashed out in mistrust or grief or anger, I wouldn’t have blamed her. I almost preferred such reactions to this strange, inscrutable quiet.

Yaltha continued in measured sentences, sparing Diodora nothing as she relayed the details of Ruebel’s death, the murder accusations against her, and her eight-year exile with the Therapeutae. She said, “The Jewish council decreed if I left the Therapeutae’s precincts for any reason, I would be given a hundred strokes by cane, mutilated, and exiled to Nubia.”

This I’d never heard. Where was Nubia? Mutilated how? I slid closer to her on the bench.

When she’d finished the entire story, Diodora said, “If what you say is true and I am your daughter, where then was I?” Her voiced sounded small, but her face was like an ember.

Yaltha reached for Diodora’s hand, which she quickly drew back.

“Oh, child, you were little more than two years old when I was sent away. Haran swore to keep you well and safe in his household. I wrote letters to him, inquiring of you, but they went unanswered.”

Diodora frowned, rolling her eyes to the top of a column crowned with a woman’s head. After a moment she said, “If you were sent to the Therapeutae when I was two and remained there eight years . . . I would’ve been ten when you left them. Why didn’t you come for me then?” Her fingers moved in her lap as if counting. “Where have you been the last sixteen years?”

As Yaltha struggled for words, I spoke. “She has been in Galilee. She’s been with me. But it’s not as you think. She didn’t regain her freedom when you were ten, but she was banished once again, this time to her brother in Sepphoris. She had hoped to reclaim you and bring you with her, but—”

“Haran told me he’d given you out for adoption and he would not reveal your whereabouts,” Yaltha said. “I left then—I felt I had no choice. I thought you were cared for, that you had a family. I had no knowledge Haran had sold you to the priest until I returned to Egypt over a year ago to search for you.”