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First Chapter
Maryam stirred, as the moonlight penetrating the mists
lapped against her eyelids. Entangled in strands of somnolence,
she tugged with her toes at her blanket. Was a messenger
trying to reach her? Maybe one from Malkeinu’s realm
ferried on the insistent rays, perhaps to help her flee
a nightmare. Or maybe one to help her grasp a dream.
She turned onto her back, blinked several times, and
hastened to finger the silver prayer-amulets at the end
of the chain around her neck. No, no messenger. A chill
shuddered her. Were those fever-beads on her forehead?
No, she felt with her other hand and it was dry. But
speech, in tongues, threatened to spill from her. If
such tongues jangled loose, maybe a fever lurked, a great
fever, and she would be as if a little girl again, pulled
under by its drenchings.
She pictured her father saying, “If you have a
fire like that again, I will come to you and hold you
as your fever dips you in the River Yarden. And
you will be cleansed and your wild tongues soothed.” She
silently mouthed a prayer praising Malkeinu,
Our King, blessed be He, shield against the night’s
malign spirits, yes, those that brought fevers. She breathed
in the spring aroma of the Samaritan night and turned
with a soft sigh toward the light shards flickering around
the tent flap. Won’t the strands of moonlight singe
the demon spirits? The light, from Malkeinu’s own
face, warmed her. Or was that light the glint of the
night demons glaring at her?
Further sleep was elusive. Images of the coming Pesach
festival in Yerushalayim danced in her, while little-girl
memories of the great fever puzzled her. Was the long-ago
fever coming back, pulling her from sleep? At last she
sat up on her mat, drawing the blanket tighter, still
chilled, and trying not to disturb her three girl cousins
in the tent. Nearby Herod’s citadel loomed, menacing
representative of a regime her father needed but had
reason to fear.
She looked about, as if to penetrate this land of Samaria,
floating out there in the liminal light and cloaked in
walnut trees and olive groves, vineyards and terraced
gardens. Mysterious Samaria. The chatter of tongues still
threatened her. I might as well be a babbling two
year old, when I was handed to Abbi, and he rescued me. Or
eight, at her great fever, talking, chanting, sometimes
in tongues, sometimes in clear, uncanny prayers from
the hundreds she knew, her mother holding her, trembling,
chased by what, no one could sense. Except Nurit. Nurit
is frowning up from She’ol, Maryam knew, she might
as well be there in the tent with her. Seeing darkness
in my cradle, demons in my prayers. And ravens in my
hair. Maryam smiled at that image, which always
amused her. Here I am, Nurit. Again in strange Samaria.
Lying back on her sleeping mat, Maryam lost the moonlight
to shadow. The orb and Malkeinu came and went,
He with His own irregularity and unpredictability. Prayer
could make His presence real, but not always. Why had
He not yet brought on her first flow? She wandered her
hand to her low belly to check, but shame stopped her. Nurit,
I miss you tormenting me. Please rest in peace. Nurit,
three weeks dead, might at last know why no first monthly,
be able to provide an answer from the other realm, but
so far not a hint; perhaps she was still intemperate
from the last days of her painful wasting malady. Had
the other realm restored the crackle to her fierce gray
eyes? The glow to her sun-scraped cheeks that puffed
when she was excited? The strength to her swing of the
butchering blade? Gone with the beloved shrew were her
tales and teasing, often about Alexandros, handsome avda
Alexandros.
Had her parents by now left the Galilee for the holy
city? She pictured the annoying, reassuring smile of
her mother, barren Chana. And her father’s short
soft beard, always soft when he was home, but prickly
when he was about to leave or avoided her questions about
what he did when he was up to something clandestine.
She wanted to arise and press against the night, or choke
it into revealing what she knew it held about her body,
about her father and his activities, about her future.
All she knew was that Herod was dangerous. Until daylight
she just fingered her neck amulets, thinking, and made
her toes crimp and stroked the foot of her blanket.
She arose before her cousins did, but they stirred and
she nodded and smiled at them, as she brushed her long
hair, fighting its black curl. She loosely gathered as
much as she could into a large gold barrette, a favorite,
her mother’s gift. She rubbed each eye hard, as
if they had at one time seen too much, or the wrong things.
Whose fault was it that she didn’t know her cousins
better? Her father’s? Her uncles’? Hers?
Maybe it was too late, the silence too long and loud,
and she too much an only child, a foundling at that.
But that didn’t stop her admiration, or envy, of
how exquisitely embroidered were the headshawls the cousins
were about to don. Still, she was appreciative. She touched
her neck amulets with a guilty thrill at the delights
of the trip, riding in the lavish entourage of her wealthy
uncles. How unrighteous were her uncles for being so
adroit at finding favor and its rewards in Herod’s
court? And could her father not seek more of both the
Covenant’s righteous ways and its beautiful fabrics?
Later in the morning, Maryam wanted to trade her smooth,
red and blue linen toga-skirt for the rough one of a
servant in order to accompany the avda Alexandros into
the village of Sebaste, adjacent to Herod’s citadel.
There he was to look after a tavern that her father owned.
When her father first bought him, she had been intrigued
with the avda’s bearing, a face that drew strangers,
his quiet aloofness, what they shared as displaced souls.
And his great hawk eyes. Could she still hold the view
of him as only like an older brother? She paced, and
smiled at her cousins, but said nothing in her impatience
for his return. Wouldn’t it be nice to bare one’s
head in public, as the avdin do?
She whiffed and the aroma of the mandrake hit her as
if the plant’s orange-colored, apple-scented berries
had just become a necklace. Rachel took some mandrake
berries intended for her sister—how many centuries
ago? But was Rachel even real—or Leah? Were any
of the holy scrolls real, or were they just wonderful
tales dictated by Malkeinu? Rachel took the
mandrakes to help her conceive, but it was Leah whose
womb filled. Beware, it’s only Malkeinu who
brings babies, not mandrakes, not any herbs, nor chants,
certainly not pagan incantations nor their magic. Who
knew, if not Malkeinu’s own good time,
what path leads to being a wife, and if a wife, a mother?
Her mother was barren, is barren, Maryam thought, but
she is my mother and is she not a true daughter of Israel?
Then her impatience struck a memory—how could
she have forgotten? A few years after the great fever,
at this Sebaste stopover, her father was seeing to this
same tavern he owned. Nurit, attending Maryam, had cackled
that taverns were where public women—loose women
and harlots—lingered. “And they sometimes
bear children who are left for others,” she had
said, looking at Maryam, as if expecting the girl to
discern some meaning. Maryam became annoyed all over
again at the deceased old woman for not letting her have
peace about her true parentage.
She looked up as Alexandros returned. “I learned
from Musa the avda that your father is selling him the
tavern under good terms,” he said with a smile. “And
when your father frees me next year, perhaps I will be
able to buy into this business.”
“Then when a harlot comes around with a small
child she wants rid of, you can arrange to give it away—like
others have done,” she said, mimicking his Greek-accented
Aramaic. Alexandros’s face tightened and flushed
as he looked away, both in anger and in deference. Maryam
caught herself and thought to apologize for her crass
and unseemly comment but simply said, “I am happy
for you, Alexandros, go about your business.”
As the caravan got underway, she muttered to herself, “When
will I stop bursting out like that? When will I stop
the quarrel in my mind? What could be so vile or putrid
about my cradle? Why else would my father and Malkeinu Himself
have agreed to disclose nothing, even hush it up?” She
thought again to apologize to Alexandros for her sharpness
with him, and found herself avoiding the eyes of others
in the caravan, imagining how odd they would find such
an act toward an avda. But she appreciated the service
he had rendered her and her family in the three years
since her father had bought him at auction in Gaza.
The next day the caravan paused at Jacob’s well
in Beth-El, the last stop before reaching the holy city.
Only Malkeinu could see her future, but she
hoped the well’s depths might offer a hint. Certainly
none of the men who had approached her father about her
so far had been acceptable. The well was crowded with
avdin and peasant travelers hauling out leather buckets
of water for people, donkeys, goats, and dogs. There
were few others of her class there, and she felt awkward,
even escorted by several male avdin, including Alexandros,
two female avdin, and accompanied by some children from
the caravan. Such a way station was rife with mischief,
including robberies and kidnappings.
Then her eye was caught by a woman standing off to the
side, rocking in silent prayer. Her look and the way
she carried herself conveyed she had not for a while
been able to rely on a decent husband, nor his kin, nor
her own kin, for subsistence and safety. Her tunic and
headshawl, originally fine but now threadbare, were woven
in a Samaritan style. The woman suddenly looked up and
motioned Maryam over. She complied without hesitation,
while Alexandros and her personal avda moved with her.
The woman whispered, “Do you know why children
die young, and what happens to them after they are dead?”
“I guess they go into the earth, or to She’ol,
or to the heavens, I do not know. Do you know?”
The woman stood looking at her, her hands lightly touching
Maryam’s arms, her dark eyes darting back and forth.
Tears made glistening tracks down her dusty, bronze cheeks. “What
amulets do you carry with you?” she asked, ignoring
her own tears.
Maryam wondered whether or not to acknowledge the tears,
and only fleetingly thought to end the strange conversation.
She pitied the woman, but liked her. She wanted to ask
her how one made contact with the dead in a way that
befitted halakha. Instead, she pulled forth the amulets
she wore around her neck, and the amulet-bone from her
tunic sleeve-pocket, absently handing the small worn
amulet-bone to the woman. It was a talisman, a small
elongated bone from a sacrificed lamb, she had been given
years earlier by a woman mentor, Huldah the Wise. The
girls hovering near Maryam and a few little brothers
tried to crowd in to sate their curiosity.
Briefly taking her eyes off Maryam, the woman smiled
and patted one boy on his head. He and the others withdrew. “How
long have you been in the ways of a woman?” she
whispered to Maryam.
“I have not, yet,” Maryam said softly. Her
lack of embarrassment surprised her.
“It is not easy to find what one seeks at this
well, is it?” The woman still fingered the bone.
Maryam bowed her head. “Am I just being selfish
and ungrateful to Malkeinu for all He has bestowed
upon me?”
The woman smiled. “May you be loved like Rachel
was by Jacob. But may you see your children live and
prosper, and theirs as well. I found deep solace visiting
her tomb-pillar in BetLechem. Women learn from the powerful
spirits there.” Then she gave the amulet-bone back
to Maryam, pulled her close for a quick embrace, whispered
something in her ear, turned, and walked away. |
