The Book of Longings Read online

  It didn’t, apparently, satisfy Judith. I was squeezing a handful of my tunic so tightly that when I let go, my knuckles throbbed. Jesus had told me nothing of this.

  Mary read my thought. “My son didn’t want you burdened with this. He believed it would make it more difficult for you, but I thought it would help you understand Judith better, and perhaps make it easier.”

  I said, “I’m sure you are right,” but all I could think was that my husband had a separate place inside himself where he kept certain privacies that I would never know. But did I not also have such a place?

  Mary got to her feet, and when I stood, too, she faced me. “I’m glad my son changed his mind about marriage. I don’t know if it was God who changed it or if it was you.” She cradled my cheeks in her hands. “I’ve never seen him so glad of heart as he is now.”

  As we walked on, I told myself I would let Jesus have his hidden place that was his alone. We had our togetherness—why should we not have our separateness?

  iv.

  I began to slip away from the straw mat while Jesus slept, light a lamp, and creak open my chest. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, trying to make no sound, I would stretch out one of my papyri and read.

  I often wondered if Jesus had ever opened my cedar chest and peered inside it. We’d never spoken of the contents, and though he’d read the prayer in my bowl and knew the depth of my desire, he hadn’t broached the topic again.

  One night he woke to find me huddled in the small spout of light, poring over my half-finished story of Yaltha’s travails in Alexandria, which I’d embarked upon during those last insufferable days before leaving Sepphoris.

  Coming to stand over me, he gazed into the open chest. “These are the scrolls you buried in the cave?”

  The question stopped my breath. “Yes. There were thirteen of them buried there, but shortly after digging them up, I added several more.” My mind traveled to the three scrolls that contained my tales of terror.

  I held out the scroll I’d been reading and felt my hand shake. “This one is an account of my aunt’s life in Alexandria. I regret I wasn’t able to finish it before running out of papyrus.”

  As he took it, I realized this text, too, was replete with brutality. In it, I’d progressed no further than describing the mistreatment my aunt had endured at the hands of her husband, Ruebel, and I’d spared no detail of his cruelty. I suppressed an urge to take the scroll back—no one had ever read my words but Yaltha, and I suddenly felt bared, as if I’d been lifted out of my skin.

  Jesus sat beside me, and leaned into the lamplight. Upon finishing, he said, “Your story caused your aunt’s suffering to lift off the papyrus and enter inside me. I felt her suffering as my own and she was made new to me.”

  Heat started in my chest, a kind of radiance that spread through my arms. “When I write, that’s what I most hope for,” I told him, struggling to remain composed.

  “Do the other scrolls contain stories such as this one?” he asked.

  I described my collection of narratives, even my tales of terror.

  “You will write again, Ana. One day you will.”

  He was saying what had never been acknowledged out loud, that the privilege was not possible now. Even he, the eldest son, could not make a way for me to write and study, not in this poor compound in Nazareth where there were no coins for papyri, where men scrabbled for work and women toiled from daybreak to day’s end. Women’s duties and customs were inviolable here, more so even than in Sepphoris. The leisure and affront of making inks and writing words were as unthinkable as spinning gold from flax, but doing so would not be lost to me forever—that’s what he was telling me.

  He blew out the lamp and we returned to our mats. His words had flooded me with an odd mixture of hope and disappointment. I told myself I would put aside my desire, that it would wait. The thought saddened me, but from that night I did not doubt he understood my longing.

  v.

  On the day that Jesus and I had been married a full year, Mary patted my belly and teased, “Have you got a baby in there yet?” Overhearing this, Jesus cast his mother an amused look that cut through me. Was he, too, waiting and hoping for a child?

  We were in the courtyard huddled over an inventive new oven Jesus had made out of clay and straw, the three of us staring inside at balls of dough clinging to its smooth, curved walls. Mary and I had taken turns throwing the fistfuls of dough against the sides while Jesus praised our efforts. Unsurprisingly, two of my dough balls had refused to stick and landed in the hot coals at the bottom. The smell of burned bread was everywhere.

  Across the compound, Judith stepped from her doorway and wrinkled her nose. “Have you burned the bread again, Ana?” She glanced sideways at Jesus.

  “How do you know it was I who did so and not my mother-in-law?” I asked.

  “I know the same way I know it was your goat who ate my cloth and not the chickens.” Of course, she would bring that up. I’d let Delilah roam free in the compound and she’d eaten Judith’s precious cloth. You would think I’d put the cloth on a plate and fed it to her.

  In a perfectly timed moment, Delilah emitted a forlorn bleat, and Jesus broke into laughter. “She overheard you, Judith, and wishes to be forgiven.”

  Judith huffed away, her baby, Sarah, tied onto her back. The child had been born seven months ago and already Judith was pregnant again. I felt a wave of pity for her.

  Mary was removing the small loaves from the oven, tossing them into a basket. “I’ll pack these for your journey,” she said to Jesus.

  He would leave tomorrow as a journeyman, traveling from village to village as a stonemason and woodworker. The theater in Sepphoris was finished and jobs there had disappeared as Herod Antipas erected a new capital to the north, named Tiberias for the Roman emperor. Jesus could’ve found employment there, of course, but Antipas had stupidly, wantonly built the city atop a cemetery, and only those who cared little for the purity laws would work there. My husband was an outspoken critic of the purity laws, probably too outspoken for his own good, but I think he’d been relieved to have a reason not to be part of the tetrarch’s ambitions.

  I slid my arm about Jesus’s waist as if to tether him. “Not only will Delilah and I remain unforgiven, but my husband is leaving with all our bread,” I said, making an effort to disguise my sadness. “I wish you didn’t have to go.”

  “If I had my way, I would stay, but there’s little work for me in Nazareth, you know that.”

  “Don’t people in Nazareth need plows and yokes and roof beams?”

  “Jobs here will go more readily to James and Simon than to me. I’ll try not to remain away too long. I’ll go first to Japha and if I find no work there, I’ll go on to Exaloth and Dabira.”

  Japha. It was the village Tabitha had been banished to. A year and a half had passed since I’d seen her, but she was not gone from my thoughts. I’d told Jesus about her, holding nothing back. I’d even sung some of her songs for him.

  “When you’re in Japha, would you seek word of Tabitha for me?” I asked.

  He hesitated only slightly. “I’ll inquire about her, Ana, but the news, if there is any, may not be what you hope to hear.”

  I scarcely heard him. Her song about the blind girls was playing unbidden in my head.

  * * *

  • • •

  IN THE AFTERNOON I found Jesus mixing mud-brick mortar to repair the crumbling stone in the compound wall, mud to his elbows, and I couldn’t bear to keep my secret from him any longer. I handed him a cup of water. I said, “Do you remember when you told me some men possessed an inner knowledge that caused them to leave their families and go out as prophets and preachers?”

  He looked at me bemused, squinting through the sunlight.

  “You thought that you yourself might even be among them,” I continued. “Well, I, too, have my ow
n knowing inside . . . that I’m not meant for motherhood, but for something else.”

  Such an impossible thing to explain.

  “You’re talking about the prayer in your bowl. The stories you’ve written.”

  “Yes.” I took his hands in mine, even though they were caked. “What if my words could, like men’s, prophesy or preach? Would that not be worth the sacrifice?”

  I was so young, sixteen then, and exorbitantly hopeful. I still believed I would not have long to wait. Some miracle would intervene. The sky would part. God would rain down papyri.

  I studied his face. I saw regret, uncertainty. Not to have children was considered a great misfortune, a thing worse than death. I thought suddenly of the law that permitted a man to divorce his childless wife after ten years, but unlike my mother, I didn’t fear that possibility. Jesus would never countenance such a law. My fear lay in disappointing him.

  “But do you need to make this sacrifice now?” he said. “There’s time. Your writing will be there for you one day.”

  I understood more clearly—when he said one day, he meant one faraway day.

  “I do not want children,” I whispered.

  This was my deeper secret, but I’d never spoken it aloud. Good women had babies. Good women wanted babies. It was pressed upon every girl precisely what good women did and did not do. We lugged those dictates around like temple stones. A good woman was modest. She was quiet. She covered her head when she went out. She didn’t speak with men. She tended her domestic tasks. She obeyed and served her husband. She was faithful to him. Above all, she gave him children. Better yet, sons.

  I waited for Jesus to respond, but he dipped his trowel in the mortar and smoothed it over the stones. Had he ever prodded me to be a good woman? Not once.

  I waited several moments and when he didn’t speak, I turned to leave.

  “Do you wish, then, to bed apart?” he asked.

  “No, oh no. But I do wish to use the midwife’s herbs. I . . . already take them.”

  His eyes held mine for so long, I fought not to look away. They were tinged with disappointment that slowly softened, then ebbed. He said, “Little Thunder, I won’t judge the knowing in your heart or what choice you make.”

  It was the first time he spoke the pet name he would call me until the end. I accepted it as an endearment. He heard the quake that lived at my center, and he didn’t seek to silence it.

  vi.

  The days he was away crept on tiny, unhurried feet. Sometimes in the evening my feeling of aloneness was so great, I snuck Delilah into our room and fed her citrus peels. Other times I carried my mat to the storeroom and slept beside Yaltha. I marked Jesus’s absence with pebbles, adding one each day atop his sleeping mat, watching the little pile grow. Nine . . . ten . . . eleven.

  On the twelfth day I woke knowing Jesus would return before dark, bearing some sort of propitious news. I couldn’t concentrate on my tasks. In the afternoon, Mary came upon me staring idly at a spider that dangled from the lip of a water jug. “Are you well?” she asked.

  “Jesus will come today. I know it.”

  She didn’t question my certainty. She said, “I’ll ready his meal.”

  I bathed myself and dabbed clove oil behind my ears. I let my hair loose and dressed in the dark blue tunic he loved. I poured wine and set out bread. Over and over I went to the doorway and looked toward the gate. A blaze of yellow on the hill . . . the first grains of darkness floating in the air . . . dusk skulking across the compound.

  He arrived with the last trace of light, bearing his tools and enough wages to replenish our wheat stores and add a lamb to the stable. In the privacy of our room, he gathered me into an embrace. I could smell the weariness on him.

  Filling his cup, I said, “What tidings do you bring?”

  He described his days, the work he’d been hired to do.

  “And Tabitha? Do have any word of her?”

  He touched the bench beside him. “Sit.”

  Was the news so grave I must sit to receive it? I sank down close to him.

  “I was hired by a man in Japha to fashion a new door for his house. Everyone in the village knew of Tabitha, including the man’s wife, who said that few had ever seen her and most feared her. When I asked why this was, she said Tabitha was possessed by demons and kept locked inside.”

  This was not the favorable news I’d expected. “Would you take me to her?”

  “She’s no longer there, Ana. The woman said she was sold to a man from Jericho, a landowner.”

  “Sold? She’s a slave in his house?”

  “It seems so. I asked others in Japha about her and they told me the same story.”

  I laid my head in his lap and felt his hand stroke my back.

  vii.

  Throughout the year that followed, I grew accustomed to Jesus’s absences. The temporary loss of him became less like a spear in my side and more of a splinter in my foot. I went about my chores, relieved when I’d completed them and could sit with Mary or Yaltha and beg for stories of Jesus’s boyhood or tales of Alexandria. I thought sometimes of my parents, an hour’s walk away, and of Judas, who was I knew not where, and a gnawing forlornness would rise in me. There’d been no word from any of them. I tried not to think of Tabitha, enslaved to a stranger.

  Whenever Jesus was away, I wore the red thread on my wrist, as was my custom, but early in the spring, on a day when my mind could settle on nothing, I noticed how frayed the thread had become over the past year, so wizened I feared it would soon wear apart. Touching it with my fingertip, I assured myself that if such a thing happened, it would signify nothing ominous, but then I thought of the ink splotch in my incantation bowl, the gray cloud over my head. It was hard to imagine that meant nothing. No, I would not risk a broken thread. I undid the knot and slid my tattered bracelet into its goatskin pouch.

  I was tightening the cord when I heard Mary shout from the courtyard, “Come quickly, Jesus has returned.”

  For the past two weeks he’d been in Besara making cabinets for a winemaker and staying with his sister, Salome. I knew Mary was anxious for news of her daughter.

  “Salome is well,” he reported when the flurry of greetings had subsided. “But I have bitter news. Her husband has a weakness in his leg and arm and a slur in his voice. He no longer leaves the house.”

  I looked at Mary, how she gathered herself, her arms wrapping about her sides, her body saying what her mouth did not: Salome will be a widow soon.

  That night all of us except Judith and the children huddled about the cook fire speculating about Salome’s husband and sharing stories. When the heat had nearly gone from the embers, James turned to Jesus. “Will you make the Passover pilgrimage for us this year?”

  James, Simon, and Mary had traveled to the Temple in Jerusalem the year before while the rest of us stayed home to work and tend the animals. It was Jesus’s turn to go, but he vacillated.

  “I don’t yet know,” he said.

  “But someone must go from our family,” James responded, sounding annoyed. “Why do you hesitate? Can’t you leave work behind for those few days?”

  “It isn’t that. I’m struggling to understand if God wishes me to go at all. The Temple has become a den of thieves, James.”

  James rolled his eyes skyward. “Must you always concern yourself with such things? We have a duty to sacrifice an animal at Passover.”

  “Yes, and the poor bring their animals and the priests refuse to accept them, claiming they’re blemished, and then they charge exorbitant prices for another one.”

  “What he says is true,” Simon offered.

  “Shall we speak of something else?” Mary said.

  But Jesus pressed on. “The priests insist on having their own currency and when the poor try to exchange their coins, the money changers charge them excessive rates!”


  James stood. “Would you force me to make the trip again this year? Do you care more for the poor than your brother?”

  Jesus answered, “Aren’t the poor also my brothers and sisters?”

  * * *

  • • •

  THE NEXT MORNING as the sun stirred awake, Jesus trekked into the hills to pray. It was his daily habit. At other times I would find him sitting cross-legged on the floor with his prayer shawl drawn over his head, unmoving, eyes closed. It had been so since we married, this devotion, this feasting on God, and I’d never minded it, but today, seeing him walk away in the half-light, I understood what until now I’d only glimpsed. God was the ground beneath him, the sky over him, the air he breathed, the water he drank. It made me uneasy.

  I prepared his breakfast, trimming corn from the husk and parching it over the fire, the sweet aroma drifting over the compound. I glanced repeatedly toward the gate, as if God lurked out there, ready to pluck my husband from me.

  When he returned, we sat together beneath the olive tree. I watched him wrap bread around a hunk of goat cheese and eat hungrily, saving the corn, his favorite, for last. He was quiet.

  Finally, he said, “When I saw my brother-in-law’s infirmity, I was moved with pity. Everywhere I look, there’s suffering, Ana, and I spend my days making cabinets for a rich man.”

  “You spend your days caring for your family,” I said, perhaps too sharply.

  He smiled. “Don’t worry, Little Thunder. I’ll do what I must.” He wrapped an arm about me. “Passover is soon. Let us go to Jerusalem.”

  viii.

  We took the pilgrim road, leaving the green hills of Galilee and descending into the dense thickets of the Jordan River valley, traveling through stretches of wilderness filled with jackals. At night we put out the fire early and, clutching our staffs, slept beneath little lean-tos we fashioned from brush. We were on our way to Bethany, just outside Jerusalem, where we would lodge with Jesus’s friends Lazarus, Martha, and Mary.