HIM, page 6
Maryam was sleeping and all was still but the room seemed to turn upside down and the very walls seemed to blink, collapsing into darkness and then opening out again.
Yosef rocked on his couch. But all seemed as before. Was he himself ill?
The child ruffled Yakob’s head. And then with the suddenness of a terrace wall giving way to a flood, Yehushua burst into a run. Ran for no reason, across their unwalled yard.
A few hours later, Yakob said, “Ami.”
Maryam was still sitting next to the edge of their invisible wall, still staring.
Yosef thought he had misheard, made it up. “What did you say? Did you say Ami, Yakob?”
Yakob pointed in slightly the wrong direction with a finger that looked like three small chickpeas.
“Maryam? Maryam did you hear?” Yosef scooped up Yakob and put him on Maryam’s lap. “Ya-ya. What did you say? Say it again.”
The infant rubbed his eyes, and then said, “Ami.” Maryam finally gave a tiny smile, with something like wonder in her eyes. Yosef cackled and did a little dance on his frail, bowed shins. Yakob, unused to being the centre of approval, moved his hands, and squealed out a laugh.
And Yosef pondered what he had seen, and how the child had commanded, and began to think things he would not share with Maryam, partly because he didn’t want to clarify them into words.
Yehushua ran wild.
He organized stone-throwing competitions, with sweetmeats for prizes. He didn’t always win – there were bigger boys. But he was plainly determined to do so.
He collected a gang of lads around himself. They would peer over walls into courtyards. Not to do mischief, more from a desire to know and see. Yehushua had the boys work on a map of Nazareth, building by building. They drew orchards and stables particularly, and mapped out pastures and vegetable gardens. They would show up with feed for animals all around the village.
Or Yehushua led them down to Sepphoris from the rocky hill with grass like sparse baby hair. In Sepphoris, houses joined to form continuous walls. He would go to prosperous households clutching fruit and say, “Hello, we are from Nazareth on the hill where only some things grow. Can we trade?” The surprised locals sometimes said yes.
Most of the boys were one or two years older than the child, and had nicknames like Lem or Smooch. About this time, for short, the boys started to call him Yazz. They nicked things like fruit or barley porridge.
“Save some for home. We will be heroes!” Yazz grinned. “Race you!” And he would run up the hill.
Unlikely as it might be, he would play house with the girls. “When we are older we will marry,” he would declare to different ones. The girls would giggle or demand that they should be the mother, and take giggling revenge on each other. “No no Sharon, you can be our baby. Our own dear little one.” The children chuckled, like the sound of water slapping down over the rocks to the valley.
At the well the women noticed Maryam’s swelling stomach. “Sister,” they said. “With child?”
Maryam faced up to them. She had to brave being regarded, as she had to bear sunlight. But something made her cheeks bunch up, when she indicated yes, something that felt like pride.
And the women gave little gladsome cries. This was more like it. No hiding away and being strange with scrolls and scripture; this was what wives were for. And it hadn’t been a long time since the last pregnancy. Again, what wives were for? Though honestly her husband was hardly well-favoured.
Maryam was a good woman. That boy of hers is a little demon; they let him run free. Something’s happened. I reckon she’s fed up with him. Can you imagine how exhausting?
Maryam tugged Yakob forward. He could walk. “I hope it will be a little sister for this one.”
Yakob stepped forward on his own feet and said with breathy softness. “Hello.”
Hello, hello dear, the Nazaredai chorused and laughed.
“My, he is coming on sudden.”
“Yes,” Maryam said quietly. The villagers said to themselves, O, she’s just shy. Modest. Properly brought up, not like the peasants around here.
“Well, they come up at their own speed, don’t they? My cousin’s boy didn’t say nowt til his third summer.”
“They say boys come on later.”
“Aye, they do.”
“It was a relief,” Maryam admitted. Wistful-like.
“Aw,” said one of the women, Idra, who understood, and she gripped Maryam’s forearm. “It must have been a worry for you, but it’s all right now.”
“As much as it can be with my first-born in the house.”
“Ooh, hard to handle, is he? Send him to me, I’ll soon sort him out.”
Maryam shook her head and said nothing, but her eyes had that stare and didn’t blink.
(Behind her back the other women would say things like “There’s something thrown about her eldest, and that’s worrying her.” And some of them with longer memories had a fair idea of what that thing was. They sometimes said murmuring, together. “That weren’t no boy.” Another woman might shake her head. “No. T’ant. Can you imagine?”)
“Well,” the nice one said, still holding Maryam’s arm. “Anyway, there’ll be another little darling soon.”
This third pregnancy, Maryam felt in control.
She knew when she would get sick. She knew what she had to eat. She knew what Yosef could do to take care of her. She had friends now and she called in the nicest of the neighbours, Idra, to give him even more information and advice.
(“Such a dear, that Yosef,” Idra said to the others. “We should all have one like him about the place.”)
Maryam felt so blessed that she had a husband who could give her children without having to do that thing they both so much detested.
Yakob gained confidence just as his mother swelled and found it most difficult to walk. He would yell and rage and sulk and demand and throw things. This time Maryam knew how to float unperturbed through this bad phase.
“You threw your cup. Now you want your cup. Ami can’t bend. Pick up the cup, Ya-ya. No, I’m not going to. You pick up the cup. I can’t bend, Yakob. You wouldn’t want to hurt your baby sister would you?”
Wail.
“Now now. You have to be gentle. Be gentle, to get what you want. If you keep being mean I will have to put you in the mean place so you can be mean alone.”
And of course Yosef, bless him, would come in and pick up the cup and carry out the howling furious boy.
When finally her spasms began to come, Yosef was out with Yakob. This time Maryam felt she could control the pain, hold things in place until Yosef came back. She told him without panic or fear that it was time that she got upstairs, out of sight.
“Do you want me to get Idra?” Yosef asked.
“No, no, you’ll do,” she said. And this Yosef, now so used to walking and moving things, was of great use helping her climb the ladder into their room.
It was not an easy birth.
Labour took most of a day and a night. Maryam entered once again that timeless realm, but she expected it, now, as this new person took over, demanding to enter the world.
From that timelessness as if from a cliff, Maryam felt she could see their lives entire. Their daily progress around the village made a kind of gold-thread pattern. As the family grew in number that embroidery blossomed in size, extending. For some reason, in that realm Nazareth was deep blue-black and the gold thread glistered.
And Yosef was there, reciting the Mizmor. “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward.” He came with his sharp hot knife.
“Why?” she thought she might have asked him, meaning why a knife.
He understood what she meant. “In a dream I was told it would kill disease.”
Someone was crying, somewhere.
Yosef was lowering someone towards her. “It is a girl,” he said, in a voice as thick as his beard. “A girl for you.”
Maryam slept, and woke with dust in sunlight, and sat up. Idra was with her, with something in her lap.
Idra said, “Yosef’s sleeping. I hope you don’t mind me being here.”
“No, no, Sister, it’s a kindness. Show me my daughter.”
When Idra smiled, her raw-boned face swallowed her eyes. Her caved-in mouth, trapped between cheeks and chin, most naturally took a thin cheerful line.
The newborn’s rumpled, red, undistinguished face, was asleep. Maryam took hold of her and held her, exalting, and a ray of sunlight through the broken roof fell on the infant’s face and made her burble and turn away.
“Your name is Babatha,” Maryam said. “Hello, Babatha.”
Babatha was demanding where Yakob had been weepy.
But she was better at sleeping and letting her parents sleep. At times it seemed to Maryam that she could be vindictively messy. “How could so much come out? It’s more than we put in.”
But, lying clean and washed on the floor, Babatha would smile up at Maryam, grinning toothlessly and pumping out a loud and hearty laugh. Look to me to be strong. And, it seemed to say, look to me to be your friend.
The first-born showed mild interest in the new sister but less, Maryam felt, than it would have done if Babatha were a boy. There was none of the natural interest a girl should have shown in babies.
Then Maryam would again feel the stab of the loss. The possession of the child, whatever it was, that thing had utterly deprived Maryam of one daughter, had left this rough chortling creature who ran wild all day.
Maryam was devoted to her new daughter. She went to work to feminize the hand-me-down infant clothes. When young, Maryam had made herself fond of embroidery and had congratulated herself on how she made good clothes prettier.
Now Maryam found she could still use a needle, though her fingers had thickened. And it seemed to her she was stitching in not only flowers and leaves and cherubim, but that line of timeless light she saw in childbirth.
When the blossoms came on the village apple trees, Maryam would pick branches for Babatha’s hair. Babatha wore flowered gowns. She was told, almost from her first steps. “No, no Atha, no no. Girls must walk with a light step. See? So pretty.”
And it seemed to Maryam that Babatha out of her own nature did tread more lightly and throw fewer things than Yakob. Babatha seemed to delight in other girls. When Idra came to call with her youngest, another little girl called Nohra, Babatha would rock back and forth on her fat hips, spewing spittle with eagerness. And how she loved to play games with scraps of cloth or eating pretend meals.
But Babatha seemed to delight in other children, especially other girls. She rocked back and forth on her fat hips, spewing spittle with eagerness. And how she loved to play games with scraps of cloth or eating pretend meals.
“She’ll be good about the house, that one,” said Idra. Dear Idra, who always seemed to be saying something encouraging.
“Really? I fear she will be a proper little miss. I can’t make her do a thing.”
And all of them, Maryam and her friends, would beam approval at each other.
When the visitors had gone, lugging their heavy daughters with them, Babatha would still be cheerful, rearranging the spoons she had been allowed to play with, and making experimental noises that sounded like steam or crows. But most of all Maryam loved it when Babatha laughed.
Older children could be horrid. Maryam remembered her own school days. But infants brought such joy. Maryam could not contain herself sometimes, rubbing noses with Babatha or telling her long stories, or tickling her, reducing her to a heap of giggles. For Maryam, infants were a picture of what our unblemished spirits were like. Starlight seemed to waver in their eyes.
Her daughter sat on Maryam’s lap as she sewed. There were the stories, the recited Mizmor, the explanations of how to stitch, and the soft easing away of fingers from the needle that could hurt. Perhaps it was this constant attention, but Babatha began to make hard cutting sounds and soft round ones at about a year old and not many months later said her first word: “Baby.”
From now on it dims, Maryam thought. The constant starlight in their faces. Oh, there would be plenty of delight left in Babatha still. Teaching her how to cook; making sure she understood her jobs around the house. Babatha would grow into something like a companion. But the timeless starlight in her eyes would fade.
And so by the time Babatha was making simple sentences, Maryam was pregnant again. For a time at roughly two-year intervals, Maryam would have another baby. For whatever reason, Maryam always dated their births by the age the eldest was at the time.
Another son Yoses, was born when the child was eight.
Then yet another son Yudeh when the child was ten.
Boys, but starlight, laughter, sweetness for a time. Maryam yearned for sweetness. She wanted babies.
Baby Yoses might wake and start to howl, and that might set off Babatha, and even Yakob would start to whimper. Maryam could hear the first-born in the children’s room say sharply, “Mama’s sleeping.” And all of them at once fell silent.
In the dark, Maryam shuddered. She felt her way into the room. “Babies have to cry, you mustn’t silence them,” she told the eldest, and gathered up Yoses to protect him.
Maryam could never place exactly when the distance came between the eldest and Babatha.
Her daughter acted as babies were supposed to act. She giggled, she cooed, she got excited and waved her hands at mealtimes, and she liked being cuddled, tickled, and cleaned. A beautiful baby with eyes like currants in a bun.
The eldest child would drop anything feminine, dresses or flowers, and swagger away from them. The child treated Babatha the same way. It was never unkind to its little sister, just brisk and businesslike. If it picked up Babatha, it was never to cuddle her, but to plonk her down on the floor and say, “Play here, then Atha,” and scuttle out through the missing fourth wall into the fields.
It was about then, when the eldest was nine years old that Maryam started to nickname it the Cub, as a way around using a male name.
The nickname amused Yosef. The first time he heard it, he roared with laughter. “Yes, yes, he’s like a hedgehog let loose, always snuffling.” Dear Yosef. He had no idea how much pain it caused Maryam every time he called the child Yehushua.
The Cub, blunt and beyond shame, rocked with laughter too when it heard it. The eyes glimmered. I know you don’t mean it kindly, but that’s nothing to me. It’s funny.
“I’m a Cub. I’m a Cub,” it would say stomping like a bear or prowling like a lion. “Grrrrrrrr!”
Babatha squealed in terror. Maryam snatched her up. “You’re not to go around terrorizing your little sister. Go on! Get out! Since you prefer the fields to this home! Go!” With a cuff she sent the child scampering and still laughing out of the house.
Maryam thought she detected in the wrinkle of Babatha’s nose or in the way she shied away from the child something like repugnance.
So Maryam sat her down to explain. “The Cub is not a boy. She’s your sister and her name is really Avigayil. But there’s something wrong with her. Something wrong in her head.”
She cuddled Babatha, pressed her cheek against the infant forehead. “She thinks she’s a boy and she’s not.”
Babatha said, “I don’t like her.”
“Like or not like, she’s still your sister. But strange.” Resting her chin on Babatha’s head, Maryam realized she was never going to explain to her other children that Avigayil had been a virgin birth. “You’re to treat her kindly. Yes? Pretend there is nothing different about her.”
A kiss on Babatha’s forehead.
Never say that Avigayil had been a miracle sent from God.
A rocking of Babatha, as if to cling onto her.
Or that something unclean has overcome the Cub and taken Avigayil away.
Unconsciously Maryam began to hum again what sounded like a merry song but was a reiterated prayer. Send her back to me, send her back to me. She hummed that tune continuously.
CHAPTER 8
HOME
The child was ten when news spread that the Romans had finally taken over Yehud.
As if to reward Yoazar barBoethus for his reasonableness, the Romans made him the Kohen Gadol for the second time.
Mikael arrived in Nazareth, looking pleased. “He keeps the Romans liking us. They will do a census soon and he will help with that.”
Maryam dipped in respect. “Tell your master for us that we are overjoyed for him. If holding this high office pleases him.”
Then only a few weeks later, Mikael arrived looking grim.
The cart was fuller than usual. There was a huge clay jar of oil, stacks of firewood, a mass of salted meat and fish. “This may be the last one,” he said, grimly. “The master is not well.”
Yosef was alarmed. “What? What is the problem?”
“He’s in pain. He can’t leave his bed.”
The other exile, who had come running after the cart, stood on tiptoe, eyes bulging. “Aie! Really? Is there talk of succession?”
“Please,” said Yosef. “Some respect. Since you are here to take some of his food.”
The teacher could not stop himself. “Changes of Kohen Gadol can lead to amnesty! We might be able to go home.”
Yosef turned to Mikael and addressed him. “Mik, my wife would like to be with her uncle now. Can you take her back to him?”
“Yes!” the teacher beamed. “Take us both.”
“You can leave me here,” said Yosef in a low voice. The wind was louder, but his voice had a rumble to it now. He was very still. “I’m the exile. Take just my wife. And the children.”
The teacher was hopping, gleeful. “And whose fault is it that your wife cannot be with her uncle, but her uncle’s? He put us all in exile.”
“No,” said Yosef addressing the teacher without looking at him. “The fault is mine. Just as it is yours and for the same reason. I couldn’t keep my mouth shut.”
Yosef looked at the servant. “Can you make sure this man gets nothing? No meat or fish or firewood. Not a thing. Since he rejoices in your master’s illness.”
