Poisoned Honey

by Beatrice Gormley

  “I don’t know,” I said. I was worried. As part of their sardine business, my family owned boats. They rented the boats to fishermen, and the fishermen turned over a portion of their catch in payment. Each boat was an expensive piece of property, protected by good-luck herbs tied to the mast and lucky pebbles in the ballast. Losing even one of those boats would hurt the business.

  I was seized with longing to find out what was happening with my family. They seemed so far away although they were only on the other side of town. I beckoned to the servant by the gate. “Go quickly to the house of Alexandros bar Tobias and ask if they lost any fishing boats in the storm.”

  “What!” exclaimed Chava. “We can’t be sending the servants here and there on every whim. They have work to do, and we’ll find out about the boats when the men come home.” She made a shooing gesture at the servant, who was now looking from Chava to me. “Shovel out the shed, as you should have done this morning.”

  I felt as if she’d yanked a mat from under my feet and I’d landed hard on the floor. I started to repeat my order, but then I bit my tongue. The servant had already disappeared into the animal shed.

  I bent over my handwork again, angry and bewildered. Why does Chava hate me? I asked myself. What have I done to her? Am I so unlikable? Nicolaos’s mother, after all, had taken to me right away. My father had doted on me. As I imagined my father’s fond gaze, my heart ached.

  For some reason, I remembered the time I’d fallen down the stairs when I was three. I wasn’t expecting to fall down the stairs and hurt myself; not at all. I was balancing on one foot at the top of the stairs, entranced by the way I could lean on the air, or so it seemed. For a moment, I was sure that I could fly.

  And then I toppled off the top step and tumbled all the way down. It seemed to take a long time, but there was nothing I could do to help myself. Each time I hit another stone block, it felt as if the step were hitting me. I was shocked that they wanted to hurt me so much, that they really would break my bones if they could. Finally, as I sprawled on the courtyard flagstones, fighting for the breath to start screaming, Alexandros laughed at me.

  Now I thought that the last few months had been like falling down the stairs. First the fever struck me. Whack! But that was only the first hard bump. Whack! Your father and your betrothed are dead, their dear bodies wrapped and stored in the cemetery outside town. Whack! Your family is on the brink of ruin. Whack! You must give yourself to a repulsive old man. Wh—

  Chava’s sharp voice pierced my thoughts. “I call her Weepy,” she remarked to Hiram’s wife with a chuckle. She was pointing to the tears rolling down my face. Hiram’s wife laughed, and the cousin and the slow-witted girl joined in.

  That night, I didn’t ask Eleazar about the boats after all. Somehow, I no longer felt like one who had a right to ask questions. I felt like “Weepy,” whose place it was to wash dirty feet and take bitter medicine.

  On the Sabbath, I went to the synagogue with Eleazar and his household. Since Eleazar’s cousin Thomas was one of the elders, we were seated in the second row. That didn’t mean that I personally was honored, though. When Chava’s niece joined us, Chava nudged me almost off the bench to make room for her.

  Craning my neck, I found my family in the assembly by spotting Alexandros, the tallest. I was seized with longing to be back among them—even with my brother. If only Safta’s wish for me would come true and Eleazar would die …

  Then I seemed to hear my mother uttering one of her favorite sayings: “Wishes won’t fill a basket.” Eleazar seemed perfectly healthy, aside from some rheumatism and flatulence. I must pull myself together and make the best of the way things actually were. Surely, as the wife, I didn’t have to let Chava push me around—surely I had some rights? Queen Esther had risked death to approach the king—couldn’t I be brave enough to approach my husband?

  That evening, as I helped Eleazar undress for bed, I tried to tell him about my problems with Chava. “I don’t want to complain, Husband,” I said with downcast eyes, “but I don’t think she’s treating me fairly. She’s not helping me learn the ways of your household, as you wished. She seems to be trying—”

  Before I was finished speaking, Eleazar put up his hand. “Women’s squabbles! I don’t want to hear about it.” He gestured for me to lie down on the bed. It was not an inviting gesture but a command.

  I obeyed, but still protesting. “She seems to be trying to make my work difficult for me!” Eleazar climbed into bed without answering. Angry tears came to my eyes. Bitter medicine, bitter medicine, I repeated over and over in my mind like a prayer.

  TEN

  CAGED

  Although I’d gotten no help from Eleazar, I resolved not to let Chava make me miserable. The next afternoon, as Chava and the other women gossiped over their tasks, I wound a scarf around my head and neck. “I’m going to my mother’s house to get an embroidery pattern,” I told Chava.

  Chava leaned back in exaggerated astonishment. “You’re going out? With so much work to be done?”

  “What difference does that make?” I answered. “Whatever work I do, you do it over again. You watched me sort those beans, and now you’re re-sorting them.”

  Going out the gate, I heard the women murmuring. Chava’s voice rose above the others: “You see what I have to put up with?” Then, in a lower voice, she muttered something about a “bad bargain.”

  Taking a deep breath of the air outside Eleazar’s compound, I walked down the alley to the avenue. I crossed the street to avoid the loiterers outside the men’s mikvah. A woman by herself, even a married woman in broad daylight, had to be careful to behave properly. Farther up the street, I crossed again, to avoid the men standing in the synagogue’s porch. One of them was Elder Thomas; he might recognize me and mention it to Eleazar.

  As I hurried across town, I decided I wouldn’t bother my family with my problems. I’d just enjoy their company and lift my spirits a bit.

  Yael, opening the gate, told me that Imma and Chloe were at the market, but my grandmother was home. Before the serving woman had finished speaking, Safta appeared behind her with open arms. I forgot my resolution and fell on her neck, sobbing.

  Safta patted my back and made clucking noises. “Hush, hush, little bird.” She wiped my wet face with a corner of her shawl. “So marriage isn’t like the story of Rachel and Jacob, after all. Those unfriendly spirits lurk under the bed, making trouble. But I can give you something to ward them off…. And remember, Nicolaos is a good young man. Give him time.”

  Nicolaos. I couldn’t believe what I’d heard. My tears dried up. “Not Nicolaos. You mean Eleazar, Safta.”

  “No, no, chick,” she said with a vague smile. “I mean your husband, Nicolaos.” Hobbling to the basket where she kept her belongings, she brought me a linen-wrapped packet of herbs. “Hide this in your mattress. It’ll keep spiteful spirits away—you’ll see.”

  “Thank you, Safta,” I said slowly. Now I felt worse than before, and I wished I hadn’t come. “I’d better be going back.” I hugged her and turned away quickly before I could start crying again.

  Outside the gate, I was thankful to see Imma and Chloe coming home from the market. I rushed down the alley to embrace them, squeezing Chloe so hard that she squeaked. “What’s the matter with Safta?” I asked. “She doesn’t seem quite right.”

  My mother and sister looked at me strangely. “No … she isn’t right at all,” said Chloe. “She won’t eat more than a few bites.”

  “She hasn’t been right since your father died,” said Imma. “Hadn’t you noticed that her mind was wandering? Sometimes she thinks she talks to her dead son. Ai, with all our other troubles!”

  “I … I suppose I thought maybe she was talking to him,” I admitted. I sensed I should ask my mother, What other troubles? But I was bursting with my own woes. I described how Chava had been treating me, and how Eleazar sided with her. “Aren’t I the wife?” I demanded. “I ought to be in charge of the house, not the
daughter-in-law!”

  My mother nodded, her lips tightening.

  “Then can’t you ask Uncle Reuben to speak to Eleazar?” I pressed on. “For the honor of our family, at least.”

  Imma sighed, and she turned her face away. “Yes, our honor … But it’s not so simple. Reuben isn’t in a position to make demands of your husband just now. You see, two of our fishing boats were lost in that storm last week.”

  “Oh, the storm!” I exclaimed. I was shocked that it had slipped my mind.

  “And we’re still shorthanded at the packing works,” continued my mother. “In fact, we couldn’t supply the full number of jars that Eleazar was supposed to deliver to Tiberias. He had to scramble and pay a high price to another supplier, or he would have lost his arrangement with the palace.”

  I began to understand. That must have been the reason for Eleazar’s curtness with me, as well as for Chava’s remark about the “bad bargain.”

  “So it’s still sardines,” I said.

  My mother shrugged helplessly. Chloe exclaimed, “Oh, Mari!”

  “You aren’t the first young wife who had to knuckle under to another woman,” said my mother, recovering her usual tartness. “How do you think it was for me, coming into your grandmother’s house?”

  “Safta?” I exclaimed. “Dear, sweet Safta treated you the way Chava treats me?”

  “She wasn’t always so sweet,” answered my mother.

  Walking slowly back to Eleazar’s house, I brooded over what I’d learned. First, my grandmother was not in her right mind. Second, I couldn’t expect my family to intervene with Eleazar for me. And third—if Imma spoke the truth—even my dear grandmother had once been unkind to the homesick young woman in her household.

  As I entered the courtyard, Chava remarked to the other women, “That one’s used to having plenty of spare time.”

  I was so downhearted from my home visit that I didn’t try to argue or answer back. Remembering the herb packet Safta had given me, I went upstairs to tuck it under the mattress. As I knelt on the floor, a picture flashed in my mind of Nicolaos, my first betrothed, lying on such a bed, holding out his arms.

  Was that what my grandmother meant by “spiteful spirits”? I pressed the packet to my face and breathed the scent deeply to chase them out of my mind. Then I pushed the packet under the mattress, jumped to my feet, and hurried out of the room.

  * * *

  One day, Eleazar’s cousin Thomas, the synagogue elder, came to dine with my husband. His ornamental belt with its heavy silver clasp, as well as the large, silky tassels on the corners of his coat, announced his importance. Eleazar was boyishly excited and pleased, more pleased than he’d seemed at our wedding.

  As Chava and I served the men in the upper room, I listened to their talk. Mainly, it was Elder Thomas giving his opinion about this and that and Eleazar listening respectfully, even if it was about his own business. But when Thomas mentioned the last wave of Tishri fever, Eleazar groaned. “It robbed me of my son, Abram,” he exclaimed. “Why couldn’t my daughters have died instead?”

  Elder Thomas shrugged sympathetically. “Who knows? We can’t see the world the way the Lord does.”

  But I have seen the world that way, I thought. The elder’s words sparked a flame in my mind, lighting up a precious moment in my life that had been dark since my betrothal to Eleazar.

  I remembered the time on Mount Arbel with my father when my soul spread its wings and flew like an eagle. Now I felt close to another such moment, when I would understand through and through why I was here instead of married to Nicolaos. Miryam had warned that my path, if I chose it, would be steep and rocky. And indeed …

  “Wife,” said Eleazar sharply.

  I glanced down at the platter in my hands. It was tilting, and I righted it just in time to keep the broiled fish from sliding into Elder Thomas’s lap. Eleazar smiled apologetically at his cousin.

  Setting the platter down, I hurried from the room and leaned against the wall outside. I, see the way the Lord does? What monstrous self-importance—worse than my idea that I was like Queen Esther.

  Still, the very next day, I felt that I was on the brink of recovering another precious moment. It was my first time to bathe in Eleazar’s mikvah, and I plunged in eagerly. As I stood in the middle of the small pool and said the prayer for immersion, I trembled with hope. Would Miryam speak to me again? Oh, I longed so badly to find myself in Miryam’s Well, to be bathed with light, to be assured of my high purpose!

  I held my breath under the water for as long as I could. But it was only ordinary water, and rather stagnant at that. When I stepped out of the pool, I found no one holding out a towel to help dry me; Chava must have called the serving woman away.

  I was chilled, and I did not feel clean, inside or out. Now I doubted that I’d ever received a commission from the prophet Miryam. Certainly, no one else would believe it. But even if I had once been consecrated to a high purpose, that could no longer be. Surely such a mission would have to be carried out by someone fresh and pure, not a used rag like me.

  Months went by. With the winter rains, the hills below Mount Arbel turned green. Weeds sprouted in Eleazar’s courtyard, too. Most of them were quickly pulled up and tossed out the gate, but I found one growing unobserved.

  This plant appeared in the crack between two paving stones, in the corner formed by the courtyard wall and the kitchen shed. Some seldom-used tools leaned there, and I noticed the two round new leaves the size of my little fingernail, only because I was looking for a flax flail. I almost pinched the sprout out of the ground, but then I stayed my hand. I was curious to see what kind of plant it would turn out to be, and so I left it.

  When I looked in the corner a day or so later, the seedling’s first true leaves had appeared. I thought they looked like the leaves of a mustard plant—one of the serving women must have dropped a seed from a pouch of spices. Sure enough, with each new leaf I was more certain it was mustard. By this time, I no longer wanted to pull up the plant. In fact, I moved some of the tools to shield it from view while still allowing enough sunlight for it to grow.

  I got in the habit of looking in on the mustard plant each morning—greeting it, so to speak. If the dirt between the stones looked dry, I would dribble some water on it. But I was careful not to let the others see what I was doing. The seedling seemed like a secret message to me from the One who creates all things: Look! I’m making a tiny, dry seed turn into a fresh green plant, just for you.

  On the day that I found a yellow blossom on my plant, my heart leaped. I hadn’t thought the plant was large enough to bloom; in the fields, mustard plants are waist high by the time the flowers appear. But there it was, tiny but bright.

  Footsteps came up behind me, and Chava snorted, “Weeds!” Reaching past me, she yanked the plant up.

  I smothered my cry of distress. I watched her drop the plant on a trash heap by the gate, but I waited until she was busy somewhere else. Then I picked up the mustard plant, which was already limp. Lifting it to my face, I sniffed its sharp scent. It seemed unbearable that its life was over, and I shoved it into the middle of the trash, out of sight.

  I found many excuses to go out of the house. It cheered me a little to visit my family, although for pride’s sake I tried not to go there every day. Chloe always looked glad when I walked in the gate. As for my grandmother, I resigned myself to the fact that her words might not make sense. It was still wonderfully sweet, sweet as honey, to feel her tender gaze on me.

  One day, as I helped Eleazar pack for a business trip to Tiberias, he said abruptly, “People tell me you’re spending all your time at your brother’s house. They’re beginning to wonder.”

  My heartbeat sped up. Surely Eleazar wouldn’t take this little pleasure away from me. Then I felt a flash of anger. “Did Chava say that? It’s not true! She doesn’t like me; I tried to tell you. Can’t I see my own mother and grandmother and sister now and then? Please—”

  “This
idle visiting must stop,” he cut me off. “You belong to this house now.”

  I was trembling, but I dared not protest anymore.

  After Eleazar and the servant carrying his pack had left for the docks, Chava handed me a market basket. “Where is your head scarf?”

  “I didn’t know we were going to the market today,” I said.

  She rolled her eyes. “I would have thought that a girl’s mother would have taught her to notice when the pantry supplies were getting low.”

  I would have thought that if she expected me to watch the supplies, she’d let me look in the pantry. But it didn’t seem worth squabbling with Chava, and besides, if I annoyed her, she might make me stay in the compound. I followed her out the gate with my basket.

  The crowded, noisy market would be something different, at least. There was always plenty to look at, especially among the Gentile vendors. Last time we’d been in the market, for instance, I’d noticed a booth of pottery figurines.

  Chava had noticed them, too, and said aloud to no one in particular (she didn’t address me directly if she could help it), “They’re lucky the elders haven’t noticed these abominations.”

  Images were forbidden by Jewish law, and the town elders frowned on any images in public, even if they were displayed by non-Jews. They’d certainly be angry if they saw those little statues of Artemis, a Greek goddess. I thought she was fascinating, in a disgusting kind of way, covered with dozens of breasts.

  That day, when we reached the corner where the alley met the avenue, I hesitated. Chava turned downhill to the market, not looking back to see if I was following. What if I walked up the avenue, away from the market? What if I walked out the west gate, into the hills, and just kept walking?

  Then I was truly frightened. Was I going mad, like my grandmother? There was no safe place for a lone woman in the hills. Savage animals lived there, and savage people. One of them was related to me on Imma’s side, as a matter of fact: the son of a cousin. The boy suffered from violent fits, and he was too wild to keep at home. They put him in a hut in the hills and paid a shepherd to bring him food.