by Tessa Afshar
He moaned. I staggered to a stop, unable to continue my haphazard run, and fell to my knees with him still in my arms. My head swam with a wave of dizziness when I saw his face. His eyes had swollen shut, and his lips had become an unearthly blue. His whole mouth had turned into a tender, purplish bruise. I bit down on a scream and hefted him up again, forcing my legs to run, faster than before.
Pray, I thought, my soul frantic with the horror of what I had just seen. Pray something. But all I could think of was Eli, Eli, the first part of my own name. My God! My God!
When I saw the large wooden door to our house, I loosed the scream I had swallowed for the past hour. My voice emerged as a broken croak and no one heard me. “Help me! Father, please help me.” Joseph had gone limp in my arms. I knew he had fainted some time before, fainted from lack of air.
I kicked at the door with the last of my strength and fell against it. One of the servants pulled the door open and I slumped backward, Joseph still held tight in my grasp. The woman cried out, and before long we were pulled inside together. I was still clutching him, his face pressed to my shoulder. My parents came running.
I saw my father’s face as he pulled his son out of my arms. He turned white. My mother started to scream. I didn’t think I could feel more fear. But her cries—shrill, unnatural sounds that pierced the courtyard—filled me with a chilling dread that robbed me of speech. Why wasn’t she helping my brother? Why did she stand there, screeching, pulling at her veil, pulling at her hair?
My father collapsed, Joseph held against him. His head drooped over the unmoving child. “My son,” he moaned, rocking to and fro. “My boy.”
I turned in shock and saw my younger sister, Joanna, sitting against the wall, sobbing quietly into her hands. The servants wept. My father, shaking and silent, convulsed around the inert body of my brother while Mother’s screams continued to fill every corner of the courtyard, piercing me like jagged shards of broken glass.
That’s when I knew. My brother was dead. The bee had killed him.
I reached out to cling to my father, in disbelief, in horror, in desperation, hoping for a miracle, seeking comfort. He looked up and the blank despair in his eyes lifted for a moment, only to be replaced by a coldness I had never seen there before. “What happened? What has done this to my child?”
I stepped away from him. “A bee . . . It stung Joseph. On his temple.” Perspiration dripped down my sides and with a trembling hand I wiped my brow. “It was my fault. We were playing . . . And I . . . I shoved a flower in his face; I think the bee was drawn to its scent. I should have come to his aid sooner, but I was distracted by a lost sheep.” I remembered that I had merely thrown words at Joseph, as if my instructions were enough. I owed Joseph the truth no matter what punishment I faced. He deserved that much, at least.
My father swept the hair away from Joseph’s swollen flesh with tender fingers. I flinched when I saw his beautiful face, distorted by the obscene hand of death, and swayed where I stood.
“But you knew how sick he became last year, after he was stung. You knew how scared he was. Why didn’t you just swat it away? He was a little boy. He was helpless.” My father moaned. “My little boy!”
“I should . . . I should have . . .”
His words grew iron-hard and sharp. “You were supposed to look after him. What did you do? Just stand there and watch it happen?”
“No! It wasn’t like that, Father! I did help. But I was too late. I was too late!”
“This wouldn’t have happened if you had watched him better.”
I was struck dumb with guilt. He had grasped the heart of my failure. I had not tried to get rid of the bee from the start. “Father, please . . .”
“Be silent!”
I closed my mouth. Swallowed my excuses. He was right. I had failed Joseph. I should have taken better care of him. I should have wiped the pollen from his face, swatted the bee sooner, come home faster. I should have saved him.
“Get out of my sight.” My father’s voice emerged scratchy soft and bitter as gall.
I gasped. With broken movements, I forced myself to stand, to walk. I went inside the house, leaving a faint trail of blood with every step where I had cut my foot on the jagged stones during my flight home. Huddling in the corner of the room where I slept with my sister and Joseph, I finally gave vent to the tears that I had quenched earlier. Joseph’s blanket was neatly folded in a corner. I grabbed it and, pushing my face into its folds, breathed in the scent of him and knew that I would never hold my precious brother again.
And it was my fault.
My father made up my name when I was born, putting together two Hebrew names: Eli, which means my God, and Anna, which in our tongue signifies favor. When he first set eyes on me, my father said, “My God has favored me,” and that became my name, for my birth was a sign of God’s favor and grace to my parents.
For eight years after they were married, he and my mother had remained childless. I came when they had given up on physicians and their useless potions. I came, but I was a girl. Still, my parents were too happy to have a child at last to complain about my gender. Three years after I was born, my sister arrived, long-limbed even at birth, with wide eyes that seemed to cover half her face. Then when no one thought it even possible, Joseph burst into our lives with his lusty cry and his irresistible smile.
It wasn’t as if my father loved me less when his son was born. It was only that he loved Joseph so much more. More than my mother or my sister or me or his business. More than life. Joseph was the light of his heart.
Until now. Until I caused his death. I felt as though I had destroyed the greatest treasure the earth had to offer.
Hours passed as I sat unmoving in a fog of disbelief. Death had swallowed me up along with Joseph. In taking him, it took me, too. Though I breathed and my heart beat with strong regularity, my wound was incurable. The thought of what my parents must be feeling made me wish it had been I who had died instead of Joseph.
The sound of the wailing of mourners penetrated my distracted thoughts. I became aware that a great crowd had gathered downstairs. They must already be preparing Joseph’s body for his burial. I could not bear the thought.
The exuberant boy I had adored for four years, the child who had made me laugh and hope and rejoice, was gone and we would never have him back. I pressed my hands against my ears, trying to drown out the sounds of wailing. I felt lashed by their sorrow, guilt eating at me with voracious hunger.
“Elianna.” Gentle hands took hold of my wrists and pulled them away from my ears. “Elianna,” he said again.
Ethan.
My betrothed. The man I had loved since before I became a woman.
TWO
Therefore, I will mourn and lament . . .
I will howl like a jackal and moan like an owl.
For my people’s wound is too deep to heal.
MICAH 1:8-9, NLT
I FLINCHED. I did not want Ethan to see me like this, my shame plain as smeared ink on my face. Then a spark of hope made me sit up.
“Did my father send you?”
His fingers cradled my jaw. With his thumb he wiped my cheek, and I realized that my face was wet with tears. “Come down,” he said. “You should be there.”
I did not miss his prevarication. Ethan had noticed my absence in the crowd and come in search of me himself, not at my father’s bidding. I shook my head and moved my face away from his touch.
“You won’t come?”
I shook my head again. He stared at me, his gaze unwavering. Ethan had unusual eyes—I always thought of them as angel eyes. I had never shared this odd conclusion with anyone, least of all him. But I felt convinced that there was something of heaven in them. He had curious irises, like a mosaic, made up of flecks of gold and green and brown, shifting hues, depending on his mood or the light. Today, they were more autumn than summer, full of golds and browns as they looked at me.
I felt compelled to explain my resistan
ce. “My parents won’t want to see me. They . . . Joseph was with me. When it happened.”
I shoved a fisted hand over my lips, biting the soft flesh at the base of my thumb to try and stuff back the sob that my own words had pulled out of my depths. It wouldn’t be quenched. Sob after sob rolled out of me. Roughly, Ethan pulled me into his arms. “Elianna,” he said, his voice gruff. “Be still now.” It was the first time he had ever held me close. If not for the extraordinary circumstances, he would not draw this near now, though we were betrothed. Jerusalem had become a conservative place since being conquered by foreign powers.
Ethan’s chest was massive and warm. It felt like leaning against a padded shield. He pulled my hand into his own and examined the mark my teeth had left. I had not realized that I had bitten through the skin. He wiped the blood with the corner of his sleeve. “You did nothing wrong,” he said as his thumb caressed the palm of my hand.
“My fault. It was my fault,” I groaned and wrenched myself away from him, huddling against the wall.
Ethan raked unsteady fingers through his hair and rubbed the back of his neck. “How could you have prevented Joseph’s death?” He had been kneeling by my side. Now he shifted so he could lean back. “Elianna, will you not speak to me of what happened? It may bring you a measure of comfort.”
I had given only short snatches of the afternoon’s events to my father. No one had yet heard the full account. I thought about sharing the story of Joseph’s suffering and death, of speaking the words out loud and reliving those moments. Bile rose in my throat, bitter and sour. Comfort? It would crush me. “I don’t want to speak of it.”
Ethan reached out and took hold of my hand again. I struggled against him, but he held fast to me. “Hush,” he said. “You need not talk of it if you don’t wish.” He held on to my fingers in silence for a few moments. “Come down with me. Sit with your mother awhile.”
I trembled at the thought of facing everyone, and pulled my hand free from his warm hold. “My father hates me.”
He looked away and said nothing. It dawned on me that he had given me no assurance to the contrary. That was unlike Ethan. He always saw the good. The hope. His silence was the same as a formal agreement. What had my father told him? I did not want to know. “I’m not coming down,” I said.
“You will let them bury your brother without you?”
“They’ll wait till the morning. I’ll come then.”
Ethan shook his head. “I don’t want you to be here alone.”
“It’s the only relief I can offer my father. He will hurt more if I am there.”
He closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “It’s the shock of losing Joseph. In his heart, Benjamin hasn’t turned against you. He will come around. Give him time.”
“Does everyone know that he blames me?”
“No. He spoke only to me and my father. And your mother, of course.”
I took a deep breath. It occurred to me with vivid clarity that before long Ethan would also reject me. He hadn’t wanted me very much to begin with. His father was a merchant who imported madder and indigo, as well as more exotic dyes, into Judea. He had known my father since boyhood and often worked with him. They had arranged our marriage between them when I was fifteen and Ethan twenty-one. I had been ecstatic at the prospect. Ethan, lukewarm.
“I won’t marry you until you turn seventeen,” he warned the day my father told me of his plan. “Not one day sooner. I won’t get myself bound to a child.”
“A child! I have a half-dozen friends my age already married.”
“I am well aware of that fact. As I said, I will wait until you are at least seventeen.”
I flushed under his hard stare. Along with a good portion of Jerusalem’s population, I was aware that one of those friends I had mentioned had married Ethan’s brother before reaching her fifteenth birthday. Seven months after their wedding, the girl had returned to her father’s home, filled with tears and complaints. Ethan’s brother had waited patiently until his wife came back to him three months later. But it was well known that she spent more time under her mother’s roof than under her husband’s. I suppose Ethan wished to avoid such a disaster in his own domestic life.
I was offended by his cold resistance. Could he not see that I was different from Avigail, his brother’s wife? More responsible? Mature? Faithful?
I had loved Ethan for as long as I remembered. I longed to be his wife. Ethan obviously did not feel the same. And now, he would see that I was not the woman he would want for his wife—or for the mother of his children—no matter what my age. If I couldn’t be trusted to look after my own brother, how could he entrust his sons and daughters to me? It was a matter of time before he would seek an excuse to break our betrothal.
“You better leave before they find us here, unattended,” I whispered. In truth, I cared nothing about how they found us. My objection was a thin excuse to send him away; I did not want to see the cold look my father had given me reflected in Ethan’s eyes.
Ethan lingered, ignoring me. “You shouldn’t be left alone. You aren’t well.”
“Please, Ethan.” My throat was thick with tears I refused to shed. “Go before you cause me more trouble. It isn’t right that you should be with me here, in my chamber.”
He hesitated, his lips tightening into a flat line. Then he rose. “I’m not going far. Just below stairs. Call for me if you need anything. Promise me, Elianna.”
I nodded. Somewhere during my haphazard dash home, I had lost my veil and my hair had come undone. He ran his fingers through the tangled curls once, twice. Then he rose and walked out. I curled into myself, a little circle of misery on my pallet. I smelled of vomit and sweat. I smelled of death. And it would never wipe off.
Hours later, Keziah, a quiet maidservant who often rushed to help anyone in need without waiting to be asked, brought me a plate of warm raisin cakes. The smell of cooked raisins and slightly charred wheat turned my stomach. I don’t know why the sight of those cakes made me choke with despair. Perhaps it was the ordinariness of them. They sat on the plate mocking me with innocent irony, because I knew nothing could ever be ordinary again. To this day I cannot smell hot, cooked raisins without feeling queasy and a little hopeless.
I dozed for a few moments in the night and awoke with a start, my memory confused with exhaustion and shock. For an instant I forgot Joseph was dead. Something loomed in the back of my mind, like a dark monster waiting in the shadows. My skin prickled and I shivered. And then memory swooped down again, irrevocable and final. Joseph was gone.
Gone.
I did not sleep after that, but sat frozen in the dark. Long before sunrise I rose to wash and sent Keziah to bring me a garment of sackcloth, appropriate for the burial of my only brother. In the courtyard mourners had gathered in sleepy groups, making ready for the procession to the new tomb, which my father had purchased the year before. For his own burial, he had said. He would lay the body of his precious boy inside that dark cave instead.
I stood on the edge of the crowd, avoiding everyone’s gaze, fearful of what I might find there. Ethan noticed me and came over. I blinked when I saw him. He had cut his beard in a show of mourning, and in spite of the dark circles under his eyes, his face looked younger and more ruggedly beautiful than I remembered.
“God be gracious to you,” he said, his tone grave. A formal greeting for a dark day. God be gracious to me? Too late for that, I thought.
“Did you sleep?” Ethan asked.
“Not much. You?”
“I tarried with your father. My parents are here also. Come. They will want to see you.”
I followed him to the corner where his parents, Jerusha and Ezer, along with his younger brother, Daniel, had gathered in the gray light. Jerusha folded me into her arms as soon as she saw me. My mother had never been physically affectionate with any of us. It was not part of her nature to touch and embrace with ease. Jerusha’s warm embraces had been a welcome comfort to me sinc
e my childhood. She was one of those rare people who knew how to fill you with approval and acceptance with a quiet word.
“My poor girl. What you have been through. I am so sorry,” she said as she held me against her soft bosom. For once, her sincere comfort backfired. I wriggled out of her arms and stepped away. I feared that if I gave in to it, I would break down and never stop.
“Elianna hasn’t slept all night. She is exhausted,” Ethan said, trying to explain my rude silence, I suppose.
“Of course she is.” Jerusha gave me another hug and stepped away.
My parents approached us. Turning rigid as one of the marble statues the Romans were so fond of carving, I bit into dry lips. To my surprise, my mother grabbed my hand and squeezed it. That was all. One small, warm touch before she let go. I thought I would melt with relief. She loved me still, that touch said. She forgave me.
My father would not look at me, but he bestowed a stiff nod in my direction. It was a great concession, under the circumstances. I could see how hard he was trying.
Jerusha drew my mother to her side. “Here, Elizabeth, lean on me.” My mother began to weep as if unable to bear even this small kindness. She had lost her voice after screaming so long yesterday, and her tears now came plump and mute.
The professional mourners gathered, carrying the bier that held my brother’s tiny body. He was wrapped in strips of the whitest linen cloth, his face covered by a spotless napkin. That linen had been woven for some great lady’s veil. For feasts and joy and celebration. Instead it covered the suppuration of death. The scent of the aromatic oils and spices with which they had washed and anointed Joseph’s body filled the air. So much spice that the stench of death could not compete.
I thought I might be sick.
Then the wailing picked up again, loud and unrelenting. What had the prophet Micah called it? Howling like the jackals, and moaning like owls. We were led by a menagerie of grief, the noise fearsome in its hopeless sorrow.