Song of the Magdalene

by Donna Jo Napoli

  I screamed.

  And screamed.

  And screamed.

  For the first time, a fit did not take me against my will. As Jacob threw me to the floor, I had two prayers at once. My first was that the Creator should keep me alive. Isaac would be ready to be born in just three more months and I had to stay alive if I was to be the mother he needed. My second prayer was that a fit would come. For Jacob would believe the common fallacy that fits were the sign of demons. He would run to a safe distance and I would be spared.

  Both prayers were answered, but neither had the effect I had hoped for. Jacob did not run. Perhaps in that moment it was hard to tell a fit from the thrashings and twistings of a woman fighting back.

  Pain woke me. I was alone on the floor, naked. My thighs were sticky. I wiped at them and my hand came away covered with blood. I stood, but the pain made me double over and sink to my knees. I fell on hard coins. I picked them from my knees and stared at the citron, the ethrog, imprinted in them. Jacob had left the prostitute’s fee. The coins would have seemed less horrible if they had been Greek drachmas or Roman denarii. But they were good Jewish bronze coins. The kind of coin Father used. The kind I played with as a child. I let them drop to the ground.

  I had to get home, to Hannah and Judith. My ripped shift lay a body’s length away. I crawled to it and began to wrap it around myself when the pain came again. I put both hands on my belly and held firm. I had to keep whole. I had to save Isaac. I fought the urge to scream. Isaac shouldn’t hear me scream anymore.

  A woman was with me when the blood came. My blood. The pool grew large. The pain knifed through me. I was on the floor again, writhing in the woman’s arms, biting my own tongue to keep from screaming. My mouth filled with blood as the blood poured out between my legs. And I was pushing, just for a moment, so quickly it would have been a blessing if this had been a ready birth. The hot water that followed was almost a comfort.

  The pain ceased.

  I forced myself to sit up. Between my legs was Isaac. The woman lifted him from the ripped birth sac. She wiped him dry with my shift and gave my son to me. He was tiny; he fit in my cupped hands easily. But he was perfect. Ten miniature fingers. Ten miniature toes. His chin was pointed like his father ‘s. His legs were long, like mine. Even in death, even so tiny, I could see that he would have been a tower of a man. Who knows? He might have been a rabbi. He might have fought for our people, like a Hasid; he might have been in spirit a holy descendant of the heroes of the resistance against the Greeks. He might have been an heir to the prophetic tradition Judith talked so much of. Isaac, my laughter, quiet and cold in my hands.

  I swaddled him in my shift. The prostitute draped her cloak around herself and me and we walked home in the brightest of moonlights. She curved in toward me, warbling words of comfort. And now I could see her as more than just the hands that had passed Isaac to me. She was an older woman, with her hair dyed Antioch-red to hide the ravages of time. Her cheeks and lips were likewise red from sikra. Even her palms were dyed a reddish yellow from the leaves of the privet, al khanna, that I knew of from the Song of Songs. I would have pulled away from her under any other circumstance. I would have avoided her as I avoided swine. But now I submitted to her warmth and colors. My nose was assailed with her storax and gelbanum and onycha and frankincense. Again I thought of the strongly scented oils in the love canticles. This prostitute owed me nothing; she knew me not at all. Yet she freely helped a woman that she must have expected to despise her. I grasped at her generosity and a shiver shot through me. The woman circled her arm around me and pulled the cloak tighter. A ragged scar ran the length of her left arm, from wrist to the inside of the elbow. Her breath was thick with the fig-like fruit of the sycamore, a fruit only the poor ate. She was a woman alone, supporting herself, buying what foods she could afford. A woman of her own means. A whore.

  There was almost no one on the streets at that hour. But those few men who passed us seemed confused. They couldn’t see Isaac within the cloak. They knew nothing. The prostitute delivered me into the open hands of Judith and Hannah.

  They washed me quietly and quickly, and helped me to my bed mat. Judith knelt beside me and whispered, “Tell me, Miriam.”

  What was there to tell? What mattered now? I looked around the room. Our bowls and plates were in order. Our chest of clothes was in place. The moonlight came in through the window. All was ordinary. This was a night like any other. No night would stand out from the others again. No day. “His name is Isaac,” I said at last.

  “A good name.” Judith touched her fingers to my lips. “How did it happen, Miriam?”

  I looked at her waiting face. She needed to know; there must have been a reason she needed to know. Maybe once I had known what that reason was, but now I couldn’t remember. I told her, though, for her sake. I watched her cry.

  Late that night I awoke to find Judith and Hannah and Father talking. At first they didn’t want me to be part of the conversation. Then they relented and gathered me into their circle. They were discussing me, Miriam, the woman whom Jacob had seen trying to seduce an idiot boy. People didn’t want to believe it. They all knew Father and liked him. Yes, he had a strange daughter, but that was all, just strange. Except for the fact which Jacob pointed out so coolly: It wasn’t the first time. I had slept with Abraham, after all. It didn’t take much to figure that out. And Abraham, too, was an idiot. I was now seen as a danger to the village. A woman whose lusts revealed her as a consort of the devil.

  I sat stunned as I listened. I recognized nothing of the woman they discussed. Who was this stranger, this Miriam?

  Father put his hand over mine. “It’s all lies, Miriam. There are penalties for what Jacob has done, so he has found a way to stop anyone from believing you. He has even called upon the scriptures, twisting them to suit his own needs. He tells us all to remember Jacob’s daughter Dinah, who provoked her assault by Shechem simply by going out to visit the daughters of the land. He stirs up the ancient feeling that a woman who appears in public is up to no good. He says you used to come by his shop to tease him — that you had tried to lure him before. He is scared, Miriam, and his fear makes him a formidable enemy.” Father’s hand tightened around mine. “I would kill him if it would matter.”

  I stared at Father. My humane father, speaking of killing. And yet I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t kill Jacob myself if I could. Yes. In this moment I might have crushed Jacob as passionlessly as I crushed the insects that invaded the garden. I might have slit his throat and bled him like a butcher bleeds a goat.

  “But it would not matter.” Father shook his head. “For after Jacob there could well be another. And another.” He stopped.

  Another after Jacob? Unthinkable.

  “Miriam.” Father’s voice was lifeless now. I knew his words to come would hurt him. I knew he feared they would hurt me, too. But they couldn’t. Nothing could hurt me.

  Father spoke: “You will not be safe in Magdala ever again.”

  It had happened. Finally. I was a pariah. After fearing it for so many years, it had happened — and not for the reasons I had expected. Not for my illness.

  I should have been afraid then, for my future. I should have begun thinking of ways to hide. Instead, all I could do was wonder why the Creator hadn’t permitted me to drown in my own saliva in that, my fifth fit. I didn’t see the sense of going on living. Why would the Creator ask this of me? If Abraham had been there to talk to, perhaps I’d have found solace. Perhaps he’d have explained it to me patiently, as he had explained the use of the tools in Jacob’s carpenter shop those many years ago. But Abraham wasn’t there. And Judith and Hannah and Father seemed far away, though they sat close by on the floor. Everything seemed far away.

  Isaac was gone forever.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The journey to my mother’s relatives in Dor was slow and hot. The arid land radiated heat. I rode in a cart pulled by oxen. Father sat beside me. Two of his laborers walked behi
nd. They were not needed for work on this journey; they were there to ward off would-be highway robbers.

  I had two aunts and an uncle in Dor. I’d never seen them. The journey’s length would not have prohibited visits among close families, but ours had not been close, even when my mother was alive. I didn’t know the story of the rift. Father was not one to talk a lot. But I knew there had been a rift. They hadn’t come even for Mother’s funeral. Father had hired a runner to transport Mother’s harp to them.

  The day before we left Magdala, Father sent a messenger ahead to my uncle. Judith had insisted I go to him, rather than an aunt, for my aunts were both married and I was beautiful. She feared the husbands of my aunts would want to take me for their second wife. I knew I could prevent that. All I had to do was tell them about the fits — the fits that neither Judith nor Father knew anything about. But I didn’t speak up. For if Judith and Father knew of my fits, they’d have realized they couldn’t send me to any relative. They’d have realized I’d be out in the streets with the other pariahs as soon as the next fit came. I wouldn’t give them this problem.

  So I would go to live with my mother’s brother, if he would take me in. He had a wife and three children, at last count. I could help with the children. They were not rich; they had no servants. It would be an act of charity for them; I would be one more mouth to feed. That’s why Hannah wasn’t allowed to come along with me, though she pleaded. My uncle could not be asked to feed her, as well. Oh, he would be given money for taking me in, but he would still behave as though it was an act of largesse.

  There would be no worry of my mother’s brother wanting to take me for a wife, for though it was not forbidden that an uncle marry his niece, I looked so much like my mother, that Father was sure her own brother could not desire me.

  I had no curiosity about my uncle. I had no curiosity about anything. My body still hurt. It had been only a week since I’d come home from the marketplace. Usually after the birth of a son the mother was unclean for forty days. But since Isaac had never breathed, his birth didn’t count. So my unclean time was only the normal seven days for monthly blood. I was tired still and disoriented. I retreated within my body like a snail within a shell. I wanted no part of the plans for my future.

  I was feverish for the first part of the trip. Father let us stay in an inn in the small town of Gaba until my fever broke. He couldn’t very well ask my uncle to welcome an ill woman. I didn’t seem to see Gaba. I was blind like the snail in the shell.

  What should have been a day’s journey for healthy people turned out to be a three-day trek. When we arrived at last, my uncle took me in. The messenger had done his job. “Welcome to Thaddaeus’ house,” said my uncle with a great show of magnanimity.

  Even in my stupor, I was surprised. My uncle called himself by the Greek deformation of the Hebrew name. It did not come easy to my mouth. I could not call him that. “Thank you, Uncle.”

  “You look like your mother. My home is your home.”

  My uncle’s wife, Rachel, showed no joy at the prospect. I didn’t realize until later that she blanched at my beauty, the beauty that meant nothing to me. I couldn’t have consoled her, anyway. For she didn’t fear that I would entice away my uncle from his wife. She knew from my dead eyes that I had no such intention. Instead, she feared that my beauty would make him realize her plainness that much more, and lead him to yearn for another, younger wife. There was nothing I could have said or done to soothe her.

  The three children Father had spoken of were grown. Time passes, even when you don’t see it going by. The two girls were already married. The only son, Samuel, was eleven already. No one needed my help. Father had to pay my uncle a great sum to take me, I knew that. He left, promising to send more money and to visit twice a year, bringing Judith along. But things conspired against us, and though the money came, Father and Judith never did.

  I spent the next two years in my uncle’s house, under the hawk eye of Rachel. I scrubbed and mended and carried water. I went to the well early, sometimes before sunrise, in order to avoid the women with children. Just as Hannah had avoided them years ago. But Hannah had avoided them so that they wouldn’t object to Abraham, whereas I avoided them because I couldn’t bear to see the babies.

  I wouldn’t let myself think about Isaac; I wouldn’t let myself wonder what he’d be doing now if he had lived.

  I was fervent in my household activities. I ground the grain and baked the bread. And most of all I kept at my woolwork, ever mindful that those around me considered woolwork the guardian of womanly virtue. I washed Uncle’s feet when he came home at night. I rubbed his head and body with oil when he had worked in the sun. My size and strength were useful and I made Rachel’s load lighter. But still she did not soften toward me. We rarely spoke, other than her giving orders and me answering questions.

  I met both my mother’s sisters. One was tall — not so tall as me, but taller than the average woman. Both were less than loving. Both suspected that I had done something shameful to have been sent here like this. They thought I’d been banished. I responded to their questions with the least information possible. I didn’t ask which one of them had Mother’s harp. I asked nothing. I never learned from them or Uncle why my mother had been so estranged from them. They never mentioned her name except the very first time they saw me, when they, like Uncle, proclaimed my resemblance to her. After the initial excitement passed, they stopped coming to visit.

  Father sent money regularly, a purse to Uncle and a purse directly to me. It was a great sum he sent me and I wondered, if he was sending an equal sum to Uncle, what Uncle spent it on. For we certainly ate the simplest of meals — Rachel used only barley, never indulging in the more expensive wheat, the grain I was accustomed to having so often back home. I had always taken a certain pleasure in the coarseness of barley, though; it was in barley fields that Ruth of the scriptures went gleaning. But I knew Rachel chose barley not out of the dearness of Ruth, but out of the dearness of money.

  And Rachel never bought a pretty dress. Once a peddler passed down our road on the way to market and Rachel eyed a purple cloth, embroidered intricately at the edges. It was a himation, a length of cloth to be wrapped round and round the body, with a portion that would hang loosely over the top of the head. Rachel owned nothing of such beauty. Her tight jaw showed how much she wanted it, but she didn’t go inside for the money. I thought of buying it for her. After all, I, too, had once longed to clothe myself in dresses stained purple with the murex shellfish. But Rachel and I were not in the habit of doing kindnesses for one another and I was far from sure that she would welcome the act. It could be taken as flaunting.

  I had nothing I wanted to spend my own money on. The very feel of coins in my hand was hateful after the coins Jacob had left for me in the hall of prostitutes. But I was practical; I saved the coins Father sent in a box that I wrapped with the rags I used for my monthly blood. The rags were washed clean, of course, but, still, no one dared touch them but me. The taboo against blood was strong; my money was safe.

  In that box, as well, were two treasures. One was the flute Judith had given me. I found it sewn in a fold in my cloak. In my daze I had left Magdala without belongings, but for the sack Hannah pressed upon me, in which the dress she had woven lay folded. I had no desire for objects. But when I discovered the flute in my cloak, my hands held it reverently. I didn’t play it. But I kept it, clean and silent.

  The other treasure was a very soft and wide skin belt that could crumple in the hand to the size of a pomegranate, that fruit that the cheeks of the beloved were compared to in the Song of Songs, that fruit that Abraham enjoyed so much, that Abraham had fed to me with such painstaking care, seed by seed.

  I’d bought the belt in a shop in Dor only a month after my arrival here. It was my comrade of sorts; it secured my secrets. I bought it immediately after my dreams began.

  At first I didn’t know what my dreams were about, I only knew I screamed and Rachel had t
o shake me that first time till I stopped. I was soaked in sweat and I couldn’t catch my breath for many minutes. My head pounded with blood. My hands tingled with fear. I looked around, frantic to figure out where I was. And by the time I had, all memory of the dream had vanished. In the morning I put on my veil and went to the street of shops and bought the belt. That night I smoothed it flat over my mouth and tied it tight behind my head before I slept. In the dead of night I woke, my screams muffled in the belt. Every night thereafter I woke, silenced behind the belt.

  After a while I could remember the dreams. They all started out in a different activity, but they all ended the same. I would be walking someplace beautiful I didn’t recognize, or milling grain in happy anticipation of a feast whose purpose I didn’t know, or embroidering a cloth for a person I’d never met. I would always be happy and always be busy and always be looking forward to something good, something new and wonderful and unknown. Then a man would come and invite me away. I knew I shouldn’t go, but I couldn’t help it. He needed me to come. His need was urgent. And when I went to him, he became Jacob. He threw me down and raised a rock and smashed my hands, one then the other, crushed every bone until they were bloody stumps. Then he raised the rock again to smash my feet, but I had already awoken myself with my screams.

  I felt my hands, the length of each finger, over and over and over. I assured myself they were still useful. My womanly virtue persisted as long as my fingers were whole, as long as they could still do woolwork. I stared at the oil lamp, burning feebly in the closed night air of Uncle’s home, and thought of nothing. Eventually sleep recaptured me.

  I learned after a few months that I could take the skin belt off my mouth after a dream, for the dream never returned again in the same night. It was a small kindness, that.

  I went to the house of prayer often. I wore a veil and I dressed in black, as I had since Abraham’s death. But I was a noticeable figure, all the same. Eyes followed me. It didn’t take long before the offers of marriage came. I told Uncle I was barren. Father had suggested something of the sort to him, though I believed Father had managed to keep from lying outright. And so Uncle fended off the suitors and I kept my day full, between work and the house of prayer.