The Book of Longings

by Sue Monk Kidd

  THE BIRTH HOUSE was a shrine to honor the motherhood of Isis. The small columned building sat near the courtyard, which was still and quiet now, the dancing women gone.

  Diodora led us to a cluster of benches on the portico and sat facing us, her hands clasped tightly and her eyes shifting from Yaltha to me. She must have known that something momentous was about to occur—it seemed perched in the air over our heads like a bird about to swoop. A hundred birds.

  “My heart is full,” Yaltha told her. “So full it’s difficult for me to speak.”

  Diodora tipped her head to the side. “How is it that you know my name?”

  Yaltha smiled. “I once knew you by another name. Chaya. It means life.”

  “I’m sorry, lady, I do not know you or the name Chaya.”

  “It’s a long, difficult story. All I ask is that you allow me to tell it to you.” We sat a moment with the rustling in the air, and then Yaltha said, “I’ve come over a great distance to tell you that I’m your mother.”

  Diodora touched her hand to the gully between her breasts, just that small gesture, and I felt an unbearable tenderness come over me. For Diodora and Yaltha and the years stolen from them, but also for myself and Susanna. My lost daughter.

  “And this is Ana, your cousin,” Yaltha said.

  My throat thickened. I smiled at her, then mirrored her gesture, placing my hand to my breasts.

  She sat terrifyingly still, her face as unreadable as the alphabet ash we’d created in the oven. I could not imagine myself hearing such a thing as she’d just heard. If she lashed out in mistrust or grief or anger, I wouldn’t have blamed her. I almost preferred such reactions to this strange, inscrutable quiet.

  Yaltha continued in measured sentences, sparing Diodora nothing as she relayed the details of Ruebel’s death, the murder accusations against her, and her eight-year exile with the Therapeutae. She said, “The Jewish council decreed if I left the Therapeutae’s precincts for any reason, I would be given a hundred strokes by cane, mutilated, and exiled to Nubia.”

  This I’d never heard. Where was Nubia? Mutilated how? I slid closer to her on the bench.

  When she’d finished the entire story, Diodora said, “If what you say is true and I am your daughter, where then was I?” Her voiced sounded small, but her face was like an ember.

  Yaltha reached for Diodora’s hand, which she quickly drew back.

  “Oh, child, you were little more than two years old when I was sent away. Haran swore to keep you well and safe in his household. I wrote letters to him, inquiring of you, but they went unanswered.”

  Diodora frowned, rolling her eyes to the top of a column crowned with a woman’s head. After a moment she said, “If you were sent to the Therapeutae when I was two and remained there eight years . . . I would’ve been ten when you left them. Why didn’t you come for me then?” Her fingers moved in her lap as if counting. “Where have you been the last sixteen years?”

  As Yaltha struggled for words, I spoke. “She has been in Galilee. She’s been with me. But it’s not as you think. She didn’t regain her freedom when you were ten, but she was banished once again, this time to her brother in Sepphoris. She had hoped to reclaim you and bring you with her, but—”

  “Haran told me he’d given you out for adoption and he would not reveal your whereabouts,” Yaltha said. “I left then—I felt I had no choice. I thought you were cared for, that you had a family. I had no knowledge Haran had sold you to the priest until I returned to Egypt over a year ago to search for you.”

  Diodora shook her head almost violently. “I was told my father was a man named Choiak from a village somewhere in the south, that he sold me out of destitution.”

  Yaltha placed her hand on Diodora’s and once again Diodora yanked it away. “It was Haran who sold you. Ana has seen the document of sale, in which he disguised himself as a poor camel keeper named Choiak. I didn’t forget you, Diodora. I longed for you every day. I returned to find you, though even now my brother threatens to revive the old charges of murder if I should seek you out. I ask your forgiveness for leaving. I ask your forgiveness for not coming sooner.”

  Diodora dropped her head onto her knees and wept, and we could do nothing but let her. Yaltha stood and hovered over her. I didn’t know whether Diodora was grieved or comforted. I didn’t know whether she was lost or found.

  When she ceased weeping, Yaltha asked her, “Was he kind to you, your master?”

  “He was kind. I do not know if he loved me, but he never raised his hand or his voice to me. When he died, I grieved for him.”

  Yaltha closed her eyes and blew out a little breath.

  I had no intention of saying anything, yet I thought of my parents and Susanna, whom I’d lost, and of Jesus, my family in Nazareth, Judas, and Tabitha, who were all so far away, and I felt no assurance that any of them would be restored to me. I said, “Let us be more than cousins. Let us be sisters. The three of us will be a family.”

  Light was falling in bright bands across the colonnade, and she squinted up at me and said nothing. I felt I’d said a foolish thing, that I’d trespassed somehow. At that moment, someone called her name from a distance, singing it. “Diodooora . . . Diodooora.”

  She leapt up. “I’ve neglected my duties.” She wiped her face with the sleeve of her tunic, then pulled on her tight, stoic mask.

  “I don’t know when I can come again,” Yaltha said. “Haran returns from his travels tomorrow and as I said, he forbids us to leave his house. We will find a way somehow.”

  “I do not think you should return,” she said. She walked away, leaving us there on the portico of the birth house.

  Yaltha called out to her, “Daughter, I love you.”

  xvii.

  The following day in the scriptorium in Haran’s house, I listened to Lavi read from the Iliad in starts and stops, finding it difficult to stay focused. My mind wandered to Diodora and to the things spoken in the birth house. I kept seeing her walk away from us.

  “What will we do?” I’d asked Yaltha during the long walk from Isis Medica back to Haran’s.

  “We’ll wait,” she’d replied.

  With effort I turned my attention back to Lavi as he faltered over a word. When I attempted to prompt him, he held up his hand. “It will come to me.” It took an entire minute. “Ship!” he cried, beaming.

  He was in a happy, though somewhat nervous mood. Earlier that morning a courier had arrived with news that he’d been granted the position at the library. His apprenticeship would begin on the first day of the following week.

  “I’ve made a vow to finish reading Achilles’s adventures before my employment,” he said, lowering the codex. “My Greek is not yet perfected.”

  “Don’t be concerned, Lavi. You read Greek quite well. But yes, finish the poem—you must find out who prevails, Achilles or Hector.”

  He seemed to bask in my praise, sitting up taller. “Tomorrow I will go to Pamphile’s father to ask for a settlement of marriage.”

  “Oh, Lavi, I’m glad for you.” His nervousness, I realized, was not merely about his reading skill. “When do you hope to wed?”

  “There’s no betrothal period here as there is in Galilee. Once her father and I draw up the settlement and sign it before witnesses, Pamphile and I are considered married. She gave me a portion of her wages and I purchased a shabti box as a gift for him. I will not ask for a bride price. I hope these things will be enough to conclude the contract tomorrow.”

  I walked to Thaddeus’s desk and gathered up a stack of papyrus sheets, the costliest and finest in Egypt. “You may offer him these as well. It seems an appropriate gift from a librarian of the great library.”

  He hesitated. “Are you sure? Will they be missed?”

  “Haran has more papyrus than exists in all of Sepphoris and Jerusalem combined. He won’t miss these few she
ets.”

  As I thrust them into his arms, there was a shuffling at the door. The servant who did Haran’s bidding was standing there.

  “Our master has just returned,” he said, his eyes traveling to the papyri.

  “Does he have need of me?” I asked, more haughtily than I should have.

  “He asked me to inform the household of his return, that is all.”

  Once again we were in captivity.

  * * *

  • • •

  WAITING WAS AN INSUFFERABLE ENDEAVOR. One sat, one dithered, one stirred a pot of questions. I fretted over whether we should accept Diodora’s rejection or find a way to return to Isis Medica. I pressed Yaltha to set a course, but she persisted in her waiting, saying if the pot was tended long enough, the answer would bubble to the surface. A week passed, however, and we seemed no closer to resolving the matter.

  Then one day with the sun dangling low above the rooftops, Pamphile broke in upon Yaltha and me in the sitting room, breathless from hurrying. “A visitor has arrived asking for you,” she said. I imagined it was the long-awaited courier bearing a letter from Judas—Come home, Ana. Jesus bids you to come home—and my heart began to thump.

  “She waits for you both in the atrium,” Pamphile added.

  I knew then who it was. Yaltha nodded at me. She knew, as well.

  “Where’s Haran?” Yaltha asked.

  “He has been away all afternoon,” Pamphile answered. “He hasn’t yet returned.”

  “Bring the visitor to us here and say nothing of her presence to anyone but Lavi.”

  “My husband hasn’t returned either.” She let the word husband slide slowly from her tongue. The marriage settlement had been signed as Lavi had hoped.

  “Be certain to alert him when he arrives. Ask him to wait in the garden out of sight. When our visitor leaves, we’ll need him to slip her out through the servant quarters.”

  “Who is she?” Pamphile asked, alarm appearing on her face.

  “There’s no time to explain,” Yaltha said and waved her hand impatiently. “Tell Lavi it’s Chaya. He’ll know. Now, hurry.”

  Yaltha opened the door onto the garden, allowing hot air to invade the room. I watched her preparing herself, smoothing her tunic, taking deep, concentrated breaths. I poured three cups of wine.

  Diodora hesitated at the threshold, peering inside before she entered. She wore a rough-weave brown mantle about her white tunic and had pinned back her hair with two silver ornaments. Her eyes were painted with malachite.

  “I didn’t know if I’d see you again,” Yaltha said.

  When Diodora stepped inside, I quickly closed the door, which had an iron lock on the inside and on the outside, but we had no key to secure it. I reminded myself that Haran had not come to our rooms in all the time we’d been here. Why would he do so now?

  Standing in the middle of the room, Diodora looked thin and childlike. Did she know how dangerous this was? Yet there was a beautiful irony in her being here; the girl he’d gone to such lengths to be rid of was in his house, beneath his roof, under his nose. It was a revenge so hidden and precise, I wanted to laugh. I offered her the cup of wine, but she refused it. I took mine and drank it in four swallows.

  As Yaltha seated herself, I gave Diodora the bench and settled on the floor, where I could look into the garden to watch for Lavi.

  “The news you brought me was a great shock,” she said. “I have thought of nothing else.”

  “Neither have I,” said Yaltha. “I’m sorry I thrust so much on you at once. I’m not known for subtlety. My delicate side wore away many years ago.”

  Diodora smiled. It was the first time we’d seen her do so and it was like a little dawn had broken over the room. “I was glad at first that you stayed away from Isis Medica as I asked, but then . . .”

  When she said nothing further, Yaltha responded, “I wanted to go back if only to see you from afar, but I felt I should honor your wishes. I’m happy you’ve come.”

  “I remembered what you said about your brother confining you here. Even if you decided to ignore my wishes, I didn’t know if it would be possible for you to leave. So, I’ve come to you.”

  “Weren’t you concerned you might encounter Haran?” I asked.

  “Yes, but I conceived a story in case I came upon him—I was relieved not to need it.”

  “Please, tell us.”

  She undraped a pouch from her shoulder and extracted a bronze bracelet carved with the head of a vulture. “I planned to show him my bracelet and say, ‘One of your servants may have left this behind in the healing sanctuary at Isis Medica. I’ve been sent to return it. Would you kindly let me speak with one of them?’”

  Her story was shrewd—but it bore flaws Haran was too clever to miss. He would know Diodora was an attendant at Isis Medica. And look at her—she was the image of me.

  “And when you spoke with the servant, what did you plan to say?” I asked.

  She reached into the pouch once more and removed a small ostracon. “I planned to beg her, servant to servant, to deliver it to Yaltha. There’s a message on it to . . . to my mother.”

  She lowered her eyes. The word mother hung in the air, golden and unmissable.

  “You read and write?” I asked.

  “My master taught me.”

  She handed the ostracon to Yaltha, who read its six words aloud. “I beg you to come again. D.”

  Out in the garden, I could see the last orange clamor of the sun. Haran would return home soon, yet we lit all the lamps and talked, even laughed. Yaltha asked her daughter about her work in the healing sanctuary and Diodora told of bleedings, sacred baths, and the intoxicating plants that induced dreams. “I’m one of only two attendants who write down the petitioners’ dreams when they wake. My master taught me to read and write so I could have this high position.” She amused us for a short while with accounts of the more preposterous dreams she’d recorded. “I take my dream recordings to the priest, who deciphers their meanings and prescribes cures. I know not how he does it.”

  “And do these cures work?” I asked in bafflement.

  “Oh yes, almost always.”

  I glimpsed a movement in the garden and saw Lavi treading through the spiky palm shadows. Catching my eye, he lifted his forefinger to his lips and concealed himself behind the foliage near the open door.

  “Do you live within the temple precinct?” Yaltha was asking.

  “Since my master died when I was sixteen, I’ve had a bed in the temple domicile with the other attendants. I’m free now and make a small wage.”

  We went on asking questions while she basked in the genuineness of our attention, but after a while she begged Yaltha for knowledge about the two years they’d spent together before being separated. My aunt told her stories about her fear of crocodiles, her favorite lullaby, how once she’d dumped a bowl of wheat flour on her head.

  “You had a little wooden paddle doll,” Yaltha told her. “A brightly painted one I found in the market. You called her Mara.”

  Diodora sat up very tall, her eyes widening. “Was her hair made of flax threads with an onyx bead on each end?”

  “Yes, that was Mara.”

  “I still have her! She’s all I have from my life before I was bought by my master. He said I arrived clutching her. I didn’t remember her name.” She shook her head. “Mara,” she repeated.

  In this way, she took the bits and pieces Yaltha offered and began to piece them into a story of who she was. I’d stayed very quiet, listening—they seemed to inhabit a realm of their own. But after a while, Diodora noticed my reserve and said, “Ana. Tell me of yourself.”

  I hesitated a moment before telling her about her family in Sepphoris—Father, Mother, and Judas—but said what I could, leaving out a great deal. I described Jesus and my heart pined so badly that I resor
ted to tales of Delilah standing in the water trough, just to have the relief of smiling.

  Darkness came, and in that softening, Diodora turned to Yaltha. “When you told me who you were, I didn’t know if I should believe it. That you could be my mother . . . it seemed impossible. But I saw myself in you. Deep inside, I knew who you were. After I heard your confession, bile rose in me. I told myself, she left me once, now I will leave her, so I walked away. Then you called me daughter. You called out your love.” She went and knelt beside Yaltha’s chair. “I cannot forget that you left me. That knowledge will always remain in a corner of me, but I wish to let myself be loved.”

  There was no time to ponder or rejoice in what she’d said. The door flew open. Haran stepped into the room. Behind him, the obsequious servant.

  xviii.

  Yaltha, Diodora, and I stood and edged together, shoulders touching, as if to make a tiny fortress. “Since you didn’t knock, I assume you’ve come on a matter of urgency,” Yaltha said to Haran, sounding remarkably restrained, but when I looked at her, she gave the impression of little bolts of lightning flashing around her head.

  “I was told you received a visitor,” he said. His eyes were fixed on Diodora. He searched her face, curious, but as yet unseeing, and I realized that was all he knew—a visitor.

  “Who are you?” he asked, coming to stand before her.

  I was desperately searching for some scenario to explain her presence—something about Diodora being Pamphile’s sister who’d come regarding Lavi’s marriage. We shall never know if my fabrication might’ve convinced him, or if Yaltha, who was also readying to speak, might’ve distracted him, for just then Diodora pulled the vulture bracelet from her pouch and offered her clumsy story, too frightened to grasp that it made little sense now. “I’m an attendant at Isis Medica. One of your servants left this behind in the healing sanctuary at Isis Medica. I’ve been sent to return it.”

  He glanced at the cups of wine and gestured toward Yaltha and me. “And are these the servants who left the bracelet?”