A good feeling came over me, that in the Temple I would pray to understand all these words - not only what my uncle had said to me, but all the other things I had heard.
My mother came back.
There was just room near the wall by me for my mother to kneel down and then to sink back on her heels.
The torchlight hit her face as she looked towards the Temple.
"Listen to me," she said.
"I am," I answered. I answered in Greek without thinking.
"What I have to say to you should have waited," she said. She spoke Greek as well.
With the noise in the streets, with the low nighttime talk on the roof, I could still hear her.
"But it can't wait now," she said. "My brother has seen to that. Would that he could suffer in silence. But it's never been his way to do anything in silence. So I say it. And you listen. Don't ask questions of me. Do as Joseph told you in that regard. But listen to what I say."
"I am," I said again.
"You're not the child of an angel," she said.
I nodded.
She turned towards me. The torchlight was in her eyes.
I said nothing.
"The angel said to me - that the power of the Lord would come over me," she said. "And so the shadow of the Lord came over me - I felt it - and then in time came the stirring of life inside me, and it was you."
I said nothing.
She looked down.
The noise of the city was gone. The torchlight made her look beautiful to me. Beautiful perhaps as Sarah looked to Pharaoh, beautiful as Rachel to Jacob. My mother was beautiful. Modest, but beautiful, no matter how many veils she wore to hide it, no matter how she bowed her head or blushed.
I wanted to be in her lap, in her arms, but I didn't move. It wasn't right to move or say a word.
"And so it happened," she said, looking up again. "I have never been with a man, not then, not now, nor will I ever. I am consecrated to the Lord."
I nodded.
"You can't understand this ...can you?" she asked. "You can't follow what I'm trying to tell you."
"I do follow," I said. "I do see." Joseph wasn't my father, yes, I knew. I had never called Joseph Father. Yes, he was my father according to the Law, and married to my mother, but he wasn't my father. And she was so like a girl always, and the other women like her older sisters, I knew, yes, I knew. "Anything is possible with the Lord," I said. "The Lord made Adam from the dust. Adam didn't even have a mother. The Lord can make a child with no father." I shrugged.
She shook her head. She wasn't like a girl now, but not like a woman either. She was soft and almost sad. When she spoke again, she didn't sound like herself.
"No matter what anyone ever says to you in Nazareth," she said, "remember what's been said tonight."
"People will say things ...?"
She closed her eyes.
"This is why you didn't want to go back there ...to Nazareth?" I asked.
She gave a deep breath. She put her hand over her mouth. She was amazed. She took a deep breath, and she was gentle:
"You haven't understood what I've said to you!" she whispered. She was hurt. I thought she might cry.