"There's blood on your face!" my mother whispered. "Your eye, there's blood. Your face is cut!" She was crying. "Oh, look what's happened to you," she said. She spoke in Aramaic, our tongue which we didn't speak very much.
"I'm not hurt," I said. I meant to say it didn't matter. Again my cousins pressed close, Salome smiling as if to say she knew I could bring him back to life, and I took her hand and squeezed it.
But there was James with his hard look.
The Teacher came into the room backwards with his hands up. Someone ripped the curtain away and the light was very bright. Joseph and his brothers came in. And so did Cleopas. All of us had to move to make room.
"You're talking about Joseph and Cleopas and Alphaeus, what do you mean drive them out!" said the Teacher to the whole crowd. "They've been with us for seven years!"
The angry family of Eleazer came almost into the room. The father himself did come into the room.
"Yes, seven years and why don't they go back to Galilee, all of them!" Eleazer's father shouted. "Seven years is too long! That boy is possessed of a demon and I tell you my son was dead!"
"Are you complaining that he's alive now! What's the matter with you!" demanded my uncle Cleopas.
"You sound like a madman!" added my uncle Alphaeus.
And thus and so it went, with them shouting back and forth, and making fists at each other, and the women nodding and throwing glances to one another, and far off others joining in.
"Oh, that you say such things!" said the Teacher, saying every word as if we were in the House of Study. "Jesus and James are my finest pupils. And these men are your neighbors, what's happened to make you turn against them like this! Listen to your own words!"
"Oh, your pupils, your pupils!" cried Eleazer's father. "But we have to live and work, and there's more to life than being a pupil!" More of them came into the room.
My mother backed up against the wall, holding me close. I wanted to get away, but I couldn't. She was too afraid.
"Yes, work, that's it," my uncle Cleopas said, "and who's to say we can't live here, what do you mean drive us out, just because more of the work goes to us, because we're better and better at giving people what they want - ."
Suddenly Joseph put up his hands and he roared out the word: "Quiet!"
And they all went quiet.
The whole mob of them fell quiet.
Never had Joseph raised his voice before.
"The Lord made shame for an argument such as this!" Joseph said. "You break the walls of my house."
No one said anything. Everyone looked at him. Even Eleazer was there and he looked up at him.
Not even the Teacher spoke.
"Now Eleazer is alive," Joseph said. "And as it happens, we are going home to Galilee."
Again no one spoke.
"We will leave for the Holy Land as soon as our few jobs are finished here. We'll bid you farewell, and those jobs that come to us as we prepare to go we'll send to you by your leave."
Eleazer's father stretched his neck, then nodded and opened his hands. He shrugged. He bowed his head, and then he turned. His men turned. Eleazer stared at me, and then all of them went out of the room.
The crowd left the courtyard, and my aunt Mary, the Egyptian, who was Cleopas' wife, came in and closed the curtain partway.
What was left now was all our people, and the Teacher. The Teacher was not happy. He looked at Joseph. He frowned.
My mother wiped her eyes, and looked to my face, but then the Teacher began to talk. She held me close, her hands shaking violently.
"Leaving to go home?" said the Teacher. "And taking my fine students with you? Taking my fine Jesus? And what will you go home to, may I ask? To the land of milk and honey?"
"You mock our forefathers?" asked my uncle Cleopas.