light. “I’ve looked upon myself in this mirror since I was a child. I want you to have it as a betrothal gift.”
She lifted the mirror to her face. “Why, I am . . .”
“Lovely,” I said, realizing she may not have glimpsed her image this clearly before.
“I cannot accept something so treasured.”
“Please. Take it.” I didn’t tell her I wished to be rid of the self I saw reflected there.
After that, I returned to life within the compound. Salome and I spun threads from flax and dyed them in a rare solution of alizarin red, which came from the roots of a tincture tree. Yaltha had procured it through means I wished not to know. It was possible she’d traded for it with Judith’s carved spindle, which mysteriously went missing around this time. We wove sitting in the courtyard, sending our shuttles back and forth, creating bright scarlet cloths that Judith and Berenice found immodest.
“There’s not a woman in Nazareth who would wear such a color,” Judith said. “Certainly, Salome, you won’t get married wearing it.” She complained to Mary, who must’ve had misgivings of her own, but she ignored Judith’s grievances.
I sewed a red head scarf and wore it every day as I went about my duties. The first time I paraded into the village in it, James said, “Jesus would not want you to go about in such a scarf.”
“Well, he isn’t here, is he?” I said.
xxvii.
Winter came slowly. I marked the months of Jesus’s absence on Yaltha’s calendar. Two full moons. Three. Five.
I wondered if by now he’d convinced John the Immerser to let me join the disciples. I kept thinking about the image that had come into my mind near the end of my confinement. Jesus and I had been on the rooftop trying to sleep when I’d envisioned him at the gate wearing his travel cloak and pouch, and I was there, too, crying. It had seemed such a gloomy omen then—Jesus leaving, while I wept—but my visions could be unpredictable and cunning. Wasn’t it entirely reasonable that I’d pictured myself at the gate because I was leaving with Jesus, not saying goodbye to him? Perhaps I was sorrowful over my separation from Yaltha. The explanation gave me hope that Jesus would sway John to accept me. Yes, I thought. He’ll appear soon, saying, “Ana, John bids you to come and join us.”
I asked Yaltha to move her sleeping mat back to the storeroom and I laid Jesus’s mat beside my own. As the days passed, my eyes drifted to the gate. I jumped at slight sounds. Whenever I could slip away from my tasks, I climbed to the roof and scanned the horizon.
Then, with winter nearly past, on a cold day full of windy light, I stood in the courtyard boiling soapwort root and olive oil to make soap, and looking up, I saw a hooded figure at the gate. I dropped the spoon, and oil splashed across the hearthstone. I was wearing the red head scarf, which had faded in the sun. I heard it snap at my ears as I ran.
“Jesus,” I cried, though I could see how different the figure was from my husband. Shorter, thinner, darker.
He drew back his hood. Lavi.
* * *
? ? ?
MY DISAPPOINTMENT THAT Lavi was not who I’d thought left quickly after I recognized my loyal old friend. I led him to the storeroom, where Yaltha brought him a cup of cool water. He bowed his head, slow to accept it, for he was still a slave and unaccustomed to being waited upon. “Drink,” she ordered.
Though it was midday, she lit a lamp to break apart the shadows, and we sat, the three of us, on the packed dirt and stared at one another in wordless wonder. We’d not seen him since the day of my wedding when he’d led the horse-drawn wagon through the gate.
His face had ripened, his cheeks fleshier, his brow more jutting. He was clean-shaven in the Greek manner, his hair cut short. Hardship had tilled furrows at the corners of his eyes. He was no longer a boy.