“What does he want of me?” I asked. But already it was breaking over me—the truth of why we were here, the diminutive man in purple, the business matter.
“Your Father wishes to present you to Nathaniel ben Hananiah,” Mother was saying, “who wishes to see you more closely.”
I looked at the man and felt something tear beneath the flat bone in my chest.
They mean to betroth me.
Panic started again, this time like a wave in my belly. My hands began to tremble, then my jaw. I whirled toward her. “You cannot betroth me,” I cried. “I haven’t yet come of age!”
She took my arm and whisked me farther away so Nathaniel ben Hananiah could not hear my objections or see the horror on my face. “You can stop perpetuating your lie. Shipra found your bleeding rags. Did you think you could keep it from me? I am not witless. I am only angered that you’ve carried out such a contemptible deceit.”
I wanted to scream at her, to hurl words like stones: Where do you think I learned such deceit? From you, Mother, who hides chasteberries and wild rue in the storage room.
I scrutinized the man they’d chosen for me. His beard more gray than black. Curved ruts beneath his eyes. A weariness about his countenance, a kind of bitterness. They meant to give me to him. God slay me. I would be expected to obey his entreaties, oversee his household, suffer his stubby body upon mine, and bear his children, all the while stripped of my pens and scrolls. The thought sent a spasm of rage through me so fierce I clutched my waist to keep from clawing at her.
“He is old!” I finally managed to say, offering the most feeble recrimination of all.
“He’s a widower, yes, with two daughters. He—”
“He wants a son,” I said, finishing her sentence.
Standing in the middle of the market, I paid no heed to the people who stepped around us, to Father’s soldier waving them along, to the utter spectacle we were. “You could’ve told me what awaited me here!” I cried.
“And did you not betray me? An eye for an eye—that would be reason enough to have kept this meeting from you.” She smoothed the front of her coat and glanced nervously toward Father. “We didn’t tell you because we had no wish to endure your fit of protest. It’s bad enough that you raise a dispute now in public.”
She sweetened her tongue, eager to bring an end to my revolt. “Gather yourself. Nathaniel is waiting. Do your duty; much is at stake.”
I glimpsed the sour-looking little man observing us from a distance and jutted out my chin in the defiant way I’d seen Yaltha do when Father forbade her some small freedom. “I will not be inspected for blemishes like a Passover lamb.”
Mother sighed. “One cannot expect a man to enter something as binding as a betrothal without judging his bride worthy. This is how it’s done.”
“And what about me? Shouldn’t I be allowed to judge him worthy?”
“Oh, Ana,” she said. She gazed at me with the tired old sorrow she felt from enduring such a fractious child. “Few girls find happiness in the beginning, but this is a marriage of honor. You will want for nothing.”
I will want for everything.
She gestured for Shipra, who appeared beside us as if she might be called upon to drag me to my fate. The market closed in around me, the feeling of having nowhere to go, no escape. I was not like Judas, who could just leave. I was Ana—the entire world was a cage.
I squeezed my eyes shut. “Please,” I said. “Do not ask this of me.”
She nudged me forward. The howling in my head returned, but softer, like someone moaning.
I walked toward my father, my feet the carapaces of two turtles, my sandals tolling.
I was a head taller than Nathaniel ben Hananiah, and I could see he was repulsed by the need to look up at me. I rose on my toes even higher.