the commotion of a bee’s wing. Then she threw back her shoulders, as I’d seen her do a hundred times. Seconds passed, ceaseless seconds.
Give her an answer, Aunt.
“I wish to speak with you,” Yaltha said. “May we find a place to sit?”
Uncertainty wrinkled Diodora’s face. “I’m only an attendant,” she said and took a step backward.
“Do you also serve in the healing sanctuary?” Yaltha asked.
“That’s where I attend most often. Today, I was required here.” She picked up the cloth and wrung it out in the bowl. “Have I attended you there in the past? Do you wish to seek another cure?”
“No, I didn’t come for healing.” Later I would think Yaltha was wrong about that.
“If you have no need of me then . . . I’m tasked with removing the offerings. I must see to it.” She hurried away, disappearing through the door at the back.
“I didn’t think she could be so beautiful,” Yaltha said. “Beautiful and grown and very much like you.”
“She’s also puzzled,” I said. “I’m afraid we made her ill at ease.” I moved close to my aunt. “Are you going to tell her?”
“I’m trying to find a way.”
The door opened and Diodora emerged carrying two large empty baskets. She slackened her pace when she saw we were still there, the two peculiar strangers. Without acknowledging us, she knelt and began placing the Isis figures into a basket.
I lowered myself beside her and picked up one of the crudely fashioned carvings. Up close, I saw it was Isis cradling her newborn son. Diodora cast a sideways glance at me, but said nothing. I helped her fill both baskets. In my soul, I was a Jew, but I closed my fingers around the statuette. Sophia, I whispered to myself, calling the figure by the name I loved.
When all the offerings had been gathered, Diodora rose and looked at Yaltha. “If you wish to speak with me, you may do so on the portico of the birth house.”
* * *
? ? ?
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,