coins for papyri, where men scrabbled for work and women toiled from daybreak to day’s end. Women’s duties and customs were inviolable here, more so even than in Sepphoris. The leisure and affront of making inks and writing words were as unthinkable as spinning gold from flax, but doing so would not be lost to me forever—that’s what he was telling me.
He blew out the lamp and we returned to our mats. His words had flooded me with an odd mixture of hope and disappointment. I told myself I would put aside my desire, that it would wait. The thought saddened me, but from that night I did not doubt he understood my longing.
v.
On the day that Jesus and I had been married a full year, Mary patted my belly and teased, “Have you got a baby in there yet?” Overhearing this, Jesus cast his mother an amused look that cut through me. Was he, too, waiting and hoping for a child?
We were in the courtyard huddled over an inventive new oven Jesus had made out of clay and straw, the three of us staring inside at balls of dough clinging to its smooth, curved walls. Mary and I had taken turns throwing the fistfuls of dough against the sides while Jesus praised our efforts. Unsurprisingly, two of my dough balls had refused to stick and landed in the hot coals at the bottom. The smell of burned bread was everywhere.
Across the compound, Judith stepped from her doorway and wrinkled her nose. “Have you burned the bread again, Ana?” She glanced sideways at Jesus.
“How do you know it was I who did so and not my mother-in-law?” I asked.
“I know the same way I know it was your goat who ate my cloth and not the chickens.” Of course, she would bring that up. I’d let Delilah roam free in the compound and she’d eaten Judith’s precious cloth. You would think I’d put the cloth on a plate and fed it to her.
In a perfectly timed moment, Delilah emitted a forlorn bleat, and Jesus broke into laughter. “She overheard you, Judith, and wishes to be forgiven.”
Judith huffed away, her baby, Sarah, tied onto her back. The child had been born seven months ago and already Judith was pregnant again. I felt a wave of pity for her.
Mary was removing the small loaves from the oven, tossing them into a basket. “I’ll pack these for your journey,” she said to Jesus.
He would leave tomorrow as a journeyman, traveling from village to village as a stonemason and woodworker. The theater in Sepphoris was finished and jobs there had disappeared as Herod Antipas erected a new capital to the north, named Tiberias for the Roman emperor. Jesus could’ve found employment there, of course, but Antipas had stupidly, wantonly built the city atop a cemetery, and only those who cared little for the purity laws would work there. My husband was an outspoken critic of the purity laws, probably too outspoken for his own good, but I think he’d been relieved to have a reason not to be part of the tetrarch’s ambitions.
I slid my arm about Jesus’s waist as if to tether him. “Not only will Delilah and I remain unforgiven, but my husband is leaving with all our bread,” I said, making an effort to disguise my sadness. “I wish you didn’t have to go.”
“If I had my way, I would stay, but there’s little work for me in Nazareth, you know that.”
“Don’t people in Nazareth need plows and yokes and roof beams?”
“Jobs here will go more readily to James and Simon than to me. I’ll try not to remain away too long. I’ll go first to Japha and if I find no work there, I’ll go on to Exaloth and Dabira.”
Japha. It was the village Tabitha had been banished to. A year and a half had passed since I’d seen her, but she was not gone from my thoughts. I’d told Jesus about her, holding nothing back. I’d even sung some of her songs for him.
“When you’re in Japha, would you seek word of Tabitha for me?” I asked.
He hesitated only slightly. “I’ll inquire about her, Ana, but the news,