way his steps slowed and his story ceased midsentence. “Ana.” He pointed toward a bend in the distance, at a heap of white robe spattered with red lying on the side of the road. I thought, Someone has cast off his garment. Then I saw the shape of a person beneath it.
Ahead of us, the father and his sons and then the priest came to a halt, judging, it seemed, whether the person was dead or alive.
“He’s been set upon by robbers,” Jesus said, scanning the rocky terrain as if they might still be nearby. “Come.” He walked quickly, while I scampered to keep up. Already the others had passed by the wounded man, giving him a wide berth.
Jesus knelt beside the figure as I stood behind him dredging up the courage to look. A soft moan drifted up. “It’s a woman,” Jesus said.
I gazed down then, seeing her but not seeing her, my mind unwilling to yield to what was before me. “My Lord and my God, it’s Tabitha!”
Her face was smeared with blood, but I saw no wound. “The gash is on her scalp,” Jesus said, pointing to a mass of sticky, dark blood in her hair.
I stooped and wiped her face with my robe. Her eyes fluttered. She stared at me, blinking, and I was certain she knew me. The stub of her tongue thrashed about in her mouth, looking for a way to speak my name.
“Is she dead?” a voice called. A tall young man approached. I could tell from his dialect and dress he was a Samaritan and I tensed reflexively. Jews had nothing to do with Samaritans, regarding them as worse than Gentiles.
“She’s wounded,” Jesus said.
The man pulled out his waterskin, bent, and tipped it to Tabitha’s lips. Her mouth opened, her neck arched upward. She looked like a featherless baby bird craning for food. Jesus dropped his hand onto the man’s shoulder. “You’re Samaritan, yet you give a Galilean your water.”
The man made no reply and Jesus unwound his girdle and set about binding Tabitha’s wound. The Samaritan hoisted her onto Jesus’s back, and we walked the rest of the way with excruciating slowness.
ix.
I heard the slap of sandals in the courtyard, then women’s voices, high-pitched and eager. “Coming . . . We’re coming.”
Tabitha groaned. I said, “You’re safe now.”
Throughout the long, torturous day, Tabitha had appeared inert, as if sleeping, rousing a little only when the men transferred her from one to the other, and each time I’d patted her face and offered her water. The Samaritan had parted with us a short while before we’d reached Bethany, pressing a copper coin into my hands, a sesterce. “See that she has lodging and food,” he’d said.
I began to protest, but Jesus spoke up. “Let him give his coin.” I dropped it into my pouch.
Now the creak of a latch and two women appeared, short, thick-waisted with round, plump faces that were nearly identical. Their exuberance faded as they glimpsed Tabitha, but they asked no questions and hurried us to a room, where we laid her on a pillowed bed mat.
“I’ll tend her,” the one called Mary said to us. “Go, take the evening meal with Martha and Lazarus. You must be hungry and tired.”
When I tarried, reluctant to leave Tabitha, Jesus gave me a little tug.
Lazarus was not as I’d expected. He was slight of build with a sallow face and weak, watery eyes. So unlike his sisters. He and Jesus greeted each other like brothers, kissing cheeks and embracing. We gathered about a round slat table that rested on the floor, an arrangement new to me. In Sepphoris we’d reclined on plush couches around a long table. In Nazareth we had no table at all, but held bowls in our lap and sat on the ground.
“Who’s the injured girl?” Lazarus asked.
“Her name is Tabitha,” I answered. “I knew her as a girl in Sepphoris. She was my friend, my only friend. She was sent away to live with relatives, who sold her to a man in Jericho. I don’t know how she came to be beaten and left on the side