set down the scissors. “There’s something I must tell you.” I waited for him to turn and lift his eyes to mine. “I am with child.”
“It is true, then,” he said.
“You’re not surprised?”
“Last evening, when you placed your hand to your belly, I thought it might be so.” He closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them, they were bright with worry. “Ana, tell me truly—are you glad to have this child?”
“I am content,” I said.
And I was. By now, after such a long drought of ink, I could barely remember why I had taken the blackseed oil at all.
* * *
? ? ?
WHEN WE ENTERED THE COURTYARD, Jesus summoned everyone to the olive tree, which is where the family gathered to announce betrothals, pregnancies, and births, and to discuss matters of household business. Mary and Salome came smelling of mulberries, followed by Judith and Berenice and their small flock of children. James and Simon wandered over from the workshop. Yaltha needed no summons—she’d been waiting there when we arrived. Everyone but my aunt appeared curious, but unsuspecting—it wouldn’t have occurred to them I carried a child. I was Jesus’s barren wife.
I clung to Jesus’s arm.
“We have good news,” he said, turning his eyes to his mother. “Ana is with child!” Several strange moments passed while no one moved, and then Mary and Salome rushed to me, Mary bending to kiss my belly and Salome smiling at me, so much longing in her face that I almost looked away. I thought how incongruous it was that I, who hadn’t wanted a child, should conceive one, while Salome, who yearned for one, could not.
Simon and James slapped Jesus’s back and dragged him to the center of the courtyard, where the three of them folded their arms about one another’s shoulders and danced. His brothers let out whoops and shouts—Praise God, who has poured his blessing on you. May God grant you a son.
How happy my husband looked out there, his uneven hair swirling about his cheeks.
xiv.
The months that followed our announcement passed quickly and without incident. Even when I couldn’t hold down my meals, when my back throbbed from my ever-protruding belly, I rose each day to carry out my chores. In my fifth month, I began to feel a little foot or an elbow ripple inside me, the strangest of sensations, and I would experience a burst of love for the child that shocked me in its intensity. When my seventh month arrived, I grew ridiculously cumbersome. Once, observing my struggling efforts to sit up on my sleeping mat, Jesus playfully likened me to an overturned beetle, then placed his arms beneath mine and hoisted me up. How we laughed at my awkwardness. Yet at odd hours in the night when he was away and I couldn’t sleep, I sometimes felt like pieces of me were sloughing away—Ana, the scribe of lost stories, Ana and the tiny sun.
* * *
? ? ?
BIRTHING PAINS WOKE ME before dawn. Lying on my mat on the earthen floor, muddled with sleep and confusion and a goring pain in my back, I reached for Jesus in the darkness and found his mat empty. It took a moment to remember he’d departed for Capernaum three days ago.
He’s not here. Our baby would come too soon, and he was not here.
A spasm encircled my belly, tightening. Pressing my fist against my mouth, I listened to a moan escape between my fingers, a quashed, eerie sound. Tighter, tighter, the pain bit down, and I saw how it would be, bearing a child. The fangs would chomp and let go, chomp and let go, and there would be nothing to do but give myself to the slow devouring. I placed my arms around my swollen belly and rocked side to side. Fear sloshed in my chest. I’d only been with child seven months.
For the past few months, Jesus had helped to keep us fed by traveling to Capernaum to fish on the Sea of Galilee. He relied on his comradery with the local fishermen, who took him out on their boats to cast nets and let him barter his portion