The Handmaid and the Carpenter (4 page)

“No,” he said.

“You would be close to the place where you labor. You would not have to walk so far each day…”

“We will never live in Sepphoris.” He would not look at her.

“…and you would be quicker coming home to me.” Her voice was singsong, flirtatious.

“It is forbidden!”

“Forbidden? By whom? I think only by you.”

Joseph stopped walking and turned to her. “What did you say?”

Mary did not repeat herself. But there was no need; Joseph had heard her.

“Always we will honor our traditions,” he said. “And we will raise our children in the village where we ourselves were raised.” He began walking again.

Mary spoke softly, wearily. “Never have I said we would not honor our traditions.”

For some time, they walked without speaking. And then Mary reached again for Joseph’s hand. Somewhere inside, she acknowledged her own wrongheadedness. Joseph was only doing what he should, pushing her to become a proper woman, a proper wife. She should stop asking questions, talking back, taunting him. He was tall and handsome, kinder than any man she had ever known. His kisses rattled her to the bone. Even in anger he never frightened her; she saw him those times as a puppy holding on to his end of the rope. When they were wed, surely she would want for nothing.

CHAPTER FIVE

Mary

IY!” MARY REACHED FOR THE BACK OF HER
head, where Naomi had pitilessly yanked on her hair. Mary sat on the ground, while Naomi kneeled behind her, attempting to fashion a braid that would subdue Mary’s curls.

“Do not complain,” Naomi scolded. “If Joseph wants your hair done properly, you must learn to do it!” Her voice lowered as she added, “And he is right. Since I have known you, your hair has been wild about your face.”

“I know well how to braid my hair,” Mary said. “But my hair knows well how to escape. Shall I spend all my days trying to capture it?”

“How often must you be told that wives should at all times endeavor to please their husbands? As women, it is our calling and our privilege. You do not deserve to be betrothed to Joseph! Another woman would know her great fortune!” She yanked again on Mary’s hair.

Yola, Mary’s other, more favored friend, rose from where she had been lying in the long grass next to the creek. She walked over to the two girls, then seized Mary’s braid away from Naomi.

“Aiy!”
Mary cried again.

Yola loosened her grip and began instead to play gently with Mary’s hair, as when they were little girls, and Mary closed her eyes in relief and pleasure. “There is no need for such constraint,” Yola said. “Is it not a pleasing sight, Mary’s hair about her face? Let us put flowers in her braid instead.” She knelt behind Mary, plucked a beautiful white wildflower, and tucked it into her braid. Then she put in another.

Naomi picked a tiny pink flower. “Use this, instead. Pink is better suited to her coloring. White suits
me.
”

Yola ignored Naomi’s outstretched hand and instead picked another white blossom. “This color is more pleasing.” She held it to her nose and breathed in deeply. “And it smells of heaven, besides.”

Naomi crossed her arms and stuck out her lips, pouting. “Mary, do you say white or pink?”

Mary shrugged. “Of what significance is the color of flowers I cannot see?”

“They are for
Joseph
!” Naomi and Yola said together. They looked at each other and smiled. On this point, at least, they agreed.

Mary pulled away from Yola and turned to sit opposite her. “Why do we waste our time this way? Let us go into the water and cool ourselves.”

The two girls looked at the creek, then at Mary.

“It is too cold,” said Naomi.

“It could be deep,” said Yola.

“My friends have left me,” Mary said. “And have been replaced with old women afraid of their shadows.” She moved to the edge of the creek, took off her head cover, and flung it aside. Then she waded into the water, shrieking with delight as the cold rushed over her ankles. She walked in farther.

“You are
wet
now!” Naomi cried, and Yola and Mary laughed at her.

“She should be dry, sitting in a creek?” Yola asked. For Mary had indeed sat down, and now the water reached her chest. This is what she had longed to do when she was here with Joseph.

“Come out from there immediately!” Naomi said. She spoke loudly, that Mary might hear her over the rushing sounds of the water. “It is improper, what you do! Come out before we are seen!”

Mary ignored her.

“We must
go
!” Naomi said.

Mary turned away. On the opposite bank grew more flowers, yellow ones.

Now Yola called out, “Mary! We have stayed too long!”

Exasperated, Mary turned to face her friends. She called back, “Why can you not enjoy this rare pleasure? When I brought you here, I thought surely you would indulge yourselves!”

“Enough!” Naomi said. “I shall have no part of this. I am going back to the village.” She turned and walked quickly away, toward home.

Yola stood hesitating, then moved to the edge of the creek, where she crouched down to speak to her friend. “Naomi has for once spoken truly. It is not fitting, what you do. Come, let us all walk back to the village together.”

“I care not what Naomi says. Nor you.” Mary swirled her hands about in the water.

Yola frowned. “You are no longer yourself. It is not your friends who are leaving you; it is you who are leaving us.”

Mary rose up and sloshed through the water toward Yola, then heaved herself onto the bank. She shook her hands, drying them, and Yola leapt up and away from the flying droplets. “You are wet as the creek itself,” she said, laughing. “And your tunic blackened with mud! Your mother will be displeased.”

With this Mary did not argue. Her mother would be displeased. She looked down at herself and sighed deeply.

Yola spoke quietly. “What lies in your heart, Mary? Since becoming betrothed, you are changed. You seem to me not joyful but disappointed. Yet Joseph is a good man, handsome, honorable, and hardworking. Devoted to God. And a descendant of the house of David!”

Mary scoffed, “There are many such descendants. There were many harems!”

“Yet we know that the Messiah will come from such a descendant. One of your seven children might be the one we have so long awaited!”

Mary picked a blade of grass and began to peel long strips from it.

“Many are the girls in the village who envy you,” Yola said. “Why, Naomi said that Joseph’s eyes—”

“I care nothing about what Naomi says.” All her friends, even Yola, spoke to her only of Joseph. Mary preferred the way Yola used to be, when they did things other girls wouldn’t do: climbing the limestone rocks that surrounded their village, begging apricots from the merchants at the marketplace, laughing at Naomi’s mother when her back was turned, spying on the newly betrothed who believed themselves alone in the olive orchards. Even trying to eavesdrop, when the men met to argue the Torah.

“Come, Mary. I grow weary waiting for you.”

“I shall not!” Mary looked quickly over at her friend, then apologized.

“I must go without you, then.” Yola took a few steps, then turned to look over her shoulder. “Are you coming?”

Mary stared into her wet lap and peeled more strips from the blade of grass. She would peel until it disappeared before her.

“Mary?” Yola called.

“I wish to be alone for a while!” she called back. “And in any case I must wait until my clothes dry before I return to the village. Go without me.”

Yola began running to catch up with Naomi. Mary watched her until she disappeared, then began undoing her braid. Her hair, too, was soaked. She would let it dry, re-braid it—properly!—and walk back to the village. And then no more would she unloosen her hair and wade in water. Her days of freedom were over. She must now turn her attention to the duties that lay before her, those that came with being promised to a man. She stood, hesitating, then stepped into the water one last time. She moved to the center of the creek and again sat down. The coolness was exhilarating. Her tunic floated around her like an immense flower, and she was its center.

A man’s voice startled her. And then from behind the bushes appeared the traveling teacher she had last seen in Sepphoris. What was he doing here? Surely no one in Nazareth had offered him gifts for his teaching! He lifted his chin at her, then spoke softly in a language she could not understand—Greek, she thought. She shook her head:
I do not understand you.
She pushed awkwardly at the skirt of her tunic floating about her, trying to make it stay down.

The man laughed, a harsh sound, and then, as Mary watched in horror, he stepped out of his sandals and removed his girdle. She rose quickly, intending to run, then immediately sat back down, for her tunic clung to her most immodestly.

“Please cover your eyes until I have left this place.” She doubted the man would oblige her, but she knew of nothing else to do.

He made a face at the sound of her Aramaic. Mary remembered Joseph telling her that Nazarenes were looked down upon almost everywhere for their cruder dialect, for their simple, uncultured ways, for their preferred isolation and their devotion to tradition. She felt a strong urge to defend her town, and an equally strong, shameful one, to say that she had been born in Sepphoris.

The man stood smirking, his hands on his hips, then stepped into the creek. Slowly, he began moving toward her. Mary rose, the water making a sucking sound, and moved as quickly as she could toward the opposite bank. How far away were her friends? If she called for them, could they hear her? Even as she asked herself this question, Mary knew the answer. She had spent too long feeling sorry for herself, regretting the loss of freedom that came with her betrothal to Joseph, whom she now wanted in the deep and primal way she used to want her mother on nights she burned with fever.

Trying to climb up the slippery rocks, Mary fell. She slid on her stomach back into the water, and her tunic rose high above her waist. She stood quickly, deeply embarrassed, and looked back at the man. He was not yet upon her, but he had moved closer. Now he was sitting, his arms swirling the water lazily about him, his own tunic risen high about him. He laughed and mockingly showed her his upturned hands.

Mary stood still for a long moment, calculating the distance between them, then scrambled up the bank and ran screaming for Yola and Naomi, for Joseph. She screamed over and over, until it seemed her throat might bleed.

She ran until she could run no more, her wet clothes dragging on her. The man had not followed her—she had looked several times over her shoulder. She stood panting, her heart racing. This is what came of her foolish desire for something beyond what Joseph had offered her. Her sin was her pride, and her sin was now compounded. To have had a man see her so! To have left herself open to being compromised; indeed to have invited such danger! Often she had heard of shepherd girls who had been attacked by Roman soldiers who took advantage of their isolation. She wanted only to go home, yet she knew that when she arrived there, her mother’s anger would descend rightfully upon her.

She collapsed into the grass and began to weep. What was wrong with her? Why could she not be happy about her upcoming marriage to a man she deeply cared for and admired, who would be a good father and provider? What did she
want
so? On and on she wept, her hands over her face, her back bowed. She knew not what she wanted, she had alienated her friends, she had experienced an event most fearful, and now she would displease her mother, whom she loved so well.

Then, mercifully, miraculously, it began to rain. Mary felt the drops first on her back, then on her head.
Rain!
Now she could explain her wet clothes and the lateness of her arrival to her mother. She would say that she had stopped to seek shelter but then decided to run home, losing her head cover in the process. And run home she must; surely by now Anne was greatly worried. Mary rose to her knees and in so doing spotted a patch of sage growing nearby. She would eat of it, for she knew it had properties to clear the head. She must only be cautious not to eat too much, for then it was said to cause a rare sort of delusion.

When she arrived in the village, the rain had stopped and the sun was out and beginning its descent; Mary had been gone for many hours. Anne first berated Mary, then embraced her and sent her immediately to lie down—she was still wet and shivering, and Anne feared illness. Mary was grateful for this; it would mean she would not have to speak to her mother when she was feeling so peculiar. She walked on feet that felt not quite her own toward her pallet.

Anne busied herself near the oven, and Mary lay still, comforted by the rich, golden light that had begun to stream into the house through the windows high up on the walls, by the rhythmic sounds of food preparation. Why had she not seen the redemption and beauty in such tasks before now? She would devote herself to keeping a home and caring for children. And she would honor Joseph, who cared for her so well. Never again would she make herself vulnerable to an experience such as the one she had just had. Mary closed her eyes and held back more tears, though these were tears of a different kind.

And then she heard a low voice, saying, “Hail, Mary. The Lord is with you; you are blessed among women.” She sat up and clutched the top of her tunic. She wanted to call out to her mother, who had moved to the courtyard, but found she could make no sound. Before her was a towering presence—a man? An
angel
? From behind him came an illumination so intense Mary could not look directly at him. In addition to a terror that caused her to tremble and fight for her breath was a rapturous wonder, a great joy unlike anything she had ever experienced. She felt awakened from a deep sleep, profoundly known. And she felt eerily suspended, yet anchored, in a place she had longed for since birth. She stared out unblinkingly toward the presence, rapt. All the world seemed to have stilled to accommodate this moment.