What if Jesus had a wife and she was a feminist writer?
(He calls her Little Thunder.")
Chapter One
I am Ana.
I was the wife of Jesus ben Joseph of Nazareth.
I called him Beloved and he, laughing, called me Little Thunder.
I don’t doubt he heard something.
What he heard was my life begging to be born.
She had forbidden us to go to the roof together, afraid Yaltha would fill my head with audacities.
Unlike my mother, unlike every woman I knew, my aunt was educated.
Her mind was an immense feral country that spilled its borders.
She had come to us from Alexandria four months ago for reasons of which no one would speak.
My father didn’t embrace her, nor did my mother.
They gave her a servant’s room that opened onto the upper courtyard, and they ignored my interrogations.
Yaltha, too, avoided my questions.
Your father made me swear not to speak of my past.
He would rather you think I dropped from the sky in the manner of bird shit."
Mother said Yaltha had an impudent mouth.
For once, we were in agreement.
My aunt’s mouth was a wellspring of thrilling and unpredictable utterances.
It was what I most loved about her.
Tonight was not the first time we’d sneaked to the roof after dark to escape prying ears.
If Jacob’s ladder reached all the way to heaven, so, too, did ours.
Her skin lay in pleats on her cheeks and her right eye drooped as if wilted.
Despite that, she moved nimbly up the rungs, a graceful climbing spider.
We settled on grass mats, facing each other.
The moon sat like a small fire on the hills.
The sky, cloudless, black, full of embers.
The smell of pita and smoke from cook fires drifted over the city.
My aunt and I had stood there gazing down at all that glory, neither of us speaking.
She reached into the chest and pulled out parchments and scrolls.
Not long before she arrived, I’d begun writing down the stories of the matriarchs in the Scriptures.
David, Saul, Solomon Moses, Moses, Moses.
When I was finally able to read the Scriptures for myself, I discovered (behold!)
To be ignored, to be forgotten, this was the worst sadness of all.
I swore an oath to set down their accomplishments and praise their flourishings, no matter how small.
I would be a chronicler of lost stories.
It was exactly the kind of boldness Mother despised.
Tensed, almost breathless, I watched my aunt pore over my efforts.
It’s as I thought, she said, her face candescent.
You’ve been greatly blessed by God.
Until that moment I’d thought I was merely peculiar a disturbance of nature.
Only after I taught myself Hebrew and cajoled and pleaded did he allow me to read the Torah.
My aspirations embarrassed him.
When he couldn’t subdue them, he made light of them.
He liked to say the only boy in the family was a girl.
A child as awkward as I required an explanation.
I’d arrived in the world during a savage winter rain.
My parents stories found their way into the flesh of my flesh and the bone of my bone.
On Ana, a girl with turbulent black curls and eyes the color of rain clouds.
Voices floated from nearby rooftops.
The wail of a child, a goat bleating.
Finally, Yaltha reached behind her back for the bundle and unwrapped the linen cloth.
She peeled away the layers slowly, her eyes alight, casting quick glances at me.
She lifted up the contents.
A limestone bowl, glowing and round, a perfect full moon.
I brought it with me from Alexandria.
I wish you to have it."
When she placed it in my hands, a quiver entered my body.
I ran my palms over the smooth surface, the wide mouth, the milky whorls in the stone.
“Do you know what an incantation bowl is?
I shook my head.
“In Alexandria, we women pray with them.
We write our most secret prayer inside them.
She placed a finger inside the bowl and moved it in a spiraling line around the sides.
Every day we sing the prayer.
I gazed at it, unable to speak.
A thing so resplendent, so fraught with hidden powers.
The second commandment forbade it.
“You must write your prayer in the bowl, my aunt told me.
But take care what you ask, for you shall surely receive it.”
When I looked up, Yaltha’s eyes were settled on me.
It was the most beautiful, wicked blasphemy I’d ever heard.
I could not sleep that night for the ecstasy of it.
Down the stone steps.
Through the portico of the reception hall.
I descended, feeling my way along the stair wall.
For several months now I’d been burying my rags in the herb garden.
To write down a prayer this was a grievous and holy thing.
Did not a blessing carved on a talisman safeguard a newborn and a curse inscription protect a tomb?
I wished to be laid bare.
I wished nothing between me and the water.
Then I stepped into the mikvah.
I wriggled beneath the water like a fish and came up gasping.
Back in my room, I robed myself in a clean tunic.
I gathered the incantation bowl and my writing implements and lit the oil lamps.
A blurred blue light filled the room.
My heart was a goblet running over.
Copyright (C) 2020 by Sue Monk Kidd Inc. Unlock Access to AARP Members Edition
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