Song of the Magdalene by Donna Jo Napoli Page B

of my life.
    Things defined themselves in contradictoryways. Judith was ours now — an addition. Yet I, who had not been lonely before, was now terribly lonely in my womanhood. I shared with Judith and Hannah an aspect of femininity that gave dignity to my day. But I was aware of another aspect of femininity that suffered from lack of satisfaction, satisfaction only one man could provide.
    No unwanted offers of marriage came, though I no longer went about the village in a way unseemly to a proper woman. I didn’t know whether that was because Judith fended off matches, as she had promised to do, or whether no offers were extended. I suspected the latter. Certainly I was as beautiful a woman as any in our village, though I was taller than half the men. I felt the eyes of lust on me even as I walked to the mikvah once a month. But it was only lust, not admiration. My behavior was too strange, even if I didn’t wander, even if I kept silent in the house of prayer these days.
    And I did go to the house of prayer. Judith took me with her often. It seemed to please Father. He always said an approving word when we came home. The passing of time smoothed away theworry that had come to Father’s brow after my singing in the house of prayer that one time. The passing of time dulled the edge of that knife I had known since I realized my love for Abraham. I came to believe that the passing of time saw the death of all things, good and bad. I came to think of passions as vanities, illusive and transitory.
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    Time passed slowly. Toward the end of the bitter winds and cloudy weather the year I was sixteen, Abraham got sick. It was a colder year than most. We had gone out well bundled up, but a storm came and we were soaked by the time we got home. I spread our clothes before the fire and insisted on rubbing Abraham dry myself, though Hannah was mortified at my seeing his nakedness. She forbade me from tending to him, when she had never forbade me from anything before. But I ignored her, just as I ignored Judith.
    I unwrapped Abraham as a woman would unwrap a child. It was easy to think of his body as a child’s, for his limbs were as thin as a boy’s and he had no power to object. Or, at least, he did not exercise that power. I exercised power — power over myself. I would not think of Abraham as aman. I tended to him as a servant does. I did what I had to do. It was my job.
    For I blamed myself for Abraham’s fever. I knew the skies from my many days in the valley. I should have read their message. I should have tasted their moisture. But restlessness seized me. I needed to walk about and suck the clean cold air into my lungs. So I had taken Abraham out without the proper precautions. And now he shivered in my arms and his thin chest radiated unnatural heat.
    The fever lasted three days before it broke. And even after that it kept coming back. Never so severely as at first, but still high, followed by racking chills. Abraham’s skin grew taut, until the ribs of his chest could be counted with the eye. He coughed often, a deep wet cough from the center of his being. His eyes varied from shiny wet to listless dull. Even his hair lost its luster. I stayed at his side and anointed his head and feet with oils I had scented with the sweet calamus.
    I couldn’t tell him the scripture stories, for he knew them all much better than I. So I made upstories to fend off boredom. I took him on boats through crocodile waters. We fed carob pods to hippopotamuses. We threw mimosa flowers into the air and storks caught them and flew away, leaving rainbow streaks in the sky.
    I wouldn’t leave his side.
    The first night Hannah appealed to Father. She kneeled at his feet. “It isn’t right. Please. Tell Miriam she cannot stay by his side through the night.” Her plea shocked us all. Hannah had never dared suggest action to Father before. She had never dared point out