The Handmaid and the Carpenter Page 5

  Mary watched all this with a heavy heart. Would that she were so tenderly cared for by her own husband! For she now felt unwell much of the time. Early every morning she went quietly out into the field behind the house and vomited. The herbs she knew about for treating nausea did not work for her now. She did not speak of her illness to her hosts, for she had been brought there to assist them. Instead, she tiptoed back into the house and returned to her pallet. Later, when Zechariah and Elizabeth ate breakfast, Mary joined them, eating as well as she could the foods Elizabeth insisted were necessary for the growing child inside her: Spinach. Figs. Almonds and eggs.

  Elizabeth napped often in the day, and Mary napped, too, sleeping for long hours and dreaming of home. One afternoon, dreaming of sitting beside her mother in the courtyard as they wove with their shuttles, Mary awakened herself weeping. When she opened her eyes, she saw Elizabeth kneeling quietly beside her. She sat up hastily, embarrassed that she had disturbed her cousin’s rest, which she now badly needed—her time was close. She tried to compose herself, but the tears would not stop.

  “It seems we are in for a summer storm,” Elizabeth said, smiling, and her eyes crinkled at the corners. “Have no fear; I mind your tears not at all. It will be a pleasure to attend to you, after you have cared for me so long and so well.”

  “I know not why I weep,” Mary said.

  With great care, Elizabeth lowered herself into a sitting position. “Is it such a surprise that a young wife would miss her husband?”

  Mary wiped at her eyes, shaking her head. “No.”

  “Of course ‘no’!”

  “But Elizabeth, I not only miss him, I am full of regret about dishonoring him! I did not cherish him. I resented our betrothal. I told my friends he was too lean, too stern, too bound by tradition. Often I walked in sadness and terrible confusion. I was not grateful for my good fortune, I did not appreciate enough the happy times I had with him, I felt that I was being robbed of my girlhood, of my youth!” She began to weep again, loudly. “Oh, Elizabeth, what am I to do? I was undeserving of such love!”

  Elizabeth sat quietly for a time. Then she said, “I know well what we must do. First we must call for the slave whips of Herod, that you might more fully punish yourself.”

  “I speak the truth!” Mary said. “And there is more.” She hesitated, then told Elizabeth of what had happened at the creek, how the man had come into the water with her, how only by the miracle given by God was her folly converted to a blessing.

  Now Elizabeth’s voice grew warm and kind. “Ah, Mary. It was not this unfortunate incident that made you with child! Rather it is the miracle the angel spoke of that brought life to your womb. Few are the people who understand and truly accept miracles; let yourself, at least, be one of them!

  “As for Joseph, do you think you are the first to feel this way? Many young women suffer such pangs of doubt! One night, just after I was betrothed to Zechariah, I wept myself unto illness, to think that I would so soon be lost. For that is how I thought of it: in marriage, I would be lost to myself, all my longings and desires subject to the rule of my husband.”

  “Yes,” Mary said.

  “Yet we long to be lost in the love of another human being; this also is true, no? For in this way, we are found.” Elizabeth reached out and gently touched Mary’s cheek. “Such are the ways of life and love. You will come to see how we live so paradoxically. We are happy, yet we are sad. We become enraged by our beloved because he is our beloved. We look forward to something, yet we are full of dread. We long for summer in winter, and winter in summer. What a contrary species are we! Better we should be cattle, at peace in the fields!” She grimaced and Mary laughed.

  “But mostly in this life,” Elizabeth said, “we are continually lifted by the love of God, by the miracles he so freely bestows upon us, and by his nearness to us.”

  Mary fell silent, thinking, then asked, “But how will Joseph ever believe me, that I am a virgin and yet with child?”

  “It is a mountain that has risen in your path, it is true. It would be natural for Joseph to doubt you, even as Zechariah first doubted me. When I told him of the angel appearing to tell me I was with child, he became angry and shouted that I had long been barren. And he reminded me that my years for childbearing were now long past. But then, on the day when he had been chosen to burn incense in the holy place, the angel came to him in the synagogue, telling him that in my womb was a child who would be called John. Yet Zechariah doubted even the angel’s words. He questioned him and asked for a sign! Imagine!”

  Mary cast her eyes downward, remembering her own questioning of the angel who had appeared to her.

  “Yes, my husband, the priest, doubted the truth of the angel’s words! And so the angel punished Zechariah. When he came out to speak to the people who had gathered for prayer, he realized he had been struck dumb. There was his sign! The angel said Zechariah will recover his voice when the child is born and named. It is for this reason that my husband does not speak. He was full of worry that I might reveal to you the circumstances of his condition, for he is shamed by the appalling lack of faith he showed. I trust you will not betray my confidence.”

  Mary shook her head. “Of course I shall not. But how awful! Were you frightened when your husband was struck dumb? Were you terribly sad?”

  Elizabeth hesitated. Then her left shoulder met her ear and she raised an eyebrow. “To tell the truth, it isn’t so bad.”

  They laughed, and then Elizabeth put her hand on Mary’s arm. “You must explain something to Joseph. Say to him, many are the ways that children come unto us, for mysterious are the ways of the Lord. He may not believe, at first, in the circumstances of your condition. But speak to him of how both of you must want the child who is come, for this is a thing deserved by all who sleep in the womb.”

  “Yet I cannot help but wonder if he has now lost the love he had for me, if he will still take me as his wife.”

  Elizabeth shrugged. “Who can guess at what is in another’s heart? The things greatest to us are the things we cannot see. I speak here of honor. Truth. Faith. And the greatest of all, which is love. Yet invisible though it may be, when you look upon Joseph again, you will see immediately if love is there.”

  She grimaced again, then squeezed Mary’s arm hard.

  “Oh!” Mary said. “Is it time?” Her heart rose in her throat.

  Elizabeth nodded. “Help me up.”

  Mary did, then spoke calmly, saying, “I shall help you to your bed, and then fetch the midwife.”

  “Make haste,” Elizabeth said, around an enormous push.

  “ANOTHER BLESSING ON US ALL!” Zechariah shouted. He took a drink of wine from his cup and once more slapped the back of his beleaguered round-bellied friend. From the doorway of the house, Mary watched the small but rowdy group of men standing in the courtyard and celebrating. They had stayed outside as Elizabeth labored, for their place at that time was out of the way of the midwife and her attendants. But once John was born, and Elizabeth and the baby had been bathed and anointed, massaged and celebrated, Zechariah had been allowed in for a look. He’d exchanged some words with Elizabeth, held and admired his son, and then hurried outside to announce to his friends that the baby had come safely into the world. And now was announcing it again and yet again. Mary was beginning to fear for the man who stood beside Zechariah, who’d begun to flinch whenever Zechariah moved. Still, one had to allow dispensation for his behavior: a son was born this night of his wife, Elizabeth. The miracle that had been promised had occurred. And his voice was most robustly returned. “Is not John the very image of myself?” Zechariah bellowed.

  “It is so,” said one of the men. “If you look a way entirely different from what you have thus far revealed!”

  Zechariah stared blearily at him as the other men hooted and laughed. “Your words make no sense, and small wonder. For you are drunk!” Then he cried, “I am a thousand times blessed, for unto me this day is born a son!” He li
fted his face to the night sky and howled at the moon, and his friends howled with him.

  Mary smiled and returned to Elizabeth’s bedside. Her cousin lay sleeping soundly, the baby in her arms, and he was sleeping, too. Mary watched them for a long while, then crept silently to her pallet. There, she lay her hands over the small rise of her stomach, and finally slept herself.

  IN THE MORNING, as Zechariah prepared breakfast, Mary tiptoed to Elizabeth’s pallet, where she lay awake and smiling, the baby in her arms. Mary knelt down to see him. He, too, was awake, satisfied-looking after his session at his mother’s breast.

  “Would you like to hold him?” Elizabeth asked, and Mary nodded shyly, then reached down and took up the baby. He was breathtakingly light. Mary had held babies before, but never one so new as this. Not even a day old! John lay still, and in his eyes was a calm and an acceptance that seemed oddly wise. Mary had never seen such an expression in a baby’s eyes before, but then she supposed that one never looked at babies so carefully as did a woman blessed by her own child growing within. Would her baby’s toes spread so comically? Would his abdomen rise and fall so rapidly with his breathing, so heartbreakingly? Would his tiny fingers pull at his face, would he fall asleep at her breast with such ease? When she laid him out on her lap to inspect him for the first time, would her face radiate happiness with the intensity that Elizabeth’s had? Last night, when Elizabeth, exhausted, had first been given her newborn, his cord still attached, Mary had stood beside her to regard him. John’s head was elongated, his nose flattened, and one eye swollen shut. He was covered with blood and vernix. Mary and Elizabeth agreed wholeheartedly on his great beauty. They spoke to the baby in the high, sweet voices given to women for such things.

  This morning John’s face had already greatly healed, and he truly was beautiful. Looking at him, Mary felt her eyes fill with tears. She handed him carefully back to his mother and then rose, clasping her hands before her. They felt so empty now, her hands, so strangely idle. “I have never seen anything so perfect as this child,” she told Elizabeth.

  Her cousin looked up at her. “Soon you will see something more perfect still.” She spoke sadly then, saying, “I shall miss you, Mary.”

  “And I you.”

  “Your traveling companions will soon come for you.”

  “I am ready.”

  John suddenly kicked out his legs, wrinkled up his face, and began to cry.

  “Kiss me quickly, then, and wait outside, lest we all three cry together,” Elizabeth said.

  Mary leaned down and kissed her cousin’s wrinkled face. “I honor and love you,” she said, and Elizabeth answered, “With me as with you. Safe journey, and I bid you give your mother my love and also my thanks, for the assistance of her beautiful daughter.”

  “It is I who should thank you.”

  John cried louder, and Elizabeth bent to attend to him.

  Mary went to her room for her small bundle of things. She said goodbye to Zechariah, who had packed her a breakfast of flatbread and olives and cheese, and then went outside. The travelers who would journey with her to Nazareth were almost upon her. Mary watched them come.

  Soon she would be back in her parents’ house. She had grown comfortable here; she loved Elizabeth and Zechariah and now the baby, too. Her health had improved considerably: her cheeks were again flushed pink, and her hair had grown even thicker and more lustrous. Her body had filled out to be that of a woman’s; Mary marveled at it as though it were not her own.

  But happy as Mary had been here, she was more than eager to start her journey home. Upon arrival, she would send word that she wanted to meet with Joseph, alone, in the olive orchard. He would know the place—it was where he had first professed out loud his love for her. And upon hearing his words, she had clapped her hands together in delight. May they share such joy again, Mary thought. May they once again regard their lives together as full of promise.

  The traveler at the lead, a stout man with an immense beard, called out to Mary, and she strode forward, her steps light, her heart full of hope.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Nazareth

  JUNE, 4 B.C.

  Joseph

  E SAT WITH HIS BACK AGAINST THE MISSHAPEN trunk of the olive tree. From far away, he saw her coming. He recognized the purposeful stride, the erect carriage, the proud lift of the head. He stood, reached behind to dust himself off, then straightened to the task at hand. He had walked here feeling sure of himself and of his decision, intractable in the words he meant to say. But now she came fully into view, and he found himself weakening. She had grown ripe and luscious, his Mary, who was no longer his. Gone suddenly was the righteous anger he had felt when Mary’s mother had told him of the “angel” who had visited and made such an astonishing announcement. Gone the conviction that this would be a happy day, and that he would be better off without her, that indeed he had been lucky to have her terrible faults revealed before their wedding day.

  His friends had told him she should be stoned as the adulteress that she was, and at first he had angrily agreed. She who questioned him unendingly, who made him feel foolish about beliefs he held, beliefs for which others praised him! She who had brazenly put her hand on his knee long before it was time for such things. He should have known then, he had told himself. On that very day, months ago, he should have divorced her, rather than having to face the humiliation brought by her coming back to their village with child. He had resolved to speak of the few things necessary and then leave. He would tell her that he would not have her stoned, but neither would he take her as his wife—he had prepared the document that released his rights over her. He would tell her of his great disappointment in her—let her for once not interrupt him!—his great disappointment, and his great sense of shame. He would tell her of all he had been made to endure while she so blithely went away to visit her relatives. The only one immediately kind to Joseph—apart from Mary’s parents, and who welcomed their attention now?—had been Naomi. And Joseph had fully intended to tell Mary everything about Naomi. Her pride in the things women should take pride in, her proper disinterest in things not womanly. Her deference to him—not once had she questioned anything he had said. He had imagined, indeed hoped for, pain in Mary’s face when he told her that Naomi was much better suited for the role of his wife, a role Mary obviously cared nothing about. He had decided that at the point when she covered her face in shame and wept, he would turn and walk away.

  But there she was before him, her beauty more breathtaking than ever. She moved closer, and he smelled her sweet scent and saw her smile, and even while he told himself to step back, he moved forward. He caught her in his arms, buried his face in her neck, and began to weep.

  “Joseph,” she said softly. “Joseph. My beloved husband.”

  He pulled away from her angrily, wiped at his face, and felt his hands begin to tremble. At least part of his rage was directed against himself, for his weakness. “Do not call me husband, for such is not your privilege! You have disgraced and humiliated me! You have—”

  “Have you not spoken with my mother?” Mary asked. “Did she not tell you the circumstances of my condition?”

  “Mary. I shall ask you once and once only to hold your tongue. Hold your tongue! And listen to me! Show me at the ending of our union the respect you should have shown at the beginning!”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “Why do you raise your voice against me? Your words do not hurt me more for being so loudly spoken.”

  He stood still, aware of the fact that he was panting. She was so beautiful. She could manipulate a weak man as easily as wet clay. But Joseph was not weak! He was strong! He spoke more quietly, saying, “I shall dispense with the things I deserve most wholeheartedly to say to you. Instead, I will tell you only this: We are divorced. I have prepared the document.”

  She spoke calmly. “Joseph. I am with child.”

  The words pierced him through, and for a moment he could not answer her. Finally, his mouth d
ry, he said, “As I am exceedingly well aware.” He cast his eyes to the little mound of her belly. It looked dear to him, he realized; it moved him, and he looked quickly away. In a voice hard with pain, he said, “You are free to marry another.” He felt hollow saying this; his eyes hung heavy in their sockets.

  “Who would have me now? And Joseph, Joseph, I want no other man! I have come to understand your great worth, as well as the depth of my love for you. In my time away, I—”

  He spoke over her as if he had not heard a word. “You are free to marry another, as am I. And I intend to take Naomi as my betrothed.”

  Mary turned quickly to look in the direction of their village, in the direction of Naomi’s house. Her high forehead, her strong nose, her soft mouth! When she turned back to him, he did not see in her the pain he desired, or even anger. It was only Mary he saw, as he had always known her. Her clear eyes, her direct gaze. But still, that distance—she lived far behind her eyes.

  “Have you love for Naomi?” she asked.

  He opened his mouth to answer, then did not. He started to walk away.

  “Joseph!” she called after him. “Do not turn away from me, who desires only to tell you the truth! Take me not as your wife, if that is your desire, but before you go, let me reveal to you all that is in my heart!”

  He stood immobile. If she wanted to talk, let her come to him.

  When Mary saw that he was waiting—though with his arms crossed over his chest and his face turned away—she moved closer to him. Her voice was low and rich, intimate, achingly familiar. “I know that my mother has told you of the angel’s visit to me. And I know you find it hard to believe or understand. As I assure you I did also! I was terrified by his presence! But oh, Joseph, such rich understanding has come to me, such clarity of purpose, such joy at the change in me that causes you such pain! For I know with certainty that the Holy Spirit came unto me, and—”