Song of the Magdalene Read online

  FOR MY SISTER MARIE, WITH LOVE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I thank Dorcas Allen, Shannon Allen, Rebecca Alpert, Leila Berner, David Bookspan, Brenda Bowen, Wendy Cholbi, Janet Sternfeld Davis, Stuart Davis, Nathaniel Deutsch, Amy Eerdmans, Maria Feldman, Barry Furrow, Elena Furrow, Thad Guyer, Lindgren Lammers, Joanna Lehmann, A.-J. Levine, David McKay, Barry Miller, Lucia Monfried, Brenda Nixon, Shelley Nixon, Joel Perwin, Miriam Peskowitz, Ramneek Pooni, Emmie Quotah, Emily Rando, Bill Reynolds, Jennifer Rosenblum, Ellen Ross, Sandy Sborofsky, Bob Schachner, Judith Schachner, Hadass Sheffer, David Sobel, Martin Srajek, Sarah Stockwell, Chuck Tilly, and Patricia Whitman, as well as Ms. Purnell’s first period English class at Strath Haven High School in 1995-96. All of them did their best to keep me from errors of physiology, history, culture, religion, geography, and heart, and none of them is to be held responsible for the errors that remain.

  I also thank my mother, Helen Napoli, who encouraged me to complete this story, and Linda Alter, whose Leeway Foundation gave me a grant at exactly the right moment to allow me to act on that encouragement.

  Palestine of the first century is a place and time over which scholars disagree vehemently. Inevitably, I found myself often having to make choices over controversial issues. In those instances I let the story be my guide. For this is fiction and my goal is simply to tell the story.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The first fit came out of the blue, out of the blue, blue sky.

  Hannah was on our flat roof, hanging out the wash. I rejoiced in its colors, just as my mother used to. When I had my own house, I’d fill it with color. I’d even have purple. Hannah allowed no purple. Purple was the sign of power and Hannah was quick to quote her brother Daniel, the scholar, who eschewed marks of vanity. Daniel used to live nearby, before he went away to Alexandria. He came daily to teach Hannah’s son Abraham. He had much to say on vanity. I didn’t care to hear about vanity. I secretly longed for a wide cloth belt, highly decorated with purple embroidery. In the shape of animals. Maybe birds. Birds with gaudy plumage, flying free. “I’m going, Hannah,” I said, breathless at the thought of flying free myself.

  Hannah looked at me quickly. “Where?”

  Though Hannah was but a servant, I owed her an account of my whereabouts. “The valley.” I looked down now at my feet that wanted to dance in the grasses. Dance and dance till I dropped from exhaustion. If I hadn’t loved Hannah, I would have left without hesitation. “Hannah, I have to.”

  Hannah clicked her tongue in sympathy. She picked up the laundry basket and looked at me. “Miriam, there are chores still.”

  “I’ve worked side by side with you since dawn. The morning is almost gone.” My voice came high with urgency. If I didn’t go, I’d burst from within. The open beckoned me.

  “The morning is barely begun.” Hannah’s tone stayed flat, but her face held no hope that I would listen. She sighed. “Be alert.”

  I knew she spoke from fear. I did not truly believe in the danger that tightened Hannah’s face. The danger was from the tongues of the villagers. If they told Father I was out alone, if he learned that Hannah kept my new wanderings secret from him, he might forget his charity toward her. He might send Hannah away. Then who would provide for her and her crippled son Abraham? I knew this was Hannah’s fear. I could not believe it of Father. Still, I would use extreme caution. I would let no one guess. I felt like a liar.

  I stopped at Mother’s grave and kissed the earth. Then I took the only road eastward, the road that passed by the well. The valley lay just beyond.

  The well was busy that morning, like every morning. I warmed to the cadences of the women’s voices as they filled their long-necked jars. The children played noisily, straying into the tall grasses. On the large rocks off toward the village two young men sat. I knew they discussed Deborah. Deborah was twelve, and those two years between her and me set us a world apart — for Deborah was ready for betrothal. Today I could see her name suited her — “Deborah” meant “honey bee” and today she was the queen of bees.

  I thought of the saying of our people: You should be like your name. What did “Miriam” mean? How did I get my name? I was not a bitter blow to my parents, so they surely had not built my name around the word mrr. No, I was wished for: maram. I was loved, like the Egyptian word mry. Would I ever be fat — mr? I laughed. Someday I’d be fat with child. Fat like Mother was in the last months of her life. Maybe my name foretold the future. Maybe I’d have child after child after child.

  I looked at the women as I walked by. They talked continuously and rapidly. I could make out snatches.

  “When Simon the tax collector comes knocking, we will fill his ears, not his moneybags.”

  “As will we. He’s collected more than enough coins already this year. Angry words are his due.”

  “Herod Antipas builds a city of disgrace. No proper Jew will live there.”

  “So our money, our work, it all goes for the Romans who will become the new Tiberians.”

  The loudest voices belonged to Naomi, wife of the fisherman Ezekiel, and Shiphrah, wife of the carpenter Jacob. I watched their arms wave, the sun glinting off gold bracelets. Neither woman knew poverty. Neither would suffer from the taxes the way most of the other women would. Yet they lamented as angrily as any. And they were deferred to, out of respect for their husbands.

  I sat near a bush and leaned back on my elbows. There was no point in straining to hear. The story was the same, day after day. The whole of Galilee suffered under the collection of the taxes for building a new palace for Herod Antipas. The women of Magdala couldn’t stop chattering about it.

  Oh, I did know it wasn’t simply chatter: Taxes were important. Still, on this lovely day, the talk of taxes seemed distant.

  I looked across the women. Judith wasn’t here yet. If Judith had been here, her eyes would have sought me. She’d have made a point of waving and watching over me. And before she left, she would have come close and murmured endearments I despised. I had often heard the women talking about her; I knew Judith wanted to marry Father. The knowledge made my insides quiver.

  Father could take a wife, or even wives, if he wanted. Few men had more than one wife, but Father was rich enough to afford more than one, and handsome enough to have his offer accepted. Yet, after Mother died, he lived with only me for a year. Then Hannah and her son Abraham moved in. Hannah had worked for us all my life, but her living with us was new and welcome, despite the villagers’ whispers. People were curious about us . . . the odd family headed by a man who slept alone, the family that harbored a cripple, even though cripples were inhabited by demons.

  But no one looked at me with curiosity now. Not even my best friend Sarah paid me any heed. Everyone was busy in another world — the women talking together, the children running about — a world I now exited from and observed as a stranger. For a moment I felt small. Like the baby in Salome’s arms over there. Almost invisible.

  I moved on my bottom behind the bush. Then I stood up and walked quickly. I stayed close to the bushes and barely breathed, though I loved the scent of the undergrowth — the myrtle and broom, the acanthus and wormwood. Now was not the time to indulge in their heady fragrances. I knew shallow breaths moved one to the edge of life. If I could skim along the edge of life, perhaps I could slip away unnoticed. When I couldn’t hear the children anymore, I took off my sandals, planted them by a lentisk bush, and ran.

  I ran faster and faster, to the very heart of the wood. Only then did I finally stop and listen to the rush of the wind in the highest treetops, the rush of the blood in my veins.

  When I emerged into a field, I lay on my back, my shift hiked up over my knees. Now the sun would work its warming magic. T
he sky was cloudless. No breezes. I wondered if the fishing boats to the east, on the Sea of Galilee, were as still as my heart.

  On my back all I saw was the sky. The morning sky, without stars or moon, without clouds, has only one point of reference — the sun. But from where I lay, with the sun burning over the sea, the ball of fire was out of my line of vision. All was blue.

  I sang a song to a tune I had made up. I didn’t know any real tunes. Father sang often, but not at home. He sang in the house of prayer. Hannah told me about it, for I didn’t go to the house of prayer. I didn’t like the idea of being closed in, listening. I wanted to be outdoors, dancing. But Hannah went daily to pray for Abraham.

  I didn’t pray really — at least not in the sense that men did. The men said prayers three times a day at fixed hours. But the women were free from those commandments. We had other duties. I helped Hannah in keeping Sabbath. I helped in minding the dietary laws. I smiled at the requisite fourth toe, the hind toe, on the fowl we ate. I peeled the sac off the gizzard with care. I picked the scales off fish so painstakingly that never once did I tear the skin and thus ruin the flesh. I knew my most important job was to grow strong and be a good wife and mother someday. A good wife did everything she could to make it possible for her husband to obey Jewish Laws. A good mother did everything she could to teach her sons and daughters the Jewish Laws so they could grow up and be good husbands and wives and, in their turn, good parents.

  Everything was aimed at ensuring that the past of Israel would live in the present and endure into the future. Israel was the people we were part of. Every Jew everywhere belonged to Israel. I belonged to Israel. My future husband belonged to Israel.

  I had no idea whom I would marry. A girl from a family rich like mine would ordinarily have had a marriage arranged years ago. But Mother had turned a deaf ear to parents seeking matches for their sons. Mother believed in love between husband and wife. Father said one of the greatest pleasures of life was its unlikelihoods. Mother was an unlikelihood. She married Father for love.

  I wanted to know more about this kind of love. But Hannah bent over her sewing with small noises of annoyance whenever I asked. And if I persisted, she coughed. Had Hannah loved the father of her son Abraham?

  Mother made Father promise that I could choose my own husband when I came of age. She wanted love for me, as well. I was happy at the thought.

  And now I sang that happiness in my own mixed-up version of a song about fawns. It was from one of our scrolls. I didn’t read, of course. But I’d heard Abraham read it. We kept many scrolls because of him — because he needed something to do all day. And I’d spoken with Father about this fawn song, a song of mysterious love.

  I sang loud and long. My breaths were as deep as the center of the sea. I was fully alive.

  I expected everything good.

  And out of the blue of the sky came a brightness that burst and dazzled. My eyes went dry like desert sand. My song caught in my throat. My mouth opened as if it wanted to swallow all of Israel. I couldn’t close it. I tried, but everything, all of me, was stiff as stone. Stiff and wild. I knew nothing, understood nothing, but fear. That was the last thing I remembered, desperately trying to close my mouth, feeling the dry burn of exposure that will not end, sealed in the fear.

  • • •

  I must have slept. For when I knew again where I was, the sun was high overhead. My lips were hard and cracked. I opened my mouth and the tight crust of saliva on my chin and cheeks pulled at my skin. I was warm, like on the hottest days of summer. I was weary, as though I’d run for hours. I stood up and looked down at my shift, grass-stained but whole. I stared at the cloth as the realization came.

  It was wrong that my clothing should be whole, it was terribly wrong, for I knew my soul had been rent. I had struggled on the ground, locked in a grip I could not break. Had I really had a fit? Oh, I had! I had. Tears streamed down my cheeks. I doubled over in sobs, yielding to the huge, merciful grief that drowned thought.

  But reason gradually returned, inevitable and cruel. I took stock. I knew the source of such fits. Everyone knew. A demon had taken up residence in the shell of my body. Just as a demon lived in Abraham. But this was my own personal demon of fits. In me. Inside me.

  I wiped away my tears and waited to see what would happen next. I waited many hours. The sun moved through the afternoon. My neck strained like a coreopsis turning to the light.

  I looked down at my long toes. If I were to die in the valley now, I would die barefoot, like one of the common children. Would that matter?

  As evening came, I walked back in a daze. My sandals awaited me safely at the lentisk bush. I went home looking no different from how I had always looked.

  The sky was still blue.

  CHAPTER TWO

  As I lay on my bed mat before the next dawn, I touched my ears, my eyes, the tip of my tongue. I traced the creases of my hands. These things that had always told me about the world, did these things serve me still? Would the demon within lie to me about the world I walked through? Would this demon betray me with my own senses?

  I was aware of each rise and fall of my chest. I felt the darkness of our home, springtime damp, like the darkness of a cave.

  I thought of the caves at Qumran, far to the south, on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea. On the first anniversary of Mother’s death Father had gone on a private pilgrimage. He went all the way to Qumran to see a community of Essenes who lived near dry, white caves. When he returned, he talked late into the night with the village men, telling what he had learned, saying how these Qumran people believed that self-denial led to purity.

  That was it: I was impure. Why else would this moment have brought the image of those caves? I had invited the demon of the fit into me with the power of some inner impurity. I was in need of being purged. The thought transfixed me. The happy girl who danced through the house and up the steps to our roof, who wove herself a path in and out of the laundry line, the girl who chattered stories to Abraham on rainy days and who had been Mother’s treasure, that girl was filthy.

  I hugged myself tight and opened my eyes.

  I could not go to Qumran. I was a woman. I would not travel anywhere alone.

  I rose from my bed mat and stood in the dark, patted by the breaths of Father and Hannah and Abraham, all asleep. My stomach growled. I hadn’t eaten since breakfast the day before. The thought of a spring fig, immense and dark, made me swallow hard. Those figs would be ready just days after Passover. Soon now.

  An old fig tree stood near our house. Father pruned it round so that it shaded our home all through the summer and fall. He said fig trees were good for meditation; their thick foliage gave calm. I went outside and sat beneath the tree. Not a wasp buzzed. I opened my mind to whatever would come. An answer would surely come. Before long Hannah called me in to help start the day’s chores.

  After that I no longer expected sudden revelation or damnation. It was as though a heavy cloak had been draped across my shoulders and even a soul as impatient as mine couldn’t but recognize that every step had to be measured. Every thought came wrapped.

  • • •

  For months I went to the valley any time I could. I had decided that it was my deception in going to the valley alone that had invited the demon. That was my impurity. So the valley should have been the last place I’d go. But the valley was the only place I could go. It was the only place I could be sure no one would see me if a fit came again. And I had to make sure no one saw me in a fit. For if they did, I would join the outcasts of society.

  Oh, Father would let me live with him still; I wouldn’t wander the streets with the lame and those who babbled nonsense, my hand open for the alms that every Jew gave freely to the beggars. But the eyes of the villagers would look upon me with pity. Some might even carry a locust’s egg or a fox’s tooth in my presence — a charm to keep my demon from entering them. I refused to suffer such treatment. They would never see me in a fit.

 
My behavior showed a lack of faith, I knew. I should have gone directly to the mikvah and immersed myself completely in the ritual bath. After all, that’s what women did after their monthly blood came. Hannah had told me about it. The blood would flow from me within a few years, making me unclean. While the blood flowed, I would be restricted in what and whom I touched. And soon after it stopped flowing, I would go to the mikvah and come home again pure. But it wasn’t just women after their monthly blood who went to the mikvah — anyone who felt the need of cleansing could go. I had gone once myself, three years before — after Mother’s funeral. If I went there now with my heart open, maybe the Creator would have mercy on me. Maybe the Creator would cleanse me of my demon.

  But if I went to the mikvah, all would know I was unclean. They would wonder. They would ask. And if the Creator did not choose to cleanse me, I would have exposed myself for naught.

  I thought of telling Father. I could ask him to take me to a healer. I was ready to drink the water of Dekarim, extracted from the roots of palm. I was ready to walk to the hot baths at El Hamma on the Sea of Galilee. I was willing, oh so willing. I would even go to an exorcist. Hannah had taken Abraham to an exorcist in Capernaum long ago.

  I approached Father once. “Father, may I speak with you?”

  Father smiled. “Yes, Miriam. Later.”

  I watched as he took off his shoes, washed his hands, and unfolded his tallith — the prayer shawl — carefully. Of course it was prayer time. I knew that. I just hadn’t been thinking, I’d been so enveloped in my own need. I put out my fingertips and touched the feather tassel tips of the tallith. Mother wasn’t clever at embroidery, so Father’s tallith had been bought. But Mother had added these tassels. They were white, like the original tassels. The only difference was that she had counted out the threads herself and knotted them. Each corner had a tassel of eight threads, totaling thirty-two — the number that matched the word for “heart.” When Father prayed, knots of Mother’s love brushed his arms.