Daughter of Cana Page 23

  In the weeks following Abba’s death, thoughts of Jude flooded my mind nearly every hour of the day. I saw his face when I looked at Yagil, I heard his voice through the shutters when people passed on the street, and I looked for him every morning when I went to the well. He had come to Cana before, so it was not unreasonable to think he might come again . . .

  But he did not. I told myself he had forgotten me. When Yagil asked about him, I said Jude was busy working. If he and his brothers were not building the merchant’s fancy bed, they were undoubtedly searching for other work, scrambling to provide for themselves while their eldest brother and mother traveled around Judea.

  At night, I lay in my narrow bed and stared into the darkness, begging Adonai for some assurance of my future. I had always assumed that Thomas and I would live together as brother and sister, but that appeared more unlikely with every passing day. Perhaps that was why I refused to release Yagil, because somehow I knew I would soon be alone.

  The boy gave me a reason to get out of bed every morning. But Yagil, as sweet as he was, did not quench the burning desire that had begun to glow in my heart. At night, when I removed my outer garment and stood before the looking brass, I ran my fingertips over my chest, my belly, and the curve of my hip. Why did HaShem give me a woman’s body, if not to join with a man? If Adonai wanted me to spend my life with Thomas, He could have fashioned two boys in our mother’s womb . . .

  I thought of Etan and Galya, and of her happiness after their first night together. “But didn’t Adonai make Eve for Adam? And didn’t He create a female for every beast on earth?” Galya told me I didn’t know what I was missing, and finally I believed her.

  If Jude did not want me, who else would want a woman far past her prime? I suspected I had become an object of pity to many in Cana. I was the unmarried virgin, the orphan, the woman whose closest kin had deserted her. Strangers looked at Yagil and wondered how I had come to have a child. Had I given birth to him in secret and later summoned the courage to bring him home?

  No matter what the rumors, one thing was clear—at twenty-three, I would be considered undesirable. No father would want me to marry his son when unanswered questions swarmed around me like flies around manure. No older man would want me for a wife when unblemished young virgins were as abundant as figs.

  So unless HaShem worked a miracle and brought Jude back into my life, I would remain alone . . . with only a little boy and a house filled with regrets.

  In Tevet, the ninth month without Thomas, the days grew short and the air chilled, signaling time for the date harvest. Though Abba would not have been happy to know that Thomas remained away from home, he would have been pleased to see that our palms were heavy with fruit.

  I hired five young men to help in the harvest. Since the job usually fell to my brother, I had to show the hired men how to remove the fruit from a date palm.

  The thought of climbing one of the date palms made a sludge of nausea churn in my stomach, but at least I would only have to do it once. If these hired men were any good, they could handle all the harvesting and I would oversee the drying fruit and the marketplace sales.

  To demonstrate, I propped a ladder next to a tall palm, then climbed up with mesh netting and a short saw. I wrapped the first long stalk with the netting, secured it with string, and used the saw to cut the stalk from the tree. “You might be tempted to cut the stalk and let it fall,” I called down to them. “But the fruit will be damaged if you do. You must protect the fruit at all costs.” Then, with the heavy stalk tucked beneath my arm, I climbed down the ladder and set the stalk on a long wooden tray.

  “And that is how it’s done,” I explained, hoping my hired workers were as agile as they were strong. “After we cut the stalks, we remove the dark purple fruit. If a fruit has not darkened, leave it to ripen on the stalk. We’ll harvest it later.”

  We finished the harvest in a month, and I paid the workers from the money I earned selling dates at the marketplace. The fresh fruit would not last long, so most women bought the dates and dried them to last through the winter. I dried a generous amount myself and would sell them throughout the year or use them for baking.

  As the winds began to bite and the stubble in the harvested fields went gray, we heard reports from Jerusalem: Yeshua and his disciples had been at the Temple during Hanukkah, the Feast of Dedication. As usual, Yeshua had stirred up trouble.

  “I was there,” the butcher told us when he reported on his trip from the town square. “Yeshua was with his followers in Solomon’s Colonnade when the authorities swarmed around him. They asked him, ‘How long will you hold us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us outright!’”

  We waited to hear the answer while the butcher smiled, enjoying his role a little too much.

  “Well?” Aunt Dinah asked. “Are you going to tell us or not?”

  The butcher’s brows slanted in annoyance. “The Nazarene said, ‘I told you, but you don’t believe! The works I do in my Father’s name testify concerning me. But you don’t believe, because you are not my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life! They will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all. And no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.’”

  A collective shudder ran through the group, and Dinah gasped. “He was speaking of HaShem?”

  The butcher lowered his chin in a grim nod. “And again, the leaders picked up stones to kill him. But Yeshua said, ‘I’ve shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these are you going to stone me?’”

  “How did they answer?” a man asked. “How could they think of stoning the man who has healed so many?”

  The butcher held up his hand. “They weren’t stoning him for a good work, but for blasphemy. They said, ‘Though you are a man, you make yourself God!’”

  “That’s true,” another man said, crossing his arms. “That’s what he meant.”

  “The Nazarene went on,” the butcher continued, “and said, ‘If I don’t do the works of my Father, don’t believe me! But if I do, even if you don’t trust me, trust the deeds. Then you may come to know and continue to understand that the Father is in me, and I am in the Father.’”

  Silence sifted down like falling leaves, until I found my tongue again. “What happened next?” I asked. “What happened to his disciples?”

  The butcher, who knew Thomas, looked at me with a sad smile. “Yeshua ben Joseph walked away, and they did not stop him. As to his disciples”—he shrugged—“they have a talent for disappearing into the crowd. I looked around for them, and they had all vanished.”

  “Good,” I whispered in Aunt Dinah’s ear. Though Thomas might insist on traveling with a man who constantly attracted trouble, at least he had learned how to escape.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Tasmin

  The year passed, a stream of months that blended into a continuous blur with only the festivals to mark them. As the second Passover without Thomas approached, I struggled with nostalgic memories of the previous Passover, which I’d spent with Jude in Ephraim, but then a message from Nazareth brought considerable comfort.

  We would like you and Yagil to join our family for Pesach, Jude wrote. We will be spending the pilgrimage festivals at home this year, for Yeshua is certain to stir up trouble in the Holy City.

  That invitation opened the door for other visits, as I became better acquainted with Jude’s brothers as well as his sisters and their families. Nothing was said about marriage—at least not in my presence—yet I sensed they were all waiting for Yeshua to return to his right mind. “Next year,” Damaris had said during the Passover meal, “we will go to Jerusalem again. Surely by then Ima and Yeshua will be with us.”

  I hoped she was right. I felt . . . I think we all felt that our lives had been temporarily suspended while we waited for Yeshua to decide what he would do with his follow
ers. Was he planning to mount an offensive against Rome, or would he quietly retreat to Galilee? I know his siblings felt pressure from those who were critical of Yeshua.

  “Last week,” Pheodora remarked one night at dinner, “I was minding my own business at the market when a man came over and asked me why my brother hated the Temple. I said my brother did not hate the Temple, and the man replied by saying the news was all over Jerusalem—Yeshua proclaimed that the Temple would be torn down, not leaving even one stone atop another.”

  James’s mouth took on an unpleasant twist. “Surely the man heard a false rumor.”

  Pheodora shook her head. “He insisted it was true. I have been afraid to go to the market ever since. Everyone in Nazareth already hates us, but now they will hate us more.”

  “You should come to Cana,” I ventured, offering a shy smile. “Most people in Cana are not sure what to make of Yeshua, but they do not hate him.”

  “This is our home,” Jude said. “For better or worse, Nazareth is the best place for us. For now, at least.”

  I lowered my head as a blush burned my cheek. I know he meant nothing by it, but Jude had just rejected my offer in a way that felt like he was rejecting me. I told myself I was being overly sensitive. I was imagining things, allowing my head to fill with presumptions that ought not to be there.

  But when I looked up again, I caught Damaris’s gaze—and saw pity in her eyes. Realizing that she had witnessed and understood my disappointment, I stood and hastily excused myself.

  “Where are you going?” Jude asked, surprise on his face. “You and Yagil have barely just arrived—”

  “We must go home,” I said, turning away so he would not see the tears brimming in my eyes. I would have said more, but I could not trust my voice.

  “I will see you to the door.” Damaris rose from her seat. She helped me find the bag with Yagil’s toys, then walked us down the stairs to the street. “Do not be upset,” she said, folding her arms as she surveyed the nearly empty road. “Sometimes men can be as thickheaded as planks.”

  I swallowed a sob and nodded. Her smile gentled as she squeezed my arm. “I will have a word with my brother.”

  “No, please. I don’t want him to feel pressured—”

  “Leave it to me, Tasmin. I know men, and I know my brothers especially well. Jude will never know we had this conversation.”

  That night, as I tucked Yagil into his bed, I could not stop thinking about Yeshua and his family. James and the others could not imagine their brother as a prophet because they were too familiar with him. But Jude and I had been in the crowd on the hillside. We had seen him work miracles, and we had heard firsthand testimony from people who had been healed by Yeshua’s command.

  I went to my room, crawled into my bed, and closed my eyes. Memories played in my head: Yeshua by the sea of Galilee, touching Yagil’s mouth and healing him; Yeshua smiling at Rahel after the demons left her little body; the joyous mother and her resurrected son outside Nain.

  At the wedding in Cana, I had been convinced Yeshua performed some kind of elaborate trick, but I could not deny what I saw when he touched Yagil. I waited for the boy’s healing to prove false or temporary. Instead, the boy remained strong, healthy, and showed no sign of relapse. His tongue, which I checked every night before putting him to bed, remained whole. His teeth continued to hold to their proper place.

  I remembered what Yeshua said at the Temple at the Feast of Dedication: “If I don’t do the works of my Father, don’t believe me! But if I do, even if you don’t trust me, trust the deeds.”

  One of his deeds lived in my house, and I could no longer doubt Yeshua’s power.

  Memories of our journey to find Yeshua crowded my head, pushing and jostling and competing for space. Who could heal Yagil but a prophet? Who else could cast a demon out of Ziv’s granddaughter and restore a lame man’s legs? Who else could raise a widow’s dead son from his coffin?

  And what did the Torah say? I will raise up a prophet like you for them from among their brothers. I will put My words in his mouth, and he will speak to them all that I command him. Now whoever does not listen to My words that this prophet speaks in My Name, I Myself will call him to account . . . When a prophet speaks in Adonai’s Name and the word does not happen or come true, that is a word that Adonai has not spoken . . .

  Yeshua spoke in Adonai’s name, and although he had said things that had not yet come true, he had spoken other things that did come to pass. He had told fishermen to let down their nets, and when they brought them up, fish spilled from the edges. He had told dead children to rise and lame men to walk. If that was not the mark of a true prophet, what was?

  Those thoughts brought others in their wake. In the beginning, did I doubt Yeshua because I resented him for taking Thomas away? If Thomas had not gone with Yeshua, would I have been so skeptical for so long? Probably not.

  So yes, I could admit that Yeshua was a prophet. But I could not believe his claim to be ben-Elohim, the son of God.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Jude

  James, Simeon, and Joses joined me in washing up. Afterward we put on clean tunics and walked to Damaris’s house for Shabbat dinner.

  “What is the occasion?” Joses asked as we strode up the hill to her husband’s fine house. “I can’t remember the last time she invited us.”

  I shrugged. “Who can know what is on a woman’s mind? All I know is she said we should all come.”

  “She has something on her mind,” James said, a dark note in his voice. “She isn’t the nostalgic type.”

  “Then I guess we will soon know what it is,” I answered. We climbed the steps to her front door and waited until she opened it, her face flushed with exertion. “You came!”

  Joses grinned at her. “When have we ever turned down a good dinner?”

  “Come in,” Damaris said, pushing the door open. “Girls, make room for your uncles.”

  I smiled as Damaris’s five daughters—six, counting the baby on the floor—lined up to greet us. Amarisa, Bettina, Jemina, Jerusha, Lilah, and Zarah looked just like their mother and seemed to have inherited her calm disposition.

  James, Simeon, Joses, and I went down the line, kissing each girl on the top of her head. Then the eldest, Amarisa, took James by the hand and drew him into the common room, where she showed him a flower chain she had made.

  “Jude, I would speak with you a moment.”

  I turned to Damaris, hearing a note of authority in her voice. “Have I done something wrong?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Nothing every other man hasn’t done at one time or another.”

  Confused, I followed her to the cooking area at the back of the house. “I don’t understand.”

  She turned and propped one hand on her hip. “You need to stop putting off what needs to be done. Can’t you see she’s suffering?”

  I turned toward the girls gathered around my brothers. “Who? Is one of the girls—?”

  “Not them. You have been visiting Tasmin for, what, a year now? She has been visiting us. You play with the child, you escort her to Cana and come back with a smile on your face—you love her.”

  I snatched a sharp breath, stunned by her declaration. “What?”

  “You are not some young boy who needs to be betrothed before love happens. You are a man, and you love Tasmin. So get the rabbi and declare your intention to marry the woman. You are not being fair to her. You act as if you are betrothed, yet you are not. Everyone in Cana must wonder what you are up to, so do the right thing and make the betrothal public. If you care for her at all—and I know you do—you must do the honorable thing and marry her. The sooner, the better.”

  For a moment I could only blink in astonished silence, then I shook my head. “How can I ask Tasmin to marry me when Yeshua is wandering around the country like a revolutionary? His life—even our lives—are uncertain. What if the Romans sweep through Galilee and arrest him and his followers? What if they arrest us?”
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  Damaris sputtered. “Why would they arrest us? We do not support him.”

  “When have the Romans ever weighed the fine details of a situation? All they need is the word of two witnesses—even false witnesses—and we could be put to death. Especially if people hear what Yeshua said when James, Simeon, Joses, and I last went to visit him.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “What did he say?”

  I blew out a breath. I had not mentioned our visit to either of my sisters because we were unable to speak to Yeshua. But still, word of his response reached us.

  “We found Ima with the women,” I said. “She is well, and she tried to take us to Yeshua, but we could not reach him due to the crowds. One of the disciples managed to get through and told him we were standing outside the house, waiting to see him. Apparently he had been talking about fertile soils and how those who hear the word of God bear fruit. And when he heard we were outside, he said, “‘My mother and my brothers are those who are hearing the word of God and doing it.’”

  Damaris smiled. “That’s not what I expected him to say.”

  “Nor I,” I admitted. “At first, I was pleased he hadn’t turned against us because we haven’t been supportive, but then I realized his statement would be enough to make people think we are complicit in his plans.”

  “What plans?”

  I shrugged. “Who knows? He talks about the kingdom of God, but he has not raised an army or trained soldiers. I don’t know what he is planning, but I have not forgotten that would-be messiahs tend to die in the midst of their uprisings. So do those who follow them.”