Miriam speaks 1

I was a virgin, once. Weren't we all?

"Hell, Miriam," I thought. "Why not?"

At fourteen, I had experienced nothing of the world. Everyone in the family watched my coming in and my going out. I couldn't go to the privy alone. The Law of Moses was strict for women, and I was barely a woman, though I had bled the curse for two years already. I stayed at home and worked at my spinning and weaving while my brothers went out into the sunlight or felt the rain on their faces whenever they pleased. They thought I didn't hear them when they gave thanks that they were not born female. But I gave thanks to have been given a mind, and I wove unusual patterns in the wool, and changed the words in the old songs to make them a little naughty, and I wished for an orphaned lamb to play with.

It was a fluke that I was by myself that day. I thought it was a daydream, or that strong sunlight had dazzled my eyes. His hair was so golden, unlike any of the men of my people. But some of the Romans were fair. I was bored and tired of waiting for my marriage to be made. I thought the Roman told pretty lies. Still, I admit, the thought of coupling with Yhwh had a certain appeal to me.

Women said that knowing a man would hurt the first time, but there was no pain. There was nothing like the weight of a body or any kind of thrust. I was suffused with ecstacy. I thrashed on my pallet, and wanted more. And more. I lay back and heard the birds outside, smelled the grassy scent of hay, and when the pleasure subsided, I slept.

Channah, our old nurse, found me asleep, cuffed me for a lazy girl. I went to the privy with her behind me, scolding like a monkey, and looked for the blood on my gown. I didn't see any. I told no one about my visitor. I could have said I was forced. But I hated to lie. I didn't want to hear any more of the shame of being a woman. So I kept it to myself. I am a private person. Sometimes I just sit in silence. I keep things in my heart. Inside my heart I am full. The grace that fills me is the knowledge that I hold.

Channah's tongue was relentless, and I passed from every room with her shadow behind me. I begged my mother to let me go to my cousin, Elisheba, whose wisdom I trusted. My curse had not come and I was alarmed. No, I knew what had happened. My parents would forbid me to leave the house if they knew. They would beat me to death, or throw me aside. But I snuck away, around the back of the privy, and so to the hut where Yusef was pounding wooden pegs into a stool. The sound of his mallet made my head hurt.

I called his name softly. He looked up and our eyes met. I should have covered my face but I didn't. I wasn't ashamed. He slowly set down his mallet and walked toward me as if he walked in his sleep. He stopped a few feet from me.

"Why are you here? You shouldn't be out." His voice was soft so clever ears wouldn't hear.

"I have something to tell you." I didn't bow my head. I looked straight into his eyes, and curved my arms around my flat stomach.

Yusef's expression was calm as the smooth surface of the sand. His eyes held some inner certainty. He started to speak but hesitated. He finally spoke, slowly and deliberately. "I can't explain it, but I know about the baby. I know what happened." He looked around at his workshop and back to me. "We'll marry soon. Next week, perhaps. No one needs to know. It will be all right."

I went to my cousin Elisheba the week after we married. Yusef stayed to pack his tools, and would join me soon after. We were going to the north, to some dusty village where Yusef's family lived, where our heads and donkeys and sheep would be counted for the Imperial Census. The journey to Elisheba's took two days. I rode Yusef's donkey, because a married woman doesn't walk unless she is very low and poor, but my back felt as if it were a sackful of rocks grinding together. We traveled so slowly. I was relieved when Elisheba's settlement came into view.

And after the long ride and the anticipation, I wanted to run to her and admire the fullness of her pregnancy and talk about babies. But what did she do? She bowed to me, and held her hand out to touch me, and her eyes carried a knowing look. And what a thing to say --

"Blessed are you among women." Huh. They wanted to stone me at home when they learned I was pregnant already. My father wanted to beat me. Channah wouldn't leave off scolding. But Yusef said I was his wife and no one but he would scold or beat me. And I knew by then that he never would.

"Blessed is the fruit of your womb," she said. But I knew that. The child in every womb is a blessing. And more so hers than mine, because she was so old and even her curse had left her. Elisheba's baby was a miracle. Mine was a dream, or an imagining, or a mystery.

Later, when I held him in my arms, his dark, damp hair stuck to his head and his little mouth rooting for milk, I forgot the mystery of his creation, the long journey to this miserable stable, and the awful pangs of birth. I cradled him close and kissed him, blessed him, named him.

Every mother is holy; every woman mothers G*d. Every woman is G*d. By whatever magic, she creates the child inside her, her belly the cauldron. Her caressing hand invokes the spirit, calls the elements together and works them. From her alone slips the child.

And from that moment, its new lungs unfolding like a butterfly, its first kittenish cry and tiny hands that knead at the breast, she prays for him, until the hour of her death.