Thus I became a laundress for Christ, an irony, as later the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland instituted Magdalen Houses where girls and women were locked away for life in laundries, for as little as flirting, let alone wantonness and adultery.
So much for being a fucking saint.
As a technique for espionage, the position of laundress wasn’t bad, however. People were friendly enough but not overly curious about me. Truth to tell, there were plenty of middle-aged widows who had found a way of life (not to mention a way to live) among the followers of the Way. Being a woman of a certain age is as good as wearing a cloak of invisibility. Even those I had met before did not appear to recognize me as the outspoken redheaded gentile who had been so improbably married to the Master. Nor did I hear anyone make any mention of the Lord ever having had a wife. Peter must have done an excellent job as an editor.
I spent the next day scrubbing linens and tunics in the back courtyard and hanging them out to dry and keeping out of the way of the elders, who included James and Peter. I did steal some surreptitious glances at Peter and had to check the urge to speak to him. No matter what Peter had done—or hadn’t done—I couldn’t help but feel for him and feel in some vague way responsible for him. I wondered if Jesus might feel the same. Leave everything and follow me, he had said to the fishermen. Your nets, your wives, your children, he had not said, but it had come to that. Luckily for me, the elders were much too busy to be bothered about the new laundress, and Abigail had not made good her threat to bring me to their attention.
In my spare time, I combed the streets of Jerusalem, revisited the Temple. I can’t tell you how many times I ran after a boy with a slight build and a head of dark curls, only to discover over and over again that I had not found Sarah. Nor was she among the members of the ecclesia at the communal meals.
After two days of discreet inquiry and fruitless search, I decided to leave Jerusalem and head for Bethany to find out what had become of Mary B. When I sought out Abigail to say goodbye, she seized upon me.
“The delegation has just arrived. Two days early. Fetch basins and towels and help me with the foot washing!”
“I thought Jesus told the apostles to wash each other’s feet,” I objected.
“Hurry!” she said. “There’s no one else to help. They’re all at prayers.”
Thus it was that I found myself kneeling before Paul of Tarsus with his (quite frankly, ugly) feet in my hand.
I am not sure what gave me away. As soon as I saw him among the delegates, I had lowered my head and eyes and pulled my shawl further over my head. Maybe it was my touch he recognized. After all, I had restored him to life with my hands.
“Have you found her?” he leaned over me and spoke in a low voice.
I shook my head, fighting back tears. I refused to let one salty drop fall on his corns. And yet, I had to admit I did not want to let go of his feet. There can be a kind of intimacy in enmity. Of all the people in Jerusalem, only he knew Sarah, only he knew what had happened.
“What about you?” I whispered. “Did you look for her? Has anyone seen her?”
“No.” He lowered his voice even more. “Finish up with my feet. People are beginning to stare.”
I dried them in a hurry and moved on to the next man’s crusty slabs.
“Is that the Healer Woman?” asked the man. “What’s she doing here?”
Startled, I glanced up and recognized the man as a carpet buyer, a Greek who had often stayed in the village. Paul must have converted him, too. “Hush, Titus.” hissed Paul. “We will not speak of it. It doesn’t matter.”
As soon as I finished washing Titus’s feet, I left the room, dumped the basin, and started for the women’s dorm to gather my things. But on my way I met the overburdened Abigail.
“They’ve all come back from the Temple. Not just the household, but all the elders, and apostles, all the baptized Pharisees. They want to eat privately upstairs. I am short servers. I’ll have to ask you to help, Mary.”
Why couldn’t they wait on each other? I wondered irritably. What about: “Anyone who wants to be great among you must be your servant, and anyone who wants to be first among you must be a slave to all. For the Son of Man himself came not to be served but to serve.” My beloved might as well have saved his breath.
“Abigail, wait,” I called after her as she bustled away taking my compliance for granted. “I’m sorry. Um, I don’t think I can. I might…” be recognized, I stopped myself from saying.
But Abigail was no fool; she turned and eyed me sharply.
“You are hiding something,” she stated. “I knew it the moment I laid eyes on you. Well, it won’t do. We have no secrets here. Do you understand? None. Come help me in the kitchen. In Christ Jesus’s name!”
Which everyone knew was code for: and that’s an order.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
OF FOOD AND FORESKINS
ALTHOUGH I DIDN’T APPRECIATE the significance of the moment then, I was about to witness the dawn of Christianity as a distinct religion. It all began with what you might call a food fight to be followed shortly by the penis wars. (If you don’t believe me, read the Bible.) Compared to other charismatic founders of world religions—Buddha and Mohammed come to mind—Jesus was with us for such a short time. He didn’t leave any detailed instructions. No angels acted as his scribe. As far as I can recall, he never wrote anything except a couple of names scratched in the dust with a stick. He left all the details for the apostles to hash out, and they were going at it with a will—or rather many wills.
“It behooves us to discuss,” James was saying, “what we are going to discuss at the meeting in the synagogue.”
I was fetching and carrying platters of food and doing my best not to bump into anything in my heavily cloaked and veiled condition. I did not need to see James to hear the ring of authority in his voice. The brother of the Lord, as people so often referred to him, who had once wanted to cart Jesus back to Nazareth in a straitjacket, had become the preeminent apostle in the Jerusalem ecclesia. James the Just, he was also called, for his wise deliberations and rulings. As a Nazirite, he lived a very pure, ascetic life, drinking no wine, eating only vegetables. Quite a contrast to his brother, the Lord, who had been something of a party animal in his day. On the whole, I had done James a big favor by disappearing and freeing him from the duties of the Levirate.
“There is only one matter to discuss,” spoke up one of the Pharisees, “and that is the Law, which, in the Lord’s own words, he came not to break but to fulfill. Not one jot or tittle of the Law is to be changed.”
“And yet,” countered another Pharisee, “we have a time-honored tradition of debate on interpretation. After all, what do we all do in the Temple Porticoes day after day? We Pharisees have always stood against ‘putting the Torah in a corner.’ The Law of Moses is alive.”
“Brothers in Christ,” Peter’s voice rang out. “As you may know, I was one of the original twelve apostles, and I had the honor of living and traveling in the Lord’s company….”
“As if we could ever forget,” muttered someone.
I was hovering nearby, one foot out the door. I admit I was curious about the controversies in the ecclesia.
“And I will remind you that he did break lesser laws for greater ones, he healed on the Sabbath; he ate with sinners….”
And he married one, Peter did not say.
“And speaking of eating, when I beheld the Risen Lord he expressly bade me to feed his sheep. Peter, do you love me? He asked. Lord, you know I do. Then he said to me: Feed my sheep. He said it three times.”
And you still didn’t get it, I added silently.
“Brethren,” he continued. And as I glanced around, I realized it was true enough there were no sistren. “One day when I was in the Town of Jaffa, I fell into a trance as I was praying and had a vision of something like a big sheet being let down from heaven by its four corners.”
“What’s he going on about?” t
he mutterer spoke again. With my eyes lowered, I couldn’t see him; he sounded elderly, but there was something vaguely familiar about his voice. “Can a sheet be let down by four corners? That’s not how you hang a sheet.”
“No,” someone answered. “He means there’s someone holding each corner, and it’s coming down flat—”
“This sheet,” Peter raised his voice, “came right down beside me. I looked carefully into it and saw four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, reptiles, and birds of heaven. Then I heard a voice that said to me,” he paused for effect, and looked around the room to make sure everyone was listening.
“Not voices again,” said the mutterer, of whom I was growing rather fond.
“And the voice said to me: ‘Now Peter, kill and eat!’”
I have to tell you that there was more than a little choking and gagging. Try some crocodile, he might as well have said. Tastes just like chicken.
“But I answered, ‘Certainly not, Lord—’”
“Why is everyone so sure it’s the Lord?” The mutterer spoke up a bit; he was going to get zapped like Ananias if he wasn’t careful. “Did the voice say it was the Lord?”
“Of course, it was the Lord,” someone hissed. “Hush!”
“‘Lord,’ I said, ‘Nothing profane or unclean has ever crossed my lips!’”
Peter had always been given to absolute statements, like: I will never deny you.
“And then a second time the voice spoke from heaven. ‘What God has made clean, you have no right to call profane.’”
The mutterings from the man next to me were drowned out by general consternation.
“This message was repeated three times before the whole of the sheet was drawn up into heaven again.”
Then Peter continued with a long involved story about being summoned by three men to Caesarea where he went taking six brothers with him. (Have you noticed how many Biblical stories sound like math problems?) An angel came into the narrative, too, but I confess I lost track of it, going in and out of the room, clearing platters, bringing a second course. I gathered that in the end the Holy Spirit descended on a bunch more people (who were not Jewish) and thus Peter concluded, “God has clearly granted to the gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”
Peter finally stopped talking and took a break to eat.
“I want to get one thing straight,” said a Pharisee. “I’m not sure I am following you, Simon Peter. Are you trying to tell us that you went to Caesarea where the Roman prefect has his palace and commands the sea to empty his sewage?” (He made a reference to the famous tidal latrines designed by Paulina’s husband.) “You went to this Roman stronghold and ate treif with these uncircumcised gentiles in their house?”
“I just told you,” said Peter, “the Holy Spirit had come upon them. And the Lord had told me in a vision from heaven that all foods are clean!”
The room erupted and everyone started talking at once.
“What about what he told Moses?”
“Are you saying that Moses got it wrong or that the Eternal One changed his mind?”
“Brothers,” James finally spoke over the din, and everyone subsided. “Let us take turns speaking so that we can all hear one another. Our brother Paul, newly arrived from the ecclesia in Antioch, has asked me if he might offer a few words to the company.”
A few words? Was James kidding—or hinting? I peeked from under my veil and saw Paul of Tarsus get to his feet, the better to dominate a room full of reclining diners, most of whom were taller than him.
“Brothers in Christ, I, Paul, called by God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, greet you in his name. I have traveled afar since I was last in your presence. I have been beaten, imprisoned, stoned and left for dead for bearing witness to salvation through Christ Jesus. Once His persecutor, I now share his wounds. By his grace, even in my brokenness I am made whole.
“Through my sufferings, the Lord vouchsafed to lead me to the Galatians of the Taurus Mountains, a remote people who dwelt in darkness and had never heard the saving word of the God. As my body was restored, the Lord restored their souls, bringing them to baptism and salvation in Christ Jesus.”
He was awfully vague about how his body was restored and who restored it, I noticed, but I wasn’t about to interrupt. Despite his promises, I was terrified that he was going to tell them about Sarah. Why else had he asked James to give him the floor? But as he went on and on (to quote Acts) I realized he was doing nothing more or less than cataloguing his success as a missionary among the pagan gentiles who, unlike the God Fearers, knew and cared nothing about the Law of Moses.
“Imagine my shock when I returned to Antioch to find the brethren quarreling bitterly over what to demand of gentile converts, whether or not they must accept the Law of Moses entire, even though many Jews have rejected Christ Jesus. And I must tell you that it is at the hands of my fellow Jews that I have suffered stoning, even unto death, if the Lord had not intervened to save me.”
Yeah, I thought: By sending a couple of benighted Galatians who took pity on him, just as a Samaritan had once pitied my beloved.
“Brothers, I have heard a lot of debate tonight over what we may eat and whether or not the circumcised can eat with the uncircumcised. And so I tell you, even now you are eating with the uncircumcised. I ask you to greet Titus, a Greek, who has, as Brother Peter so beautifully expressed it, received the repentance that leads to life. Titus, will you stand and testify to your salvation in the name of Christ Jesus.”
Titus stood, trembling, and holding his hands over the part in question.
“Brave man,” said the mutterer, “there are people here who would circumcise him on the spot, if James gave the signal.”
James must have been alert to that possibility, too, for he immediately called again for silence. “Brothers in the Lord, we will hear more of this matter tomorrow, but we will not debate tonight. Titus is our guest in the Lord, and as our Lord and the Law teaches, we are to be kind to the stranger, for we were once strangers in Egypt.”
“But he is no stranger,” Paul pushed his luck, “for he has accepted the baptism of repentance and is one with us in Christ Jesus. Titus, give your testimony.”
Titus looked uncertainly from Paul to James, whom he rightly guessed had more authority, Paul being regarded by the Jerusalem church as a loose cannon.
James made an eloquent if ambiguous gesture.
“I was once a despicable wretch, living in such ignorance and sin, I did not even know it. I was blind, but by the amazing grace of Christ Jesus embodied in his apostle Paul, now I see,” Titus began. I once was lost, but now I am found.….”
He stopped short of bursting into song, but that was the gist. It was a tent revival testimony, and even the Pharisaic contingent got caught up in it.
“Brothers,” Paul jumped in, as soon as Titus had concluded. “I, too, have had a message from Heaven. It is this: at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bend, every tongue confess him King of Glory. What matters to the Lord is a broken and contrite heart, a circumcised heart!”
There was a rare moment of silence as everyone in the room took in Paul’s vision of the church universal—theirs for an intact foreskin.
“Shema Israel, Adonai Elohenu Adonai, Echod,” prayed the old man, and suddenly I remembered waking up after the first night I ever spent in Jerusalem, hearing this prayer sent up as the Nicanor Gates opened with a colossal groan.
“Nicodemus,” I spoke before I could think.
Fortunately talk broke out again before anyone could pay any attention to the old man and the serving woman.
“Who speaks?” asked Nicodemus.
James’s voice rose over the din, as he did his best to calm everyone, reassuring them at some length that both dietary laws and circumcision would be on the agenda. I had to make a quick decision. Run or trust this man—an old friend of Joseph’s, who had pleaded with his fellow members of the Sanhedrin over and over on my beloved’s behalf. Who had welcomed
Joseph and a bevy of gentile whores into his home without turning a hair. Who had tutored Mary B in Torah when no one else would teach her.
“Will you come apart with me and talk?” I whispered in his ear.
“Do you look as beautiful as you smell and sound?” he asked.
“I’m afraid not.”
“Well, never mind. I once could see, but now I’m blind, was found but now I’m lost. Help me up and we’ll pretend you’re leading me to the nice Roman style pisser they have here. Or maybe not just pretend, if you don’t mind. I’ve drunk quite a lot of wine.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CONTRARY MARYS
WHEN NICODEMUS HAD RELIEVED HIMSELF, we went to sit in the back courtyard. We were both glad to be away from all the excitement and tension in the upper room.
“All right then, I think I have guessed who you are,” began Nicodemus. “But if you’d rather not say, I understand.”
“How is your wife, Nicodemus, and your children?” Just because I was in extremis, I did not want to be rude. His wife had showed my friends and me hospitality without question when we were all about as unclean as it is possible to be.
“I am a widower, may Abraham receive Hannah’s poor exasperated soul. I fear I drove my wife into an early grave. My daughters look after me, the Eternal One bless them and give them peace.”
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