Song of the Magdalene Read Online Free PDF

there. I walked around the cart and faced Abraham, ready to talk sense into him, when I saw the sure light in his eyes. I followed their gaze past the familiar bushes to a tree I hadn’t noticed before, laden with fruit, the first pomegranates of the year. I pushed the cart hurriedly to it, then reached for a ripe one. It fell into my hand with the slightest tap.
    â€œIt’s trying to jump to you, Abraham.” I laughed. “It can’t wait for me to take it home and peel it.”
    â€œHere.” Abraham opened and closed the fingers of his right hand rapidly. “Let me hold it.”
    I put the smooth, thick-skinned ball in his hand and he turned it over and over. It was the perfect size for his fist. He turned it over so many times that it glistened with the oils of his skin. “Do you want me to peel it,” I asked, “or do you intend to wear it away to the flesh?”
    Abraham grinned. “Let’s go home. Fast.”
    When we passed through the door, Hannah was out. I washed my hands and Abraham’s, and we offered our thanks to the Creator. Then I fed him pomegranate, seed by seed. The juices ran down his pointed chin. I patted them away with a soft cloth.
    â€œStop.” Abraham smiled with reddened teeth. “There won’t be any left for you.”
    â€œWe can pick more tomorrow.” I pressed my lips together in satisfaction. “It’s more fun to see how much you enjoy them.”
    â€œThey’re too wonderful to miss. I insist.”
    I loosened a seed and held it ready before my mouth. Plump, translucent. Abraham was right: They were too good to miss.
    Suddenly Abraham jerked out his hand, grabbed my wrist, and pulled me toward him. He took the seed from my hand. “Come to me, Miriam.” One by one, slowly and with great effort, he fed me the rest of the pomegranate.
    His fingers were stained red for days afterward, as were mine.
    Winter passed in whispered words and songs. A new spring came, and between tending the kitchen garden and reading with Abraham, I was almost entirely happy. Almost entirely satisfied. We wandered away the spring and summer and fall, the wheels of the cart growing thin, the soles of my feet growing calloused. We were as one.
    It was well into the next winter before I had my second fit. I was close to twelve at that point and I felt older and wiser. The fit more than a year and a half before seemed so distant that sometimes I wondered if it had been the product of my child’s imagination. The young woman I was now wouldn’t have such flights of fancy.The young woman I was now walked the solid earth and parted the little clouds of breath that preceded her down the street. She knew she was full of life.
    I was with Abraham when it came. Naturally. We had not gone to the valley that day because of the qadim, the cutting dry east wind. It had come overnight and left the air clear as crystal and made the temperature plummet. The frozen bushes glittered; the trees reached toward the earth with icicle fingers.
    Hannah was out when the fit came. At the well, of course, for there was nowhere else she ever went without Abraham other than the house of prayer, unless he was off with me in the valley. We were sitting by the fire. I loved the sort of day that justified a fire. Many of our neighbors had no fireplace inside their homes, but instead contented themselves with sitting around an open-air fire in their cooking lean-to. I was grateful for the luxury of our fireplace. The air smelled nutty, for we were burning the dead branches of pistachio trees.
    I threw a log on, cheerful and unwary. Perhaps as cheerful as I had been that day in the valleywhen I sang of fawns, though never as light-hearted. Still, my body was infused with the intoxicating breath of the fire.
    As the log left my hand, the bright light came; the flame of the fire split into a thousand sparks. The sweet smell of pistachio turned foul. A piercing