I took a break from my first story just after I started rewriting it. For the fourth time. I swear, I could put a whole novel together from just the endless revisions. But this story, tentatively called Three Days to Beit Lehem, is completely different. I had a weird dream a few weeks ago — must have been the AP exams that did it, that delivered that final death-kick to my sanity-starved brain. All I really remember from it like this:
It was a nice name, no doubt, but who in their right mind would name the son of God Warren?
This, thankfully, took a more serious track. I found myself a Hebrew font (hooray!), and got to work looking up names, places, dates, and telling myself that I’ll make my best effort to read the New Testament to get even a little more religious background so I can bring some humanity into the stories. Because, frankly, they’re a bit one-sided, aren’t they? Being a non-Christian, this is already difficult enough. At least I haven’t written whales into the story, but what more could you expect from someone whose favorite smells include melted butter, Mazda, and garage?
Alef
She named the child three months before it tranquilly, unnaturally, made its first soggy appearance in the world. Yosef had argued for weeks before the birth that surely the child’s name should be Achim, or Eliakim, or Heli, the name of his father. But Miryam was adamant.
“I had a revelation!” she shouted. She had become quite tempestuous in this late stage of her pregnancy, and in the hurried move to Beit Lehem, at last refused to listen to Yosef’s pleadings at all. “The child’s father has chosen a name.”
“But Yeshua is such an uncommon name!” he protested, bringing his two mules to the front of the house where Miryam sat in the shade. He had had the same dream, but he did not tell his wife. She liked it better that way, where she alone was the chosen one. It was an enormous weight for such a young girl, but she bore it regally, a living golden girdle around her waist.
Miryam laughed at him, “And who would name the son of Yahweh Heli?”
So that was how it would be with her. For nine long months, Yosef struggled to make room for his — no, his — child, avoiding the curious glances of those in the open markets and alleys who longed for him to explain how the biologically-impossible had blossomed, so incredibly, in Miryam, his young bride. Left to Miryam’s cheerful banter about her child being the very son of God, the townspeople looked upon him as an outsider, a tangent point to Miryam’s family on heaven and earth. When the time of the census arrived, just as Miryam was coming to term, Yosef lamented the poor timing and rejoiced the event all in the same moment. It would do precious good for both Miryam and himself to leave crowded Hagalil behind them for a few days, to let the rumors run dry. And to return with a son — the son of Yahweh himself! Yosef, though his limbs were sore and his hair was gray, would show the people of Hagalil that he would be the best of fathers to this child. He had heard, many times, of the Roman pontifices, with their slaughters and their intolerance. No, his son, Yosef’s son, would be a man for the ages.