The girl is a virgin.
She is the second of two daughters. If her older sister’s gender was the disappointment, hers was the conceding of it, a reluctant surrender.
Her hands are tinged red and constantly dry from the earth’s clay. Her mother works animal fat into her palms every night.
She sings when she carries water back from the well. She likes to give the birds something to listen to. She feeds the stray cats, even though she is not supposed to. In return, she is allowed to pet them; a transactional devotion. She mends their clothing, delicate work for small hands; the fraying hems of her mother’s, the worn patches of her father’s, the ripped seams of her sister’s.
“Crybaby,” her sister taunts her when the needle pricks her and tears well.
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Her sister lives at home with her husband, a playful man with aggression in his eyes. They were married just after the rainy season. It was the most fun the girl ever had.
She drank too much honeyed wine and caught slippery olives in her mouth. Everyone cheered.
She didn’t see her dour sister, the hand wrapped around her wrist the whole evening. She was too busy dancing.
The girl is betrothed to a man with a heavy brow and calloused hands. He is older, her mother’s age. She has met him twice, and both times he kissed her forehead, gently laying claim. Her mother tells her she is lucky, and so the girl is.
She is shelling pistachios when someone arrives; a long ago friend of her father’s, seeking reprieve from his journey across the desert. An unexpected guest fills the air with ceremony.
Her father butchers a cow for his visit. She holds the bucket under the cow, as she has hundreds of times, to catch the blood. Her calf is mature, but the girl can hear him bleating in mourning for his mother; he pushes free of his pen and startles the girl, who knocks the bucket over. The blood spills all over the dirt. The calf licks it. The girl wonders if he knows it came from his mother, if he can smell it.
Her father thwacks her on the head for spilling the blood. They could’ve eaten it instead.
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Her mother recites the prayer over their dinner, richer than normal.
The girl peeks an eye open. The man is staring at her. “Amen,” her father says.
“Amen,” they all repeat.
The traveler sucks the rib bones dry. They drink wine mixed with honey, the girl allowed some too, but tonight it is too sweet; it coats her throat in a way she does not like.
The girl is not surprised when he slips into her room at night. She is the only one who sleeps alone.
He is aggressive, but his eyes are playful, and the girl learns this is far, far worse.
She is a pomegranate impatiently forced open, dripping crimson and staining hands. Plucked seeds, discarded skin.
The traveler is gone in the morning, a wisp carried on by the wind.
The girl is proud of herself. She did not even cry.
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Her mother sees the blood on the sheets in the morning and exclaims, “Your first bleed!”
“You can get married now,” her sister smirks.
The girl nods, playing along, yet her mother is right. It is her first bleed, forced into admission by the traveler; immaculate timing.
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When the girl cannot keep food down, her mother corners her. The girl does not tell her about the holy ghost that slipped into her room, that carried her voice out with him, back on the road. The girl repeats what the traveler whispered in her ear, with his hand over her mouth of milk teeth: This is God’s will.
The girl is indeed lucky and her betrothed kind, as her mother said. He will love the child as his own, although he takes convincing. It’s a miracle, her mother insists. Her mother repeats what the girl told her, the traveler’s words to be repeated forever. This is God’s will.
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Her sister does not say so, but the girl knows she is jealous. She overhears her name at night, and the next morning, her brother-in-law points at the newfound slope of her stomach. God has favored her, she hears. Perhaps you married the wrong sister, her sister’s voice. Certainly, the less fertile one.
She visits her cousin, also pregnant, a miracle of a different origin; she had thought herself barren.
“Who am I, that the mother of the Lord should visit me?” her cousin jokes. The girl smiles but is not amused; her mother has spread word of her condition. “Oh!” her cousin exclaims and holds her belly. “He’s strong!”
“You think it’s a boy?” the girl asks.
“I’m sure of it.
“Do you hope it’s a boy or a girl?” her cousin whispers.
Neither.
“Boy.”
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It has gone on long enough. The girl tries to repent, to purge herself of the sin of lying. But every time she tries, her mother refuses to bear witness.
“Mother,” the girl says. “Listen to me.” But she looks in her mother’s eyes, and her grasp limps. Her mother knows, has always known.
“This is God’s will,” her mother says desperately. The girl knows then—if she had never offered the lie, her mother would’ve.
The girl has only ever been a vessel for God’s will, the throne on which he sat, never the manifestation of it.
“Say your prayers,” her mother tells her, before leaving the girl to work animal fat into her own palms.
She is an obedient daughter. She prays to the God the man invoked; she asks him to protect her mother and father and sister and even her sister’s husband. She prays for the well-being of all their animals.
She prays she will be able to survive the birth. She prays she will be able to love the begotten child.
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The calf is butchered for her wedding. He tastes exactly like his mother had.
Her wrist is now the one held, though the grip is loose.
Nearly everyone drinks too much honeyed wine. Nobody tosses olives in the air.
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The girl gives birth in a stable, unaided by her mother or sister. Her husband holds the baby first and kisses his screaming forehead. She exhales a sigh of relief when her son is placed in her arms; her prayers have been answered.
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She is at her son’s feet when he dies, years before her and decades after the father who raised him. As at his conception, she cannot say she is surprised; her son has never belonged to her.
She is at her mother’s bed not long after, clasping her failing hands, holding a damp rag to her mother’s forehead.
“You have been lucky,” her mother says and kisses her hands. “You have had God’s favor.”
“No, Mother.” She opens the curtains, drawn as if Death will respect the barrier. She can hear, faintly across the desert, chanting; the mourners of her son, their devotion unceasing. They will be at her door soon. They will share dried figs and lost stories, but their grief will not converge; the son of God will rise again. Hers will not.
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They will kiss her hands. They will worship and pray to her. They will hang her portrait in galleries. They will paint a peaceful expression upon her rosy cheeks, serenity in her gaze. They will carve her weighted crowns of gold, gild her gowns. They will shape her from smooth marble, a woman out of stone. Her son will sit on her lap. Her hands will be clean.
A baby is born to a Virgin.
The girl is nowhere to be found.