Short Story: Laughter

 I am posting this because I sent it to my writers group this week and it has gotten mixed reviews (they were nice about it). I know it needs work but I also know that I don't know what to do with it.  My fiction is too secular for Christians and too Christian for secular audiences. 

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Laughter (title in progress)

I saw her—them—today. I’d heard they were coming back but I didn’t want to believe it and I didn’t want to see them. But our village is small, and their home, a part of his family’s complex, is just three streets over. I was on the way to the market and they caught my eye as they were unloading an ass-driven cart.

She looks to be at the end of her time, as if she will soon go into her confinement. The little boy, maybe three, maybe getting closer to four, carried small baskets in and out to help his burdened mother. He is a pretty child. He seems serious but with that mysterious wisdom we see in children’s eyes that often deceives us.

I have to admit it. I stopped and watched. How long, I don’t know. Then I knew tears were coming down my face, and I surely did not want anyone to notice me. I swept my veil over my face and turned. The tears did not stop even though I wished them to. In fact, they flowed and wet my veil freely.

I stopped again at the well, sat on the hard stone wall, and composed myself. Why was I weeping? Certainly not from the joy of seeing a family that formerly inhabited our village returning. I barely knew them. They were poorer than my family. They had no servants, as we do. He, the husband was, and I guess still is, a day laborer at the quarry, cutting stone and working in the sun all day. My father is a grain merchant, and my husband works for him. They do not sweat and turn brown, coming home each night filthy.

So it wasn’t envy. Their ass and cart looked ancient and barely usable. And they traveled so far to get back, or that is what we are hearing! And really, who could envy a family so talked about. No, gossiped about, maligned. All those whispers back before the census when so many of us had to visit our father’s hometowns. Not my family, of course, but so many others did. This is my father’s home for over one hundred years. We were allowed to stay home while so many others packed up for who-knows-where-who-knew-how-long to make the oppressors, as Jacob my husband calls them in private, happy for a while.

If not joy or envy or grief or anger or any other reason, why my tears? I had to move along, I told myself. The market’s best goods would be gone soon even though I couldn’t remember at that moment what I was supposed to purchase.

It was as if my memories of the day’s tasks were pushed out by the memories of that morning of light and terror.

Yes, it was about four years ago. I counted on my fingers. Four years, after my betrothal to Jacob and before Momma died. We had to grieve for months before the wedding could take place. I’ve been married almost three years. Jacob is a good man who will take over Father’s business, with my brothers, of course. Jacob knows how to keep Father happy, at least for now.

A good man does not always mean a good husband or maybe a good lover, but we are not allowed to speak of such things. Perhaps if Momma were still alive I could ask about the expectations of a good husband in bed. I have no other woman I can ask about these matters. The questions embarrass me.

That morning, though, I was newly betrothed and rejoicing. Perhaps foolishly so, but isn’t betrothal what every maiden wants? Pure ones, of course. I have no idea what young women who have allowed themselves to be violated before their wedding would want. In those days I dreamed about my wedding gown, the feast's delicacies, the gifts we would receive, the dancing and wine, and how my wedding would make other girls of the village envious.

I was in the kitchen that morning. It was early and I was alone in that part of our house. I was kneading bread for the midday and evening meals. I have strong, large hands so Momma taught me early to bake. She was at the market with Father and my brothers, Micah and Hiram.

I remember it so well—I had pushed and prodded the dough for the required time and set it near the oven to proof. I wiped my brow, satisfied that this batch would meet Momma’s standards. Then, all of a sudden, a flash of sunlight entered the room. There is only one small window in our kitchen and the sun dos not rise on that side of the house. I gasped, turned to the light, and… I don’t think I fainted, but the next thing I knew I was on the floor, kneeling but resting back on my feet, like a dog in the street.

All I could think of was terror and awe. The room was awash with light, not yellow but pure white, and I could not see the source of it. I covered my face, and then prostrated myself fully before what I took to be the direction from which it came.

What could this mean? The word “angels” floated into my thoughts. An angel—appearing to a woman, like me? Since when do angels show up in an everyday kitchen while an unmarried, unimportant woman bakes the daily bread? Angels are for war and battle or announcements to kings or visions for prophets in the temple. I had to be losing my mind or having a fit. I have heard of such things. When people fall on the floor and rolled around and spit like foam comes out of their mouths. Afterward they say—or I am told—they saw a bright, even God-like light beforehand. Could I be affected this way now? Oh, Jacob would not want that. In the moment I thought I could never tell anyone about this vision or fit or whatever it was.

But I was thinking too clearly and I don’t think that happens when people are cursed with the falling down sickness. The light behind my eyelids seemed to dim a bit. I tried to open my eyes. Still, an extreme brightness and pain remained, but I could discern a shape, like a man but not like a man. Like an eagle or vulture with pure white wings. A face like a type of human but none like I had even seen. The hair was blue and its tunic light and shimmering green.

“What!” was all I could say. Then I gulped and got out, “Who?”

“Sairah, you are favored among women,” I heard. Yes, its lips moved. I should not say “its.” It was surely an angel, who else, whether I was dreaming or afflicted or really awake. I saw is lips move and those words came out. In Aramaic, not the Hebrew we hear in synagogue or the Latin of the oppressors or the street, both of which I barely know.

I did not understand. “I am favored among women?” I repeated his words like a child learning Torah.

Then I knew. Years, my whole life, of the promise, the blessedness, the terror of being chosen to carry the Messiah. We girls whispered about it. The devout ones prayed for it. The less devout of us questioned how it could be possible but reminded ourselves what an honor it would be. Then there were the girls known to hide from their parents to meet secretly the rough men from the Roman work crews, no better than slaves. They said it would never happen and especially not to them. Our mothers taught us to hope for it, this visitation, this announcement, this miracle we could not understand. Some said that the prophet called for the purest of the pure, and only the pure, to carry the anointed. Others said the Messiah would not be born of a pure maiden but of a righteous married woman prepared by a wedding to an especially righteous man of means to care for the Messiah.

We did not know. These are high flown arguments for the scholars. But we believed this anointed man would come to chase away the Romans and whatever Gentiles would hope to follow them as conquerors of our holy land. He would set up a kingdom greater even than Daniel’s or Solomon’s, with peace and holiness, abundant food and justice.

All these thoughts flooded my mind while the dimmed angelic being waited. I had not spoken to it, to him, in any words of my own yet. He probably thought me stupid. What kind of woman would be favored among all others but could not respond to the great proclamation of our history?

“How can this be?” I finally got out, just four words. I swallowed, but my mouth was so dry there was no liquid to help me speak above a croak. “They say the mother of Messiah will be a virgin. I am betrothed but faithful to the law and my mother’s teachings. I have not lain with Jacob nor any other man. Will this happen after we marry?”

The being spoke again. In my ears it sounded very loud, but I think now it was quiet. No one in the village has every confessed to noticing such a disturbance in our home.

“The Holy Spirit will come upon you and you shall conceive without the seed of man. Your offspring will be the Son of the Highest, the awaited one, the King, and He will save your people, and all people, from the sin that plagues them and defies God.”

At this point, I sat up, fully. The knees and feet had already stiffened and numbed. I did not respond. All that the being said was a mystery to me. Yes, I had heard the prophecies though we girls are not allowed to study Torah or the Prophets as the boys are. I had heard some of these words and titles about Messiah, but my mind was still foggy from the bright lights.

The angel had answered my question although it did not make sense. What would Jacob say if at my wedding my full belly would be seen under the gown? What would Momma or Father say or do? I was to tell them about an angel visiting me in the kitchen—not the temple or synagogue—on bread baking day? How would they believe me?

“But my betrothed and my family will not believe me. Jacob will end the betrothal. He might have me shamed in the synagogue or even worse. Why would he believe me? This will cause a rift in my family. Father will send me away to give birth. The village will laugh at me. The only man who will want me is some old widower that my Father will sell me to.”

“God will speak privately to your betrothed. He will believe. He will not touch you in the marriage bed before the anointed is born.”

“But what about my parents? The baby will come before the adequate time for such things. They will be shamed. Even if Jacob accepts me, and I doubt he will, he will lose his job with my father and have to become a common laborer. We will be poor and desolate in a new village.”

“You are blessed among women. If you do not believe God now that He will take care of you for your own sake, believe it for Messiah. You will carry Him, bear Him, suckle Him, mother Him, and raise Him. You will be the vessel of God’s choice.”

I paused in my arguments with the angel. Who argues with a divine being from heaven? So I did something far worse than argue. Something our great grandmother thousands of years before did when promised a miraculous birth.

I laughed. Not a little childish giggle, not one of those laughs where you try to keep it in and it falls out your nose in embarrassment, sounding like a horn. I laughed as if watching a rich, pompous person walking over a weak bridge fallsinto the mud and muck in all their finery. The mirth flowed out of me.

“This cannot be. I cannot believe.”

In an instant, I was alone. No light, no wings, no shimmering green and glowing azure hair, no voice like a waterfall at the Jordan in spring.

I sat there, my heart pounding, so glad I was alone in the house. No one would rush in and force me to explain why I was on the floor. Eventually I returned to my feet, looked out the small window, walked into the courtyard, breathed, splashed cold water on my face from the basin the workmen used. I breathed deeply some more and went back to the proofing bread.

I never told anyone. I thought it had to be a dream for a long time, yet I waited in fear any way. No miracle happened. My flow came every month as it should I married Jacob after the time of grief for Momma. We had a good wedding, but not that of my daydreams. Momma’s absence stung deeply. The wedding night followed the wedding in leaving me with a sense of “is there more?”, but I’ve grown used to Jacob and sometimes the act gives me pleasure. Yes, that morning of terror must have been a dream or the falling sickness, but that never happened again.

A few months later there were some rumors. Another girl, one of the devoted ones from the poorer families, was supposed to marry her betrothed and an obstacle arose. People talk, even when it doesn’t concern them. The couple married anyway but from what I heard, probably a lie, there was no big or wedding night ceremony. Then the oppressors scattered so many to the towns of their ancestors. The husband had to take her miles and miles to a town near Jerusalem. That meant a long hike through Samaria under the hostiles eyes of the soldiers. How hard for her when she was heavy with child.

And we didn’t hear from them or of them for so long. Until the last few weeks when word came of their return after a sojourn in another country. Her parents and his did not speak of them. I hope they are happy to come back here. It’s not as exciting as Egypt or Jerusalem. Of course, we heard about that star and Herod’s tyranny. We live far from Jerusalem up here in the Galilee, so our babies were safe.

Or I should say, the babies of the other village women.

I was glad, no, I rejoiced, when my flow came steadily after the angel’s visit, or maybe it was my dream or spell. And it continued after my wedding over three years now. Every month, every year. I should have been with child at least once, maybe twice. I would be a loving mother. I am healthy and strong. The babies would come out fast and squalling. The first boy's name would be Isaac, after my father. Even a girl would suffice. I would name her Rachel because Jacob would leave the naming and upbringing of a girl to me.

We wait. Jacob is not angry but he asks me “when” more and more often, and he wants to lay with me more and more, in hope that will bring the change, the miracle he wants.

I wait another month, another year.

“You are blessed among women,” the angel said.