Now Silent Hannah had fluid and eloquent gestures for everything, and we all knew them. It had been several years since she and the Orphan had come to Nazareth as vagabonds do, and she'd lived with us since that time, and the Orphan had lived in many places. But we all knew her language of signs and I thought her hands as beautiful sometimes as Jason's hands.
No one knew how old she was. She might have been fifteen or sixteen. The Orphan had been younger.
Now, she stood before Joseph and very suddenly she broke into the gestures that signified her brother. Where was her brother? What had happened to her brother? No one would tell her. Her eyes swept the room, swept the faces of the women against the walls. What happened to her brother?
Joseph started to answer her. He started but once again the tears came to his eyes, and his pale hands hung in the air, unable to describe the shapes he saw or wanted to see.
James was worried. Cleopas started with words. He didn't know the signs very well. He never had.
Avigail could say and do nothing.
Finally I turned Silent Hannah to me. I made the gesture for her brother, and pointed to my lips, which I knew she could now and then read. I pointed upwards and made the sign for prayer. I talked slowly as I made the various signs.
"The Lord watches over your brother now, and your brother is sleeping. Your brother is asleep in the earth now. You will not see him again." I pointed to her eyes. I leaned forward and pointed then to my own eyes and to Joseph's eyes, and the tears on his face. I shook my head. "Your brother is with the Lord now," I said. I kissed my fingers and gestured again upward.
Silent Hannah's face crumpled and she pulled away from me violently.
Avigail took firm hold of her.
"Your brother will rise on the last day," Avigail said, and she looked upward, and then, letting Silent Hannah go, she made a great encompassing gesture as if the whole world were gathered under Heaven.
Silent Hannah was in terror. She hunched her shoulders and peered at us through her fingers.
I spoke again, gesturing. "It was quick. It was wrong. It was like someone falling. Suddenly over."
I made the gestures for rest, for sleep, for calm. I made them as slowly as I could.
I saw her face slowly change.
"You're our child," I said. "You live with us and with Avigail."
She waited a long moment and then asked Where was her brother laid to rest? I gestured to the far hills, high up in the hills. Silent Hannah knew the caves. She didn't need to know which cave, that it was the cave for those who die by stoning.
Her face was fixed again but only for a moment, and then with a strange fearful expression, she made the gestures for Where is Yitra?
"Yitra's family is gone," I said. I made the gestures for mother and father, and little ones, walking.
She looked at me. She knew this couldn't be right, couldn't be all of it. Again, she made the gesture for Where is Yitra?
"Tell her," said Joseph.
I did. "In the ground, with your brother. Gone now."
Her eyes grew wide with shock. Then, for the first time ever I saw her lips draw back in a bitter smile. A groan came from her, a terrible tongueless sound.
James sighed. He and Cleopas looked at each other.
"You come on home with me now," said Avigail.
But this wasn't finished.
Joseph quickly gestured to the Heavens again, and made the signs for rest and peace under Heaven.
"Help me with her," said Avigail, because Silent Hannah wouldn't be moved.
My mother and my aunts came forward. Slowly Silent Hannah yielded. She walked as one in a dream. Out of the house they went, the group of them.
She must have stopped in the street. We heard a sound like an ox bellowing, a huge and awful sound. It was Silent Hannah.
By the time I reached her, she'd gone wild, thrashing at everyone around her, kicking, pushing, and out of her came this shapeless bellowing louder and louder, echoing off the walls. She pushed at Avigail and flung Avigail against the wall, and Avigail suddenly broke into sobs and began screaming.
Shemayah, Avigail's father, opened the door.
But Avigail flung herself on Silent Hannah, sobbing and crying and letting the tears run, and pleading with Silent Hannah to please please Come. "Come with me!" Avigail sobbed.
Silent Hannah had stopped her moans. She stood still staring at Avigail. Avigail let herself convulse with her sobs. She threw up her arms and then went down on her knees.
Silent Hannah ran to her and lifted her. Silent Hannah began to comfort her.
All the women gathered around. They stroked the hair of the two young women; they stroked their arms and their shoulders. Silent Hannah kept wiping at Avigail's tears as if she really could wipe them completely away. She clutched Avigail's face and wiped hard at her tears. Avigail nodded. Silent Hannah patted Avigail over and over.
Shemayah held the door open for his daughter, and finally the two young women went into the house together.
We went back into our house. The coals were glowing in the darkness, and someone put a cup of water in my hand, and said, "Sit down."
I saw Joseph against the wall, his ankles crossed, his head bowed.
"Father, you don't come with us today," said James. "You stay here, please, and watch the little ones. They need you here today."
Joseph looked up. For a moment he looked as if he didn't know what James was saying to him. The usual argument did not come. Not even a sound of protest. Then he nodded and closed his eyes.
In the courtyard, James clapped his hands to make the boys hurry. "We mourn in our hearts," he reminded them. "Now we're late. And those of you who work here today, I want this yard swept, do you understand? Look at it." He turned around and around, pointing at the dead dried vines that clung to the lattices, to the leaves heaped in every corner, to the fig tree that was no more now than a tangle of bones.
Once we were on the road, crowded into the usual slow grind of wagons and teams of workers, he drew me close to him and said,
"Did you see what happened to Father? Did you see it? He tried to speak and - ."
"James, this day would have wearied any man, but after this . . . he should stay home."
"How can we persuade him of that, that I can run things now? Look at Cleopas. He's dreaming, talking to the fields."
"He knows."
"Everything falls on me."
"It's the way you want it," I said.
Cleopas was my mother's brother. It didn't fall to him to be the head of the family. It was the sons of Cleopas, and his daughter Little Salome, whom I called my brothers and sister. The wives of these brothers were my sisters. The wife of James was my sister.