Judas Read Free

certain death. But that would come later.
    ***
     
    My mother entertained men. That is how she put it. She had visitors who came, and went, and left money—most of the time. My mother was not a woman of the streets, not then. She entertained men. For her it was an important distinction. Some would say that was a distinction without a difference.
    “Judas,” she said, the furrow between her eyebrows meant she was serious, “I entertain important men. It is how we live, Sweet. You will understand someday. Do not make Mummy’s work harder. When my visitors are here, stay out of sight and for heaven’s sake, don’t let the Greeks see you.” She lived in fear of the Greeks, by which she meant the eunuchs and the boy lovers, our neighbors in the south end of the city.
    She served her visitors golden dates, dark figs, plump ripe pomegranates, olives, and honey cakes with wine. When they arrived and she was distracted, I would grab one of the cakes and stuff it into my mouth before she could turn and catch me. To this day, I believe those purloined honey cakes were the sweetest things I ever ate. I can still feel their stickiness on my fingers; savor their sweetness in my mouth. Only once did a honey cake betray me. I sat in our back court eating one left over from the previous nights entertaining. I laid it down next to me for a moment to lick my fingers and a wasp, a honey thief, settled on it. I foolishly reached to brush it away and it stung my finger. I howled so much I woke Mother. She explained the way of wasps to me. “They are evil,” she said. Evil or not, I did not stop coveting honey cakes.
    ***
     
    Men would sometimes tell stories about The Mighty Heroes of Old , which is how they would speak of them, The Mighty Heroes of Old . They would amuse me while Mother prepared herself for the evening. I wondered about the stories. They filled the ears and mind of a child to overflowing. I had creatures lurking and skulking about in every corner of my head. Sometimes sleep would not come, so busy were these occupants, these tenants I had invited in but could not evict. Were they true? I needed to know.
    “Yes, even I know because it is in the books of Moses that were read to me when I was little like you,” Mother said, when I asked her after one of my particularly restless nights.
    “You saw giants?”
    “No. No, the giants were in the book. They are called Nifillim. There were other creatures, too, that came to earth and beautiful ladies entertained them. And David, our great king, killed Goliath, a giant, and saved the nation.”
    That was how she remembered the story. In her home, before she was taken away, education in the holy books was deemed a poor expenditure of time for girls and women, an education denied me as well. In Caesarea, the doors where people worshiped Mother’s god remained firmly shut to us.
    In the morning, her visitors would be gone and then we had money to spend. We walked to the market around the corner. It always excited me to see it, filled with hurrying people bargaining, buying, and selling. I remember the scents best. Meat cooking on spits, roasting lamb and goat, filled the air with smoke and the aroma of coriander. Spices exuded the mix of cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, curry, pepper, and ginger. There were things to eat, things to buy, copperware, fish, everything anyone could possibly want or need, or so I thought. If the entertaining went particularly well, we visited the cloth maker and the sandal maker and bought things to wear and the flashing, jangling ornaments Mother fancied. When there was no entertaining for a while, Mother took them back to market and sold them. That way we always had money to buy food.
    I learned very early the power money wields over men. And that a man’s life—any man’s life—is worth more than a paltry thirty pieces of silver.

Chapter Three
     
    “What have you done?” My mother stood in the road, hair flying, her face fractured with worry.