Water: John 4

Beautiful-invisible

With steps softer than his heavy breathing, she slips from the bed chamber and into the inner room—the room used for everything mundane. She greets mundane warmly in comparison to the rest of the rhythms she has accepted as her life.

Moonlight slices through narrow slits in the rough wooden shutters, shining on the beaten clay of the floor. The small house has been claimed by the chill of early morning, yet she leaves the warmth of his pallet. Not so cold that her breath comes as clouds from her lips, the chill is enough to grip her body. Yet she leaves the warmth of her covers.

Clenching her wrists and standing in the center of the room, she shivers as a choppy snore seizes the silence within the small residence located on the outskirts of an obscure Samaritan village.

Oh God. She feels his breath biting on the nape of her neck despite the distance between them. His presence lingers. She retreats to the far corner, to her kitchen, where she dips cool water from a clay jar. She gasps as it rolls down the hollow of her back and soaks into the material of her nightgown. The small shock focuses her.

She does not know this man, really. The choice to be with him, under his roof, had been made in haste. Over the following two years haste had come to nest. She had felt she needed a man to survive. But perhaps survival had been a rash decision.

He is a scribe. He works hard during the day, garnering respect from some, tolerance from others. He is loved by none, certainly not her. But he makes a living and shares it with her in exchange for her body next to his. Every night he comes home, eats dinner and leads her to bed. This is her life.

She grips the handle of the water jar. If she were really alive, she would hurl the jar to the floor. She would shatter the suffocating passivity she’s forced to wear more tightly than clothing, more completely than skin. She doesn’t.

Instead, in the hollow space of this inner room, open to the outside world only through a narrow, shuttered window overlooking a shared courtyard, she thinks about crying.

Water drips from her fingers onto the dirt floor. She thinks about going to the well during the heat of the day to fetch more water. She thinks about her snickering neighbors and their brazen stares as she attempts to steal toward the path at the edge of town. She thinks about the light of day soon to come and decides she will not cry.

There is no time to cry now, not in the dark. This is her time to be beautiful-invisible. In the darkness of the inner room, if she can suppress her own loathing, she is not despised. It is here upon occasion she lets herself live, breathe, some nights even worship. Yes, tonight she will worship.