The Handmaid and the Carpenter by Elizabeth Berg Page A

attendants. But once John was born, and Elizabeth and the baby had been bathed and anointed, massaged and celebrated, Zechariah had been allowed in for a look. He’d exchanged some words with Elizabeth, held and admired his son, and then hurried outside to announce to his friends that the baby had come safely into the world. And now was announcing it again and yet again. Mary was beginning to fear for the man who stood beside Zechariah, who’d begun to flinch whenever Zechariah moved. Still, one had to allow dispensation for his behavior: a son was born this night of his wife, Elizabeth. The miracle that had been promised had occurred. And his voice was most robustly returned. “Is not John the very image of myself?” Zechariah bellowed.
    “It is so,” said one of the men. “If you look a way entirely different from what you have thus far revealed!”
    Zechariah stared blearily at him as the other men hooted and laughed. “Your words make no sense, and small wonder. For you are
drunk
!” Then he cried, “I am a thousand times blessed, for unto me this day is born a son!” He lifted his face to the night sky and howled at the moon, and his friends howled with him.
    Mary smiled and returned to Elizabeth’s bedside. Her cousin lay sleeping soundly, the baby in her arms, and he was sleeping, too. Mary watched them for a long while, then crept silently to her pallet. There, she lay her hands over the small rise of her stomach, and finally slept herself.
             
    IN THE MORNING, as Zechariah prepared breakfast, Mary tiptoed to Elizabeth’s pallet, where she lay awake and smiling, the baby in her arms. Mary knelt down to see him. He, too, was awake, satisfied-looking after his session at his mother’s breast.
    “Would you like to hold him?” Elizabeth asked, and Mary nodded shyly, then reached down and took up the baby. He was breathtakingly light. Mary had held babies before, but never one so new as this. Not even a day old! John lay still, and in his eyes was a calm and an acceptance that seemed oddly wise. Mary had never seen such an expression in a baby’s eyes before, but then she supposed that one never looked at babies so carefully as did a woman blessed by her own child growing within. Would her baby’s toes spread so comically? Would his abdomen rise and fall so rapidly with his breathing, so heartbreakingly? Would his tiny fingers pull at his face, would he fall asleep at her breast with such ease? When she laid him out on her lap to inspect him for the first time, would her face radiate happiness with the intensity that Elizabeth’s had? Last night, when Elizabeth, exhausted, had first been given her newborn, his cord still attached, Mary had stood beside her to regard him. John’s head was elongated, his nose flattened, and one eye swollen shut. He was covered with blood and vernix. Mary and Elizabeth agreed wholeheartedly on his great beauty. They spoke to the baby in the high, sweet voices given to women for such things.
    This morning John’s face had already greatly healed, and he truly was beautiful. Looking at him, Mary felt her eyes fill with tears. She handed him carefully back to his mother and then rose, clasping her hands before her. They felt so empty now, her hands, so strangely idle. “I have never seen anything so perfect as this child,” she told Elizabeth.
    Her cousin looked up at her. “Soon you will see something more perfect still.” She spoke sadly then, saying, “I shall miss you, Mary.”
    “And I you.”
    “Your traveling companions will soon come for you.”
    “I am ready.”
    John suddenly kicked out his legs, wrinkled up his face, and began to cry.
    “Kiss me quickly, then, and wait outside, lest we all three cry together,” Elizabeth said.
    Mary leaned down and kissed her cousin’s wrinkled face. “I honor and love you,” she said, and Elizabeth answered, “With me as with you. Safe journey, and I bid you give your mother my love and also my thanks,