The Cloak

My heart is beating like a child’s drum in my chest, in my throat, even in my ears. Erratic and fast and so hard I can feel it thrumming in my fingers and toes. I stand at the very back of the crowd that has clumped together on the shoreline, trying to stay on my feet, trying to dredge up the courage to do what I came here to do. We’re all waiting for the scrape of sand and shush of a small fishing boat being dragged ashore. I can’t see the boat from where I stand, but I know it’s out there. I try not to draw attention to myself. I try to stand like just another one of them – the faceless crowd. I know I look ill; my skin is too pale; my clothes bedraggled; my body unnaturally thin. I pray that no one I know sees me, recognizes my face. No one here should – it took me two days to travel to where I heard he’d be. But there’s always a chance; a possibility. And the threat of being noticed is a constant small jolt of electricity shocking my bloodstream at every sideways look, at every person who happens to brush against me.

Even the thought of making my way through that crowd, being so closed in and surrounded by so many bodies makes me nauseous – makes my entire frame tremble with fear. I’m sweating even though I haven’t yet moved an inch. I scrubbed myself in the stream this morning, scraping my skin with pebbles and sand until it was pink and raw – making myself as clean as I could. But there’s a hard little lump of despair in the back of my throat that says nothing can wash away the stigma I carry with me.

What am I doing??

I shudder at the uproar it will cause if anyone here finds out who I am. What I am. Because in truth that is all that’s left of me. My disease. The uncleanness it stamped me with 12 long years ago. The blood I can’t control or stop no matter what I do.

The bitterness of it coats my throat; nearly makes me turn around and leave before I’m caught. But something traps me here, in this in-between space at the edge of decision. My foot is unable to step forward, but neither do I turn away. What can they do to me that they haven’t already done, the bitter voice that follows me everywhere pipes up in the back of my head, and then, there’s nothing else – nothing to go back to.

My mind drifts to the first years of desperation. The ones where I thought it would end. The weeks and months where I sought help, where I reached out for and clung to any hand that promised a cure. My body has been a pincushion for all kinds of experiments, I’ve eaten more herbs and poisons and purged myself in countless rivers and… rituals… until nothing remained. I swallow back the shame of it. All the horrible, degrading things I’ve done to stop it. And all of it for nothing. Not one of them stopped the hemorrhaging of my body.

There’ve been years that I tried bargaining with God. Where I tried to be good. I kept the commandments as best I could. Despite the war in my heart. Despite the cruelty of my neighbours and synagogue officials. But hope died a long time ago. And in it’s place…

I don’t know which is worse – the despair I live with now, or the anger. Each one is a monster that lives deep in my breast. Threatening to devour me in one bite. But… the anger tastes bitter after all this time. And the loneliness of despair is so deep – such a black, endless, pit of a cage. I’m tired of either and both of their company. I’m so tired of all of it.

It’s my tiredness more than anything that led me here – to this moment, to this crowded shore. I told myself all the way here, each painstaking step at a time that this would be my last. My last time falling for the wish of a cure – my last attempt to end it. And I will end it, one way or another.

I would never have bothered to come, but… the stories I’ve heard about this man… they’re hard to ignore.

I swallow back the dryness in my mouth. Survey the teeming mass of people in front of me. The eagerness in their faces. The desperation. I shove hope down – kill it before it can take root.

Now that I’m here I can see how ridiculous this is. There’s no chance I’ll get to him through that crowd. There’s no chance he’ll have time for me. There’s an important official waiting at the front, and I’ve heard those closest to me murmuring to each other – his daughter is dying, and he’s here to beg for her life. The crowd is excited about it. Hoping to see the stranger do something crazy. There’s no way that I can compete with a young girl’s death – nor would I want to. For a minute I imagine the scorn in the voices that would follow me afterwards. Tears of shame crowd the edge of my eyes, threatening to break out, give me away. Selfish woman. They’d sneer. Stole a young girl’s chance to live. They would say. I don’t want that to be another stigma I carry. I won’t let it.

I know this is useless, that I should just flee now before I’m recognized – before something gives me away. But still, I hover, wanting to get a glimpse of him, this man that promises such outrageous things. I didn’t hear the boat, but everyone shuffles closer to shore, voices rise in excitement. He’s here.

The crowd shifts and murmurs, and moves like a clump of honeybees around their queen. I catch a glimpse of a dark head, the side of a face, a tunic travel-stained and simple… and a hand reached out, clasping someone’s shoulder in greeting. It’s just enough, even in the distance, for me to tell that whoever he is, he’s kind. I’ve become an expert at reading body language over the past 12 years of sickness. Which person might give me scraps, and which to avoid in the streets.

I’m turning away, when an idea pops into my head. Half a sentence; a piece of an image. The picture of my hand reaching out. Just touch the edge of his cloak. A small, quiet, whisper in the back of my brain. Not the bitter voice that usually speaks. If he’s who he says he is that might be enough.

I stop.

Consider.

Try to keep walking away – but the little voice won’t stop niggling at the back of my mind. Tugging. What if I just tried? No one has to know – or even see me.

“He won’t even know I’m there.” I whisper to myself, licking dry, cracked, lips. Knowing they’re colourless – bloodless, like the rest of me, “It won’t make any difference to him – it’s not touching his skin, just his cloak.”

I mull it over, my heart racing, anxiety flooding my system. The dizziness I often struggle with makes it hard to keep from stumbling, but before I can stop myself I’m making my way through the outer edges of the crowd.

Every few steps, terror at what I’m about to do just about freezes me solid, makes me turn around and flee and I have to stop to take a deep breath. Steady my shaking hands. Fight back the nausea.

“Just his cloak.” I mouth, “Just one touch.”

He doesn’t have to see me. He doesn’t have to talk to me. The thought of him catching me in the act makes my whole body tremble so hard the person next to me gives me a concerned look and I immediately panic, putting several bodies between us, not being careful even as I jostle and bounce against others.

The feeling of touching other people is so foreign, I can scarcely hold myself together. My fingers are gripped together so tightly I can’t feel them any longer. I try to make my body small, I try to limit the contact with skin as much as I can. I know it’s wrong. I know I’m erasing whatever smidgeon of goodness is left in me by contaminating so many. The leaders at the temple would put me down like a deranged animal if they found out. I should stop. I should leave now, before it’s too late. Tiredness is swamping me, so much so that each step feels like pulling my foot out of mud.

The picture of touching the edge of his cloak stays vivid in my mind until I’m right at the edge of his circle and he’s just in front of me, facing away, talking to the official.

Now’s my chance and all I do is stare down at that cloak. I hear the rumble of his voice as he speaks in the background. There’s a strange buzzing in my ears. The world is hazy and shifting and I know I’ve reached the very end of my limits. I won’t make it back home after this – the stress has been too much for my already depleted body.

In a dreamlike state, I kneel down, reach around a stranger’s foot that shifts in front of me and touch that cloak before it can move away, with just one finger. There’s so many talking to him – to each other, that no one notices me. I’m just a nobody, a woman meant to be unseen, and it’s just a fingertip. But I feel it all the same. The instant my finger makes contact with that fabric. The warmth that moves all through my body, halting the blood that has never before stopped leaking out of me.

I cover my mouth with shaking fingers to stop the cry that wants out and I turn and try to melt into the crowd. Except everything feels different, strange. My body feels light, as if it doesn’t belong to me. And the relief is so intense all I want to do is sink back down to the ground and take it in. I need a minute. Can it be true? Or will I wake up from a dream and realize this never happened?

“Who touched me?” The soft, deep, voice behind me makes me freeze. Panic floods me. Embarrassment races in and flushes my cheeks red. How did he know?

I start pushing frantically, trying to wedge myself through those in front of me, but I’m blocked and hindered by the press of bodies. No one wants to move aside for me – they’re all pressing in, trying to get closer to him, and it’s suddenly like squeezing through a brick wall. It wasn’t nearly this difficult to get here. Everything inside me is screaming at me to get away.

“We’re surrounded by people,” I hear one of his men argue behind me, sounding slightly grumpy “what do you mean, ‘who touched me?’” Listen to him, I think, desperately willing it so.

But he’s not listening. I can tell. I can feel his eyes searching the crowd. Any minute now, they’ll fall on me.

I have to get away before he sees me. Panic makes my breath come faster even as the tiredness leaves my body. Even as the dizziness fades. I’ll be stoned for sure. Or something equally dreadful. I took from him without asking. What kind of crime would he consider that to be?

I feel his eyes land on the back of my head and I stop struggling to get around the people in front of me. All the fight leaves my body in that one instant, and a need to face my executioner makes me turn my head. Slowly. Defiantly.

I lock eyes with kind brown ones.

They’re inquisitive, curious. Not angry. He cocks his head, waiting.

I turn around fully, fear pounding through my whole body and my knees give out at the edge of the cloak I just touched. Words spill out of my lips, tangled and halting as I confess. As I cut myself open and lay my soul bare to him in front of a crowd I can only imagine will turn hostile the minute I stop talking.

When I’m done I wait for my punishment. I slide my eyes closed against the tension lacing the air, against my embarrassment, against my defeat. The crowd around us is whispering and uneasy, everyone is shifting and unsure if they should condemn me or not – many of them wondering if I’ve touched them, if I’ve made them unclean on my way through. I know from experience that it’ll only take a moment for someone to start calling for my judgement. I wait for him to strike me dead, hit me, laugh, or spit.

But instead a calloused, sun-browned finger is suddenly touching me gently, nudging my chin up until I’m forced to meet this man’s gaze again. It’s the first willing touch I’ve had in years, and a tear leaks out in spite of myself.

He crouches down so we’re on the same level. There’s nothing in his eyes but compassion. “Daughter, your faith has healed you,” He says quietly, ignoring the murmuring crowd, acting as if it’s just him and I sitting here.

There’s something else there – in his eyes. A shiver runs up my spine as I recognize what I see – it’s … delight… I realize in shock. He’s surprised and he’s… delighted. Like I somehow gave him a gift. One he wasn’t expecting.

I don’t understand. Confusion makes my head swim.

I could swear I heard pride in his voice. As if he knows what it took for me to come to him. As if he can hear all the voices in my head that told me I wasn’t worthy of his attention – that he wouldn’t help me – that I had no right to his aid. He looks at me as if he can feel all the years of pain and loneliness, as if he can see how close I’ve been to giving up.

And he’s so… proud of me. For coming to him.

Tears flood my eyes. I can barely see him through the shock, as I clamp down on the sob that wants to escape.

“Go in peace.” He tells me gently. And then he stands and follows the official who’s impatiently waiting for him, the crowd eagerly following him.

And I sit on that shore, surrounded by sand and water that shushes back and forth among the reeds. His few words, his touch, keep reverberating through my head, over and over. They settle on me like a warm blanket, and I cry and cry.