“Let my people go,” said Joshua, as Moses.
“Okay.”
“You can’t just say, ‘Okay.’”
“I can’t?”
“No, the Lord has hardened your heart against my demands.”
“Why’d he do that?”
“I don’t know, he just did. Now, let my people go.”
“Nope.” I crossed my arms and turned away like someone whose heart is hardened.
“Behold as I turn this stick into a snake. Now, let my people go!”
“Okay.”
“You can’t just say ‘okay’!”
“Why? That was a pretty good trick with the stick.”
“But that’s not how it goes.”
“Okay. No way, Moses, your people have to stay.”
Joshua waved his staff in my face. “Behold, I will plague you with frogs. They will fill your house and your bedchamber and get on your stuff.”
“So?”
“So that’s bad. Let my people go, Pharaoh.”
“I sorta like frogs.”
“Dead frogs,” Moses threatened. “Piles of steaming, stinking dead frogs.”
“Oh, in that case, you’d better take your people and go. I have some sphinxes and stuff to build anyway.”
“Dammit, Biff, that’s not how it goes! I have more plagues for you.”
“I want to be Moses.”
“You can’t.”
“Why not?”
“I have the stick.”
“Oh.”
And so it went. I’m not sure I took to playing the villains as easily as Joshua took to being the heroes. Sometimes we recruited our little brothers to play the more loathsome parts. Joshua’s little brothers Judah and James played whole populations, like the Sodomites outside of Lot’s door.
“Send out those two angels so that we can know them.”
“I won’t do that,” I said, playing Lot (a good guy only because Joshua wanted to play the angels), “but I have two daughters who don’t know anyone, you can meet them.”
“Okay,” said Judah.
I threw open the door and led my imaginary daughters outside so they could know the Sodomites…
“Pleased to meet you.”
“Charmed, I’m sure.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“THAT’S NOT HOW IT GOES!” Joshua shouted. “You’re supposed to try to break the door down, then I will smite you blind.”
“Then you destroy our city?” James said.
“Yes.”
“We’d rather meet Lot’s daughters.”
“Let my people go,” said Judah, who was only four and often got his stories confused. He particularly liked the Exodus because he and James got to throw jars of water on me as I led my soldiers across the Red Sea after Moses.
“That’s it,” Joshua said. “Judah, you’re Lot’s wife. Go stand over there.”
Sometimes Judah had to play Lot’s wife no matter what story we were doing. “I don’t want to be Lot’s wife.”
“Be quiet, pillars of salt can’t talk.”
“I don’t want to be a girl.”
Our brothers always played the female parts. I had no sisters to torment, and Joshua’s only sister at the time, Elizabeth, was still a baby. That was before we met the Magdalene. The Magdalene changed everything.
After I overheard my parents talking about Joshua’s mother’s madness, I often watched her, looking for signs, but she seemed to go about her duties like all the other mothers, tending to the little ones, working in the garden, fetching water, and preparing food. There was no sign of going about on all fours or foaming at the mouth as I had expected. She was younger than many of the mothers, and much younger than her husband, Joseph, who was an old man by the standards of our time. Joshua said that Joseph wasn’t his real father, but he wouldn’t say who his father was. When the subject came up, and Mary was in earshot, she would call to Josh, then put her finger to her lips to signal silence.
“Now is not the time, Joshua. Biff would not understand.”
Just hearing her say my name made my heart leap. Early on I developed a little-boy love for Joshua’s mother that sent me into fantasies of marriage and family and future.
“Your father is old, huh, Josh?”
“Not too old.”
“When he dies, will your mother marry his brother?”
“My father has no brothers. Why?”
“No reason. What would you think if your father was shorter than you?”
“He isn’t.”
“But when your father dies, your mother could marry someone shorter than you, and he would be your father. You would have to do what he says.”
“My father will never die. He is eternal.”
“So you say. But I think that when I’m a man, and your father dies, I will take your mother as my wife.”
Joshua made a face now as if he had bitten into an unripe fig. “Don’t say that, Biff.”
“I don’t mind that she’s mad. I like her blue cloak. And her smile. I’ll be a good father, I’ll teach you how to be a stonemason, and I’ll only beat you when you are a snot.”
“I would rather play with lepers than listen to this.” Joshua began to walk away.
“Wait. Be nice to your father, Joshua bar Biff”—my own father used my full name like this when he was trying to make a point—“Is it not the word of Moses that you must honor me?”
Little Joshua spun on his heel. “My name is not Joshua bar Biff, and it is not Joshua bar Joseph either. It’s Joshua bar Jehovah!”
I looked around, hoping that no one had heard him. I didn’t want my only son (I planned to sell Judah and James into slavery) to be stoned to death for uttering the name of God in vain. “Don’t say that again, Josh. I won’t marry your mother.”
“No, you won’t.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I forgive you.”
“She will make an excellent concubine.”
Don’t let anyone tell you that the Prince of Peace never struck anyone. In those early days, before he had become who he would be, Joshua smote me in the nose more than once. That was the first time.
Mary would stay my one true love until I saw the Magdalene.
If the people of Nazareth thought Joshua’s mother was mad, there was little said of it out of respect for her husband, Joseph. He was wise in the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms, and there were few wives in Nazareth who didn’t serve supper in one of his smooth olive-wood bowls. He was fair, strong, and wise. People said that he had once been an Essene, one of the dour, ascetic Jews who kept to themselves and never married or cut their hair, but he did not congregate with them, and unlike them, he still had the ability to smile.
In those early years, I saw him very little, as he was always in Sepphoris, building structures for the Romans and the Greeks and the landed Jews of that city, but every year, as the Feast of Firsts approached, Joseph would stop his work in the fortress city and stay home carving bowls and spoons to give to the Temple. During the Feast of Firsts, it was the tradition to give first lambs, first grain, and first fruits to the priests of the Temple. Even first sons born during the year were dedicated to the Temple, either by promising them for labor when they were older, or by a gift of money. Craftsmen like my father and Joseph could give things that they made, and in some years my father fashioned mortars and pestles or grinding stones for the tribute, while in others he gave tithes of coin. Some people made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem for this feast, but since it fell only seven weeks after Passover, many families could not afford to make the pilgrimage, and the gifts went to our simple village synagogue.
During the weeks leading up to the feast, Joseph sat outside of his house in the shade of an awning he had made, worrying the gnarled olive wood with adze and chisel, while Joshua and I played at his feet. He wore the single-piece tunic that we all wore, a rectangle of fabric with neck hole in the middle, belted with a sash so that the sleeves fell to the elbows and the hem fell to the knees.