Chapter Two
S
he is a harlot!” Shrill accusation. “Stone her!” Swift judgment. She had been only eleven when she watched the men in town kill Zephorah. The memory survived through the years with poignant terror.
As girls do, she had combed and braided Mary’s hair many times in their moments together. Mary had come to look upon her as an older sister. They lived in adjoining houses. Their families had often dined together, especially on feast days. Although they had played together since Mary’s toddler days, they were actually quite different. Mary seemed shy, deferential and demure; Zephorah daring, inquisitive, assertive. It struck some quite odd that two so different should become so close. Rarely had they argued, Mary content to let the older girl decide what games they would play, or what they would do on any given day. This resulted more often than not in daily trips to the town well, a popular place for adolescents to meet and discuss their interests, which almost always concerned the opposite sex.
Zephorah, a stunning beauty of fifteen, flirted and blushed playfully at the young men loitering there. Her olive skin, brown almond eyes, lush auburn hair, clothes which clung to her shapely form, fully developed breasts; she had become the main event among the young stallions at the well. On the way home she amused and entertained the younger girl with lengthy biographies of each boy. It seemed to Mary that Zephorah knew something about every young male in Nazareth. “We must not speak of such things, Zepha,” spoke Mary, uncomfortably titillated with her friend’s romantic fantasies. But the older girl just rolled her eyes and giggled.
“Just wait, little one. One day you will understand.”
Mary had not understood. What had happened? How did her friend suddenly turn “bad?” How could she have run away with this boy and leave her family to grieve? Three days later she came home alone, afraid and ashamed. Her lover had returned the day before with a good story to tell his friends. He would be admired now. He would be thought manly — experienced. To his father of course, he told of how she had seduced him. He was a good boy from a good family, his father a priest. So the boy would not suffer. No punishment greater than a sacrifice offered. With that, it would be over. “Why is it,” thought Mary, remembering this event years later, “that when a man has sex, he is thought manly, but when a girl does it, she becomes a harlot?”
Who would throw the first stone? This honor naturally fell to the one who had been violated. Since it was a mere boy, his father took stone in hand, a broken, jagged piece of thick pottery. But instead of casting the piece himself, the older man thought for a moment and then handed it to his son. This confused the boy, frightening him. The eyes of his father-priest however, were demanding, unforgiving. His son looked at Zephorah weeping in the street where she had been harshly thrown, her hair filthy with dust, her eyes streaming tears, pleading. Somewhere in the back of the crowd which stood more than ten deep, a mother screamed. His father’s eyes prevailed. With a force strengthened by fear, his hand traced the arc. The stone struck between the eyes just above the nose. Blood spurted. Seconds later a hundred more stones followed. One of them weighing several pounds struck her in the head, mercifully crushing her fifteen year old skull. The boy watched. Someday, he would be a priest himself.
