AN ALTERNATIVE TRUTH

Just twist a well known tale a little bit, and what do you have?

“I’m pregnant, Joseph, I’m sure I am,” wept Mary, “I feel sick every morning and I’ve not had my monthly bleed for ages...”

He stared at her open-eyed, and then:

“That’s disgusting!” he almost shouted, “what were you thinking? What have you done? They’ll stone you, you know that, because a good stoning is what you deserve, going about like a foreign street girl and dong dirty things like that!”

“What do you mean, Joseph?” she wept.

“We all know what a girl has to do to get herself in the family way, and it’s disgusting!”

“I … I don’t know … nobody ever told me...”

“Going with foul men and their unwashed bodies, lying with them, damn you, and doing intimate things, wicked things, gasping and begging for more...”

“I wouldn’t do that! You must know me better than that! I’ve never been with any man, not a single one, except…

“Ha! Except! You acknowledge except! So there have been some.”

“One, Joseph, only one...”

“And who might that be, little innocent Mary with her gown off and her … I don’t like to think of it, what with us getting married like we’re supposed to be!”

“There was nobody else...” Mary’s body was shaking with two kinds of grief, her condition and his accusation.

“Then which of the old men with wrinkled whatsits have you been lying with, you harlot?”

“ONLY YOU!” she shouted, “Only with you,” she added, in a grief-stricken whisper.

“Only me?” He went pale as the significance of what she’d said hit him like a bolt from the big wide blue.

“Yes, you.” This time there was a suggestion of defiance in her voice. “And I hate it when you don’t believe me even when you must know the truth,” she added, trying to hold him with her eyes, still moist from too much weeping.

“You mustn’t tell anyone...” he gasped, thinking hurriedly. “This must be our secret, yours and mine. I can’t have father thinking that we’ve … that we’ve … that we’ve done it! He would thrash me, beat me until the bruises had bruises of their own, and then he would put his arms round me and say that he had to do it, he had to half kill me, out of love, he’d say, I’d understand one day… I can almost hear him now! So you mustn’t let on. Keep it to yourself.”

“And grow fat with child? On my own? With the Priests looking on and knowing what I’ve done, and pointing their gnarled old fingers at me, and ordering that I make penance for my sin, ordering that I be stoned to death against the town wall, that my battered body have the infant ripped from it and… and … and….”

“But it was a sin,” pointed out Joseph.

“My sin alone? Nobody else’s?”

He didn’t understand. “Of course it was you alone!” he protested, “Who else could be to blame? Who else was there? Of course it was only you and therefore you are the one who deserves the punishment!”

“And you weren’t with me, Joseph?”

“Well, yes, but it’s what us men do. You can’t blame us because we’ve got instincts and urges! You could have said no!”

“Didn’t you hear me, Joseph?”

“Hear you? When?”

“When you lay with me and touched me and I cried out ‘NO’ at the top of my voice when you were gasping and pushing and doing the things that you did… didn’t you hear me?”

“I’m not deaf! Of course I heard you! But I knew that you didn’t mean it. The light in your eyes told me that much!”

“It did?”

“A woman can say no a million times and not mean it. It’s up to us men to understand, and I understood full well back then what you wanted, so we did it. That’s all there was to it. I might as well not been there. If it hadn’t been me you’d have caught another man in your web and done it with him! It’s what you women do.”

“But I’m fourteen, Joseph, still quite young and I haven’t learned all these tricks. I always thought that ‘No’ meant ‘No’.”

“Well it doesn’t. And you meant ‘yes’. I knew that you did.”

“When I said ‘No’?”

“Of course. Surely you can remember?”

“My folks were away, the house was empty except for us, and you started fumbling with me. And I said ‘no’ more than once. I even tried to run away, Joseph, but you’re stronger than me and you grabbed hold of me really hard. You even bruised me! How didn’t that mean ‘no’?”

“I knew what you were doing,” he sighed, struggling for another argument, “you were playing hard to get like all the pretty girls do. But I knew what you wanted.”

“And now they’re going to stone me to death? Because you thought that ‘no’ means ‘yes’ and that running away is my way of teasing you and playing hard to get? And when I’m dead and my cold body cast away into the desert for the carrion to feed on, you might, just might, get a sound beating if you mention to your dad that it was you who … who ...”

“Who what, Mary?”

“RAPED ME!” she shouted.

“Then so be it,” he sighed, “I’ll miss you if that happens. But it won’t, because I’ve got a plan and enough coin to pay for it.”

“You’ve got a plan, Joseph?”

“I know a wise woman. In a village less than half a day’s walk away, and she knows how to help a girl in trouble like you’re in trouble. She’ll help. She’s done it before.”

“You know?”

He looked suddenly shy and like the little boy he hadn’t been for a good decade. “There was this other lass,” he murmured, “she got into trouble too, and I had enough coin … she was all right afterwards. It was easy-peasy, didn’t hurt her one bit and now she’s living a happy life with another man… Annie she is, you might know her?”

“The sad woman who tries so hard to have babies for her husband to fuss over, but for whom it never happens, month after month?”

“It can turn out like that,” nodded Jospeh, “but not always. That’s what the wise woman told me. Not always. So what do you say?”

“I suppose it’s better than a stoning,” whispered Mary, “when can we go?”

“Now,” he said, “we’ll be home by nightfall. Nobody need know.”

“Right!” she said, determinedly, “We’ll go now!”

And they did. Right there and then they walked the long road to the other village and the wise woman.

“It makes you think,” said Joseph as they went along, “how when you’ve done it and the baby’s no longer there, that everything he would have done with his life, the things he might have said, the words that folks might have listened to, will all go unsaid and unheard… it makes you think, doesn’t it?”

“The trouble with you, Joseph, is you don’t think enough!” she snapped back at him, and they trudged on.

© Peter Rogerson 02.12.17