I Am Not an Adulteress Anymore

Chapter 15

Later in the Afternoon:

He did go, although he left me reeling and unsatisfied, my body burning with a strange longing I had never known existed. And all that from just one kiss. I shake myself free of the thoughts, or at least attempt to, and tiptoe to Mother's chambers. She is snoring loudly, so I gather a few belongings and head out of the house and down the crowded streets toward the bathhouse. I cannot imagine what it will feel like to wash the layers of caked-on dirt from my skin.

But halfway there, after a donkey cart has nearly plastered me against a wall, I feel a hand on my arm.

I turn around fast and suddenly I am looking into the eyes of none other but Eli.

My face goes red: Eli.

I am catapulted back six years. It had begun when I was twelve and he was twenty, the son of one of the most prominent Pharisees, and Father much lower in the pecking order.

It had been a terrible feeling, being under his watch, and I suspect that my father had felt it too.

For when his father came to mine when I was 13, Father had rejected the offer. I had been too young.

But Father rejected him again when I turned 14, 15, and then again on my 16th birthday.

A few days later, Father had died while reading the morning prayers aloud. Some said it was a curse for refusing Eli's father so long, but even so, Mother carried on in Father's way. Perhaps she had wanted to honor him in his death, or perhaps she simply wanted to spite the men who so quickly had turned on her and her late husband.

Not long after, Ephraim had appeared.

I shiver now, looking into Eli's face. It is not that he is ugly, for he is not. In fact, I have seen many other women looking at him, and I see by his fine-linen prayer shall, that he is now married. But none of that could erase my discomfort around him.

For when he looks at me, as if he is undressing me layer by layer as if he is stripping me bare, and today is no different.

"Hanna," he says, pulling on my arm so I am standing close to him in the midst of the thronging crowds. "You are back."

And with that, I pull away from him and look down. "To visit my Mother," I say. "I must go. Please greet your father for me, and your new wife."

And I pull away from him and wedge myself between two fighting women, sending a whole band of doves upward into the sky as I squeeze my way forward.

But all the way down the crowded street, I feel Eli's eyes on me, and I have a sinking feeling that he will not let me go so easily, eve