Until She Finds Him

Mary puts aside the largest, softest piece of bread for Jesus and tells herself he will come when he smells the food.

The travelers are settling for the night. Families have been gathering and separating all along the road from Jerusalem, children attaching themselves to whichever adult has something interesting to say or something left to eat. Now smoke drifts across the place where Mary kneels, bringing the sharp smell of burning twigs and the sweeter scent of onions. Tamar, the youngest, sleeps against a bundle, her mouth open. Mary covers her feet before reaching for another bowl.

“James, tell your brother we are eating.”

James has already torn his bread. He looks toward the men unloading the last animal.

“Which brother?”

“The one who is not here.”

He counts, grins, and gets up when she points with the bread knife.

She has seen so little of Jesus today. At twelve, he can walk the whole distance without needing her. He has probably found someone willing to discuss what they heard at the feast. Joseph was much the same in Jerusalem, coming back with a head full of things to tell her when all she wanted to know was whether he had remembered the oil.

She pours water into a cup. It tastes of the skin and is warm enough to disappoint her. She leaves the rest for Jesus.

James returns alone.

“He is not with Joses.”

“Then ask your father,” Mary says.

“I did.”

Mary looks up sharply and sees Joseph coming toward them. She knows his walk, the slight outward turn of one foot, the way he makes room for people before they notice they need it. He steps around a little boy rolling a stone.

“Is he with your cousins?”

“I thought he was with you,” Joseph says.

Mary rises, still holding the cup.

“He was walking with the men.” Her voice has risen.

“Earlier, perhaps. I have not seen him.”

“Since when?”

Joseph looks toward the children, and she dislikes that he has to think. She searches her own memory. Jesus beside a doorway. Jesus holding a bundle. But was that this morning, or yesterday, when everyone was preparing to leave? She has spent a whole day believing she knows where he is.

“We will ask,” Joseph says.

Mary begins with the nearest families, calling his name with the ordinary sharpness of a mother fetching a child who has forgotten supper. A woman says she saw him with the boys. Which boys? She cannot remember. Another is certain he passed her on the road, until Joseph asks whether she means today or the journey into Jerusalem.

Mary keeps smiling because they are trying to help. The smile begins to hurt her face.

By the last of the cooking fires, she is describing him. Twelve years old. Dark hair that will not lie down at the back. A faded tunic, mended near the hem. She touches her own side to show where, as though that small repair might distinguish him among all the boys whose mothers keep making their clothes last.

A child points toward the animals.

“There was someone over there.”

Mary turns so quickly that her cloak snags on a basket. She wrenches it free. Beyond the fires, a boy crouches beside a pack. For an instant she knows him: the curve of his back, the fall of his hair, the tiresome, beloved way he becomes absorbed in something while everyone waits.

“Jesus.”

He turns.

She has never seen his face before.

The boy stands uncertainly. Mary puts a hand over her mouth, shakes her head, and walks back so carefully that she seems to be carrying something that will spill if she moves too quickly.

Joseph meets her halfway. “No one?”

“He would come to eat.”

“Yes.”

“He knows where we stop. He would ask.”

Joseph gently takes her elbow. “Then we find out where he is.”

She wants him to say that Jesus is safe. Instead, he asks their kinswoman Salome to gather the children while they search the nearby groups. Mary leaves the bowls where they are. She cannot sit beside his untouched bread while someone else looks for him.