Read Desired: The Untold Story of Samson and Delilah (Lost Loves of the Bible) for Free Online Page A

during the winter. To my left, along the back wall, was a low table where we took our meals, sitting on our bottoms. My mother had another, smaller table just in front of me, where she often did chores such as stringing fruit to hang from the support beams to dry or sewing a patch onto a tunic. She had good light here from the door, which she liked to prop open whenever the weather held. Her friends knew that when the door was open, she was doing the sort of chore that was always better when good friends provided chatter.
    I decided to tend to the meal table, which needed a good oiling after the drying heat of summer. Mother kept a small crock of olive oil on the table, so all I needed was a rag to rub it in. I rummaged around in the basket on the floor where Mother kept her rags, made from old clothes that were not worth repairing any longer. We never changed tunics, wearing the same one for every season and every chore, so our clothes did not last long. She was devout, however, in supplying us with new scarves quite often, especially before festival seasons.
    I chose a small piece of knobbed linen with pitiful tears running through it. Pouring a thin green streak of olive oil across the tabletop, I knelt down beside the table and set my mind on my work. Astra came over, holding a blanket up for my inspection, as if I needed to see that yet another hole had torn the fabric.
    “Why would he do that?” she whispered.
    “I don’t know. We owe him double now, though. You cracked his head, and Father sold him cheap rugs that won’t last the winter.”
    A little spark of life passed between us, the familiar tweak that made us see the situation from a stranger’s eyes. Astra giggled first. I shook my finger at her before I gave in to my own giggles. My ears heard my father speaking, but my mind was slow to bring his words into focus.
    “We need a goat,” Father told Mother. “And do we have any remaining cheese?”
    I waved my hand at Astra’s face to quiet her. We were having guests for dinner.
    “None. The goats are pregnant.” My mother’s tone was thin and tense. This was the worst possible month to have guests for dinner. Pregnant goats gave no milk. We couldn’t roast a pregnant goat, even if we were desperate, because it would mean giving up two goats. And the harvest was coming in, but it was hardly ready to serve guests. Olives had to be pitted and pickled and pressed; grapes had to be crushed and poured into wineskins; wheat had to be separated from the chaff, ground, and made into bread. All month, we ate raw heads of wheat, raw olives, and grapes. But you would not serve such a meal to strangers.
    Father soothed Mother by stroking her shoulder and then reaching for her hand. He placed the fat bag into her palm and grinned at her.
    “We have money now. Go and buy what you need. Go and buy everything you need. The other families will sell whatever you need. And fill the oil jar, to the top!”
    I had never seen what money could do, and certainly never on my mother’s face. She grew younger in the blink of an eye. She reached to me, wiping the tears away from my cheek. She thought I was crying in relief, and she was moved by my tears, which made her cry.
    Father looked at me, and then back at Mother, with her own tears now, and threw his hands up in exasperation.
    “You’re all crying? I just made you wealthy, and you’re crying.” He groaned. “I’ll be on the roof. Amara, bring me a bowl of grapes and call me when dinner is ready or our guests arrive.”
    He fled from us.
    Mother ticked off her instructions to us, assigning chores and making her shopping list. Astra and I set to work as she left.
    “Mother! Wait!”
    She turned to me, a smile on her face. She delighted in me. Money in her palm made me more delightful too, I could tell.
    “Which neighbors did Father invite for the celebration?”
    I would have loved to have Sirena and her husband as our guests.
    Her eyebrows rose and she gasped.