three times around my hands.
Barely hands now, though.
Just bits of muscle, sinew, bone.
If I should rip the bandage with my teeth,
yank it from my flesh,
what’s left would
shrivel to nothing
on the floor.
My brothers turn their eyes away
the moment we walk in.
The house is deadly quiet
without Tuzia’s constant songs.
There’s only one thing on my mind.
It’s not the searing pain
through every joint
and muscle
in my hands.
Or when I cried out
in the courtroom
like a child.
It’s true,
it’s true,
it’s true!
It’s not my father’s
anguished howl
upon the sound
of crunching bones.
Or even when I found
the breath
the guts
to hold my teacher’s gaze
and say before the torture
stole my voice:
This is the ring you give me.
These are your promises.
That’s all done.
The only thing that matters now:
Can I still paint?
92.
Nineteen bones
in the human hand,
each more delicate
than the next.
No way to say now
how many jagged splinters
are held together only
by my skin.
Twelve steps
up to the studio,
each one steeper
than the last.
No way to say
if I will reach the summit
but I will not do so
with my father’s help.
One girl who climbs alone.
Head spins
stomach roils
skin crawls
as I reach the top.
I make it to my stool
but I can only clamp
a brush between both hands,
a rodent desperately clinging
to a bit of trash.
Ignoring searing pain,
I lean forward
with the tightest grip I can,
determined more than ever
to make my mark.
My arms tremble
from the effort
but somehow, some way,
I get the brush
into the nearest pot of paint.
I grip again,
fight the fire
of someone ripping
off my fingers
one by one.
I persist,
Judith slicing through a neck,
and wrench my arms
toward canvas.
Before I reach my goal,
the paintbrush drops.
The rage simmers.
If I could,
I’d grab a pot of turpentine
to throw across the room.
But even that I cannot do.
Instead I crouch,
retrieve the brush
in rodent claws again.
I jam it toward the canvas,
clumsy as a toddler.
I call it progress.
But when it drops
a third time,
I drop too.
What is the point?
Then Judith’s there
beside me on my knees.
That’s my girl.
They crushed my hands.
Only your hands.
My hands are my life.
I need them to—
You’ll paint again.
She doesn’t understand.
There’s no telling.
I might have given up my only gift,
and all for what?
The desperate hope
that someone might believe me?
Listen to me, Artemisia.
Your hands are not your life.
Your gift does not flow
from these bones and tendons.
They could slice off your hands
and you would still
find a way to paint.
You may have to let the bones
grow back together,
to let the wounds close.
But the body is its own
amazing piece of art.
It will heal, in time.
Broken
A story only shows one moment in time. A few moments. Susanna is threatened, Susanna is accused, Susanna is vindicated.
But push further. Yes, Susanna’s story is upheld as the truth. Few women can say that. And Susanna does not bear the wounds she might if things had gone another way. But when she emerges from Daniel’s chamber, she fully understands things she didn’t before. She will never be the same again.
All Rebecca sees, though, is her sister unbound, walking free. The elder sister shrieks her relief, drops to the floor.
(My boys are dear, but, oh, I wish for you a sister, love.)
Susanna has had enough drama for one day. She pulls her sister up. “Please, let’s go home. He has ruled in my favor.”
Rebecca sobs, forces her sister to look her in the eyes. “You do not brush me off this time. You hear me, Susanna. In the same situation, two men upon me, I would have succumbed. Yet you—”
Susanna does not want to be a hero. She only told the truth. Another woman might have made another choice. Another would have had no choice at all.
“You would have done whatever you had to do to survive the moment. And you would have received no judgment from me either way, do you understand?”
Rebecca presses a tearstained cheek to her sister’s weary shoulder. “It’s over,” she murmurs.
But people wait outside, people who hours before were prepared to hurl stones at Susanna’s head, the families of two men who will be put to death tomorrow. This is far from over.
Susanna gives her sister a task she can seize upon. “Am I presentable?” she asks.
Rebecca smooths her sister’s hair. “We’ll need to be up early for the stoning,” she says as she fusses at a smudge of dirt on Susanna’s sleeve.
Susanna shakes her off. “I’m not going.”
Rebecca’s face betrays more shock than when the thugs arrived to haul her sister away to be stoned. “Of course you’re going. Those two lechers will be stoned because of what you did! You have to—”
“They’ll be stoned because of what they did.”
(This is so important, love. They’ll be stoned because of what they did.)
But Susanna knows she will spend the rest of her life reliving this, explaining this.
“I’m going,” huffs Rebecca, smoothing her own hair. “I’m going to watch them die and know you’re safe.”
But Susanna isn’t safe. She is one willow tree away from being smashed in the head with rocks.
A crowd of people who had known Susanna since she was a little girl would have stood by and watched—cheered even—as they fastened a sack over her head. Not so tight she’d suffocate. Just tight enough she wouldn’t see what was coming.
The crowd would have started with pebbles. The kind nasty children throw at birds. When they graduated to stones, the size of a fist or so, it would start to hurt. Crashing blows to the head, a broken nose, perhaps.
Finally a chosen one would pick a rock. Perhaps the victim of her heinous crime—those two elders
so wronged when she would not succumb to their demands. They would each heave a rock the size of her very head and hurl it at her, shaking inside her sack, bracing every moment for the worst.
And then the worst would come.
The crowd would walk away, having had its entertainment, her broken skull left as one of so many rocks in a pile.
93.
Fresh blood weeps
through bandages
like tears I cannot shed.
The cloth is gray
and tattered at the edges,
the first blood shed
encrusted black.
Mother would have changed
these cloths by now
but Father’s been wrapped up
in trying to convince the world
we’re still worth hiring.
Once upon a time
I would have called on Tuzia.
(If buyers think
my work is worth nothing,
at least I know my honor’s
worth a scudi, maybe two.)
And so, alone,
I unravel bandages
stuck with blood and grime.
It works at first;
the soiled layers
pile on my lap.
I might imagine
this the monthly detritus
of womanhood.
Except for the searing pain,
injustice,
rage,
the memory of Tino’s sneer
as bones were crushed
to prove what my word could not.
And so I’m back to bloody cloths
again, and just like every time before,
they’re mine to bear
because I am a woman.
A woman yes,
but not alone.
Susanna’s pure white skirts
swish gently round her legs
as she glides up and sets
a bowl of water at my side.
She kneels and reaches
out her hands
for mine, the shredded
parts of me made plain.
Part of me thinks the moment
her pure white hands
touch my demolished ones
she’ll float away,
a feather on a breeze.
That doesn’t happen.
I barely feel her fingers
as she guides mine
toward the bowl.
I gasp at water
on my weeping wounds.
To wash the filth away,
the crusted blood and memory,
is insurmountable.
Susanna soldiers on
soothes
strokes
sings a song
I can’t make out.
I stare into the murky water
until my tears obscure the view.
Maternal kindness
is a razor-sharp reminder
of what—of who—I do not have
to help me carry this weight.
I weep
and weep
and weep
enough to clean away the grime.
Next thing I know
Susanna’s wrapping up my hands.
Fresh bandages
soon to be encrusted
by the world.
Once bound,
Susanna takes my hands
in hers.
They will heal.
Breathe
When last we left Bethulia, two women waited to see if their kinsfolk would believe they had accomplished the impossible. They had completed what they set out to do. But push further, remember?
Life goes on in Bethulia. Life that would have ended under Assyrian swords if Judith and Abra hadn’t done what women do: risked everything.
On the main road, a child sprawls in the dirt, another child looms over him. The triumphant victor hoists a sword skyward, completely unaware that if his sword were not an olive branch, he’d never have the strength to lift it.
“Your head is mine!” he bellows. The children gathered around all hoot until one among them notices they’re not alone.
Grown people spoil every game, and the children scatter at the sight of the women returning home from the market, basket in hand. Nervous giggles, whispers. Even the victor drops his sword and runs. The vanquished child scrambles up from the dirt, the last to realize a genuine threat is upon him.
“It’s all right,” Judith starts to say, but the child falls in his panic to escape. Judith lunges forward to help, but Abra holds her back, her hand on Judith’s arm a constant reminder that she’s there. She’s never left.
The captain’s army scattered too, so many frightened children at the discovery their leader was now without a head. Without Holofernes, the once-mighty Assyrian army was nothing more than flailing limbs without a brain to govern them. Judith had been correct when she told her young love, We only need to reach their leader. She takes no pleasure in that now.
(Being in the right is not always the solace you might expect.)
Soon, every person Judith passes on the street has heard the story that made its way through the hills to Judith’s village, how all of Israel was saved by an unknown, fearsome warrior. The villagers know Judith is the warrior. They saw the head, her bloodstained hands. The ones who slumbered peacefully that night were told of the head, her bloodstained hands, made more monstrous in the retelling. No one ever looked at her the same.
They never will.
Judith can survive the whispered glances now that the true threat is scattered on the wind. So why then does she bolt upright each night just after drifting off to sleep, sheets drenched with fear, panic rising, certain she feels hot blood on her hands, her face, her breasts?
Why does she struggle for breath, claw at her nightclothes, fight the urge to flee into the night?
When finally exhaustion overtakes her, then Abra screams, flings out an arm, strikes Judith in the bed they share. Or else she weeps throughout the night, a lullaby drowned in a funeral dirge.
They didn’t share a bed before. But now, the only chance both women have to make it through each night lies in the other’s protection. When panic grips one executioner, the other holds her tight and wills her sister back to here and now. To breathe, to stay, to live.
94.
I breathe.
I stay.
I try to live.
The wounds have healed enough
to peel away the bandages,
stretch out my fingers,
hold a brush.
But cramps seize
my hands
after minutes
at the easel.
I set down the brush,
massage the ache,
and do my best
to ignore the racing of my heart
when boots ascend the stairs.
It isn’t Tino,
incarcerated while we await
the judge’s ruling.
respond as though
he is the one stomping
up the stairs.
Heart, hands, throat,
terror rising.
Father winces at the sight
of me breathing deeply,
digging nails into my thighs
to trick my brain.
When I am almost sure my heart
will not leap from my chest,
I reach for the brush.
My father is now stuck
with me forever.
I must find a way
to prove useful.
But I can’t go on
when he speaks:
The verdict is in.
If it were good news
he would not delay.
Tell me.
Your innocence
has been proclaimed.
Each instant
preserved on canvas
requires days and weeks and months and even years
to tell the truth.
If I should live a thousand lifetimes
I would not have sufficient days
to render my shock in its entirety.
After all I went through,
is it possible I was believed?
The family honor
has been restored.
But there’s more,
a hesitancy in his eyes.
And what of Signor Tassi?
The pause is too long
before he says,
Five years banishment from Rome.
I wait for a just answer
to everything he took.
If I am innocent,
then he is guilty.
But Father’s face
says there is no more.
After seven months of trial
destroying my honor,
my prospects,
my purity,
my hands,
Tino is free to ravage another girl
so long as she’s outside Rome.
At least I will not see him, but—
It’s possible he’ll
never leave the city.
I blink at him
till comprehension dawns.
The Medici.
With their power and wealth
and lust for art,
the richest benefactors in the city
will seize this chance to flaunt
how far they fly above the law.
My father nods.
They’ll harbor him
inside their villa.
And yet, my dear,
it is a victory.
A victory!
It’s not even a decent failure.
My hands were crushed
and why?
Not even for the knowledge
that I’ll never see the man again.
He may be able to live in Rome,
but he won’t be able to work.
No one will be able to hire him.
Do you think that’s
what matters to me?
It’s what matters to him.
Five years!
I do not wish to weep
in front of Father.
To give him
cause to view me
as anything but equal.
But tears slip down