This is, by all accounts, a first draft. There are days when I think I will rewrite it entirely. This morning is one of them.
But here it is anyway, because maybe a nine-page essay can make up for my seventeen-day absence, and also I want to tell you that now, finally, because of these last two weeks, I remember the last time I was brave. I want you to know that I told my whole story, Mas. I told it with my whole heart.
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ELIZABETH
RHONDEAU
The shortest
answer is doing the thing.
—ERNEST HEMINGWAY
Just
now, not even fifteen minutes ago, I heard a laugh I knew on the staircase. It
was coming up and I was headed down. It's a good laugh, one of the best as far
as I've known, open and wide and willing. It belongs to a boy, a friend; a
person I should have seen and been happy to see, but instead I turned mid-laugh
toe-point on that stair and leapt to catch an elevator before that laugh could
catch me.
I can't remember the last brave thing I did.
Which is not to say that happenstance
conversation—even in a stairwell—ranks high on the list of Acts of Incomparable
Courage, but the fact is that it certainly got me thinking, mostly about lions
because since the time of anything they’ve been the harbingers of heroes, the
way they watch you all lithe and noble-like, completely self-possessed,
confident that the second a summer wind so much as implies a new course they
have only to stand and command it be still for the universe to comply. People
put lions on princes’ shields and kings’ banners, atop monuments to victory,
across library steps, guarding palaces, temples, tombs—and not just in one
country and culture, but most. While the Anglosphere took to tacking the feline
on every piece of heraldry they could shake a shield at, people in Sri Lanka
put it directly to their name, drawing Sinhalese from the Indo-Aryan sinhala, the lion people, people with lion blood, that
little country with big heart. Egyptians worshipped Sekhmet, a warrior goddess
with a lioness head, breath that created the desert, and nicknames that could
kill you before she ever did.
In Venice the lion presides over every cathedral and canal, emblem of the
water- city’s patron Saint Mark who, incidentally, wrote my favorite account of
Christ’s life, a living picture of a living man equal parts energy and
humility, a portrait so striking that you begin to understand how the king of
beasts is often associated with the King of Kings. I imagine Mark was infused
by that same vitality. I imagine Mark would never take the elevator. Neither,
for that matter, would a lion.
Samson killed a lion once, which you would think
would be some sort of epic brave-on-brave ordeal considering the reputation of
both parties but turns out the Man of the Sun more or less walked right up to
the beast and ripped him in two. As far as Bible bravery goes, this is pretty
typical. David’s got his slingshot, Joshua takes trumpets to march around
Jericho, Moses keeps a staff at his side for anything from snake charming to
splitting a sea in two. I am relating all this to my Thursday scripture group,
increasingly panicked about my own inability to actually do anything whatsoever
at all, comparatively, when I reach the real clincher: “And then,” I announce, “there’s
Judith.”
If you do not know the story of Judith, here’s the
quicklist: the Israelites are surrounded on every side by Assyrians who,
daunted by their opponent’s hilly refuge, forgo the instant attack and decide
to cut off the city’s water supply instead. This was pretty smart, seeing as
forty years in the wilderness proved that Israelites certainly have a way with
whining, and it’s only a matter of days before this lot is doing just that. Fed
up with their people—and not immune to dehydration, themselves—the city council
declares they’ll give the Lord five more days to work a miracle or call it
quits.
Judith, a wealthy young widow both beautiful and righteous, sees the problem with that proclamation
pretty much immediately, and tells them so, plus some. “Give the Lord five more days?!” she rallies (and I’m
paraphrasing), “Give?! Who do
you think you are, putting God to the test as if you are gods yourselves? Who
are you kidding, waiting around and threatening highest Heaven? What kind of
faith is that? Good goats, people! Get up and go!”
At which point Judith does exactly that, marching right past those city walls
and into the enemy camp with nothing but one handmaid, the entirety of her
jewelry collection, and an absolute confidence in God.
Within three days Judith has head honcho Holofernes
believing that the siege has caused the Jews to turn away from their God, a
disobedience to merit their destruction, and that she’s there to help any way
she can, starting with prayer. By the fourth day this deal is working out
nicely enough that Judith’s invited to a banquet at Holofernes’ tent, where the
ensuing revelry causes Holofernes to drink (and this one’s verbatim) “much more
than he had ever drunk in any one day since he was born.” His servants,
calculating the sum of a pretty woman plus their merry major general, leave the
two alone. Judith, recognizing the miracle because she herself ensured it,
takes a sword and then takes Holofernes’ head with two strokes to his
dead-drunk neck. She and her handmaid carry their prize home in a grain bag and
the next morning the Assyrians awake to an Israelite army at their door with
Holofernes’ head on a stick.
Never mind that the story is likely untrue; most
people call it apocryphal though the Catholics deem it deuterocanonical, and
there’s enough anachronism within the first verse of the first chapter to say
it’s steampunk. Still, you can’t beat that kind of brave, and with my own
barley basket dependably devoid of the beheaded, I begin to wonder at what
point I could ever identify with it. Lucas Cranach the Elder painted Judith
like a varsity softball player, eyebrows raised and smirking, her sword over
one shoulder like nothing doing. If ever I were to sit for a Bavarian
portraitist, I imagine it would be just that. Sitting.
_________________________
Of course, there is a line between self-deprecating
and downright obnoxious, and before I cross it I mean to say that I recognize
my irrational tendency toward despair when it comes to bravery. Or perhaps it
is a certain perception of bravery, this perception of bravery—the one with blood and swords and loud speeches
to large crowds. This is, simply put, not my style; and while I try to
reconcile the quiet confidence I feel at my core, the noise from the Judith
camp is overwhelming.
I find refuge in Esther. At first, this is only
because I am too distracted by her King Ahasuerus’ palace, the glitter and
grace of the arabesques I imagine linking lines from floor to ceiling in a
mosaic of marbles that catch the light of a desert sun but keep the heat at
bay. I am enamored of the garden parties in gilded courtyards, the promise of
provinces from India to Ethiopia. But it is not long before the fickle king
falls fool to his advisors, Vashti’s out the door, and I watch Esther arrive to
vie for her place.
She is so small and still so sparkling. Some say
she could only have been barely fourteen when she entered the pageant at the
citadel, but even swallowed up in the splendor of Shushan she stands out.
Assigned to the care of head eunuch Hegai, she learns quickly and steps
carefully, proving a personality beyond her arresting beauty that wins the
favor of her fellow beauty contestants almost instantaneously; she walks with
friends throughout the day and every afternoon meets Mordecai at the gate to
reassure him all is well. In the morning she begins again, learning perfumes
and cosmetics, fastening bracelets at her wrist and linen around her waist,
preparing for the possibility of a crown upon her head.
Bravery, before it became a term indicative of the
splendid and valiant from the Middle French or the brave and bold from the
Italian, was a word of adornment, the collective noun for fine clothing.
It was something you owned to keep at the ready. It was something you put on,
what you wore to face your finest moment.
_________________________
I have taken to wondering how Esther ever got into
this situation to begin with. At what point did uncle Mordecai come home
weary-eyed and reticent to tell his orphaned cousin that he had answered the
king's quest for a queen, that he had offered her up to a task that would
require she be stripped of everything she'd known and become before, that to
succeed he must forbid her mention any family, any heritage in their God? When
did the dark-eyed Hadassah understand that she would lose even her name, that
from this moment on she was to assume every appearance of a Persian princess?
She is sitting at the table, her shoulders straight. He is telling her quietly,
eyes on the grain of the wood under his trembling hand. They are not eating,
only listening, each waiting for the other to find the right words for the
wrong situation. Was Mordecai the one to suggest Esther? He says it as a prayer, hoping it is a promise of
what she will become. Or did she choose her new name, offering it in peace,
assuring her uncle that she has what it will take to triumph. Esther, she says. Star.
Hadassah. Hebrew for myrtle, the white flower sacred to dreams and weddings, a
five-petaled bud that opens quietly into a small floret before maturing into
blossoms like supernovae.
In Jewish Liturgy myrtle is one of the four sacred plants of Sukkot, the Feast
of Tabernacles celebrating the harvest. Alongside willow branches, a palm
frond, and the fruit of a citron tree, the myrtle flower aids in allusion to
the human body—by binding all four together, the mitzvah implies an entire being dedicated to the service
of God. The long lean palm stands in as the spine, with the willow forming
words for a mouth and the sweet-sour citron symbolizing the heart. Hadass is the eye. Vision.
Many artists paint Esther in full swoon at
Ahasuerus’ feet, a tableau specific to the Septuagint.
It is gratifying to note the itch that flames into indignation when I see
Esther in this setting. Regardless of the edition's veracity, I am bothered
that they would choose this of all moments to capture the story’s spirit; it is
not fair, it is not my Queen Esther. What about her calm acceptance of
Mordecai’s proposition? What about the careful diplomacy of her speech before
the king? I prefer the Esther painted by Edwin Long. In the portrait, she is
sitting. Two servants work about her, holding fine linen and jewels to her
gilded gown. The palace is painted just as you imagine it should be; intricate,
ornate, unparalleled luxury—but what eclipses this all is her eyes. Esther
watches you, unmoved, and in her unblinking stare you sense not only a deep
sadness and pervading fear but a resoluteness that defies them both. You know
that Esther will tell the king. She will tell him everything.
To be concise, encyclopedias redirect inquiries for
bravery to courage, where under etymology there follows a long list of its
original French. In earliest incarnations the word stayed true to its Latin
root and denoted the heart or innermost feelings as a source of fortitude.
Jumping the Channel, the Middle English movement used the word to replace their
original ellen, meaning
strength, and become a more all-encompassing term for “what is in one’s mind or
thoughts.” A friend suggests that perhaps today the word is a combination of
the two, that to have courage is to tell your whole story with your whole
heart.
_________________________
It is time we talk about fear, as if we haven't
been tiptoeing around it all along, afraid to mention we're afraid. Because
that's the trick, isn't it? We are all scared of something or other and it's
going to catch up with us eventually. When it does, we have two choices. The
first is to fall, incapacitated, i.e. take the elevator and leave things be.
This is fine; in most situations—barring birth, death, love, and taxes—the
impact is negligible. You’ll do it tomorrow; they’ll want a different style
anyway; he never even knew I was on the stairs in the first place. You alone
will hurt.
But you could also stand and face it. You could
calculate every weakness and what if and still choose to fight, and you would learn something. You would
learn that it takes recognition of your vulnerability in order to be strong,
that in admitting every possible failure you make room for immeasurable growth
and an inevitable joy.
It makes sense. The boy sprinting into the street
to save the child toddling into traffic isn’t at that moment brimming with any
sense of bravery. He’s compelled by a total terror, a fear of loss, death.
It’s only after the fact that he’d call it courageous, and even then there’s a
certain humility inherent to the kind of ordeal that would make him refrain.
There is a sacredness to those moments where you recognize you are whole only
because you are broken.
Once, at a safari reserve in the mountain climes of
Java, I sat with a mama leopard over my lap. A crowd had gathered even before I
walked into the cage and their whispers crescendoed as the giant cat first
rubbed her jaw into my shoulder blade and then took one long, leathery lick of
her tongue up my forearm. “So brave!” they whispered. “So brave! So brave!”
they echoed—but instead of bravery I felt only beauty, my heart hammering not
heroically so much as happily. I sat with the warm weight of the animal’s
stomach against mine, watching the way she watched through one eye half-open
her two toddlers stumble toward us. She batted lazily at my bangle bracelets
and I scratched the hollow behind her ear and a while later I walked out past
the reverenced crowd to find my friends. “You are crazy!” they said. “You are
so brave!” they said. “But I wasn’t scared,” I explained, confused.
It’s right there in the straight-up right-now
dictionary definition: Brave. Verb. To encounter with courage and fortitude,
to defy; to overcome one’s initial fear(s). There is no bravery without a little trembling.
_________________________
We all know how Esther ends because it has become
her beginning: Queen Esther, Preserver of Her People. Haman’s hanged,
Mordecai’s promoted, and Esther stands at Ahasuerus’ right hand in all her
bravery, in and out.
Secretly, I want to say that Esther wins this
battle hands down. That compared to Judith's parlor tricks she is the true
paragon of intrepidity, that her reserve is the real role model for heroine
how-to. But there are merits to both ends of their bravery, and I suppose the
point is that they did what they could—and, maybe more importantly, they did
what the other could not. It is not hard to imagine the consequences of a
Judith running rampant in Ahasuerus' court, or an Esther faced with Holoferne's
sword. In the end, it is all a matter of action; to see, to fear, to defy, to
do. And even then it’s not how you do it, but that you did.
_________________________
A few months after the leopard, while living on the
opposite side of that same Indonesian island, I stopped by a friend’s house for
the afternoon. She was a week home from the hospital with a new baby girl and
the entire family met me at the door in a clamoring chorus of questions, the
most immediate of which rang out above the rest: “Are you brave?” they asked. “Are
you brave? Are you brave?” And I didn’t even have the half-second to wonder “Brave
what?” before suddenly yes, I guess I am brave because there I was sitting
cross-legged on the dirt floor with a six-day-old life in my arms.
I am not brave. It just happened so fast and so it
happened, you know, and around me the conversation continued, and I suppose I
must have contributed, laughed along; but to this day I remember only the
weight of this sleeping child swaddled around my stomach, her belly swelling
against mine, and the sublime race of my blood as it contemplated the myriad
implications of this miniature human. I am thinking about what am I doing here
and who trusted me or anyone with a breathing body and think about if this were
a real life from my own and what happens when that does happen, and how does anybody
get anything done for fear of failing and am I brave? And this, this life, a
real little life, are you brave? Are you brave, Novidewi? I whispered. She blinked at the sound of her name.
New Goddess. Who knoweth
whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?
