FICTION
The Healing of the Bleeding Woman
The worst part was the smell. Of course, the pain was bad as well, but the smell was how people could tell I was unclean. My illness started when I was fourteen, one year after my first blood flow. There might have been signs it was coming—my monthly flows were always unpredictable—but my condition truly announced itself while I was helping my imma and sisters prepare dinner one night.
I felt a trickle down my thighs, and immediately took my hands off the bread I’d been preparing, and stepped back.
“Danita?” one of my sisters said. “Are you well?”
Imma turned to look at me, then noticed the small but growing red stain on my robe. She glanced at the bread, and sighed. According to the law, I would be unclean for at least seven days, while my blood flow lasted. The bread would have to be thrown out, and there was no time to replace it before Abba came home.
“I’m sorry, Imma,” I muttered. “I’ll get rid of it.”
“Do it quickly,” Imma said. “Then change out of that robe and find someplace to sit, out of the way.”
I obeyed, settling on a straw mat on the other side of the room. Anything I sat or lay on during my flow would become unclean as well, so I had to be mindful during that time. Anyone who sat or lay where I had would be made unclean until evening.
When Abba came home that evening and saw me sitting alone in the corner, he smiled and brought over a plate of raisin cakes.
“There will be a pair of turtle doves waiting for you when you’re done,” he said, before joining Imma and my sisters at the table.
If my blood flow lasted longer than a week, as it often seemed to, I would have to buy either two pigeons or two turtle doves to sacrifice another seven days after its end. I would not be permitted to attend synagogue or enter Adonai’s presence until then.
***
Two weeks passed, and my blood flow continued. I ruined two more robes and a set of linens that had to be replaced, and I had such severe cramps it felt as if my entrails were being ground on a mortar stone.
Imma gave me a musty smelling bag of perfume.
“I’m sure your blood flow will end soon,” she told me. “Longer flows are sometimes common in girls your age, but for now, I thought you could wear this on a cord around your neck to … well … hide the smell.”
I tried not to wrinkle my nose. “Thank you, Imma.”
She nodded. There was a crease between her brows that seemed to get deeper the longer I bled.
I started hearing her and Abba whispering together at night when they thought I was asleep. I lay on the pallet Imma made me—in a separate room from my sisters, of course—straining to hear what they were saying, but I could only make out my name, nothing more. The last time I heard my parents whispering like that was before my oldest sister’s betrothal, but I doubted they were discussing potential marriage arrangements for me.
When I received my first blood flow, the year prior, Imma told me that I had become a woman, fit to marry and bear children. But no man could lie with his wife during her monthly time without becoming unclean himself, and I certainly couldn’t bear children in my current state.
I finally learned what my parents were actually talking about a few weeks later when I continued to bleed. Abba took me aside one morning before he left for synagogue. It was the first conversation we’d had alone in over a month.
“Now, tell me the truth, Danita,” he said. “Have you committed some sin you’re afraid to tell your imma and me about? I swear to you, we will not be angry if you have, but we must know if we are to help you.”
“No, Abba,” I said.
A similar thought had already occurred to me. Surely I’d done something to greatly displease Adonai for Him to cast me out of His presence for so long, but I could not think what. And He wouldn’t tell me Himself, no matter how much I prayed.
“Well, I’ll make a sin offering on your behalf,” Abba said. “Just in case.”
He reached out to pat my hand but stopped himself.
Abba’s offering must not have worked, because I bled through another month. Then Imma took me to my physician appointment.
The physician was young, with sparkling dark eyes and curly brown hair. A friend of the family had recommended him, saying he’d been educated in the Greek’s medicine, like many of the best physicians. I found him quite pleasing—handsome, even—until he started asking me questions about my blood flow. When did it begin? How heavy was it? What was the pain like? I stammered through each one and wished Adonai would command the earth to open up and swallow me. Meanwhile, Imma’s eyes slowly slid down to look at the floor. Not even Abba knew such personal details.
“Danita,” he said, once the examination was finally over. “I believe I know what’s happened to you. You see, a woman’s temperament—her body’s natural state—should be cool and moist, but yours has somehow grown too wet. What we must do is remove the excess moisture.”
I envisioned wringing out a soaked sponge.
“Spend as much time as you can sunbathing. Try to eat only thin, warm food, such as broth and gruel, and if you see no improvement within a week’s time, return to me for bloodletting.”
I wasn’t sure how making me bleed more was supposed to help me, but I returned to him the next week, just as he said, sunburnt and starved for solid food. I was so weakened after the bloodletting that Imma had to support me on the walk home. I couldn’t remember the last time she’d touched me—that anyone had touched me gently—and I resisted the urge to rest my head on her shoulder as she half-carried me through the streets.
The next physician she took me to was an older man, with gray streaks in his beard, and he was horrified to learn that I’d been bled. He said such treatment went against all medical wisdom.
“It is very lucky that you’ve come to me now,” he said. “Another bloodletting could have drained the life out of you.”
He did like my last physician’s idea of sunbathing and eating warm food though, and advised me to continue doing both. For his treatment, I was to lie as still as possible in a cool dark room with my feet elevated and my arms and legs bound tight to my sides, “to compress the blood flow,” while Imma and my sisters laid sea sponges soaked in vinegar on my face and limbs.
We did as he ordered, and I could barely feel my arms or legs after a few hours. Imma helped me stand once we were done, and the first thing we saw, once I was up, was a dark red stain on the back of my robe.
“To think there will be no dinner tonight because we’ve made ourselves unclean for nothing,” Imma mumbled.
I wasn’t sure if she knew I could hear her or not.
I saw several more physicians over the next few years. Some prescribed potions made from herbs and grains. One tasted as though it contained tree dust, which, I later learned, was because it did. Nothing helped though. There were some times when I thought my flow even increased after their treatments.
Imma stopped going with me to my visits, after a point. It was impossible to keep my illness a secret from the neighbors, and I think it embarrassed her, walking through their whispers and stares every few weeks.
Some of the neighborhood children began a game where they’d walk in my footsteps and see who could get the closest to me without touching me. Most of the time, I pretended I didn’t notice them, but there was one day when I heard a boy snickering just behind my shoulder.
I turned around and slapped him across the mouth, as hard as I could. For a moment we just stood there, him staring at me and me staring at my hand; then he screamed. From the sound of it, you would have thought I’d tried to gouge out his eye. Another boy a few years older than him—his brother, I assumed—ran out of his house, saw us together, and turned crimson. He ran up to me and struck me full in the face. I hit the ground before I even felt the pain. Or the fresh blood trickling down my chin.
“You are a wicked, sinful woman!” he screamed, standing over me. “You should not even be allowed to live among us, spreading your filth!”
No one stepped forward to argue with him.
Shortly after this incident, my parents used part of my dowry to buy a separate house for me. I couldn’t resent them for it; it was difficult, living in the same house as someone who could spread her impurity to you with one careless touch, or by sitting on the wrong chair or cushion. Besides, I knew my dowry would never be good for anything else.
My new house was small, but it was on the outskirts of town, away from many people. If I stood at one of the windows though, I could see travelers coming in and out of town. My sisters came by to visit me sometimes too, of course, and they usually brought their children, for they were all married by then. They’d stand outside my doorstep, holding their children as they tried to wriggle out of their arms. I wondered what it would be like to get to hold them too, or better yet, to hold a child of my own. To feel life grow inside of me, instead of the pain of sickness.
Sometimes I’d hear doves or pigeons cooing in the trees in my yard and think about the birds at the altar, whose blood could make me clean. I had stopped speaking to Adonai.
***
Abba died a few years after I moved out of his house. Imma came to me after with the rest of my dowry, and the little inheritance he could afford to give me.
“I’m sorry I can’t give you more,” Imma said. “But, well, the physician appointments are expensive enough, and with the added cost of your house—”
“It’s alright, Imma,” I said. “I understand.”
And I did understand. She was buying her way out of my life, out of my problems. I clutched the little purse she gave me, as a beggar clutched a loaf of bread.
I increased my appointments after that until they were almost every other day. I no longer believed any physician could heal me, and kept seeing them more from habit by then, so I could still feel like I was doing something to help myself. Besides, I rarely had anything else to see or do.
When both my dowry and inheritance started to run low, I took to begging outside my house. I began to take more notice of the people who came in and out of the town, catching snippets of their conversations. It was almost like having visitors. That was how I started to hear stories about a man from Nazareth. A holy man, apparently. Someone, people said, who could be the Messiah.
At first, I barely paid attention to these rumors. Many men had claimed to be the Messiah before, and they always turned out to be no holier than I was. But then the stories became strange. It was said he commanded a crippled man to stand up and walk and drove a legion of demons out of another, with only a few words. That he had the power to forgive sins. That he was on his way towards my town.
I found myself thinking that if he could command these other ailments to leave people, how difficult would it be for him to order my illness away? It was silly. I had no proof any of the stories about him were true. Trusting in rumors I never would have listened to in normal circumstances was foolish. But I had nothing left to try.
Since this man—Jesus was his name—was a traveler, I assumed he and his followers would have to come through the town’s market for supplies during his visit. Perhaps I could run into him there. I spent whole days sitting in corners and under stairways, where I could watch for him without being seen.
“Yahweh,” I prayed, using Adonai’s sacred name. “Please let me find him. Please, have mercy on me, and let me have this chance to be healed.”
It felt awkward to pray again, after not doing it for so long, like trying to converse with a friend I hadn’t seen in years, but I was too afraid of missing Jesus not to try to ask Adonai for help. I realized how purposeless I’d been the last twelve years, going to physicians and trying new treatments I knew wouldn’t help me. I’d been as listless as a leaf that falls in a stream, flaking to pieces as it floats from one current to the next, still believing the next one might push it towards the shore. But rising each day, taking my vigil, and watching for Jesus and his followers, wasn’t just something to do to pass the time.
I began to think of my healing as less of a possibility and more of a matter of time. Perhaps this was what hope felt like? No, not hope. Assurance.
On the day he finally came, I would have known Jesus even if I hadn’t spent weeks watching for him. Not so much because of his appearance; actually, he wasn’t really much to look at. His robes were dingy and faded from travel, and his beard needed trimming. It wasn’t at all how I pictured the Messiah, but I knew him because of the large crowd that was gathered around him.
So many people surrounded him and were focused on him that, for the first time in years, no one stared at me or tried to avoid me.
I jumped up from the corner I sat in and began to yell as loud as I could: “Jesus! Stop, please! I need to speak to you! Wait!”
But the crowd swallowed my voice. He didn’t so much as turn to look at me. I wouldn’t be able to elbow my way towards him with so many people around; as it was, I could barely see the top of his head.
“What if,” I thought, “he did hear me, but he doesn’t want to acknowledge me because of my uncleanness, like everybody else.”
The thought made my stomach churn.
I couldn’t miss my opportunity to be healed. I couldn’t. But perhaps Jesus didn’t need to see or speak to me at all to hear me. If he truly were a holy man, like people said, just touching him would be enough to heal me, even if it were only the edge of his garments.
I couldn’t push through the crowd standing up, but if I got down on my hands and knees, I could crawl through it. The crowd was so thick that nobody reacted as I crawled over people’s feet and weaved between their legs—for all they knew, the person next to them could have just stepped on their foot—but I did have to be careful not to trip anyone.
Someone stepped on my right hand, and I cried out as I felt my fingers pop. Pain sliced through my hand and down my wrist. I pulled my hand back and looked at it; my fingers were red and bent at an odd angle. My stomach lurched. I couldn’t stop moving though; Jesus was still walking away.
I balled my hand into a fist and tried not to look down at it and kept my weight on my elbow. I hadn’t lost sight of Jesus. I could see the edge of his robe swaying as he walked. My fingers still throbbed, and I kept losing my balance and falling. I dragged myself forward and reached for his garment. I was nearly there.
My arm strained as I stretched it as far as I could. I only had to reach a little further. Someone nearly kicked me in the head, but I ducked just in time. It was almost over. Just a little further, and my suffering would be over.
My fingertips brushed the edge of his robe, and a little puff of dust went up.
I collapsed, but not from pain. Actually, I didn’t feel any pain, not in my arm, and not in my abdomen. I looked down at my hand and flexed my fingers. They were straight and pale.
Something inside me felt different too, although I could not say what. It was as if another part of me that was crooked had suddenly been straightened out again. Swallowing, I reached down under my robe and felt my thighs. They were dry.
“Who has touched me?”
I suddenly realized that the crowd had gone still because Jesus had stopped moving.
“Who has touched me?”
It was he who asked the question. Fear clawed at my chest now, but he couldn’t have known that I had touched his garment.
A second, rougher voice said, “Master, you see the crowd pressing all around you. How can you ask, ‘Who has touched me?’”
“Someone has touched me.”
The certainty in his voice made me tremble. He did know, and why not? He truly was all that people claimed, a holy man. The Messiah. If he could heal someone without speaking to them, he could know who and where I was. He was giving me a chance to come forward.
“I did, Lord,” I squeaked.
My legs shook too hard for me to stand, and I fell down in front of him.
“Forgive me,” I begged. “For the past twelve years, I’ve been ill, and always bleeding. I heard of all the people you healed, and hoped you might heal me …”
He would be unclean until evening, because of me. How many other people could he have healed or ministered to in that time? I hadn’t even considered it.
What would he say to me? Would he yell at me? Hit me, like the boy in the street, all those years ago? I squeezed my eyes shut and waited for the blow.
A hand touched mine, and I opened my eyes. He had knelt and was clasping both my hands. I stared at them. The feeling was warmer than I remembered. His hands were gentle but rough. Calloused.
He smiled at me, the way a host at a banquet would smile for a long-awaited guest. It was as if he were glad to see me, even though we’d never met.
“Daughter,” he said.
My breath hitched. When was the last time anyone called me their daughter?
“Your faith has made you well. Go in peace and be healed of your disease.”
Warmth spread through me, as he helped me to my feet. For the first time in twelve years, I truly did feel at peace.
Morgan Want is a former journalist whose microfiction has previously been published by Vine Leaves Press. She is currently at work on her debut novel. Her short fiction, writing progress, and devotionals can be seen on her Instagram page @wantmorgan.
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Image: Christ healing a bleeding woman, Photo from Catacombes of Rome, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
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