Every day, Valeria hit her. That was the training. For not coming fast enough; for being dishonest, greedy, or lazy; for looking at her when she spoke; and for not looking at her when she spoke. It was for her own good, Valeria said.
“Ancilla, come here!” Valeria used the Latin word for “slave-maid.” “Ancilla, draw my bath!” “Ancilla, undress me!” “Ancilla, clean the birdcage!” Even her name was gone. She was no longer Esther. She was Ancilla, girl-slave; and Matti was Puer, boy-slave.
Esther combed Valeria’s hair and massaged her feet. She helped in the kitchen and served the food. Matti emptied the cesspit toilet by hand and spread the contents on the household garden, swept the hearth, and fetched water from the fountain. In the afternoons, he worked in the kitchen. When they woke before dawn, they did it all over again.
They didn’t have enough workers, Valeria said. Her beloved slave, who had been with her since Valeria had been a girl, had gotten the shakes. They couldn’t sell her, so they’d done what they had to do; they couldn’t have kept feeding her. Esther wondered what that meant. She was too scared to ask.
Valeria actually looked sad while she talked about her old slave, but quickly returned to character, becoming increasingly angry. The old slave, Valeria said, was the only one who had known how to dress Valeria, apply her face paint, and curl her hair. “You were supposed to take her place, but you can’t even comb my hair properly,” she said to Esther. When Esther accidentally pulled her hair too hard, Valeria stabbed her with a hairpin.
In spite of the beatings, Esther felt a sense of relief. Proculus hadn’t touched Matti. Matti spent more and more time in the kitchen, where he was out of the master’s sight. With its copper pots hanging from the ceiling, the small, dark room looked like a cave with bats dangling from their feet. The cook, Coqua, often hit him with a large spoon, but Matti said it didn’t hurt as much as he pretended it did.
Coqua prepared the food on metal grates set over embers on the raised stone counter. To light the embers, she struck a piece of steel against a fragment of quartz and caught the spark on a slice of a fibrous mushroom. She blew until the heat made holes in the mushroom, and then used the mushroom to light the straw. She had to keep blowing while she added the wood. When Matti saw her struggling to catch the spark, he blew with her. The next day, he lit the embers himself. After that, Matti took over the job of lighting the coals in the morning, and Coqua let him take more scraps.
“He’s a fast learner,” Coqua told Esther. “Better than the last one.”
“What happened to him?” Esther asked.
“He got older.”
Esther raised her eyebrows.
“His voice dropped,” Coqua explained. “He got hair on his rosebud. The master likes them young. He wanted to get the boy fixed, but he waited too long.”
Esther swallowed but it didn’t help; what was stuck in her throat wouldn’t go away. Matti was not out of danger.
Later that day, when Matti was cleaning the columns in the peristylium, Esther spotted Proculus behind a statue, watching him. She wiped her sweaty palms on her tunic. Then she called out, “Puer! The cook wants you in the kitchen. Immediately!”
The next few weeks went by in a blur. There used to be a past and a future, an order to the week, a countdown until the Sabbath. No more. Maybe God still had His day of rest, but they didn’t.
One morning, Valeria commanded Esther to arrange her hair. When Esther reached for the comb on the dressing table, she knocked over a bottle of rose oil. It shattered on the floor. Valeria punched Esther on the chin. Esther’s head snapped back, and she fell to the floor, dazed. She moaned and rubbed her chin; the pain was excruciating.
“Get up!” Valeria screamed.
She whimpered and rolled to her side.
“Get up, I said!” Valeria kicked her in the stomach.
Esther eased herself up. A shard of alabaster was stuck in the fleshy part of her palm, and blood dripped down. Esther yanked the shard out.
“Can’t you do anything right?” Valeria shouted.
“I’m sorry. I—”
“Quiet! How dare you address me?” Valeria inhaled deeply, as though to calm herself. “You slaves break things, you lie, and you steal. And then after we put so much work into training you, you get sick and die.”
Esther hobbled away. Her body, already covered with purple welts, cuts, and scratches from Valeria’s previous attacks, throbbed with each step. Her arms were dotted with burns from the scalding water that splashed onto her as she filled Valeria’s bath, and with the lashes she’d received for the water not being hot enough, or for being too hot. Sometimes she thought she deserved the punishment. It dulled the pain of the wounds inside: the memory of Miriam’s outstretched arms; the aching loss of her parents, Yehuda, and Shimon; and her guilt about not being able to protect Matti. When her body hurt as much as her soul, she was in equilibrium.
Before Esther closed her eyes that night, she said to Matti, “I’m Esther Bat Hanan, daughter of a Temple Priest. You’re Mathia Ben Hanan. Our mother was Sarah. We had two brothers, Yehuda and Shimon.” She used to make up stories for Matti, but no longer. She wanted him to remember his own story. She was terrified that they’d forget the names of their family, maybe even their own; that one day, their past would be gone, and she would be Ancilla and he would be Puer.
She recited the prayer “Shema Israel, Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.”
She made Matti say it too. When they finished, he asked, “Do you ever think sometimes that maybe it’s not real? We’ll go home and everyone will be there again?”
If her heart could have torn, it would have.