Jesus’s mother was slim, with bright gold hair, delicate hands, and her son’s tall forehead. Mary had barely materialized and spoke in rushed whispers. Margery bent towards her. “Executioners were naked . . . A tavern nearby . . . In those days . . . Yellow awning when the heat . . . Little tavern made clams . . . With plenty of . . .” Mary wrinkled her forehead, expecting an answer to a hard question; her face suffused with tenderness as though the answer had been given.

Joseph wore a peaked turban to emphasize the oriental locale. He danced a jig as a little mess of a cat attacked his ankles. Mary’s robe was so thin her swollen belly was visible. “The angel’s shadow startled me. Plaid mantle and a . . . bronze . . .” She was sensitive to color as a defense against sadness; she wished her periods would stop. A desert finch lit at their feet and took its ten or twelve positions in the twinkling of an eye.

Margery led Mary and Joseph towards Bethlehem. They couldn’t reach town in time so they camped in an abandoned stable whose thatched roof was supported on one side by a stone wall and on the other by the rooted trunk of a dead cypress. They were filthy, tired, and hungry. Joseph tethered the ox and donkey and set a taper between the stones that spilled its thick flame upwards. He went to the city to find a midwife.

Margery removed Mary’s shoes and veil. Mary raised her palms in piety and her belly moved. She felt contractions in her back rather than her stomach. Pushing Jesus out was like shitting, but euphoria replaced that feeling the instant he was born.

When Joseph returned with two midwives Margery had already cut the tiny umbilical cord with her dagger. The two women took the liberty of confirming Mary’s virginity. They were somber and amazed, their wimples and veils made of thick black fustian.

“St. Andrew took his clothes off . . . gave them to his executioner . . .” Mary’s blathering was an unbreakable silence. Margery wondered, Is the whole family simple-minded? She snatched up the baby, who seemed to need her, and wrapped him in fayr whyte clothys & kerchys that she had brought along.

There was no pain or blood, little to hinder Mary’s descent from vision to daydream. She seemed to forget about her son on his birthday. The virgin-mother contradiction was only medical; she didn’t feel like a virgin or a mother. For her the body already hung upside down, flayed and exposed. She rejected subject matter per se, even though Jesus had palmed Margery off on her.