By Andrea Lingle

When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.
The more I called them, the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and offering incense to idols.
Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them.
I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them.

Her hands speak. The skin is smooth, even at her age, polished by time and care. The fingers twist away from the carefully manicured thumbs in an inimitable torsed knot. Each nail is brushed with robin’s egg blue lacquer, and each nail carefully shaped into a graceful, blunt arch. At this moment, her hands are settled in her lap. The right hand holds a hand embroidered handkerchief, worn by time and washing to a translucent gauze. The skin crossing the bulbous knuckles is as dark as good soil, black and rich. Her hands have ushered life into and out of the world. Her hands have guided small vernix-crowned heads from womb to world when darkness held the night, as thunder crashed off the sides of tree and mountain, when heat turns asphalt into shimmering illusion, and in the gentle mist of breaking dawn. She was a mid-wife. 

She had made her place between the feet of anguish. What was breaking from one was born in another; pain bearing joy. She would massage the tight places, coaxing them to trust and let go; she would sing her song of courage with a deep rumbling voice that began before there was light and brought forth screaming, breathing life; and she would sit like time herself, patient and gentle, when pain bore pain. 

Now she sat, twisting and twisted, waiting. Not hoping. Not wondering. Just waiting. Occasionally an embroidered initial or petal would emerge from its embroilment to be returned to the clutching palm. Inside the cloth was a stone, worn smooth by eons of rolling in river and ocean and hand. A balm to the tide of moon and worry.

Her hands have grown bent. No longer can she hold aside the luminous veil. She waits.   

They shall return to the land of Egypt, and Assyria shall be their king, because they have refused to return to me.
The sword rages in their cities, it consumes their oracle-priests, and devours because of their schemes.
My people are bent on turning away from me. To the Most High they call, but he does not raise them up at all.
How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender.

Slowly, her hands become still. The cries behind her have become urgent, turning from groans to frantic bleats. She rises partially, pausing to allow the pain in each joint to dissipate. Now she straightens, letting her lungs fill. She calls softly to the one in the corner, thoroughly washing her hands. Moving to her stool she begins to show the nascent hands where to press and how to cajole. Tears form and fall as her hands sit, grotesquely beautiful in her lap. Her unaccompanied voice does not crack as she begins her song. It is a counterpoint of melody and agony as deeply and richly twisted as hands and roots and time and grief.

I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath.
They shall go after the LORD, who roars like a lion; when he roars, his children shall come trembling from the west. 
They shall come trembling like birds from Egypt, and like doves from the land of Assyria; and I will return them to their homes, says the LORD.

Hosea 11:1-11 (NRSV)