“That’s it,” Joshua said. “Judah, you’re Lot’s wife. Go stand over there.”

Sometimes Judah had to play Lot’s wife no matter what story we were doing. “I don’t want to be Lot’s wife.”

“Be quiet, pillars of salt can’t talk.”

“I don’t want to be a girl.”

Our brothers always played the female parts. I had no sisters to torment, and Joshua’s only sister at the time, Elizabeth, was still a baby. That was before we met the Magdalene. The Magdalene changed everything.

After I overheard my parents talking about Joshua’s mother’s madness, I often watched her, looking for signs, but she seemed to go about her duties like all the other mothers, tending to the little ones, working in the garden, fetching water, and preparing food. There was no sign of going about on all fours or foaming at the mouth as I had expected. She was younger than many of the mothers, and much younger than her husband, Joseph, who was an old man by the standards of our time. Joshua said that Joseph wasn’t his real father, but he wouldn’t say who his father was. When the subject came up, and Mary was in earshot, she would call to Josh, then put her finger to her lips to signal silence.

“Now is not the time, Joshua. Biff would not understand.”

Just hearing her say my name made my heart leap. Early on I developed a little-boy love for Joshua’s mother that sent me into fantasies of marriage and family and future.

“Your father is old, huh, Josh?”

“Not too old.”

“When he dies, will your mother marry his brother?”

“My father has no brothers. Why?”

“No reason. What would you think if your father was shorter than you?”

“He isn’t.”

“But when your father dies, your mother could marry someone shorter than you, and he would be your father. You would have to do what he says.”