Satiated

It is late afternoon. The sky is reddish with yellow bands due to the remaining bit of the sun. It is bright enough to see, and it is starting to get dark to the point where I am already feeling nostalgic. The man I live with just walked into the house, and I want to enjoy these moments alone more. I hate being with him to get a minimally dignified life, and I do not even know if this life can be called worthy.

The air is fresh, unlike when I went to get water earlier, and the wind is not strong enough to be a nuisance but enough to shake the leaves of the trees, so they make that rattling noise. The sound mixes with the birds about to retreat until dawn. I look to my left and see a little bird in a nest, big enough to have feathers but young enough to not be able to fly. What is his worth among his kind? Do other birds find he useful? Apparently, he is like me. He is alone. What bird would like to be close to a bird that already has feathers and does not fly?

The man calls me to prepare the food. His name doesn’t matter; I do not feel emotionally intimate enough for that, even though, in bodily terms, I am. But what good is that if it is not enough to make him want to marry me? He at least seems to like my food; the third husband divorced me because he thought I did not add enough spices. It matches the first one, which said that I am not enough for not producing children. My name does not matter either. My identity does not exist in a society that does not allow me to live without a man while judging me for those who did not want to keep me.

The rest of the night passed quickly, as well as the morning. Noon is not the time when women go to the well to get water; it would be foolish to come at this time without a plausible reason. But my past has even robbed me of my bond with other women. In a society where the individual does not matter as much as the group, shame makes a difference in social circles. I do not carry any honor, even if all the failure in my other relationships is not my fault. But I am seen as the culprit; maybe I am. I feel like I am, at least. But I also know it is not like I could have stopped it, so at the end of the day, what I feel is the weight of injustice, the weight of a fate I never had the chance to change.

I always go to the well of Jacob, one of the patriarchs of Israel. The well is in Sychar, in the region of Samaria, near the land that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. It is almost poetic how even the place where I live shows my exclusion from society, in this case, Jewish society. We are like an impure race to them. Since returning from Babylon, they have excluded us, and then some years ago, they destroyed our temple. We are the ones who kept the religious tradition pure even with the invasions of Assyria and Babylon; even that they would disagree.

I am walking up the hill to the well. My mind focuses on the clatter of my sandals; both in the grass and in the sand, you can tell the different weights I put on one leg compared to the other just by the sound they make. It is the routine walking pace. When it dawns on me that I am already approaching, I lift my head; a man is sitting by the well. Even though I am alone not by choice, because a company is never pleasant, I got used to it. So I got to a point in my life that I started to prefer to do things alone.

Jewish. The man sitting by the well is a Jewish man. When you think it can not get any worse, the man there is a Jew.

I reach the well and try to get the water as fast as possible. I do not want to put up with affront, or even worse. After all, I am a Samaritan woman, and he is a Jewish man.

“Give me some water,” he says.

A Jewish man asked me, a Samaritan woman, for water to drink? Does he not know how Jews feel physically disgusted towards us?

“How can you, being a Jewish man, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for water to drink?”

“If you had known the gift of God and who was asking you for water, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.

“But you do not even have a bucket or a rope. How could you get this water out of such a deep well?” Is he trying to outmaneuver me somehow? I’m not falling for this… How superior does he think he is? “Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well from which he drank himself and his sons and cattle?”

“Whoever drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give will never thirst again. On the contrary, the water will become a spring of water welling up to eternal life in the person who drinks it.”

For a Jewish man who has heard a sarcastic reply from a Samaritan woman, he is still very calm… And this water he’s talking about… It would be great not to come back to this well anymore at the hottest time of day.

“Then give me this water so I will not be thirsty anymore, and I won’t have to come back here to get water!”

“As you wish. Go back to town and call your husband.”

Shame weighed heavily. Once he knows I do not have a husband, he won’t have any respect for me; it would only be worse if he knew how many husbands I have had. Even though it’s not my fault for all this failure, that’s not what he’s going to think.

“I do not have a husband.”

“You spoke the truth when you said you have no husband. You’ve had five, and the man you’re with now isn’t your husband.”

How does he know this? He must be a prophet!

“I see he’s a prophet!”

There is so many things about God that I want to understand better! I have never talked to a prophet before, even because I feel that God has been a little quiet since the time of our ancestors and because of that I cannot wait for the Messiah to arrive.

“Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews say that Jerusalem is the place to worship,” I continue.

“Believe me when I say that there will come a time when you will not worship the Father either on this mountain or in Jerusalem,” he replied.

“You Samaritans worship what you don’t know. We Jews, on the other hand, worship what we know, for salvation comes from the Jews. But the time is coming, and it is now when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. These are the worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship him in spirit and truth.”

How nice to hear about all of this. How good it is to learn more about God!

“I know the Messiah is to come! And when He comes, He will explain to us everything we need to know about God.”

“I am the Messiah!”

I get paralyzed on the outside. My body is paralyzed. But inside… inside, I am agitated. Was I talking to the Messiah this whole time? Was God’s Messiah talking to me, a Samaritan woman, this entire time? He knows about all my relationships, all the failures. And yet the Messiah wanted to speak to me. If he already knew about every marriage I’ve ever had, he must know about everything that happened… He knows it wasn’t my fault! He knows I am with this man now, who does not even want to marry me for survival and to maintain dignity.

As many thoughts cross my mind without me having much control over them, I hear footsteps. It distracts me enough to refocus on what’s going on, and I glance over and see a group of men approaching.

“I have to tell… I have to tell the people of Sychar.”

“I was counting on it.”

I drop my bucket; I don’t care about the water in that well now.

I arrive at the town square, and I don’t know who to start with.

“Come and see a man who told me everything I’ve done,” so I decided to scream. “Is he not the Christ?”

The rest of the day was busy. Many believed in the Messiah because of what I said he knew about me. They invited him to stay in the city for a while. I’m sitting on my doorstep, and I have never felt as light as now. Satiated. Sated is a better word. I hear a bird call, and when I look, I see that it is that bird of yesterday; and he is flying. He is finally free to fulfill his role.

“I know how it feels. I know how it is.”

A short story about the woman at the well (John 4).