Eddie H. Christ: a Sibling Rivalry of Biblical Proportions

Eddie H. Christ

A Sibling Rivalry of Biblical Proportions

By Gerard DiLeo

Eddie H. Christ

A Sibling Rivalry Story of Biblical Proportions

© 2002-2017 Gerard M. DiLeo

ISBN: 9781973470861

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, copied, quoted, or used without the express written permission of the author. Contact: drdileo@gmail.com

Imprimatur applied for; Nihil Obstat pending.

To my good Christian daughter, Phoebe.

Who made you?

God made me.

Who is God?

God is the Supreme Being Who made all things.

Why did God make you?

God made me to share in His infinite glory and happiness.

--from the Baltimore Catechism

…

Who are you?

I really wanna know.

--Pete Townsend

CONTENTS

The Fork in Time

The Alpha

In the Beginning

The Bar Mitzvah

The Big Gap for Jesus, the Leper Colony for Me

Sons of Fathers

Sex in the City and the River of Life

The Slammer

The Family Reunion

Initial Public Offering

Six of One, Half a Dozen of the Other

The Joke’s On Us

The Apostles or, When is a Foursome

a Threesome? Or Even Just the Same Guy?

Mountain Visions and Barbecues

Lights Out

Check, Please

Gethsemane

Stump the Pharisees, Stump the Romans, Stump the Jews, Stump the World

The Sign of the Cross--the Rest of the Story, or…Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum

On the Third Day…and Beyond

The Dead and the Doppelgangers

The Finding of Jesus at the Temple, Oil on Copper Plate

41 x 24, Carl Heinrich Bloch (1834-1890)

Luke 2:41-50, Fifth Joyful Mystery

Salt Lake City Gallery, sales@hopegallery.com

Back jacket photo by Anna Parsons, M.D.

The Fork in Time

That's a joke, right? Pontius Pilate laughed, but it seemed to me to be a nervous laugh because he was not a joking man. He could neither make a joke nor get a joke. And he certainly couldn't take a joke.

Just ask us Jews.

When things didn’t make sense to Pilate, as often happened in his probationary governorship, he would get nervous because then unpredictable things would happen—things that Rome would notice. He was already on thin ice. The nervous laugh would follow. And then when he laughed his nervous laugh, we Jews would get nervous ourselves, because when things didn’t make sense to Pilate, bad things happened to Jews. Many a stipes, the vertical piece of wood that awaited its patibulum, or crosspiece, littered the way to Calvary like a haunted, uneven picket fence which divided a ghastly future from its ghastly past.

Here was my big brother, Jesus, perched one tier below Pilate, Pilate’s wife, and Caiaphas. There, cloaked in royal purple Roman sarcasm, scourged nearly to death and I would hope ready to admit he had learned his lesson, he contrasted with Barabbas, the barbaric ne'er-do-well—opportunistic killer—guiltless and following the agenda of anyone smarter than him, which was pretty much anyone else.

When it came to which one to release—who it would serve the Jews better to release—it seemed to Pilate there was no contest. He had just offered the angry mob the release of a pacifist healer instead of a Neanderthal murderer and, as he understood it, they wanted the murderer loose among them. He heard it with his own ears.

Bar-abba! he heard again and again. Pilate turned to his wife, Claudia.

I’ll wager your dream didn’t end like this, he said to her sarcastically. Oy, he added. Oh, sorry, but there just isn’t a Roman word for how I feel right now.

How do you feel, Claudia asked.

I feel so…so…Oy!

Oy, indeed, she responded.

For me, survival has always been such a no-brainer: murder is murder no matter who's doing it—desert robbers, mountain lions, or the stupid blood-sucking Romans. One more murderer loose was never a good idea. Pilate and I were certainly on the same scroll here, so to his amazement, this mob just didn't get it. They repeated their choice to him.

Really! Really? He looked at Caiaphas, who actually heard the mob correctly but had nothing to clarify and seemed pleased with the choice as Pilate heard it. Well, not entirely pleased, as it was a choice between two bad choices, but pleased somewhat, like he had just won a tie. The priest silently pushed down a frown, which was his custom when he had nothing to add.

How in the hell had it come to this? Good Jew gone bad? Bad Jew gone crazy? Or just a Jew in the Roman system who stood out just a little. Stood out enough to get scourged.

And crucified? Pilate asked with surprise. I am just fascinated, Jesus, the amount of bad luck for you. Had I known you’d be crucified, I certainly wouldn’t have had you scourged, too. It was as comforting as Pilate ever was. There’s a long line of Jews waiting for scourging, he muttered to Primus Pilus, his chief centurion. We wasted a slot.

We’ll make up time, Governor. We can do two scourges at the same time—tough on the soldiers, but doable.

And the scourge would be a quality scourge? Pilate asked sternly.

Oh, you won’t tell the difference, the centurion promised.

Are you sure? Pilate challenged him.

Haven’t been able to tell the difference before, the Centurion added with a chuckle, settling the matter.

I was in the mob, but I didn’t consider myself to be part of it. Idiots, all of them. We Jews were supposed to be a smart bunch of people, as evidenced by the collective wisdom of whacking off foreskin, but a mob is only as smart as any other mob that can form, be it a mob of Atticus Finch’s neighbors, Nobel Laureates, Morlocks, or a bunch of foreskinned infidels. Regardless of its membership, IQ is always indirectly proportional to the number in the mob. What did they expect, confusing everyone—especially Pilate—with their choice? And although this mob represented no evolutionary leap in mob intelligence, the great cataclysmic historical irony is that Pilate had misunderstood them.

Again I asked myself, how had it come to this?

Christ!

Eddie Christ, that is. Verily I say unto you, it’s nice to meetcha.

The Alpha

Anachronism is forgivable when you’re outside of time. Christ, a name that came around long after I was dead, was a Greek word for the liberator of the Jews from…well, anyone who was putting the screws to ‘em. I guess that would mean everyone. Christ—the Christ—was to be a gift from God. Who would know it was to be a gift with a lot of wrapping to get through before you got to it. And then of course with all the pretty wrapping laying tattered and torn in pieces all over the floor, your first impression is that you weren’t all that impressed. Like a pair of socks for Christmas, useful but mundane, basic but ignored till needed.

My proper name was Edrachus, son of Joseph—Edrachus bar-Joseph. Edrachus, Ed, Little Brother—I answer to most everything, except Little Brother. I like EC, but this wasn’t technically correct.

Call me Eddie.

That’s what my big brother, Jesus, called me. He said, Don’t worry, one day it’s really going to be popular. For the rest of my longer-than-expected life I never met another Eddie, from Bethlehem all the way to Rome. Even all those places I tagged along with Paul later, no sir, not a single one. There were a few other guys named Edrachus—but not a single one would be caught dead being called Eddie. Of course now I know it’s kind of a suburban name, not at all appropriate for the Middle East at the time. Yea, the name Eddie did get popular a couple of thousand years later—He was right—well, of course He was right. Nowadays the name Eddie is on a mug in every Stuckey’s you pass on the Interstate. But Jesus’ prediction of the name’s popularity was like the predictions of the coming of the Kingdom of God, which you thought would be right around the corner or next Thursday the way everyone talked about it. Long after Jesus was gone, I had a running bet with myself over which would come true first, the popularity of Eddie the name or the coming of the Kingdom of God. I took steps to hedge my bet by calling myself Eddie H. Christ for a while. As I understand it, the popularity of Eddie did come and go before the Kingdom of God. All of the Eddie mugs became long gone and replaced with Jarred, Ryan, Dylan, and Connor. Oh well.

As long as you’re falling for this whole suspension of disbelief stuff, you’re also going to have to accept that Jesus had a brother at all. Some who call themselves Biblical scholars have said that James the Apostle might have been the brother of Jesus, but no way. James was a step-brother—from Joseph’s first marriage. And that’s only what he himself said, because I never saw any evidence. Joseph never talked about it, like any stuff that happened a wife ago was always a mistake. James—if he was a son of Joseph—wasn’t even around for me and Jesus. We didn’t even meet the guy till Jesus grew up to be a man and we left home. I would have thought Jesus would have trouble buying it, too, even when this guy came up to him and held out his arms—a glorious gesture.

Jesus! My brother, at last I found you. Didn’t look anything like him. Well, I suppose he wouldn’t have—different fathers, if you know what I mean. I’ll say definitely different mothers, too, no matter what he claimed, because he didn’t look anything like me, either.

Jesus bought it right off the bat—just looked at him and said, O.K., my brother, then I guess you can be an Apostle.

I said, He can? You’re kidding, right? You’re making a parable? What’s the lesson here?

No, Eddie, Jesus said back, why would I be kidding? Contrary to popular belief, Jesus was a great kidder. He wasn’t kidding me here, though. During this whole exchange, I turned it over and over in my mind, at times raising an eyebrow, at times twisting my mouth in thought.

Well, I argued, trying to make Jesus reconsider, for one thing, we don’t know this guy from Adam, and--

You knew Adam? Jesus asked me.

Yea, wise guy, I knew Adam. And Eve, too, O.K.? And Cain and Abel, too. And I’m the one who gave Cain the idea to brain Abel, because Abel was such a pain in the ass. And this guy reminds me a lot of Abel.

James should have been looking a little nervous about all of this, but he just gazed at Jesus with that devout look and said, I put my faith in you, brother.

And another thing, I continued.

Oh, I see, you have a whole list.

Yea, and number two, I was going to be your first Apostle, remember?

I said, ‘We’ll see,’ remember? he said, a little cop-out phrase he learned from Mom, like I was some child or something. Big brothers, ya gotta love ‘em, the bastards.

Yea, I had a whole list of reasons. Jesus stopped me at number seven.

So there was James. Personally, I say he was a nut case. He would say he came from different places—we’d catch him in lies all the time, until we realized that he had this problem with his identity. The truth is Jesus could never have lived with the likes of this guy during all of those teenage years with puberty and hormones and the things that came with them. As it turned out, Jesus had a time putting up with him as an Apostle. Well actually, Jesus was patient—it was me who had the problem.

God (not direct address—just complaining), James was so obnoxious!

My point is that Jesus had only one brother and his name was Eddie and that’s me. And the only one who lived with Jesus when he was a boy was me. Couldn’t ask Joseph about James since showed up a good twenty years after Joseph had died—on a day that was a pretty bad day for me. So who knows? Maybe he was lying. There’s a commandment for lying, and if you lie to the Messiah, there’s a special subcategory for that type of lie. I would remind James of that all of the time, but he’d just say, Love your brother, with a knowing glance toward Jesus, like I was having trouble doing that. I would have never admitted it to James, but there was some truth in that knowing glance of his. My trouble accepting James, at times, mind you, paled next to my accepting and loving my brother. As yourself, James would add.

As myself.

Sibling rivalry with the Son o’God—you could only imagine.

Now I know that any Bible you pick up is noticeably ignorant of the fact that I existed. You can’t find an Eddie anywhere. Ever wonder why? Probably because I wasn’t any type of admirable character during the life of Jesus. Or maybe the Bible wasn’t the kind of book that called for a lot of comic relief. Certainly I would have just gotten in the way of the story. Which really pisses me off since James has so much press. Of course there were three James’, and you never knew which one the Bible was talking about at any one time. There was James the brother of Jesus, and you know how I feel about that. There was James the Greater—John’s brother and son of Zebedee and Salome (an old fish woman, not to be confused with that slut in Herod’s palace); and there was James the Lesser, son of Alpheus and Mary, a first cousin of my Mom. All three James’ were aggravating. And Jesus liked me better than any of the James’. He told me. I think.

Maybe I dreamed it.

Well, he didn’t really tell me—he was Jesus. You just knew with the Son o’God.

The Son of God! I don’t know, you just can’t let a phrase like Son of God roll out of the mouth as easily as top of the charts or best in class, right?

Did you know that James’ Mom, Salome—the old fish woman— once asked Jesus to keep her James and John in line for special spots in Heaven next to God once this Messiah business was all over? Once the Christ thing happened. You don’t have to wonder where that James got it from. Putting in a request for top spots for her boys made Salome the patron saint of stage Moms.

Prospects look good, Jesus had told her, which is a phrase that would figure importantly in an oracle shaped like an eight-ball one day.

Yes, but where? On your right side? On your left? she had asked. For the record, right side was always better than the left side. She wanted to know which one was going to be on which side, playing favorites with even her sons.

They’ll probably be seated in the obstructed view section, I had answered. Those are the cheaper seats, I told Jesus.

I know they’re the cheaper seats, he answered with some exasperation.

She was a horrible little thing, seething at me through her one tooth. A wiry, short, grey-haired hag who yelled every time she spoke, from all of her years as a fish woman on the wharf. She had the middle finger of her right hand missing—some ancient trauma which had me wondering what would she be doing to lose one middle finger.

Eliminate the middleman! she would shout from the wharf. Buy it here!

She turned back to Jesus for the answer that would place her sons on this side of him or the other, but Jesus just told her that she should pray very hard about it, which was like telling her to call Customer Service and be patient while on hold. In fact, all praying is like being on hold in the Customer Service telephone queue.

Your prayer is very important to us and will be answered in the order that it was offered.

The Bible. An inspirational work. I guess I shouldn’t be too upset about being left out of the greatest best seller in history. Look at Jesus’ mother, Mary. Our Mom. I mean, she’s the Blessed Mother, the Virgin Mary, Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Our Lady of Prompt Succor, Our Lady of Unfortunate Experiences…I think, Our Lady of This, Our Lady of That, and Our Lady of a lot of other things. There’s even an Our Lady of the Iceberg. Gotta be a Lady of the Thaw, right? She’s so famous for being Our Lady of all kinds of things that you could open up a Webster’s and put your finger in it with your eyes closed and whatever word you picked, there’s probably Our Lady of that. Our Lady of All Nouns. Our Lady of A, E, I, O, and U. And sometimes our Lady of Y. She’s everywhere, and yet she only got mentioned five or six times in the Bible, tops. So slighting me doesn’t seem so bad.

I was almost mentioned. Almost mentioned a few times I might add.

You might remember in John’s gospel, when Peter the Rock, Thomas the Doubter, Bartholomew the Stand Up Comic, and Zebe’s two boys—John himself and James—James the Greater—were fishing after Jesus had died, and they weren’t catching anything, and the resurrected Jesus told them where to put their nets…Read it. It says, Peter, Thomas, Bartholomew, John, James, and two others.

I was one of the two others. The other guy was the boat owner, but he was drunk knocked out, which is why we used his boat—just kind of took him for the ride. Anyway, I was one of the others. We got back with so much fish, even unloaded it, docked at the same spot from where we had left, and the owner never woke up during all of this commotion. When he finally did, in that same boat in that same spot, he was none the wiser, like nothing happened.

My boat sure stinks like fish, he muttered, rousing. Like it never ever stunk like fish any other time. He climbed out of his boat onto the wharf where we had stacked all our catch.

Hey, where’d all the fish come from? he wondered out loud. Then he looked at the risen Jesus and exclaimed, The fish of the sea walk onto my dock now and stack themselves. Truly you are the Messiah. In a fisherman’s world, this was better than rising from the dead.

Some of those fish, I caught, I corrected him.

Yea, sure, he said, come back when you feed five thousand. Uh, any more loaves of bread? I am just famished! And in the distance could be heard a nine-fingered woman maligning the middleman.

Anyway, the fact that such a lowly character as me was almost mentioned a few times is pretty generous. When you look at Mary’s status in Christianity, I should have been mentioned not zero times, not almost once, but negative times. Ten to the minus twenty-three times. Of course someone somewhere made that decision, and I suppose I better not argue, since the Bible was, as they say, inspired. Actually, I think it was a conspiracy against me by the four evangelists, or as I like to call them, the only guys we knew who knew how to write.

Oh, and I was almost mentioned again that time after Jesus’ arrest in Gethsemane. In John, Chapter 18, verses 15 and 16:

Simon-Peter, in company with another disciple, kept following Jesus closely. This disciple, who was known to the high priest, stayed with Jesus as far as the high priests’ courtyard, while Peter was left standing at the gate.

…in company of another disciple. This disciple… Yep, me, thank you. And I stayed with him a lot longer than the courtyard. But I won’t tempt you with that right now. Buy the book. (Not that one. This one.)

So what was the item in old business? Right, that Jesus had a brother. Why on Earth was that necessary? Maybe it was a twist on the good vs. evil thing or the opposites attract thing or the Jesus needed a little brother to wail on so he’d be well-balanced thing. And if he did have a brother, shouldn’t it have been a big brother—you know, to show him the ropes. I’m two years younger. Always behind him in the pecking order, always getting his hand-me-downs. Even in the respect and admiration department—could make a guy jealous. After all, I had my pride.

But I was such the little brother. And he had his way of always letting me know it. He would always tell me, Take away me, and that leaves just you, whatever that meant. That left just the dregs of the family? The base and the crude and the foibles?

Did he really need a brother?

So much care went into Jesus coming at all that it seems trivial to have included a little brother in the nuclear Holy Family. Folks, I can’t explain that. Except that maybe it was to make Jesus look even better, because of the stark contrast. Who knows? You’re going to have to have a little faith in the man upstairs for why I was necessary. I mean, who are we to question things like that? Certainly not me. I’m just Eddie—but I can tell you I’m glad I was here. I would like to think I was in Jesus’ childhood for a reason. Maybe it was some training for him, to train him to act in such a way that people would choose him over all else.

But was it fair to poison my whole childhood for his training? It seems now that of those who would choose between me and Jesus, the ones who chose me just didn’t seem to do as well. Was it because they chose me to play with, a mortal whose deficiencies were measured by the glories of the big brother, or because the ones who chose him backed the winner from the start? Being only two years apart increased our cross section of friends, so it wasn’t the age. Of course it wasn’t the age!

From my point of view, it cracks me up for anyone to question that the Messiah had a brother. Shouldn’t most people look at it the other way around—they should say you were crazy if you thought you had a Messiah for a brother and not that the Messiah had a brother. Am I right? Even back then, everyone used to question me on whether I thought there really was a Messiah in my family. So this whole thing is backwards now. But I can tell you that growing up with it, it all seemed so normal. What did I know? Naturally, for a while, just being a stupid little kid, I thought every family had a Messiah, and Jesus was ours. I remember asking a neighborhood kid, Barabbas, just who the Messiah was in his family.

Gotta be me, he said, I’m an only child.

Later I learned that there was only one Messiah—that our family was the ecclesiastical lottery winner for some reason. I know Michael thought he was the Messiah in the Jackson family and Marsha thought she was divine in the Brady’s, but apparently this thing was only needed once. I think only once. They say he’s coming back one more time.

Sometime after the name Eddie becomes popular.

Thank goodness we were the only family with a Messiah, because I wouldn’t wish that on any other family. You’d think it would have been sweet, but amen I say to you I had it rough with a big brother like Jesus. Consider what a sibling had to live up to. Boy did that suck! All of you little brothers have heard it so many times, right? Why can’t you be like your big brother, Steve? Why can’t you be like Michael, Jr.? Why can’t you be more like Bubba? Well maybe not Bubba. But how do you think it was hearing, Why can’t you be like Jesus? I can tell you how it was. It was lousy. And Jesus knew it. He’d just give me that little smarmy smile like he did, knowing I couldn’t put together that chair like he and his Dad could. His other Dad—I mean Joseph of course. Joseph wasn’t his real Dad for real, ‘cause Jesus was, that’s right, the Son o’God.

But I have to hand it to ol’ Joseph, it wasn’t easy for him, either. He was like the stepfather trying to live up to Jesus’ real father. Sucked for him, too. That’s why Joseph—my real Dad—like me best. Well, he didn’t actually tell me that. You just knew with a guy like Joseph. We were kind of in the same boat, Joseph and me, and that gave me more feeling toward him than just being his son. I felt it with him and he knew it. It was an unspoken conversation we buried many times together with just a shared glance, askew, sometimes every minute.

Poor Joseph. I really shouldn’t say he liked me best. It’s just that there was a certain distance between Jesus and Dad, as you might expect. If there were any unspoken conversation between them, it was nothing like the one I had with Dad. Jesus loved him, respected him, honored him and all that, but it was a little too proper if you ask me. Joseph knew that, too. Lemme give you an example. One time Joseph got sick—I don’t know—droopy, turning a little yellow—liver problem or something. Probably inhaled too much varnish. So he’s all flopped on the linens in the sleeping room, thinking his time is near, and he calls us in one at a time. I was first.

Son, he told me, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I’m afraid.

Don’t be afraid, I consoled him. You’re gonna get better. I know it. I know it for sure. I promise. He clutched me to him and we cried together. After that cry said everything between a father and a son that could be said, it was Jesus’ turn. Dad didn’t ask me to leave, so I stuck around.

Son, Dad told Jesus, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I’m afraid.

Don’t be afraid, Jesus told him. Joseph smiled, anticipating a validation of what I had just said. You’ve always known your time here was brief compared to the rest of your life in the hereafter. I thought I saw him turn yellower right there.

See the difference? I was clutching the ol’ man, holding him tight, like that could keep him from slipping away; and Jesus was, like, no big deal if the guy who’s raising you croaks. Just a phase, just this deal. Nice knowing you—see you in the afterlife. Here, lemme give you a shove. Bon voyage. Like nothing you did here was important.

So why the hell would you even want to try?

Eddie promised me I would get better, Joseph said to Jesus.

It was a promise? Jesus asked.

It was a most excellent promise, pledged on the graves of all our ancestors from the line of David, I shouted.

Wow, said Jesus. Well, Joseph— he never called him Dad—then I guess I promise, too. Joseph sighed relief and smiled at Jesus.

Thank you, son, he said. Now I know I’ll be better in no time.

I guess my promise is shit! I scoffed. Can’t compete with Jesus, I complained to Joseph. Joseph just slouched back on the linens. He cheated, Dad. I promised because I love you. He promised because he could.

Edrachus, Joseph spoke in a weak voice, it doesn’t matter, does it, as long as I get better?

Yea, Jesus said, what’s the difference?

The difference, I answered, is that you were born a man for a reason, but you can’t even feel what it’s like for a man to lose something.

We haven’t lost anyone yet, Jesus corrected me, so calm it down.

Say, boys, ya wanna talk like I’m in the room with you here? Joseph objected.

You should be feeling better already, Joseph, Jesus told him. Sleep.

Joseph caught a break there. Within a week his yellow complexion had gone and he was back with his wood. What’s the difference, indeed! I think I’ve made clear the difference. I don’t know what I’d do without Joseph, being so otherly together with me, compared with Jesus. Even Mary—Mom—couldn’t feel that chill of otherliness Joseph and I felt, having been dipped into that Immaculate Conception as her start in life.

Now Mom was a good Mom. She kneaded dough and rolled it and baked it as best she could with the only heat source 93 million miles away. Only folks with a big place could light a fire inside. She washed our clothing, which was easy since we each had only one outfit, which consisted of just an undergarment and an outer garment.

She did all kinds of mother things, like saying she loved us both the same. I kept score a lot, I guess. And even though you just knew with a woman like Mom, she did actually say that to me. But saying things like that was a Mom thing to do. She’d ask me right back who I loved more, her or Dad. And of course I’d say I loved them both the same. A kid learns this mind game pretty fast. When she’d ask Jesus whom he loved more, he would feel compelled to explain things far beyond just loving people the same.

Mother, he would say, I render to you the love that is yours, and I render the love that is Joseph’s to Joseph. And of course there’s the Father.

Don’t forget Caesar, I chimed in.

Jesus, she asked, can’t you just say you love us both the same?

What’s the difference? he asked her back. I could have slapped him.

But we’re two different people, she said to him. That’s the difference.

No, you’re not, he said back to her. Then he gestured toward me.

Oh, she said, as if a certain touchy paternity issue had explained everything.

I was lost on all of this, but I think it had something to do with this one begetting this one and that one begetting that one, and everyone’s all joined together who make children all the way back…to who? To David? Hmmm…to Adam and Eve? Hmmm…back to God the Father Himself? And when did the belly button come in? ‘Cause Adam and Eve never had one.

Jesus always had an answer that was right, but do you see what I mean? He was a part of our family, yet he was separate, too. Joseph felt it and I really felt it. Jesus was the son of God and I was as far removed from God as anyone, except even farther since you had to throw in a few more miles distance due to sibling rivalry.

I often wondered if Mom really did love us exactly the same. Sometimes I suspected she loved Jesus more, because little brothers would wonder such things, but I had to go with her Mom answer. Jesus acted like he knew different—of course he would if there was something different to know, ‘cause he was Jesus. And God the Father? Well, you know Jesus was His favorite. I wasn’t anything else to Him more than any other guy hanging around. Well that’s not exactly true, because after all I was a Jew. But I wasn’t anything else to Him more than any other Jew hanging around.

Just another Jew, I’d say.

That’s not true, Eddie, Jesus argued one day after I worried out loud to him. He doesn’t think of you as just any other Jew hanging around.

Oh, so he loves me more than everyone else? I challenged him.

No, of course not. He’s your Father in Heaven—He loves everyone the same.

But we’re all different people, I replied. I wasn’t going to let him get away with this after what He had told Mom.

Love is the same in both directions, Jesus explained. All the love is the same. It’s either love or it isn’t, and if it is, then He loves everyone the same.

So, like I said, he thinks of me just like any other Jew hanging around.

At least you’re Jewish, Jesus finally said, exasperated.

He would always argue that I was loved by God the Father as much as he was, but then he’s the one who got all the miracle powers. I waited for mine for a long time, and it’s a good thing I didn’t hold my breath. I admit it, I was jealous. I had pride. And that was painful, because look what I had to work with.

And there’s another thing that always bothered me about him. I swear it was like being on Bewitched. Here’s Jesus, God-made-man, with all of these powers, and we’re still fetching water every day. I’d rag him, but he said that it wasn’t his time…wasn’t his time. Like living with that prick, Darren Stevens, married to Samantha.

Make the water come to us for once, I’d suggest, like in the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. No dice. Think how much more you could do for people if we got our chores over with faster, I’d tempt him. No way. Hard-headed, I swear. Must have been that golden light all around his head you see in holy pictures that made his head so hard. Probably brass. When I think back on it, there wouldn’t have been a chance that day on the mountain, Jesus being tempted by the devil with what he could have if he would just take a dive for a little hard-earned pomp and self-indulgence. I’d sell out for just a chocolate eclair.

Jesus did everything better than me. He slept all night long the very first night after he was born. Me, I squawked for months with colic. You’d think Jesus could fire up just a little biddy big brotherly miracle to break up my gas. Or at least turn water into simethicone. I know he was only two, but he was Jesus. And later on I had to hear all the time—and I do mean all of the goddamned time—what a terrible baby I was. Up all night, every night; then after that, having bad dreams and trying to get onto Mom and Dad’s bed mat, which is probably why there weren’t any more kids after me. In truth, there was only one bed mat anyway, if you can call it that, so if a dream woke someone up, it woke up everyone.

Dreams. There are dreams and then there are dreams.

Know that dreams were a big deal back then. Dreams told Mom she was pregnant, but didn’t tell her how, which was O.K., because her Mom didn’t tell her how girls got pregnant anyway; dreams told Elizabeth John was coming, but didn’t tell her he’d be considered a weirdo with a water fixation; a dream sent the wise men; a dream sent Joseph packing his family off to Egypt.

And these were the good dreams.

For me, bad dreams would come and I’d have to give my parents a terrible night’s sleep for sure. Once I dreamed that an angel came to me and told me to watch my step. Had a sword drawn and everything. Sword was on frickn’ fire! Might even have been an archangel. That made me feel special. Watch my step indeed! I guess when you’re the brother of Jesus you’re held to a higher standard.

Oh I was trouble. Of course there was my throwing up all the time—have you ever seen what people back then had to eat? It wasn’t Stouffer’s, for sure. Yea, I’d like to see how any modern Gerber baby would do on that shit. And it was shit. All we had was salt. A lot of it—too much on everything. Of course no one worried about things like hypertension, because who cared when the life expectancy back then was forty anyway? Or was it thirty-three?

I wasn’t breast fed. No, Jesus was breast fed. When I came along, Mom said, No, I’m not breast feeding—I did that once. You probably don’t know that Mom, among many other titles, is called Nuestra Senora de la Leche y Buen Parto, Our Lady of Happy Delivery and Plentiful Milk—that’s how the Le Leche League got its name. Jesus was the happy delivery and got the plentiful milk. I was the accident and got the village wet nurse, Mrs. Noah, who was like the village granny who pitch-hits for your Mom’s breasts. She also doubled, though, as the village idiot. She was named after Noah’s wife, but since no one knew what Noah’s wife’s name really was, she was just called Mrs. Noah. She wasn’t that old, but someone in their early thirties was usually a grandma.

To be honest, as I got older I realized that BC grandma age was definitely still doable from a BC man’s point of view…well, a horny BC man. Wet nurses did Girls Gone Wild for a living, dangerously flashing them in a land where a man who was inclined to do anything he wanted might get the wrong idea. Gotta get past the lactation, right? For protection, some shepherd or fisherman or some any other type of guy would offer to escort her to each assignment. Maybe they played the I never was breastfed, card and sought succor themselves.

Succor.

The mouth is an infant’s first portal to the world, and my door was Mrs. Noah, the village idiot. I must have been wise to the whole old, hanging, granny breast thing ‘cause I never would latch on to the old thirty-something-year-old hag. Can you blame me? Of course, this is what I was told. Over and over and over. She packed formula, though, for babies like me—babies that just aren’t important enough for the real Mom to give a breast to. Flour and water and honey. And they would ruin it with salt, too. And the cups were often shaken with sand to beat off the crusted gruel, so add to the taste a dash of granulated silicon. Lucky I didn’t make a pearl by the time that sludge got down to my ass.

Boy could Jesus get the grades. Next to him I guess I did look pretty stupid. That’s what happens when you suckle from the village idiot. He didn’t flaunt it too much, but he probably had already gestalted the Grand Unification Theory, so counting with sticks was a piece of cake to him. Yea, Jesus got straight As in stick counting and ass-measuring and hammer hitting. I got Bs—low Bs. Except water hauling—I just couldn’t get the knack of carrying that bucket on my head. I got a D-. Probably could have gotten a letter grade better if it hadn’t been for my attitude, which unfortunately swaggers your stride. So measure my being an underachiever by the amount of water spilled. Don’t hire me for water hauling. Women’s work anyway.

Although he didn’t flaunt it, when asked he always had an answer for everything. He knew how everything worked. I mean everything. One time I asked him how it was that tides rose and fell. He told me it had to do with sponges in the ocean—that they inhaled and exhaled really slow.

Really? I said excitedly, all giggly that I had an answer man for all of life’s mysteries right in my own family.

Nah, not really, he laughed, I was just playing you.

Oh.

Don’t feel stupid, he said. Actually, it’s the moon. It wants the water, too, so it pulls on it differently depending on how far away it is. But the Earth is so much stronger and won’t let it go, so all the moon is able to do is tug a little.

Yea, right, Jesus, I said. I think I’ll go with the sponges, thank you. I wasn’t falling for that. Fool me once… Stupid, indeed!

Jesus had a dog. I wanted one, but Mom and Dad said one dog was enough, so the little brother got cut out again. Most little brothers get used to it, but I wasn’t most little brothers.

Jesus got to do this but I couldn’t because I wasn’t old enough; Jesus got to have that but I couldn’t because I wasn’t responsible enough. And on and on. Of course, if you were a middle child, you got doubly screwed, because the oldest got, say, the dog, the middle couldn’t for all of the above reasons, and the youngest got one anyway because he wouldn’t care what the old folks said or as usually was the case, just wore ‘em down.

But you can share Jesus’ dog, Mom said.

Yea, right. What part would I get, anyway? I didn’t want Jesus’ stupid dog.

Thing was, though, that Jesus’ dog wasn’t stupid. His dog, wouldn’t you know, was special. Once I brought him outside after letting him have some scraps from dinner, and we were outside there, just him and me, except he was on his mission to unload. I was just there to make sure he did it. He sniffed around in that prerequisite ritual until his