Virgins Always Bleed: (Not a Vampire Book)

by Lemlem Tilahun

She’d have offered to remain a female eunuch than marry someone who she did not know, nor love, until she opened the bible and landed on Ruth 3:4: “And it shall be, when he lieth down, that thou shalt mark the place where he shall lie, and thou shalt go in, and uncover his feet, and lay thee down; and he will tell thee what thou shalt do.” It was a scene that has always bothered Yemsiratch, of a pretty young widow laying herself on a slab so a rich patron can carve her into sizeable bits just because her mother-in-law saw it as the only way to escape poverty. An unwashed, unpainted, unadorned form of prostitution, if Yemsiratch ever saw one, even if gentle Boaz proved too righteous to take advantage of the offer. It was the last straw. Yemsiratch said, “Nay, I would not,” and walked out of church two weeks later, breaking her covenant: a free woman! God does not seem to particularly mind. But she, being the non-deity half of the contracting parties, had a lot more to lose.