agrippa's daughter

          Birch Moon's brown Chinook face blushed, eyes beaming. "Ah! Baby girl!"
          Bernice reared her red fuzzy head and bawled like a bagpipe. Spanked on the bottom.
          Hank whooped with relief and delight. Like Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee. Hollering too. He yanked the cork from a reserved bottle of single malt and swigged. Next time, he swore, if there was to be a next time, he was going to do the traditional manly thing. Find a hospital maternity ward for Max, and a waiting room for him. If she insisted again on one of those hippie-dippy happenings, then he would haul his ashes to a sweatlodge and commune with Chief Seattle's ghost.
         Maxine cooed. "Her hair is so beautiful."
         "Aye, a bonnie lass, my Pa would say."
         "She will break many hearts. Including her own."


                                                                                     *


         Maxine had been a constant reader of Howard Fast for a long time. Her father knew him and had hosted a book party once, inviting all the old friends. "Agrippa's Daughter" was about this sensual redhaired greeneyed Jewish woman forced to marry her uncle during the Roman occupation of Judea. This uncle was her third husband. The grandson of the reverered Rabbi Hillel, whose moral teachings were resoundingly echoed by Jeshue of Nazareth.
         She found Mister Fast to be the sharpest and most pedantic of that grim gaggle of Reds her father invited over for the holidays. Maxine felt inspired to name a daughter after Berenice Bat Agrippa.
         A typographical error in the court's record of birth gave the newborn the name Bernice.
         Bernice.
         Hank loved it. Already he was making plans.