At the front of Emma’s classroom, Miss Harper puts down the book of poetry she’s been reading from. Her eyes generously sweep the room, including Emma, who marvels at her luck in landing such a warm, upbeat, poetry-loving teacher this year.
“What does the narrator of this poem mean,” Miss Harper asks, “when he says he has ‘miles to go before he sleeps?’”
Miss Harper, pretty, young, and tall, with glittering, heavily lashed, hazel eyes, is a huge relief after fourth grade and stoop-shouldered, math-obsessed Mrs. O’Reilly, who, in her brittle voice, used to repeatedly single Emma out. “This girl cannot do math any third grader could do in her sleep!” This girl, this girl … Mrs. O’Reilly never bothered to learn her name.
Emma is convinced that she knows the correct answer to today’s question about Frost’s narrator. Like Pandora, whose myth Emma’s father has recounted to her numerous times, the narrator still believes in “change and revolution,” and thus in an “infinity of possibilities,” as her father puts it.
Just as Emma is about to raise her hand, she glances over at Rosemary Mammano sitting beside her. Emma genuinely admires Rosemary for chewing gum so surreptitiously in class that teachers never catch her. Rosemary is the only girl in class whose mother allows her to wear earrings and lip gloss—today, plastic red hoops dangle provocatively from her ears, and her lips are shiny and moist, as if she’s been eating a juicy peach.
On the other hand, Emma doesn’t admire everything about Rosemary. Once, she’d said to Emma, “God likes Catholics best, which is why I’m glad I wasn’t born Jewish like you. You all killed Christ.”
Emma had allowed herself to glower at Rosemary in response, but, oblivious—or not, Emma wasn’t sure—Rosemary continued. “I’m even gladder I wasn’t born black,” she said, “because then I would have killed myself.”
Remembering Rosemary’s bigotry, which, she hopes, doesn’t reflect the beliefs of all Catholics, Emma forgets all about Frost’s narrator, and starts to worry instead about the Virgin Mary. Ever since the day she spoke to her in the Church’s courtyard, she’s been promising herself that she will soon find the courage to attend a real Catholic Mass, in order to learn more deeply about Catholic rituals and secrets—and how they really feel about Jews. This coming Sunday she will do it, she decides, come Hell or high water, an expression her father sometimes uses when he’s at his most emphatic, although, of course, he adds, “Hell is a metaphor, no more.”
Emma yearns to dip her fingers into the basin of holy water, and she yearns to sit on a wooden bench, eyes shut and lips parted, humbly tasting the flesh of God. Most of all, she yearns to kneel inside a dark, shadowy booth, confessing her most shameful thoughts to a handsome Italian priest with hooded eyes, who looks like Bobby Gaglione.
But what if the Catholics spot her as an imposter? They’ll call her a Christ-killer and a dirty Jew. They’ll drag her home by her ear. Her father will beat her black and blue. He and her mother will never forgive her. In their eyes, she will have betrayed them for all eternity. But … she takes a deep breath—she will not be stopped in her mission.
It occurs to her that she needs an accomplice to watch her back, someone trustworthy and Jewish, someone who loves and understands her. Only Shelley fits the bill, of course, the best friend whom Emma loves as she cannot love her sister. Shelley lives on the first floor of Emma’s building, and, according to their mothers, who are cordial to one another, but no more, Shelley and Emma became friends while still in baby carriages. Shelley likes to say, “One day I’ll live in Paris and be a famous actress, and you’ll be a famous poet in Greenwich Village, and we’ll write letters to each other every day.”
Emma turns her attention back to Miss Harper, and, at last, she raises her hand. But Miss Harper is already calling on Charlie Ludwig, Bobby Gaglione’s best friend. Charlie gulps ever so slightly, and Emma notices how much he resembles his older brother, Marvin, the boy with glittery blonde hair, the one May has such a crazy crush on.
“It’s about death.” Charlie Ludwig speaks shyly, his eyes downcast. “About not wanting it. Ever.”
Miss Harper smiles with delight. Her pearly teeth shine. “Excellent answer, Charlie.”
Emma is disappointed. Her answer, referring to the beautiful and timeless myth of Pandora, was much more interesting and poetic than Charlie’s. The bell rings, signaling the end of the school day. Emma gathers up her books and joins Shelley for the walk home. Slowly, they walk up Magenta Street hill to the Projects, Emma’s calves feeling tight and knotted, although they haven’t even made it past the schoolyard yet, with its intimidating, tall fence that some of the boldest older kids scale on weekends.
Shelley quietly hums to herself as they walk, and Emma decides to plunge right in. “Come to Catholic Mass with me on Sunday.”
“Are you nuts? Why in the world?” Shelley frowns and tosses her thick, jet-black hair with irritation, as they make room for a grandmother in orthopedic shoes to pass. “You’re too damned bossy.”
Shelley’s accusation stuns Emma. Her calves knot more tightly, and she stops in her tracks. Is there truth to Shelley’s accusation? Well, there was the time Emma had insisted that Shelley walk with her all the way to the Coops housing development on Allerton Avenue, two subway stops away from the Projects, farther than either of them is allowed to walk without an adult. Emma had heard a rumor that “secret Communist cells” met regularly in the Coops, and how could she resist seeing those cells for herself, since her father had once been a “card-carrying Communist,” and since he says that, in his heart, he will always be one. But this fantasy of Emma’s hadn’t inspired Shelley, whose parents are “at best, mildly liberal,” according to Emma’s mother, which might be one of the reasons her mother and Shelley’s don’t click.
Nevertheless, Emma had forcefully dragged the sulky Shelley along, and they’d just made it past the Burke Avenue subway station, when who should appear but Shelley’s mother, Tessa Gould, wearing a madras shift and rollers in her hair, and lugging a shopping wagon filled with bags of groceries. Just their luck, she’d decided to shop that day at the Burke Avenue supermarket, rather than at the A & P near the Projects.
She’d asked no questions. “You are grounded for a week,” she’d said to Shelley, her words sounding like the cries of an enraged bird.
Emma wonders now if Shelley still hasn’t forgiven her for that. They’re almost home, and as they cross the street to the Projects, Emma tries again. “Idjut,” she says, calling Shelley by the pet name they have for each other, “I bet no Jewish kids have ever gone to Mass before. We’ll be Jewish outlaws. Like the James boys, Jesse and Frank, because … .” She’s at a loss to say more, but hopes that Shelley will be hooked by the chance to be so dramatic and outrageous.
Immediately, Shelley wrinkles her small nose with pleasure. “Jesse and Frank. Shelley and Emma. Jewish outlaw girls on the loose, making history.”
How wonderful to know someone so well, that you can turn their desires into mirror images of your own, Emma thinks. Perhaps even more wonderful, is having her needs come first, so unlike the way things are at home, where her father and May’s needs are paramount. Unable to stop herself, she waves her fist in the air, a gesture of victory that Shelley, luckily, doesn’t catch.