before sunset on Friday because that’s when the Jewish Sabbath starts.”
“But I thought they were Communists, so how can they be Jewish? Communists don’t have religion, right?” Edith asked, but nobody answered her.
Arthur put down his hammer and picked up the paper. He read aloud, over the radio, which was playing “How Much Is That Doggy in the Window”instead of the news.
Executioner Joseph Francel sent the electrical charges through their bodies. Julius, the weaker, went first. He died with a grotesque smile on his lips. A wisp of smoke curled toward the ceiling as the current charged through Mrs. Rosenberg. It took three shocks of 2,000 volts each to electrocute Mr. Rosenberg. Four jolts swept through Mrs. Rosenberg and still she was not dead. A fifth was ordered.
“It’s a damned shame to kill a woman like that,” Pop muttered. “These are bad times we’re living in.”
“Where do their little boys live now? Do they know that their mother and father were electrocuted?” Edith asked. She tried to imagine what being electrocuted would feel like. Was it like being burnt? She’d burnt her hand once picking up a pot on the stove.
Arthur too was picturing the electric chair in his mind and trying to imagine what the Red martyrs had felt. He thought about the way his whole body vibrated when he used his chainsaw. What if that feeling were multiplied by a hundred or a thousand? Pop started to whistle softly along to Patti Page, fitting the corners of the new bed together carefully.
“I would’ve gone down to DC to picket the White House yesterday, but my Contemporary Issues class had its final exam,” said Arthur. He noticed that Edith was looking dubious as her new bed took shape.
“It’ll be just like the beds the girls have in the college dorms,” he assured her. “They call it a studio bed.” Edith liked her old bed upstairs very much. It was painted a creamy ivory color, like vanilla ice cream, and the headboard had wicker panels on each side and a wreath of wooden ivory roses with ivory leaves in the middle. And her magic box was under it. But she didn’t say anything. Her garret was scary now and she wanted to move downstairs.
She went outside and wandered out to the hollow by the uprooted maple where she had landed. She walked very slowly in ever wider circles, dragging her feet through the duff and looking at the ground. She really would be happy if she could find her missal again. But it was nowhere to be seen. Of course she didn’t really believe in God, but possibly he did not like little girls to steal his books.
The missal was lost, but at bedtime, when she looked under her new studio bed, fragrant of knotty pine, she was happy though not surprised to find her magic box had moved itself downstairs. As she pulled it out, it slid as easily along the floor as a little sled, its light-colored wood sweet-smelling and smooth to the touch. Its sides were about as high as the length from her wrist to her elbow. Edith lay down on her stomach, propped her head with her hands, and peered into the box. She watched a tiny tornado whirl across a tiny prairie and sweep a herd of grazing buffalo into the air, along with a redhaired cowgirl. Then she pushed the box back under the bed and got into her pajamas.
CHAPTER 2
LIFE AFTER BIRTH
If Edith woke up before her parents on Sunday mornings, she was allowed to go to Mass with her friend Daniel’s family, the DeMelos, who lived on the other side of Buck Hill Road. On a chilly May morning the month before the tornado, previous, Edith dressed in her flannel-lined jeans, her red sneakers, and a green hand-knit cardigan that Kitt had made for her. She crept down two flights of uneven stairs from her bedroom in the attic. Opening and closing the creaking south door carefully behind her, she trotted downhill on the gravel drive and crossed Buck Hill Road to the DeMelos’ ranch house.
It puzzled her a little that Kitt and Arthur let her go to Mass. They didn’t like churches. When Arthur read her the story of Spartacus last winter, where all the slaves who rebelled against their masters were crucified, she asked him if Jesus was also a revolutionary like Spartacus.
“Well, maybe he meant to be,” he answered gruffly, “but the Church today is an ally of Capital. It collaborated with Hitler and the Nazis too.”
As far as she knew, Arthur and Kitt had never set foot in a church, except possibly to go to a wedding. Their own wedding, they told her, was performed by the justice of the peace in Worcester. Arthur wore a red bandana around his neck, and Kitt wore a red dress.
Edith didn’t care much for Jesus herself. She couldn’t bear to look at him hanging bloodily from the nails in his hands and feet, and would get stabbing feelings in her own extremities when she had to see him. Usually she was able to find something nicer to look at in church, like winged angels. Sweet-faced Mary with the baby reminded her of Daniel’s pretty, gentle mother, Mrs. DeMelo, who liked Edith to call her Aunty Grace. Also, Edith loved to see the colored glass in the church’s arched windows, refracting the morning sunlight in small rainbows around the nave where the people sat. It felt like being in fairyland. Her heart swelled with the beautiful organ music old Mr. Szymanski played while the priest walked down the aisle. Father Bernard was as beautiful as a bride in his magnificent brocade dress, and she breathed in the spicy incense from the smoking golden censer.
Edith knew that on the Sundays when she went to church, Kitt gave her little brother Marcus, a spoonful of his terpinhydrate and codeine cough syrup, so he wouldn’t wake up. Then she’d go back to sleep in the big bed she shared with Arthur. Edith used her parents’ first names when she remembered to, since she believed that Mommyand Daddywere “bourgeois affectations”—a bad thing, in other words. Edith felt a little bit bad that, if she’d stayed home to play with him, Marcus could get up and wouldn’t have to take medicine when he didn’t even have a cough. She would miss the Sunday breakfast too. When Kitt and Arthur finally got up, they would relax in their bathrobes and drink Bloody Marys while Arthur made them something nice to eat—blueberry pancakes in the summer, jelly omelets or scrambled eggs with bacon and fried potatoes in any season. They didn’t believe in God, and they told Edith when the subject came up that religion was the opiate of the people. They would never have imagined that she could be stupid enough to take it seriously.
Daniel silently opened the door to Edith’s knock, still looking sleep-tousled in pajamas with rocketships on them. Daniel DeMelo had been her best friend since the DeMelos moved in across the road two years ago. Daniel was a boy, although a very short boy. Like Edith he was always at the front of the line when they lined up in size places at school. Like Edith, he loved to make up stories and play outside in the woods and fields at being pioneers or Indians or soldiers or Robin Hood or elves and fairies. They were both very good readers and loved to read, especially books that came in series. They were currently racing each other through the Little House books. They took the books out of the Whitby Town Library at the Commons where Kitt took them on Saturdays. They had just finished Farmer Boy.
This morning, though, Edith’s business was with the girls. Without a word, Edith pushed past Daniel and headed through the DeMelos’ messy kitchen straight to the girls’ bedroom, where she happily doffed her jeans and sweater and let Mary and Betsy, Daniel’s big sisters, dress her up for church and try to subdue the wild cloud of red hair that drove her mother to despair and threats. Betsy applied water and Alberto VO5, with excellent results.
“You really need to have it styled,” Betsy said ruefully. “Mommy could do it for you if your parents would give permission.”
They all knew Edith’s parents wouldn’t give permission. To smart people, fancy hairstyles were almost as stupid as church. Mary was taking her golden hair out of the rag curlers and combing it artfully into shining ringlets, like Shirley Temple’s but a less babyish style.
