Pages 12 - 38 Summary

"The Pilgrimage": A woman recalls her mother telling her about how women would crawl into churches on their knees. She, at the time a small child, identified the pain they must feel in their knees with her own and wondered when the skin on the knees would crack and bleed.

"Later, She Met Joyce": Cecilia, young girl, meets another girl named Joyce. The two become friends and even lovers but wind up being separated when Joyce changes school. She sees her again at Mass one day. Joyce is pregnant and Cecilia, now older, is conscious that her old friend speaks in a rough, slang dialect her mother associates with a lower social class. Joyce does not seem to remember Cecilia. Later, Cecilia is made president of her class.

"An Open Invitation to a Meal": The poem's narrator is tired of being...