Chapters 5-8 Summary

Gurion describes his fascination with another student, Jelly Rothstein: "A Sephardic beauty in the loudest, sharpest, meanest kind of way." Although most students—especially other girls—do not like Jelly, Gurion is captivated by her facial ticks and unusual appearance which he understands as expressions of "the lithe intelligence at labor behind [her face]." He compares Jelly with the biblical Eve who is scorned because she gave fruit of the tree of knowledge to Adam. Both Eve and Jelly, as Gurion sees it, have been wrongfully shamed by history. Gurion also expresses his compassion for Benji Nakamook, whose mother punishes him by starvation—sending him to school with no lunch. Benji keeps his mother's cruelty a secret, one that warps his personality. "His secrets had made him into a person who was willing to hurt anyone and anything...