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Emma Goldman-Sherman

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A Nest of Hornets

That summer, I told her, “I’m a boy.” My mother laughed and said, “The hell you are.”

After dinner, I chased fireflies. I decided their lights meant green for boys, red for girls even if it wasn’t science. I trapped the red ones in a jar and scooched into the closet to watch them light and sigh till they died.

In the crabapple, some hornets built a nest with their saliva and chewed-up wood pulp. Like a papier mâché lantern, but no light shone from it. I watched as the hornets moved in and out.

My mother planted herself on a lawn chair in the grass to read romance novels from the library. She got me a book on hornets. I copied out pictures of their anatomy. I learned how their stingers have no barbs. The stingers don’t tear out when they sting someone. So they don’t die the way bees do. A hornet can sting a person a hundred million times. I told her, and without looking up, she said, “Then don’t go near them.”

The Chinese maple was too fragile to climb with deep red leaves like her lips. I dreamed of climbing oaks when I got bigger. She was counting on time to stop me.

“Soon you’ll have to be a good girl like all the rest of us!”

Under the Chinese maple, I traced its roots sprawling into the soil. I thought they’d be as deep as they were tall, but trees mostly reach up not down.

Before the hornets, I’d climb so high into the crabapple, my mother would think I’d left the yard. She’d screech the name she gave me to scare all the birds. I’d wait till she quieted, hands on her hips, before I’d let her know, “I’m where I said I’d be, in the crabapple tree. Only I won’t answer to that.”

That was the summer her belly swelled. She got me another book from the library. She said it wasn’t polite to talk about, even if it was science. She said I’d have to do it too, cause I was a girl, and I’d be a woman. I tore clumps of grass from the lawn and dug small holes in the soil.

I said, “I refuse.”

She said, “You’ve no choice in the matter.”

I told her, “I’ll be just the way I am, a tree climber, bug lover, and a boy!”

“You can’t ever be a boy!” she said and slapped my face.

I ran squishing rotten crabapples beneath my feet. I kicked that nest on my way up, climbing so the hornets came out angry and stinging.

I could hear her screaming, “You come down from there!”

She tried to nurse my welts. She poked long skewers wrapped in vinegar-soaked gauze down the cast of my broken arm. She draped washcloths cooled from the refrigerator over my eyes to ease my concussion. But I’d left her once and for all.

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Liking Joe

The day I almost drowned at the Waxman’s pool, I was wearing a styrofoam bubble strapped around my waist. I didn’t want to wear it, but I had bad ears, and I wasn’t allowed to get my head wet.

My mother didn’t swim either. She had a hairdo and her female thing. If I splashed, her eyes flashed with anger. Just because she sat by the pool didn’t mean she wanted to get wet.

My mother, grandma, and my grandma’s best friend, Mrs. Waxman, sat by the pool drinking Arnold Palmers because we’re Jewish, and Jews don’t drink. So they pretended they were drinking, smoked like dragons, and ate a few bites each of a special lunch called Salad Knees Was.

They told Mrs. Waxman, “you’ve outdone yourself! Divine! To die for!”

Lacquered and hairsprayed, they raved loudly about what they loved. I was given a taste and tried not to choke. “You’ll get used to it,” they said. “If you’re built like your mother here, you’ll eat salad for the rest of your life!”

Mrs. Waxman brought me a tuna sandwich on soft white bread. I waited the required 20 minutes and went back into the pool inching my way around the edge, dangling, my bubble a deformity on my back.

Joe, Mrs. Waxman’s grandson, arrived on vacation from college. From the edge of the pool, he seemed giant. All three women sat up to rearrange their legs.

I couldn’t let him see me with a bubble on my back. I slipped it off and immediately began to sink. My mother stood up frantic.

“What is the matter with her? Didn’t I tell her not to do that? Oy guvult, she’ll drown!”

I could see her through the water screaming, shaking and bobbing her head til Joe jumped in. He scooped me up so fast. The water broke open over me as he lifted me out.

“You coulda drowned! You shoulda known better! How could you be so stupid?”

Joe, soaked, took all the bills from his wallet and laid them out to dry in the sun. He said, “Keep an eye on those for me, will ya?”

The ladies clucked in delight. I made it my project to dry his dollars. I put pebbles to keep them from blowing away. Grandma called me a little wife with a budget.

I knew they were mean. I didn’t want to play their game. I just hadn’t found a way out yet.

Joe swam laps underwater barely surfacing to breathe. I studied him.

“Don’t get any ideas, young lady,” my mother said. “You’re not going back in any time soon.”

I didn’t care about the water. They thought I had a crush on Joe, but I didn’t like Joe like that. Joe was what I wanted to be.

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The Summer My Mother Remarried

What I found out front: a bright green praying mantis. Limbs as thin as spider web thread. She cast her perfect shadow against our door. My stepfather quickly flung her aside.

What I found in Mrs. Edward’s house: a terrarium full of green plants sweating. They could water themselves with their own sweat. There was an orange-coiled heat lamp to keep the snakes warm, but Mrs. Edward said it was hot enough this time of year. The squeak of the gerbil wheel and the scuff-scuff of the hamsters in their tunnels. Some creatures could not keep themselves warm while others could. Some summers were harder and hotter than others. This was a hard hot summer for me, according to Mrs. Edward.

Every day that summer I was deposited on her porch. I’d check to see if a snake got out to eat a gerbil or a hamster. The snakes couldn’t hide the truth. Whatever they ate bulged in their necks and took days to get digested.

Every day I counted the gerbils and the hamsters. The number never changed. When I asked what the snakes ate, Mrs. Edward said she fed them mice she purchased for this purpose. Baby mice are born into the world to be swallowed whole.

Every day I’d learn one new word from her big dictionary. Then I’d spin the globe and drag my finger across its mountains and valleys to see where I might go. Names and places I didn’t know.

I told Mrs. Edward about the praying mantis. She said the young ones are called nymphs. They get so hungry, sometimes they eat their own siblings. Mostly they prefer fruit flies. Once they are fully grown, they can catch and eat birds! I told her I would never want to eat a bird, but I couldn’t wait to be fully grown. She said it would happen soon enough.

What I found out back: a piece of glass so green it could have been an emerald, if an emerald was ever the size of the bottom of a broken bottle. I liked the way the curved sleekness felt cool in my hand even if the sharp parts insisted I pay good attention. I used to hide the ragged edge of this jewel in my pillowcase and grip the smooth part all night long.

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Emma Goldman-Sherman Emma Goldman-Sherman’s poetry appears or is forthcoming in The Bellingham Review (finalist for the 49th Parallel Award) Eckleburg, Toyon (w/Arabic translation), Gigantic Sequins (1st prize), Exist Otherwise and others. Emma’s micro-chapbook, “Possible Paths for the Minotaur,” will be part of the Ghost City Press Summer Series. Their microfiction is anthologized in Best Microfiction 2025 and the Fish Anthology 2023 (3rd Prize). They work as a neuroaffirming coach and support writers and artists at https://www.bravespace.online/.

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