“Sorrow is essential to forgiveness,” he says. “The soul must feel sorrow and detest the sin committed in order to reconcile with God.”
        “My mother never sins.”
         “Everybody sins. There are sins of omission. It may be something she hasn't done that is her sin.”
        Emma thinks about her mother's chores, trying to recall something her mother hasn't done that could be her sin. She does laundry on Monday, ironing on Tuesday, baking on Wednesday, more washing on Thursday, cleaning on Friday and shopping on Saturday. Sundays, she kneels on the hard floor of this church, a rosary threaded through her chapped and twisted fingers.
        She's done nothing wrong, Emma thinks. She does everything. She works enough to wash away the sins of the world.
        “No,” she shakes her head firmly. “My mother never sins.”
        The priest stands warily, sorting through the vestments in his open closet, filling the pails with alter robes and cloths. Before closing the closet door, he pulls a tall, black book down from the shelf. At first Emma thinks he will give a sermon on how Christ died gladly for her sins, but when he opens the book rice paper falls from engravings of stone statues of men.
         “Michelangelo believed the human form existed inside a block of marble, and that he was the only one who could release them,” he said. “When he died, he left a series of men with one whole arm or a head emerging from blocks of marble, the rest of their bodies trapped inside the stone. They are called 'The Prisoners.' ”
        Named for the whole features that escaped from stone—Awakening slave, Atlas slave, Young slave, Bearded slave—they line the hallway leading to the statue of David, a whole and perfect man. The priest closes the book and gives it to her.
        “You can take it with you,” he says, tucking the book beneath her stack of laundry. “Let me know what you think.”
        Unsure of this man with soft, clean hands, Emma backs away. Walking out through the church, she passes the mural of Christ emerging from clouds. Standing over his apostles, he thrusts his empty hands over their heads, as though proving there is nothing up his sleeves. Outside, she walks down to the foreign place to show the book to her Aunt Maria, to ask if she has ever heard of Michelangelo, if it's really true that there once was an Italian artist who could release the bodies of men from stone. Purple rhododendron blooms mysteriously on the right side of her aunt's pine porch. Prickly-pear blossoms and golden rod blaze across the shale barren to the left. The door to the house is open, revealing a darkened hallway filled with the grandfather's model sailboats and battleships, a shrine to Mary standing between a vase of roses above a soft, white altar cloth. Emma sits in the rocker outside the doorway, waiting for Maria to return, thinking how nice it would be to hitch a ride with her longshoreman uncle, travel back to Naples, brave the dragons beneath the Straits of Messina, explore the wonders of Sicily.
        The grandfather wakes from his nap, walks outside, his faded eyes blinking against the late afternoon sun. He touches Emma's shoulder gently with his bony hand.

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