Miss Emily

by Nuala O'Connor

  “Thank you, Ada.” She glances down, then up at me. “And may I apologize—”

  I hold up my two hands. “Don’t give it another thought, miss. I think Christmas brings out the bear in everyone. I know my daddy used to be like a devil in December, full to the brim with the excess of it all. With everyone being in on top of one another.”

  I grab a bit of shortening as big as an egg and soften it; Miss Emily takes it from me and mixes it into the cream. I heat a spoon on the stove top to make the molasses come easier from the cup, and together we knock the gingerbread into shape.

  “Doesn’t it smell intoxicating, Ada?”

  “It does, miss,” I say, but the chicken broth is wound so tight into my nose that, if I’m honest, I can’t really smell the cake. Today, though, I’ll agree with whatever she says; with our feet on the same plank again, all will be well.

  Miss Emily Turns to White

  TODAY I CANNOT LEAVE MY ROOM, NOT EVEN TO investigate the condition of my herb garden, which is surely by now a disgrace of withered leaves. Something strangles me, sits on me like a neck brace, and I dare not venture even as far as the kitchen. There is fog over Amherst, and the insides of my windows weep with condensation while the sun offers its dull light to my room. The outside world will make no demands on me today. Nor any day, perhaps.

  I lock my door with its imaginary key to release my freedom, for if the outside cannot be let in, I can still try to unleash my own insides. I sit to my desk and hope to write a few lines—something about the fog—but the words defy me, and I throw down my pencil. I look out: the sun is trying hard to glare its way through the mist. I open the window a little; the robins in Austin’s white oak chirp meekly today, afraid—maybe—to break the pearly spell. And yet the sounds of the town are amplified: rolling wheels, men’s shouts, factory din, a train. Noise thunders above or through the fog, I am not sure which; it seems to echo back as if in a great hollow.

  Yesterday, from this very window, I lowered my basket filled with gingerbread to the children who waited below, a custom I recently began and which the small people delight in. I usually send word to my nephew that I am making gingerbread, and he alerts his playmates. They wait to see the sash go up and the basket teetering on its string. It is a mode of greeting the children that suits me well; I get to stay in the security of my room, but I also get to halloo to them and see their angel faces.

  They ran up the steps, through the gate, and took the gingerbread in greedy handfuls; its dark goodness stained their mouths. The sun shone on their pretty heads, warm and nurturing.

  “Many thanks, Miss Dickinson!” they called. “Thank you, Aunt Emily!”

  “Go well, little ones.” I watched them run off to their world of play in the bright sunlight.

  Now the fog shrouds the sun, but I know it will break through eventually; it is stronger than any vapor.

  I sit again and try to write. I manage a morsel:

  The Sun took down his Yellow Whip

  And drove the Fog away—

  Nothing else I conjure coheres with those lines, which are all that want to come down to me through the corridors of my brain. I fold up the piece of paper and put it away with the others in the boxes in my drawer. I peer at them a moment, my sad little scraps and sadder little booklets, the string-bound parcels that I can neither open nor destroy. They are but one more layer in my polar privacy. I place a tray cloth over the bundles, for they seem to leer and mock me. No more will you write. It has left you, that urgency, that wellspring, that ability to connect things. I close the drawer and sit by my fireplace to read.

  Mrs. Barrett Browning is to be my companion today, she who died smiling, so they say, and whose last word was “beautiful.” I go through the book, page by page, soaking in the comfort of her poetry. I look at her words, one by one. Love. Thee. Breath. Smiles. Tears. It pleases me that each word is solitary, a loner. Side by side, their staccato nature blends with others, but in the end they stand alone. Each word is a fence post—upright, demanding, shrill—but each one holds the fence erect and, as such, is indispensable.

  Ada comes to my bedroom carrying two sprigged calicoes and my brown wool dress. She brings her spick-and-span aura with her, and I wonder if my room smells stale, if it smells of me. I notice a new confidence around her—the pluck and poise of love, no doubt. I court vicariously through Ada and Daniel Byrne; I watch their shy, sweet glances tossed like luck pennies back and forward in the kitchen. Sometimes a stray penny lands on me, and I pocket it gratefully.

  Ada holds up my gowns. “These are clean and aired, miss.”

  “Yes.” I watch absently as she puts them away among my other dresses. Their colors riot in front of my eyes. “From now on I shall only wear white,” I say. I do not know where this sentence—this decision—has descended from. It is true that I love white—my favorite dress is a snowy cotton wrapper with mother-of-pearl buttons and a pocket; I feel such ease in it, such freedom. But to forgo all color?

  “Miss?” Ada says, her arms aloft, holding the dress she was about to hang.

  “I will be Mr. Collins’s Woman in White. No, better, I will be Aurora Leigh in her ‘clean white morning dresses.’”

  “Black is for mourning, miss, surely?”

  “No, morning, Ada. Morning! The early part of the day. How slippery meaning is.”

  I feel a flutter in my limbs; I am warming to this notion now—white has long been of importance to me. This morning’s fog, far from being oppressive, made me restful, and that sort of tranquillity always vivifies me somehow. Fog and snow and blank paper—these things seduce me, they energize me. Can calmness and energy be bedfellows? It strikes me that if I am pure in dress, my mind may empty itself of all concerns, and that will make it easier for me to write.

  “Well, I suppose the white dresses are easy to keep,” Ada says, uncertainly. “They do bleach well.”

  “All around me is color, Ada. I do not need to add to that. The woodpecker’s crimson head shines, the daffodils in the garden dazzle, and the plummetless purple well of words awaits me. That is color. I will wear white!”

  “You will need new gowns, then, miss. Will I order yards of cotton from Cutler’s? Will I send for Miss Leonard, the seamstress? We should consult your mother.”

  “I fancy dimity, Ada. And a lace collar. Lace trim, too, in lines on the bodice. There is no need for Miss Leonard to come. Vinnie can go to her and be measured for me. Sizewise we are one and the same. And my sister loves an outing.”

  “And what’s to be done with these other dresses, miss?”

  “My Norcross cousins will have them, gladly. And Vinnie and I shall sew at least one new dress ourselves to save the cost of the seamstress.” I turn to her. “Leave me now, dear Ada, for I must think.”

  I stand to the window; the sun has pierced the fog, and it is all but gone, lifted like a veil to reveal Main Street and the town. Now I miss its spectral covering. This decision—to wear white—sings poetry to me: it will speak of my obedience to words, my dedication. It may signify that to me only, perhaps, but to whom else do I need to show my allegiance? I am giddy with excitement and cannot wait to tell Mother that I need new stuff for gowns. Perhaps she and Vinnie will get some good cloth for me when they go to Boston; they surely have the sweetest of dimity in that city.

  Even the sewing of a new dress does not daunt me, though I am usually a complaining cat when it comes to needlework. No, I will happily baste, stitch and hem until my fingers bleed. Not onto any new dress, of course. I shall be careful where the drops fall; I will not brook stains on my alabaster future.

  From now on I shall be candle-white. Dove-, bread-, swan-, shroud-, ice-, extraordinary-white. I shall be blanched, bleached and bloodless to look at; my very whiteness will be my mark. But inside, of course, I will roar and soar and flash with color.

  I write by night now, when nothing thrums bu
t my lamp. It makes a halo around my desk, and its oily stink creates a heady balm. There is no sound save my pencil across the paper and the soft clicks that emanate from the fire in my stove. The house sleeps; Amherst sleeps. Only I endure. And when my pencil tires of flicking word arrows onto the page, there is the moon to admire, full-faced and lovely, a bright coin. I enjoy it at every stage of its passage from plate to curving wedge to sliver to fingernail. I love its pallidity.

  I am both exalted and calmed by my farewell to colored clothing; it speaks to me of the way feelings reside in me: I am at once whimsical and wistful. Are these not strange mates? And yet in me they are permanently entwined in love’s long embrace.

  Mother, being Mother, complains about my decision to wear white.

  “Oh, Emily. Must you? It is not practical. And pale colors drain your face. They make you wan and sickly to look at. Must you really?”

  “Yes,” I say, already comfortable in my favorite white wrapper as Vinnie and I fashion another. Mother has a headache and has thus far refused to partake in our sewing festival. “Would you wish me different, Mother? Is that what you are saying?”

  “Of course not, my dear.” She pauses. “But people will think you work here if you dress like a servant.”

  “People? What people?”

  She tuts. “And dimity? It is more suitable as bedcoverings. But at least pin your cameo to your throat if you must wear a wrapper. Or your garnets. Then I will know it is you and not a serving girl crossing my path on the staircase. Or a spirit!”

  Vinnie and I bend our heads over our work; we sit either side of the fireplace. Mother is on the love seat, Godey’s Lady’s Book in her lap, but she rises and comes to me, her paisley shawl aloft. She tucks it around my shoulders.

  “There. That is better,” Mother says. “Now you will not look like a revenant, passing from room to room.”

  “How very poetical of you, Mother,” Vinnie says. “You have been reading verse, I daresay.”

  I snort, and they both look at me. “My apologies. I only meant that Mother does not care for poetry or books. Usually.”

  “Be that as it may, Emily, it is rude to make noises with your nose. Quite, quite rude.”

  I shrug off the shawl and continue with my sewing. Vinnie waves her arm to catch my attention; I look over, and she crosses her eyes in the same comical way we did as children. We suppress our laughter, and I suppress something more, for it pains me to hurt Mother, however trying she may be. She scuttles around us all, trying to please Father and trying to make us right, though it has been clear for a long time that neither Vinnie nor I will ever be right, in her eyes at least. She would have us more like herself: cautious and resigned but willing, the type of young woman who craves to be a bride.

  Father wanted a friend for life in Mother, and that he got. He is fond of saying, “There is no place for argumentative women in this world. None at all!” and Mother obeys and does not quarrel. Are they equals? I think not. Poor Mother, she has been saddled with an opinionated husband; odd, independent, single-minded daughters; and a son who drifted from sunny to haughty. But she must take at least part of the blame for all of us.

  Miss Ada Receives the Gift of a Fish

  I AM WORKING BUTTER, SLOW AND STEADY, WHEN A COMMOTION outside knocks me off my rhythm. I put my paddles in water and slip to the window. Dick, the Squire’s horse, is dancing around the yard like a man with a burr in his drawers. Daniel dances with him, but he is all the time talking to the horse and petting his long snout. He keeps with the animal, leaping whichever way the horse leads him. Crohan looks on, holding himself back by the fence in case he might have to lend a hand. Sure what good would a useless yoke like him be anyway? I pity Daniel, saddled with that fella; he’s nothing but a worry, a hindrance. Crohan only has work because his uncle gives it to him; no one else would take him on. He has the kind of face I would like to thrash, God forgive me for thinking it.

  I go back to my butter and soon get lost in the slip-slap of it again; I watch its color go from primrose to a pale buttercup. I chant in my mind, Come, butter. Come butter. Come butter, come. The smell of it brings me home, and though the milk is grand here in America, it is nowhere near as fine as Irish milk. Come, butter. Come butter. Come butter, come.

  I hear a soft rap on the back door; Daniel opens it and walks in.

  “God bless the work,” he says. “Did you put a cinder under the churn?”

  “The churn is away being fixed,” I answer, and I lift my foot to show him the cinder under my boot.

  “You’re fierce clever, Ada. No fairies will steal your butter.”

  “They won’t. Is the horse all right?”

  “Something spooked him.”

  “Or someone.” He stands close to me, and the January breeze that has caught in his clothes comes off him in waves. “Will I heat a sup of buttermilk for you?”

  He gives me a quizzical look. “How did you know I like it warm?”

  “Don’t men always like their buttermilk warmed up in winter?”

  “We do.”

  I place a jar in a pot of hot water and pour in the buttermilk; I stir it around and around, aware of Daniel near me the whole time, willing him to touch me, even just a hand to my hair. He doesn’t come to me, and I stir the milk on and on, then test it with my finger. I lift the jar and hand it to Daniel.

  “Now,” I say.

  He slugs it back and, quick as quick, leans forward and kisses my mouth with his milky mustache. He skips out the door before I can say a thing; I wipe the froth from my lip with my fingers and turn back to my butter, only to find Miss Emily in the doorway.

  “Miss! I didn’t know you were there.” She is looking at the back door. “He was only here a minute, that’s all.”

  She smiles, a tight little smile. “I am come to tell you . . .” She blinks and puts her hand to her head. “I am come to say . . .”

  But she does not finish whatever it is she wishes to say, for she swoons sideways, and I jump to her side and hold her up.

  “Sit here now, Miss Emily. Sit awhile.”

  “Oh, Ada. My head swims and my stomach has such pains.”

  I have lemon brandy out for making an Election Cake, and I pour a jot and make her drink it back.

  “Now,” I say. “Now, now. Do you want to go up and lie down?”

  Miss Emily nods, and I help her to her feet. I move to tuck my arm into hers, but she bats me away and walks ahead. The seat of her dress is streaked crimson—blood on snow. Thanks be to God, I think, it is only that; I feared there was something terrible the matter with her.

  “It’s your flow, miss,” I say as we go up the stairs, and she nods miserably, her face as hoary as her gown.

  “It doesn’t come often, Ada, and when it does, it flattens me. Every time.”

  “It’s the same with myself. They don’t call it the Curse for nothing.”

  “The Curse? How charming.”

  And the funny thing is, she means it. Words are treasure to Miss Emily; the most ordinary thing sends her off into one of her reveries about the nature and beauty of words.

  I get her settled in bed, and she seems to want me to linger, but I am thinking of my butter, melting in the heat from the stove, and the cake still to be made and now rags to fashion, too. And all this on a day when Daniel is about the Homestead and I will barely get to glimpse him, for I am up to my shoulders in work.

  “Your Daniel is a good man,” Miss Emily says.

  “He is, miss. Kindness is as rich as yolk in him.”

  “You make a fine pair.”

  I fidget with my apron. “I’ll go and see to the rags, miss. We’ll get you comfortable.” She nods, and I unclip her snood and let her hair fall free on the pillow. “Now, take your rest.”

  A lipping fish sits on the table in the kitchen when I come down the stairs. The bac
k door swings wide, sending in a breeze that at least has saved my butter. The poor fish looks like he is trying to say something from his jutting mouth—a plea for mercy, maybe, a last gasp for water. I think Daniel must have left it for me, but no, he wouldn’t throw it here and leave. The fish’s gills puff and drop; its blood and scales mark the table. I wrap it in a cloth and give it a blow to its head with the back of the ax. When I am sure it is not moving anymore, I cut off its head and put the body into the scullery sink.

  One of Miss Vinnie’s cats comes sauntering in; she must have smelled the fish from her perch in her mistress’s room.

  “Well, what can I do for you, madam?” I say, and the cat stares at me with her steady eyes. “Pssshhh, now.” I flick my hands at her, but she doesn’t move. “I have enough to be doing without entertaining you.”

  Me and Miss Vinnie disagree over the cats; I don’t want them in the kitchen, but she says they do no harm. None except their falling hairs and muddy paws on my clean floor. I take the fish’s head and toss it out the back door, and the cat goes haring after it. I linger a moment to see whether Daniel is around the yard. Patrick Crohan steps out of the barn and grins over at me; he waves his two hands and does a little jig, then disappears back inside. He is a broth of a boy. But there is no time to get het up over Crohan. I have to see if Mrs. Dickinson would like fish for tea, with pickled oysters, maybe, and a posset to follow. And there is much to be done besides.

  With the rags made and given to Miss Emily and the butter wrapped in burdock leaves, I take my duster to the parlor and run it over the ornaments—the wax flowers under their glass dome always remind me of dead things. There is no one about—I had been hoping to catch Mrs. Dickinson—and the room is as silent as if it has been empty for years. I think, not for the first time, how forsaken the house feels without children to run through its rooms. I miss the rush of small people underfoot—there was always a clatter of them at home, and if they didn’t belong to us, they belonged to someone not far away. Miss Vinnie’s cats are like silent, spoilt children, but real little ones would liven up this house. Ned comes and goes sometimes, of course, but Miss Susan always keeps him quiet when she brings him, the poor lad. He should be beating a hoop through the yard, not sitting still with a picture book, like a little scholar, under his mother’s eye.