Miss Emily

by Nuala O'Connor

  “With ease, Father,” I say. “Remember that I was small like a pipit and my hair was chestnut bright and my eyes were like the brandy left in the glass when the party ends. Remember that I was a kangaroo beside the beauty of my sister and the handsomeness of my brother. Won’t that do?”

  “Goodness, Emily, I refuse to remember any of that. Now, look here, I have recent molds of your mother, Lavinia and Austin, but none of you. Must you be so singular? So stubborn?”

  “The essence of the person drains from daguerreotypes after a few days, Father. Would you have me fizzle away before your very eyes?”

  He rattles his arms in annoyance. “I will have Mr. Spooner, the photographer, come here, Emily. You will not need to leave the house.” He draws himself up to settle the matter. “Spooner has not embraced this new ambrotype nonsense. He will produce a fine portrait of you, my dear.”

  Mr. Spooner comes, a compact person with a beard that wishes to defy gravity—it pokes from his chin, a horizontal bush. Mother has forbidden me to wear white. I wear Vinnie’s old blue check; it sits lumpily around my chest, a curious match for the image of my sixteen-year-old self. I squint at that picture; I remember the day my likeness was taken. I was shortly to go to Boston to visit with my aunt’s family. Father insisted that before I leave he must have a daguerreotype of me, to keep him company. I was chock-full of youthful bounce: eager and excited in my planning for school the following year and in happy anticipation of acquainting myself with Boston. There I would visit the graves at Mount Auburn and contemplate the souls snug beneath the cypresses; I would marvel over the wax figures in the Chinese Museum; I would enjoy a horticultural exhibition. But all that was ahead of the girl in the daguerreotype.

  When I compare her—button-lipped and erect—to the image that looks from the mirror now, I feel lachrymose. My young self looks giddy but contained, as if some strange but welcome news has lately been imparted to me. I am heavier now, of course; my drooping eye droops even further, and my chin flops a little lower; I am, perhaps, a touch vinegar-lipped. Such are the vagaries of age. But there is something else: a resignation of spirit, maybe, a lack of wonderment at what might yet come to my door. There is no primrose path I wish to wander anymore; there are few infelicities to tempt me now.

  Vinnie says I have not changed one whit, but of course I am changed. I have been immeasurably altered by every person I have met and by every word I commit to paper. In any case, I am sure I read somewhere that the plain woman can never be satisfied with her reflection or with a daguerreotype, for neither the mirror nor the sunbeam art of the photographer can ever be as forgiving as the sleight-handed portrait painter.

  Mother still marvels at Otis Bullard’s portrait of Austin, Vinnie and me when I was but nine years old. She stands in front of it often and sighs, the nostalgic exhale of someone who is content but a little sad. Such a trio of sweetlings we are in that painting, with our cropped hair and bud lips. But surely Mr. Bullard was being economical—we each have the same unblemished, identical face. Perhaps we were very alike back then and it is only in later years that our features have parted ways, so to speak. I held a pink moss rose that day and a botanical book that I was, at that time, in love with—it was my constant companion. Vinnie wanted to hold her cat, but Mr. Bullard gently suggested she hold a sketch of a cat instead—“less inclined to jump”—and to everyone’s amazement she agreed. She was, I think, afraid of Mr. Otis Bullard.

  We wore dresses with gigot sleeves—mine in green velvet, Vinnie’s in silver-blue—and Austin looked every inch the Squire-in-waiting in his starched collar and black jacket. It was January, I remember, and cold, and that may account for the blush to all our noses and cheeks. Or perhaps again the artist took liberties and gifted us the healthy flush that winter had stolen. Whatever the truth of the matter, Mother treasures this painting as no other in her possession; I think she likes that our extreme youth is bound into that canvas and that it is untouchable there, a static, innocent hoard. It is as well she likes it, for no one—including me—is fond of the daguerreotype captured a few years later, and doubtless none of us will fancy the current one either.

  Mr. Spooner is a flapper. His hands flap, his lips flap, even his coattails flap.

  “Come, come, Miss Dickinson,” he says, waggling his arms at me like a demented schoolteacher with a brazen child. He does not touch me, but he maneuvers me with his whomping hands until I am seated in such a way that pleases him.

  Ada has dusted and swept the room so that it sparkles, but Mr. Spooner wants no furniture and no “trimmings” in the background.

  “I detest baubles. We must remain clutter-free, clutter-free,” he intones, erecting a white backdrop behind me.

  Mother and Vinnie stand by—a Greek chorus of encouragers—all smiles and nods, so that I will not get up and refuse to take part in the charade.

  “Emily,” Vinnie says, “you look wonderful. Does she not, Mother?”

  “Very handsome,” Mother says.

  I fiddle with my sleeve buttons, glancing at the tiny cameo of the blindfolded woman on one. I wonder if she has the right idea—to go blindly in the world, neither see nor be seen. Spooner urges me not to move and slips the copper plate into his black box.

  “Hold still, hold still,” he says over and over, until I notice that even Mother is irritated by his constant repetition. “Mustn’t breathe the vapors, mustn’t breathe the vapors,” he chants, and Mother puts her hand over her mouth and steps back. “Hold still, hold still.” It takes all my powers not to smile, for I must hold still.

  I concentrate on keeping a death face, my features fixed like those of a person mortally frightened, or so it feels to me. I allow my mind to go here and there, up into clouds and above oceans. Westward across Massachusetts, over Mount Norwottuck, as if I were a wheatear returning from Africa. But it is difficult to imagine well with an audience present, urging you to inertia. I fix my stare on the brass peg below the lens and feel my eyes will soon water, which will be the undoing of it all. My breath backs up in my throat, and I long to breathe deeply, but there would be too much movement in that. Tick-tock goes the clock, tick-tock goes my heart. My mind soars upward, and my body tells me it will not stay stagnant much longer; I have almost reached patience’s end when I am released: “And . . . done,” Spooner calls, and I come back to earth.

  I let my torso crumple, and then I stretch my arms and waggle my neck. Mother shakes her head, and I compose myself.

  “Thank you, Mr. Spooner,” I say.

  “What is a photograph but a mirror with a memory, madam?” Spooner says, glancing at Mother with a smug smile. He is so pleased with his phrase he repeats it. “A mirror with a memory, yes.”

  “Indeed, sir.”

  “Madam, be so good as to line up my next victim,” he says, a quip he surely trots out—along with the rest—at every sitting. We dutifully laugh, and Vinnie takes her place before the black box.

  Mother is sitting for Mr. Spooner when Ada bustles in with rum and rags, intending to clean brasses, it would appear.

  “Begging your pardon, ma’am,” she squawks, backing out of the room. I go after her. “I forgot it was this morning,” she says flatly.

  “That is quite all right, Ada.” Her skin is mottled and strange, and she is curiously quiet. She fell lately, on the stairs, and bruised her face, but the marks have healed a little.

  “I’ll go back to the kitchen, miss.”

  “Mr. Spooner is quite the enthusiast, Ada. Constantly seeking new prey.”

  “Miss?” she says.

  “He likes to photograph so much that we are afraid he is going to line up Vinnie’s cats for a portrait next.” She keeps her eyes to the floor and does not smile. “Who is out the back today, Ada?”

  “Out the back?”

  “In the yard. Who have we got?”

  “Daniel is there, Daniel Byrne. And M
oody Cook. Mrs. Sweetser’s girl—Nancy—will be here shortly to help me with the bleaching.” She wrings her hands. “And Crohan is there. At least I think he is.”

  “I see.” I pause for a moment, wondering what Mother will say to my plan, but the opportunity is too ripe to let wither. “Go and tell them to gather by the barn, Ada.”

  “All of them?” she asks, her eyes round as plates.

  “As many of them as you can find.”

  Mr. Spooner sets up his box in the yard.

  “Superior light in the outdoors,” he says, to no one in particular.

  He lines up Daniel Byrne and Moody Cooke and Mrs. Sweetser’s girl. He calls for chairs and puts Ada sitting at the end of the row, then drags her by the arm to the middle, as she is the smallest. “We need one more for balance,” Spooner says. “Isn’t there one more?”

  Daniel Byrne whistles through his teeth—a clear, melodic blast—and Patrick Crohan slinks from the barn. Ada keeps her eyes forward, but I see that she goes rigid when Crohan slopes in front of her to take his place at the end of the line. Ada has forgotten to remove her apron. I scurry forward, and she unties it hastily, knocking her hair askew in her hurry to pull it over her head. I pat down the stray hairs for her and smile, but she gives me a grim look in return. Perhaps it is wrong of me to ask her to be photographed along with the man she loves, but I think she will thank me for it when she sees the daguerreotype. She is a vain little thing, and it will suit her nicely to see how pretty she looks when Spooner returns with a cabinet card for her to display or to send home to her family. And when she takes in how handsome her Daniel is, too.

  “My hair parting is like the map of Ireland, miss,” she hisses. “I look a fright. I think I should step away into the washroom. I’m in the middle of sorting the clothes anyway.”

  “No, no, Ada. Stay. The laundry will wait.” I squeeze her shoulder and move to the side.

  “Hold still, hold still,” Spooner calls, one arm aloft to keep the group from moving. “Hold still, hold still.”

  No one moves, save for Ada, whose hands worry in her lap. I think to run and pluck a blossom for her, to stay her fingers, but it is too late. So I watch her agitate and realize that her hands—her hardworking, tiny hands—will be nothing but a blur in the photograph.

  By and by Spooner says, “And . . . done. You may all relax now.”

  A dove breaks from a tree in a sputter of wing beats, and Ada leaps from her chair and runs indoors. Daniel Byrne stands in the yard looking after her.

  Miss Ada Keeps a Secret from Daniel

  THE DICKINSONS ARE SEWN TOGETHER LIKE MOST FAMILIES are—in uneven patches and scraps—but they go together well in spite of that. Miss Emily is the cause of a certain part of the up-and-down nature of the family, but Mr. Austin makes waves, too. No one else would say that of him, perhaps, but I see it. He has the worst of both his parents: the Squire’s distance, Mrs. Dickinson’s moroseness. But he also has a peculiar spark of his own—a sort of rumbling anger that bubbles under everything he is and does. That anger dances across his face and into his limbs, making a restless creature of him. He is fine-looking, too, of course—all wild hair and brooding eyes—and that brings its own troubles. Something about Mr. Austin exhausts me. I can always sense when he is in the Homestead, because tiredness threatens to keel me over. The tense way he carries himself leaks into the atmosphere around him and the very rooms he occupies.

  It is to Mr. Austin that Miss Emily turns when I tell her what Crohan has done. Well, I half tell her, because I cannot bring myself to say what happened in its entirety; I am too ashamed, and I don’t want to upset her.

  “Ada,” she says, coming to me as I labor over the linens, “did Patrick Crohan do something to you? Something untoward?”

  My heart lodges in my throat; I do not want to talk about what happened to me. My haunted nights are bad enough without having to speak of it to Miss Emily. I step away from the copper and dry my hands on my apron. I look at her, anxiously twisting her slender fingers and frowning at me. How can I make her my confessor? She is too delicate in herself; I don’t wish to trouble her with the awfulness of what occurred. So I choose to say little.

  “Ada, speak to me. Did that man assault you?”

  “Yes, miss, it was Crohan who bruised me. I did not fall on the stairs as I first said.”

  “My poor Ada.” She holds her hand out to me, and I take it. “Go on. Tell me what happened.”

  “Crohan hit me, miss, with his fist, because I would not agree to kiss him. He found his way to my bedroom and accosted me there.”

  “But that is terrible, Ada. Appalling! I shall go to Father at once.” She drops my hand and makes to leave.

  “No, miss, please don’t.” I grab her fingers in mine. “I fear that your father will turn me out. Where would I go then?”

  “But, Ada, that man is violent. He should not be allowed to walk away.”

  “Leave it go, miss. I don’t want any more bother. Please. For me. I’m asking you.”

  “As you wish,” Miss Emily says, but she looks wholly unsettled, and I know that the matter is not at an end.

  Sure enough, she goes to her brother and it is Mr. Austin who comes to my bedroom late one evening—alone—to talk to me.

  “Are you positive,” he says, “that you did not entice him, that you did not invite him in?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Is he someone you know well?”

  “Yes, sir. No, sir. I only mean he works for your father from time to time and he comes to the kitchen. With Daniel Byrne. The Irish all know one another around here, sir.”

  “He comes to the kitchen? You ask him in?”

  “No, sir. He comes uninvited. He left a fish.”

  Mr. Austin pushes his hand through his hair, exasperated, it seems, with me. “Is Emily the only other person who knows?”

  “She is.”

  “What does she know?”

  “That he came unasked to my room. That he hit me.” I am too shamed to tell him of Crohan’s threats when I warned him away from the Homestead. I feel a yawn breaking from my throat, and I try to tamp it down, but up and out it comes.

  “I am tiring you.”

  “Yes, sir. No! I’m only yawning. It’s not to say I am weary.”

  He turns to the fireplace and puts his hands on the mantelpiece, his back to me. “Did the man force himself on you, Miss Concannon?”

  I am afraid to lie. “Yes, sir.”

  “And do you bleed?”

  “A little.”

  He turns quickly. “Not now. Not after what you say happened. On a monthly basis, I mean.”

  “Oh.” My face burns. “Not every month, sir. My flow is irregular, as they’d say.”

  He clicks his tongue and chews his lip. “I see. I shall ask the apothecary for tansy or Spanish fly or whatever concoction they use these days for such things. I know not what they prescribe anymore.” He leans in close to me. “You will take it, and we will say no more of this indiscretion.”

  “Thank you, sir. Many thanks.” I look at the floor, and Mr. Austin turns away and leaves.

  My bones feel broken with tiredness. The bruises that Crohan left on my thighs are faded, but he may as well have inked them on me, for the skin seems to throb under my petticoat. I sit on the stool, put my head in my hands and weep.

  I take the tincture every couple of hours and wait for the flood that will surely follow. Even in the night, I get up every two hours or so and sneak to the kitchen to warm water and take it. The tansy tastes of grass and oil; its awfulness fills my mouth. At night I soak brown paper in warm water and paste it over the yellow bruises on my arms and legs. I have been bathing balm of Gilead buds in a tot of rum and painting that onto my cuts. All of this because of what Crohan did to me. The hurt he caused to my body is one thing, but he has disordered my mi
nd in a way that I cannot make peace with. I don’t trust my own thoughts, for the terrible memory of him comes unbidden and chokes me at all times of the day and night. I swallow cups of tansy, and with the horrible taste of it, I try to douse him out of me.

  And, at last, I bleed. Heavy, clotted blood spills out of me so fast I am afraid to move. I have had to fashion big fat rags to stop the red streaming down my legs. All my innards hurt—from the top of my stomach down, it feels as if something drags through me and means to force itself out, one way or another.

  I sit to peel the spuds. I sit to pluck a chicken. I sit to knead dough. All the things I normally do standing at the table, I must sit for. If I don’t sit, the ache and pull between my legs threatens to make me collapse in a heap on the kitchen floor. This must be what birthing feels like, or near enough to it.

  Everything has been torn asunder—my mind rattles along trying to forget what happened, but my body screams it to me. The sight of my own blood turns my stomach, the smell of it even more so. It has a high, tinny stench; it smells old and bad. Even bleeding the chicken out into a bowl gets me thinking again; I push away the thoughts and turn my mind to work.

  It is awkward to pull feathers from sitting, but after dunking it in a bucket of hot water, I take the bird in my lap like a pet. Mammy always strung up a chicken to pluck it—a rope from the rafter tied to one chicken leg—but I like to stand over the bird. Today I sit and go at the tail feathers and wings. The grab and tear settles me a bit; there is a violence to it that soothes me somehow. I barely even notice the prick of the quills, the tickle of the afterfeathers or the bird changing from decorated to bald. I am not with myself at all; I am somewhere far away. I try to pray, but the words won’t come to me in any order.

  By the second wing, I am weary and all I can think of is lying down; the feathers in a cloud on the floor around my chair look inviting. But I will not lie down, because I cannot. I can’t prostrate myself on the floor any more than I can go to my bed. Apart from the work I must do here, my bedroom is no sanctuary for me now. I enter it with fear each night, and I am sure the air is tainted with his almond stink no matter how long I leave the window open or how much attar of rose I drip onto the mat and bedspread. The room seems to crowd around me; it breathes its wooden breath, hawing all over me, the way Crohan did.