And the heat of the bed worsens the itchiness between my legs. I kick off the covers and slap at myself—a trick Daddy taught me for solving an itch—and it lessens for a few minutes, but back it comes to torment me. It hurts me to pee, too, and so I wander through the day with a bladder fit to burst to delay the moment when I will have to sit on the pot and feel the scald of it coming out of me. I wish my mammy was here, or Auntie Mary. Someone who would comfort me and tell me what to do. For I cannot speak to Daniel. Mr. Austin warned me not to tell him or anyone, and apart from his warning I simply would not know what to say. What words could I put on what Crohan did to me? And what would Daniel think of me at all?
Miss Emily comes to the kitchen to bake a cake for her nephew, who is in bed with one of his ailments.
“Will you take the cake to him?” I ask, and Miss Emily stands and stares at me as if I have said something altogether mad.
“No. I will send it by Father. And I will send flowers, too, for Sue. Shall we go to the conservatory and see what attractive blooms grow? Or we could make a garland with pine branches from the garden.”
I don’t want to go out into the yard; Crohan might be there, and I cannot stand to look at his leering face.
“If it’s all the same to you, miss, I’ll stop here. What cake are you after? Give me the recipe, and I’ll get the bits ready.”
“Perhaps I should send something more ambrosial to Ned, for building his strength?” She looks at me, but I do not know what to suggest. “No, I won’t. He loves sweet things. I shall make my coconut cake.”
“Grand so, miss. I know that one by heart.”
She goes to the conservatory. I avoid looking out the window into the yard, as I have for days, for fear of who might be there. I sit for a few minutes to gather myself, and when I sense that Miss Emily might be coming back, I go to the cupboard for sugar, grated coconut and flour. We dried the coconut the last time we made the cake, and I am glad we did, for it swallows time to prepare it from fresh. I am starting to cream the butter and sugar when she comes back with a clutch of blue and white hyacinths.
“Look, Ada. Are they not embarrassing in their loveliness? And to think Hyacinth was a graceful Grecian man.”
“They are gorgeous, miss.” I take the flowers and put them in water, stopping to stick my nose into their open bells; their perfume is pungent and sweet. “Don’t leave them too many days in water, miss. Tell Miss Susan the stems go to mush in water. Tell her that.”
I don’t mention that my mammy always told me that the recently dead smell of hyacinths, as it seems a morbid thing to say when little Ned is not well. Mammy washed every corpse in Tigoora for waking, and she told me that as each soul lifted, it left that hyacinth smell after it. I leave the flowers by the sink; Miss Emily will wrap them later in paper and ribbon. I soak the dried coconut in warm water to soften it, and Miss Emily sifts the flour. She is in a gay mood, and it lightens me to be around her.
“I wonder how the Rich—may feel—
An Indiaman—An Earl—
I deem that I—with but a Crumb—
Am Sovreign of them all—”
“Is that one of your own rhymes?” I ask, and she nods.
She is shy about her verses, but I like it when she recites snatches of them to me. It makes me glad to know that the nights she spends writing by lamplight come to something.
I hear a gentle knock-knock at the back door, and there is only one person it can be. It is not Moody Cook, for he strides into the kitchen. And that other yoke sneaks in. I ignore the knocks, hoping that Daniel might peek in the window, see that Miss Emily is with me, and go away. But he raps again, louder this time, and Miss Emily leaves down her flour sifter and goes to the door. I sit on a chair, for my legs have begun to wobble, and if I do not sit, I will crumple to the floor.
“Miss Dickinson,” Daniel says, pulling his cap from his head. “May I have a swift word with Ada?”
“Of course, Mr. Byrne.”
“My name is Daniel, miss. You might call me that.”
“Yes, yes,” she says, and steps aside to let him in.
“I’m awful busy,” I say to him, so that he will leave, but he looks at me with such pained expectation that I get up and hoosh him ahead of me to the scullery. “What is it?” I whisper.
He looms over me, and I do not like his closeness; it seems to threaten me. I shrink against the sink. He sees me do it and steps back.
“You have fallen away from me, Ada. Have I done something to upset you?”
“No, Daniel.” I look at the floor. “I haven’t been well in myself, that’s all.”
“Might you need a doctor?”
“No!” The word snaps in the air between us. “No, I have a remedy from the apothecary. Mr. Austin got it for me. . . .” I trail off, because I feel I am saying too much. “I’m grand. I’m as good as mended.”
“All right, then,” he says, twisting his cap in his hands. He looks down at me, and I can see that he does not know what to make of what I am saying. I long to tell him the truth, but how would I say it?
“I’m grand,” I mutter.
“I will be up-country for a week or so with Old Man Crohan. I will call on you when I return.” He nods and leaves me. I hear him say good-bye to Miss Emily, and then he is gone.
I upturn a bucket and sit on it. I am far from mended, far from grand. My rags are soiled with a stinking green, and I shiver without control at odd moments. There is a rash working its way over my back and arms like clouds across the sky. Every day when I take off my clothes to look, there is more of it creeping down my neck and along my wrists to my palms. And I am hot. I swoon with heat so badly at times that I have to pull the collar from my throat and fan myself. My muscles ache so that I don’t know if I am coming or going. In my apron pocket, I keep a lavender bag; I pulverize it between my fingers and lift it to my nose to drown the smell of Crohan, the smell of myself.
Miss Emily clangs shut the oven door. It is a signal to me. I stand and go into the kitchen, patching a smile to my face for her.
Miss Emily Ponders Her Brother
“IT IS LIKE A PEARL, ISN’T IT?” I HOLD UP THE SHELLED ALMOND for Ada to see. “A tear-shaped pearl.” I eat the almond, and the fragrant desert of California seems to flow over my tongue. “Mr. Cutler ordered them in for us. Have one, taste one.” I hold out an almond to her.
“I’m not baking with any bloody almonds,” Ada says, and tosses the cloth she has been wiping with onto the table.
“I don’t want you to bake with them. Mother is bilious, and the apothecary said almonds would help. I mean to blanch these and beat them into an emulsion with barley water. Will you help, Ada?”
“The very smell of them makes me want to throw up. I will not help. I have a thousand other things to be getting on with. A million.”
She grabs the broom and heads for the stairs, and I do not dare to call after her to say that Father is still waiting for his morning coffee. I brew it myself and take it to the dining room, where he is ensconced with his deeds and whatnot.
“Emily?” Father’s eyes are as glazed as a cow’s, and his hand is out for the coffee. I think to speak with him of Ada and her attacker, though she pleaded with me not to, but Father is heavily occupied and does not wish to be disturbed, so I leave him be.
Sweet April light at last, and the frost will soon be lapped up by the sun. The trees are newly bursting with buds—some even have leaves—and the syringa by the barn offers her purple fragrance for all to swoon on. There is a memorial today at the church for all those killed at Fort Sumter during the early days of the war. Those long-lost, lovely boys must make do with a prayer from me, tossed from my spy hole into the Amherst wind. I never go to church anymore; apart from the dreadful crowds, there is, for me, a lack of meat in its teachings. The godly men rely too much on belief in the ethereal—that which is
wanted and hoped for but unseen. I prefer to bow to the flesh and gristle of what lies before me, things I can see. But for the boys who fell in the war, I will send forth words of comfort in the hope that someone out there hears them and puts them to use as a spiritual poultice.
All of the Homestead and Evergreens are gone to the service, and it is at times like these that I miss my old Carlo the most—his warm, wet muzzle in my hand, his silly, faithful dogness. Mother always styled him a model hound, but I knew all of his secrets: avarice, laziness, a hot temper at times and too much fondness for a quiet life. Now, who does that call to mind except myself? Carlo and I were duplicates in temperament, I think. Father has suggested that I get a new dog, but I have not the heart. More than a year without my canine companion has taught me to be alone more fully.
I peep from my eyrie today. With the frost melted, the mud churns up, and tardy ladies on their way to the service hold the ends of their skirts aloft like dancers in a muted ballet. Pink arbutus waves above the street and makes everything look utterly alive. And then Mr. Kellogg’s wife, heavy with child (again), comes rolling down the road like a sainted marble on her way to the church. I disdain her yearly birth-giving. What time does the woman ever have to think, or sit alone, or just be?
Spittle loosens on my tongue; I am in need of something toothsome. Vinnie jokes that I eat so many sugary things that it is a wonder I do not have a sweeter disposition. It may be that my sister sucked up all the sweetness of the family and kept it for herself. I leave the cupola and pad down to the kitchen, where the stove blazes and Ada chants prayers and sings in the scullery while she scrubs crockery. I hear her call to one of the cats, whom she pretends that she dislikes, but I see her gentleness with them often.
“Sheba-sheba-sheba,” she says, “come on, old pet, come here.”
But the cat must not come to her, for Ada starts to sing again. Today it is a plaintive song, and I stand to listen. She sings about Slievenamon, her mother’s home, and says she will never forget one she met there.
Ada stops her scrubbing when she finishes her song, and there is nothing but a taut silence. I do not want her to know that I have been listening—an intruder—so I slip down to the cellar with the butt of a candle for light and go to the cupboard. There I have stowed an oval of gingerbread which I mean to share with the children later. But first I shall sate myself on its gummy mass. I break a piece—I have failed to procure a knife from Ada’s store—and, like the low thief that I am, I steal it into my mouth in one huge bite. It is crisp outside and makes a pleasing crunch against my teeth; its insides yield to me, and ginger hops on my tongue. I giggle to myself and wonder if my reason is gone from me entirely.
“The bat thinks the fox cannot see,” says a voice in the near dark, and I jump, almost dropping cake, candlestick and all. Ada steps into the light; she is holding an ax. She looks a little deranged, and I am sure I look somewhat crazed also, huddled in the cellar, my mouth filthy with crumbs.
“Ada, you startled me. And you have found me out in my greed.”
“I heard scuttling down here and thought we might have a rat.”
“And you would slaughter it with an ax? Brave girl!”
She looks at the ax and lowers it. “I didn’t mean to frighten you, miss. I had to come and see what was scuffling about.” She sets the ax against the wall. “I’ll get the brandied peach leaves while I am here. They’ll spice your mother’s custard nicely.”
I break another chunk off the gingerbread and hold it out to her. She grins shyly but takes it, and we stand there, two underground ghouls, scoffing cake.
I belch softly. “Excuse me.”
“That gingerbread would bring you back if you were too far gone,” Ada says, and she sighs. “Now, miss. Work, work.”
I close the cupboard. Ada retrieves a jar of peach leaves from the wine cellar and bundles me up the steps. The cheery kitchen walls are succor to my eyes after the dark below. I sit at the table, near the stove’s heat, while Ada heats milk for custard and scrapes long vanilla pods onto a plate, their seeds an army of immobile insects.
“Are matters improved with you, Ada? You know, since that which happened. Do you feel well?”
She doesn’t raise her eyes from her work. “As well as can be expected.”
“I heard you sing, before. In the scullery. You came across as wounded. Lonely.”
She looks up at me, and I cannot read her eyes. “It’s a song, Miss Emily, that’s all. It’s only a song.”
Miss Ada Goes to Boston and Chicopee
I MUST GO TO BOSTON, AND I MUST TRAVEL THERE ALONE. MR. Austin has decreed it, and he says it is for the good of my health, not to mention his family’s well-being. I felt the itch of contradiction rising on my tongue when he talked of the family, but I softened it. He, of all people, does not take kindly to answering back.
He came across me in the dining room, dusting the ornaments. I stopped what I was doing and greeted him; he stood and looked at me for a time, then came close.
“You have a venereal disease, Miss Concannon. The French disease or the clap, one of the two. I am sure of it.”
That is what he said to me, and he was angry, and I disliked his anger because there was blame in it. Even still, I felt I deserved the blame, for I am choked with guilt. I pray in my mind to the Holy Mother to help me.
I tried to tell Mr. Austin that I was feeling fine. “My symptoms are few, honest to God, sir.”
He grabbed my hands and held them by the wrists. “This is a symptom, these horrible blotches,” he said, blatting out the words. “I have seen it before. Many times. And if you do not wish to succumb to this disease completely, you will go to Boston to consult a physician.” He tossed my hands from him and glared at me.
“Of course I will go, sir.”
“I will make provisions for you, travel and the hospital and so forth. My sister is exceedingly fond of you, and I do this for her.”
“Thank you, sir. I am grateful.”
I was arranging flowers with Miss Emily when she spotted the rash; I had covered my hands with powder, but it had worn off.
“What is this, Ada?”
I pulled my hands to my sides, but she prised one from my skirts and held it before her. She bent her head and squinted. The rash is all along my palms, and it looks like a splatter of pink berries. The patches are unsightly to be sure, but the rash is not itchy, and for that reason I have not been too worried about it.
“It doesn’t bother me, miss.”
“That may very well be the case, Ada, but Mother might not have you prepare food if she knew of it.”
“I am vigilant, Miss Emily. And Mr. Austin is taking care of me. He says I must see a doctor in Boston, and so I am going there.”
“Very well. That is to the good.” She put her arm across my shoulder. “You know you can speak with me, Ada, of anything that troubles you.”
“Yes, miss,” I said, but I would not like to darken her heart with things she does not need to know.
Boston City Hospital is brand-new. It looks like the Four Courts in Dublin with its high green dome. Broad steps lead up to the hospital’s entrance; I stand at the bottom of them and consider not climbing them at all. Then I remember the wad of Mr. Austin’s letter to the doctor in my bag and know that I must. Mrs. Dickinson thinks I am visiting cousins in Boston; Mr. Austin and Miss Emily thought it wiser to keep the truth of my trip from their parents.
The air in Boston is different to the air in Amherst. It has that wideness that city air holds—it must gather so much to itself: huge buildings, the river, all of its people and, beyond the bay, the whole of the Atlantic Ocean. I stand and breathe in the city, both afraid of and exalted by it. I wish that Daniel were here to see it; I had hoped for a few lines from him on his travels, but he has been gone two weeks now and there is no word yet. It may be that he is in the wilderness and
does not get to any town.
I start up the steps and present myself at the hospital’s counter. The clerk takes my letter and reads it. He looks at me, and his mouth creases into a sneer. I follow his directions down corridors and up staircases to the place I am to wait to see the doctor.
I sit for a long time. I feel I will go gray with the waiting. There is a peculiar smell like clean on top of dirty. There are two other women seated with eyes cast down to the floor. It is not a place for chatter. I look around, but there is nothing to see; I am sorry that I did not bring Mrs. Child’s book with me for company. I think about what Mr. Austin said: the French disease. I always thought that things that came from France were good, like the Alençon lace that trimmed Mammy’s wedding veil. Or Bernadette Soubirous, the French girl who had visions of Our Lady when she was gathering firewood. Even the priests’ vestments at home in Dublin came from France, and they had “the approbation of the archbishop of Paris” according to our parish priest. But to have a disease from France—the disease—is no good thing. And what of the other thing he mentioned—the clap? What can that mean?
I push the thoughts away and try to clear my head. But while I am stuck and idle, my mind wanders of its own accord. There is only one place it ends up these days—it is the same when I am on the edge of sleep—and I fight to pull myself away. But my thoughts have their own will, it seems, and I am back in my bed, with Crohan grunting over me, pushing himself inside me and muttering obscenities. When I try to shove him off, he slaps me hard in the face and bites my lip with his teeth. I shut my eyes and ears to him as best I can and drag myself away from the pain and the high, horrible stink of him. But when he spills himself into me with a strangulated cry, my eyes fly open, and I see his eyes swivel in their sockets and a wayward, stunned look come upon his face.
Miss Emily Page 14
