Mrs. Bangs had to intervene. “Trip, there will be no more talk of cutthroats at my table.”
“Sorry, Ma’am,” Margaret said; she bowed and begged our pardon, vanished into the sink-room and shut the door.
I could not eat another mouthful of pickled beef. My appetite had fled with Byron Thrall. I fancied that Cambridgeport itself was a Haunted House and that my Enobarbus walked amongst the population like a resourceful ghost who could linger between the Quick and the Dead.
I HAD SMALL USE FOR THIS DAY WORLD. I HAD TO SUFFER THE horse-car rides to my Physician. Boston meant nothing to me. That miserable horse labored among the tracks and delivered me and my little cousins to Dr. Williams’s sandstone house and his magic eye machine. The light he shone into my eye was like a pin upon my retina that felt far worse than a scratch. I would have screamed had Fan and Loo not been there to watch my agony and consternation. My Physician did not mean to harm me. But he could not help unless he pricked my eye.
“Miss Dickinson, you have disobeyed me.”
My guilt was enormous, but dear God, I could not recollect what I had done wrong.
“You have been reading and writing,” said he. “Your eyes are inflamed.”
“Sir, I promise you. I have read no more than a mouse.”
“And even that is too much of a strain,” he said, though he managed to smile at my diction. “Good Lord, shall I put you under arrest?”
I had rheumatic iritis. Salient Sarah, Father’s new mare, suffers from the same disease. But horses are blessed with having a fancier name for it—moon blindness. The glare of the moon gives Sarah the most crippling headaches. Father has to steer her out of the sun and keep her in the stable when the moon is ripe. But sometimes Sarah will stall in the middle of the road and utter a baleful cry. Father is loath to whip her when she is so despondent. A horse with moon blindness is worth nil, Father’s friends have told him, but he will never part with his mare.
And I have Sarah’s moon blindness, a fickle irritation of the iris that comes and goes as God (or the Devil) wills. But my Physician is a Goliath in his field—no one can compete with Dr. Williams and his ophthalmoscope, neither in the North nor in the South that once was. And poor Sarah has no such Goliath. Even if Father serenaded the moon and kept it from shining for six months, Sarah’s sickness would devour her and lead to irrevocable blindness, while Williams might be able to save my eyes.
“Under arrest,” Dr. Williams repeats in front of my Norcross cousins, whom he has allowed into his examination room, since he knows I would be as fearful as a kitten without them. Also, he loves to have an audience in his little theater. Father has chosen an ophthalmologist who thinks he is Mr. Shakespeare.
“Misses Norcross,” he says, “may I have your solemn oath that you will do your very best to see that Miss Dickinson does not misbehave?”
Fanny and Loo hang on his every word with watchful eyes.
“You may, Sir. You may.”
“Good. Then I will relinquish her to your own command.”
He ought not have lent my cousins such a powerful proposition. It was like having a pair of stern little soldiers beside you. I had my own impish power to make them smile, but I still could not peruse any of the letters from Sister Sue in my pocket during the ride back across the Charles. I had to wear my dark glasses under the bright, baking roof of the horse-car, shun the river and its sheen, which could have made me as blind as Salient Sarah.
30.
LIKE A HALF-BLIND MAIDEN IN MOSQUITO LAND I DREAMT OF a trousseau, yet I was nothing but a pickpocket’s appendage, otherwise known as a mouse. But a mouse could still wear her Plumage, and I decided to write a letter to my betrothed.
My Dearest Enobarbus,
I think of you all the time. The housekeeper at 86 Austin says you are a dead man, Byron Thrall, and that the Shady Hillers are no more. And what evidence do I have that you are still alive? You came from the shadows to rescue me and returned to the shadows. Perhaps you are only a vapor that rises out of the burying-ground at night. But your little mouse don’t mind.
Tell me, dearest, how to find you? Must I visit the burying-ground and shiver like a boy while I wait and blow my bugle to keep the other vapors from pestering me? Or are you made of solid stuff, scratchier than a ghost? Moon blind like my father’s horse, I could not really see your face. But you did clasp my hand, and yours was as material as a hand could be.
Dearest, shall we have another assignation on Magazine Street? Must I swoon again before you can find me? And how will I ever get this missive to you? Send it flying into the wind, against a barrier of mosquitoes? Pin it to a gate at the burial ground? Instruct me, and I will follow your tiniest wish.
Yr affectionate friend,
Daisy the Kangaroo
I realized there was a contradiction in being both a mouse and a kangaroo. But my Enobarbus could cancel such contradictions. And while I pondered, Margaret Tripper kept biting into my ear like a pernicious mosquito.
“There is no Shady Hill Mob. Byron Thrall is dead.”
“But I did meet the Shady Hillers, I swear.”
And she told me I had met a malignant mob of army deserters who loved to wear the mantle of Massachusetts’s last great gang. These deserters had a price on their head. They were unfortunate men who ran from the smoke and blood of war. And the Shady Hill Gang was a masterful disguise.
“Our Civilian Guard, even with shooters in their belts, run at the first mention of Shady Hill,” she said. “Miss Emily, a rotten, stinking deserter picked you up off the ground. It’s lucky he didn’t scalp you. That’s how them deserters earn their living. They sell women’s hair to the factories, because silk and such are scarce in wartime.”
“I will not believe you, Trip.”
“Then one afternoon you’ll be looking at a hat made from your own hair—if you survive your own scalping. But I will not pronounce another word, not in the presence of Miss Frances and Miss Louisa. They are much too tender to hear such things.”
But Fanny and Loo were enthralled; Margaret might just as well have told them a tale about Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. My little cousins caressed their own scalps, as they imagined the silk of their hair sitting in the window of a milliner’s shop on Centre Street. But they would have given their lives to protect my scalp.
We went to the Ice Cream saloon next to Haymarket Square, the terminus of the horse-car railroad line. Ice cream had become the rage of Boston and Cambridgeport—no neighborhood could live without a proper saloon. Boston had its own ice cream factory that could supply any town or hamlet within a hundred miles. And the saloon at Haymarket Square was more like a palace, or the grand salon at the Willard Hotel in Washington. It had chandeliers and potted plants, elephantine tables and plush velvet chairs, and it was filled with the hoi polloi I had met on Magazine Street—men in high hats and women in the finest bonnets and bustles. The children that accompanied them were not children at all, but little ladies and lords without a pinch of curiosity in their eyes. The Ice Cream saloon had become their mansion and meeting ground. They did not look once at the terminus outside their window, at the horse-cars arriving and departing, or at the horses themselves, who reminded me of Salient Sarah; these overburdened railroad horses had Sarah’s stubborn dignity. They brooded with their own sense of outrage as the stable hands poked at them and removed their bridles.
I was much more interested in horses than in the hoi polloi. I kept wishing that Enobarbus would appear, drive the hoi polloi out of the saloon with a cudgel, and then sit with his mouse and my Norcross cousins. And we’d all revel in ice cream, seal our friendship with sweet chocolate or whatever flavor we could imagine—the Lord’s vanilla or Satan’s caramel—as we scooped up mouthfuls of the magical cream with the longest spoons in Massachusetts. But my man never showed, and I entertained Fan and Loo with tales of Father’s moon-blind horse.
I had to twist and turn and tell lies to free myself from their clutches after sundown. I
sent them off to some sewing circle or to the theatrical club on Pearl Street, with the promise that I would wear a whistle—it was meant to summon the Cambridge Guard. But I had seldom seen such civilian soldiers in my horse-car rides and in my nighttime strolls. And so I sallied forth from Mrs. Bangs’s the moment my little cousins left for Pearl Street. I had Loolie’s whistle dangling from my neck. But it seemed like some worthless appendage for a kicking Kangaroo.
I had my reservations, since I was traveling under a full moon. But I shielded my eyes against the glare that crept through my dark glasses. And while on Valentine Street, I could catch glimmers of light leap off the tin roofs and hear a strange, prolonged groan, as if some giant had fallen out of a tree. Said giant was nothing but a surly mob—men grasping torches that stung my eyes, while pistols with long noses bobbed out of their pants.
I shivered at the first sight of them. They looked terribler than any mob I had ever seen, with chaos and a bitter wind in their wake. They might have knocked me over had I not leapt behind a fence.
“Girlie, git off the street,” one of them rasped. “It’s not so safe, what with deserters and devils running around.” And when I didn’t answer him, he said, “Have ya seen our Tom?”
That name rippled through me like some premonition. I grew taut as a crazy string and managed to whisper, “Who’s Tom?”
My interlocutor laughed at me. He wore a belted factory-man’s blouse and a pair of Colts whose handles looked like pearl ears.
“Every boy and kitten in Cambridgeport has heard of him…just as they ought to have heard of me.”
He bowed in a most pretentious way. “Josiah, Captain of the Cambridge Guard, at your service.”
“Who is Tom?” I asked again, no longer whispering. Suddenly I felt as morose as Zilpah in her Northampton institution, moroser even. At least Zilpah had a dormitory of other women to comfort her, or she could wait for Pa-pa’s next appearance on the lawn. Zilpah had her chains to rattle, and I had nothing at all. “Who is Tom?”
“Chief of all them devils,” said my paladin with the twin Colts. “They pretends that Byron Thrall—bless that man—has come home to roost from Mount Auburn’s. But Byron never bought and sold women’s hair, Byron never ran off from his regiment, Byron never pissed upon our flag. And he ain’t no lily-livered deserter, like Tom.”
And this captain of the Cambridge Guard disappeared into his own hot swirl of dust. I was more disturbed by him than any rascal who might deprive me of my scalp. I no longer knew where to twist and turn. I had lost my footing after the captain had mentioned Tom. It wasn’t moon blindness that crippled Daisy the Kangaroo. Daisy was also deaf! So excited was she by some new stranger on Magazine Street, fancying him as an exotic apparition, that she had not listened to the strains of his voice. Or perhaps her fickleness, her blinded heart, had stopped her from recognizing a pickpocket who sold women’s hair as the burglar of Rooming-house Row and the handyman who had once lived in a shed.
What if I were wrong and had wished Tom the Handyman into a sack of deserter’s clothes I could not see? My Tom had his very own mouse, Zilpah Marsh—not Miss Emily Dickinson. I cursed my own curiosity, lent me by the Devil. I’d as lief drown in one of Cambridgeport’s canals than go on speculating. And if I didn’t stop thinking of Tom I’d insane myself.
The mosquitoes were already tormenting me. I couldn’t move without marching into a whole skirt of them. I must have been near the river. The rot of marshland burned in my nose. And then that first signal of moon blindness struck—the feel of a terrifying stitch at the back of my head. And I plunged into total darkness, as if I’d fallen into Father’s well, but it was like a hollow without an end. I spun within its walls, faster and faster, and woke with a stifled scream on the front steps of 86 Austin, wrapped inside the shelter of an old horse blanket.
31.
LORD, I DID NOT KNOW WHO I AM OR EVER WAS. I DREAMT of the Ice Cream saloon, of enriching myself on Satan’s caramel, of wearing my horse blanket among the hoi polloi. But I could not dream forever. I was giddy and sad at the boardinghouse, and wouldn’t part with that blanket, though it was fat with dead mosquitoes and live fleas. Mrs. Bangs had convulsions over my filthy blanket.
“I will write your father, Miss Emily, I most certainly will. The Misses Norcross are as gentle as can be. But I will not abide boarders who roam through the night without a male escort, and who arrive on my doorstep in a trance, draped in a blanket that no decent woman would ever wear.”
But she backed down the second she saw I would not budge. Pa-pa paid her a king’s ransom for my upkeep. He was stingy with his time, stingy with his words and his affection, but he sent me into Boston like an heiress. My treatment with Dr. Williams would have bankrupted most country lawyers, but not Pa-pa. He was willful with his daughters, and denied us nothing except himself. That was Pa-pa’s paradox. And he wasn’t so different from my pickpocket, who brought me out of the wilderness of a dark street without a kiss or word of affection that I was conscious of. And I had nothing but his blanket as my one memento of him.
Daisy the Kangaroo could fight with Mrs. Bangs, but not with Margaret Tripper, whose Irish heart was fiercer than mine. I permitted her to scrub my blanket and pick out the fleas, and then I wore it everywhere, except to my Physician’s office, since his seriousness stunned me and made me feel like a little child at church. But not even my awe of him kept me from wearing it on the horse-car. Fanny and Loo liked to pretend that my blanket was invisible and never once referred to it. I was their cracked older cousin, who scribbled words on wrinkled envelopes and ancient recipes and party invitations whenever they visited us in Amherst. It wasn’t out of some prissy desire or need. Lines came like lightning and left like lightning, and I had to write each one down with my pencil stub or lose it forever.
But the lightning rarely came while I was imprisoned in the boardinghouse. It wasn’t my Physician who punished me by taking away my Pen—the punishment was deep inside my loins, as if some rigor mortis had settled in away from Amherst and Father, Sister, Brother, and Sue. I could feel a few crackles coming back as I wandered in the mosquito-swollen streets at night, my blanket drawing them in like a mosquito-eater. Enobarbus the Pickpocket couldn’t have been my Tom—Tom could barely spell his name, and would never have been on familiar terms with Antony or Enobarbus, and the “Egypt” both of them adored. His blazing blond hair and blue eyes had not equipped him for the brutal escutcheon of words. He was deft of hand, and his music came from his lithe motion, not his Lexicon.
And so I sought out this stranger with a certain sadness. I wanted to keep the false fancy inside my head that the pickpocket of Magazine Street could still be my Tom, transformed by witchcraft into a shaper of sentences. I searched the haze of darkening streets, with Loolie’s whistle under my blanket, a whistle I would never blow. God help us all if I should ever need Captain Josiah and his mob to protect me. Josiah would always catch me at the tail end of his little tornado.
“Kitten, skedaddle, else a body might think you’re a lookout for Tom and his outlaw army.”
But he never had time to continue that topic of conversation. He always leapt back inside his tornado, and I searched in vain. The pickpockets had a route I could not readily decode, and I would return to 86 Austin, my scalp and hands tingling with mosquito bites.
I realized that night marches wouldn’t do. I’d have to risk daylight, and the malignant attack of sun upon my eyes. Fanny and Loo were hysterical; stalwarts of my Physician, they kept watch over me like the stern little soldiers they’d become.
“Auntie Em, you will blind yourself,” they said.
Fanny and Loo had that baffled look of children who had strayed outside their own measure; they dressed alike, had the same ribbons and curls, the same agitated fingers and eyes. I’d come to Cambridgeport to be in the care of my little cousins; they mended my clothes and looked after me, but they’d never before rubbed up against my willful nature. I’d attended to their wan
ts whenever they visited Amherst, sat with them, played with them, let them water my plants while I scribbled out the lightning inside my head. But now they had a chance to “meet” Austin’s wild sister, the kicking Kangaroo, and it agitated them.
“Loolie, you must not be so concerned. I will be back in an hour, I promise.”
My little cousins resorted to the only weapon they had—Margaret Tripper, who tried to block my path to the front door.
“Miss Emily, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“I am, but if you don’t get out of my way, I will rip the eyes from your head and roast your heart and liver on the nearest fire I can find.”
I was putting on my Plumage, that’s all, but poor Margaret had never seen me at work.
“That’s not the language of a lady,” she said. And stunned as she was, I flew right past her. I wouldn’t don my dark glasses—if I did find Enobarbus, I wanted to see the true color of his hair. But I had picked the brightest of mornings, and the sun burnt down upon my bonnet like an Egyptian plague. I couldn’t shield my eyes with the edge of that blanket I wore like a grenadier’s cape; I would have accomplished very little with a swatch of wool cutting off my command of the street.
And so I twisted into the sunlight. I did not even have to roam very far. The Shady Hillers must have felt safe in the sun. I caught a glimpse of my darling apparition as I wandered up and down Magazine Street with its printing shops and converted poorhouse. He seemed to float on wind and air. Lord, he shook the life out of me. I could not mistake the syllables of his blond hair. And for the first time in this metropolis my lightning struck like an earl. The sounds came to me.
That blond Assassin in the sunlight
And the lightning struck a second time. I knew now where my Tom had gotten his gift of words. That other mouse, better known as Zilpah Marsh, had taught him to read and write. She’s the one who had fed Mr. Shakespeare to him before she’d gone berserk, or at least was locked away in the asylum with that memory of her own butchered child.
The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson Page 18
