The Trouble with Emily Dickinson

by Lyndsey D'Arcangelo

  “So where is THE Kendal McCarthy?” Queenie asked as her eyes searched around the room. “I thought you two were hunkered down in the library studying?”

  “We were earlier this morning.” JJ eyed the clock beside her bed. “She’s probably finishing up her Women’s Literature exam as we speak.”

  “You know, I hate to admit it, but she’s pretty cool.”

  “I’ll spare you the ‘I told you so’ then.”

  Queenie held up her hands to protest. “No, no. I won’t take your charity. I deserve any ‘I told you so’ you can throw at me. I was wrong about her.” She paused momentarily. “I feel like I’ve been wrong about a lot of things lately.”

  “Wait a second. Did your conscience suddenly grow back again?”

  “I’m serious,” Queenie insisted. She jumped up and tossed her cup into the garbage can with a single hook shot. “I never realized how cynical I could be.”

  “Sure, you can be cynical sometimes, but we all can.”

  “I know—it’s just that I started thinking that maybe I’m part of the problem. I never give anyone a chance at a relationship because I’m already convinced that it won’t work out anyway. I’ve spent a great deal of my adolescent life expecting the worst when I could be missing out on the best.”

  “Looks like you’re finally putting that genius of a mind to good use.”

  “If I’ve learned anything from you over the past three years it’s that sometimes your heart is going to get broken and sometimes it isn’t. But if you never take that chance, you’ll never know the difference between the two. I don’t know what it feels like to put your all into someone. To take a risk like that.”

  JJ watched as Queenie slumped sadly down onto the floor. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “I just—” Queenie stopped and looked up at a poster on the wall, then longingly at a collage of photos arranged on the corkboard hanging on the back of their door. “I’m sorry. I’m not sure what’s going on with me, but I think you might be right. I think I’ve gone and grown a conscience after all.”

  “It happens to the best of us.”

  “Hey, do you remember when I said I was going to slip in the ‘I’m a big, scary lesbian’ secret during my maid of honor speech at my sister’s wedding?”

  “How could I forget? It’s the only reason I’m going to the wedding.”

  “I’ve decided that maybe—just maybe—it isn’t such a dandy idea after all.”

  “Oh?” JJ climbed up off of her bed and sat down on the floor beside Queenie. “What tipped you off exactly?”

  “Besides the fact that it’s an incredibly self-serving, devilishly-motivated, not to mention childish, thing to do?”

  “Yes, besides all of that.”

  Queenie sighed. “Well, it’s that whole risk thing I was talking about. My sister is taking that risk. She’s putting her all into someone, and that’s something that deserves to be celebrated. It’s something special, and who am I to take that away from her?”

  JJ reached over and put her arm around Queenie’s shoulders. “It only took you three and a half years of private school to mature into a well-adjusted, morally-sound young woman. I’m so proud.”

  “Moral?” Queenie asked in disbelief. “Well-adjusted? Please! Let’s not go overboard here. I still plan on making a colossal splash into my parent’s pool of normalcy by declaring my homosexuality to the rest of the McBride family soon enough. It’s simply a question of when.”

  “Graduation perhaps?”

  Queenie smiled deviously, “Perhaps.”

  * * *

  JJ sat nervously in her chair in the back corner of The Spot, shifting her position every other minute, fighting the overwhelming sensation to bolt from the room as soon as the opportunity presented itself. The lighting was dim, thankfully, so nobody else at her table could see that she wasn’t only pale, but that a soft shade of seaweed green had settled along her cheekbones as well.

  “You okay?” Kendal asked. She was sitting beside JJ, and every once in a while her hand drifted over and squeezed JJ’s leg in moral support.

  JJ nodded in return, afraid that if she opened her mouth to speak, an awful regurgitated mess would come rushing out.

  “She’s fine,” said Queenie confidently. “Look at her. She’s ready to nail this like a three-pointer at the buzzer.”

  “I think I can do without the basketball metaphors,” JJ grumbled.

  “Oh, right,” said Queenie. “How about, she’s ready to knock this one out of the park!”

  “And without baseball metaphors, for that matter.”

  “Hey, I’m just trying to lighten up the situation here.”

  “Well, stop.”

  Queenie sat back in her chair and mumbled something about JJ having a poetry book stuck up her butt.

  “What’s that thing everyone always says?” asked Kendal. “Pick someone in the crowd and picture them naked?”

  “I think if I pictured anyone naked I’d start laughing.” JJ forced a laugh.

  “I’d be able to concentrate just fine,” Queenie smirked.

  JJ ignored her and took in the crowd. It was as if people kept multiplying like pods from some alien invasion movie.

  “Is it me or are there more people in here than usual?” she whispered to Kendal.

  “More than usual. I invited everyone on the cheerleading squad. And each one of them probably invited someone else and so on and so forth. And then someone probably posted it on Twitter and it went viral or something.”

  “Isn’t that Mya?” JJ asked.

  Kendal’s hand shot up in the air, “Hey, Mya!”

  Mya made her way to their table dragging an unenthusiastic Kyan Stevens behind her.

  “Ever since she asked him to the winter formal, she’s been waving him around like an Oscar or something,” Kendal slipped in through tight lips.

  “Are they together?” JJ asked.

  “I guess so. Honestly, I don’t think Kyan even had a choice in the matter.”

  “Hey, ladies!” Mya said cheerfully as soon as she reached the table. She gave Kendal a slight squeeze of the hand and winked at JJ as if they shared some special secret. “We just came over to wish you good luck.”

  JJ smiled politely, and watched Kyan fidget until Mya elbowed him gently in the gut.

  “Uh, yeah. Good luck,” he mumbled, as he rubbed the sore spot.

  “I must say, you two make quite the darling couple,” Queenie remarked.

  Both Kendal and JJ shot her a warning look, but it was too late. Her mouth was already off and running.

  “I swear you two are the Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes of this school. I bet they’ll even dub you KyMya in the school paper.”

  “You think so?” Mya asked, genuinely serious. She grabbed hold of Kyan’s hand. “I think we’re going to be voted king and queen of winter formal this year!”

  “Oh, that would totally rock, girl!” Queenie replied, as she slapped Mya on the arm in an overly enthusiastic and utterly obnoxious sort of way.

  “Cut it out,” JJ mouthed, and turned her head swiftly as soon as Mya looked in her direction.

  “Are you nervous at all?”Mya asked.

  “Me?” JJ pointed at her chest. “Not at all.”

  “Oh, yeah, she’s not nervous at all,” added Queenie. “Just look at her. She’s as steady as a rock.”

  JJ scowled at Queenie.

  “She’s just psyching herself up,” said Kendal. “You know, kind of like how we prepare before a cheerleading competition.”

  Both JJ and Queenie looked at Kendal. She shrugged her shoulders back at them.

  “Well, we better find a seat before they’re all taken,” Mya shifted. She yanked Kyan by the sleeve of his shirt and they wandered away through the crowd.

  “That Kyan, he sure is a lucky guy,” said Queenie.

  “Mya’s a sweetheart,” Kendal maintained.

  “He looked absolutely miserable,” said JJ.

  “Wo
uldn’t you be if you had to deal with that?” Queenie pointed behind her with her thumb.

  “Hey!” said Kendal as she hit Queenie playfully in the arm. “Mya’s a little—particular, that’s all. She’s a girl who knows what she wants. And it’ll do Kyan some good to be led around by his tail for a while. He needs to be knocked down a peg or two.”

  JJ was about to add a few more cents-worth to the conversation when she saw Mrs. Clark take the stage. In an instant, she lost all sense of reality and her head began to sway lazily from side to side.

  She felt Kendal squeeze her knee under the table again and thought she saw Queenie give her the number one sign. Or maybe it was the peace sign—she couldn’t tell. At this point she was seeing everything double.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” JJ announced, as she felt sweat break out over her entire body. The damp taste in her mouth went dry, and she began to hyperventilate.

  “Take deep breaths,” Kendal suggested, as she leaned closer and rubbed JJ’s back.

  “You don’t look so good,” said Queenie. “I’ll go get you some water.”

  JJ pushed her chair away from the table and bent down until her head was between her knees. She felt Kendal rub the small of her back as she tried desperately to block Mrs. Clark’s voice from her ears.

  Queenie returned with a cup of ice water and proceeded to dump it over the top of JJ’s head.

  “Hey!” JJ screamed instantly as she leaped up from her chair.

  A hush fell over the entire coffee shop. Chairs shifted, conversation halted and a high-pitched feedback squeal erupted out of the microphone in Mrs. Clark’s hand.

  JJ stood there, water droplets sliding down her cheeks and nestling in the part between her lips, as every person in the entire room stared at her. With her cheeks growing hotter, JJ knew she’d turned a deep shade of pink. “Thanks for the water,” she hissed at Queenie.

  “At least you’ve got your color back,” Queenie offered in return.

  “JJ,” Mrs. Clark shouted into the microphone. “I’m glad to see that you’re so excited about this reading. For a minute there I thought no one was going to volunteer to go first, and I’d have to start calling names.”

  JJ gulped, hard.

  “Why don’t you start us off then?”

  “Go get ’em, tiger,” Queenie said with a fist pump. She gave JJ an encouraging nod and sat down next to Kendal, who held her breath in anticipation.

  “Whenever you’re ready, JJ,” said Mrs. Clark.

  JJ licked her dry lips and commanded her legs to move forward. She walked with her head down and her shoulders low until she reached the stage.

  CHAPTER 38

  When she looked out into the crowd, JJ avoided any and all eye contact with the faces she recognized, and focused on the ones she didn’t know, until they blended together into a sea of colors. She caught a glimpse of Olivia Green, the best writer in class, smiling supportively at her from the back of the room. JJ’s trembling lips parted slightly and a short and purposeful breath escaped. It was the final signal that there was no going back.

  Her eyes began one final lap around the room. They stopped about halfway around the track, settling on Kendal and Queenie in the corner. Queenie, of course, was making a funny face at her and it almost made JJ laugh out loud. Her shoulders straightened, and her hands reached out on their own and grabbed hold of the microphone.

  “I wrote this for class—well, I suppose you could say I wrote it. I prefer to say that it flew out of me like water from a faucet. I turned the handle and suddenly the words were there, and they kept coming. There were no breaks in the lines and no pauses to question where the poem was headed. The words just kept flowing from my pen, one after the other. And these are the words that ended up on the page. These are the words I was asked to read out loud today and they come in the form of a poem entitled, ‘Mother May I?’”

  As the crowd waited, JJ grabbed hold of a wooden stool from the back of the stage and pulled it forward. She sat down with her eyes facing the floor and when she felt confident enough to proceed, she lifted her eyes to the crowd.

  “She tied my hair in ribbons, I untied them and my hair ran wild.

  She forced a cotton shirt over my head. I took it off and basked naked in the sun.

  She remembered days of girlie pom-poms. I dribbled a ball aggressively down the court.

  She often wondered who I was inside. I boasted that I was her only daughter.

  She cringed at my defiance. I cringed at her reluctance.

  Yet, somehow we connected through years of change when I finally wore a dress.

  She accepted our fate. I accepted our gender.

  We found a common strand, which wove a mother and daughter from two different textures.

  Together, we knitted a quilt that I now use when I get cold.”

  CHAPTER 39

  Kendal watched the band set up their instruments on the stage. A guy with crow-black shaggy hair and tattooed arms strummed a few strings of his guitar and twisted the knobs at the end. He looked up briefly and caught her watching him. She smiled momentarily, and then refocused her attention on the book in front of her, a biography of Emily Dickinson. When she decided it was safe to let her eyes wander again, he was standing right in front of her.

  “Come here often?” he asked, while chomping on a piece of gum.

  “Every Friday night,” she said politely.

  “A fan?”

  “A fan of poetry, actually.” Kendal raised the book in her hand so he could read the title.

  “Emily Dickinson? I’ve never heard of her.”

  “She was a poet. You should read some her work. It’s amazing.”

  “Maybe I will. My name is Brad, by the way.” He pointed to the rest of the band members behind him. “We’re called Candy Hearts. We’re pretty popular in this area.”

  “Really? I’ve never heard of you,” Kendal teased.

  “Touché,” said Brad with a snap of his finger. “I guess we’re not as popular as Emily Dickinson.”

  “Guess not.” Kendal extended her hand to him. “I’m Kendal, by the way.”

  “Nice to meet you, Kendal.”

  “So—Candy Hearts? That explains your shirt then.” She pointed to his maroon T-shirt which had a white heart on the front of it with the phrase “I like you” printed on it.

  “Clever, isn’t it?” he grinned. “Candy hearts make for great T-shirt designs when you’re trying to promote a band.”

  “Why Candy Hearts?”

  “Why not? Beats out the other names we came up with.”

  “Which were?”

  “Four Guys and a Drummer or, A Drummer and Four Guys.”

  “Clever.”

  “I don’t think we would have come up with as brilliant a T-shirt design for those.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Speaking of T-shirts, would you like one?”

  “Tempting—but I think I’m going to have to pass.”

  “So listen,” Brad said, as he tapped his fingers at the sides of his jeans. “I’ve got a few moments before we are supposed to warm up. May I join you?” He gestured at the open seat across from Kendal.

  “I’m sorry,” she said as nicely as possibly. “I’m waiting for my girlfriend.”

  “Girlfriend?”

  “Yes.”

  “As in a girl who’s a friend or as in a girl you’re dating?”

  “As in a girl I’m dating.”

  “Really?” He paused. “I don’t mean this in a bad way or anything, but I never would have guessed that you were gay?”

  “Neither did I,” Kendal smiled.

  “So what brings you here on a Friday night? I thought Sampson Academy was a party school?”

  “This is our favorite place to hang out, actually. My girlfriend participates in the poetry slam every Friday night. After you’re done playing, you should stick around and check her out.”

  “Maybe I will.” As Brad turned to leave, he st
opped suddenly. “She wouldn’t like to buy one of our T-shirts by chance, would she?”

  “No,” Kendal laughed. “I don’t think so.”

  “Never hurts to ask.”

  “Stick around after your set,” said Kendal. “She might change her mind after she hears you play.”

  “Will do.”

  Kendal looked on as Brad crept back to the stage and traded barbs with his band mates about how he had just been shot down. She leaned back in her chair and set the open book face down on the table so she wouldn’t lose her spot. She looked out of the adjacent window, which gave a clear view of the school’s front lawn that was a few hundred yards away. The fountain in the center of the quad had been turned on a week earlier, signaling that spring had arrived at last. Everything around her felt fresh and new.

  As Kendal began to consider the strange course of events that had occurred during the school year, she glimpsed JJ walking toward the coffee shop with her head high, no longer shuffling her feet across the ground in the unsure way she had before. Kendal felt the warmth in her chest expand. That night on stage when she’d read her poem aloud, a new and confident JJ was born, a person that Kendal somehow had grown to love even more than she had before.

  Since then, JJ had participated in every poetry slam and open reading held at The Spot. Recently, some interested poetry fans invited her to perform at clubs in downtown Richmond. She’d also become a frequent contributor to a local literary magazine.

  As for Kendal, she’d finally found that purpose or sense of direction she’d been searching for. She’d decided to study Women’s Literature in college and then go on and get her master’s degree. Eventually, she wanted to become a teacher, enlightening young minds with the magic of poetry in the same way that JJ had enlightened hers. She’d also decided to quit the cheerleading squad, because it just wasn’t important to her anymore. Kendal never felt more secure than she did at that moment. And she had JJ and Emily Dickinson to thank for that.

  “Have you been waiting long?” JJ asked, once she reached the table.

  “Not at all,” said Kendal. “Just preparing myself for another one of our ‘wild nights.’”