Miss Emily

by Nuala O'Connor

  I slap my hands to my ears and shake my head, as if this might remove the pictures from my brain once and for all.

  “Miss Ada Con-cannon!” The voice stumbles over my surname. “Miss Ada Concann-on. For Diseases of Women!”

  I stand and hold up one hand. “Yes, I am here.”

  “This way,” the nurse says, and I follow her into a cool, white room. “Undress to your petticoat, behind that screen.”

  My cheeks roar with heat as I unpeel my clothes, then come to stand before the doctor. The room is huge, bright and cold, and I feel small and lost. The doctor reads Mr. Austin’s letter and bids me to lie on the examining table. I shiver at the touch of his hands. He opens my legs and holds me open with his fingers; he pokes at me with a steel implement. It doesn’t hurt much, but I feel bad to think of his eyes on me down there.

  “Venereal. From the Latin venereus, which concerns sexual desire. ‘One night with Venus, a lifetime with Mercury.’ Are you familiar with this phrase, Miss Concannon?”

  “No, sir,” I whisper.

  He pushes my legs together, and I keep my knees tight. “You have contracted gonorrhea, Miss Concannon. A common disease of the immoral. You probably know it only as ‘the clap.’ I will prescribe calomel—a mercury salve—and you will take Daly’s Sarsaparilla and Nerve Tonic. The great Mr. Daly assures us that his tonic permanently cures the disease you carry. I am not as confident as he, but you will take it anyway. It will help.”

  “Thank you, sir.” I sit up, and the doctor studies me.

  “Quicksilver and sarsaparilla. Have you not got the most tuneful of remedies, Miss Concannon?” He points to the screen, and I get up to dress.

  I have no Bible. Only the one book sits by my bed, Mrs. Dickinson’s Frugal Housewife. It is to that book that I turn each night to ward off bad thoughts, as much as to lower myself toward sleep. I am weary after the din of Boston, and Mrs. Child’s words settle me. I read her remedies and advice and recipes until my eyelids feel like purses that are forcing themselves shut. She tells me that the buds of the elder bush, simmered with new butter, make a soothing and healing balm. She says that night sweats may be helped by fasting early and late and drinking cold sage tea. I read in her pages about earwax making a useful lip balm and that pearls are best cleaned with torn paper. It is not until the word “almond” leaps from the page that I realize I have been nodding off. That word—and its stink of Crohan—wakes me again and harrows up all my pain. I could cry with tiredness and frustration. Is he, and what he did to me, ever going to leave me be? Will my mind be forever agitated?

  I put aside the book and go to my chest of drawers. I unwrap the calomel and sarsaparilla and stand them on the chest. Mrs. Child says not to tamper with quack medicines, but surely if the city doctor recommended these things, they cannot be the work of quacks? I take the tonic first, a long swig from the bottle. Then I stand with my back wedged to my door and paint on the balm. It is thick and silvery, and it stings my flesh, but my hope is that that means it is healing me.

  I am getting better. I will get better. I will be better. When I put on my apron each morning, I feel a little whole again. I am getting better. I will get better. I will be better.

  There is no confessional in Amherst, for there is no Catholic church. I go to my cousin Annie’s house at Kelley Square to talk with Uncle Michael. He lives with her now, sharing a room with Annie’s boys. He got fed up rattling around his place, all alone, like a specter. He let his house, and now strangers occupy its rooms and sleep in its beds and eat off its tables. I cannot bear to think of them there, shedding their dirt into corners and making scruffy what Auntie Mary always kept so beautiful.

  “That’s an awful grand coat, Ada,” Cousin Annie says, knowing full well it was her father who bought it for me but preferring a sly compliment to saying what she wants to say. Which is that—in her opinion—he wasted his money on a fine coat for me.

  “Thank you, Annie.”

  She puts her hands out for my gloves.

  “I’ll keep them on, if it’s all the same to you. I have a bit of a chill.”

  “Please yourself,” Annie says. “You will anyway.” She always treats me like an elbow relation, rather than her mother’s niece and her own cousin.

  Annie leaves me standing in the hall while she goes off, shouting to her father to come down to his guest. She says “guest” as if I am a stranger to her and all of them; it stings me every time. I look at the pictures hung in the hall—cheap landscapes bought at Cutler’s. Nothing like the beautiful oils of winter scenes and the watercolors of the sea that the Dickinsons have in their hallway. I look out the side windows at the rain but only see myself in the glass, staring back. Miss Emily could stand at a window for a week, gazing, quiet as a cadaver. I hear footsteps and turn to see Uncle Michael come down the stairs, looking like a cabin of bones holding up scraps of flesh. I am shocked by how bad he appears; it is only a few weeks since I saw him last. I wonder if Annie is feeding him at all.

  “Ada, you’ve come to see me.” He holds out his arms, and I go to him; he feels brittle and small, an imitation of the man he was.

  “I have, Uncle Michael. But I am looking for something off you, you won’t be surprised to hear.”

  He doesn’t invite me in, and we sit on the stairs together, a sorry huddle to look at, I am sure.

  “What is it, a leana? If I can help at all, I will.”

  “I need to make my confession, Uncle.” I wind my gloved hands together in my lap.

  “You are in luck. Father Sullivan is coming from Holyoke to Mr. Slater’s home this next Sunday.”

  “I know that, Uncle, but the thing is, I don’t want Father Sullivan as my confessor.”

  “I see. Well, maybe we could get you over to Chicopee to see a priest in the church there. They have a plan to build a basilica, you know, eventually.” Telling me this animates him; he was always a man for churches and grand buildings. “I will take you myself.”

  “Thank you, Uncle Michael.” I hold his hand in my own, and it is rivered with purple veins like the hand of an old, old man. “Are you strong enough, do you think?”

  “There’s not a bother on me, Ada. Sitting in a carriage won’t knock any wind from me, will it? It’s a day out for us. We’ll take a lunch in Chicopee. How’s that for fancy?”

  Uncle Michael chuckles to himself, and I am glad that it is to him I turned. I could have waited for Daniel to get back from his travels and gone to him, but I would have had to explain why I didn’t want Father Sullivan to hear my confession. I would have to admit to not liking the man—another sin to add to my list of sins—and to why I could not tell that priest about what I had done. No, I cannot let Daniel know I want a blank-faced confessor, a stranger to me and to Amherst. I cannot tell Daniel a thing.

  I sit in the church in Chicopee and toss around the words “the clap” in my mind and think of the way Mr. Austin spit them. To clap is normally a nice thing, something good at the end of a performance. Why is it used for this? The other way of saying it is worse. Gonorrhea. It sounds like a lumbering thing, a thing that would crush and kill you. Though the doctor in Boston said it was not a death sentence; he said it clearly. I cannot decide which way to tell it to the priest in the confessional. I don’t think that telling him I have “a bad disease” will be enough. And what type of sin am I guilty of anyway? Venial? Mortal? Have I sinned against the Sixth Commandment even though myself and Daniel are not married? Am I really an adulterer? The word is horrible to me.

  Uncle Michael waits outside the church, taking a bit of sunshine on his face. I sit in the pew and slip off my gloves. I examine my hands in the gloom, and they look a little better, I think. I am missing a day’s pay to be here; Mrs. Dickinson was outraged that I wanted another day off. I told her I had to bring Uncle Michael to Chicopee, but I left her to guess the nature of the trip. She shook her head until it
looked as if her curls would collapse and at last said I could have the day, but she was not one bit happy about it.

  “Mind you catch up properly with all that you neglect,” she said, and I answered that of course I would.

  The church smells like the church in Tigoora, of varnish and censer smoke. It is vast, though, as big as a barn. The Stations of the Cross are carved from marble, which makes them less brutal than the painted ones at home. The wounds on Christ’s skin don’t look so angry; they are white bulges instead of bloody sores. I put my gloves back on and mumble the words of a hymn to keep myself occupied: “Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est. Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est.” I know it means “Where charity and love are, God is there” because my last schoolteacher said so. The hymn comforts me now—the thought that God is more than likely charitable to women such as me.

  The priest comes at a clip down the aisle and disappears into the confessional in a flurry of skirts. I wait a moment, then enter the box and am immediately fearful of the pounding of my own breath and of what I will say. The confession box is airless and smells of melted wax. I wonder if this is what a coffin feels like, the tight, wooden stuffiness of it; the thought makes panic rush up into my throat. The priest slides back the door and waves his hand in blessing. I feel dismayed and wonder if his Manual of Confessors will list such a thing as the clap, or if I am the first person ever to come before him with it.

  The priest mutters his opening prayer and then is silent. I shift on my knees; the prie-dieu I am kneeling on is hard, and I wait for him to continue, but he appears to be waiting for me.

  “Confess,” he says, and I see the side of his face in the flicker from his candle.

  “I . . . I . . . I have been fornicated against, Father,” I say, and I have no idea where the words spring from.

  “By whom?”

  “A man.” He tuts loudly, and I swallow. “A man who works for the house I work for, Father.”

  “Did it occasion the loss of virginity?”

  “It did, Father.”

  “Will a child be the result?”

  “No, Father.”

  The priest sighs and puts his hand to his forehead. “Henceforth protect your chastity strongly. Say the rosary each morning and night for a year. In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.” His hand flutters again, and he bangs shut the small door between us. I stay where I am for a moment, then steal from the box and out of the church.

  After all the fuss and palaver of Boston—its clanging bustle—Chicopee is a mercifully quiet place. And it has gentled Uncle Michael, coaxed him back to some sort of joy. He smiles hugely when I walk toward him, and I feel doubly blessed: to have the priest’s absolution and to have my uncle’s company. He holds his hand out to me and says we must do something while we are here. I perch on the wall beside him.

  “Do something? Like what?”

  “Whatever it is people do on a day out, Ada. We’ll look at buildings. We’ll eat large and walk long. See what’s to be seen.”

  He is a little giddy, more himself than he has been in the six months or so since Auntie Mary died. I look at the sun stippling the path through the branches of the trees. I treasure the silence of the street we are on; it has a lackadaisical air despite all that takes place in the nearby textile mills and iron foundry and along the busy canal.

  “They call Chicopee ‘the crossroads of New England.’”

  “Do they indeed?” he says. “How do you know that?”

  “Miss Dickinson told me. Miss Emily. She has a headful of knowledge.”

  “Tell me, now, is she always gliding about? They say she walks the house at night like a púca.”

  “Not at all, Uncle. She’s no ghost. She is in the kitchen with me as often as not and is as good at baking bread as any cook. And her sister sweeps the stairs morning, noon and night and manages much else besides. Their mother doesn’t tolerate idleness.”

  “Oh,” he says, sounding disappointed.

  “But she’s always writing things,” I tell him. “Even while she bakes, she can be composing a verse. And she writes into the night in her bedroom.”

  This seems to please him, and he nods. “Why does she hermit herself away, do you think? She used to stroll the streets the same as Miss Lavinia. She was always visiting, they say.”

  “She prefers her own company, that’s all. And the writing takes up her time. She goes out to the garden and conservatory. She’s mad for growing things—flowers and all that.”

  “She was well liked always. People took to her.”

  “Miss Emily’s not gone anywhere, Uncle. She’s right there in the Homestead, the same as she ever was.”

  “But, hiding behind windows and lowering baskets of cake from them is not right. She should be out gallivanting with her kind. With men!” He lets out a strange giggle that ends in a gasp.

  “It would do her no good,” I snap. “Men are never what they appear to be.”

  Uncle Michael turns to look at me. He puts his hand on mine. “Have yourself and young Byrne had a falling-out?”

  “No.” I snatch my hand from his.

  “He’s a solid young fella, that Daniel Byrne. Every girl in Amherst had her cap set at him, you know. Then you waltzed into town. Hang on tight to him, Ada. He’s a good one.”

  “What are we doing sitting here? We need to go and find an inn where we can eat.”

  I get up and start to march ahead of him down the road that leads to the river. I don’t want to hear about how good Daniel is; don’t I know it already? Amn’t I in pain with the thoughts of his goodness? All I want of a sudden is to stand and look into the river. I miss the Liffey that passed so near my home in Dublin. I miss its swirling, secretive hurry as it rushed on to get to the sea. I miss the weed stink that wrapped itself around me. I come to the covered bridge that connects both sides of the Chicopee River and I stand at the fence looking down into the water, waiting for my uncle to catch up. The river doesn’t have the clay smell of the Liffey, but its brown, busy movement comforts me nonetheless. The sun warms my back. I watch ducks paddle furiously against the current, then let themselves drift. Paddle, drift, paddle, drift. Is it a game, or are they really trying to get somewhere? Back to their nests, perhaps, where eggs or chicks wait for care.

  Uncle Michael slides up beside me, puffing gently from the walk. He puts his hand on my shoulder. “Don’t let any man ever take anything that’s yours, Ada,” he says.

  I nod; I think of telling him it is already too late for that, but I don’t wish to vex him. “I won’t, Uncle Michael,” I say. “Let’s go. The sun is turning me to butter.”

  “Lead on,” he says, holding out an arm toward the bridge, and we walk it together, our boots making a pleasing, rhythmic echo through the bridge’s high chamber.

  Miss Emily Grieves Her Brother

  FATHER WORKS. MOTHER SLEEPS. ADA TOILS. VINNIE TALKS TO her cats. The mice keep up their clicking dance in rooms where no puss is present, but they will not last long. Across the garden Susan tends to my brother and his children; she entertains guests. Amherst burbles on. And I sit here with my little halter, trying to secure time and lead it along. It is not that I have nothing to do—there is a myriad of tasks that call to me urgently—but I am on a slow day and I cannot seem to lift my hands to anything. I think of Longfellow, who says that there are days where darkness and dreariness must reign. But he also says the sun shines behind the clouds; that makes me applaud his poetic optimism.

  I rise from my desk and open my bedroom door; I leave it ajar to hear the sounds of the house. Ada recites her prayers and sings hymns as she works—her new custom. The beat of the song she chants today sets off a rhythm in my chest: ba-ba-ba-ba-ba, de-de-de-de-de. Vinnie is reading aloud a letter from our Norcross cousins: no doubt the cats purr, lick their coats and ignore her while she does so, but they are audience enough for my siste
r. Mother coughs in her sleep, though perhaps she is awake? I am selfish in my aloneness and choose not to go to her, but she hacks once more and I am roused enough to flitter down the corridor and open her door. Her breathing is steady, and I leave again. Her bouts of repressed spirits and illness worry us all.

  There is a certain guilt that wraps itself into me because I choose to travel my own road. My travels, of course, do not take me far, but I know that I grieve Mother, Vinnie and, especially, Austin. Even Father, my great ally, looks at me sometimes with uncomprehending eyes. But it is Austin who finds me the most alarming. Dear Austin; when we were children, how close we were. Anytime I was allowed to school—Father often considered me too delicate to go—I would write to Austin. From Mount Holyoke my letters buzzed like honey-heavy bees, full of youthful skittishness, which he returned in his own missives. He wrote to me from Easthampton, and we would poke fun at everything from Father’s gravity to Moody Cook’s plainness to whatever slattern Mother had hired to help with the washing. And I begged Austin often to give up his schooling and come home to me; I was lonely, and Father hovered over my health like a nervy physician, making me timorous in return. I was often housebound, receiving Dr. Brewster regularly and being condoled with by all the elderly spinsters in Amherst. When Austin did come home, Mother and I made special pies in his honor—ones heaving with apples and plums—and all was light in the house. Father loved to see him about the Homestead. He would look at Austin with relief and satisfaction and make singular pronouncements.

  “You are a trout rescued from the Sahara’s heat,” Father said on one occasion, setting Austin, Vinnie and me off into giggles over Father’s gravity, his ticklish analogies, his constant worrying as to our well-being and our whereabouts besides.