Miss Emily (21 page)

T
HE
D
ICKINSONS 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 un-settled, 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 mind 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 after-feathers 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.

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.