Afternoons with Emily Page 10

  But religion didn’t stop there! Aunt Helen attended the church sewing circle, which seemed to have enormous authority and influence. Father joined a Bible study group and went off Tuesday evenings muttering darkly, “When in Rome . . .” Kate had a Christian youth group whose purpose was unclear, other than social. I went to Sabbath school, as did most of my class at the academy. I soon learned that Ruth and Naomi were pretty tame, after Europa and the bull — but I knew not to say so. I decided Job would have made a fine myth.

  And God went to the academy with me too, every weekday. I was reminded that my school was founded by ministers who then went on to start the college to train young clerics. Almost forty years later, the college itself was less religious — but God still loomed over the academy, influencing each class. In geography, when we studied the Red Sea, we were told that Moses parted it. In botany, when we studied stamens and corollas, we were reminded Who created them.

  One day at recess, Lolly and two other girls pulled me aside urgently. They giggled, and I practiced giggling too. “Miranda, tell us — have you professed?”

  “I don’t understand. My father’s the professor, not me.”

  “Have you converted? Have you affirmed? Are you saved?” For some reason, I felt they were waiting for me to say the wrong thing.

  “I don’t know. I’ll ask Father tonight.”

  When I did, not surprisingly, he handed the problem over to Aunt Helen. He gave her a look, and she sighed, but not very deeply. With the big house, and the hired girl to help her, and Kate’s splendid education, doing Father’s work for him occasionally was well worth it to Aunt Helen.

  “Miranda, you’re asking about conversion,” she told me. “To experience conversion, you must truly believe in the Almighty.”

  “Well, I do — I think. What else?”

  “Then you must confess all your sins and wickedness.”

  “What wickedness?” I was instantly indignant. “I haven’t ever hurt anyone, not ever!”

  Now my father was quietly amused. “You know, Helen, I think she’s right.”

  “Jos, this is serious. I won’t have you mocking conversion! You don’t know the first thing about it,” said Aunt Helen.

  “Well then, let’s do this properly,” Father soothed her. “We should, you know. I believe Marian was considering conversion, right at the end. I’ll have Philip Meeker, the college chaplain, come and talk to Miranda. He’s the one to answer her questions.” Ever the scholar, my father chose to consult the experts.

  A few evenings later, Mr. Meeker called on us. He was well named; I could not imagine anyone meeker than this little rosy man. He was an unbroken pink all over, including his hair and his tiny hands, and he had a nervous stammer. The college students must have seemed like ravening wolves to Mr. Meeker.

  Father and I led Mr. Meeker into the study, where Aunt Helen waited with tea. She gestured for Mr. Meeker to take a seat.

  As he did, he beamed. “Professor Chase, such a p-p-privilege!” His eyes came to me; the crinkles around them deepened as he smiled even broader. “And how may I assist the young lady?”

  I had spent the afternoon listing questions for him, so I was all prepared.

  “Please, what are ‘profession’ and ‘conversion’?”

  Mr. Meeker’s head bobbed as he nodded quickly; these were questions he had clearly answered before. He was prepared too.

  “They represent the experience of recognizing the Lord and submitting to His will for you.”

  I considered this; it sounded like a ceremony. “Where do you do it?”

  “You profess in a church.”

  “Like a wedding?”

  “Not really; it’s more solemn. The whole congregation is witness to your act of submission.”

  “I wouldn’t want strangers; I’d sooner have just my friends and family.”

  My strong opinion on this matter stopped his nodding. “We are all God’s family,” Mr. Meeker assured me, turning a deeper pink. We appraised each other like duelists; then he tried a new approach.

  “Your father tells me you are concerned about sin,” he offered.

  “I’m certainly not! ” I replied hotly. “I told him I was sure I hadn’t sinned yet. I know all those commandments from Sabbath school. I know perfectly well I haven’t killed, or coveted, or committed whatever it is.”

  “Sometimes, in a very young person, we accept the possibility of future sins, for present contrition.” We seemed to reach a truce here, so he went elsewhere. “Tell me, Miss Chase, do you accept our belief in Lord Jesus as the one true religion?”

  This shocked me. “I couldn’t ever do that! There are other religions every bit as good.”

  Now it was his turn to be shocked; Father and Aunt Helen were merely surprised.

  “Then am I to understand that you, Miranda Chase, believe in gods other than our Lord and Christ His Son?”

  I dug in my heels; no one was going to take Poseidon and Artemis away from me. “Yes, I certainly do.”

  “How many, may I ask?”

  I tried to count up the population of Mount Olympus, and then there were all the heroes and the demigods. “About a hundred, more or less” was my rough estimate.

  Mr. Meeker turned to Father for help, but he was wearing his aloof onlooker smile — so Mr. Meeker stammered manfully on.

  “And have you ever t-t-taken part in the worship of these gods?”

  I thought carefully. So far I had told the truth — but the truth had made him so absurd that I would never accept him as a religious tutor. I decided to tell a half-lie and end the interview.

  “Yes, I have — often,” I said sincerely, remembering the beautiful altar to Poseidon that Lettie and I had built at Learner’s Cove. We decorated it with shells and seaweed, and brought tiny crabs and lizards as offerings.

  Here endeth the lesson. Father patted and soothed and steered Mr. Meeker out the door. When he returned to the parlor, I expected a scolding, though I wasn’t sure for what — except perhaps for having been a bully. However, I was merely sent up to bed. From the stairs, I heard bits and pieces of Father’s conversation with Aunt Helen.

  “Always so truthful . . . Barbados. Her nurse there . . . outgrow it. . . . Wait a year or two.”

  This was ridiculous; I was scornful that Father could make such a mistake. Of course, I knew all about voodoo; Lettie and I often talked about the ghosts and the goats and the little wax figures. But I had not meant that at all. I was standing up for my right to the Greek gods and goddesses, who were my pleasure and my property. More important, I was standing up for myself. Therein lay a discovery that no teacher, neither Mr. Harnett nor even Mr. Meeker, could condemn. Or a parent.

  Then it struck me: I took a position and refused to budge — and I won! Just a year or two ago, little white mouse Ara would have turned tail and scuttled back up to her attic.

  I ran in to tell Kate all about it, and she laughed herself breathless over my version of Mr. Meeker. Then I showed her a victory paean that Mr. Harnett taught me, and then we laughed some more.

  The next day at recess, it was easy to tell Lolly and her group that my family had decided to defer my profession for a while.

  “We’re just going to think about it this winter,” I reported gravely.

  The girls approved this prudent approach.

  “Goodness, it took me a whole year to make up my mind,” Lolly assured me. “What’s the rush? God can wait!”

  The others gasped at her daring. I knew they would all be saying it by evening.

  “Anyway, this isn’t a good year for a conversion. Wait until a revival year, when everyone’s doing it!” advised a red-haired girl.

  It seemed agreed that I was behaving properly. Then we began to plan which afternoon they would come to my house. They wanted to watch Mr. Stokes, the barber, cut my hair.

  This was the closest I had come to being revealed as an impostor — a changeling, masquerading as a New England fourteen-year-old. Appa
rently I did right in pretending a hesitation over the conversion. What if I had told my classmates the truth — that I preferred the Greek gods to Christianity? Every day, I learned more about hiding just how different I was.

  Two days later, I came home from school and went into the kitchen for the cookies and milk Aunt Helen always had ready. On the table beside my mug, I saw a small envelope with my name on it. Inside I found a note written in a delicate script like a garland:

  My dear Miss Chase,

  A rumor flew and lit at my window. Do you too refuse Salvation? Let us then consider Perdition together — here on Monday, at four o’clock.

  Your unprofessed friend,

  Emily E. Dickinson

  Aunt Helen found me munching cookies and puzzling over this.

  I gave her the note. “I don’t know what she means,” I complained. “I wish she’d just come out and say what she wants.”

  “She must have heard about your encounter with poor Mr. Meeker, Miranda.” She laid the note back down on the table.

  “But how could she? She doesn’t even know me.”

  “The small-town telegraph is speedier than Mr. Morse’s. You’ll see. . . . Even our thoughts are circulated, I vow.”

  At supper that night, Father was pleased and curious. It occurred to me that leaving Boston and his in-laws had made him very sociable. Perhaps he always had been on Mount Vernon Street too, and Mother didn’t join him.

  “Think of it as an honor,” said Father. “I hear she’s very particular and choosy. She never goes out and only sees a handful of people. The Dickinsons run Amherst and the college, you know.”

  I was still reluctant. “Isn’t she very old?”

  “About thirteen years older than you, I’d guess — but you always like older people, Miranda. Perhaps she’ll lend you some books.”

  I really wished Father would say, “Don’t go unless you want to.” He should protect me! My school days were hard enough, trying to pass as a proper fourteen-year-old. Why did I have to go and meet some snobbish old maid?

  Monday afternoon, I brought my atlas and my watercolors home from school. I started a map of the Mediterranean in geography and had come to the best part: the dark wavy band along the coastline. Should this be a Prussian blue or a daring viridian? I would much rather stay and work on my map than call on a stranger-lady who wrote so oddly.

  But Aunt Helen repeated the Eleventh Commandment — “An engagement is an engagement” — and buttoned me into my Sunday dress, my favorite violet challis. It had stripes of tiny roses, pink and crimson, and flat velvet bows at the neck and wrists.

  “You look more like Beacon Hill than Amherst,” my aunt grumbled. She was openly opposed to this invitation. Her reaction made me more apprehensive but also more curious; what was there to disapprove of? When pressed, however, Aunt Helen just shook her head and murmured, “I suppose it will be all right.”

  Going cross lots through people’s gardens, it took less than ten minutes from our house to the Dickinsons’. As I approached, I could see the scalloped white cupola and the four brick chimneys above the maples, which were almost bare after last night’s windstorm. I came closer, and the big house itself appeared, as solid as the rock under our stage. I sensed that it too was rooted deep underground.

  I had heard that the Dickinson family called their house “The Homestead,” and it surely made a statement of ownership and permanence. The brick walls were painted custard yellow. There were many large square windows, with Hooker’s green shutters and plain white tieback curtains. The front door had a small portico with four square columns. Someone was standing at an upstairs window, watching me.

  I was prickly with unease as I went up to pull the bell. The black door was opened promptly by a smiling no-age lady with massed dark hair, like that of an Indian. I had seen her in church on Sundays.

  “Come right in, we’re expecting you,” she declared. She gave my hand a firm grip, nearly tugging me inside. “You’re really quite famous!”

  I stood awkwardly in the spacious square hall, wishing I were less famous and back in my own house. Was this woman my hostess?

  “Just go right up,” the woman directed, waving to the stairs. “She has your tea all ready.”

  That answered one question — the woman beside me was not Emily Dickinson. Before I could introduce myself or say another word, I heard a door open, and I looked up to the landing. A small, slight figure — a woman? a child? — stood in a doorway against the light. Then there came a voice that I imagined I would remember as long as I lived: a voice like an alto recorder. It spoke softly, intimately, as if confiding in me only.

  “Is that the damned soul who comes calling?”

  I froze on the stair, stopped by this shocking statement. A flash of indignation flooded my body, turning my cheeks a hot red. If she believed me to be “damned,” why had she invited me into her home? Could she be joking?

  “Mr. Meeker would certainly call me that,” I agreed, starting to climb the stairs again.

  “I hear he exited MEEKER than he had entered,” the voice answered, and I broke into delighted laughter as I stepped onto the second-story landing. Yes, I was laughing at the very moment I met Emily Dickinson.

  She was about my height but much more delicately built. When she shook my hand, I felt tiny bird bones, as frail as Lettie’s. She had thick hair — the color of autumn oak leaves — looped over her ears, and a lively, plain round face. She wore a simple white dress with a full pleated skirt and a glorious scarlet shawl.

  She stepped backward into her room, and I followed. “Come to the window where I can see you, Miranda Chase.” She smiled with faint apology. “My eyes are not on duty today.”

  It was hard to follow her particular mode of speech. Anyone else would have said, “I have poor sight,” or “My eyes are bothering me.” With her, the eyes became soldiers not doing their jobs. Is it some kind of code? I wondered. I was not sure I could learn to read it.

  “It was autumn until you came,” she told me cryptically. What could she mean now? This message was a little harder to decipher. Perhaps she referred to my dress?

  “These are called Christmas roses,” I told her. “My aunt Helen has promised to change the bows to red velvet at Christmas.”

  “What a fine thought! Did you know some birds change for Christmas too? They put on a regular pageant for me.” She pointed to a window, where I saw a birdhouse with a feeding tray in the nearest maple.

  “Now I want you to meet my room,” Miss Dickinson said, spreading her arms out wide in an all-inclusive gesture.

  I looked about, admiring the spaciousness, the three large windows (two facing south, one west). I liked the dainty little stove murmuring on the hearth, though the autumn afternoon was warm.

  “A corner room, facing south — the best in the house,” said my hostess proudly. “All my family insisted that I have it when we moved here two years ago.”

  This did not feel like the kind of house that anyone had acquired recently, but I let it pass. It might have been another coded signal I had missed.

  “May I look at your books?” I asked. This should be safe.

  “They would be very hurt if you didn’t.”

  I smiled at the idea of the books having feelings and crossed to the shelves. I saw a few Shakespeare plays, and the sonnets; there was some Thackeray, and some poets I didn’t know.

  “Please, who is John Ruskin?”

  “An observer, like you.” She smiled like a cat with a secret and arranged our tea on a small side table. She watched me too. Now I knew who was at the upstairs window when I arrived.

  “This is Father’s favorite molasses loaf,” she said, cutting a slice of the spicy cake. “I make it just for him.”

  “I think that you use the hymnal and the dictionary the most,” I told Miss Dickinson, coming to join her. “They look the most lived in.”

  She was charmed by this phrase of Aunt Helen’s. “Let’s be ‘lived-in’ frien
ds, you and I,” she suggested, handing me a cup of tea. “We already have a common bond: we’re both unconverted sinners.”

  This recalled Mr. Meeker, who had brought me to this room and this meeting and this odd, oblique conversation.

  “Did Mr. Meeker want you to profess too?” I asked.

  A cunning look crossed her face. She gave a wry, pleased smile and leaned close to me. “Many better men than Mr. Meeker have tried to persuade me — men who were much closer to God than he is.” She sat back up and sighed. “And friends I dearly loved — even my own brother. They were all after me like a pack of hounds. Yes, they hounded me.”

  I could see she liked the analogy. I did too. “And what did you do?”

  “For years I would say ‘perhaps’ or ‘soon.’ I hid in thickets and underbrush, and doubled back on my tracks. But you were braver; you turned to face them and bared your teeth, didn’t you?”

  “But you really can’t call Mr. Meeker a pack of slobbering hounds,” I offered. “He’s more like a puppy nipping at the heels.”

  To my delight, Miss Dickinson gave a bright, full-throated laugh — and at a joke of mine.

  “That is certainly true,” she replied, still laughing. “Not just a puppy. The runt of an albino litter.”

  We shared a wicked laugh together at poor Mr. Meeker’s expense.

  “Enough of our close escapes,” Miss Dickinson said. “Now I would like to hear about your name. Miranda. Inspired by Bermuda and the bard?”

  I was enchanted that she knew the private Shakespeare origin of the name Miranda. How had she guessed? By the time I had told her about our Shakespeare evenings in Barbados, and why I was there, and the James family, and the dolphins — by then, Miss Dickinson knew a good deal about me. She listened quietly, her head tipped, her hands clasped. She asked very few questions, but her alert, intent eyes compelled me to keep speaking.

  “You are a regular Sinbad, a Gulliver,” she said at the end. “Parts of that were very interesting.”