Miss Emily (3 page)

“I am, Daddy.”

He takes me the five miles to the train station in the baronet's trap. He does not speak until we are on the platform.

“Godspeed, Ada.” He hugs me close.

“Good-bye, Daddy. I will write.”

“You'll write to your mother, I suppose,” he says. “Stay amidships if the swells bother you. And keep your eyes on the horizon.”

I step back to look into his face, but he turns from me and is gone. I take the train to Kingstown and board the first of the boats that will ferry me across the seas. The gangway is jammed with people, and a ship's officer shouts at us not to break it.

“Go easy, go easy!” he roars.

But in the throng we have no choice whether to move forward or back to save his gangway, with all the pushing and shoving and trick-acting that is going on.

Up on the deck, I grip the rail and watch the harbor shrink as we move away; Dublin lies like a big dozy cow, not able to shake the sleep off herself. I wrap my hands around the rail and rock back and forth; my palms come away dappled with salt grains, and I hold them up and watch them glint in the early sun. I laugh aloud, feeling happier than I ever remember in my seventeen years on this earth. I have never been on a big boat, and though everything is rumbling and strange, I feel as if I have done it all before;
it is like adventure comes natural to me. The coast of Ireland gets smaller and smaller—it cannot disappear quick enough. It is possible, I think, to throw off one life and glide toward another so easily that it is barely noticeable. When Dublin is no more than a blurred line, I put my back to it and turn my face forward.

Miss Emily Hides in the Garden

T
HE GODDESS
P
OMONA HAS BEEN AROUND THE ORCHARD SCAT
-tering her goodness: everything is floral and abundant, while the apple maggots and cabbage worm do their best to undo it all. I sit under a pine, listening to the sounds of the earth, the turn of the beetle and the bone song of the crickets; above me a jay chimes her good fortune to the sky. Moody Cook, the blacksmith, is by the barn tending to the horses with the Irish boy, Byrne, who sometimes comes. Their voices lilt across the garden to me, though I cannot hear what they say. Byrne is a big, well-put-together young man, steady, gracious and capable. Father talks of him in an avuncular way, as if he has made Byrne the fine fellow he is.

The smells are summery: leaves, blossom and rich marl. I would like to push my hands deep into the clay and savor its deathly cool around my fingers; I would enjoy the corpsy feeling of it. I fix my spine against the tree trunk and stretch my chin skyward. There is true peace here for those of us who crave it.

I am hiding from Mother and Vinnie, who are determined to pin sheets while the sun shines, but the wet slap of linens is not what I want to feel today. There is a poem forming in my gut, and in order to release it, I must be alone. I have a chocolate wrapper and a pencil in my pocket, and as soon as the words crystallize in
my mind and push to my fingertips, I will write them down. For that I need the shelter of the garden; I am too easily discovered in the house.

Mother's voice—in the imperious tone she uses for the help— slices through the air. “Mr. Cook! Mr. Byrne! Has my eldest daughter passed this way?”

The men saw me indeed, for they stopped their fussing around Dick, Father's favorite horse, as I passed the chaise-house. They stood to watch me go by, both raising a hand in salute. I had put my finger to my lips and shaken my head, knowing they would take my meaning.

“No, ma'am,” I hear Moody say, “I have not spoken to Miss Emily this day.”

“Nor I,” says Byrne.

They did not even lie. Bravo, Moody Cook! Bravo, Daniel Byrne! I rise and slink under cover of trees to the farthest reach of the Homestead's rim and prop myself behind a large chestnut where there is no chance of Mother unearthing me.

Words begin to jostle, then settle, in my mind; they play out before me as if already written. I see them in the inked curlicues of my own handwriting; I see them in pencil, blocky and spare. Words behave differently depending upon what I need them for. Writing a poem is not like writing a letter; the addressee is my soul—myself. Yes, I write for myself, and if the thing I write ends up shambolic or spasmodic, then what of it? Is it not the nature of all humankind to be unruly and contrary? To be uneven and to do things in uncharacteristic ways? Words are my sustenance: they are bread and wine. I flex my fingers and press my palms together. I flatten the yellow chocolate wrapper across my knees, take my pencil in my hand and begin to write.

Miss Ada Arrives in Amherst, Massachusetts

M
Y
U
NCLE
M
ICHAEL SITS BESIDE ME AS THE TRAIN ROLLS
toward Amherst.

“Massachusetts is greener than Ireland,” I say to him.

“Only parts of it, girleen, and only for some of the year.” Uncle pats my arm. “It's August now, but let me tell you, come winter there will be snow thicker and higher than you have ever seen.” He clicks his tongue in pace with the train's skip and jolt. “Now, tell me all about the passage.”

“My stomach never rose into my mouth once,” I say, “though it was often wild at sea. And they served a gray slumgullion to us three times a day. I was the only girl on deck most of the time. The men seemed hardier than the women.”

“And did you find people to talk to?”

“Not really. There was an English girl bound for Boston, but she could hardly speak she was so sick.”

I don't tell him about the woman with the oranges. Every night she sat alone at the long table in steerage and peeled an orange. Never having eaten an orange before, I couldn't take my eyes off it. She dug her nails into the skin and broke the fruit into pieces; she
popped the slices into her mouth, and the juice dribbled from her lips. I had never witnessed the like, and the sweet, strange smell tickled at my nose. The cut of her, I thought, my mouth filling with spit. There was something obscene and lovely about the woman, and I would have given my two ears for a nibble of that orange.

“Wait until you see where we live,” Uncle Michael says. “Annie's husband set us up nicely. He's a decent man.” He sounds proud. Mammy always said that my cousin Annie's good marriage had benefited them all. Annie married a Kelley from Tipp; she met him in America and not in Tipperary at all. Tom Kelley bought a large property on Main Street in Amherst, and all his family, and the Mahers, live on it in different houses. Tom named it—rather grandly, I think—Kelley Square.

Auntie Mary is at the door of her house when we walk up from the train station, our legs unfixing after sitting so long. Auntie cries, shakes her head and looks at me as if I am something Uncle Michael has charmed out of the clouds.

“Ada!” she calls, arms outstretched. “Ada Concannon, come here and let me wrap myself around you. I declare to God, it's like looking at my own sister. You're the spit of Ellen, the walking head off her.”

All life throbs outside their door; the center of Amherst is not far. While Auntie Mary crushes me to her breast and sobs into my hair, I look farther up the way. Horses and men fill the street; women stroll, and children run. The smells in the air are sharp but welcome: oil and dung and a clear autumn-ness that is made of leaves. This is a town of light and brick; it hasn't the gray drear of Sackville Street back home; it hasn't the endless green of the land around Tigoora, though there are hills off in the distance. Auntie smells of butter, and her dress is stiff and new; she is a different shape to Mammy, but there is something of Mammy in her, too.

“Mary, you're holding that girl like you'll never let her go. Bring Ada inside and let her take her rest. Feed her. She must be wall-falling with the hunger.”

Auntie steps back and looks at me. “How was my darling Ellen when you left,
a leana
? How are they all?” I go to speak, but she shushes me. “We'll get you settled first.”

I startle awake to the sound of a long, sharp whistle, and it takes a minute for me to realize it is coming from outside. It is the factory whistle, I learn later, calling the men to work. It takes me another minute to let the shape of the room settle around me, to know where I am. My cousin Maggie's bed is neat and comfortable, and I can't say I miss the snorting and farting of my sisters. Maggie is in Connecticut, doing for the Boltwood family, which is lucky for me, because I get her room, never mind her bed, all to myself.

I can hear Mammy's voice saying, “Look at you lying there, Ada Concannon. You think you're a cut above buttermilk.”

“That's right, Mammy,” I say aloud. “I do think that. Because I am.”

Light slants through the sides of the shutters, and I get up and open them to see what I can see. The house is already awake—I can hear them below—and I don't want Michael and Mary to think I am a lazy strap, so I haul myself into my petticoat and dress and go down.

Miss Emily' s Father Pleases Her

F
ATHER IS TRIUMPHANT.
H
IS VOICE BOOMS THROUGH THE OPEN
back door, and I stand and listen from the yard.

“She starts Monday next. She does not need to live in.”

“And her experience?” Mother says.

“Vast experience. She worked for a baronet in Dublin before coming here, as a scullery maid and in the stillroom.”

“She will find our household modest in comparison, no doubt.”

“I daresay she will find us easier.” Father allows himself a laugh. “Now, my dear. You may congratulate me on such an early and spectacular success.”

I step through the door into the kitchen. “Success, Father?”

“Yes, indeed, Emily. I have found you a neat little person, a cousin of Maggie Maher's, who does so well for the Boltwoods. Do you see how determination brings dividends? This girl is fresh off the boat from Ireland and keen to work. Am I pleasing you thus far?”

I go to him and kiss his cheek. “Yes, Father.”

“Emily, you will be doubly pleased when I tell you that she is an accomplished baker.”