Afternoons with Emily (12 page)

There were two large, handsome brick residences that dominated the town. President Stearns of the college lived in one; the
other belonged to the Dickinsons, the leading family of Amherst. The Dickinsons were founders of the college, builders of
the community. Their rooflines and chimneys rose above the trees; all the other houses were smaller or built lower. Looking
down from the nearby Pelham Hills, I found that the village itself was almost invisible. The forest appeared undisturbed.

I liked to walk along the village streets, looking into autumn gardens, imagining the lives of the families. I thought I could
fit into a society on this scale. Already some people greeted me, and a few girls my age smiled shyly — suggesting that my
oddities did not stand out yet.

Nevertheless, the night before the academy opened, I was full of apprehension and stage fright. I dreaded the crowds of strangers,
already friends with one another. I feared my own mistakes and ignorance. I had no idea what to say and do tomorrow morning.
I confessed all this to Kate; I even managed to make a funny story about my terrors. Kate laughed till she was weak.

“Stop, Miranda, stop! It won’t be as bad as you think,” she reassured me kindly. “You needn’t worry about the boys, they’re
always nice to new pretty girls. Just smile and pretend they’re smarter than you are.”

I stared at her in amazement. I was going to be one of the pretty girls? Even stranger — I was expected to pretend to be less
than I was. What a curious society to navigate. My nervousness escalated.

Kate hugged me, smiling. “It will all be fine. The other thing to remember is that the girls will like you if you don’t chase
the boys.”

Following that advice would be easy!

That night, the first frost took vivid scarlet bites out of the tawny maples. On my fourteenth birthday, we walked to school
under the brilliant trees. We went along the green and up the hill to the academy, a plain building of painted brick. Its
three stories were starkly unadorned, stating that education within was serious and spiritual. “All frivolity abandon, ye
who enter here!” I whispered to Kate, who laughed.

Entering, I was caught up in a swirl of noise and energy, and swept along in a stream of excited children pressing forward.
Far from avoiding or criticizing me, none of the other students paid me the slightest notice. I was not conspicuous, not different;
I was blessedly one of the crowd.

Somehow I found myself in the right rooms, with teachers who expected me and handed me books. Labels and names and directions
poured over me, my ears rang, my eyes were dazzled — but all I received was the same hurried kindness as everyone else. I
had expected so much worse on my first day. So far no one had guessed that I was a creature out of my element.

One of my teachers was Miss Lowe, a grave young woman with dark eyes and a level gaze. When recess came, she asked me to stay.
I was relieved; I had not wanted to attempt jumping rope with my skillful classmates. I intended to ask Kate to teach me how
when we got home.

“Miranda, tell me about the list of books you read this summer.” She held the handwritten list I turned in this morning, as
was asked of each pupil. She seemed worried. “Did you read all these with understanding?”

“Yes, Miss Lowe, I did.” I wondered what it was about my list that concerned her.

“I see. Tell me, which was your favorite?”

“It was a tie — either
Emma
or
Henry Esmond.
” I thought a moment. “Definitely
Emma.
Jane Austen captures her characters so vividly, don’t you think?”

Miss Lowe gazed at me appraisingly. “Yes, I do. How would you feel about being with an older class for literature?”

“I wouldn’t mind at all, if they didn’t.”

“We often mix up ages; it makes for a more interesting discussion. Now tell me — do you like Longfellow?”

“I loved ‘The Skeleton in Armor.’ I even memorized it! But I think ‘Hiawatha’ was — well, childish.” I hoped I hadn’t spoken
too freely. I looked at Miss Lowe for her response.

Miss Lowe smiled for the first time. “That will be our secret, between the two of us. And here’s another: I don’t like Sir
Walter Scott!”

We grinned at each other. I knew Miss Lowe and I would have many book conversations in the future.

“That wasn’t bad at all,” I told Kate as we walked home with our armfuls of new books. “Miss Lowe is a little like Mr. Harnett.”

“That is the best school I ever attended,” Kate affirmed. “I can tell already.”

“What good news from everyone!” Father beamed at dinner. “Nobody bit Miranda, and nobody eloped with Kate!” We all laughed,
and I marveled at the change that had come over Father. He was more outgoing and open, even engaging in frivolities and jokes.
And he and Aunt Helen were as happy as Kate and I about the school situation.

“Your academy was started by the same gang of Unitarian churchgoers who founded the college some years later,” Father informed
us. “The two institutions are still very close and still hell-bent on saving souls. We won’t tell anyone how corrupt and worldly
you girls really are!”

I was delighted by Father’s banter and our inauguration as a family. In Barbados, as much as I loved it, I was a welcome guest;
here I felt completely at home.

The Pelham Hills blazed beside the river; we walked under the maple torches and oak beacons that were all along the village
streets. Fires of leaves raked up into stubby pyramids smoldered along the lanes; violet smoke rose in twisted columns. Amherst
in autumn was a stunning surprise of clear blue weather — but the colors deepened as the nights chilled, and the wind had
a steel edge.

Kate and I were beginning to feel quite at ease at the academy. Half the girls in her class were only going through the motions
of study until they could close their books for good and move into their prescribed roles as wives. Meanwhile the awkward
boys, pimpled and bony and honking like geese, were handy to practice on until appropriate suitors came along.

The other girls were the scholars, the readers; they moved deep in projects, laden with books, eager for learning. Kate fit
effortlessly among them. Because Kate literally did not see boys, the girls forgave her her hair, her complexion, her striking
beauty.

I turned out to be a little hard to place in the academy, since I was ahead of my age in some subjects and behind in others.
The teachers were all kind and uncritical; after a week of switching me about, they devised a patchwork schedule. I was with
the fifteen-year-olds for history and literature, and (oh, shame!) with the ten-year-olds in mathematics. I had botany, geography,
and French with my own age. I considered taking recorder lessons as some of the girls did.

Gradually I learned protective coloration, as if I were a small animal in the woods. I could skip rope at recess; it was simpler
than it looked that first day. I learned jacks, which was a friendly and flexible game played in silence. I practiced jacks
at home on our porch. I did not have real friends yet, but no one snubbed me.

In class, I tried not to raise my hand. If I was called on, I learned that no one minded my knowing the answer — if I produced
it uncertainly. I never mentioned books except those that had been assigned. (Jane Eyre, forgive me!) I discovered that Barbados,
so remote and exotic, made a fine excuse for my social naïveté — so I enlarged my time there and put my years in Boston far
in the past.

All this fitting in was very tiring — but I had Kate every evening to hear my trials, to listen and laugh and encourage me.
She accepted me as I was; I had nothing to conceal — and I was never lonely. One night I even told Kate that I thought Lolly
Wheeler, the social center of the fourteen-year-old set, was starting to like me.

Every afternoon after school, Kate and I walked up Amity Street to watch the day’s progress on our new house. There was to
be a two-story wing to the west for Father, with a study downstairs and two bedrooms over it. One day, we met my father and
Ethan Howland, our handsome young architect, frowning and pacing up and down the site. Ethan Howland came from Springfield
for half the week to supervise the additions to our house. The work was going rapidly, but the large one-story addition behind
the main house — my father called it the “temple” — had met trouble: immovable bedrock.

Mr. Howland and Father had been most congenial until this business of the rock, which loomed in the space where we had intended
to build our large drawing room.

“Jos, you have to give in on something,” Mr. Howland was pleading. “Follow the Parthenon ratio, but make the whole room smaller.
We can build right up to the rock. That’s thirty feet.”

“I won’t have it!” Father’s rejection was explosive. “I won’t have a skimpy temple that looks as if it had shrunk in the wash!”

“Then we’ll have to build over the rock,” said Mr. Howland. “You’ll just have to lower the ceiling.”

“Never!” Father glared and blew like a whale. It was a shame to see him so upset, when until now the progress on the house
had given him so much pleasure.

I wandered off to study the rock, now our acknowledged enemy. There was no way to guess how deep it went, since what was visible
was no more than the horn of a huge hidden mass. I returned to the building for a yardstick and measured the projection. Somewhere
in my mind there was an idea moving and taking shape, as a deep-water dolphin glimmers its way up to visibility. I rejoined
the men, who were still arguing.

“Father, I believe there is a way.” I was very calm and confident, just as I was for my first geography test last week. I
knew the answer; I only had to produce it. Both men stared at me.

“Do you remember our Shakespeare evenings in Barbados? And how we said we’d do them ourselves in Amherst?”

“Of course I remember. That’s one of the reasons we must have a big room. You can’t do Shakespeare in a stingy ten-by-ten
parlor.”

I saw Mr. Howland swallow a smile. Our parlor was actually a generous twenty-two by twenty.

“Well, couldn’t we use a stage for our readings? The rock is twelve feet wide and only two feet high. So we could just build
over the rock — and then drop down for the rest of the room. That way you could keep your temple measurements, and we’d have
a stage too. What do you think?”

There was a long silence while Mr. Howland scribbled and smiled and waited for Father to speak.

“Miranda, what did Alexander cut?” Father said at last.

“The Gordian knot!” I laughed with delight at having been helpful. “And he got Asia in return!”

“Well, Alexandra, you’ve just cut our knot — but I’ll give you a stage instead of Asia. Ethan, why didn’t we think of that
by ourselves? By God, we’re going to build Kate a hall for her first concert!”

We all congratulated ourselves and one another, glowing like the brilliant leaves falling around us. I pointed at them, naming
them for the colors of autumn from my paint box.

“Scarlet lake, vermilion, rose madder,” I called.

“And burnt sienna and alizarin,” Mr. Howland added.

“All the colors of happiness,” said Kate, coming from behind and startling us all.

When we lived in Boston, we attended the Unitarian church near us. We went a few times a year and forgot God in between. In
Barbados, on Sunday, we used to read prayers on the gallery for the house servants and their families. I suppose I was really
very ignorant in religious matters. But I did love the Christmas story, and anything about angels, and the few hymns I knew.
Also I was curious about the Holy Ghost when I happened to think about it.

All this casual religion changed when we came to Amherst. God was everywhere, all week long. We attended the First Congregational
Church every single Sunday, all four of us. Father pointed out the important Dickinsons: an older man with a fierce, vain
face; a younger couple, quite stylish; and another youngish woman. The church itself was pale yellow Greek Revival, a grave
and dignified building. The music was the best part.

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!”