How had Emily Dickinson put it?

Good Morning—Midnight—

I’m coming Home—

Day—got tired of Me

Something like that. Seventy-eight midnights, and the feeling of shame over the choices she’s made—over the one big choice—refuses to leave her. Her heart is anchored by it, her head stuffed full of what-ifs.

What if there had been another boy at school who wanted to tell her his secrets?

What if horse-loving Allison had loved Paul instead?

When Paul drove her to the abandoned barn, what if she’d said no, like she’d sworn on a Bible she would?

And there was, of course, the fact that she could have just left town without telling him she was going. Why did that never occur to her? He would have been angry—no doubt about it—but he would still be alive, and he never would have brought the gun to school.

What if Gigi had been sick in bed on that Sunday and had had to stay home from church so that Paul couldn’t have ever snuck into her room in the first place? Surely Gigi wouldn’t mind being sick if it meant that her grandson would live. And if Paul were alive, Emily wouldn’t feel so cut open, so cut up, so cut down.

So sew. Either way you spell it, on its own, the word looks wrong. Emily could write a poem about it, about how sew needs a subject, an object. About how a girl needs a duty to lock her in place. So if she sits at a desk, scrawls words on paper, are the words as lonely as she, or do they sow seeds into a soul across time, across centuries? Was Emily Dickinson ever able to thread the words together in such a way that she was beyond the need for stitches?

Emily reaches for the book on her bedside table and pulls the covers up over her head. She turns to Poem 812, the one she read to Paul before she knew for sure she was pregnant, and holds the flashlight over it.

On a Saturday in early December, five days before their trip to McDonald’s, Emily and Paul sat in the truck in the Beams’ driveway looking at the house, which Emily’s father had decorated earlier that day with white lights that framed the front door and all of the windows.

“The whole Christmas thing,” Paul said. “It’s too much.”

“Too much of what?” Emily asked.

“Too much of everything.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

Paul sighed and pulled her closer. “People go overboard. They make things more complicated than they have to be. Even something beautiful like Christmas.”

“Oh, Paul, that makes me sad.”

“It makes me sad, too. I don’t want to feel sad. There’s all this light. I should feel happy, right?”

“Feelings are feelings,” she said, repeating something her grandmother used to say. “There isn’t a rightness or a wrongness to them. They just are.”

“We raise trees on our farm. Saplings. How do they make it?”

“You help them,” Emily said. “They wouldn’t survive without you.”

One of Paul’s responsibilities was to measure the width of the Christmas trees, an act that resembled hugging.

“Then I go and cut them down,” he said. “I mean, my parents talked to us a long time ago about what we do and why it’s good and how the trees give back to the air and the cycle of it and all, but still.”

“I want you to listen to something,” said Emily, reaching into her backpack for her English book. “It was written around 1864, but to me, it seems like it could have been written right now.” She read Paul the Emily Dickinson poem that she’d studied in class that week.

A Light exists in Spring

Not present on the Year

At any other period—

When March is scarcely here

A Color stands abroad

On Solitary Fields

That Science cannot overtake

But Human Nature feels.

It waits upon the Lawn,

It shows the furthest Tree

Upon the furthest Slope you know

It almost speaks to you.

Then as Horizons step

Or Noons report away

Without the Formula of sound

It passes and we stay—

A quality of loss

Affecting our Content

As Trade had suddenly encroached

Upon a Sacrament.

After she finished reading, Paul took the book from Emily’s hand and kissed her palm.

“I like the way it sounds in your voice,” he said, “but I don’t get it.”

“I’ll teach you.”

“I’m too dumb,” he said, shaking his head.

“You understand trees.” Emily kissed Paul’s forehead. “You’re not dumb. Poems grow just like trees. You’ll see.”

But he hadn’t seen. He hadn’t given himself time to see.

The night they sat in Emily’s driveway, Emily tried to teach Paul something. What if she’d succeeded? What if there’d been some bit of knowledge set firmly down on pages that would have saved him?

“Dickinson’s talking here”—she pointed out to Paul in the book—“about the transitory nature of light.”

“I’m with you so far,” he said.

She angled the book so that Paul could look. “Light visits less often than darkness. Most of the time, we’re living in the dark.”

“So true.”

“The first word of the poem is like a seed,” Emily said, thinking of the one that was likely growing inside of her. “And the last word of the poem is what that seed becomes. The rest of the poem is the poet changing that first word into something else. The word grows into something new, just like a seed grows into a tree.”

“So light becomes a sacrament.”

“Yes, exactly!”

“Okay, see? That’s the problem. I’m not sure what a sacrament is. I told you I was stupid.”

“I’m not sure I know, either,” Emily said. “But I think it’s something holy.”

A sacrament, Emily knows now because she’s looked it up, is a visible sign of God’s grace. Emily Dickinson scoured her small corner of the universe in search of such signs. She lived in a time and place governed by Puritan values. To renounce Christianity publicly, as Dickinson did in front of her entire school, was to banish herself from society. She refused to call herself a Christian because she did not want to lie. Science, not faith, was her guiding light. Experimentation led to proof. Logic and reason were what she held dear.

But if that was so, then why were so many of Emily Dickinson’s poems like little searchlights for God?

• • •

Walking to the dining room for breakfast, K.T. by her side, Emily considers what she is searching for other than a way out of her skin. As they scuttle over the pebbles, Emily hears lost rhymes rearranging themselves.

In my life I watched God take

Angels from my midst.

I pinned some jasmine to my breast,

Twined violets round my wrist

While I raged inside myself

Knowing what will be:

When God takes way more than He gives

He leaves the shell of me.

Maybe Emily Dickinson also heard poems under her shoes. Maybe she let this one stay so some other girl who came along could scoop it up, hold it in her palm.

“Rabbit, rabbit,” says K.T.

Emily looks at her sideways.

“It’s the first of March. Earth to Emily …”

“Is that another ASGism?”

“Seriously,” K.T. says. “What rock have you been living under?”

“A really heavy one.”

“You say it for good luck. It’s supposed to be the first thing you say when you wake up on the first of the month.”

Emily frowns. “Rabbit, rabbit?”

“Yeah.”

“I think that might be a Vermont thing.”

“No,” says K.T., “it’s an all-over thing. Why is the rock so heavy?”

“I need coffee,” Emily says. “I can’t talk without coffee.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Sometimes I wish I were a little girl again.”

“Are you homesick?” K.T. asks. “It’s okay if you are. It happens here, especially in the winter.”

“I’m not homesick,” says Emily. “I’m nostalgic.”

“I get that way at times,” K.T. says. “Like when I want my mom here so she can tuck me in at night and wake me up in the morning. I hate alarms. Do you ever miss playing with dolls?”

Emily pictures her Cabbage Patch, Barbie, and Madame Alexander dolls in boxes under her bed at home. “No,” she says.

“I think I’d rather play with them than with boys.”

“You’re funny.”

“I’m totally serious,” says K.T. “At the Snow Ball, as I was standing there talking to this guy, who was kind of an asshole, I started thinking about it.”

“Why was he an asshole?”

“He never took his eyes off my boobs.”

Emily smiles. “Get used to it, K.T.”

“Oh, I’m used to it. I’ve had these things for ages. I’d give anything to be flat again.”

“Yeah, right.”

“No, really. I want to go back. Being a kid teaches you that you’re the queen of your forest, and then whammo. You have to pack up your toys and start playing games with real people. I’m not so sure we’re ready yet. I think we should play with our toys for just a little longer.”

As they enter the dining room, Emily loses her appetite over the smell of sausage. “I’m just going to have coffee today,” she tells K.T. “I’ll meet you at our table.” But the table is occupied, and Emily has to sit at one of the tables in the middle. While she’s waiting for K.T., she opens up her poetry notebook just as Amber Atkins comes from behind and taps her on the shoulder.

“We need to finish our presentation,” says Amber. “Is it okay if I sit here?”

“It’s a free country,” Emily says, adopting the official ASG attitude of a junior to a sophomore. At Grenfell County High School, the classes mingled more freely, but maybe that had more to do with boys and girls flirting than anything else.

Amber dumps her things—a dirty canvas bag and a large sketchbook—into a chair. “I’m going to get coffee,” she says. “You need a refill?”

“I’m good,” Emily says. In her notebook, she jots down a couple of lines and tucks it back inside her book bag. When K.T. arrives, and then Amber, the three girls make polite conversation about the dorm Amber lives in, Sweetser Hall, which was where K.T. lived last year with an exchange student from India.

“Jhodi never understood why Americans make such a big deal over the Indian/Native American thing,” K.T. says. “The whole political-correctness issue wasn’t in her repertoire. ‘What’s in a name?’ and all that. She had the coolest accent ever.”

“Political correctness is just another name for American excess.”

Emily can’t help but smile. Amber sounds like Paul.

“Before you know it,” Amber says, “we’ll be calling the homeless ‘domestically challenged.’ Look at Christmas, which now starts the day after Halloween. Look at the Big Gulp. Our country is so screwed up. Speaking of which, are we still going to Chicago?”

“It’s a thing for French,” Emily explains to K.T.

“You can come with us,” Amber says. “We’re taking the train to look at some art. Right, Emily?”

“Right.”

“You know,” says Amber. “We could go to Chicago. For real, I mean. The train station’s just a few blocks from here.”

“Right,” Emily says again.

“I’m serious. What are you two gals doing for spring break?”

K.T. and Emily look at each other.

“Whatever,” says Amber. “Hey, Emily, maybe we can work on this during lunch. I’ll meet you in Madame Colche’s classroom at twelve-thirty. Ça va?”

“Ça va,” Emily says.

Amber rises from the table, grabbing her stuff. “I’ll catch you European Americans later.”

When Amber is out of earshot, Emily says, “That girl is one bumped pumpkin.”

“Pot, meet kettle, kettle, meet pot.”

“You’re really on a roll this morning, K.T.”

“Not compared to Amber. I didn’t know you two were friends.”

“We’re not,” Emily says.

“It’s okay for you to have friends other than me. Not that I have any friends other than you, but …”

“What about the girls in the quartet?”

“Oh, they’re great. But they’re all seniors, and they’ll graduate before you know it, and then there I am again. Bereft. Like with Jhodi. I guess I shouldn’t have put all of my ‘friend eggs’ in her basket.”

Like me and Terra, Emily thinks.

“But Jhodi was really smart. And funny. And humble. She had seen so much more than the rest of us. After the novelty of having her around wore off for everyone else, she and I became close.”

“I bet you miss her.”

“I do. We talked about … stuff. And she was homesick the whole time she was here, but she stuck it out because she was only here for nine months. ‘Only as long,’ she would say, ‘as it takes to make a human.’ ”

“I’m sorry you miss her,” Emily says. “I’m sorry you got stuck with me.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know. But I’m still sorry about it.”

“She and I agreed that feelings are the most important things,” says K.T. “Much more important than facts.”

“Sorry is a feeling, isn’t it?”

“I’ve got to go practice. See you in the p.m.?”

“Okay,” Emily says.

“Are you really?” K.T. asks.

“Am I really what?”

“Okay.”

Emily nods. “I’m getting there,” she says. She sips her coffee as K.T. takes her tray to the conveyor belt and heads back out into the cold of morning. In a few minutes, Emily follows the same path, wondering where the bread crumbs are that will lead her back to the girl she used to be.

Treasures

The woods yield up their treasures

When you are but a girl.

Whole days under dappled trees,

A fairyland unfurls.

Mayapples with coquettish blooms,

Umbrellas to the moss;

Pinecones with their symmetry,

Feathers with their gloss—

They dare you to draw closer,

To see if you can see

Your magic self curled up within

God’s rich poetry.

Emily Beam, March 1, 1995