First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders
and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.
And her bonnet,
the bow undone with a light forward
pull.
Then the long white dress, a more
complicated matter with mother-of-pearl
buttons down the back,
so tiny and numerous that it
takes forever
before my hands can part the
fabric,
like a swimmer's dividing water,
and slip inside.
You will want to know
that she was standing
by an open window in an upstairs
bedroom,
motionless, a little wide-eyed,
looking out at the orchard below,
the white dress puddled at her
feet
on the wide-board, hardwood floor.
The complexity of women's undergarments
in nineteenth-century America
is not to be waved off,
and I proceeded like a polar
explorer
through clips, clasps, and moorings,
catches, straps, and whalebone
stays,
sailing toward the iceberg of
her nakedness.
Later, I wrote in a notebook
it was like riding a swan into
the night,
but, of course, I cannot tell
you everything -
the way she closed her eyes to
the orchard,
how her hair tumbled free of
its pins,
how there were sudden dashes
whenever we spoke.
What I can tell you is
it was terribly quiet in Amherst
that Sabbath afternoon,
nothing but a carriage passing
the house,
a fly buzzing in a windowpane.
So I could plainly hear her inhale
when I undid the very top
hook-and-eye fastener of her
corset
and I could hear her sigh when
finally it was unloosed,
the way some readers sigh when
they realize
that Hope has feathers,
that reason is a plank,
that life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with
a yellow eye.
Wow, who hasn't wanted to do this?
God, I hope someone did.
Here is Miss Emily's poem, Death,
from which we get the tulle tippet:
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put away
My labor, and my leisure too,
For his civility.
We passed the school, where children
strove
At recess, in the ring;
We passed the fields of gazing
grain,
We passed the setting sun.
Or rather, be passed us;
The dews grew quivering and chill,
For only gossamer my gown,
My tippet only tulle.
We paused before house that seemed
A swelling of the ground;
The roof was scarcely visible,
The cornice but a mound.
Since then 'tis centuries, and
yet each
Feels shorter than the day
I first surmised the horses'
heads
Were toward eternity.
According to her biographers,
she always wore a white dress, even while gardening.