The Brontë Badasses, and: Emily’s Apocrypha, and: Reading Emily Brontë by Long Island Sound

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The Brontë Badasses, and: Emily’s Apocrypha, and: Reading Emily Brontë by Long Island Sound Jane Satterfield THE BRONTË BADASSES are up to here with their aunt’s old-time religion,their brother’s boozy brawls. They’ll walk milesin unhip boots, unfazed by hail or funnel clouds,slinging sweet iambics to help them keep the pace.Anne’s irked past words with nannying and given inher notice—good riddance to the coked-upfinancier and his straying wife, the schoolboystoning sparrows, the chronic cleaning up.She’s breathing freer now that a Gothic cross heavesbetween her breasts. Some nights she leadskitchen karaoke, is not above canoodlingin the crypts with her father’s curate. Charlotte downsa dirty chai to plot another romance novel.She’ll lock the doors and justify their genius,rifling through her sisters’ desks. She’s no ordinarybusybody, just looking for a pen. Her love lettersto her old prof are full of pretty filthy stuff—submissive dreams and words like whips. Emily’san insomniac, works from dusk till dawn and stillfinds time for pistol practice—survivalism calls.When hailed to play piano, she’ll unleash a darkfugue on unwitting guests and call her hawkdown with a whistle—watch out, she’ll throwred wine in your face. Beguiling cocktails?They can’t even. Their laughter sets the houseabuzz as any hive. They go commando whenthey can, in town or on the primrose path. [End Page 526] EMILY’S APOCRYPHA Wafting across the moors in a cloud of Yorkshire mist, the so-called sphinx of English literature has acquired almost supernatural status. The absences surrounding her have made her all the more magnetic and some colorful apocrypha has emerged to fill the gaps. —Lucasta Miller, The Brontë Myth did not include the dour black plumageof today’s lashing rain, though the hillsin her time and town would have rung with a similar hammering sound,worsening wind erasing horizonsand heather. Did not include the whirl of sirens, though maybe you’d have heardthe purring cat curled up to the grating’sedge while embers alternately flared and cooled. Moor walker and maybemystic who knew a book might be an indexof birds, maybe amid a brother’s intemperate rage, Emily Brontë watched a spider cross the flagstonefloor, ink-thick in its advance, retreat;reckoned that a pistol’s kickback is nothing next to the heart’s: torquedmuscle pumping its own fugue.Linnet, skylark, curlew, cuckoo; lapwing with rainbow feathers and furling crest,merlin of the steel grey eye—You did know the world of tearing talons, poacher’s traps, what cruelty in manbegets. Sometimes you spoke too franklybut mostly held your tongue, tired out at teas, [End Page 527] with social calls. Village paths gave or didn’tbeneath those scruffy boots.You were no small-town sibyl, stitching stuttered measures from some divine source.Nor did you die on an ebony horsehair-filled couchseveral inches short of your lanky height. If good sense demanded a fire ironacross your arm to seal a sheepdog’s bite,you wore its flaming sigil, and if a spray of flour hung in the kitchen’s heat,it shone as moments, marginalia, scrawlednotes stashed in a locked desk box, your mastiff crouched nearby,becalmed though still a beast,held at bay like a devouring flame. [End Page 528] READING EMILY BRONTË BY LONG ISLAND SOUND Life is short & art is all & the day is dazzling, a glassine surface, the clouds a mottled counterpane. The view splays blue, ring-billed gulls parse the tide. No lark or heather-bells, just pages where the seasons swing. You walked away from village chatter, toward the waterfall’s campaign, up moorland hills where a wind beat a path through grass. Such license in stolen afternoons where you saw hidden constellations— the silver trail of snails, a fistful of bees roused from sleep. Your dress was a welter of thunder clouds and lighting bolts— Today I’m gauze and flutter sleeves. Would you say the here and now’s a horizon...