Problems with Emacs redisplay in screen

I've only recently starting using screen on my Mac (/usr/bin/screen, version
4.00.03 (FAU) 23-Oct-06), having tired of dropped connections.  I typically
just run GNU Emacs in no window mode to read mail using VM.  I ssh from a
Gnome terminal on a Solaris machine at work.  TERM is generally set to
"xterm" though I've also tried "gnome".

Much of the time things work well, but there are times when I simply can't
seem to get Emacs to properly refresh its windows.  In these cases I
typically wind up with almost nothing visible.  If I know where I am (say,
in VM), I can generally 'q'uit and start it up again.  I suspect that works
mostly because when I exit the mail program it brings me back to a window
with substantially different content (say, the *scratch* buffer), so Emacs
has to completely refresh then and refresh again when I restart VM.

Is there something I can do to make this combination work better?

Thanks,

-- 
Skip Montanaro - [email protected] - http://www.smontanaro.net/