The Secrets of Lizzie Borden (19 page)

Abby knew what it was like to live without love. She had married Father for security and to acquire a ready-made family. It was a match of convenience, not love. For thirty-seven years she had stood by and watched her friends and female relations marry and give birth while she sat home alone, a dutiful and obedient daughter, an old maid without prospects seeking consolation in sweets, watching her hips and belly broaden with fat instead of a baby. I pitied her, and I also understood her, we were two of a kind beneath the skin, and then the likeness truly began to
show
.

I knew how it felt to hear the dressmaker cluck her tongue when my dresses had to be let out an extra inch or she measured me for new ones and paused to make a note of my broadening girth. I had seen a photograph of Abby as a young woman when her figure could still be called pleasingly voluptuous, but as the years passed, her waist disappeared, all pretense at fashion faded, and her dresses became more like sacks and then tents. Whenever I ate cookies for comfort, I thought of Abby. I thought of the future and saw myself becoming her and it terrified me.

And I knew in my heart, no matter what hopes and dreams I harbored, that if I ever made a match of my own it would be because my husband saw a great big dollar sign whenever he looked at me and not the love of his life. Father
was
right, no matter how much I denied and despised that hard and brutal fact—and
he
would
never
let me forget it—and whenever I looked at the mirror of Abby and saw myself in her,
she
wouldn't, and
I
wouldn't, let me forget either. The truth
is ugly
and
viciously unkind!

I don't know how much time passed before Bridget found me, sitting there in the blood, stroking Abby's back. Bridget just suddenly seemed to materialize like a spirit out of the ether there beside me.

“Oh, Miss Lizzie,
what have you done?
” she wailed.

I looked up at her with a quivering chin and eyes wide and dumb as a cow's.

Bridget had always liked Abby and her eyes were filled with tears as she crossed herself and muttered a quick prayer for Abby's departed soul to rest in peace.

I began to sob and shake; I felt the emotions building within me like a volcano that was about to erupt with a vengeance and destroy
everything
. I had killed Abby, I hadn't made things better, I had made them worse, and now I would surely hang or spend the rest of my life in prison. I would
never
be free!

“Hush now,
macushla
.” Bridget started to reach for me, to take me in her arms, but then stopped herself at the last moment and drew back quickly, as I was covered in Abby's blood. “Shhh . . . you just sit quiet now, Miss Lizzie, an' stay
right
here, don't you move a hair now, an' I'll be right back, I will. . . .”

I heard her footsteps hurrying briskly down the stairs. Then up again. I heard a rustle of paper behind me. As she came back in I realized that Bridget was laying a trail of old newspapers from my bedroom to where I now sat beside the guest-room bed in a sticky fast-cooling pool of Abby's blood.

“Come on now,
macushla
. Up you get. Keep to the paper now. There, that's it, good. Follow it now, just like a trail; there you go, good girl, good girl!” she said, walking backward, beckoning encouragingly with her hands, urging me to follow her back into my bedroom.

Once I was inside she bade me stand on a square of old newspapers, then she rolled up her sleeves, poured lukewarm water from the pitcher into the basin and took a fresh menstrual towel from the bottom drawer of the bureau where I kept them and went to work bathing me, scrubbing me clean with swift efficiency. From time to time she would pause for a fresh towel, tossing the soiled one into the pail from beneath my bed. I think she used three, or maybe four. Then she fastened a fresh one between my legs. I remember her clucking sympathetically and daubing some thick, greasy yellow ointment onto my raw red thighs, tending me as though I really were a helpless tiny naked newborn babe incapable of doing anything for myself.

Hands on hips, she stepped back and looked me over carefully. My hair was damp where she had wet it to wash the blood out, but in the sweltering summer heat it would soon dry, and if need be I could always claim I had lain down to nurse my headache with a cold compress over my brow. She dressed me as though I were a child, kneeling at my feet to roll the black stockings up my legs and lace my numb, clumsy feet into my boots. At her urging I stepped dumbly into my drawers and petticoat. I seemed to suddenly awaken from a trance at the hard tug of corset strings cinching my waist in, followed by the heavy, stultifying folds of my best blue bengaline town dress sliding stiflingly over my head. For a moment I thought I might faint. I turned blank faced to Bridget and pointed down at the stained and crumpled blue housedress lying on my bed. I didn't understand why she was dressing me up as though I were about to go to town. My housedress had been lying there innocently on my bed all along while I went naked to kill, so why couldn't I put that back on?

“You're to town now,
macushla,
” she gently explained as she nimbly did up the back of the bengaline with swift, sure fingers that didn't shake a bit, “to the dress goods sale at Sargent's, you know, an' I'm to follow just as soon as I finish those blasted windows—Devil take them! You told me about the dress goods sale they're havin', at eight cents a yard, remember that when they ask, an' sure they will, you know. Here's your hat now, an' your gloves. Be quick now! It won't do for us to linger hereabouts. They'll all be wantin' to know where we were an' what we were doin' when they find her lyin' dead up here; sure they'll be wanting to know where we were an' what we were doin' when it happened. There now,
macushla
.” She hugged me quickly and kissed my cheek. “It's all right; your Bridget's taken care of ev'rything. Come along, step lively now.”

She nudged the pail of bloody napkins, with her foot, back under the bed to tend to later.

“They'll
never
go pokin' their fingers an' noses in there! Thank the Lord policemen are all men, an' they're a finicky bunch an' want to hide their eyes an' stop their ears at the mention o' a woman's monthly!” She paused and looked at me again. “Step lively now, Miss Lizzie; time's a-wastin'!” she said, jerking her head, beckoning me to follow her, as she went out the door.

As I followed dumbly, numbly, my feet feeling like they were shod in lead and my hem dragging like a deadweight, moving just like Trilby in a trance following her Svengali, Bridget passed me on the stairs with a thick wad of soiled newspapers held at arm's length out in front of her. By the time my sluggish feet carried me into the kitchen the newspapers were already in the stove, burning. And on the table, now clean and sparkling, lay “the Great Emancipator,” the hatchet that would either be my avenging angel and set me free or be the demon that would damn me to Hell for all eternity. I started to reach out and touch it, then snatched my hand away as though the hatchet had reared up and snarled and threatened to bite me.

“My purse, I forgot my purse,” I said with a stupid, slurry tongue. How curious, I was standing close enough to reach out and touch her, but my eyes . . . it was as though Bridget were standing miles away at the end of a long, dark tunnel.

“I'll fetch it,” Bridget said, but I stopped her.

“No, I'll go,” I said, and started for the stairs before she could stop me. My eyes still weren't right and I had to grope like a blind woman for the banister. It took a great effort to pull myself up; my feet were still as heavy as stones and every step seemed as high as a mountain.

I was on the landing when there was an exasperated rattling followed by a loud, sharp knock at the front door. Bridget and I both froze. Our eyes met. All the color drained from our faces. Bridget silently crossed herself. I watched the motion of her hand; moving from brow to breast, shoulder to shoulder, it seemed to take forever. In those moments—I know they were mere moments—Time seemed as sluggish as my feet and hardly to move at all. But the odd, slow sensation only lasted an instant; then life was speeding by as though I were watching it all from the window of a moving train.

Thinking so quickly I surprised even myself, I took off my hat and yanked off my gloves and tossed them down to Bridget.

“I've just come in!” I whispered.

She nodded and set them down, then braced herself, squared her shoulders, and at a nod from me went to open the door.

It was Father. While she was tending me and cleaning up the mess I had made, Bridget had had the good sense to lock the front door from the inside, rendering Father's key useless.

I forced a smile and went down to greet him.

“I'm sorry, Father.” I hugged him and kissed his cheek. “How thoughtless of me. I've only just come in. I wasn't thinking and must have locked the door.”

“How typically careless of you, Lizzie,” Father said as he shrugged out of his old musty black Prince Albert coat and swatted away the hands I raised to help him. “I would only be disappointed if I dared let myself expect more from you these days. But I know you all too well, my girl—
you never
take the time to do
anything
right!”

“Father!” I cried, leaping back as though he had just struck me. “That's hardly fair! Anyone can make a mistake—”

“Here!” He thrust his coat at me. “Hang this up! And make sure you take the time to do it
right
so it doesn't wrinkle or fall on the floor.”

“Yes, Father.” I sighed dutifully, clutching the coat against my chest as though it could hide my heart's frantic pounding. I didn't feel like arguing; trying to defend and justify myself was just a waste of words and never yielded the hoped-for results. I should have given up a long, long time ago. Why bother? He had made up his mind and Father was
always
right about everyone and everything.

“Where is your stepmother?” he asked.

“She's gone out.” I had to think of something—and
quickly!
“There was a note.... Someone was sick!”

“Who?” Father asked.

“I don't know. I was still feeling under the weather when I came downstairs—really, Father, if we make one more meal of that mutton I'm sure it will be the death of us all!—and I saw her with the note, but I wasn't really paying attention. . . .” I smiled and shrugged apologetically as I trailed after him into the sitting room with his coat still draped over my arms.

“If someone else is sick it can hardly be the mutton,” Father said. “Something must be going around.”

“You look a trifle peaked, Father,” I ventured. “Wouldn't you like to lie down on the sofa for a bit? A nap might make you feel better. I promise I will call you the moment Abby comes in.”

“Yes.” Father nodded. “I think I will.” He lay down, or rather half-reclined, on our hard, unyielding black monstrosity of a sofa. It was too short for him to stretch out properly upon, but it had come with the house.

“Hang that coat up properly, Lizzie,” Father called after me, “before it gets wrinkled or you lay it down God only knows where and forget all about it.”

“Yes, Father.” I just nodded and smiled, like the good dutiful daughter he expected me to be.

As I went to hang it up, wrinkling my nose at the rank odor that rose from it—it really needed a good washing, but Father
would
wear the same suit
every
day—a stiff roll of papers bound with twine fell from the pocket. I picked it up. With a glance back toward the sitting room, to make sure Father wasn't standing in the doorway watching me to make sure I treated his coat properly, I called back cheerily, “I'll be in the kitchen if you want me, Father; I have some handkerchiefs to iron.”

If he answered, I didn't hear him. I had already torn off the twine and unrolled the document and discovered that it was his will and that he had already damned me before David Anthony even had a chance. Though it had not yet been signed and witnessed, it was only a matter of time. “I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps. . . .”

He had set it
all
down in black and white, for a lawyer to read aloud, for
everyone
to know, after he died, telling the world that Emma and I were a pair of frivolous and foolish, naïve, and gullible old maids who didn't know the value of a dollar and could not be trusted to govern and guard ourselves wisely, or the fortune he had spent a lifetime accumulating, against the ravages of fortune hunters and our own imprudent impulses. Thus the bulk of his estate would go to his loyal and obedient widow, the ever dutiful Abby Durfee Gray Borden, to administer as he herein decreed. “He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat . . .

“Oh, be swift, my soul to answer Him . . .”

As for Emma and me, his flesh and blood daughters, he was leaving us a measly $25,000 each
in trust
to be administered by Abby, to be doled out as
she
saw fit,
at her discretion,
and upon her death a suitable administrator of
her
choosing was to carry on the task as long as we lived, making us beg and account for every cent.

From beyond the grave, Father would continue to control us; we would
never
be free of him. I had wasted my youth, miserably and helplessly watched it pass by, for
NOTHING,
$25,000—not even $1,000 for every squandered stolen year of my life! Thirty-two years
wasted,
sitting wretchedly at his feet, like an odalisque in a tyrannical sultan's harem, suffering and secretly seething,
Die, just die, before it's too late for me to live!
And the cage wasn't even gilded, the shackles weren't silver, only the cheapest and basest of base metals that raised an angry maddeningly painful red rash upon my very soul. And now . . . now Emma and I were, by this document, bound forever by Father's will, denied all hope, and even the dream, of the freedom that only money can buy. We would be slaves in one form or fashion until our dying day, like chattels, imbeciles, and little children on a penny per week allowance, denied the right to
choose,
to
live
our lives as we saw fit; we must
always
answer to another.