Chapter 6

Squeezing my eyelids tight against the blazing bright intrusion of another blistering August day that seemed to scorch right through my lace curtains, I awoke, greatly annoyed, to the sound of voices—Uncle John and Father talking as they descended the stairs together to partake of Uncle John’s favorite breakfast of johnnycakes with maple syrup and sliced bananas that Abby always prepared when he visited us. Just the thought of food made me nauseous. I thought I smelled fish. Of course, never one to squander a morsel, Father would have ordered the fried swordfish from last night’s supper reheated along with what was left of that ghastly mutton stew. Even Abby’s pleas to dispose of it, that it was surely heat spoiled and had made us all sick, could not induce him to let Bridget throw it out. I moaned as pain wrung more blood from my womb, and rolled over in bed and pulled the covers up over my head despite the heat. I knew I should rise and change the blood-soaked towel chafing a blister between my tightly clenched thighs before it seeped through my nightgown onto the sheets, if it hadn’t already, but I was just too tired and wretched. David still had my drawers and handkerchief, proof that I was no longer a virgin. I could of course claim a nosebleed, but that would only explain the bloodstains on my handkerchief, not how he happened to be in possession of it. Then there was the even more embarrassing matter of my underpants. Somehow I very much doubted anyone would believe he had stolen them off the clothesline in our backyard when Bridget hung the laundry up to dry just to blackmail me into becoming his bride.

I had hardly slept at all the night before. I had awakened around midnight to what sounded like someone banging on the back fence. I rose and peered through the lace curtains and in the moonlight saw the silhouette of a man jumping the fence. He crept stealthily across the yard, light-footed as a cat, to stand beneath the pear tree, and bent to gather up an armful of the fallen fruit. I watched him steal into the barn. A few minutes later he emerged and stood boldly in the yard, fully illuminated by the moonlight, staring up at my window. It was David Anthony. Our eyes met. He smiled and tipped his hat to me and then sprang back over the fence like a satisfied tomcat. Maybe I only imagined it, but I thought I heard him whistling “The Wedding March.”

I returned to my bed, but I could not rest. I kept wondering what David had been doing in our barn. I tossed and turned until dawn. Finally, in the first gray light of morning, after the milkman had come and gone, I could stand it no longer. I rose from my bed and, in my nightgown and bare feet, crept downstairs and out the back door. As soon as I opened the barn door I saw it—the yellow-green pears lying on the dirt floor arranged in the shape of a heart. With a stick, driven deep into the hard-packed earthen floor, David had drawn an arrow piercing it and above and below its shaft had crudely inscribed our initials—D.A. & L.B.—and scrawled the ominous, emphatic word FOREVER!

I fell to my knees and furiously rubbed out the inscription. Then I gathered the pears up in the now badly soiled skirt of my nightgown and carried them back outside and dumped them on the ground at the foot of the pear tree, scattering them with my bare foot, before I tiptoed back inside.

When I heard Father and Uncle John bidding each other good day as they parted ways, I gave up on trying to fall back asleep and dragged myself out of bed. There was dirt on my hands and feet and all over the front of my nightgown, so I knew the heart of pears David had left for me had not been just a bad dream. I washed in the lukewarm water that had been standing overnight in my washstand and fastened on a fresh towel and daubed some greasy ointment on the sore, chafed skin and the blisters the bulky towels always raised on my inner thighs, though I knew I was only wasting my time, and the ointment; as soon as I started walking it would rub off. I tossed the soiled towel into the pail half-filled with water and borax that I kept under my bed for this purpose and then with my toes shoved it back out of sight. I barely bothered with my hair, braiding it and twisting it up and pinning it on top of my head in a sloppy, frizzy bun. The pins made my head ache, but I couldn’t bear to have my hair down sticking to my neck in this abominable heat. I didn’t feel like bothering with stays or stockings, it was just too hot, so I stepped into my drawers and yanked on my thinnest summer chemise, a single petticoat, and my old, by now badly faded, paint-stained blue diamond housedress and thrust my feet back into my comfortable old black house slippers and, with them slapping against my sweaty heels, sulkily descended the stairs with my slop pail to empty it in the cellar privy. I would tend to the pail of soiled napkins later. There would be plenty of time for Bridget to launder them before my bothersome and detested visitor arrived again next month to torment me.

It was so hot I didn’t feel like doing anything. I sat in the kitchen, nursing the red-hot, hammering ache behind my blood-shot sleep-gummed eyes with a cup of steaming coffee, listlessly crumbling one of the oatmeal cookies Abby had baked to welcome Uncle John. I heard Abby lumbering about upstairs, like an elephant, tidying up the guest room where Uncle John had slept last night, and groaned and laid my head upon the table.

“Are you all right, Miss Lizzie?” Bridget asked, pausing on her way outside to wash the windows. Abby had been patient, letting Bridget put off this most detested of chores for weeks, but had woken up this morning adamant that today was the day it must be done despite the hellish heat and food poisoning, as “Mr. Borden had had some words to say about it.” Knowing Father, he was probably upset that a visitor, even one like Uncle John who wouldn’t give a fig about it, had arrived to find the house with dirty windows.

I just groaned and banged my brow against the table. It was then that I spied the banana lying on the table just inches from my head. It made me think of David Anthony’s organ of masculinity, and all the times I had touched it and held it in my hand, and the one time I had, with misgivings, taken it into my mouth. And the last time, when I had felt it thrust forcefully, powerfully, and painfully into my body, to trap me into a marriage I didn’t want. With an angry cry, I shot up from my chair, wrenched off the peel, and smashed the banana into a pulp before I burst into tears and fled back upstairs with the mushy mess still clinging to my fingers and palm, ignoring the odd, pitying look Bridget gave me. I half-hoped she would follow me, take me in her arms, and call me “macushla,” but she didn’t. She was already out the back door jostling her soap, pail, and mop against the beautiful, bountiful curve of her hip. I knew she must still be feeling poorly, since she was not singing about those golden slippers like she always did when she was about her chores.

As the morning wore on, I felt caged and restless in my room, tormented by my fears about David Anthony and the damning linens in his possession. I tried to read and took up countless books and magazines only to toss them aside; my mind was like a sieve and wouldn’t hold any of the words. I felt like I was a pot simmering with secrets and fears that were about to boil over and scald and scar me and change my life forever. Somehow I think I knew it was all about to end. Finally, I could stand it no more. I gathered up the handkerchiefs I had been meaning to iron for a fortnight and trudged back downstairs to the kitchen.

I was sitting at the kitchen table idly leafing through an old magazine, trying to interest myself in a very entertaining and revealing article about a year in the life of a corset salesman, and nibbling oatmeal cookies and sipping coffee while I waited for the iron to heat, when I suddenly became aware of muffled voices. Though I could not distinguish actual words, there was a sense of urgency about them. I instinctively knew that something was wrong and, with my heart pounding, followed the sound into the sitting room. I knew the woman’s voice was Abby’s, but who did the other voice, the masculine one, belong to? Father and Uncle John had both gone out and I doubted either of them had returned so soon. And Bridget was outside, balancing precariously on the top rung of the ladder to reach the upper windows. She was so intent on her work, and not falling down and breaking her neck, she probably wasn’t even aware that company had come calling, much less clambered down to let them in like a proper maidservant should.

I was curious, and I had a right to be, this was after all my home too, so I went to see who was in the sitting room. I froze on the threshold while in my mind, like a magic lantern show, I saw a series of vivid and horrifying pictures, a terrifying tableau vivant of bloodied lips, broken ribs, bruises, blackened eyes, and grotesquely bulging pregnant bellies, red-faced squalling infants, and toddlers clinging to my skirts with jam-sticky fingers, illustrating what my life would be like as David Anthony’s wife. I couldn’t move or speak; I don’t think I even breathed. I just stood and stared at them.

Hat in hands, like a humble man, David stood before Abby. She was seated on the horsehair sofa in her old mint-sprigged white cotton tent of a housedress, with a deep frown furrowing her brow, and her hands, folded in her lap, were clenched tight and shaking. When she turned and looked at me I knew she was wishing that those furious fat fingers were curled tight around my neck; she was mad enough to want to murder me. It was then I noticed what lay draped over the sofa arm beside her—my drawers and the handkerchief David had used to wipe me. It was no use denying that they were mine; the hanky was embroidered with my initials L.B. in blue silk thread and the bloomers were trimmed with matching blue ribbons and lace, a “senseless extravagance” much deplored by Father. Now he would know that someone besides me and the Maggie had seen them.

David and Abby abruptly stopped speaking when I walked into the room. He gave a quick nod to Abby and swiftly took his leave. As he passed me, I saw triumph in his eyes and caught a snippet of “The Wedding March” wafting back at me from his puckered lips. I reeled backward as though he had just slapped me.

Like a crucified figure, I braced myself in the doorway, before turning slowly back around to face Abby. My fate was in her hands and both of us knew it. I knew before a single word was spoken that I was doomed.

I am sorry to disappoint those who have been salivating all these years for a blow-by-blow account of what happened that blistering August morning, but I cannot provide one. There were moments when I felt as though I were living under deep murky water like a lazy catfish, when everything seemed to happen sooooooo sssssss-lllllllooooooowwwwwwwlllllllyyyyyy, and others when everything seemed to speed up so fast and pass in a dizzying blur. In spite of what some might think, my vagueness about that day has never been intentional or feigned.

I remember Abby sharply expressing her disappointment in me, her shame and disgust at me and my wanton, whorish ways. Her kindness was a thing of the past; a gift I had disdained once too often, now it was gone forever. I stood there, lost for words, blundering and blubbering, desperately wringing my hands, feeling the blood oozing out from between my thighs, in a silent mockery, proving that I was not carrying David Anthony’s child. But that didn’t matter now; my dirty linen was lying on the sofa, proving that my chastity and good name were both things of the past.

At one point, I fell on my knees and caught desperately at Abby’s hands, groveling and weeping, begging and pleading, but to no avail. Abby pulled her hands away from me as though my touch might give her leprosy. Unclean thing! her eyes screamed, telling me that I was not a smidgen better than the painted whores who walked the streets on the wrong side of town. I called her “Mother”—“MOTHER, PLEASE!”—I sobbed, but this time it was Abby who coldly reminded me that she was not my mother, only my stepmother. Now it was she, not Emma and me, who had no mercy, no pity, no kindness in her heart. When I told her I did not want to be David Anthony’s wife, she told me I should have thought of that before I opened my legs to him.

Abby said I was “cheap” and “lucky” that David was “willing” to marry me. “Most men won’t bother to buy the cow if they can get the milk for free. That’s the trouble with you; you’ve never realized just how lucky you are, Lizzie. So much has simply been handed to you, but you’ve never shown a mite of gratitude for anything.”

“You’re a COW and I HATE you!” I blurted out before I could stop myself, then clamped a hand tight over my mouth after it was too late to take the words back.

“Well then, there’s nothing more to be said, is there? Until your father comes home,” she added pointedly.

And then Abby turned her back on me. That was the end. She no longer wanted me to be her little girl. She no longer wanted to be my mother. Talking with David Anthony had transformed her into the wicked stepmother Emma and I had imagined she was all along. The doughy-soft sugary-sweet Abby was gone; now she was like a gigantic granite boulder glazed with ice that was determined to crush me. I heard her going up the stairs, her heavy, lumbering tread just like an elephant’s, leaving me alone to contemplate my dishonor and disgrace and the unhappy future that lay before me as Mrs. Anthony. I snatched up those damning linens, furiously wadding them into a bundle, as tight and small as I could make them, wishing I could just make them disappear. But what good would that do now? Abby had already seen them. Father would believe her . . . and David. I didn’t stand a chance against them. I was trapped. Trapped! Just like David had said.

I had to get out. I was suffocating. I couldn’t breathe in that house! I felt the walls closing in on me. I needed air; I needed to think, to clear my head. Hazy red stars danced maddeningly before my eyes and I felt so hot I thought surely I was going to die if I didn’t get out. As I rushed through the kitchen I shoved my shameful bundle into the fire. Let it burn! Devil take the damning evidence against me straight to Hell! I didn’t want to see it, touch it, or think about it! I just wanted it to disappear! Abby could tell Father whatever she liked, but at least now he couldn’t see the evidence with his own eyes. I ran outside, gasping frantically for air, gulping it in hungrily by the mouthful, but I couldn’t stand the open space of the backyard either. Suddenly I felt so exposed and vulnerable, like a woman about to face a firing squad.

I darted desperately into the barn, seeking some sort of haven there, though I knew it would be hotter than an oven inside, and dreadfully dusty, and I hated it now for all the memories it held of David. As I slumped light-headed against the wall, willing myself not to faint, to stay alert and think—Think, Lizzie, think! Find a way to save yourself!—a silver gilt glimmer caught the corner of my eye.

The hatchet! It was practically new. It had been used only once as far as I knew, when Father had killed my pigeons. I took it up. I felt its weight in my hands. In a peculiar, perplexing way I can’t truly explain, it was almost comforting. It gave the illusion of power back to me; it made me feel that I was in control of my own destiny, that it was my own sense of powerlessness that was truly the illusion. The power was in my hands, not theirs; no one else had mastery over me unless I was meek and allowed it!

The funny pattern in the wood grain of the hickory handle almost coaxed a smile and a chuckle from me. Bridget and I thought it resembled the late President Lincoln’s profile, and she had called it “the Great Emancipator” in jest because in the right, or wrong, hands, given the circumstances, it could set souls free. It occurred to me then that it could, like Lincoln freeing the slaves, also set me free.

Save me; save me; set me free! I prayed to it, like a silver gilt idol, with all my might, and a little voice in the back of my head began to sing, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”—repeating over and over again the verse that went: “As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free”—free as I ached, body and soul, to be, to live by my own will and whims, not wholly at the mercy of Father’s, or some other man’s, sufferance!

Gripping the handle tight, holding on for dear life, I walked slowly back to the house, with the hatchet’s glistening blade hidden in the folds of my skirt. When I glanced down and saw it nestled against the part that was stained with paint it occurred to me then that the reddish-brown color looked just like dried blood.

I went upstairs to my room. I laid the hatchet down reverently upon my bed. I stood and stared at it with heavy, drowsy suddenly very sleepy eyes, swaying like a woman mesmerized. As the sunlight pouring in through the open window played over the silver gilt like sunshine reflecting upon a river, I thought of water and baptism, of being cleansed of my sins, renewed, reborn. I began to take off my clothes. I just wanted to lie down and go to sleep and never wake up, and if God was truly merciful, I thought, that was what would happen. He would gather me to His bosom instead of foisting me into David Anthony’s arms.

Through the thin wall I heard Abby singing in the guest room. David’s visit had interrupted her before she had finished tidying it up for Uncle John. That was Abby’s way; I knew she was trying to distract herself and put all the unpleasantness out of her mind until Father came home.

I tossed my paint-stained housedress onto the bed—sky-blue diamonds merging with navy, like ripples of water, light and dark, in sunlight and in shadows. I pulled my chemise up over my head and peeled off my petticoat and stepped out of my slippers and drawers. I scowled in annoyance at the single pinprick-sized spot of blood on the back of my petticoat; it was the kind of stain the women of Fall River discreetly referred to as a flea bite. I think I meant to change the heavy, blood-sodden towel for a fresh one. I even pulled the pail out from under my bed. I heard . . . saw? . . . the slosh of bloody water and the soiled napkins swirling inside the pail. It sounded as far off as the sea, the vast blue waters that had once carried me away to another continent, another life, another world, and given me one sweet, sweet taste of freedom.

My head felt unbearably heavy. I thought my neck would surely break beneath its weight, like a pile of bricks balanced upon a toothpick. My sight was shrouded by a rolling red mist and exploding stars, bright bursts of light popping against the red, making me fear that one of them would extinguish my sight forever and leave me stone-black blind. I wanted to lie down, I felt so sleepy and faint, heavy and light-headed all at the same time, but my feet were already moving with a mind and determination of their own and the hatchet was in my hands, hell-bent on securing my freedom. Now was not the time to waver or succumb to weakness like some swooning heroine in a romance novel waiting for the hero to save her. There was no “hero born of woman” to “crush the serpent with his heel” (the little voice in my head was still singing random snatches of “The Battle Hymn”: only it wasn’t one voice anymore. It was a whole chorus all singing different verses and snippets at the same discordant time so I could hardly think, only intuitively understand what they were telling me I had to do). There was only me . . . that song, and the hatchet, “the Great Emancipator.” “His truth is marching on. . . .”

Wearing only the bright red-flowered pink calico belt that held the cumbersome towel in place between my raw, red thighs, with the silver gilt of the hatchet’s head cold as ice against my hot, sweaty breasts, I approached the guest room door. I laid the hatchet down on my desk while I lifted and shifted the end that partially blocked the door just enough for me to open it. I vaguely remember my nipples puckering as I paused on the threshold and stared down at my feet as though I had never seen them before. I wiggled my toes, sweaty and pink, against the faded flowers of the ancient carpet.

I hefted the hatchet in my hand and shivered as it grazed my breasts. I closed my eyes and let myself dream I was the truehearted heroine whose hope sprang evergreen being caressed by her long-lost love, one of over a hundred souls presumed perished on an ill-fated Arctic expedition. I felt so weak, and then, as I stood upon the threshold of the guest room, I tingled with a surge of sudden strength, like a jolt of electricity, that made my spine snap erect.

Abby was still singing. “From this valley they say you are going/ Do not hasten to bid me adieu/Just remember . . .” She had her back to the door; she was bending over the bed, plumping a pillow she had just put in a fresh white slip and adjusting the coverlet. She never sensed that anything was wrong. The hairs never tingled warningly on the nape of her neck. No guardian angel tapped her shoulder to alert her that Death was sneaking up behind her.

“He has loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible, swift sword. . . .” I raised the hatchet high, I felt its heaviness in my shoulders, and I brought it down HARD. It pulled and hurt me too as the blade bit deep with a terrible crunch into the back of her head. This hurts me just as much as it hurts you. . . . I wanted to tell Abby, and maybe I did; I just don’t know if the whisper was only inside my own aching, pulsing, pounding head. I wish it didn’t have to be like this.... Then I did it again. And again. Again and again and again and again . . .

The popular singsong rope-skipping rhyme that came afterward says I did it forty times, but the coroner counted nineteen blows. But I wasn’t counting; I only know I did it several times. After the first blow, or maybe two, she fell facedown, jarring the whole house. I half-feared she would fall crashing through the floor. I almost wish she had; maybe they would have thought her death was just a terrible accident? But she didn’t; she just lay there twitching and bleeding on the floor, her blood reviving the faded flowers on the carpet. I’d never seen them look so bright before.

I planted my feet wide, standing firmly astride her, and raised the hatchet high. One blow cut through her switch of false hair and it flew up onto the bed like a wild black bird that raised goose bumps all over me and nearly startled me out of my skin. I felt her blood splash my face, salty and hot. I tasted it on my lips. The blood is the life—I tasted her life as I was taking it away! I never felt such power, or such horror, or such a terrible sadness. I hated myself; I hated Abby; I hated David Anthony; I hated that I had been driven to this murderous madness. But what choice did they give me? They drove me to it! It wasn’t my fault! So I just kept hitting her. I couldn’t stop! I don’t think I wanted to, but in a little part deep in my heart I did, but I couldn’t. I just kept hacking away at the back of her head.

Blood and gristle and bone kept flying while the muscles in my arms, shoulders, and back felt like they were fraying, screaming and straining with every blow. My breasts ached and felt painfully heavy as they swung free. Free!—the way I had always wanted to be! Free! But there was always something or someone that wanted to enslave me, to keep me chained and bound like a dog or a slave or a criminal to an owner or some outmoded or unjust social convention! There was a large flap of skin on the back of Abby’s scalp that kept opening and closing, like a bloody mouth, mutely crying out for me to Stop! Finally I listened; I really did stop.

As suddenly as it began, all the rage and resentment left me. Like a great wave of icy water had just struck me and knocked me off balance, I slumped, shivering mightily, onto the floor. It was the hottest summer in human memory, yet I’d never been so cold in my life. My knees simply buckled and I dropped down onto the floor beside Abby. “And then she saw what she had done . . .” So goes the rhyme. They got that part exactly right.

Breathless and quivering, I sat there, naked as a babe in a diaper, in Abby’s blood, feeling it soaking through the towel and mingling with my monthly blood. For the second time in my life I was sitting in my mother’s blood; only this time it was my step mother’s blood and I had been the one to spill it. I had killed her. I had made the blood pour out of her.

“Mother!” I whispered, and reached out a tentative hand to touch her shoulder; it was still twitching. My hand was still there when it finally stopped, when the last little bit of life left her, and then I began to cry.

In my mind I saw Abby, her moon-round open and friendly face and sweet, shy smile, her crinoline billowing wide, like a big plum-colored cloud, as she crouched down to shake my hand for the very first time. I remembered mincemeat pies sprinkled with rosewater and love like a dash of fairy dust, a pretty pink dress and the unexpectedly becoming sunny yellow sash she tied around my waist, the painstaking care she had taken to curl my hair into perfect gleaming red ringlets garnished with ribbons, “just like a little French doll.” She beamed with proud delight as she stepped back to admire me; anyone who saw her face then would have truly believed she was my mother—I could still hear her! She had loved me; she had liked me then. In those days she really was my friend! I could have been the daughter, and she could have been the mother, whom we both wanted and needed so badly, but . . . I chose to let Emma step into our dead mother’s shoes and take my hand and lead me away from Abby. I thought it was my duty. I was a good little soldier; Emma said so.

Abby . . . She had never stopped trying to win back my love, but every time I felt my heart start to soften . . . Emma was right there like an evil black crow cawing in my ear to remind me and stiffen my resolve, like a good little soldier serving Mother’s memory like a queen. And then David Anthony had come along and changed love to hate forever; he had made certain that there was no going back, I could never change my mind. Even if I decided to let Abby into my heart again, hers would be closed to me, locked and barred forever because of what I had done in the hayloft with David Anthony. I was not the kind of daughter any respectable God-fearing woman would ever want to call her own. Did those women who walked the streets in their gaudy gowns and painted faces, selling their bodies, even have mothers or had they all disowned their daughters, cast them out of their hearts the way Abby had me? Even being a mere stepmother to one such as me would shame Abby. I was an object of disgust, riddled with sin, more loathsome than any toad, snake, or slug! I suddenly wanted very much to be invisible, so no one could look upon my shame.

But there was another reason I chose to hate Abby, one that no one else ever guessed. When I looked at her I sometimes thought I was looking into a magic mirror that foretold the future—my future. I saw too much of myself in her. It frightened me so much that I shrank and ran from her and pushed her away every chance I could even as I secretly despised myself for my cruelty, simply because I didn’t want to wake up one morning and discover that I had become her.

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.

Even if Abby didn’t long survive Father, with the reins of power so firmly in her grasp she was certain to remember every petty slight and pain we had caused her and pass them on to her precious piglet, Sarah, and she would not hesitate to make us suffer for every tear we had caused Abby to shed! Even if Abby didn’t, Sarah would be sure to humble us; she’d have us barefoot and in burlap sacks if she could! And, by Father’s will, she could! Abby would cede that power on to her! I was so outraged, I completely forgot that Abby was dead!

He might as well entomb us with him, like the pharaohs used to do to ensure their slaves would be there to serve them in the afterlife! I thought as I crumpled Father’s will furiously in my fist. I felt rage, rabid, red-hot rage, like a feral cat trapped inside me, yowling, scratching, biting, clawing, desperate to get out! Without even stopping to consider the consequences, I shoved Father’s will into the stove and slammed the lid. Burn, burn, burn! I silently screamed. Devil take your will! Burn in Hell, Father! I will be your slave no longer!

And then a glint of silver caught my eye. Tempting me, enticing me, a second time. “I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnish’d rows of steels, as ye deal with my condemners so with you My grace shall deal . . .” There was “the Great Emancipator” lying on the table where Bridget had left it, ready to free me from bondage once and for all if I only dared use it. And I did dare! I DID! Oh by God and the Devil I DID, Heaven help me!

“As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free. . . .”

Father would die to make me free.

It was the only way. . . .

 

The next thing I knew the red mist was receding and I was lying huddled on the blood-speckled faded flowers of the sitting room carpet sobbing at Father’s feet, naked except for the blood-soaked towel between my thighs and Father’s Prince Albert coat—I couldn’t let him see me naked; he might have laughed! He would have certainly told me that I was fat. He always told me that; I was his “piggy in a blue gown.”

“The Great Emancipator’s” silver blade was buried deep in Father’s mangled red and now unrecognizable face, cleaving his left eyeball in half. It was dangling by its bloody roots down against the bare bones of his cheek.

A red bubble burst inside my brain and I saw my fat, blotchy breast pop out of Father’s black coat as I hefted the hatchet high above my head. Father’s eyes snapped open wide. He was LOOKING at me! He was about to say something.... I knew it would be mean!

“DON’T LOOK AT ME!” I screamed, and brought the blade down.

A thick spurt of hot blood hit my face, just like a fist. I staggered back, but I didn’t stop. I couldn’t! I thought of the will—his will telling the world that I was a fool and a spendthrift, too stupid to govern myself, to know what my own best interests were, that a stupid cow had more common sense than me. How could he do this to me?

I raised the hatchet high and brought it crashing down on Father’s face again. “He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored. He has loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword. . . .” It wasn’t a sword, it was a hatchet, but it was sharp, angry steel just the same! Up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down, over and over and over again! Ten or eleven times the coroner afterward said, but to me it felt like a hundred.

How dare he look at me, at my ugly naked flesh and even uglier angry naked soul? How dare he make me his slave for thirty-two years—wasting MY life away when I was on FIRE to LIVE, LIVE, LIVE!—and then try to keep me chained and bound to him even beyond the grave? To give my deed to Abby, to let her own and control me the way he dictated! Negroes were free, but women were still slaves, their father’s property until he deeded them over to a husband he deemed worthy, but if no worthy husband ever appeared. . . slaves to the parental hearth and home until death set them free one way or another, but my father had found a legally binding way to circumvent that and keep me imprisoned eternally until... “The Great Emancipator” struck blow after mighty, bloody blow to set Lizzie Borden free! “In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, with a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me. As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.” I won my freedom and baptized it in blood, with Death acting as midwife at the bloody birth that spawned my new life! In one blood-bathed day I was transfigured! I was set FREE! Free, rich, and orphaned all in the same bloody day!

Then Bridget was there, just like before, crouching down beside me, comforting me. “Glory, glory hallelujah!” It was over! I was free! She took care of me, just like she had before. She carefully shucked Father’s coat from my shoulders and wadded it up and thrust it beneath his head, since it was covered in blood and too bulky to burn in the kitchen stove.

Bridget carefully pried the blade from Father’s face and reverently carried “the Great Emancipator” away. God bless you, President Lincoln! I thought as I caught a last fleeting glimpse of his profile imprinted in the wood of my savior’s hickory handle. You set me free, just like you did the slaves!

More newspapers, more bloody towels. I was having a painful and heavy period. Then I was clean again and back in my comfy old soiled and faded blue diamond housedress, my town clothes had been put away, and Bridget and I were sitting at the kitchen table, heads together, hands tightly clasped, as we hurriedly pieced together our story. A note had come for Mrs. Borden, from someone who was sick, we didn’t know who, we were both still feeling poorly from the night before and barely paying attention, and Abby had rushed out without even changing into a proper town dress. Bridget had been washing the windows all morning but had been taken ill and after vomiting in the yard had come in to have a little lie down, perhaps ten or fifteen minutes or so. Then, feeling better, she returned to her work; she wasn’t a one to leave a task undone. And I had been lounging about not doing much of anything all day. I had trifled over my breakfast of cookies and coffee and taken a few bites of a banana while leafing through an old magazine and waiting for the iron to heat so I could iron some handkerchiefs. When Father came in I was there at the door to welcome him, just like I always did, and see him settled comfortably on the sofa for his nap. Then someone had come in and killed him. Bridget and I heard nothing, saw nothing. I just walked into the sitting room and there he was, dead on the sofa, his face a bloody mangled mess with one eyeball dangling against the bare bones of his cheek. It was a sight I would never forget no matter how hard I prayed to.

I tried to take it all in, really I did, but I was feeling sluggish and heavy headed, like I was walking underwater again in leaden shoes and hems, Bridget’s urgent words reaching me as though from far, far away. I could tell she was badly shaken as well, though she was trying hard not to show it. No wonder there were so many inconsistencies when the time came for us to tell our stories under scrutiny. Neither of us realized that the alleged note would become so vital, that it would be endlessly sought for and debated; rewards would even be offered if the author would only come forward, but no one ever did, because there was never any note at all; it was entirely our own invention.

“I’m goin’ for Dr. Bowen now,” Bridget said as she let go of my hands and got up from the table.

But I snatched them back and clutched them to my breast. “Bridget!” I cried fervently. “Promise you’ll never leave me!”

“I promise.” She bent swiftly and kissed my cheek, but she lied. She lied! She never really came back, not to me. No one stays; everyone goes. No one loves me; everyone knows.

I trailed after her to the back door and leaned there, slumping against the screen, watching her round the corner, heading across the street to Dr. Bowen’s house. Nosey old Mrs. Churchill, our next-door neighbor, was peeping through her curtains.

“Is something wrong, Lizzie?” Her voice floated out to me.

I heard myself answer, “Oh, Mrs. Churchill, do come over! Someone has killed Father!”

The next thing I knew I was swooning in a rocking chair and she was leaning over me, laying a cold compress across my brow and rubbing my hands vigorously.

“I shall have to send for the undertaker,” I think I said. I was so deep underwater and my words were up there bobbing on the surface with the waves crashing around them. Then Mrs. Churchill was leaning over me again, speaking comforting words and rubbing my hands, I saw her mouth moving, but the waves were crashing and roaring so loudly I couldn’t hear a word she said; I only knew that her mouth was moving. And the stars came to dance before my eyes. I knew they weren’t fireworks. It was past the Fourth of July.

A parade of brass-buttoned blue-uniformed policemen passed before my eyes. They all had different names and faces, but I couldn’t tell them apart. They all looked the same. Blue coats, brass buttons. I don’t think I ever saw so many handlebar mustaches in my life! And questions! So many questions! “Where is Mrs. Borden?” Note. Sick friend. “I think I heard her come in. Oh, do go and look, Mrs. Churchill!” A scream from upstairs. A syringe in Dr. Bowen’s kind, capable hands, a needle pricked my arm, and I think my head floated away and got lost in the clouds and then they burst into powder and Lulie Stillwell was there, stark naked and smiling at me.

Concerned women from the neighborhood hovered over me uttering comforting words and condolences as I lay upon my bed, wandering half-lost in a lovely world of hazy morphine dreams. I smiled and said, “Thank you, you are very kind,” every time anyone spoke to me, and turned my flushed, hot pink face into my pillow and let them think I was stifling tears instead of laughter, because they would have died if they had known I was thinking about Lulie all the time they were being so very kind to me.

Someone, Alice Russell I think, helped me change my dress. An excuse to search my body for wounds and bloodstains no doubt, but the only blood was oozing out between my legs, and that explained the one tiny dot on the back of my petticoat. I left the soiled towel to soak in the pail beneath my bed with the rest, I would attend to them later, and obediently donned the fresh one Alice handed me. Then I let her help me into clean undergarments, meekly stepping into the drawers she held open for me and raising my arms so she could slide a chemise and then a petticoat over my head. Glassy-eyed and docile, I stood still and let her help guide my arms into the sleeves of my candy-pink-and-white-striped housedress. As she fastened the gay red belt around my waist, I regarded the stripes on my sleeves and smiled. That delicious bright pink had me thinking of Lulie again. But I didn’t care! I just wanted to lie down and lose myself in a world of dreams, to turn back time . . . to unmake the mistakes I’d made. Lulie should never have married Johnny Hiram; she should have been mine!

Late that afternoon Emma arrived, gnawing at her lips and wringing a tear-drenched handkerchief in her hands, summoned back from Fairhaven by an urgent telegram from Dr. Bowen. I remember her leaning over my bed, her dark eyes boring into mine.

“Lizzie, did you . . .” she began tremulously, the words hovering, trembling like tears, upon her raw, bitten lips.

“Ask me no questions and I will tell you no lies,” I whispered back dreamily.

And she never did. Never!

Of course Emma knew the moment she looked into my eyes, but she would spend the rest of her life pretending not to and in public she became my staunchest defender, especially after I told her about Father’s will. But in private, a wall of impenetrable ice grew up between us.

I always thought Emma was the strongest one, the one with all the backbone despite her brittle, fragile appearance. But Emma had been content only to grumble like a sour stomach, to damn Abby with every glance and thwart her plans whenever she had the chance. Cordially detesting our stepmother had been Emma’s way of dealing with the situation. Her fury was meek and mostly obedient. But I . . . I had taken up the hatchet and actually done something about it! I had hacked away the chains and set us both free. Emma’s public support was her way of thanking me. But when we were alone and no other eyes were watching us, we were sisters bound by blood and secrets only; otherwise we were cold and chilly strangers.

Emma, embracing ignorance like the lover she would never know, asked no questions, but everyone else . . .

Questions, so many, many questions! Why wouldn’t they shut up and leave me alone? I just wanted to roll over and go to sleep, but they wouldn’t let me no matter what Dr. Bowen said. Policemen are very tenacious and very mean! Why couldn’t they let me rest? I felt like I was back in school being put to the test and made to stand up there in front of the blackboard and the whole class! Everyone was staring at me! I just wanted them to stop!

“Must I see all these people now?” I wailed. “It seems as if I cannot think a moment longer, my head pains me so!”

A policeman—maybe more than one, I’m not quite sure; why did they all have to dress alike and confuse people?—asked me what I had been doing before I walked in and found Father dead upon the sofa.

I said I had been out in the barn, up in the loft, eating pears—three pears or maybe four—and after that I was ironing handkerchiefs in the kitchen, reading a magazine while I waited for the iron to heat and gossiping to Bridget about a dress sale at Sargent’s—only eight cents a yard!—you see, Bridget, I did remember! Later they would say that I said I had been out in the barn, up in the loft, rummaging about in a box of odds and ends, amongst bent and rusty nails and old doorknobs and broken locks, looking for some pieces of iron suitable to fashion sinkers for a fishing trip I was planning to Buzzards Bay. Maybe I did say that? The details sounded right. But I honestly don’t remember. Or maybe I wanted the iron to repair a screen? Someone said I said that too. I really cannot remember! Every time I look back upon that day it feels like being caught, trapped, and at the same time lost, in a bad dream that just drags on forever.

The hatchet was “the Great Emancipator” who set the slave Lizzie Borden free, but Morphine was “The Great Muddler” of Lizzie’s memory. I shall be forever grateful. That’s all I have to say about that awful, awful day.