Lizzie Borden (6 page)

~~~

In the morning, Emma woke to the sounds of roosters in the neighborhood. It was still dark outside, but she heard sounds in the kitchen, and imagined that the cookstove was hot and its warmth had filled the whole kitchen. Emma’s room was freezing. She arose, carefully used the chamber pot without touching it to her bottom, and dressed quickly in black leggings, long underwear, and a maroon wool dress with high collar. She made her bed and set the chamber pot next to the door. It would be bad for Maggie if she had to empty frozen slops. She brushed her hair, pinned it up and carried the covered pot out into Lizzie’s room and locked her bedroom door behind her. She barely gave Lizzie a glance, knowing the girl would still be sound asleep. No one would know, save Lizzie herself, what time she turned out the lantern. She probably would not be ready for breakfast until noon, lazy brat.

She felt the warmth from the kitchen as soon as she reached the landing. Then she descended the stairs and turned into the dining room.

Bridget Sullivan, the little redheaded Irish maid, was lighting the lanterns in the dining room. She looked disheveled, as if she hadn’t quite put herself together yet. Emma could see her stepmother, Abby, thumping her two hundred pounds around the kitchen. Emma walked through the warm glow of the kitchen and set her pot of slops in the utility room.

“Good morning,” Abby said.

“Why are you up so early?”

“Babies due this morning.”

“How do you know that, did a message come?”

“No, but Mrs. Churchill said she thought that Sophie Warren was in labor last night, so I’ll make up a casserole now and take it over. She’s supposed to have twins, you know. Runs in her family.”

“So for that you got up before dawn?”

“It’ll be a busy day. Is Lizzie awake?”

“No. Nor is she likely to be for a time yet. It’s freezing cold upstairs.”

“I know.” Abby opened the oven and checked on the cakes.

“Didn’t anybody make a fire in the furnace last night?”

Abby turned and looked directly into Emma’s eyes. “Did you?”

Emma hated it when the little pig woman looked at her like that. “No.”

“Well, I reckon nobody else did, either. Don’t complain unless you do your share around here, Emma.”

“I do my share, Abby. I do more than my share. I do more than my share
and
your share.”

Emma poured a cup of coffee and stood in the middle of the kitchen, looking out the black window. Actually, what she saw was the reflection of her stepmother, concentration on her round, lined face, as she sliced vegetables and mixed it all together in a casserole dish. Abby had barely more gray hair than Emma did, a point that bothered Emma terribly. Abby’s hair was long and brown, shot through with a silver that would look beautiful on a woman of smaller means, and done up in a bun at the back of her neck. She had a wide nose, and large, fleshy lips, two facial features totally foreign to Borden blood.

Abby turned abruptly and bumped into Emma. “Emma,” Abby said in frustration. “Please. I’m busy in here.”

Emma took her coffee and sat at the table in the dining room.

“Oatmeal, Miss Emma?” the maid asked.

“Thank you, no, Maggie.”

“Bridget.”

“What?”

“My name is Bridget, Miss Emma.”

“Well, of course it is.”

“You keep calling me Maggie. Maggie was your other maid. She left here two years ago, Miss Emma. My name is Bridget.”

Emma looked at the girl’s face. She was deeply freckled, with curly red hair and dark green eyes. Typical Irish. And she had the temper and the brat attitude to go with it. She seemed impatient as well this morning. “Well, Bridget, then, no thank you. Toast, perhaps. And then be a good girl and make a fire in the furnace.”

Bridget brought two slices of toast, the dish of butter and a jar of plum jam.

Emma ate the toast dry.

Abby brought her breakfast in and set her place across from Emma. She had a bowl of oatmeal, two pieces of toast with butter and jam, and a plate of fried fatty bacon.

They ate in silence, avoiding each other’s eyes.

Then Abby cleared her throat, looked at the tablecloth and said, “Your father has many pressures upon him.”

“They are of his own making.” Emma said, looking straight up at Abby, wishing she would raise her eyes.

“Be that as they may, he tries only to make a fine home for us.”

“For you.”

“You are an ungrateful girl.”

“I am not a girl. I am a grown woman, and so is Lizzie. We have a right to say what goes on in this house and how the family finances are handled.”

“You have no such right. The money is your father’s to do with as he wishes.”

“To do with as
you
wish.”

“These conversations have cost him sleep.”

“Oh. That’s a terrible shame.”

“Emma. . .”

Emma put down her toast and regarded her stepmother.

“I’m sixty-seven years old. Your father is sixty-nine. We won’t live too much longer. I just wanted a little something to leave to my baby sister, Sarah. She’s just married again and trying to make a go of things. You and Lizzie. . . You’ll have everything. . . .”

“He’s already given her a house in town.”

“And he gave you and Lizzie just compensation. Besides, that house is much too small for Sarah and her family to live in.”

Emma snorted. “Just compensation! He deeded us a pile of sticks filled with unruly tenants. If she doesn’t like the house, she should sell it and buy a larger place.”

“It isn’t that easy, Emma.”

“Then why doesn’t he leave it to her in his will?”

“She needs a place to live now. He just thought this would be a better way. . . .”

“Well, it’s not.” Emma’s face flushed again and she was in danger of losing control. “That property was our mother’s. He can deed some other property to your stupid half-sister. He can give her some bank shares. But that property, that
particular
property is the most valuable of them all, and it has the most sentimental value to Lizzie and me.”

“I’ll speak with him about it again.”

Emma threw her toast onto her plate. “I’m sure you will.” She threw her napkin on top of the toast, pushed away from the table and left the room.

She walked up the stairs quietly, the rage burning brightly within her. She unlocked Lizzie’s bedroom door, hands pale and trembling in the pre-dawn light. She stumbled against Lizzie’s chair and then dropped the key to her own bedroom on the floor. Tears began to blur her vision and she got down on her knees to find the key, furious at the prospect that she might cry, furious even more that she couldn’t get into her bedroom to seethe in privacy.

She moved and heard the key slide across the wooden floor.

“Emma?” Lizzie’s sleepy voice. “Emma?”

“Shut up,” Emma said, then her fingers found the key and she stood up, but she couldn’t fit it into the lock. Her hands trembled and it was dark and Lizzie was listening and her fury, her helplessness, her
impotence
was in a rage beyond thought.

“Emma?”

“Shut up, shut up,
shut up!
” Then the key fit into the lock and she turned it and opened the door. She took a deep breath. “I’m leaving here today, Lizzie,” she said, and then entered her room, shut and locked the door behind her.

I’m leaving here today, she had said, as she clenched her fists and crossed her arms over her chest.
I’m leaving here today
. She paced back and forth, from her bed to her closet. Her suitcase was in the closet, she had only to get it down and pack it full of her clothes, but she didn’t trust herself at the moment. If she loosened her hands from their grips upon themselves, they may do something. So she paced, her face on fire, the muscles in her legs stiff and tense, her back straight, her jaw so tight it ached.
I’m leaving here today
.

A soft knock came to her door.

“What?”

“Emma,” Lizzie said, “please let me in.”

“Go away.”

“I won’t. Now open the door and talk to me.”

Emma pressed her fingers to her eyes, pressed them hard until she saw yellow spots and it began to hurt. Then she opened the door.

Lizzie came in, her hair up in curling rags, nightgown wrinkled and smelling of sleep.

“What has happened?”

“Lizzie, there’s nothing. . . I can’t do. . .” She made a sweeping gesture toward their parents’ bedroom, “he. . . Oh God!” The tears threatened again. Her breaths came in sobs.

“Sit down and tell me.”

Emma sat on the edge of her chair. The sobs began to abate. She took a deep breath, fetched a handkerchief from her pocket and ran it across her face and lips, then twisted it in her lap. “I’m going to go to New Bedford for a couple of days.”

“No, Emma. Please don’t. Please.”

Emma felt better as soon as she said it. “I’ll be all right, Lizzie. I’ll stay with friends.” Emma nodded. She would see friends, that’s for sure.

“For how long?”

“A week.”
As long as it takes
.

“Please don’t. The last time you said one week, you stayed away three. And were half dead when you finally did return.”

“Stop it. None of that is your concern. I hate it here. I’m going there for a breath of fresh air.” Emma found she couldn’t meet Lizzie’s eyes. Lizzie knew who her “friends” were in New Bedford. Lizzie was the only one who knew, and Lizzie didn’t approve.

“I’ll come with you.”

“You won’t. Now leave me alone. I have to pack.”

“I worry so, Emma.”

“I’m a grown woman. There’s a train at nine. Now goodbye.”

“If I got down on my knees—”

“Leave me, Lizzie.”

Lizzie stood looking at her for a long moment. Emma felt she should say something, do something, but she sat on the chair and avoided Lizzie’s eyes. She felt alone, so alone. She wanted to say Yes, Lizzie, save me from having to go to New Bedford, but she didn’t. She sat there, hands on her lap, eyes on her hands, and finally Lizzie left, closing Emma’s door quietly behind her.

Emma lifted down the suitcase. In that simple act, the rage drained away, and in its place anticipation sprouted and grew. It had been a long time since she’d been to New Bedford. It was time, surely it was time. She took the money envelope from her bedstand drawer and counted it. Forty-three dollars was all she had managed to save from her weekly allowance of four dollars. Well, it would have to do.

She left with only a nod to Lizzie, who was still in her room. She walked to the station in the early morning light and waited in the unheated waiting room. The train arrived at eight-fifty precisely, and at nine o’clock, it jerked and they were on their way to New Bedford.

The anticipation Emma felt in her freedom was sporadically deposed by the hatred that welled up inside her. The smell of a man’s pipe touched it off. So did the cut of a matron’s expensive wool coat. A fat woman jiggled down the aisle and Emma raged within again, trying in vain to calm herself. There were only two thoughts that had an effect on her rage. One, was that she would never have to marry, and so she had this freedom, as meager and as simple as it was, to leave home alone for a week; and the other thought was what lay at the end of this short train trip to New Bedford. Peace.

In less than an hour, she arrived.

Emma hailed a cab and it took her to the Capitol Inn, a small hotel on Madison Street, one that Emma frequented whenever she came to New Bedford. She checked in under the name of Lucy Billings, with the cabby carrying her baggage, and she left the usual instructions with the clerk and made sure he wrote them down. She was to be disturbed under no circumstances until the night before she was to check out. There would be no maid service, there would be no messages relayed, there would be no giving out of her hotel room number to anyone for any reason, under any circumstances. She sealed this promise with a most generous two dollar tip. Then she went to her room.

The bellboy opened the draperies, but Emma hustled him out, with ten cents in his palm. She was filled with excitement at the prospects of an entire week here in New Bedford, with no Abby Borden, no Andrew Borden, no Lizzie Borden, no church, no neighbors, no Maggie—or Bridget, or whatever the maid’s name was—no pressures, no expectations on her or her behavior, no nothing.

She took off her traveling hat and sat on the bed. She checked her watch. Almost eleven o’clock. She left the room, pocketing her key, and searched the halls until she found a little Irish chambermaid. Emma gave the girl money and instructions, then went back to her room to unpack and to pace, awaiting the arrival of the week’s cache of rum.

Off and on all day, Lizzie thought about Emma.

Emma had demons. There was just no other way to explain her behavior. The Borden household was not without its pressures, and its members certainly had their quirks, but Emma. . .

Emma went to New Bedford at least once a year, usually twice, and had done so ever since Lizzie could remember. She went without parental approval, without chaperone. She never asked permission and her parents never stopped her. She took all the money she’d saved from the allowance Father gave her, and went. There was never a letter from anyone in New Bedford, and Emma never spoke of anyone there, so Lizzie knew she had no friends there. Once, while nursing her after one of her trips, Lizzie came upon a receipt for a room from the Capitol Inn, so Lizzie knew where Emma stayed in New Bedford, and it wasn’t with any friends. She never let Emma know she’d found the receipt. She just felt better knowing she could find Emma should the need ever arise.