See What I Have Done

by Sarah Schmidt

‘I don’t feel so good.’ Blood continued.

  There was the sound of feet on the front stairs then the bedroom door opened. Mrs Borden stepped inside, was cross. ‘Girls, what on earth are you doing up here?’

  Emma held the tooth high. ‘I got it!’

  Mrs Borden came for me, a tender face. ‘Lizzie, are you alright?’

  ‘She’s perfectly fine,’ Emma said, arms folded across chest.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Open up. Let’s see how bad it is.’

  I opened and blood dribbled onto her hands. ‘Oh dear,’ she said. I cried. She pulled me into her body, warm with the smell of kitchen fat, warm with love, and said, ‘You’ve certainly had quite the adventure today.’ The absolute worst kind. She pulled away. My blood sat on her shoulder, trickled down towards her heart. She smiled at me. Teeth popped over lip.

  I overheard an officer tell another, ‘We found a green tin full of money upstairs in Mr and Mrs Borden’s bedroom. Do you think whoever did this knew there was money hidden in the house?’

  ‘Who could say? Take it as evidence.’

  What secret is Mrs Borden hiding now?

  Somewhere along the floor I thought I could hear my name, the house whispering, There’s something down here you should see. I lowered my head just enough to see under the dining room table. There on the carpet, condensed meat and bile, the leftovers of rotting. ‘Where has that come from?’

  An officer cleared his throat. ‘I’m sorry, what did you say Miss Borden?’

  I tried to size up the mess, compare it to all the vile vomit of Bridget and Mrs Borden I had seen in the morning.

  ‘Nothing. It’s nothing,’ I said. Where had it come from? Is that Father’s? I was in the house this morning and then I was out of it. Bridget made noise, Mrs Borden made noise. I walked through the house and then Father came home. How did I miss the rotting?

  ‘I heard you say something,’ the officer said.

  I better be good. ‘There’s something strange under the table.’ I pointed, watched the officer tilt forwards like a cuckoo.

  ‘What in the world . . .’ He crawled the floor and for a moment I considered straddling his back, riding him like a prized pony, I just want to be taken away from here. I’d command my little pony around the room, kick heels into his stomach.

  ‘I told you they were sick,’ I said, was right.

  ‘Did you see it happen?’

  ‘Of course not. I would’ve had Bridget clean up if I did.’ Where had it come from?

  Everything hurt. A throbbing behind my eyes began every time the officer asked a question. ‘Where was your mother?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I think I was upstairs.’

  ‘What were you doing?’

  Memory coiled like a snake. ‘I don’t remember.’ The clock on the mantel ticked ticked. I’d had enough of speaking. I wanted Emma to come home.

  ‘It’s very hot in here,’ I said. ‘Can we open a window?’ The house let out a sigh as windows opened. People spoke about me as if I didn’t exist.

  They sent for Alice Russell to keep me company until Emma came home. When she arrived she said, ‘Lizzie, what on earth happened?’ She stroked my hand, like she should, and I told her, ‘They are dead. Just as I feared.’

  ‘How?’ Alice was hysterical, was too much.

  I played with her hand, pinched her skin like dough. Her skin was softer than mine. I didn’t like that. I pinched harder and she eyed me. I smiled. ‘Someone came and cut them,’ I told her.

  ‘Oh my Lord!’ Her mouth dropped open like everyone else’s. I was tired of the look, the way it made me feel like hiding.

  ‘I don’t think I believe it myself,’ I said.

  Someone had opened the window in the dining room and the house filled with more noise. I heard a pigeon coo-coo in a tree. I felt empty inside.

  The officer asked, ‘Did you see anyone unusual loitering around your house this morning?’

  ‘No, not this morning.’

  He paused. ‘You mean, there has been someone before?’

  My heart skipped its beat. What’s the answer? ‘We were robbed last year.’

  ‘Who was the culprit?’

  Footsteps above us became louder and louder, echoed in my head. ‘What are they doing with Mrs Borden?’

  ‘There are procedures to follow,’ he told me, offhand.

  ‘Oh.’ I wanted to be there, to make sure things were being carried through properly, isn’t that the right thought?

  ‘Miss, did they catch who robbed you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can you tell me anything more about this morning?’

  Everything was lost inside my mind, all the jitter-jitter of the morning cutting away the things that made sense. I wanted Emma.

  Everything became too bright. Voices were pinpricks in the ear. My hands ached from resting under my knees. I pulled them out from underneath me, saw a small cut on one of my fingertips, blood dried around the openings. I put it in my mouth and I shifted in my seat.

  The officer looked at me with little eyes. ‘Now, did your mother . . .’

  ‘Stepmother,’ I told him.

  The officer held his pen in the air. ‘I thought . . .’

  ‘Mrs Borden is Father’s second wife.’ Facts need to be stated. I smiled.

  ‘I see.’ He flung his pen back into the inkwell and pounded his fist against the yellow-white paper. I tried to look past his fingers to the notebook. He guarded his thoughts well.

  ‘After breakfast, your stepmother, Bridget and yourself were home alone, correct?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you remember details relating to the time after you found your father?’

  I shook my head. No, no, not I.

  The officer said, ‘Let’s try. Where was Mrs Borden at the time, Lizzie?’

  I thought ever so hard. ‘She had been sent out to a sick relative.’ The walls knocked together around me, made all the red and blue and green of the wallpaper swirl. I felt nauseous. I threw my hands across my eyes and waited for the rush to leave me. There was too much to remember. I blocked everyone out.

  All I could see was a moment from a few days before, when Father, Mrs Borden and I had sat around the dining room table and sipped mutton broth. Mrs Borden slurped from her spoon, carnivorous pig, and I watched her tongue flick her lips, grey and thick. I imagined her tongue inside Father’s mouth. What they must taste like.

  ‘You must be missing Emma.’ Mrs Borden, jolly.

  ‘Must I?’

  Father sat at the head of the table, peeled skin from an ink-spotted banana. ‘Answer properly, Lizzie.’

  ‘Very well. I miss my sister. I’d do anything to make her come back.’ I traced my fingers over the lace tablecloth, got snagged.

  ‘I miss my sister too. I wish I could see her every day.’ Mrs Borden’s voice hammered my head, just like her voice hammered my head this morning, keeps hammering.

  I opened my eyes and stared at the officer. The sound of pigeon claws on the roof. Tack-tack. ‘Officer, I remember something from this morning. I came downstairs a few minutes before nine . . . I should say about a quarter before nine. My uncle had already left for his business outing.’

  ‘And your father?’

  ‘He was with Mrs Borden. They were speaking about things.’

  ‘What kind of things?’ His tongue lapped at his lips, sloppy.

  My head ached. ‘Just common things. I asked them how they were.’

  ‘And how were they?’ The way he was trying to find meaning made me angry.

  ‘They seemed happy,’ I said. ‘We were looking forward to having dinner with Uncle tonight.’

  The officer dipped his pen and lightly ran his fingertip over the nib. Above our heads the floorboards stretched as far as they could. The clock on the mantel ticked ticked.

  ‘Mrs Borden asked me what I wanted for dinner. I told her not anything. Then she said she had been up to the guestroom and made the
spare bed, but would I mind taking some linen pillowcases for the small pillows because she’d just received a note from somebody sick and she had to go out. Then I think she said something about the weather. I don’t know.’

  All the spaces between an hour, between life and death, came towards me. I could see everything clearer and I could tell the officer because it was right there in my head waiting to be told. I could tell him that I then went outside and stood under the pear arbour for a short time, took a pear off the tree and then went to the barn and ate it. I could tell him that I took another pear and ate it in the middle of the yard, and how hot the sun felt for early morning and how I could see small beads of sweat on the attic windows. I could tell him that I went back into the barn to look for a lead sinker, that Uncle and I had decided to take a fishing trip the next day like we used to. I ate pears again. They were delicious and dripped down my wrists, sticky and sweet-smelling. Birds perched in trees. Neighbours were outside talking. Then I went inside the house, to iron handkerchiefs in the dining room. I almost forgot, I could tell the officer, ‘I read a magazine in the barn. I was there for maybe half an hour reading.’ Everything was right there. I could even see myself speaking with Mrs Borden, how we talked about the time we found a frog in the basement and couldn’t catch it, how that was such a fond memory for both of us, though it is hard to remember everything I told her. Perhaps I would have asked her about the time she met Father and did they love each other immediately and, if they did, what did that love feel like and did she think it would ever happen to me? I could tell the officer all of this because it was the truth. All of this happened in the house at some stage.

  Should it matter when it happened?

  I leaned forwards and said to the officer in a whisper, ‘The more I think about it, I did speak with my father when he came home! I told him that Mrs Borden had gone to visit a sick friend. He smiled and said, “She’s always looking after others.” That’s when I left him to rest on the sofa and I went outside and then I found him . . .’

  The officer reached out his hand and placed it on mine. He said, ‘It must have been such a shock,’ and I told him, ‘At first I did not think what had happened was real. I noticed he’d been cut, but I did not see his face properly because he was covered in blood. I was so afraid. Officer, I didn’t know that he was dead at the time.’

  There was a cracking sound on the back stairs and I could hear men talking.

  The low voice said, ‘It’s hard to say without confirming through an autopsy, but the blood has congealed and dried significantly. I would suggest Mrs Borden died earlier in the morning.’

  I looked out the dining room window. The clock on the mantel ticked ticked. I wanted all things at once: for the questions to end, to keep talking, to be left alone, to be surrounded, to continue with the day as normal, to check Father, to make sure Mrs Borden really was gone, to have Emma come home and tell me everything would be alright.

  SIX

  BRIDGET

  3 August 1892

  I DUSTED, I DUSTED, thought of old Mrs Borden, of her in my room looking for ways to keep me with her. It must’ve been hard for her to be on hands and knees, look under my bed. The effort it must’ve taken to get back to standing, holding my tin, all her sweat on my sheets. I dusted. Mrs Borden and her sad eyes. Mrs Borden and her tyrant talk. Mrs Borden outside overhearing me. How that must have hurt her. I stopped dusting. Lizzie had a neat pile of whites on her velvet swooning sofa. I picked up the pile. Three long-sleeved white aprons and a bonnet. Perhaps they were meant for me. I tried on an apron, saw myself in the full-length mirror next to Lizzie’s dressing table. I looked a ghost, looked like one of Whitehead’s butcher boys, looked like I was drowning in fabric.

  I took it off, refolded the aprons, put them back on the sofa. If chance arrived, I’d ask Mrs Borden about the aprons, see if she knew why Lizzie had them. I looked out Lizzie’s window. The view I had. So much of Fall River in front of me, a patchwork of street, people, house. There was nothing out there for me. I saw the rooftop of Mrs McKenney’s service office down Second Street. What could’ve been had she sent me to another family.

  The sun came over the pane and I heard Mrs Borden walk through the house, rattling my tin box as she went. There was a pain in my chest, like someone had punched me there, stopped me breathing. Rattle, rattle, rattle.

  I was bent over, trying to breathe the pain away, when someone knocked on the front door. Three big thunder raps, the big bad wolf looking for his piggies. I waited for Mrs Borden to answer the door. The knocks came again. I called out, ‘Mrs Borden? Ya expectin’ company?’

  She didn’t answer.

  I downed the front stairs, pulled the house key out of my pocket and unlocked the door. I pushed it open, sun hit my face, made my lips part. A man stood there.

  ‘Hello, Bridget.’

  I looked at the man, stood back a little and took him in. Uncle John.

  ‘Mr Morse.’

  He smiled, lips crooked, wrinkled face, worn leather. He wore a black woollen suit, hard to clean, made him smell like paddocked sheep.

  ‘You going to invite me in?’ A cigared voice.

  I thought about swinging the door closed in his face. ‘Of course.’

  In he walked, stooped a little as he went through the door. I went to get his bag but there was none.

  ‘Mr Morse, where’re yer things?’

  ‘I didn’t bring any. I’m only here to visit a short time.’

  ‘Mrs Borden is the only one in at the moment.’ I came back inside, locked the door. John stood close to me, the way he does. He took a deep breath, smelled me, the way he does. ‘Care for me ta hang yer jacket, Mr Morse?’ I held my arms out, expected him to lay the jacket across. I did not care for the way he stared at me. Like he was seeing something else.

  ‘Give me a hand?’ he asked and so I had to. He lowered himself for me and I unhooked his jacket from his bone-thin shoulders, saw clumps of skin knotted in his hair where he’d been scratching the back of his head. A piece fell onto my hand. I shook it off good.

  ‘Alright, Mr Morse,’ I said. ‘I’ll pop this in the cupboard.’

  He straightened. We stood for a moment and I stared at him. I hung his jacket, felt his eyes on my back. I hoped it would be a quick afternoon visit. From the kitchen, the pound of feet walking tired into the sitting room. I pulled myself to attention, saw Mrs Borden wipe her mouth with the back of her hand. She looked at John, held her palm across her heart.

  ‘Goodness. John.’

  ‘Have I startled you, Abby?’ He said it like a game.

  John left me behind in the entrance, went to Mrs Borden, his arm stretched towards her, his fingers little hooks. He shook her hand, as if she was a rag doll.

  ‘Pleasure to see you, Abby.’

  ‘And you as well. What brings you here today?’ She could barely speak.

  ‘Didn’t Lizzie tell you?’

  Mrs Borden inched her eyes together, creased her brow. ‘About what?’

  ‘I wrote a few weeks ago letting her know I’d be in town for business and that I’d come visit.’ His long, bony jaw moved like a grip broiler and toaster as he spoke. Mrs Borden smoothed her hair.

  Lizzie didn’t always tell us things. The only letter to arrive of late had been for Emma, inviting her to Fairhaven. The trouble it caused. Lizzie had slammed her bedroom door, had screamed, ‘You’re not leaving me here alone with them.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ Emma said.

  On and on it went. Then Lizzie cut the arm off one of Emma’s dresses. ‘You can’t leave if you have nothing to wear.’

  ‘What is wrong with you?’ Emma asked.

  ‘You know very well I can’t be here alone.’ Lizzie, scissors in hand.

  ‘You’re reacting like a spoiled monster.’

  ‘Well, don’t force my hand.’ She snipped, just a little, made cotton threads rain onto the carpet.

  It went on for days. I’d go into the basement to g
et away from their hacking voices, their slamming doors. I found Mr Borden down there once. He leaned against the brick wall, let it hold him up.

  ‘Hello, Mr Borden.’

  ‘Bridget.’ He nodded his head, sharp.

  ‘Hope I’m not disturbin’ ya.’

  ‘Not at present.’ He closed his eyes, looked like sleep.

  The basement was cool, half lit like a cave. I could hear both of us breathing, slow and breathy. We stood that way, then he said, ‘I’m sure you have some work that needs to be done.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ I left.

  Back upstairs there was peace now. I’d thought the sisters had left but I found them in the parlour, Lizzie resting her head on Emma’s lap, Emma stroking Lizzie’s forehead. The heat that came from their bodies. I wanted to open the windows.

  ‘Bridget,’ Emma said, ‘could you make us a pot of tea?’

  I could see their chests grow big then small together. Lizzie kept quiet, her eyes bay-blue and soft. Someone had won.

  Mrs Borden cocked her head, said to John, ‘Lizzie hadn’t mentioned anything.’

  John sucked saliva through his teeth, made the hair on the back of my neck bristle. ‘Well, here I am.’ He laughed.

  I didn’t care for that.

  Mrs Borden gave a half-smile, scratched her temples. ‘How long do you intend to stay?’

  ‘Overnight. Possibly a day or two.’

  She tried to look behind John. ‘But you didn’t bring your luggage?’

  ‘It’s the funniest thing. I didn’t think to bring any.’

  I wished he’d go away.

  ‘I’m sure you can borrow something from Andrew.’

  ‘How very hospitable, Abby.’ John sucked saliva through his teeth again and Mrs Borden called my name, like I wasn’t even there.

  ‘Prepare Mr Morse some tea and give him dinner.’

  ‘Yes, marm.’

  ‘Don’t go to any trouble on my behalf,’ John said.

  ‘Nonsense, we’ve plenty of food, haven’t we, Bridget?’

  ‘Yes, marm.’ I went by them in the sitting room, went to the kitchen and put the mutton broth on the heat. I heard Mrs Borden tell John to sit, to be comfortable, and then they said nothing else to each other. Oh, it was quiet. It was so quiet that I could hear Mrs Borden’s tongue click each time she opened her mouth.