He tried to say something but I shook my head, pushed my hand harder onto his mouth. I looked into his eyes, watched them dart around, felt his lips tremble under my palm. His frightened eyes. For a moment I thought of letting go. Papa tried to push against me, but I was stronger and I finished the job, felt him become still under my palm. When I stepped away from him, I heard movement from down the hallway, a bed squeak. I ran out of the room, bolted from the house into the morning. I ran and I ran. But it was odd. I didn’t feel relief, didn’t feel different this time. Something was missing.
I wondered if it had been the same for Lizzie when Andrew died. I’d kept track of her, kept newspaper articles in a little oil-coated rucksack on my back, kept the axe, kept the piece of skull, kept thinking I’d get back to her and John when time allowed. I collected the first article a week after I’d left Fall River. Accused of murder. What a devil daughter, to kill her father and mother. I thought about her in the house that day, her coming and going, her strange little ways, her anger. Maybe she had been the one, surprised us all, had been the one who took my money, took my fun.
I stole newspapers from shops, collected Lizzie for almost a year while she was awaiting trial, and then I put her away, only took her out when the mood struck. That whole time I was collecting. I wanted to see if there were any clues as to who did the crime, wanted to keep tabs on John, wanted to know what happened to all that family money. I looked at the illustration of Lizzie dressed in black in a courtroom, a headline reading: LIZZIE BORDEN PLEADS NOT GUILTY TO MURDER.
That made me laugh, the pleading. She had city doubt stacked against her. Two days after Andrew and Abby were killed, whispers skipped up and down streets. Lizzie did it, she hated her mother, the maid said she heard Lizzie laughing when Mr Borden came home. There’s nothing like neighbourhood finger-pointing.
Not everyone accused Lizzie. Family friend Reverend Buck declared that ‘Fall River couldn’t afford to have a vile creature, a butcher like this one, roaming at large. Lizzie told me that she saw someone loitering inside the family home that fateful night.’ She had remembered. What fun that must’ve been for her. Police checked and rechecked the house, went over the stories that Lizzie had told them. When the police realised how much sedative she had been given, they put her loitering man down to sleep phantoms, and I was in the clear. It was during these re-examinations that police made discoveries, a blood spot on one of Lizzie’s petticoats, Alice Russell letting slip that Lizzie burned a stained apron and dress in the stove the day after the murders, that Emma had encouraged her to do so, that when Alice had begged, ‘Lizzie, please think about what this will look like,’ Emma stoked the flames, made sure the cotton burned quick.
And then, on 11 August 1892, it happened. After the burials and after the inquest began, the police came for Lizzie. She was sitting in the parlour, windows open, the way Andrew and Abby would never allow in the evening. Emma was by her side when they came in. She wouldn’t let Lizzie go willingly. Some say they held hands, others said Emma wouldn’t let them begin the arrest until the windows were closed. The charges were given, arrest was made. ‘Lizzie, you did this thing.’ Lizzie tremored, Lizzie almost cried, Lizzie bent like a reed. If I were there I would’ve told her that she wouldn’t have been in this situation if she’d just showed emotion, gave them what they wanted to see. But I knew, you can’t play along and strategise at the same time. She should’ve disappeared like I did.
They took Lizzie to the police station, made it official, and readied her to be taken to Taunton jail. Emma sat with her while transport was arranged. An officer told the Boston Herald, ‘The sister held Lizzie like a babe. I guess that’s what women do. I don’t know, I’ve never been around when one’s got arrested.’ It made me think that he didn’t know women at all.
I never liked reading the parts that came next, reminded me too much that I never got my payment. Inflated by their father’s $300,000 inheritance, Emma told Lizzie not to worry. ‘I’ll save you. However much it takes, I’ll save you.’ There was an illustration of the sisters holding each other before they took Lizzie away, put her on the train to Taunton.
Fall River drew lines—guilty, not guilty. While Lizzie was locked in a cell, urinating humiliation in a slops pail, Emma hired her father’s lawyer, Jennings, and they prepared for trial. You read the usual things when friends are called as witnesses: ‘I’ve known Lizzie for years. She’d not ever do a thing like that’; ‘Nothing but love for her father.’ Horse-shit. The good bits came when, one after the other, friends and acquaintances told reporters, ‘Well, Mrs Borden and Lizzie never did get on well.’
For ten months she was held in jail. I liked to think it’s because they didn’t trust her to stay put. But she got special treatment, was allowed to eat home-cooked meals, was allowed to grow strawberries in her cell. Spoiled and rotten. Then, finally, on 5 June 1893 the trial began. For thirteen days newspapers sent their reporters to the New Bedford superior court to take stock.
Day one. The trial began. Day two, the jury was taken to the scene of the crime. I could’ve shown them around: Here’s where Abby tried to save her own life by crawling under the bed. As you can see, she was just too big. Here’s where I found blood. Here’s where Bridget vomited. Here’s where Lizzie filled with anger. These are the doors that were locked. Over there is where Bridget washed windows and Abby yelled at her. This is the table where the bodies were laid out. Here’s where, here’s where, here’s where. The jurors would poke their old fingers in everything, pretend they were investigating the facts when really they wanted to touch the spaces dead people had been.
While in the house the jurors were told that Emma still lived there, despite it all. One of the men said they noticed Borden family photos spread throughout the house, on the mantels and side tables, on walls and dressers, on bookshelves and in cupboards. Emma always had company that way. Another juror said it was very sad, ‘The way she was alone like that. I’d imagine she wouldn’t take well to having her own thoughts day in and out.’ Another, ‘Miss Borden made us tea while we were there. Seemed to have made her happy to be useful.’ These different truths.
As the trial days continued articles always mentioned Lizzie’s clothes, her black-black drab, a missing button, her provincial face, sour-white cheeks, her New England stride as she walked into and out of the courtroom. The way jail was making her plumper. Lizzie sat, stared at her hands, stared at witnesses as one after the other testified about her relationship with Abby. What would people say about my relationship with my papa if I was ever caught and put on trial?
On the third day, John told stories of his whereabouts on the day of the murders, told stories like he believed them. ‘I was in the sitting room and Mr Borden and his wife came in and out of the room all morning. At some stage Mrs Borden came in with a feather duster and cleaned.’
‘And then what did you do?’
‘I left the house, went to the post office.’
‘And then?’
‘I returned to the Bordens’ in a horse-car.’
‘When you got to the Borden house, did anything attract your attention at first?’
‘No, sir. In fact, I ate a pear.’
‘But you were informed of what had happened?’
‘Yes.’ John would’ve been smug.
‘Did you see Mr or Mrs Borden first?’
‘I saw Lizzie.’
‘No, Mr Morse—which victim did you first see?’
‘Oh, I saw Mr Borden.’
John went on and on. I thought of that day, how police were there in ones and twos after Andrew was found, how fistfuls of people gathered out front of the house. It was hard not to notice something amiss, but John had simply wanted pears first, would investigate why the police were there second.
It was on the fourth day that Bridget, that fire bubble of secrets who everyone dismissed as stupid, told the court that after she found out Andrew and Abby were killed, she took three officers down to the basement wh
ere the Bordens kept a box of hatchets by the furnace.
‘I didn’t touch the hatchets but the police took three of ’em,’ she said.
She wasn’t believed. ‘Why did the police take three?’
‘I’m not sure.’ Bridget would’ve shrugged.
‘Did you touch them?’
‘I left ’em alone.’
‘Now, tell me, when Miss Borden got you down from the attic and told you her father had been killed, what was she doing?’
‘Standin’ at the door. She was excited.’ Indeed. Lizzie had been excited that day, all her movements. I could still see her in the house, could still see all of them in there, moving around like strangers to each other, not noticing the blood that was boiling up from inside. Andrew and Abby on the dining table. The smell of rotted pears, rotted meat. John standing in night shadows watching me.
‘Excited?’
‘More excited than I’d ever seen her before.’ Bridget’s eyes would’ve widened.
‘Was she crying?’
‘No, sir.’ Big shake of the head.
‘That’s not what you said at the inquest. You said, “The girl was crying.”’
‘I didn’t say she was cryin’. I couldn’t’ve said it. I know what she was doing.’
The more people spoke the more Lizzie found herself in trouble.
‘She didn’t get along with her mother.’
‘There was tension.’
‘Sometimes Mr Borden would be yelling at her.’
‘Miss Lizzie can be temperamental. Or so I’ve heard.’
‘When I questioned Miss Borden on the day of the murders, her story kept changing. I got to thinking something was a lie.’
On day seven, a grand miracle happened, the kind that only people with the money to talk their way out of danger can do. Lawyer Jennings successfully argued that Lizzie’s inquest testimony should be inadmissible. ‘She was never counselled about her rights. She didn’t know that what she said could be incriminating. She was in great shock. She wasn’t under arrest at the time.’
The judge accepted. Her father’s money had been put to good use. Lizzie had a second chance, had her words cleansed. Reading that always made me heat and rage, made me shout at the paper, ‘Some of that money belongs to me.’ What I would’ve given to have that kind of money, make rights in my life.
It was talk of riches that brought Emma to the stand on day eleven. She was forced to publicly acknowledge the problems of the family, to talk about property, the bloodlines that owned it. Emma, laying out Borden puzzle pieces for me to fit together. It was the closest I ever got to hearing her voice, this mysterious sister who perfectly timed her vacation. I imagined how her voice sweated tension, dripped onto the courtroom floor whenever the subject of Abby came up.
‘Why did your sister stop calling Mrs Borden “Mother”?’
‘I don’t know.’ Eyebrows would’ve come together.
‘How did your sister address her then?’
‘As Mrs Borden.’ That cold-hearted way of relating.
‘When did your sister start calling her Mother?’
‘Early on, when she was very young. Before I even called her Mother.’
I could’ve told them for certain that’s not what Lizzie was calling Abby on the final day together.
Emma was dismissed. She wasn’t giving them anything. I wondered if Emma was like me, a protector of sisters, willing to do anything to keep them happy and safe. In the illustrations, it always looked as if Lizzie tried to make eye contact with her sister, and Emma was always looking away. It made me think she knew something about her sister that nobody else did.
I got a kick when Lizzie was made to look at her father’s broken skull. ‘This is what an axe can do,’ the prosecution told the jury. I knew what a lot of things could do. I had seen Andrew and Abby’s heads, had smelled the heat coming out of their skulls. I’d always wanted to see what their heads were really like once the skin had been peeled back. Were they like plaster dolls? I read and reread these articles like it was breathing.
A black box was brought into the courtroom, placed on the prosecution’s table and was opened. Out came Abby’s skull, out came Andrew’s, chiselled white-yellow bone. The courtroom gasped, Emma snapped a cry, Lizzie lost control, fainted where she sat. Imagine how they would’ve reacted if they saw that firsthand, all fresh, like I had. But I knew the score—the prosecution was doing this in the hope they would find a weapon to match the injuries. They would never find it. That made me laugh good and proper.
‘This is an outrage!’ Jennings said. ‘Absolutely no consultation was made with my client and her sister to do this to their parents.’
Why would anyone ask the sisters whether they could decapitate the bodies after the funeral service? The medical doctors would’ve waited until the last horse-drawn carriage had left Oak Grove Cemetery before bringing the coffins into the women’s quarters near the cemetery gates and opening them up. The sight that must have been. Like all dead things, the Bordens would have slipped from their skins, bodies bloated before returning to size, their heads a mess of summer hate. The doctors would have held their breath, readied themselves to remove the decomposing heads so that the bodies could be put back in the ground, covered up and mourned over.
The prosecution made the scene sound warm, a family-friendly vacation—the heads took a trip to Boston, rode train carriage comfort, and arrived at North Station, made their way over paved, horse-browned mud roads, past multi-storey sandstone buildings and down sidewalks to the Harvard Medical School. Squirrels climbed oak trees as the heads neared, streetcars dinged greetings, welcomed them to Boston, power lines zapping as electricity pulsed like blood. A grand city show for the sad New England heads. Andrew would’ve thought it all too much.
I learned what it took to boil human skin from bone. First, a vat of water was brought to the boil, then the heads were taken from their box, and a thick fluid spilled from the underside, soaked into the velvet lining. The medical doctors said, ‘We realised then that their brains had begun to liquefy. Mrs Borden’s brain had evacuated out through the large hole in the right of her skull.’ Evacuated. I liked that, just like the image of water boiling and the heads being dropped in like mutton legs, bounced around the pot in a dance until skin bubbled like animal fat, floated to the surface in a mess of hair.
There were illustrations of the skulls being held high in court. The Bordens, what was left of them, had kept well, and it was easy to see how much the axe had destroyed. But Jennings didn’t like it. ‘Your Honour, it would please us if the heads were put away this instant. This does nothing to solve the crime. Poor Miss Borden is a mortified mess. Look at her.’ Everyone would’ve looked at poor, pale Lizzie, just as they had done all throughout, and Jennings said, ‘I’d like to take this moment to state the obvious. Her demeanour proves she couldn’t have committed the crime. The very sight of the heads is making her ill.’
The heads were put away. Nobody had any sense of fun.
On the thirteenth day, the day I had been waiting for, Lizzie took the stand, spoke for herself. But it was for nothing. She touched her forehead, composed herself and said, ‘I am innocent. I leave it to my counsel to speak for me.’ Then she sat down, said little else on the matter. I remembered her back in the house. She seemed to have a lot to say then. She had been nothing but a drawn-out mumble, a repeat of prayer, of know-it-all excitement.
Both sides made final arguments and the jury was sent to deliberate whether or not they would let a respectable woman hang from the neck. If she had been someone like me, like one of my sisters, they would’ve rushed her out of court and done it themselves. The jurymen considered the fact that no one found blood on Lizzie, considered the fact that the house showed no signs of forced entry, considered the fact that Andrew could be a very hard man, considered that there was no murder weapon found. If I’d been there, I would’ve given them so much more. When the twelve men decided Lizzie was not guilty, because
, ‘We believe women just don’t do this type of crime,’ the courtroom broke out like cannons, cheers lasted for three minutes and could be heard almost a mile away. It reduced Jennings to tears, reduced Lizzie to an ecstatic. Emma sat with her sister, and waited for Lizzie to regain her composure.
I got thinking that if I had been there, I would have shown them the axe head and Abby’s skull, told them that thanks to John, the Bordens would have died regardless. They needed someone to tell them that it’s family you need to worry about, not an outsider. I knew what people were capable of.
‘No murder weapon found.’ I’d been keeping a big Borden secret for a decade. I’d saved Lizzie. And now she owed me, John owed me. I liked the idea that one day, this little thing might show up, bring her what she deserved. Give me what I deserved. Maybe I’d feel right about things, could search again for my mama and my sisters after I’d finished with Fall River, go and belong to a family once more, tell them that they no longer had to worry about Papa.
I stole onto a train to Fall River. When I arrived I walked through the same streets that John had shown me. There was the same sulphur-river smell, the sounds of church-bell booming like an ache. My gums bled and I went in close to a shop window, opened my mouth. A tooth hung. I gently pushed the tooth back into the gum line, and pushed on to Second Street.
There was the algae-green tiled roof of Lizzie’s house. Pedestrians weaved in and out of each other, children laughed and poked each other’s arms, legs. Near the house, people crossed the street, crossed their hearts, zigzagged briefly from one side to the other. I quickened towards it. A small boy darted out in front of me, yelled, ‘Karoo-karoo, I touched it! I touched the murder house!’ and raced away to a group of children waiting down the street. They took his hands and rubbed them. The boy looked back towards the house he had escaped from, saw me, and said, ‘Don’t do it, mister. It’s cursed.’
See What I Have Done Page 22
