The Secrets of Lizzie Borden

by Brandy Purdy

  Father scoffed at our desires and called us pretentious and silly; to him all men were fortune hunters and his dollars, not his daughters, were the glittering prizes that dazzled their eyes. The idea that any man could ever love us for any other reason was utterly absurd to him. Emma in her perpetual black, gloomily and dutifully mourning Mother and a life that had passed her by, was dried up and old before her time. She would have made the perfect witch flying on her broomstick across the midnight sky of a picture postcard for Halloween. And I was a short, stocky, stout-waisted, ruddy-faced redhead with skin inclined to freckle, and washed-out, almost colorless, blue eyes, and whose jawline was inclined to be jowly. I was beautiful only in my dreams, inspired by the romantic novels I devoured, where I dwelled in splendid castles and danced through life in my lover’s arms in sorbet- and candy-colored dresses of the latest Parisian fashion with my fiery red hair piled up in mounds and masses of curls entwined with silk ribbons, diamonds, and pearls. In my sleeping kingdom my complexion was porcelain and pink roses perfection and not the least bit florid or mottled, my profile was as perfect as the one on the cameo at my breast, and my waist formed an exquisite hourglass my beloved could easily span within his two strong, manly hands, and after the dancing was done he carried me away in his arms to make love in a bed of roses or upon a blanket of ermine depending on the season. And sometimes he sang his love to me in a wonderful tenor voice, thrilling my soul with his high notes. (I was always rather fanciful.)

  But Father could never see it my way—we had the money to make our dreams come true if we could only spend it! Good solid investments that paid well and regular dividends so the wolf of poverty wasn’t even lurking anywhere remotely near our door, why he wasn’t even within shooting range! But no, Father always shook his head and said it was better that we bide at home and save our money, make it last the whole of our lifetimes, instead of spending it on fripperies to try to attract some worthless fellow; we would only be disappointed otherwise. We really were poor little rich girls, prisoners in a day and age when nice, respectable girls didn’t leave their father’s house except to go to their husband’s. We were Bordens and thus above the poor mill girls and Irish “Maggies,” as the denizens of Fall River always called the poor Irish girls who hired out as maidservants and had to earn their bread and butter and even the plate it was put upon. We were too good, and proud, to go out and work for a living, to actually earn the pennies to pay for the lives we longed for, if we even could; no typewriter girl or governess I ever heard of wore diamonds and ermine.

  I remember the summer I turned thirteen and my courses came for the first time. We were visiting our farm in Swansea. Emma, in our mother’s stead, explained what it meant and showed me how to fashion the thick cloth towels, fold, and attach them to the homemade calico belts women used in those days, and how to soak them in a pail of cold water and borax kept discreetly out of sight beneath the bed or under the sink in the cellar until the Maggie laundered them and tucked them away in the bureau drawer in readiness for the next month. Father took me fishing. As we sat on the bank, holding our poles, waiting for the fish to bite, he spoke to me for the first time of courtship and marriage. I will never forget the words he said to me: “When men look at you, Lizzie, they will never see anything but my money; no one will ever love you for anything else. It’s the way of the world; when people know you’ve got money they all want a share. You will never be anything but a dollar sign in men’s eyes, Lizzie!”

  Father always did have a low opinion of my personal attractions. He had a definite knack for making me feel worthless and was endlessly “just funning” about my figure, calling me things like “piggy in a blue gown,” shaking his head dolefully and clucking his tongue whenever he saw me taking a second helping at table or grazing idly on sweets, and urging me to take a good long look in the mirror and see myself the way others saw me. And if I dared lose my temper, or angry tears appeared in my eyes, he would say I was devoid of humor and could not take a joke.

  The only bright spot in my existence was Bridget Sullivan, our Maggie. When Father refused to pay her a reasonable wage and Bridget threatened to leave us, Abby, Emma, and I all chipped in to pay her out of our pin money.

  Bridget—I was the only one who called her by her given name; the others just called her “Maggie”—flitted flirtily through that drab and dreary house brandishing her feather duster like a fairy’s wand, a lively twinkle lighting up her green eyes, giving an occasional pert toss to the thick, curly black hair hanging down her back below the frills of her white ruffled cap. Often she would pause when she saw me brooding or frowning to chuck me under the chin and say, “Now, now, macushla”—my darling! I’d never heard a sweeter word!—“surely it’s not as bad as all that?” Macushla —my darling, my dear—I had looked it up at the library and discovered it was a Gaelic word that literally translated meant “my blood.” Trust my Bridget to make even nauseating, sickening, sticky red blood seem sweet as strawberry jam! Bridget! Her dainty feet seemed to be always dancing, light as air beneath her black skirt and long white apron despite the sturdy black boots weighing them down. She was always humming or singing her favorite song, “Oh, Dem Golden Slippers,” until my longing to give her a pair became almost unbearable.

  There were days when I would sit for hours, glassy-eyed with boredom, chin propped heavily upon my fist, and dream of kneeling worshipfully at her feet, lifting her skirts, unlacing those clunky black boots, and cradling each little foot in my hand, gently as a dove, before I eased it into a dainty, elegant slipper of gleaming gold with a French heel encrusted with diamonds that had come all the way from Paris, France, as my gift to her. If she came upon me and spoke to me when I was lost in this sweet reverie I would blush and grow so flustered I would have to leave her. I couldn’t even bear to look at her lest she read the truth in my eyes. The Thursday and Sunday afternoons she had off always seemed the dullest, darkest, and longest of the week, and I was always boorish and ill-tempered in her absence, perplexed and half-ashamed that I was having such outlandish thoughts about our Maggie. I spent countless restless hours pouting, pacing, and worrying about what she was doing, and who she might be walking out with. She was so young, lovely, and lively I lived in perpetual fear that some poor but earnest Irish Paddy would entice her away from us with the promise of a brass wedding band. I tried to curtail my emotions; I was terrified someone would remark the coincidence and link my bad moods to Bridget’s absence, but fortunately not even eagle-eyed Emma ever did.

  No wonder I was so eager to leave, to spread my wings and fly far, far away!

  Chapter 2

  “My sweet taste of freedom,” that is how I always think of the eighteen glorious weeks I spent in Europe that magical summer of 1890. It was my one, and I feared only, chance to truly live, to fly, and soar free, before I was shut back inside my cage where the bars were the cheapest base metal and not even gilded. I stayed in fully electrified hotels equipped with every comfort, modern convenience, and luxury. There were telephones on the bedside tables, room service, impeccably mannered servants who seemed to live only to please me, and private baths with hot and cold running water where I could lie back, stretch out my limbs, and soak for hours in rose-scented water and dream I was a mermaid sunning myself on a rock waiting for my prince to come along and carry me away to his castle in the clouds. I dined every night on gourmet meals in elegant restaurants, saw the scandalous Can-Can danced at the Moulin Rouge, and had my hair done by a real French coiffeur. I swirled and glided across high-polished ballroom floors in the arms of the most wonderful man in the world and wore my first ball gown, a dress straight out of my dreams, with yards of rustling peach taffeta billowing like a bell about my limbs, and feasted my eyes on great works of art and grand cathedrals so beautiful they made me weep.

  And to think I owed it all to the Central Congregational Church. That staid and proper institution that was the bedrock of every respectable maiden lady’s life in Fall River had sent
me, like Alice, down the rabbit hole to my own Wonderland—Europe!

  Without the church I would have had nothing to do except sit at home reading romance novels and eating Abby’s cookies, pies, and cakes and just getting fatter and fatter. Though I longed to be one of the happy, carefree girls from up on The Hill being called for by handsome boys in tennis whites, gaily skipping away, racket in hand, in a white pique skirt and starched white shirtwaist with a big sailor collar and wide-brimmed straw hat with long grosgrain streamers to ride to The Hillside Country Club in a smart pony cart for games and refreshments, and maybe a sing-along around the piano and some dancing, Father didn’t approve of ladies engaging in social activities unrelated to church or charity.

  Every Monday I attended a meeting of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, where we gathered to drink tea or lemonade and heatedly denounce the demon rum between passing around plates of cookies and dainty cakes and painting a placard or sewing a banner or two for us to display once a month when we stood outside a local saloon to protest their peddling of the Devil’s elixir, frowning, waggling a disapproving finger, and saying Shame! to everyone who went in or out. Wednesdays I acted as treasurer for the Christian Endeavor Society and doled out the dollars and cents to finance our good deeds and sold cookies Abby had baked to raise funds for the Fall River Philanthropic Burial Society, to provide decent burials for the deserving poor. Tuesdays and Saturdays were devoted to my favorite charity, the Fruit and Flower Mission. First we met to discuss our mission; then, every Saturday, without fail, we brought baskets of fruit to those we knew who were convalescing at home or in the hospital and, like angels of mercy bearing bright, happy bouquets, bravely ventured into the part of town known as The Flats that was nearest to the mills, where the workers lived in the most deplorable and squalid conditions, in tumbledown tenements and hovels. It was a horrible fetid and filthy place, made muddy from the mill waste, with stagnant puddles standing deep enough to drown a small child.

  Emma always said we had it backward, our charity should have been the other way around; we should have given the flowers to our friends, and taken the fruit to nourish the needy poor instead, citing something she had read about citrus fruits and scurvy sailors. But such “radical thinking” was not in keeping with our mission and she was politely asked to reconsider her membership, though the dues were nonrefundable of course.

  I just couldn’t understand Emma taking a position like that! More than once I had been moved to tears when I beheld the awed expressions upon the faces of a poor family of mill workers when I bestowed upon them the regal red beauty of roses, and when, instead of a new baby, I laid a bouquet of festive autumn-hued chrysanthemums in the arms of a poor worn-out Irish woman who was already the mother of nine children, all bawling and tugging at her tattered skirt while her husband was passed out from the drink.... The look on her face was indescribable! It was truly a moment to treasure, and I knew that I had made a difference. The recipients of our floral gifts were always so stunned that they were rendered speechless; some of their dear faces actually turned red and quivered and looked ready to burst from the overpowering feelings they didn’t know how to express. But I understood; I knew exactly how they felt. Their eyes were so starved for beauty in the decrepit leaky-roofed hovels where they lived it made me happy beyond words to give them something to feast on. That was what the Fruit and Flower Mission was all about.

  And then there was my Sunday school class where I stood before the chalkboard like a brave captain at the helm of his storm-tossed ship determined to imbue the Oriental heathens who worked in the town’s mills and laundries with goodly Christian virtues. I taught them to sing hymns, read Bible stories, and write their names, and every Christmas we staged a pageant in which my pupils sang Christmas carols and hymns and enacted the Nativity story. Everyone looked forward to it all year . . . except our organist, Mrs. Stowe, but that was only because she tripped over a sheep and broke her collarbone during a rehearsal of the manger scene one year, but that was not my fault, so she really had no cause to turn against me and the dear Celestials. My pupils loved me, and not just because I gave them each candies and a new pencil and a pretty card with a Bible verse printed on it every Sunday, and both the Reverends Buck and Jubb said I was a wonderful teacher who was personally responsible for saving countless heathen souls, and that the Sunday school Christmas pageant always sent the congregation home with much to ponder.

  The events that would lead to my “sweet taste of freedom” began with just an ordinary meeting of the Fruit and Flower Mission. We were taking a civilized pause to cool our tempers after a rather heated discussion about which blossoms the poor Irish Catholic denizens of our city would find most uplifting. Addie Whip and her best friend, Minnie Macomber, had just astonished us all by saying they thought the gay, brilliant pink hue of azaleas would be more in keeping with “Catholic tastes” than the tired old lily-of-the-valley and lavender bouquets Ella Sheen and her sisters, Evy and Annabelle, always insisted upon. I could well understand the Irish being in the mood for something festive and new and dared to venture that I thought purple satin ribbon to bind the stems of the azaleas would be a most bright and becoming touch—imagine what vivid joy it would bring into their dismal, drab little lives! It was then that my beautiful ash-blond cousin, Anna Borden, who lived in a grand mansion up on The Hill leading the life I longed for, impulsively proposed a trip to Europe as a culturally broadening experience to relieve our ennui, and to shop for dresses, of course. It was getting rather tiresome, she said, gadding about the wrong side of town handing out chrysanthemums to cleaning women. Her sister Carrie and their friend Nellie Shore enthusiastically embraced the idea.

  They were all in their twenties and as yet unmarried, but not without hopes like me; whereas I was but a few months shy of thirty with no hope of a savior to end my spinsterhood in sight. All three had rich, doting fathers who could deny them nothing, but I stuck out like an ugly weed in a garden of American Beauty Roses that had stubbornly insinuated itself into their majestic midst. But I didn’t care; I wanted to go out into the world so badly, to experience and see with my own eyes all the wonderful and exciting things I had only read and dreamed about. I just had to go with them; I just had to!

  The Reverend Buck lent his support to the venture, wistfully recalling his own Grand Tour as a young man and lamenting that he could not join us. But, in all fairness, he stipulated, anyone who wished to come and had the means to pay for the passage must be allowed to join us, and it was essential that we equip ourselves with a suitable chaperone, and for this role he recommended Miss Hannah Mowbry. Once the most popular teacher at the high school, she had in her respectable but impoverished retirement parlayed her love of travel into the lucrative role of professional companion, paid to escort affluent and unmarried young ladies wherever in the civilized portions of the whole wide world they wished to go.

  How I pestered and plagued Father night and day to let me go. I started when he came down to breakfast and ended at his bedroom door after supper. I begged; I wept; I took to my bed with a monster of a migraine and shunned all food. I went down on my knees and tried to make him see just how important this was to me. He was afraid that I would desert him in his old age, abandon him in his gray hairs for some worthless European scoundrel, some slick-haired cad I found in a casino or lurking around the halls of a castle somewhere just like a spider waiting to snare naïve and wealthy women in his fiendish web. I vehemently swore NEVER!, crossed my heart, and promised faithfully that I would always be there to care for him. Even if he lived to 105, my face would be the last he saw upon his dying day, I declared.

  “We both know I cannot depend on Emma,” Father said, and I was quick to agree. By this point if Father had fallen into the sea and was drowning, Emma would not have thrown him a life preserver; instead she would have shoved Abby in after him and sought a bucket of blood to pour over their heads to attract sharks. But I, I was his little girl born to be a comfort in hi
s old age. He had given me his name, Andrew, as my middle name since he had been denied the consolation of a son to follow in his footsteps that every man deserves.

  I told him exactly what he wanted to hear, that my first duty was to him, and him alone, and never would I betray him, turn my back, or relinquish that role, not even for the most loving of husbands. Rashly, I ripped the gold and enamel class ring from my finger and shoved it onto his gnarled and hairy pinkie, the only one it would fit, to seal this eternal pledge of devotion and kissed it as solemnly as if it were a bishop’s ring. Anything to get my way, to get away!

  Emma, so taciturn and disagreeable that Father actually welcomed her absence, had her twice-yearly trips to visit her friends, the elderly Mrs. Brownell and her spinster daughter, Helen, in Fairhaven, but this obedient little sheep Lizzie had never strayed from the fold. I was almost thirty and had never left Massachusetts; I wanted a taste of freedom too! I deserved it!

  Finally, when I was hoarse as a bullfrog and half-blind from weeping, Father reluctantly gave his consent. He came into my room, where I was lying sick and wretched in my bed, my pillow soaked with tears, and gave me the steamship ticket and told me I should see about my passport as soon as I was able. He surprised me the night before my departure with a most extravagant gift. When he came home from his daily round of business meetings, he had a large cardboard box tucked under his arm. He sat it on the sofa and told me to turn my back to him. I heard the lid lift and a tantalizing rustle of tissue paper; then the most beautiful sealskin cape lined with lustrous chocolate satin was draped around my shoulders and a matching muff was thrust over my hand. I had never been so happy in all my life! I felt just like a butterfly coming out of its cocoon.