The Secrets of Lizzie Borden

by Brandy Purdy

  As I fastened all three locks on the front door behind me I heard voices coming from the sitting room, but I didn’t go in. Father’s voice, and Abby’s, I recognized, and it took me only a moment to identify the third: Uncle John Vinnicum Morse, our late mother’s brother, or “that ol’ fanny pincher,” as Bridget called him in unconcealed disgust.

  Damn, damn, damn! I wanted to stamp my feet, pull my hair, and scream.

  Though to all the women in the house he was a thankfully infrequent guest, in Father’s eyes Uncle John was always a welcome one. He was one of the few people Father trusted, especially when it came to financial matters, and when Uncle John darkened our doorstep it was certain money was the magnet that drew him. Until recently he had been living in Hastings, Iowa, as a farmer and horse trader, but he had since moved nearer, to New Bedford, where he shared a house with a blind butcher. Though Uncle John professed to have our—Emma’s and my—best interests at heart, always referring to us as “dear Sarah’s girls,” neither of us really liked him and we often went out of our way to avoid him, as I understand many other women did also. To put it delicately, Uncle John was a real bottom pincher, and all of us, even the unsightly mountain of flesh that was Abby, had the bruises to show for it every time he came to visit us.

  He also liked to chew raw garlic, being thoroughly convinced that it was of great benefit to his health—“a cure-all in one clove,” he called it and “a damn sight cheaper than seein’ the doctor”—and to walk around in his red flannel union suit as a sacrifice upon the altar of the God of Thrift, to save his good and only suit, the same shiny, rusty black one he had been wearing since our mother’s funeral, despite the fact that he was rich enough to buy out Savile Row and still be rich as Midas. His only extravagance was consulting fortune-tellers. He had sworn by them ever since as a barefoot boy he had been warned by an old gypsy woman whom he had allowed to read his palm upon a dare that he would step upon a piece of broken glass and cut his foot open one summer’s day, bad enough to bleed almost a bucket full and leave a lifelong scar, and lo and behold, he did, and ever since that prophecy was fulfilled he never made a decision without consulting some gypsy seer hovering over her crystal ball, tarot cards, tea leaves, or the palm he held out crossed with silver. Otherwise, he made Father’s parsimony seem like largesse on the grandest scale.

  I shuddered with loathing and bent to unlace my boots before tiptoeing upstairs in my stockinged feet. I would rather go to bed without supper than sit down with Uncle John. The next morning, I decided, I would lie abed late and come down only when I was certain that Uncle John had gone out. My courses provided the perfect excuse to cloak my incivility. And, with any luck, I could avoid Uncle John altogether; he rarely stayed more than a day or two. And even if he ventured into my bedroom to say hello, if I kept my bottom in the bed he couldn’t very well pinch it.

  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.