The Ripper's Wife

22

In November he killed again—Jack the Ripper, the faceless fiend who slashed his knife and chased me through my dreams. She was young and fair, an Irish girl, twenty-six, the same age as me. Mary Jane Kelly, that was her name. The papers said her lover could only identify her by her hair and eyes after he was done with her. Before he cut off her face, I wonder, did she in any way resemble me? He butchered her on the very bed she took him to, thinking only of his lust and money, not blood and butchery. What risks we women take! What savage carnage wrought on one only seeking coinage! He left her lying there naked, stripped of her very skin. How he must have hated her, or someone, very much.

I could not keep my breakfast down after reading the papers. I vomited everything back up and ran upstairs, dots dancing before my eyes, like fireworks doing the polka, and flung myself onto the bed May had only just finished making with only seconds to spare before I swooned. I lay there for hours, not daring to move, the flat of my palm resting on my queasy, fluttering belly, my heart galloping as though it were determined to win the Grand National.

God had seen fit to punish me, by sending me that which I most feared. I was pregnant again and I had no idea who the father was—Jim, Edwin, or Alfred. I’d been so distracted these last few months, maybe I forgot to insert the little sponge or a womb veil, or maybe it failed me? Maybe it happened one of those times when I was taken by surprise and the seed was already planted before I could even try to uproot it with a caustic douche? If I even remembered to do that? There were days when I felt as though my head would float away like a hot-air balloon if it weren’t tethered by skin and bone to my neck! Just trying to sort it all out made my head feel like it was swimming in syrup!

I tried to undo the pregnancy, with the most powerful, stinging douche I dared. I pilfered a tiny, tiny pinch of Jim’s arsenic even though it scared me so and added that to the mixture. In the privacy of my pink and ivory bathroom, I lay huddled on my side, next to the tub, with my knees drawn up tight, holding on to them as though for dear life, the bathroom tiles cold as ice beneath my burning body, and stuffed a towel into my mouth so no one would hear my screams and cried and cried. I nearly burned my insides out. It felt as though Satan himself had struck a Lucifer Match inside my womb!

When the blood began to trickle I thought I had done it, that everything would be all right. I lay flat on my back, gasping with relief and the last lingering vestiges of the unmerciful pain that had mercifully rid my womb of its unwanted burden, softly sobbing as I shakily applied great daubs of cold cream to my stinging, raw lady parts.

But the blood was only the result of irritation; I’d simply scalded that most delicate skin bloody raw. My womb was not void of its terrible, unwanted burden after all. I had heard horrible stories about desperate women who resorted to the knitting needle when all else failed, but I didn’t have the courage to chance it. Bobo and Gladys needed me, and I had to go on living for their sake. I could only pray that after God’s punishment would come a small mercy and He would see me through the horrors of childbed one more time.

I knew I would have to tell Jim soon, before my face and belly began to exhibit the telltale roundness. I would keep my secret as long as I could, but all I could really do was hope and pray that my baby would not be born a miniature mirror image of Alfred Brierley. Thank heaven for small mercies and I didn’t have to worry about any resemblance to Edwin. That would be entirely understandable and wouldn’t cause even one single eyelash to flicker, as all the Maybrick men had brown-black hair and similar features.





23

THE DIARY

I’ve tried three times to kill myself. But I am still alive. Suicide seems the only honorable thing to do. Bunny and the children will think it was an accident. I take so many dangerous medicines, it should be quite simple. There would be no shame to blacken their names, and perhaps, someday, they will look back and remember their “poor Jim,” “poor father,” with kindness. But each time I quaked with cowardice and reached for the charcoal, the bone black, and saved myself at the last instant. I’ve journeyed to the threshold of death, only to falter and turn back.

There are moments when all I want to do is die and others when I want, with all my heart, to live. A little voice in my head says that if Jack the Ripper were brought to trial he would be executed, so my taking my life is only Justice donning a different cap; it wouldn’t truly be suicide and a sin but an execution. I think that little voice is right. I want to heed to it. It will not be quieted and needles at me so, sharper than the delicious pinch of the hypodermic. I know, in my heart, ignoring it is wrong; it is the Voice of Righteousness, the Voice of God. But I haven’t the courage to be my own executioner, so I just lie here, my guilty heart swollen sore with remorse so that each sluggish beat is a torment to me, and pray that soon it will stop.

Every night and day I pray that God will give me the courage to die. But I just can’t do it! It seems so simple; arsenic and strychnine have slain so many, through mishap and malice, but it’s not; it’s not! Oh God, it’s so damned difficult! I took their lives, callously, without regard, but I cannot take my own!

It fills me with horror to contemplate the knife-wielding monster, the maniac, I let myself become. Everyone believed me the kindest, the gentlest, and the most loving of men. Edwin always used to joke that I would not even suffer them to use flypapers in the kitchen to kill innocent flies. What would he say if he knew I had murdered five harlots? I fooled them all, but I can no longer laugh about it. It sickens me to look back on what I have written and know that monster was me and that he still lives because I lack the courage to kill—to execute—him.





Christmas was dreadful! The beast is still alive in the black heart of me. At our Christmas Ball, I saw Alfred Brierley lay his hand on Bunny’s bare shoulder and lean and whisper something in her ear as she lit the candles on the Christmas tree.

When Bunny and I had bid good night to the last of our guests, I swooped her up in my arms, carried her upstairs, tore off her gown, ripped the jewels from her neck and the pearls from her hair, and beat, Beat, BEAT her! I didn’t stop there; I raced into my study, flung open the safe. I marvel now that my cold, Cold, COLD, numb, Numb, NUMB hands and my hot, Hot, HOT head had the wits to unlock it. I brandished my will in her face.

“Do you know what this is?” I taunted.

I tore it up, scattering the pieces like snowflakes in her hair. I left the bitch penniless, and then I flung her to the floor and fucked, Fucked, FUCKED her harder than I have ever fucked a whore before.

As I crouched over her, mercilessly pounding her bleeding cunt, pulling her hair, relishing every plea and whimper, feeling blood trickle through her hair to warm my cold, numb fingers, suddenly I chanced to look up. I saw four little white feet innocent as doves. Bobo and Gladys were standing hand in hand in the doorway in their white nightgowns.

With a cry like a dying animal I wrenched myself—my monstrous self!—off their mother and fled into my study. I locked myself in. I gulped brandy straight from the decanter and swallowed every potion, powder, and pill I could find. I tried to end my life again, but, at the last crucial instant, the bone black beckoned and the coward in me reached out like a drowning man to grasp it and let it pull me back to life—Sweet, Horrible, Wonderful, Wicked Life!