Eventually Mother said, ‘There will be a baby.’ Her body stretched and she complained about how she ached, how she could not wait for this part to be over. I helped her put shoes on when she could no longer bend over, rubbed her feet with lanolin and lavender so she could sleep better.
‘You’re a good girl, Emma,’ she said. ‘You’re going to be a wonderful big sister.’
I grinned at her but I knew all of this. I had heard it before, had been a big sister before. How could she have forgotten?
Time passed, Lizzie arrived, and I knew I had made it happen. I tried to find myself in this new sister. I would stand over Lizzie as she slept, watch her face for familiar expressions. I dressed Lizzie in my old clothes like a doll, carried her everywhere until my back gave way, told Lizzie my childhood memories in the hope that she would think of them as her own. Lizzie and I had the same shaped eyes, had the same way of opening a hungry mouth. I spent hours teaching baby Lizzie to talk like me, to say, ‘Emma, Emma,’ but the only word that came was ‘Dada’, over and over.
There were brief triumphs: baby Lizzie liking the same foods as me, loving the same pieces of music, of thinking a horse’s neigh and a rooster’s crow were worthy of applause. Lizzie climbed over my body each morning, her saliva-wet baby hands warm and sticky on my back and legs. I was so excited to see myself reflected in another’s face that I began to refer to me and Lizzie as I.
‘I is looking upset.’
‘I is hungry.’
‘I love I.’
Sometimes I would hear Father talk. ‘It’s as if she’s reverted back to primacy,’ he told mother.
‘Perhaps she has still not coped with Alice leaving us?’
‘Still. Surely she realises they are not the same being.’
There was silence between us. Lizzie pulled at my fingers and I knew she wanted me to come undone, give in to her.
‘How are you feeling? Do you want to talk?’ I wiped a hair from Lizzie’s forehead.
‘When do you think everyone will leave?’ She was annoyed.
‘I’m not sure what happens from here.’
‘Oh.’ Lizzie watched the door.
‘They said Abby died first.’ I wanted to understand the day, how it could have started so differently from mine only a few hours earlier.
‘Yes.’ Lizzie nodded.
There was something bitter on my tongue. ‘They told you?’
‘I figured it out.’
‘How . . .’
‘Quiet. Emma, I don’t want to discuss it.’
When were we going to discuss it? ‘Alright.’
Lizzie smiled. I tried to pull my fingers away but she snapped them back. These old habits of ours, the receding and taking, Lizzie the perpetual winner.
‘You should rest.’
‘Yes.’
She pushed me away, turned her back and fell into sleep. I watched her for a moment before walking out of the room through to Father and Abby’s bedroom. At the back window I recognised the stoop of a man outside. John.
I gritted my teeth. He stood near the pear trees with arms on hips. He had a small crook in his spine, a tilted smile and he took a handkerchief from his suit pocket and wiped it across his face. He looked into the sun, wiped his forehead once more. John went towards the front yard, towards the crowd. It was a shock to see him. John’s visits to the house had lessened since Abby arrived, only coming a few times a year rather than every month when Mother was still alive. Each time he visited the household stiffened.
‘Good day.’ John would shake Father’s hand, strong-wristed. The men stood on opposite sides of the front door.
‘Good day,’ Father would say, wiping his hand on his trousers.
John would look him over, smile like he had ginger in his mouth. ‘You look well.’
‘Likewise.’ Father, a nod of the head.
The script of loathing. Strangers remembering a past. Once, shortly after Mother had died, I caught Father shaking then stroking John’s hand as if it were hers, as if by doing so she would walk out of John’s body and back into the room. A moment passed. John said, ‘That’s quite enough,’ and Father broke away, returned his hand to his pocket and kept it hidden for days. ‘I forgot where I was for a moment,’ he said.
Distance longs to change people. I saw it each time John came: every few weeks, every few months, a year. Mouths became thick with lost conversation. I knew that John only visited to stay in our lives. ‘Darling girls,’ he said. ‘I’m most happiest when I see you.’ As a teenager I relished the visits, but as an adult I soon lost interest in his theories of industrialisation, of hunting and butchery and sea travel. ‘You’ve got to let the animal come to you, Emma, always to you.’ There was a meanness to his voice. He stopped bothering to ask me what I was up to, what I liked, as if I was past the age of being enthralling. Not like Lizzie. She was golden all the time.
Lizzie loved our uncle more than ever, held on to him like a prize. They belonged to each other, Lizzie always the delight. Every now and then they would make fun of me, of how quiet I was, how plain. ‘If she were an ornament, nobody would even notice if I knocked her from the mantel and smashed her!’ Lizzie would say, made Uncle laugh. In those moments I wanted Lizzie to die, never to have existed. But I reminded myself that Mother had given Lizzie to me to love. I would always have to accept Lizzie without hesitation.
I watched John eat a pear, take bite after bite. His trousers were hitched tight, his long legs creeping out towards the dirt and hard ground.
‘Tall like Father.’ I said it without thinking.
John stood still, inspected the yard with little head snaps before turning his head towards the window. He squinted and smiled at me, waved.
I pulled away, walked downstairs towards the kitchen. People spoke:
‘Are there known family enemies?’
‘Claims she was outside. Preparations for a fishing trip.’
‘Apparently he was still warm when Miss Borden found him.’
‘Looks like a hatchet, the way his face took the blows.’
‘Mrs Borden tried to take shelter under the bed when the attack began. Too big to fit.’
Bile swamped my throat; here were some answers. I thought of Lizzie finding Father: skin peeled to bone beyond bone, the place of nothingness, the place beyond death.
From the dining room, Dr Bowen brought a chair for me to sit on, placed it near the stove. ‘They’re going to move your father and Mrs Borden into the dining room shortly. Best you stay in here.’
I didn’t want to sit. ‘Yes, alright.’ I tried to swallow, tried not to think of their bodies.
‘How is Lizzie?’ Dr Bowen said.
‘Asleep. I think she’s still very frightened.’
‘Lizzie witnessed some horrible things. She’ll need extra attention and affection from you.’ Dr Bowen pushed his round-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose.