I wanted Emma to come up, but I was afraid she was angry with me for letting Father die. There were many things I needed to explain to Emma but I didn’t know the words. I thought of her coming upstairs, running for me. I would open my door and she would pick me up from the floor and cradle me in her lap and I would tell her, ‘It was so terrible, Emma, so terrible. I thought they would never stop with their questions,’ and then she would look at me with those loving eyes and kiss me on the forehead and tell me, ‘I will take over from here now, Lizzie, you go away and disappear and leave this behind you.’
I wanted to tell Emma something. I sat on the floor by my bed and thought about things I’d never told her. There had been the times Mrs Borden had told me I was a disappointment to Father, of her slapping my face and me laughing back at her; of the time I saw Mrs Borden through the keyhole, naked and shivering. I thought about the night after Emma had gone to Fairhaven. The shameful thing I did.
Nightmares had grabbed me in my sleep, bruised me to screaming. The things I had dreamed. I woke to a morning that was half awake. I looked around my room, had that feeling that someone had reached inside my body and pulled me out backwards, had left me with nothing but animal noises dripping from behind my ears, loud then louder until I couldn’t hear myself think. Sweat broke me, made me flood salt into my bedclothes, the day is already too long, and I got up, stripped the bed, stripped myself, made heavy cotton piled in the corner of my room for Bridget to clean. My heart beat and beat, galloped into my throat and exploded. I couldn’t help but shake. I needed Emma, needed something like comfort. I put a dress on, tried to calm myself, but every time I blinked, closed my eyes longer than I should, the flash of night was there. Behind the wall, I heard one of them—Father or Mrs Borden—toss and writhe in bed, I have been in there before, and I wanted to feel safe, wanted to feel small again. I went to Father and Mrs Borden’s room, let myself right in.
Shadows played through curtains. There in the bed lay Mrs Borden, Father already gone, her lump of body, barely moving. Emma would’ve said not to go to her but I couldn’t help myself. I walked towards her, the floorboards creaked, and Mrs Borden sounded her heavy in-and-out breath, little tornado, and I got close, my fingers stroked the bedclothes then the wooden bedframe. I kneed the bed, shifted all my weight forwards, leaned over her head. She didn’t even know I was there. The side of her face was wrinkled, was not the face I remembered from my childhood. I leaned closer, touched the creases around her eye, her paper-loose skin, peel her away, peel her back, and my heart slowed and, for a moment, I was calm. What touch can do. Fingers slid through grey hair and I stroked and stroked. Mrs Borden looked restful in that sleep, like she used to, like she always would, I stroked, hair like horses, and I leaned even closer, smelled her skin, old moth wing and saliva, and I kissed her forehead, felt the tip of my front teeth press into skin and bone. Mrs Borden moved underneath me. I pulled back, saw her stare at me.
‘What in God’s name . . .’
‘I’m feeling funny. I had such strange, awful dreams.’
Mrs Borden pulled the covers to her chin. ‘What do you want me to do about it? Your father isn’t here.’ A spit.
I sat on the bed close to her. My heart thumped, made me lick my lips. I told her, ‘I want the bad dreams to stop but Emma isn’t here to help.’
Mrs Borden let out a little moan, pulled herself onto her elbows and sat up. She stared at me, the longest time, and I looked at her, the way the corners of lips drooped and flattened. Then I looked at the space in the bed next to her, the space where Father had been, it’s probably still warm, and Mrs Borden followed my gaze, shook her head and shook her head. ‘No,’ she whispered. It made me feel like I was thirteen, like the day Father and Mrs Borden hadn’t wanted me in their bed anymore. ‘You can’t keep coming in here after you have a nightmare, Lizzie.’ Father and his mean words. It took me time to get over it.
I stared at her, stared right into her centre and waited. It was quiet in the room. And then she pulled the covers down, pulled them across, showed me the space beside her. If only Emma had been there: I wouldn’t have had to crawl into bed beside Mrs Borden, wouldn’t have had to treat her like a mother.
TEN
BENJAMIN
4 August 1892
THE SUN HIT me like a cannon. The pigeons danced on the roof. Time passed and the barn door opened. There was movement below, a woman trilling like a bird, saying, ‘Morning, sweet ones.’ It was Lizzie. Then she screamed.
‘My birds!’
I lifted onto hands and knees, was a secret crawling to the top of the stairs. I looked down, saw her hands in a deep waste drum. She screamed again, pulled out a dead pigeon, wings tipped and stiff, without a head, like all dead things. She pulled out another and another, let them pile at her feet and yelled, ‘I hate him! I hate him!’ Lizzie held the birds against her chest, made them listen to her heart. The sun cracked across the barn, the breathing of wood. I remembered Papa: moving through the house, bare feet slapping the floor until he stopped at my bedroom. ‘Boy. Boy.’
‘Yes, Papa?’
‘Open.’
I opened the door. The smell of musk and burnt tobacco, of old mud. Papa smiled a browned tooth. ‘Get your coat.’
I got my coat and followed him out. We moved quickly. ‘Where are we going?’ My feet marched like rats.
‘You’re going to hold some things down for me.’
We reached the family chicken coop. ‘You hand them to me while I take to the axe.’
Papa stormed the chickens. I was holding the birds upside down, their scaly legs rubbing the inside of my wrist like an itch.
‘Give,’ Papa said.
I handed a chicken, watched it writhe, watched its eyes bulge. When the axe fell, the chicken was thrown into the air, blood dropped on my skin, its head oddly animated on the chopping block. I picked up another, tried to hold it steady as it squabbed with fear.
‘I can’t hold them. They’re too flighty.’
I handed a chicken. Then another. A chicken, a chicken.
When it was all over, I was told, ‘Collect them heads and take them to your mama.’
The heads had stacked on the ground like kindling. I was afraid to touch them. One of the heads moved, eye blinking and beak gasping. ‘Papa, it’s still alive.’
‘It’s all nerves.’
I slowly picked the heads off the ground and placed them in a bucket. Blood stench. I was covered in it.
Outside the barn Andrew’s bellow voice called, ‘Lizzie! Lizzie, come here.’ Lizzie turned and I receded from the stairs. Andrew stood at the door, his shadow filling the open space.
‘Get away from me,’ Lizzie said.
Andrew sighed. ‘I hoped you wouldn’t find them before I . . .’
‘You killed them!’ Lizzie threw a pigeon at Andrew. The bird hit him in the abdomen, slumped to the ground. A wing snapped.
Andrew stepped inside the barn, slapped Lizzie across the face. ‘Stop this nonsense.’
Lizzie sobbed, stamped her feet, wooden toy soldier sound, and said, ‘Why?’
‘They are vermin, Lizzie.’
‘They’re my pets. I cared for them.’
‘They were bringing disease into the house.’
Lizzie bent down, picked up the bird and held it. ‘Why did you have to be so cruel? You could’ve just let them fly away.’