‘Are you saying this is my fault?’ Emma high-pitched, a nasty.
Yes. No. I want everything to be gobbled up. ‘It’s just that maybe a monster wouldn’t have broken in if an extra person had been here to guard the house.’
‘Nothing makes sense anymore.’ Emma rubbed her eyes and face.
‘Do you think I’m making things up? That I’m lying to you all?’
She looked at me, opened her mouth to speak but nothing came out. I could see her teeth, a few crooked edges, her flat tongue sliding over them. For a moment she was repulsive. ‘You’re a terrible, terrible sister,’ I whispered.
Emma bowed her head, flipped her fingers in palms. A tiny breeze crawled over my ears and onto my face. Everything still. There was a small creak-creak in the walls of the house and Emma shuddered. Somewhere in the bottom of my mind there was a voice, She will leave you if you keep secrets. Sweat ran down my temple, came to the corner of my mouth. I sipped it up. Nothing made sense anymore. I lunged for Emma and wrapped my arms around her, sat at her feet, waited for her heartbeat to sync with mine. I held her tight and I thought of her leaving. I cried.
‘Shhhh,’ she said. ‘Shhhhh.’
For a time everything was gold. My heart beat love, made me calm, and I cocooned myself against my sister.
Then, in a small voice, she said, ‘How could a weapon have disappeared?’
I pulled back from her. My hand slapped Emma across her cheek, slapped it again. ‘You ruin everything!’ I said. A small fire exploded at the back of my neck and under my arms. I got up from the floor, made it creak, and headed for the backyard, if she wants all this horror so much, I’ll show her.
I walked outside to the pear arbour and sat under leaves, let the fruit sweep my hair. I reached my hand up and pulled down on a pear, took a bite, let juice drip. Teeth ground teeth and my skin heated. Emma and her constant questions. Why do people care so much about what I did that day and what I saw?
I went to the barn, walked in. Pigeon feathers lay on the ground. I kicked them, made clouds. I climbed the ladder up to the loft and looked out the window onto the house. I hated everything I saw. I rushed over to the little box in the corner of the room, I’ll show her. I lifted the cover and looked inside. What I expected to see had become invisible. Panic in my heart. I looked again. I rubbed my forehead. From outside I heard my name being called and I climbed down the ladder, decided never to go back into the barn again.
After the final prayer, the coffins were taken out of the parlour and into the street, the sequoia cherry wood bright and sunny against dark-green tree leaves. We followed them to the hearse, hemmed in by the crowd that stretched six houses to the left and six houses to the right. Emma crossed her arm over mine and her body tilted, caught off balance by the small waves of sound. I held her tight, walking straighter than I ever had before. It was easy. Some of the neighbourhood women reached for us, said, ‘We are sorry for your loss,’ and ‘Is there anything we can do for you?’ I smiled at them, these people who will always love me. Two children from Sunday school pressed their sweat-sticky hands into the side of my dress and said, ‘We’ll pray for you, Miss Borden. May God protect their souls.’
‘Thank you, sweet ones. How thoughtful of you.’ There’s a certain love that comes in grief. Tastes sweet in the heart.
I looked up at the house towards the guestroom where Mrs Borden was found. The house caught a handful of sunlight and shone it in my eyes and there in the window I could see her looking down at me, her hair tangled, falling below her round shoulders. The house moved around her. She closed her eyes and as the house began to shut its curtains, shadows poured over her face, her cheeks swelled into mountains, growing past her head and body until they filled the room and made it a cave.
‘I don’t want to live in the house anymore,’ I said.
Emma pushed into my ribs. ‘But it’s home.’
It was difficult to breathe.
I wanted us to go to Europe then, sit in front of fireplaces and sip champagne. I’d make Emma my student, show her new ways of living, stop her from thinking that we belonged in this ugly house.
‘Tell us what you saw, Lizzie!’ women said.
‘Tell us so we can find them!’ men said.
These chalky voices in my ear, all these questions. I covered my face with my hand and Emma swept her arm over my back. Uncle helped us into the carriage, giving me a look, and I knew that I would be alright.
We followed Father and Mrs Borden down Second Street. Their coffins swayed slightly at the back of their carriage, a final waltz, right onto Rock Street where we walked once, all holding hands. The breeze picked up, cooling us, and letting out a sigh, I took Emma’s hand and stroked it, tried to put her sad and empty face to the back of my mind. I had seen this face only once before, when I had told her that I didn’t love her anymore. After she had made me promise never to say it again, she told me, ‘It’s important that we’re together, Lizzie.’
The coffins were taken to the undertaker’s quarters as our carriage continued down the path, through oak tree soldiers, towards the family plot where Mother and baby Alice were waiting. When Mrs Borden’s family had arrived and after the priest shook hands with the men, Father and Mrs Borden were brought to us.
‘This is it,’ Emma whispered to me.
There was no need to answer. I watched Father sink low into the ground and settle next to Mother while Mrs Borden came for both of them in her hard wooden cage. I rubbed my forehead.
The priest blessed the earth and held his cross over the grave, grinding prayers into the ground, his voice pleading with God to take care of this husband and wife in death as much as he had in life, ah, but here they are butchered and betrayed, and he prayed for Emma and me, their heaven-sent children.
I could feel Emma’s heavy heart pounding her into the dirt inch by inch, past the tree roots, burying her too early. We stood arm in arm on top of the earth that would one day be our own. The ground looked so small. I wondered how I would fit.