The Secrets of Lizzie Borden Read Online Free PDF Page A

fellow; we would only be disappointed otherwise. We really were poor little rich girls, prisoners in a day and age when nice, respectable girls didn’t leave their father’s house except to go to their husband’s. We were Bordens and thus above the poor mill girls and Irish “Maggies,” as the denizens of Fall River always called the poor Irish girls who hired out as maidservants and had to earn their bread and butter and even the plate it was put upon. We were too good, and proud, to go out and work for a living, to actually earn the pennies to pay for the lives we longed for, if we even could; no typewriter girl or governess I ever heard of wore diamonds and ermine.
    I remember the summer I turned thirteen and my courses came for the first time. We were visiting our farm in Swansea. Emma, in our mother’s stead, explained what it meant and showed me how to fashion the thick cloth towels, fold, and attach them to the homemade calico belts women used in those days, and how to soak them in a pail of cold water and borax kept discreetly out of sight beneath the bed or under the sink in the cellar until the Maggie laundered them and tucked them away in the bureau drawer in readiness for the next month. Father took me fishing. As we sat on the bank, holding our poles, waiting for the fish to bite, he spoke to me for the first time of courtship and marriage. I will never forget the words he said to me: “When men look at you, Lizzie, they will never see anything but my money; no one will ever love you for anything else. It’s the way of the world; when people know you’ve got money they all want a share. You will never be anything but a dollar sign in men’s eyes, Lizzie!”
    Father always did have a low opinion of my personal attractions. He had a definite knack for making me feel worthless and was endlessly “just funning” about my figure, calling me things like “piggy in a blue gown,” shaking his head dolefully and clucking his tongue whenever he saw me taking a second helping at table or grazing idly on sweets, and urging me to take a good long look in the mirror and see myself the way others saw me. And if I dared lose my temper, or angry tears appeared in my eyes, he would say I was devoid of humor and could not take a joke.
    The only bright spot in my existence was Bridget Sullivan, our Maggie. When Father refused to pay her a reasonable wage and Bridget threatened to leave us, Abby, Emma, and I all chipped in to pay her out of our pin money.
    Bridget— I was the only one who called her by her given name; the others just called her “Maggie”—flitted flirtily through that drab and dreary house brandishing her feather duster like a fairy’s wand, a lively twinkle lighting up her green eyes, giving an occasional pert toss to the thick, curly black hair hanging down her back below the frills of her white ruffled cap. Often she would pause when she saw me brooding or frowning to chuck me under the chin and say, “Now, now, macushla ”— my darling! I’d never heard a sweeter word!—“surely it’s not as bad as all that?” Macushla —my darling, my dear—I had looked it up at the library and discovered it was a Gaelic word that literally translated meant “my blood.” Trust my Bridget to make even nauseating, sickening, sticky red blood seem sweet as strawberry jam! Bridget! Her dainty feet seemed to be always dancing, light as air beneath her black skirt and long white apron despite the sturdy black boots weighing them down. She was always humming or singing her favorite song, “Oh, Dem Golden Slippers,” until my longing to give her a pair became almost unbearable.
    There were days when I would sit for hours, glassy-eyed with boredom, chin propped heavily upon my fist, and dream of kneeling worshipfully at her feet, lifting her skirts, unlacing those clunky black boots, and cradling each