Lizzie Borden by Elizabeth Engstrom Read Free Book Online Page A

the door and talk to me.”
    Emma pressed her fingers to her eyes, pressed them hard until she saw yellow spots and it began to hurt. Then she opened the door.
    Lizzie came in, her hair up in curling rags, nightgown wrinkled and smelling of sleep.
    “What has happened?”
    “Lizzie, there’s nothing. . . I can’t do. . .” She made a sweeping gesture toward their parents’ bedroom, “he. . . Oh God!” The tears threatened again. Her breaths came in sobs.
    “Sit down and tell me.”
    Emma sat on the edge of her chair. The sobs began to abate. She took a deep breath, fetched a handkerchief from her pocket and ran it across her face and lips, then twisted it in her lap. “I’m going to go to New Bedford for a couple of days.”
    “No, Emma. Please don’t. Please.”
    Emma felt better as soon as she said it. “I’ll be all right, Lizzie. I’ll stay with friends.” Emma nodded. She would see friends, that’s for sure.
    “For how long?”
    “A week.” As long as it takes .
    “Please don’t. The last time you said one week, you stayed away three. And were half dead when you finally did return.”
    “Stop it. None of that is your concern. I hate it here. I’m going there for a breath of fresh air.” Emma found she couldn’t meet Lizzie’s eyes. Lizzie knew who her “friends” were in New Bedford. Lizzie was the only one who knew, and Lizzie didn’t approve.
    “I’ll come with you.”
    “You won’t. Now leave me alone. I have to pack.”
    “I worry so, Emma.”
    “I’m a grown woman. There’s a train at nine. Now goodbye.”
    “If I got down on my knees—”
    “Leave me, Lizzie.”
    Lizzie stood looking at her for a long moment. Emma felt she should say something, do something, but she sat on the chair and avoided Lizzie’s eyes. She felt alone, so alone. She wanted to say Yes, Lizzie, save me from having to go to New Bedford, but she didn’t. She sat there, hands on her lap, eyes on her hands, and finally Lizzie left, closing Emma’s door quietly behind her.
    Emma lifted down the suitcase. In that simple act, the rage drained away, and in its place anticipation sprouted and grew. It had been a long time since she’d been to New Bedford. It was time, surely it was time. She took the money envelope from her bedstand drawer and counted it. Forty-three dollars was all she had managed to save from her weekly allowance of four dollars. Well, it would have to do.
    She left with only a nod to Lizzie, who was still in her room. She walked to the station in the early morning light and waited in the unheated waiting room. The train arrived at eight-fifty precisely, and at nine o’clock, it jerked and they were on their way to New Bedford.
    The anticipation Emma felt in her freedom was sporadically deposed by the hatred that welled up inside her. The smell of a man’s pipe touched it off. So did the cut of a matron’s expensive wool coat. A fat woman jiggled down the aisle and Emma raged within again, trying in vain to calm herself. There were only two thoughts that had an effect on her rage. One, was that she would never have to marry, and so she had this freedom, as meager and as simple as it was, to leave home alone for a week; and the other thought was what lay at the end of this short train trip to New Bedford. Peace.
    In less than an hour, she arrived.
    Emma hailed a cab and it took her to the Capitol Inn, a small hotel on Madison Street, one that Emma frequented whenever she came to New Bedford. She checked in under the name of Lucy Billings, with the cabby carrying her baggage, and she left the usual instructions with the clerk and made sure he wrote them down. She was to be disturbed under no circumstances until the night before she was to check out. There would be no maid service, there would be no messages relayed, there would be no giving out of her hotel room number to anyone for any reason, under any circumstances. She sealed this promise with a most generous two dollar tip. Then she