Lizzie Borden by Elizabeth Engstrom Read Free Book Online Page B

went to her room.
    The bellboy opened the draperies, but Emma hustled him out, with ten cents in his palm. She was filled with excitement at the prospects of an entire week here in New Bedford, with no Abby Borden, no Andrew Borden, no Lizzie Borden, no church, no neighbors, no Maggie—or Bridget, or whatever the maid’s name was—no pressures, no expectations on her or her behavior, no nothing.
    She took off her traveling hat and sat on the bed. She checked her watch. Almost eleven o’clock. She left the room, pocketing her key, and searched the halls until she found a little Irish chambermaid. Emma gave the girl money and instructions, then went back to her room to unpack and to pace, awaiting the arrival of the week’s cache of rum.
     
     

Off and on all day, Lizzie thought about Emma.
    Emma had demons. There was just no other way to explain her behavior. The Borden household was not without its pressures, and its members certainly had their quirks, but Emma. . .
    Emma went to New Bedford at least once a year, usually twice, and had done so ever since Lizzie could remember. She went without parental approval, without chaperone. She never asked permission and her parents never stopped her. She took all the money she’d saved from the allowance Father gave her, and went. There was never a letter from anyone in New Bedford, and Emma never spoke of anyone there, so Lizzie knew she had no friends there. Once, while nursing her after one of her trips, Lizzie came upon a receipt for a room from the Capitol Inn, so Lizzie knew where Emma stayed in New Bedford, and it wasn’t with any friends. She never let Emma know she’d found the receipt. She just felt better knowing she could find Emma should the need ever arise.
    There was no trouble guessing what Emma did when she was alone in the hotel room. Lizzie shivered to think of it. Her sister. Her flesh and blood. Her surrogate mother. Emma, the woman who raised her, the woman she had always looked to for guidance and inspiration. Emma.
    Emma drank. She drank and whenever she drank, she also got into trouble.
    Emma always came home from New Bedford sick, bruised, in pain and reeking of alcohol.
    Lizzie marveled at her older sister. She couldn’t imagine going off alone the way Emma did. She always tried to picture it in her mind. Where would she go to find liquor? True, it was a commonplace enough item, yet ladies didn’t frequent saloons and taverns. Was it purchased in a regular store? And what did Emma do, once she had her bottle? Where would she go? Would she carry it around in a paper bag, to sit in her hotel room and guzzle? Did she use a glass, or did she swig straight from the bottle? Did she wake up in the morning, wash her face, brush her teeth and begin again, or did she moan and roll over, search blindly for the neck of her bottle and continue, never really beginning, never really ending? Was it her companions that bruised her so? What would happen if somebody happened to get overly rough with Emma? What if some day she just didn’t come home?
    Lizzie had no idea what really went on in New Bedford, and it was the activities she conjured up in her imagination that worried her so much. Lizzie joined the Women’s Christian Temperance Union when she realized what Emma was doing. She hoped legislation would be a way of averting her sister’s seemingly inevitable downfall. Lizzie went to the meetings, Emma forefront in her mind, and she prayed for Emma’s soul.
    At dinner, Andrew Borden drew his white eyebrows together when Lizzie told him that Emma had gone to New Bedford to visit friends.
    “Again?” He asked, his voice thunderous and disapproving.
    Lizzie nodded, her eyes on her plate.
    “Who does she know in New Bedford?”
    “I don’t know, Father.”
    “It seems that Emma gets upset about the least little thing and then goes running off to New Bedford to do whatever it is she does up there that lays her up at home for a week afterward. I don’t like