The Secrets of Lizzie Borden

by Brandy Purdy

  When I grew weary of being stared at like an animal in a zoo, I had the veranda enclosed with ivy-covered lattices and climbing pink roses, so I could sit and enjoy myself in peace, sip my tea and eat cake at the little round wicker table, or sit on the porch swing and lose myself in a book or daydreams. I also had the back porch glassed in so I could sit there and watch the cardinals, orioles, woodpeckers, catbirds, and black-capped chickadees that were such a delight to me. I accounted each one of them a blessing, God’s little winged wonders, angels in animal form. Watching the squirrels frolic in the trees always lifted my spirits and made me smile, and I always kept a goodly supply of nuts on hand to scatter on the ground as a treat for them. I had pretty little painted wooden houses built for them and placed about the yard and in the trees, and I provided a big marble bath and ordered the gardener to keep it full and refresh the water every day, and I always made sure the dear creatures had plenty to eat. I even ordered a statue of Saint Francis of Assisi, like one I had glimpsed in a beautiful garden in Italy, in his monk’s robe and tonsure, holding out a great basin before him that I kept filled with bread and seeds, leading some of my neighbors to arch their brows and scathingly remark that they were afraid I had “gone Catholic” like the “good-for-nothing” Maggies and Paddies they employed as servants.

  The name I had given my house, and dared to have chiseled on the top step facing out onto the street—“like a tradesman’s storefront!” —sorely incensed my neighbors. They deemed such a vulgarity most unwelcome up on The Hill. No one named their house in Fall River, not even the castles they had imported piecemeal from Europe; if they had a name there they were shorn of it once they reached our shores. It was “not the done thing” and I was accused of “putting on airs.” And perhaps I was. I had lived by my father’s penurious dictates for thirty-two years and it felt so good to step out of his shadow and come into my own at long last and make up for lost time and chances in bold, magnificent ways and gaudy gestures. I never felt so free!

  And when I decided, mirrors and the truths they showed be damned, it was time for Lizbeth to step out of my dreams and into real life and changed my own name accordingly, my calling cards, engraved with my new name, Lizbeth A. Borden of Maplecroft, wreathed with hand-painted violets, became at once collector’s items and objects of curiosity, ridicule, and disdain. Ladies—real ladies—did not change their given names, only their surnames when they married. No one could understand why I did it, and I didn’t even try to explain. I wanted to come out of the dark cocoon I had inhabited for so long. I was tired of being a plain, drab little moth; I wanted to spread my wings and soar sky high and be a bold, splendid, beautiful butterfly. I wanted to be elegant, refined, cultured Lizbeth, who I had always been in my secret soul, the woman my architect had seen lurking inside me, not dull, boring, inept, inelegant Lizzie, whose very name sounded like a coarse, common, clumsy, ignorant slut of a barmaid. He had called me “Lizbeth,” and that was who I wanted, more than anything else, to be, and I knew that it was now or never. And, to be honest, after the notoriety of the murders and the trial, I just wanted to be someone else, to be reborn fresh and new, to have a fresh coat of paint and new decorations just like I gave my Maplecroft.

  I waited in vain for the invitations to dinner parties, balls, sewing circles, book club meetings, card parties, Sunday concerts in the park, the theater, picnics, clambakes, oyster suppers, and weekend house parties to come pouring in. And I hadn’t heard a word from the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, the Fruit and Flower Mission, or the Christian Endeavor Society since they had sent cards and flowers to me in jail, nor had I been asked to resume my duties as a Sunday school teacher.

  Maybe they thought I was still in mourning and not ready to socialize yet? So after the decorators had finished their work, I took the reins into my own hands and sent invitations with beautiful gold script embossed upon creamy parchment cards with gilt maple leaf borders to all my female neighbors and friends and acquaintances in Fall River, including every member of the clubs and societies I had belonged to. I invited all the Sunday school teachers and every woman who sung in the choir at Central Congregational Church and even the ladies of the book club to which Emma had belonged but which I had left because their selections habitually lacked excitement and imagination. They had all sent me flowers and cards expressing their good wishes when I was in prison, so it never crossed my mind that they would forsake me now. I thought I was about to pick up the thread of my old life even as I spread my wings and soared on to bigger and better things. After all my nest, my home, my haven, was in Fall River and, in spite of all my lofty ambitions, I never wanted to change that.

  To welcome them to Maplecroft, I had Madame Tetrault bake a big five-layer maple cake with waves of creamy frosting decorated with pretty little candies shaped like maple leaves that melted deliciously in the mouth to let the tongue savor the sweet maple flavor. And I instructed Elsa, the downstairs maid, in her black dress and starched snow-white frilled cap and matching ruffled white apron, to pass around amongst my guests with a silver tray, shaped like a maple leaf, with yet more of these special candies arranged elegantly upon it. Then I would make my grand entrance and graciously receive their kind words and embraces.

  I had a new dress made just for this occasion, maple-colored silk, trimmed with beautiful frothy cocoa-colored heirloom lace and dark-chocolate satin ribbon edged in gold. I even commissioned little gold maple leaf earrings and a maple leaf brooch set with champagne-colored diamonds to wear with it and bought a rope of pearls in a lovely, soft golden color and a fringed silk shawl worked with a pattern of vines and leaves in various shades of browns, amber, orange, and gold to complete the ensemble.

  I couldn’t bear to sit upstairs fidgeting and watching the clock, so I went downstairs. I could always rush back up before Elsa opened the front door, so I could still make my grand entrance. But the change of scenery didn’t calm me a jot. I anxiously watched the clock, my fear mounting as every second ticked by, gone forever. I couldn’t sit still more than two minutes; I kept darting up from my chair and running to the window and back again, and then I found myself walking the floor, pacing back and forth until I feared I would wear out that stretch of carpet. But I never saw a soul coming through the front gate.

  I wondered if the clock could be wrong. I waited an hour. And then two. But no one ever came. No one even sent a servant to my door with a polite excuse about illness. Even Emma was conspicuously absent, keeping to her room; she found my wanting to socialize when I should have still been in deep mourning “morally reprehensible” and “almost criminal.”

  Almost, I answered her in tart, angry silence. I suppose the only thing that could possibly be more criminal is the double murder I was acquitted of!

  I finally sat down upon the sofa in front of the tea table and ate each one of those little maple candies myself; even when I felt full and sick, I kept on eating, trying to fill up the emptiness inside me even though I knew it had nothing at all to do with my stomach. And then I started on the cake. That beautiful cake and all my elegant plans, the care I had taken and lavished upon each and every last little detail—it had all been such a waste! I sat there, alone in my splendid parlor, and ate every morsel of that beautiful cake and was sick all night, a miserable green-faced and bloated-bellied queen sitting on her gleaming white porcelain throne. It served me right for being such a wretched glutton; I should have sent it back to the kitchen for the servants to enjoy, but that never occurred to me.

  When I sat there glumly staring at the last crumbs on my gilt-bordered yellow rose–patterned plate letting the tears run down my face, Emma appeared like a menacing black crow in the doorway.

  “More tears are shed over answered prayers, Liz-zie,” she said, drawing out each syllable of the name I had shed like a snake’s skin—Emma would never call me “Lizbeth”—“than unanswered ones. God sometimes punishes those He only seems to favor by giving them exactly what they want.”


  And then she turned on her heel and in a loud, sickening swish of black silk skirts and crepe mourning veils left me alone to contemplate a blessing that suddenly seemed like a curse, like some cruel masquerader who had ripped the mask off to reveal a strange unknown and unexpected face sneering and jeering at me.

  As if that were not bad enough, at that very moment one of those infernal hack drivers drove up with a near-bursting load of out-of-towners he had met at the train station and brandished his whip at Maplecroft and bellowed: “THERE IT IS, FOLKS—THE HOME OF THE NOTORIOUS LIZZIE BORDEN, WHERE SHE LIVES NOW!”

  That Sunday I nervously put on a fussy pink and peach gown covered collar to hem with appliquéd flowers and a matching hat and pinned a pink cameo onto my high white lace collar and picked up a lacy, beribboned parasol and bravely strode down the aisle of the Central Congregational Church to my pew.

  It was the first time I had been to church since my acquittal. I had wanted to let things quiet down and return to normal. As soon as my flower-covered rump touched the polished walnut every single person sitting near me, before, behind, and alongside me stood up and moved away to find themselves another seat. And the Reverend Buck, who had been so kind to me, sitting and praying with me for hours in my jail cell, sending me edifying books to read, and loudly proclaiming my calmness as “the calmness of innocence” every time I was publicly accused of coldness and indifference, wouldn’t even look at me. I tried time and again to catch his eye, but he was blind to me.

  At last, I stood up and, head held high, retreated back up the aisle. I never set foot in that church again or any other in Fall River. I knew I would not be welcome. From that day forward I would spend my Sundays reading my Bible and singing hymns alone at Maplecroft. Madame Tetrault was kind enough to teach me to play the piano in the parlor well enough so that I could accompany myself, and, later, I would have a fine phonograph and a collection of records so I could hear beautiful voices raised to the glory of God.

  I knew then, without a doubt, that Fall River society had slammed its doors on me. This stinging rebuff made in the house of the Lord where all were supposed to be merciful, kind, and charitable was the final proof. No one wanted to know “the self- or hatchet-made heiress,” as they called me. I was an oddity, an aberration, an embarrassment, and no doubt many wished I would pack my bags and leave Fall River forever.

  Perhaps that’s why, mulish and stubborn, just like Father in his most hard-fisted penny-pinching moments, I dug in my heels and swore I would make my home in Fall River until the day I died. When a reporter from The New York Sun stopped me on the street and asked me about it I held my head high and, with cordial frankness, replied, “A great many persons have talked to me as if they thought I would go and live somewhere else when my trial was over. I don’t know what possesses them. This is my home and I am going to stay here. I never thought of doing anything else.”

  Though I had often hungered for a bigger, richer, more exciting slice of the world’s pie, I was too proud and stubborn to let them drive me out and chase me away like a whipped and whimpering dog with its tail tucked between its legs. Even though in truth I might have been able to reinvent myself and lead a far happier life elsewhere I was too proud to make the attempt. I had my pride—my stubborn, arrogant, hurt, and angry pride! And I would never let them see me cry or know just how much they had hurt me!

  Every day, I would sit behind my glazed and barred windows, or on my ivy-shrouded veranda, and try to lose myself in a book or hug Laddie, my Boston terrier pup, or with Daisy, my white Persian cat, purring softly on my lap while I stroked her silky fur, and try to pretend I didn’t care as I listened to the hack drivers regale their passengers with the blood-soaked saga of Lizzie Borden, never sparing them a single gory detail about the murders. Sometimes the hackneys even drove them out to see the house at 92 Second Street and the graves in Oak Grove Cemetery where Father and Abby reposed without their heads.

  They never went away. I’m afraid that when the day dawns that finds me lying on my deathbed the last thing I will hear is a cabdriver crying out my name like some annoying carnival barker who never shuts up for long. Whenever a cabby caught a glimpse of me, sitting peacefully on my own front porch not bothering a soul, or going in or out of the house, minding my own business, he would stab his whip in my direction and shout, “THERE SHE IS!” His passengers would always ooh and ahh or slump back in a swoon against the leather seats as though they had just had the thrill or the scare of their lives. And there was always someone who would attempt to boldly stare me down as they declared, “She LOOKS as if she DID IT!”

  Some even brought cameras and posed in front of the house; for a time there was even a photographer who made a good income carting his camera out to cater to the tourists’ desire for such a ghoulish souvenir. “There we are in front of the Lizzie Borden house!” I could just hear them exclaiming over the picture once it was pasted in their album. As much as I embraced modernity, I more than anyone regretted it when cameras became more portable and commonplace, so that any fool with enough money to squander or spare could afford one.

  I grew so weary of it all! I think the last time I really laughed about my notoriety was right after the trial when someone started a rumor that every unmarried man on my jury had proposed to me and I was delightedly dallying over deciding which one I would marry. I remember I was having breakfast in bed one morning, my shoulders surrounded by billowing layers of lavender chiffon ruffles and my hair up in curl rags, when I saw the headline screaming LIZZIE BORDEN TO WED ONE OF THE JURY THAT ACQUITTED HER! above a portrait of the twelve men looking so solemn and serious and an article discussing the personalities and prospects of the unattached gentlemen and speculating on which one I would choose to be my husband. I laughed myself silly. Tears rolled down my face and I almost wet the bed.

  But my amusement didn’t last long. Too many outlandish and intrusive headlines soon curdled my sense of humor and left me with a sick headache and sour stomach and I no longer had the heart to laugh at any of it. It grew so I couldn’t abide to even look at a newspaper for fear that I would find my picture or name in it.

  To the children of Fall River, I became a source of fearful curiosity, like a witch in a storybook, the butt of countless childhood pranks and dares to knock upon my door or climb my garden fence. They pelted my windows and walls with raw eggs and gravel. More than once some brave little soul made it all the way up to the front door to insert a pin into the doorbell so that it rang shrilly until the pin was extracted. It quickly became the headache-inducing custom for children walking along the sidewalk to break into a run while screaming at the top of their lungs and flailing their arms wildly whenever they passed Maplecroft. But some, instead of screaming as they rushed past, would march by brave as little soldiers, or even stop to skip rope on the sidewalk, while chanting loudly the popular singsong rhyme:

  “Lizzie Borden took an ax

  And gave her mother forty whacks.

  When she saw what she had done,

  She gave her father forty-one.”

  Sometimes they added a second verse:

  “Andrew Borden now is dead,

  Lizzie hit him on the head,

  Up in Heaven he will sing,

  On the gallows she will swing.”

  The bravest ones, the ones who ventured onto my property and didn’t run away shrieking before I could speak to them, I rewarded; I gave them candy and cookies and cups of hot cocoa and slices of cake or Madame Tetrault’s marvelous jelly roll, that scrumptious, sumptuous miracle of moist golden cake filled with rich cream and raspberry jelly.

  And some of the poorer ones, who showed promise and a love of learning, I gave gifts of books and paid for them to have a college education just as I would have done for my own sons and daughters if I had been so blessed.

  I loved children; the older I got the more I regretted that circumstances, and my too deeply entrenched private fears, never permitted me to marry and have a family,
and it hurt my heart to know that so many of them feared me, even though I understood and never blamed them for it. But understanding isn’t a balm for pain. Those who dared approach me I always befriended. I bought them birthday and Christmas presents and never failed to send them amusing cards to let them know that I was thinking of them. And there was one dear, sweet slow-witted boy, the son of poor Irish Catholic mill workers, whose parents only sent him to school to have someone watch him during the day because they both had to work. I bought him picture books and colored pencils and drawing paper to keep him entertained while his classmates were at their lessons, and I always made sure he was decently dressed and had shoes on his feet so the other boys and girls wouldn’t make fun of him for being dirt poor. He always came to stay an hour or two after school with me, we had tea together on the veranda, or in the parlor when the weather was cold, and on the days when there was no school I found little chores for him to do around Maplecroft that I always paid him for. He was the sweetest of them all, a pure soul who never saw any evil in me; he hugged me until I thought my back would break and called me his “auntie Lizbeth.” It broke my heart when he drowned one summer trying to keep up with the other boys. I paid for his funeral.