“Yes, I do.”
“What does that consist of?”
“Usually a white linen jacket or a white linen gown, something of that kind.”
“Like a duster?”
“Like a long apron.”
“Anything else?”
“Sometimes an Indian-rubber apron also.”
“And what are those things put on for?”
“Partly to insure absolute cleanliness, and partly to protect my clothes.”
“From what?”
“From blood.”
“Miss Emma, did any of the members of your family have waterproofs?”
“Yes, we all had them.”
“What kind were they?”
“Mrs. Borden’s was a gossamer. Rubber.”
“That is, you mean rubber on the outside?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And black?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where was that hanging?”
“I think she kept it in the little press at the foot of the front stairs. In the front hall.”
“Did Miss Lizzie have one, too?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where did she keep hers?”
“In the clothespress at the top of the stairs.”
“Do you know where this waterproof of Miss Lizzie’s was on the day of the search?”
“Hanging in the clothespress that has been spoken of so often.”
“Do you know where it is now?”
“It is there now.”
“Been there ever since.”
“Every day since.”
Every day since, Lizzie thought. Every day since the day of the search and yet before then to the day of the murders themselves, for there had been little rain that August, and no need for a waterproof, no need at all. Every day since that day in August, when the nightmare began, to this sixteenth day of June, ten months and more later, when all was still in the courtroom now as the Government attorneys conferred at their table.
At last, Moody rose.
“As I suggested to Your Honors,” he said, “there is one witness on the way from Fall River. His testimony does not relate to a vital part of the case, and we will not insist upon a delay for the expected witness, but will close our evidence at this point.”
“The evidence is closed on both sides,” Robinson said.
“I desire to say to the jury,” Mason said, “that the testimony in this case is now all in. Lizzie Andrew Borden...”
She was startled to hear the Chief Justice addressing her. She had expected more — was this all? Yet he had just informed the jury that the testimony had all been heard, and now he was staring at her from behind the bench as she got to her feet.
“Although you have now been fully heard by counsel,” he said, “it is your privilege to add any word which you may desire to say in person to the jury. You now have the opportunity.”
Lizzie turned to face the twelve men in the jury box. Her head high, her posture erect, her voice clear and unwavering, she said, “I am innocent.”
15: Cannes, London, Liverpool — 1890
Lost in guilt: the certainty that what Alison had done to her, what she continued to allow her to do was Godless and evil, and that she would be punished as surely as had been Eve, whose transgression had eternally doomed all women to a monthly secretion of blood.
“But, why, oh why, dear Lizzie, any feelings of guilt? I should sooner slash my wrists than have you experience the slightest remorse. I have loved you from the instant I first laid eyes upon you — oh, that ridiculous journey from Oxford to London, where it was all I could do to keep my hands still, patting you and touching you at the merest provocation, smitten like a schoolgirl! And your own face, Lizzie — admit it — lighting with surprise and delight when first I entered the compartment. Did our eyes meet, or have I only dreamt it this past month and more? Did I see in your secret gray what was most surely in my revealing green? Oh, your radiant splendor! That fair complexion and dazzling red hair, I wondered in the very first instant — I shall blush myself now — whether you were tinted so below, and longed to lift your skirt and petticoats in that public conveyance, causing your Anna to die of mortification behind her veil. How jealous I was of your traveling companions! How silly, how hopelessly and immediately in love!
“But, guilt, Lizzie? If there truly exists this God you worship, if indeed His all-seeing eye monitors our daily movements, controls them perhaps, then was it an accident that He chose to have us meet? And having caused us to be thrown together that way, by the sheerest coincidence, as it seemed — you and your friends on the worst possible train to London, Albert and I catching a later train than we’d expected after an eternal visit with my cousin and her three squawling brats — no, it could not have been coincidence, it was certainly divine will, please don’t laugh, Lizzie. Your God chose to have us meet, chose to inspire our friendship, chose to have us meet again in Paris, chose indeed to have you stricken with influenza so that you might be here this very moment. And chose, my dearest darling, to encourage our intimacy, for which I have nothing but the humblest gratitude. Come to Him enwreathed in guilt then? Nay, Lizzie. Come to Him on your knees instead, in praise and in thanksgiving and in joy. Come to Him as I come to you — in bliss.”
Lost in shame: the discovery of herself as someone quite other than what she had supposed herself to be, a proper daughter and sister, a woman who was pious, virtuous, obedient and domestic — a lady.
“But how are you any less a lady now, Lizzie? Are your responses not ladylike? I find them exceedingly so. Are your kisses not the kisses a lady might offer to her love? Or do you speak of your passion? Is it your passion that shames you so? Then are we, as women, not entitled to the same passion men consider their God-given right? Are we any less ladies for being passionate women? Would it be any more ladylike, I ask, for me to touch, to stroke, to enflame not your miniature replica of the male sex organ — I shock my virgin, forgive me, I shall shift to less personal ground, I shall become objective. Do you consider it ladylike for any married woman to take into her hands a husband’s quivering worm and coax it to messy emission? I see that shocks you as well. Be shocked then, Lizzie, for it is shocking — to me, it is — and demeaning, and frankly disgusting, and not in the slightest bit ladylike. Nor can I find anything ladylike about a woman spreading her legs to a man’s masculine pride, and suffering his brutish batterings. A woman then becomes a beast of the field, and can scarce lay claim to being a lady. My hands upon your breasts are ladylike. My body pressed to yours is ladylike. My mouth upon your — if you blush again, I shall scream! You may be technically a virgin, but you are no longer a maiden in any sense of the word, so please don’t behave as foolishly as if you were Felicity-Twit! Oh, how I envied her place beside you in that hotel bed!
“That you should have come through puberty and adolescence, that you could have reached this advanced stage of your own womanhood without once having recognized the erotic potential of that adorable cleft between your legs is a matter of vast astonishment to me. I quite realize that our learned medical tomes prophesize disease or at least nervous prostration as the end result of self-manipulation, but never to have entertained the faintest curiosity about your own anatomy? Never once? Never to have explored yourself, to have touched yourself? Even in this male-dominated prison we share, I find that utterly incomprehensible. I asked you once if there were no looking glasses in all of Fall River. Here, now is a mirror — see how delicately the handle is formed of silver in the shape of a naked woman, her flowing tresses encircling the looking glass itself? Take her in your hands, Lizzie. Open your legs to her. Look upon yourself. Do you see your own lovely reflection? That is the lady within you, Lizzie, the true lady, known best and only by other ladies. Pull back her hood to reveal her pink hard face, lay your fingers delicately upon the center of your pleasure and desire, stroke her, Lizzie, stroke Miss Puss. She blushes as prettily as you do; I shall be compelled to kiss her in a moment.”