all. She looked at the moon through the moon cut into the door, a tacit pun that made her feel weary. She gave herself time while she listened to the murmur of the women talking and the muffled music from inside.
No, it wasn’t the pie making her stomach feel off. It was what Maggie had said . . . or not yet said about Miss Lizzie.
“Are ye all right in there?” asked Mary, now close to the door.
“Aye, I’ll be out in a trice.”
The stench made it no place of respite. She stood, let her skirts to the floor and went back outside, gustily inhaling the fresh night air. She bent to the nearby bucket to wash her hands. A cake of soap exuded its own milk in a tin dish.
“Tell me then,” she said.
“You’ve noticed she’s . . .” began Maggie strongly, but then she trailed off.
“She’s what?”
“It tests one to talk about sommat in your gut with no true reason behind it.”
“But you left.”
“I left, not even knowing the next place I’d land.”
“And where did you?” asked Bridget.
“I’m renting a flat with five other girls. They’re at the mill, and I take in laundry, sewing, odd jobs. I made the meat pie you just ate.”
“So you can make a living just with that?”
“Close to it. I’ll serve again if I can find another home without a character.”
“Mr. Borden wouldn’t give you one?”
Bridget straightened. So Maggie had been booted after all, in opposition to what Mary had told her in the backyard that day. And perhaps now she was casting Bridget against the family in revenge?
“I went to him with my fears, and he was angry.”
“What were your fears?”
“I worry Miss Lizzie is dangerous.”
Bridget responded with an exhale, crossing her arms. “And dangerous how, you say?”
“Have you not seen the rage that sits in her eyes?”
Bridget said nothing. Above their heads, the stars sprawled in their chosen arrangements. Some ancient peoples had looked at the mess up there and managed to see patterns. “Her eyes are a quite unnatural color,” she said finally.
“Hers unnatural, and yours blind,” said Maggie.
“What did you fear?”
“I feared harm.” Maggie’s voice took on a tone of defensiveness now rather than persuasion.
“You feared she would harm you?”
“Yes. I wished to end all association with her and leave the house forever. She isn’t right, and if you don’t see it yet, you will.”
“Did she yell at you?”
“No, but worse. It’s the quiet that scares me. I tried to talk to Mr. Borden about it, and he wouldn’t hear it. So I tendered my resignation.”
“You left good employment just because of a feeling?”
“I did, and you ought to as well.”
“And who will serve the Bordens? Do you intend to dissuade every maid until there are none left in Fall River?” Bridget hated the words coming out of her mouth and didn’t know why she was being cruel to a girl who was only saying the things she had already thought.
“I don’t care who serves them! Let them stew their own mutton a hundred times over!”
“Persuade her better,” said Mary. “Use that blarney. Tell her what you saw that makes you so wary.”
“Well, that’s the trouble, isn’t it? I’ve naught to report other than a feeling deep in me gut that Miss Lizzie was the sort of trouble I wanted nothing to do with.” She regarded Bridget in exasperation. “Did you never find yourself on a dark street and something amiss at your back? No one’s there but you hasten your pace till you’re flying.”
“Aye,” said Bridget.
“So that’s how I felt with Miss Lizzie.”
“And tell her about the way Lizzie stopped calling her stepmother Mother,” said Mary.
“Two years ago, for love of nothing but money, Miss Lizzie suddenly stopped calling her Mother, which she had done since her father married her. She raised Miss Lizzie since she was a child, and suddenly she’s Mrs. Borden to her.”
“What happened?” asked Bridget.
“Mrs. Borden’s half-sister—whom she helped raise—goodness, this lady has been mother to so many and yet none from her womb . . . her sister had been bandied about by her husband, not good with money or rents or those matters. So Mr. Borden provided her a house on Fourth Street, deeding it to Mrs. Borden. The girls were in an uproar about it.”
“How so?” asked Bridget, amazed. “Family sticks together, and what uproar did they make of a kindness?”
“She’s not blood to them,” said Maggie. “Abby’s not, and her half-sister even less so. So the house became a morgue of stillness with their darting looks and their prim faces until one morning it exploded in anger, and Mr. Borden gave them their own house.”
“And it didn’t placate them?”
“Not a bit; he might as well have given them a coal from the fire for all it pleased them.”
“I wonder that they don’t move into the other house,” said Bridget.
“Not fit for them,” said Maggie with her chin lifted and a haughty expression adopted on her face.
“You’re just the picture of her!” breathed Mary Doolan.
“It’s the house they once lived in with their true mother, and they didn’t want to return! They’re renting it out. And it’s over that bundle of pettiness that they began calling her Mrs. Borden.”
“The very greed of it,” marveled Bridget.
“Yet they’re unashamed. They lost a ‘mother’ for the sake of helping out a family member with a no-good husband and two young children to provide for.”
A fellow came out then, bringing music and cheer with the opening of the door, and the stark silence of the stars as it swung shut behind him.
“Evening, ladies,” he said. For the sake of his privacy, of one accord they nodded and moved back toward the dancehall.
“Well, I’ve done my job in warning you,” said Maggie. “All the rest is up to you now.”
They
