Mon. Oct. 12th

Her sister Alice arrived in the middle of a late snowstorm.  The mid-wife had been unable to come, forcing Papa to help deliver the squawking, wrinkly red-skinned creature.  And unbeknownst to him, Emma had hidden in the wardrobe and witnessed the entire birth process. 

There had been so much blood.  The bed had run red with it.  A shudder of pleasure moved through Emma’s little body at the wonderful metallic smell of it.  From that day on, her most favorite color in the world was red.

Time passed, and to Emma's displeasure, her father doted on little Alice.  She started watching her father and sister, and her father and mother.  And she began feeling separated from them.  They didn’t seem to notice.  Papa and Mama and Baby Alice appeared to be the perfect little family. 

She was never really sure if she had meant for it to happen.  She had spent another morning watching her parents dote over the baby, while ignoring her.  So when Papa left for work and Mama stepped out back to hang laundry she had walked to the side of Alice’s cradle, and just stared down at her. 

It took her only a moment to snatch up the pillow off the bed, and with heartless deliberance hold it tight against Alice’s face.  It only took a few seconds and it was done.  The baby struggled one last time and then fell limp.  Emma tossed the pillow back on her parent’s bed and went into her room and played with her blocks until she heard her mother’s anguished sobs.  She stopped for a moment and listened, before she went back to her game.

Things were better after that.  Papa paid attention to her.  He took her for walks and sometimes to town with him.  She felt so proud and important when he would introduce people to her.  Now and again, one of them would hand her a penny or a sweet. 

Papa always waited for her to say thank you.  It galled her.  She knew how to act—what was right.  She didn’t like school, but her father told her how important to was for her to learn reading and math.  The rest, he said, wasn’t very important—to her at least.  She would go away to a finishing school where she would learn how to take care of a house and then she would come home and he would find someone for her to marry. 

She would not! 

Nothing on earth would induce her to marry.  She still remembered Uncle John’s fumblings, and what he’d made her do to him.  And, while she had loved the blood when Alice had been born, been thrilled by her mother’s cries of pain, she had no intention of enduring such agony. 

No, she had learned early on—there were ‘givers’ and ‘takers’…and while she would take what she wanted and leave the rest, child bearing was one thing she was definitely leaving. Then her mother started being sick in the morning and she and Papa seemed to sharing a very special secret.  It wasn’t long before Emma’s worst fear was confirmed.  Mama was pregnant again.

Emma smiled and simpered about how happy she was, but inside she was seething.  This would just be one more thing to come between she and her father.  Already his business seemed to be pulling away from her—more interested in accruing wealth then garnering her affection.

To her surprise, however, when little Lizzie was born things took an unexpected turn—she liked her baby sister.  And, it appeared, Lizzie liked her.  Lizzie was a fretful baby, and her mother lost patience with her constant crying.  Emma only had to lean over her cradle and wiggle a finger and Lizzie’s wailing ceased. 

Andrew Borden had never liked noise, so Emma was now his princess.  She could quiet the squalling infant and restore quiet and order to his house.  In fact, she became more and more infatuated with her baby sister.  Mama had had a difficult delivery and was kept in bed for several weeks.  She emerged from her room to find that Emma was more than capable of carrying for Lizzie.

So while the hired girl did the heavy work, laundry and cooking.  Emma took complete control of the baby.  Her mother, Sarah, tried to take advantage of having time to sew or knit—two things that needed to be done and that she truly loved doing.  But after a few months, she attempted to regain control of her household. 

Emma was not happy, but she didn’t know what she could do.  After all, her mother was bigger and older—she would be much harder to eliminate than Baby Alice had been.  She was going to have to think about this.

It came to her several weeks later.  Papa had found rats in the cellar, and had come home one day with a large can of rat poison.  He had called Emma and her mother into the kitchen and showed it to them.  He told them it was dangerous and that they weren’t to touch it—and that they needed to leave it up high where Lizzie couldn’t get into it.

At almost two, Lizzie was moving around and getting into mischief.  Emma promised Papa that she wouldn’t let Lizzie get anywhere near the tin with an evil grin.  Then she found an empty tin box in the shed and waited for an opportunity to take some of the poison. 

She had to wait nearly a month, before she found herself alone in the house.  Then she scrambled up a chair, took down the can and filled her little tin box.  She placed the can back just as had been, and hid the tin beneath a loose floorboard under her bed.  The next time she found herself alone, she tipped some into the sugar bowl.  Papa never used sugar—but her mother, that was a different story.  She loaded her coffee and tea with sugar—to the point of Papa complaining about the cost of it.

It took a lot longer than Emma had expected.  Mama would vomit and suffer from cramps, and then be all right the next day.  But, Emma was patient.  She had to be careful.  Change the sugar if the were having company.  But it didn’t take much to dump the tainted sugar into an old Mason jar and fill the bowl with wholesome sugar.  Later, she’d swap out the sugar again and hope for the best.

Mama got weaker and weaker, as she got sicker.  She was unable to keep any food down—living only on sweetened tea.  Her hair came out when she combed it and her hands and feet tingled all the time.  The doctor was finally called in.  He found that she was suffering from a severe gastric condition and suspected she was once again pregnant. 

He sympathized with Papa, but told him he had made it clear to her not to get pregnant again.  She hadn’t recovered from Lizzie’s birth and the best they could hope for was for her to lose the baby early on, and concentrate on regaining her health.  Then he moved on to his next patient.

Mama did not wake up again.  Once again, they are down to a family of three…