Margaret Atwood - Alias Grace

You’d be my paramour.

Now Thomas Kinnear came riding home,

And on the kitchen floor

McDermott shot him through the heart

And he weltered in his gore.

The peddler came up to the house,

Will you buy a dress of me;

O go away Mr. Peddler,

I’ve dresses enough for three.

The butcher came up to the house,

He came there every week;

O go away Mr. Butcher,

We’ve got enough fresh meat!

They robbed Kinnear of his silver,

They robbed him of his gold,

They stole his horse and wagon,

And to Toronto they rode.

All in the middle of the night,

To Toronto they did flee,

Then across the Lake to the United States,

Thinking they would scape free.

She took McDermott by the hand,

As bold as bold could be,

And stopped at the Lewiston Hotel,

Under the name of Mary Whitney.

The corpses were found in the cellar,

Her face it was all black,

And she was under the washtub,

And he was laid out on his back.

Then Bailiff Kingsmill in pursuit,

A Charter he did take,

Which sailed as fast as it could go

To Lewiston, across the Lake.

They had not been in bed six hours,

Six hours or maybe more,

When to the Lewiston Hotel he came,

And knocked upon the door.

O who is there, said Grace so fair,

What business have you with me?

O you have murdered good Thomas Kinnear,

And Nancy Montgomery.

Grace Marks she stood up in the dock,

And she denied it all.

I did not see her strangled,

I did not hear him fall.

He forced me to accompany him,

He said if I did tell,

That with one shot of his trusty gun,

He’d send me straight to H_l.

McDermott stood up in the dock,

I did not do it alone,

But for the sake of her person fair,

Grace Marks, she led me on.

Young Jamie Walsh stood up in court,

The truth he swore to tell;

O Grace is wearing Nancy‘s dress,

And Nancy’s bonnet as well!

McDermott by the neck they hanged,

Upon the Gallows high,

And Grace in Prison drear they cast,

Where she must pine and sigh.

They hanged him for an hour or two,

Then took down the body,

And cut it into pieces

At the University.

From Nancy‘s grave there grew a rose,

And from Thomas Kinnear’s a vine,

They grew so high they intertwined,

And thus these two were joined.

But all her weary life Grace Marks

Must in Prison locked up be,

Because of her foul sin and crime,

In the Kingston Penitentiary.

But if Grace Marks repent at last,

And for her sins atone,

Then when she comes to die, she’ll stand

At her Redeemer’s throne.

At her Redeemer’s throne she’ll stand,

And she’ll be cured of woe,

And He her bloodied hands will wash,

And she’ll be white as snow.

And she will be as white as snow,

And into Heaven will pass,

And she will dwell in Paradise,

In Paradise at last.

Three - Puss in the Corner

Chapter3

1859.

I am sitting on the purple velvet settee in the Governor’s parlour, the Governor’s wife’s parlour; it has always been the Governor’s wife’s parlour although it is not always the same wife, as they change them around according to the politics. I have my hands folded in my lap the proper way although I have no gloves. The gloves I would wish to have would be smooth and white, and would fit without a wrinkle. I am often in this parlour, clearing away the tea things and dusting the small tables and the long mirror with the frame of grapes and leaves around it, and the pianoforte; and the tall clock that came from Europe, with the orange-gold sun and the silver moon, that go in and out according to the time of day and the week of the month. I like the clock best of anything in the parlour, although it measures time and I have too much of that on my hands already.

But I have never sat down on the settee before, as it is for the guests. Mrs. Alderman Parkinson said a lady must never sit in a chair a gentleman has just vacated, though she would not say why; but Mary Whitney said, Because, you silly goose, it’s still warm from his bum; which was a coarse thing to say. So I cannot sit here without thinking of the ladylike bums that have sat on this very settee, all delicate and white, like wobbly soft-boiled eggs.

The visitors wear afternoon dresses with rows of buttons up their fronts, and stiff wire crinolines beneath. It’s a wonder they can sit down at all, and when they walk, nothing touches their legs under the billowing skirts, except their shifts and stockings. They are like swans, drifting along on unseen feet; or else like the jellyfish in the waters of the rocky harbour near our house, when I was little, before I ever made the long sad journey across the ocean. They were bell-shaped and ruffled, gracefully waving and lovely under the sea; but if they washed up on the beach and dried out in the sun there was nothing left of them. And that is what the ladies are like: mostly water.

There were no wire crinolines when I was first brought here. They were horsehair then, as the wire ones were not thought of. I have looked at them hanging in the wardrobes, when I go in to tidy and empty the slops. They are like birdcages; but what is being caged in? Legs, the legs of ladies; legs penned in so they cannot get out and go rubbing up against the gentlemen’s trousers. The Governor’s wife never says legs, although the newspapers said legs when they were talking about Nancy, with her dead legs sticking out from under the washtub.

It isn’t only the jellyfish ladies that come. On Tuesdays we have the Woman Question, and the emancipation of this or that, with reform-minded persons of both sexes; and on Thursdays the Spiritualist Circle, for tea and conversing with the dead, which is a comfort to the Governor’s wife because of her departed infant son. But mainly it is the ladies. They sit sipping from the thin cups, and the Governor’s wife rings a little china bell. She does not like being the Governor’s wife, she would prefer the Governor to be the governor of something other than a prison. The Governor had good enough friends to get him made the Governor, but not for anything else.

So here she is, and she must make the most of her social position and accomplishments, and although an object of fear, like a spider, and of charity as well, I am also one of the accomplishments. I come into the room and curtsy and move about, mouth straight, head bent, and I pick up the cups or set them down, depending; and they stare without appearing to, out from under their bonnets. The reason they want to see me is that I am a celebrated murderess. Or that is what has been written down. When I first saw it I was surprised, because they say Celebrated Singer and Celebrated Poetess and Celebrated Spiritualist and Celebrated Actress, but what is there to celebrate about murder? All the same, Murderess is a strong word to have attached to you. It has a smell to it, that word — musky and oppressive, like dead flowers in a vase. Sometimes at night I whisper it over to myself: Murderess, Murderess. It rustles, like a taffeta skirt across the floor. Murderer is merely brutal. It’s like a hammer, or a lump of metal. I would rather be a murderess than a murderer, if those are the only choices.

Sometimes when I am dusting the mirror with the grapes I look at myself in it, although I know it is vanity. In the afternoon light of the parlour my skin is a pale mauve, like a faded bruise, and my teeth are greenish. I think of all the things that have been written about me — that I am an inhuman female demon, that I am an innocent victim of a blackguard forced against my will and in danger of my own life, that I was too ignorant to know how to act and that to hang me would be judicial murder, that I am fond of animals, that I am very handsome with a brilliant complexion, that I have blue eyes, that I have green eyes, that I have auburn and also brown hair, that I am tall and also not above the average height, that I am well and decently dressed, that I robbed a dead woman to appear so, that I am brisk and smart about my work, that I am of a sullen disposition with a quarrelsome temper, that I have the appearance of a person rather above my humble station, that I am a good girl with a pliable nature and no harm is told of me, that I am cunning and devious, that I am soft in the head and little better than an idiot. And I wonder, how can I be all of these different things at once?