Alias Grace (58 page)

I
have often thought of writing to you and informing you of my good fortune, and I’ve written many letters to you in my head; and when I’ve arrived at the right way of saying things I will set pen to paper, and thus you will have news of me, if you are still in the land of the living. And if you are not, you will have learnt about all of this anyway.

Perhaps you heard of my Pardon, but perhaps you did not. I didn’t see it in any of the newspapers, which isn’t strange, as by the time I was finally set free it was an old worn-out story, and nobody would have wanted to read about it. But no doubt that was just as well. When I learnt of it, I knew for certain that you must have sent the letter to the Government after all, because it got the results in the end, along with all the petitions; although I must say they took a good long time about it, and said nothing about your letter, but only that it was a general amnesty.

The first I heard of the Pardon was from the Warden’s oldest daughter, whose name was Janet. This would not be a Warden you
ever saw, Sir, as there were many changes since you went away, and a new Warden was one of them, and there had been two or three new Governors as well, and so many new guards and keepers and matrons I could scarcely keep track of them. I was sitting in the sewing room, where you and I used to have our afternoon talks, mending stockings – for I continued to serve in a household capacity under the new Governors, as I’d done before – when Janet came in. She had a kind manner and always gave me a smile, unlike some, and although never a beauty, she’d managed to become engaged to a respectable young farmer, for which she had my heartfelt good wishes. There are some men, especially of the simpler kind, that prefer their wives to be plain rather than handsome, as that sort buckles down to the work and complains less, and there is not a great chance of their running off with another man, as what other man would go to the bother of stealing them?

On this day Janet hurried into the room, and she seemed very excited. Grace, she said, I have the most astonishing news.

I did not even bother to stop sewing, as when people told me they had astonishing news it always concerned somebody else. I was ready to hear it of course, but not ready to miss a stitch over it, if you see what I mean, Sir. Oh? I said.

Your Pardon has come through, she said. From Sir John Macdonald, and the Minister of Justice, in Ottawa. Isn’t that wonderful? She clasped her hands, and at that moment she looked like a child, although a large and ugly one, gazing at a beautiful gift. She was one of those who never did believe me to be guilty, being soft-hearted and of a sentimental nature.

At this news I put down my sewing. I felt very cold all at once, as if I was about to faint, which I hadn’t done for a long time, ever since you left, Sir. Can it be true? I said. If it was another person I would have thought she might be playing a cruel joke on me, but Janet did not relish jokes of any kind.

Yes, she said, it is really true. You are pardoned! I am so happy for you!

I could see that she felt some tears were in order, and I shed several.

That night, and even though her father the Warden didn’t have the paper actually in hand, but only a letter about it, nothing would do but that I had to be moved out of my prison cell and into the spare bedroom at the Warden’s house. This was the doing of Janet, the good soul, but she had the assistance of her mother, as my Pardon was indeed an unusual event in the dull routine of the prison, and people like to have some contact with events of that sort, so they can talk about them to their friends afterwards; so I was made a fuss of.

After I’d blown out my candle I lay in the best bed, wearing one of Janet’s cotton nightdresses instead of the coarse yellowy prison one, and looking up at the dark ceiling. I tossed and turned, and somehow I couldn’t get comfortable, I guess comfort is what you’re accustomed to, and by that time I was more accustomed to my narrow prison bed than to a spare bedroom with clean sheets. The room was so large it was almost frightening to me, and I pulled the sheet up over my head to make it darker; and then I felt as if my face was dissolving and turning into someone else’s face, and I recalled my poor mother in her shroud, as they were sliding her into the sea, and how I thought that she had already changed inside the sheet, and was a different woman, and now the same thing was happening to me. Of course I wasn’t dying, but it was in a way similar.

The next day at breakfast, the Warden’s whole family sat beaming at me with moist eyes, as if I was some rare and cherished thing, like a baby snatched out of a river; and the Warden said we should give thanks for the one lost lamb that had been rescued, and they all said a fervent Amen.

That is it, I thought. I have been rescued, and now I must act like someone who has been rescued. And so I tried. It was very strange to realize that I would not be a celebrated murderess any more, but seen perhaps as an innocent woman wrongly accused and imprisoned unjustly, or at least for too long a time, and an object of pity rather than of horror and fear. It took me some days to get used to the idea; indeed, I am not quite used to it yet. It calls for a different arrangement of the face; but I suppose it will become easier in time.

Of course to those who do not know my story I will not be anybody in particular.

After breakfast on that day I was strangely dejected. Janet noticed it and asked me why, and I said, I’ve been in this prison now for almost twenty-nine years, I have no friends or family outside it, and where am I to go and what am I to do? I have no money, nor any means of earning any, and no proper clothing, and I am unlikely to obtain a situation anywhere in the vicinity, as my story is too well known – because despite the Pardon, which is all very well, a mistress in any right-thinking family would not want me in the house, as she would be afraid for the safety of her loved ones, it is only what I would do myself in their position.

I did not say to her, And I am also too old to go on the town, as I did not wish to shock her, she having been well brought up, and a Methodist. Though I must tell you, Sir, the thought did cross my mind. But what chance would I have, at my age and with so much competition, it would be a penny a time with the worst drunken sailors up an alley somewhere, and I’d be dead of disease within a year; and it made my heart fail even to consider it.

So now, instead of seeming my passport to liberty, the Pardon appeared to me as a death sentence. I was to be turned out into the streets, alone and friendless, to starve and freeze to death in a cold corner, with nothing but the clothes on my back, the ones I’d come
into the prison with; and perhaps not even those, as I had no idea what might have become of them; for all I knew they had been sold or given away long ago.

Oh no, dear Grace, said Janet. All has been thought of. I did not want to tell you everything at once, as we feared the shock of such happiness coming after such misery might be too much for you, it sometimes has that effect. But a good home has been provided for you, it is in the United States, and once you have gone there you may leave the sad past behind you, as no one there need ever know about it. It will be a new life.

She did not use exactly these words, but that was the gist of it.

But what am I to wear? said I, still in despair. Perhaps I was indeed unsettled in my wits, as a person altogether in her right mind would have asked first about the good home that was being provided, and where it was, and what I was to do there. I thought later about the way she had put it, A good home provided, it is what you say of a dog or a horse that is too old to work any more, and that you don’t wish to keep yourself or have put down.

I have thought of that too, said Janet. She was really a most helpful creature. I have looked in the storage rooms, and by some miracle the box you brought with you was still in there with your name on a label, I suppose it is because of all the petitions that were got up in your favour after the trial. They may have kept your things at first because they thought you were soon to be released, and then after that they must have forgotten all about it. I will have it brought up to your room and then we will open it, shall we?

I felt a little comforted, although I had some misgivings. And I was right to have them, for when we opened the box we found that the moths had been in and had eaten up the woollens, my mother’s thick winter shawl among them, and some of the other things were much discoloured and musty-smelling from being shut up for so long in a dampish place; the threads in some were almost rotted
through, and you could put your hand right through them. Any piece of cloth needs a good airing every once in a while, and these had been given none.

We took everything out and spread the things around the room, to see what could be saved. There were Nancy’s dresses, so pretty when fresh, now for the most part ruined, and the things I’d had from Mary Whitney; I’d prized them so much at the time and now they looked shoddy and outmoded. There was the dress I’d made at Mrs. Alderman Parkinson’s, with the bone buttons from Jeremiah, but nothing could be saved of it except the buttons. I found the piece of Mary’s hair, tied with a thread and wrapped up in a handkerchief as I’d left it, but the moths had been into that too, they will eat hair if nothing better is left and it is not stored in cedar.

The emotions I experienced were strong and painful. The room seemed to darken and I could almost see Nancy and Mary beginning to take shape again inside their clothes, only it was not a pleasant notion, as by now they themselves would be in much the same dilapidated state. I felt quite faint, and had to sit down and ask for a glass of water, and for the window to be opened.

Janet herself was taken aback; she was too young to have realized what the effects of twenty-nine years shut up in a box might be, although she made the best of it according to her nature. She said that in any case the dresses were now sadly out of fashion and we could not have me going to my new life looking like a scarecrow, but that some of the things could yet be used, such as the red flannel petticoat and some of the white ones, which could be washed in vinegar to get rid of the smell of mildew and then bleached in the sun, and they would come out white as anything. This was not quite the case, as once we had done it they were indeed lighter in colour but not what you would call white.

As for the other things, she said, we would have to look about us. I would need a wardrobe, she said. I do not know how it was done – I
suspect she begged a dress from her mother and went around among her acquaintance and collected up some other things, and I do believe the Governor contributed the money for the stockings and shoes – but at the end she’d gathered together a store of garments. I found the colours over bright, such as a green print, and a broadcloth with stripes in a magenta tone on a sky blue; it was the new chemical dyes that are now in use. These colours didn’t exactly suit me; but beggars can’t be choosers, as I’ve learnt on many occasions.

The two of us sat together and made the dresses over to fit. We were like a mother and daughter working on a trousseau, very friendly and cosy, and after a time I was quite cheered up. My only regret was the crinolines; they’d gone out of fashion and now it was all wire bustles and big bunches of cloth pulled to the back, with ruchings and fringes, more like a sofa to my mind; and so I never would have the chance to wear a crinoline. But we cannot have everything in this life.