The Ripper's Wife(72)
Back in my bolt-hole, I mournfully etched her initials—MJK—onto the back of my watch. I will never forget her. I will always regret her. In my dreams, she holds me in her arms, my head cradled lovingly against her breast, as she rocks me gently, like a child, strokes my hair, and croons her favorite song:
“Scenes of my childhood arise before my gaze,
Bringing recollections of bygone happy days,
When down in the meadow in childhood I would roam;
No one’s left to cheer me now within that good old home.
Father and mother they have passed away.
Sister and brother now lay beneath the clay;
But while life does remain, to cheer me I’ll retain
This small violet I pluck’d from Mother’s grave.
“Only a violet I pluck’d when but a boy,
And oft times when I’m sad at heart, this flow’r has
given me joy,
But while life does remain, in memoriam I’ll retain
This small violet I pluck’d from Mother’s grave.
“Well I remember my dear old mother’s smile,
As she used to greet me when I returned from toil;
Always knitting in the old armchair,
Father used to sit and read for all us children there.
But now all is silent around the good old home,
They all have left me in sorrow here to roam;
While life does remain, in memoriam I’ll retain
This small violet I pluck’d from Mother’s grave.
“Only a violet I pluck’d when but a boy,
And ofttimes when I’m sad at heart, this flow’r has
given me joy,
But while life does remain, in memoriam I’ll retain
This small violet I pluck’d from Mother’s grave.”
But she was the mirror and I had to break her. I couldn’t stand to look at myself anymore! Wherever she is, Mary Jane will know the truth by now, and I know she will understand. Who was it—some author, though I cannot recall the name or the book—who said that God sometimes sends us the strangest angels; we never know they have been to visit us until after they’re gone. Mary Jane Kelly was undoubtedly one of the strangest angels the Lord ever sent, an angel masquerading as a whore for a murderer masquerading as a gentle man. She ended Jack the Ripper’s bloody reign. The Autumn of Terror is over; winter is about to fall.... I killed the messenger, God’s messenger . . . GOD HELP ME! Shall I live to see springtime? I buried her heart by moonlight at the base of the flowering may, the hawthorn tree, in our garden. Sometimes I look out and fancy I see her standing there . . . watching, waiting for me . . . keeping vigil . . . my saucy ginger tart angel . . . Why didn’t you tell me God, not the Devil, sent you?
22
In November he killed again—Jack the Ripper, the faceless fiend who slashed his knife and chased me through my dreams. She was young and fair, an Irish girl, twenty-six, the same age as me. Mary Jane Kelly, that was her name. The papers said her lover could only identify her by her hair and eyes after he was done with her. Before he cut off her face, I wonder, did she in any way resemble me? He butchered her on the very bed she took him to, thinking only of his lust and money, not blood and butchery. What risks we women take! What savage carnage wrought on one only seeking coinage! He left her lying there naked, stripped of her very skin. How he must have hated her, or someone, very much.
I could not keep my breakfast down after reading the papers. I vomited everything back up and ran upstairs, dots dancing before my eyes, like fireworks doing the polka, and flung myself onto the bed May had only just finished making with only seconds to spare before I swooned. I lay there for hours, not daring to move, the flat of my palm resting on my queasy, fluttering belly, my heart galloping as though it were determined to win the Grand National.
God had seen fit to punish me, by sending me that which I most feared. I was pregnant again and I had no idea who the father was—Jim, Edwin, or Alfred. I’d been so distracted these last few months, maybe I forgot to insert the little sponge or a womb veil, or maybe it failed me? Maybe it happened one of those times when I was taken by surprise and the seed was already planted before I could even try to uproot it with a caustic douche? If I even remembered to do that? There were days when I felt as though my head would float away like a hot-air balloon if it weren’t tethered by skin and bone to my neck! Just trying to sort it all out made my head feel like it was swimming in syrup!
I tried to undo the pregnancy, with the most powerful, stinging douche I dared. I pilfered a tiny, tiny pinch of Jim’s arsenic even though it scared me so and added that to the mixture. In the privacy of my pink and ivory bathroom, I lay huddled on my side, next to the tub, with my knees drawn up tight, holding on to them as though for dear life, the bathroom tiles cold as ice beneath my burning body, and stuffed a towel into my mouth so no one would hear my screams and cried and cried. I nearly burned my insides out. It felt as though Satan himself had struck a Lucifer Match inside my womb!
When the blood began to trickle I thought I had done it, that everything would be all right. I lay flat on my back, gasping with relief and the last lingering vestiges of the unmerciful pain that had mercifully rid my womb of its unwanted burden, softly sobbing as I shakily applied great daubs of cold cream to my stinging, raw lady parts.