Alice + Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis (4 page)

Alice was adept at discouraging suitors, but that would be difficult to maintain, especially if her family forced the issue. If she relented to pressure and married, there would be babies, one after the other, both her own or those of her siblings. She would be expected to help maintain the household, with little-to-no autonomy or authority over anything, including her own body.

If she did not marry, her father and brothers would decide her fate. The options in that scenario were clear: Alice could continue to live in her parents’ home, as her older sisters had, or with her married siblings.

Alice seemed to want out of the Mitchell home and into her own, but it was not as if she could just go out and get an apartment, or the job she would need to pay for it. Occupations for women were extremely limited in the 1890s, especially for her class. Of the 8,200 women employed in Memphis in 1891, 2,200 were white, and the majority of these wage earners were servants and seamstresses, and they still ended up in someone else’s home, whether it was their family’s, their employer’s, or a boarding house. They were rarely from well-to-do families like the Mitchells, working out of necessity, and yet, only about three percent made enough to claim economic independence.
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One way or another, a man would be the head of Alice’s home, and she would live the kind of life he saw fit. The other Mitchell women seemed perfectly happy to spend day after day inside, with women like Lucy Franklin tending to the household’s daily demands. Their hours were spent in a state of perpetual anticipation, filled with leisurely activities like mending and knitting, writing letters, and reading the Bible. Whether they enjoyed these tasks, or regarded them as mere distractions was immaterial; everything depended on the Mitchell men. Any time Alice’s father and brothers came in the front door, their needs were prioritized above all else.

The kind of power Alice craved, the right to come and go as she pleased and, most importantly, fully dominate Freda, could only be wielded by a man.

And so Alice would have to figure out a way to become one.

A
LICE HAD YET TO FIGURE OUT
how to transform herself—a plump, handsome woman—into a man, but she knew how to act like one. If a man wanted to spend the rest of his life with a woman, he proposed, and in February of 1891, Alice did just that. She could not make her intentions known to Freda’s family or procure Thomas Ward’s permission, but she could ask Freda to marry her, and that was all that mattered. She sent the proposal in a letter, and in return, she received a fervid acceptance.

Still, Alice sent two more letters, each one containing the same proposal. Acceptance was binding, she warned, and Freda agreed to her terms each time, posting an equal number of sanguine letters back to Memphis.

Of course, it would be nearly thirty years before women had the right to vote in America, and more than 120 years after Alice and Freda’s engagement, same-sex marriage is still illegal in the state of Tennessee.

But for Alice and Freda, these were just details, minor problems in need of creative solutions.

They devoted themselves to the task with absolute secrecy. Alice’s brother, Robert Mitchell, would later recount their letters in court, many of which emphasized Freda’s role as a “true woman,” an obedient, faithful wife.

In another document, Alice gives her ideas of what a model wife ought to be and do. She must never deceive, must know how to keep house, must know how to cook, she must be able to sew on a button and must be her first love and her last love. She closes the essay by saying if a certain browneyed girl keeps her promise she will show a model husband and wife within a year. This reference is, of course, to Freda.
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At the time, however, no one, not even Jo or Lillie, suspected anything out of the ordinary existed between them, and Alice was determined to keep it that way—even if it meant denying herself in the present.

A nineteenth-century reader would not have suspected the dispatch was actually a love letter, even though it was teeming with machinations.
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Every turn of phrase could be explained through the lens of a tender, albeit impassioned, female friendship. There was nothing unusual in the politics of cliques reaching a fevered pitch during sleepovers, especially over
sleeping arrangements. Alice appears considerate in her letter; she wants Freda to know that she prefers her, but does not wish to injure the feelings of another.

Exchanging small gifts was equally unremarkable. If the rose Alice mentions was not a euphemism, it was a perfectly respectable gift. It not only suggested affection for gardens, an acceptable interest for proper young women, but it was also very thoughtful. There was some effort involved in procuring the perfect rose, and perhaps it was of particular importance to Freda, who no longer lived in Memphis, but may have shown an attachment to its flora.

The rose was hardly the most lavish gift Alice bestowed on her intended. She had been secretly saving small sums of money, the bulk of which she reserved for their elopement and setting up house, but in June, she made one large purchase: an engagement ring for Freda. She obviously gave the purchase much thought and consideration, engraving the ring, “From A. to F.” And of course, she told no one about it.

Freda was far less discreet, happy to display their love whenever possible—the more conspicuous and dramatic, the better. To avoid suspicion, Alice argued that they should be no more demonstrative than Jo and Lillie. She thought further exhibitionism put their future in peril.

But to Alice, it was worse than imprudent—the lack of seriousness this immodest behavior implied seemed to really bother her. Schoolgirls went chumming as an imitation of what was to come, not living what had already arrived. Couples who were betrothed in earnest, which is what Alice believed them to be, did not behave that way.
Either way, in order to make it to the altar without suspicion, Alice reasoned they should appear to be the unexceptional half of a socially acceptable quartet.

I
F ALICE HAD A POST-ENGAGEMENT POLICY
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it was to pass. They were to continue to pass as girls chumming, and then later, Alice was to pass as man. At first, it was a practical measure, a necessary façade until a long-term plan could be formed, but over time, it became the plan itself. Passing as a man was more than just a way to hide a relationship between two women; as a man, she could claim all of the rights and responsibilities of a husband, too.

Alice never expressed a desire to be a man for any other reason than marrying Freda, so there is little to suggest that she saw impersonation as anything more than a means to that end. She may have been inspired by examples from history. Joan of Arc kept her hair short and wore military attire while fighting the English during the Hundred Years’ War, and in America, hundreds of women passed as soldiers in the Union and Confederate armies during the Civil War.

Alice had definitely seen actresses disguised in men’s clothing, wigs, and makeup at the theater, and it seemed to influence her transformation—the adornments, that is, but not the gestures. If she studied the mannerisms and word choices of men, practiced deepening her voice and displaying the chivalrous behavior expected from Southern gentlemen, she made no mention of it. She did, however, discuss ordering a suit and fashioning her hair into a style worn by young men. If it would please Freda, Alice promised to grow a mustache. She would shave the loosely scattered, light hairs that grew above her upper lip, hoping that each new growth would get her closer to darker, bristly stubble.

Freda, who longed to be on the stage, was delighted that their plan now contained wardrobe considerations. She played an active role in shaping Alice’s character, mixing elements from their old life with that of their new one, as husband and wife. Freda loved calling Alice by her pet name, Allie, and thought “Alvin J. Ward” to be a similar, agreeable name.

It was careless to keep Freda’s last name, an obvious clue for whomever the family would inevitably send after them, but it was just one of several curious choices the couple made. Even though Mr. and Mrs. Alvin J. Ward wisely opted not to settle in Memphis, a city teeming with people who knew them and their families, they nevertheless planned to marry there.

Even stranger still, Freda promised to enlist her own family’s reverend from Grace Episcopal Church to perform the marriage ceremony. Freda was said to have had a lovely singing voice, and when the Wards lived in Memphis, she often performed at the church. It is hard to imagine that the reverend, who had so often seen the seventeen-year-old surrounded by the Wards, would officiate Freda’s nuptials
without questioning her family’s conspicuous absence, or why she would choose to have the ceremony downriver from the city in which they all lived.

There was a backup plan involving the local justice of the peace, though it seems likely that he would have been familiar with either the Wards or the Mitchells. There was no third option. By all accounts, they were confident they could marry in Memphis and then light out for St. Louis, where they would live happily ever after.

Alice was convinced that they would succeed. She had not proposed in three separate letters, reiterating her terms, out of sheer excitement. There had been too many misunderstandings between them, too many volatile elements; Alice wanted to make sure Freda took their commitment seriously this time. In each letter, she made it clear that there was no going back.

If Freda broke off their engagement, Alice promised to kill her for it.