Wicked Girls (14 page)

Isaac comes not.

I twist in the night

like a wrung-out rag,

wet and worn.

Ann wakes. She covers

her head with her pillow.

I know she misses sleep.

I pack my tapers and stockings

and clothes and such.

My home sounds as a bandage

for this gash I got ripped

across my chest.

Home might feel as angel wings

fanning me softly to dream.

Home might bring Isaac

back to me, as he'll ne'er step boot

in this place, not with all

the witch-naming folk what live here.

We stuff into Salem Town's courtroom.

The wigged men scratch their heads,

shift their papers, ready to decide

if the witch Goody Good,

the beggar woman we first accused

who was known many years to be a witch,

will be put to death.

I hold above my head

the jagged half of a broken knife.

The metal sparkles across the courtroom.

“Goody Good stabbed me in the breast

with her knife until it broke.”

Tucked deep in the back of the room,

a young man clears his voice and says,

“I believe that be part of my knife.

I threw it away evening last.”

“Come forward,” Judge Newton commands.

The young farmhand places the handle

of a broken half knife on the judges' bench.

“Ann, bring forth your piece.”

Judge Stoughton points his gavel at me.

He puzzles the two knife parts exactly together.

The judge leans over the bench.

His eyes wind up to slap my face.

“In a courtroom one must be truthful.”

Judge Stoughton reprimands,

but he speaks to the farmhand,

stares him down until the boy nods and says,

“Yes, sir,” and slinks back into the crowd.

Mercy tugs my arm after the proceedings.

“Ann, do not cause suspicion.

Steal not knives as evidence.”

I start to explain, but Mercy cuts me—

“You are keener than the other girls.

I expect better from you.”

“Miss Ann.” Susannah pants

and bends over as she speaks.

She grabs my arm as a brace.

“Ye did so beautiful today.

I could never be calm like ye

in front of the judges and all.

Ye work like a miracle.”

“I was not—” I begin to tell her

how I acted wrongly, but stop.

Susannah pats my shoulder.

“Mighty Miss Ann,” she sighs.

Mother stares at Susannah and me,

a look of disgust painted on her lips.

I look over to Mercy,

but when Mercy sees me

she squares herself

to talk only to Elizabeth.

I turn then to Susannah, a servant

not telling me what to do.

Susannah bathes me in.

I am sun and all to her.

I pin my dress.

The fabric wraps again

round half my body.

My fingers blue ice

even in summer's heat.

“Maaargaret.” I had forgotten

that voice for a few weeks. Step-Mother

ought to be fined for her hollering.

“Yea,” I say as I skirt into the kitchen.

“I made biscuits this morn.”

She bares all her teeth,

snaggled and black,

something green caught

between them.

“You best eat my food.

You might well have starved to death

at your uncle's, but not back here.”

I slide past the table and tell her,

“I got preliminary examinations

in the meetinghouse, and then we testify

in Salem's court for the trials.”

But before I can place my hand

on the door, she wraps up

a few of the crusty things.

“Here then, take them with thee.”

I inhale and reach for the door,

but she holds me back.

“I will see thee at the trial

this afternoon. Judge Stoughton

doth amaze with his questions.”

She swipes her brow.

I fear her swoon will tip her over

and her massive form will crush me

as wheat to flour.

“Good day.” I say it sweet,

but close the door

with what little force I possess.

Three steps down the road

I yell, “Here, boy.”

Ridley sniffs at my hand.

The three biscuits devoured,

he licks his chin for more.

Judge Corwin adjusts his spectacles.

“Charlotte Easty, many petitions

be laid upon the bench for thee.

What say you to these accusations

of witchcraft?”

Charlotte quivers not, no

speck of madness in her eye.

“I am innocent, sir.”

Magistrate Hathorne points

at Abigail and Ann,

twisted as serpents upon the floor.

“What have you done to these girls?”

“Nothing but pray for them each

night, for the Devil surely torments

them,” Goody Easty says.

The court falls quiet

as the forest after a rainstorm

until we girls

scream out in pain.

I shiver with a cold

I have not known before,

I know not why,

and then I see it in their eyes:

this crowd

carries the hangman's noose.

Ann ceases her crying.

I see her half-smile.

“Perhaps 'twas not Charlotte Easty

who tormented me.”

Why is she doing this?

I try to signal Ann not now,

not today, but I am too late.

Abigail follows her,

“Yes, Charlotte Easty be not the one.”

The courtroom stomps

and roars like a mob

of angry cattle.

“Do not play, Ann,” I whisper.

“I feel pinched!” I scream out,

but the courtroom chant drowns

my moaning.

They scream, “Release Goody Easty!”

as we girls are shuttled from

a room of unfriendly eyes.

“How could they release the witch

Goody Easty, Rebecca Nurse's

second sister, from prison?”

Ann whines in front of Abigail and Susannah.

I nearly wish to push her into the stream

as we travel back from Ingersoll's tavern.

You know why this happened,

I want to scream in Ann's face.

I hate that I must actually say,

“Some are already against us.

We must be steadfast.

We must never admit

the path we take

may be the wrong one.”

I quicken my pace.

Ann's eyes sparkle with tears

She starts, “But I—”

I fairly well run in the opposite

direction Ann travels home.

I do not even want to hear

her footsteps.

I collapse at Constable Putnam's

door. They tuck me into my new bed.

My fits must then begin,

and never a cessation.

I convulse so long I cannot stop

twitching—dazed, speechless,

choked violet, on death's ashen pillow.

A crowd gathers to witness my torture, my demise.

Ann says, “'Tis Goody Easty

who chokes Mercy.

Goody Easty's specter dances

on the beam above Mercy's head,

twists a chain around her neck.”

Abigail cries, “Goody Easty threatens

to kill Mercy because

Mercy accused her in the courtroom!”

The girls all fall in line behind

my horse. They follow the path.

Except Susannah,

who never does say

she has seen Charlotte Easty.

We shackle the witch

into the jail's dungeon,

and my ailments

slowly improve.

I clearly will have to be the driver now.

I must hold the whip,

bear the cold and steer the carriage.

For if I do not,

then men like John Alden,

who aided in killing my family,

and Reverend Burroughs

with his wicked hands

and nasty belt upon wives and little girls,

might also go free.

I step up.

I wind around my wrists

Ann's slacking reins.

Charlotte Easty's led

into the Court of Oyer and Terminer,

her face not deathly pale,

but the sadness in her eyes

greater than that of the sow

next to be slaughtered.

“I am innocent,”

she says without spite.

She looks like the sky

around a star, almost radiant.

“Charlotte Easty came at us

with a spindle,” Ann cries.

“Yea, she be stabbing at us,”

Margaret says.

Ann's mother pulls herself to standing

and stomps her heel—

“Our spindle is gone missing.”

Magistrate Corwin cannot hush

the whirs of the crowd.

It is now Susannah's turn

to act, but she forgets.

She sits like a dumb ox.

She forces me to rise from my bench

and lunge into the middle

of the courtroom.

I
tumble to the floor

wrestling an unseen force.

Abigail picks up quickly and says,

“Mercy fights Goody Easty's specter

for the spindle. There! There!”

And she points at me

rolling like a ball of yarn

around the floor.

I arrest, still as a tomb,

and the crowd silences.

All hearts seem to leap from their chests—

And folk worry do I breathe?

Constable Putnam picks me up.

I clasp the spindle

to my breast. My eyes flutter.

I crack awake like a hatching chick.

The courtroom crowd cheers

just as soldiers celebrate victory

on the battlefield.

“Is this your spindle?”

Judge Hathorne asks Missus Putman.

“Yea, that be one and the same,” she affirms.

Charlotte Easty's petitions

and her eyes like the newborn babe's

no longer protect her.

The crowd has witnessed

her attempt to murder.

All yell, “Witch!”

She will hang now,

an innocent woman,

and 'tis my fault.

I try to remind myself

that I am avenging

true demons like Burroughs

and Alden, but Charlotte Easty—

why, Lord, must she be sacrificed too?

And yet I am blinded

to any other way.

“Well that you all followed

my lead and sent Charlotte Easty

back to her cell,” Ann whispers

harshly at us and then stands to leave.

Wilson sits and will not be stirred

no matter how fierce Ann tugs

his leash.

Does Ann not realize

that Charlotte Easty, an innocent woman,

now will die, so that we will still

be believed? That all of this

might have been avoided had she

not led the girls to release

Charlotte Easty in the first place?

The other girls nod, even Margaret.

“'Twould have been horrid”

—Ann again attempts to force

Wilson to stand and leave Ingersoll's

with her—“otherwise.”

Abigail begins, “Did not Mercy…”

“Tomorrow at meeting no one

shall cause disturbance. Understood?”

Ann barks.

Ann yanks Wilson's collar, but

he still holds his place.

She meets the fire of my stare

and hands over his leash.

“I must go,” Ann says.

“Mother needs, well,

something.”

Black, she wears black,

her petticoats like tar.

The sky is white.

I cannot look to it.

Even her blood

colored black.

I cannot see

but black and white.

Old and dead,

the tree that creeps

from the rock

wears no frock of leaves,

not even in the summer.

Charlotte Easty's

body convulses, her legs squirm.

The blood gushes

from beneath her blindfold,

from her nose and mouth and ears.

She dies slowly.

She swings

though no wind blows.

My hands ball.

I could punch down

the clouds.

There is such power

in my hands.

I bend over and retch

like an empty water pump,

for nothing comes out my mouth.

The other girls gnaw

on their nails, stare bewildered

at the body hung on the tree.

Margaret trembles.

Her teeth chatter louder

than shutters unloosed in strong wind.

Abigail opens

her lips to speak.

I lift my finger,

and she reconsiders.

Elizabeth rubs her shoulder

as Doctor Griggs

checks the stopped pulse

of the witch's body.

She then falls to her knees,

folds and refolds her hands

in prayer.

Susannah stays

wisely out of view.

And Ann, Ann's big eyes

scour my skin. No matter

what be about, even a hanging,

Ann cannot unleash her eyes from me.