Wicked Girls (17 page)

“What'll we do next?”

I ask Mercy as I dip my bread

in the stew. The door to Ingersoll's

opens, and who steps into the place

but Isaac Farrar. My jaw do fall

and so does my bread into the porringer.

“'Tis Isaac,” I say.

“Yea, I see that,” Mercy says.

“He can't see me eat,” I say.

“Have ye a turkey's brain?

This be the first good meal

I have seen thee eat in weeks.”

Mercy shakes her head

and pushes the bread to me.

“How do I look?”

I pull at my scraggly hair.

I look in front of me

at the queen of beauty,

every hair on her head perfect,

and I want to cry.

“Stop fussing,” Mercy says.

Isaac eyes me then

and starts walking to our table.

I can't move nothing

like I be iced to my chair.

“What do I do?”

I whisper all frantic to Mercy.

“Isaac, how fare thee?”

Mercy smiles and tilts up her chin.

“Ye girls be stirring trouble?”

Isaac says, and locks on me

with a fierce, stern eye.

I shake my head.

“See any witches in the tavern today?”

He says this loud so all can hear him.

I look on Mercy and she blinks.

“Yea, we both be tormented today,” I say.

Folk move toward our table.

“We see Goody Nurse and Goody Good

and the wizard Giles Corey,” Mercy says.

“Show them your arm, Margaret.”

I hold up my purpled and blackened arm.

Isaac leans toward us. “I think ye

be the witches.”

Uncle Ingersoll, the tavern owner,

pulls Isaac back from us.

“How darest thou say such

about Margaret and Mercy?

Seest thou not the proof

of my niece's suffering?”

“Perhaps I am mistaken,”

Isaac says, but he eyes me hard again.

“But 'twould be a pity to hang the innocent.”

“Yes, 'tis horrible to cause

harm to the innocent,” Mercy says,

and rises aside Isaac.

“Thou wouldst know.”

The two of them stare

each other down

like they be holding muskets

ready to shoot.

Isaac drops his weapon. “Margaret.”

He places his hand 'pon my shoulder.

“You
do not
want to share company

with
these girls
.”

Mercy clasps my hand. “Leave us.”

My uncle then asks gently

that Isaac make his way

out of the ordinary.

Mother burns.

The fever that courses

through town bites her

with its dirty fangs.

“Good folk from everywhere,

Andover, Boston, are dying,”

Father says.

Mother is large now with child,

but shrinking each day.

None dare speak of the baby;

to lose another one would send her

to the madhouse, or worse, the grave.

They quarantine Mother upstairs.

Only a slave tends her.

Her cry sounds like my grandfather's

screamings before he died.

“Please let me go to her,” I beg Father.

But he pulls me down from the staircase.

His voice is stern. “Ann, you are needed

for trial. You cannot catch fever.

Stay in your room.”

'Tis I who am exiled from Mother.

I quarantine Wilson in the tiny

back shed. He whimpers like Mother,

that big dog.

I will wait till Father sleeps

and then slink up the stairs.

I will see my mother.

I need to lie beside her crying

and let go tears.

I stand silently behind her,

still as a stalk on a windless hill.

Abigail peers into the meetinghouse window.

I jiggle her shoulder.

When Abigail begins to scream,

I cup her mouth.

“Abigail Williams, what art thou about?”

I whisper to her ear.

“I be listening to their talk,”

she says, and looks down.

“Fine idea,” I say. I join her

on the embankment. Abigail smiles.

We watch the men fastened to their benches.

They shake their heads like weeds

do twist in the wind.

Reverend's voice rattles through the pane,

“John and Mary Tarbell, Samuel and Mary Nurse,

and Peter Cloyse all have been absent

from worship many Sabbaths now.

What say you we do?” He steps away

from the pulpit and sits aside Thomas Putnam.

“A committee ought to be formed to talk

to them,” the Constable suggests.

“Let them rot with their devil kin,”

says Ann's father, Thomas Putnam,

and straightens his hat. “Need we their kind?”

I clasp Abigail's hand.

“I need you to do something for me.

Remember how you stole letters

from your uncle's desk before?

I want you to take the letters

the Reverend receives this week

and bring them to me each day.”

I narrow my eyes.

“But Reverend must not know you take them.

Abigail, you are being given

a very important job. Can I trust you

or need I ask Ann to do this?”

“Oh no, I can do it. I will sneak them

so he cannot miss the letters,” she says,

and skips quickly down the path.

I inhale large and climb away from the window.

The sun heats my steps, and when I look down

I see the outline of myself expand on the grass—

big, black and important, taller than I ever imagined

I would stand. I stumble to think of why.

The sun causes me to sweat

and tremble like the old ladies.

“I can't be sure we should do this,”

I say to Mercy.

Before I can say more, she faints

outside of the parsonage

as the bell sounds for meeting.

Her fingers clutch round her throat,

choking her breath.

“Who torments thee, child?”

Reverend Parris kneels over Mercy

in front of the whole membership.

Mercy can't make full words,

but she ekes out, “Eye Ah,” and gestures

toward Isaac with her eyes.

Ann and Abigail squint dumbstruck

in the morning sun when Reverend

asks them to confirm, “Isaac?”

They do nod heads and repeat, “Isaac.”

The Reverend cradles Mercy in his arms

as she moans and quivers. “Poor girl.”

He shakes his head and scowls at Isaac.

Someone cries, “Arrest the wizard!”

Folk circle round Isaac and his family.

“I be innocent,” Isaac says as the Constable

pins Isaac's arms behind him.

Isaac spits at Mercy twitching in the dirt

and folk scream. Isaac calls her “Lying witch.”

“To the jail with ye, boy!” The Reverend

points a finger direct to prison.

I hold up my hand. “No, stop, sir.

'Tis the wrong man.” I look at Isaac direct.

“The specter who chokes Mercy

be Giles Corey. I see him clear.”

I repeat, “Giles Corey.

Mercy, Giles Corey

be the one tormenting ye?”

Mercy nods and the crowd gasps.

“But she said Isaac.”

Reverend's face bulges like

an overgrown trunk.

“Mercy said, ‘He was,' and pointed

at Goodman Corey,” I explain.

Constable releases Isaac.

Folk shake heads and shrug shoulders.

They settle down and then file

into meeting.

I hold Mercy's hand as she is too

weak to stand or go into church

just yet.

Isaac don't even look on us

as he shuffles lastly in the meetinghouse,

but he do know what did happen.

I should feel right good,

but I feel quite bad.

My fingers touch not

when I wrap my arms

round Mother and the baby

kicking at her belly.

I kneel before her

and kiss her fair hand.

“Please forgive me.

I have been devilish to thee.”

“You have been bewitched

for certain. I forgive thee, my firstborn.

Now fetch me my broth.”

Mother sips a few spoonfuls,

but then dissatisfaction washes

over her face as though she wishes

to eat something different.

“What else may I fetch thee?”

“Nothing for certain.

This broth does me well.”

Mother exhales loud as an old bellow.

“What you should do for your mother

is to end your allegiance to that servant.”

“But Mercy—” I begin.

“Hush your tongue, child.”

Mother grows apple red.

“Was I not on my deathbed?

A mother knows. Thou shalt see.

That servant be not kin, she be not

fit to walk behind you, less beside you.”

Margaret holds the paper over the fire.

A spark could leap up and eat away

all the words. A corner of the parchment

catches to orange, and I blow the little flame cold.

“You cannot burn that letter,” I say to her,

and snatch it from her hands.

“And it would not change things anyway.”

Doubt descends like nightfall upon our village.

It is still summer, our days longer

than the moonlit hours, but one feels

winter coming, for even in the breathless

heat there grows cold.

I read the letter from Reverend Mather

again. “Reverend Cotton Mather,

like others in our village, questions

whether the specters we girls see

be the Devil,

or innocent people the Devil disguises himself as.”

I look at Margaret. “Understand you this?”

She dips her bread in maple syrup,

swats a bee swirling over her head.

“But still when we fit, the law locks

the witches up and then tries and hangs

the lot of them what don't confess.”

She lowers her head. “More hang this Friday.”

“One who deserves it, Burroughs,

and four who do not, and we can do

little but stand by and watch.

Still, the Lord calls us to track

and punish the guilty ones.”

I swipe the tear trailing down my cheek.

“But it is changing, Margaret,

like a shift of wind.

We will not be heard anymore,” I say.

Margaret says, “We must just remain

strong and united.”

I pick the bread off my skirt and dunk

it in her pot of syrup. I nod my head,

but I am not so sure.

Four men and one woman

pulled in the death cart.

My old master,

who surely deserves to die,

Reverend George Burroughs,

speaks the Lord's Prayer

with a noose about his neck,

every word in place,

as a witch should not be able to recite.

The crowd quakes

as though the earth were splitting apart.

“How can he recite the Lord's Prayer?”

someone asks. Another wonders,

“Did we make a mistake?”

Ann cries, “The Devil stands beside Reverend Burroughs

and whispers the words of the prayer in his ear.”

She gestures to the right of the man.

My tongue weights down my mouth,

and I am not sure whether or not to speak,

but then I affirm, “Aye, the Devil stands there.”

All the girls point and say the Devil

told Reverend Burroughs what to say.

William Burroughs does not kick his way to death.

His neck snaps and his head hangs,

like a broken twig, apart from his body.

Someone in the crowd shouts, “He was innocent!”

Shoves and hollers erupt and soon people are crying,

“We killed an innocent man!” Dirt clouds

around my face as riled hooves kick up the ground.

Not until Reverend Cotton Mather,

the man who has questioned the witch trials,

raises his hands and hushes everyone

with a prayer, only then, does cease

the bickering and yelling.

I bend over and vomit. I turn from the hanging.

I turn from the Reverend Mather's assurance

that we hung the guilty—something inside me

cannot hold on to it.