Conversion

by Katherine Howe

  One of the science-team henchmen passed the star a megaphone. She flashed a brilliant smile and cried, “Good afternoon, girls!” Her words echoed off the chapel walls, filling our ears with sound and authority.

  The screams rose in pitch. Girls in plaid skirts elbowed each other out of the way, trying to get closer. Camera lights beamed at Bethany Witherspoon from several directions, throwing her into a weird flat light, with freaky shadows under her eyes.

  “We’ve spent the entire day on your beautiful campus!” she boomed through the megaphone. “We’ve taken samples from the basement, the gym, the classrooms, the HVAC, the athletic fields, and everywhere in between!”

  More screaming.

  “And we’re here to tell you that we’re going to get to the bottom of this problem! We’re not going to be fooled by any school nurse, or any fancy epidemiologist!”

  Everyone was clapping and screaming with their hands pressed to their cheeks. Some of us were reaching for her at the pulpit, clawing to get closer. Girls’ arms thrust for Bethany Witherspoon’s ankles, as if she alone could drag them out of hell.

  “Do you want to have tricoethylene poisoning your air and your water?”

  “No!” we screamed.

  “Do you think it’s okay for them to just dump chemicals right next to a school and not tell anybody?”

  “No!!” we chorused in delirium.

  “We’re going to hold the government accountable for what’s happened here! We’re going to find the answer! And we’re not going to let anyone cover it up, are we?”

  “NO!” the entire chapel thundered.

  “ARE WE?”

  “NO!!” we bellowed louder, many of us beating on the pews with our hands and feet.

  “Are you going to sit there and let the Massachusetts Department of Public Health tell you you’re not really sick?” Bethany Witherspoon pointed at the nondescript person in the white jacket frowning off to one side of the pulpit.

  “NO!!” we bellowed at the top of our lungs.

  “We’re here to uncover the truth, and we’re not going to let anyone stand in our way! Now, who’s with me?”

  Everyone in the chapel erupted in a formless frenzy, girls and protesters and reporters rushing the pulpit as Bethany Witherspoon passed the megaphone into the waiting hands of an underling and started gathering girls to her, hugging them and waving at the cameras.

  The crazy part was, I felt it, too. I wanted to run to her, to surrender to her the responsibility for what was happening. I wanted to let the pressure out of me, the years and years of anxiety and terror and fear, let it all come screaming out of my mouth. And when I looked at Emma next to me, her eyes almost glowing with desire, I knew I wasn’t the only one.

  INTERLUDE

  SALEM VILLAGE, MASSACHUSETTS

  MAY 30, 1706

  There’s a soft knock on the door, and Goody Green pokes her gentle nose into the Reverend’s study.

  “Do excuse me,” she says. “But the girls’re getting hungry. It’s suppertime.”

  I scowl at her with a sudden heated flame of hate.

  “Thank you, my dear,” Reverend Green says, and perhaps it’s my imagination that he looks guilty around the edges.

  He’d rather hear the rest of my story. I smile slowly at the minister’s wife.

  “Well,” she says to him, and then her eyes slide to me, and when she sees my possessive smile, she recoils, unable to hide her dislike.

  “We won’t be long.”

  “Of course,” she says through her lowered eyebrows. “If you and Ann still have things to discuss. I’ll be right out here.”

  The door closes. I’m sure she will be right out there. Maybe she’ll go so far as to listen in at the door. I would, if I were her.

  “What happened the next day, Ann?” the Reverend says, leaning deeper into my thrall.

  On March 2 my mother shakes me awake before light and tells me I’d better dress myself, and hurry.

  “Why, Mama? What’s happened?” I ask through squinting eyes.

  Betty Hubbard’s lost in sleep next to me, one of her skinny arms around my neck, and I’m loath to leave our warm pallet. I rub my eye with a fist and look up at my mother’s pinched face. She’s wearing a fresh linen liner in her hood, and its crisp white lace makes her face look milky in the early spring morning.

  “Your father’s been at the jail all night. With Reverend Parris. We’re to meet them at the meetinghouse this morning.”

  I lift myself on an elbow and say, “They were talking to Tittibe?”

  A shadow crosses through my mother’s eyes that I don’t understand.

  “Yes, Annie. Talking to her. They expect she’ll name the Reverend’s enemies today. It’ll be a great day for the village. We’ll be whole again.”

  A deep and sickening fear grips my entrails, and I swallow thickly to keep from being sick all over the linens. Then I’d have to wash them while everyone else goes to the meetinghouse to see what happens.

  “Come along. Don’t lie abed like a lug. And get Betty up.”

  At the sound of her name, Betty Hubbard stirs, rolling onto her side and murmuring, “Go away.”

  “Insolent girl.” My mother scowls. “Be dressed before I can blink twice, or your hide’ll regret it.”

  “Betty,” I say, shaking her shoulder.

  “What?” she moans. “Leave me be. I’m bewitched. It makes me tired.”

  “You wake up right now!” I dig my nails into her shoulder flesh and shake like a dog on a squirrel.

  “What?” Betty whines, opening an eye and looking at me. “I want to go home. I’m going to tell my uncle today he’d better take me.”

  “That’s all well and good, but today we’re expected back at the meetinghouse,” I say. “Now get up.”

  “What for? They already talked to Tittibe. And those other two. Sarah Good scares me.” She draws the bedclothes up under her chin and pouts.

  “My father’s been with the Reverend at the jail all night. Your uncle, too, I wager. Talking to Tittibe Indian. Mother says today Tittibe’s going to name the people who’ve been hounding Reverend Parris. Trying to undermine his ministry.”

  “His ministry?” She sits up now, also confused. “But . . . Abby said . . .”

  “What do they care what Abby Williams says? She’s eleven.”

  I’ve known for a while that most of the adults in town only pretend to get along well with each other. They always tell us we must behave, we must be kind to children whom we hate. They tell us that God can see into our souls and knows our blackest thoughts. They tell us to do and say only the purest things, or we’ll never gain the kingdom of heaven.

  But they’re hypocrites, every last one. We’re beginning to understand that our game has been wrestled away from us. That in a way we cannot fully understand, it’s nothing to do with us at all.

  “Get up,” I say. “It’s about to be over.”

  The crowd at the meetinghouse is even bigger and more boisterous than the day before. My mother has to fight our way to the doors. In the throng I spot a girl I half know, Mercy Dane, alone in the crowd, and her icy pale eyes look on me with a hate so burning white, it sears my soul. I look away, and hot tears spring to my eyes. I feel like I’ve been slapped in the face.

  By the time we achieve the meetinghouse aisle, foul and wild-eyed Sarah Good and that libertine crone Sarah Osburn already cower at the front, hunched together, their wrists linked with heavy rope.

  My mother elbows her way through the throng, pulling me and Betty Hubbard along by our arms, crying, “Out of the way! Move out of the way!”

  The magistrates stand in a black-coated knot off to one side, having a discussion involving much waving of hands and seeming concern about the time.

  At the front of the meetinghouse a bench awaits, and
I’m surprised to find it occupied only by Mary Warren and Goody Pope. My mother steers us to the bench and pushes us roughly to our seats, then shoves herself into a space on the bench just behind, earning frowns and muttering from those who arrived early to watch the play unfold.

  No sooner have we been seated than a hue and cry breaks out at the back of the assembly and the doors are thrown open to the sharp spring air. There stands Reverend Parris, with the sallow face of a man long without rest, flanked by my father, by the old doctor, by a few other men I don’t know, by Abigail Williams, and by his daughter Betty Parris. His hand is clenched around the upper arm of Tittibe Indian, who holds her head up high and meets no one’s gaze.

  When I see Tittibe, I cry out and then quickly cover my mouth.

  One of her eyes is empurpled and swollen shut. Her lip is split and cracked with dried blood. As they advance forward, she limps and must be held up by the Reverend on one side and by the warden who guides her other arm. Her skirt, already patched with wear, is torn and ragged at the ends. As she passes by our bench, she does not look at us.

  “Unconscionable,” spits a male voice a pew behind me. “Look, you, how they’ve treated her. Didn’t I tell you? There’s nothing of witchcraft to any of this.”

  “Hush, Goodman Calef,” someone else says.

  Abby and Betty Parris slip in next to me, their small faces pointed and serious.

  “What is this?” I hiss to them.

  Abby levels a prim look at me. “She’ll name them all now,” she whispers.

  Next to her, little Betty Parris, who was brought up by Tittibe, nods. “She’ll name all the witches now, Annie. You see if she won’t.”

  The judge begins with no preamble. We all know why we’re here.

  “You spoke of a man yesterday, Tituba. What covenant did you make with that man who came to you? What did he tell you?” asks Judge Hathorne.

  Tittibe speaks in a near monotone, and the pulp of her lip makes her voice thick and hard to discern.

  “He tell me that he God, and I must believe him and serve him six years, and he would give me many fine things.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “About six weeks and a little more. Friday night before Abigail was ill.”

  “Did you promise to serve him when he spoke to you then? What did you answer him?”

  “I told him I could not believe him God. I told him I’d have to ask my master, and I would’ve gone up to ask Reverend Parris, but the black man stopped me.”

  “What did you promise him?”

  “The first time I believe him God and he was glad of it. Then he tell me they must meet together.”

  “With the other witches? When did he say you must meet together?”

  “He tell me Wednesday next at my master’s house, and then they all meet together and that night I saw them all stand in the corner, all four of them, and the man stand behind me and take hold of me to make me stand still in the hall.”

  “Where was your master then?” the judge asks, glancing at Reverend Parris, who is making notes at the same table with Goodman Cheever.

  Tittibe stares at Samuel Parris. She waits a very long moment before she answers. All us girls begin, very quietly, to tremble.

  “He were in the other room.”

  “What time of night was this?”

  “A little before prayer time.”

  “What did this man say to you when he took hold of you?”

  “He say go and do hurt to them and pinch them. And then I went in, and would not hurt them a good while, I would not hurt Betty, I loved Betty, but they make me pinch Betty and next Abigail.”

  Abigail and Betty Parris choose this moment to cry out and rub their hands over their pinch marks, which must vex them terribly, if their consciences do not.

  “Did the other witches pinch the girls, too?”

  “No, but they all looked on and see me pinch them.”

  “Did you go into that room in your current form? And did the other witches, too, or did they send their spirits?”

  “They went in their natural forms and my master didn’t see us, for they wouldn’t let my master see. Their magic blinded him.”

  “When the other witches left the parsonage, did you go with the company?”

  “No, I stayed. And the Devil stayed with me.”

  The entire meetinghouse gasps in horror. The Devil lingered in the Reverend’s house. The Devil himself! He may have even sat at the minister’s table. Reverend Parris’s cheek twitches, and he looks hard at the paper before him.

  “What did the Devil then do to you?”

  “He tell me my master would go to prayer and Reverend Parris he read in the good book and Reverend Parris he’d ask me what I remember from the Scripture, but the Devil tell me don’t you remember nothing.”

  “And what happened the next time you saw the Devil?”

  “He ask me again that I serve him six years. Then he show me a book.”

  “When did he come the next time?”

  “The next Friday in the daytime, betimes in the morning.”

  “What book did he bring? A great or little book?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t show it to me, but had it in his pocket.”

  “Didn’t he make you write your name in the book?”

  “No, not yet, for my mistress called me into the other room.”

  “When you came back, what did he say you must do in that book?”

  “He said I must write and set my name to it.”

  “Did you do as he said?” the judge asks.

  Tittibe pauses, knowing what horror she’s about to admit. She clears her throat, and we all lean forward, our lips parted, as though ready to drink the lie from her bloodied mouth.

  “Yes,” she says, and we all groan in horrified satisfaction. “Once. I make a mark in the book. I make it with red blood.”

  Judge Hathorne peers at her with a frown. “Did the Devil get the blood out of your body?”

  “He said he must get it out the next time he come.”

  “Did you see any other marks in his book?”

  “Yes, a great many. Some marks red, some yellow.” Tittibe pauses, her eye roving over the crowd. “He open his book and I see a great many marks in it.” She pauses again. “Belonging to a great many people.”

  The judge steeples his fingertips before his mouth.

  “Tituba,” he intones. “Did the Devil tell you the names of the other witches?”

  The murmuring in the meetinghouse freezes to silence. The room is so quiet, I can hear Betty Hubbard and Abby Williams breathing on either side of me.

  The slave is aware of her abrupt command of us all. Her voice rises with new authority.

  “Yes.”

  The room buzzes with certainty, and I hear many names being whispered of likely witch confederates. The Devil has been loosed in Salem, and we’re about to learn who’s been serving him in secret, masquerading as good Christians.

  “Of two,” Tittibe hastens to add. “Not more. Good and Osburn. The Devil say they make their marks in that book, he showed them to me.”

  Beneath my fear, I marvel at Tittibe Indian. When my father beats me, I’m quick to say whatever will make him stop. She could have named anyone, anyone at all, along with the women we’ve already long suspected, and we would have believed her.

  The judge, however, is bound to find out more. “How many marks do you think there were, in the Devil’s book?”

  Tittibe shifts her eyes to Reverend Parris, who gives her a curt nod.

  “Nine,” she says. “I counted nine.”

  “Did they all write their names, too?”

  “They make marks. Goody Good tell me she make her mark, but Goody Osburn wouldn’t tell. She was cross to me.”

  Go
ody Osburn, the strumpet crone, as my mother’s called her, spits on the floor between her feet and says nothing.

  “When did Goody Good tell you she set her hand to the book?” Judge Hathorne wants to know.

  “The same day I came hither to prison,” she replies. They were all three put in prison together, Tittibe and the Sarahs. I wonder what they said to each other in that prison cell at night.

  “I see. Did you see the Devil that morning in prison?”

  “Yes, a little in the morning. He tell me the magistrates were coming up to examine me. He say I must tell nothing, that if I did, he would cut my head off.”

  “Tell us how many women used to come when you witches rid abroad on sticks.”

  “Four of them. These two”—she points at Sarah Good, whose eyes won’t focus and who seems much amazed, and Sarah Osburn, who seems angry enough to set the meetinghouse on fire with a look—“and two strangers.”

  The judge, we can all see, thinks he’s about to get to the bottom of this. “You say that there were nine witches in total. Did he tell you who they were?”

  The assembly behind us all nods, urging her to reveal the witches’ names. Some even go so far as to offer suggestions.

  Tittibe’s voice wavers with panic. “No,” she cries. “He not let me see. He tell me I should see them the next time at our Sabbath.”

  “But didn’t he tell you the names of the others?” The judge’s lips are pressed together in frustration, and Samuel Parris wears a look of murderous rage.

  “No sir,” says Tittibe.

  “Did he at least tell you where the nine lived?” the judge booms at the frightened slave, who is sagging against the bar, unable to hold up her weight any longer. Tears have begun to stream from her blackened eye. “Speak, woman! You saw their faces! You saw their marks in the Devil’s book! You know that they numbered nine in the coven! You will tell us where they live, by God, you will, or you’ll suffer the consequences!”

  The island woman lets out a desperate scream of anguish and fear. We girls clutch each other, shaking, Betty Parris gasping out tears, and someone moans in misery and despair.