Wicked Girls
Page 14
“The pain be relieved!” he cries.
He gives to us chocolate
and bids us stay in the shade
for a while, but I tell him,
“No, we must go back to meeting.”
Outside I unlace my boots,
walk toward the pond
away from the parsonage.
“Shan’t we join meeting?” Elizabeth says.
She rubs one elbow.
“They will not know
when we left the Holten home.”
I wave her toward the water.
Elizabeth stares at the meetinghouse.
She looks at me as though
my feet be on fire, as though
I be walking toward hell.
“But ’tis a sin. The Lord—”
“Oh, Elizabeth, one can pray
anywhere,” I say.
She shakes her head and whispers,
“Perhaps not when one lies.”
I hug Elizabeth to my chest.
Her body tenses against my touch.
“You be so perfect. You need not be.”
She says nothing.
I pull up her sleeve.
“These lashes, Elizabeth?
What does the Lord mean
by this beating?”
Tears puddle upon her face.
“That I am a horrible sinner.
That I must be punished.”
“Don’t be a fool’s slave.
He that does this to you
works for the Devil.
No man should beat thee.
That meetinghouse holds
as many devils as Christians.”
I slip off my bloomers
and, for the first time, reveal
the hardened crevasse of scar
the color of poisoned blood
that snakes my inner thigh.
“Reverend Burroughs’s blade,” I say.
I pat the riverbank.
“Stay here, where the Lord makes peace.”
Elizabeth hesitates but then
crouches down beside me.
I cup water over her wounded arm.
“Don’t you see, we girls must protect ourselves.
But for the first time we do so not alone.”
JOHN PROCTOR SENT TO JAIL
Incantation of the Girls
Cross us not, for thou shalt see
be there power in not three,
but in four or six or five:
this is how we will survive.
For the man who calls us mad,
claims we’re lying, deviling, bad,
is named a witch, his ankles clad.
DEATH SENTENCE
Margaret Walcott, 17
I arch my back like a cat
and spew from my mouth
so bright a red that some in the jury
do not believe ’tis blood
till they swab their fingers
and taste the iron and bite.
The court clerk mops up
my mess, and I shoot Mercy
a crooked half smile.
I yell at the witch in the box,
“I will not drink your Devil’s blood.”
Like they be offering flowers,
one by one, neighbors and kin
of old Goody Nurse
lay petition papers
on the judges’ bench,
hoping tulips and roses
might stop her dying.
The jury hands Foreman Fisk
the verdict slip and he reads,
“Not Guilty.”
Ann melts ’pon the floor,
howls louder than ever before.
Abigail throws herself backward,
her legs bent behind her head.
Elizabeth follows
like another stitch in a quilt.
Mercy’s hands dance.
She pulls the strings
to make the girls move and moan.
Mercy wiggles her finger left
and Ann collapses on her left side.
Mercy yanks hard all at once
and seizures erupt o’er the floor.
Mercy grabs me by the collar
and we roll to the ground
like two restless pups.
She whispers,
“We must roar,
big as the mountains.”
A holler with a whitecap
bellows out of my mouth.
I’ll not ’low Rebecca Nurse
go free as did her sister
Goody Easty afore.
Rebecca Nurse shall be judged
the witch we say.
The courtroom freezes.
Folk cannot shift their feet,
but just gaze at our explosion.
Presiding judge Stoughton
strokes his whiskers,
questions whether the court
ought not reconsider the testimony.
Goody Nurse is asked
what she means when she says
Goody Hobbs is “one of us,”
but the old woman stands silent.
She don’t deny her fellowship
with the confessed witch.
Goody Nurse blinks and gazes
out at her family, a half smile
pinned across her face.
They prod her to speak,
but her lips be sealed.
The jury writes down
Rebecca Nurse’s fate
a second time,
and Foreman Fisk declares,
“She will hang.”
Elizabeth grasps my hand
and that of Mercy,
and I clutch to Ann, and Ann to Abigail.
A chain, we bow heads and raise prayerful arms.
None of us can stand.
We send another witch
to the hill and rope.
What else can we do?
AUTUMN AHEAD
August 1692
Yea, the fruit be ripe,
eat it.
Things do fall.
The leaves promise
to hold tight their branches,
but their colors soon be changing.
Green unfolds
its beauty and anger,
as scarlet, maize, amber.
For all that be ripe today
will crumble
into brown
into a pile
of wither
and indifference.
SIGHT SEERS
Ann Putnam Jr., 12
Father kisses my hand.
“Off you to help
the good folk of Andover.”
Margaret and I ride without chaperone
on the velvet-cushioned seat.
She leans back. “Feel the breeze.
We could be at the spinning wheel.”
Margaret’s mouth snaps at me like a bear trap,
“We’ll do as I say when we arrive.”
She jabs a finger in my arm.
“Do you hear me?”
“I haven’t cobwebs in my ears.”
I turn away.
The reins pull back.
My uncle, the Constable,
lumbers toward the carriage,
Mercy on his arm. I want to turn away,
but she is like lightning on the ground.
I can’t help myself but to look.
Margaret scowls and wipes her hands
on her apron.
“Mercy has been blinded,” he tells us
as he lifts her onto the seat.
“But still she feels the Lord
needs her to go to Andover.”
I stroke Mercy’s hair,
and she leans against me.
Shivers flare up my arms.
As soon as the carriage pulls off,
Mercy yanks away,
shakes herself out
like a dog after a bath,
her faked blindness
cast out the carriage window.
>
“When we arrive, Margaret,
ye shall faint,” Mercy states.
Margaret nods.
“But Margaret, I thought—” I begin.
“Ann, may I not have my say?”
Mercy looks at me.
“What are you become: a problem,
another Susannah? Will we have to
fit a muzzle to your face?”
Margaret laughs, and Mercy switches
sides of the carriage so she sits
aside Margaret instead of me.
“Now listen.”
She pauses with an odd gulp,
turns her face to profile
so she stares out the carriage
as she rattles command.
“We haven’t time to dally.
We must work our plans.
We bring sight to those in the dark,
but we must know what it is we see.”
When did she take charge?
EXCOMMUNICATED
Mercy Lewis, 17
Minister Parris’s eyes
swoop around his congregation.
He collects our attention
like a chimney gathers smoke.
“And Reverend Noyes pronounced,
‘Rebecca Nurse,
thou art spiritually unclean
and today art severed from the church.
Thou art alone against the Devil
and his wiles.’
The rope that hangs
kills you but once,
damnation lasts eternity.”
Abigail tugs my sleeve and whispers,
“Reverend said Rebecca Nurse
cried till the tears drenched her dress,
repeating over and over like one mad,
‘You do not know my heart.
You do not know my heart.’”
I cover my own heart
and look down at my feet.
What have we girls been doing?
I stand up to speak against Rebecca Nurse’s
excommunication and Reverend cries,
“Witches force Mercy rise to her feet!”
He looks at us girls for confirmation.
I start to shake my head.
But Ann, Abigail, Elizabeth and Margaret
all cry out, “Witches be upon her!”
Reverend slaps my shoulder
and pushes me back in the pew,
“Poor serving girl.”
Poor servant, indeed! My fingers prick and burn.
“’Tis Rebecca Nurse who forces me stand.”
I stand and say it clear and loud.
All in church nod their heads,
looking on me not with leering eyes,
but as though I be strong and right.
And the Reverend bows his head behind his pulpit
as long as I call witch.
GOD WILL GIVE YOU BLOOD TO DRINK
Margaret Walcott, 17
The cart pulls the women
through the streets,
and my fingers unclench.
I stop gnawing
the side of my cheek.
No specters fly.
They drop the noose
over Goody Nurse’s head.
All’s quiet and still
as the air
round a loaded gun.
The old woman
kicks her knees,
torments
as she’s snuffed into hell.
I turn my eyes to the dirt.
Before she’s hanged,
the next witch,
Goody Good, the old beggar woman,
one of the first witches accused, hollers,
“I’ll not lie to thee now
as I never would afore.
I am innocent.”
Reverend Parris holds up
his right hand, a Bible tucked
under arm, “Clear ye soul now.
Go not to death in hatred.
Admit that thou art a witch.”
Goody Good kicks her heel.
“I am no more a witch
than you are a wizard.”
She looks to cast spittle
’pon Reverend Parris’s face.
“If you take my life away,
God will give you blood to drink!”
She sprays her curse
and he quickly bags her head.
Reverend Parris looks to push
Goody Good to her death,
speed her along to hell,
but she dies the same
slow speed as the others.
I spin round and see Isaac sneaking
glance at that l’il Lila Fowler.
First I want to stab myself
but then I want him to be the one
what pains. How dare he?
I wish I could march up to Isaac
did to Reverend Parris, tell Isaac
to drink the Devil’s blood!
Mercy notes the rage clenching
my hands.
“Fear not,” Mercy says.
“Isaac shall pay you out.
We shall see to that.”
“Have ye a plan?” I ask.
Mercy smiles and nods, “In time.”
ISAAC IN THE WILD
Margaret Walcott, 17
“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.
SCARLET FEVER
Ann Putnam Jr., 12
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