The Shape of Mercy

by Susan Meissner

  Papa is skeptical that the girls in our Village are bewitched, but he cannot explain the fits. No one can. And now that the cause has been determined, the girls will be pressed upon to name their afflicters. How does one know something like that?

  The little bird with the broken wing is back. Winter is far from over. He must know this now.

  I dreamed again of Mercy. This time I dreamed she was at my writing desk back home, just like I pictured when I was there. She was writing in her diary—the one I spend my afternoons with—bending over it with her feather pen. I could hear the soft scratching of the quill on the parchment.

  I was afraid that if I spoke to her, she would disappear, so I said nothing. I just stood and watched her. She wore the dress from my fourth-grade play. Her brown hair was swept back with the ponytail holder I had worn. I could see its hot pink hue just under her white cap. Her facial features were indistinguishable. She had eyes and a nose and a mouth, but they were out of focus. I couldn’t make them out. The room was different, the way dream rooms are. The walls were still painted yellow, but there were more of them, like the room was expanding, creating more space for itself.

  My pictures of Paris were there, but they were full of people, and the images were alive. The people in the pictures moved, going about their Parisian business, oblivious to their onlookers.

  The photographs made me uneasy. For some reason I didn’t want Mercy to see them. I moved away from the walls and they receded, but the photographs seem to grow larger. Mercy would surely see them.

  Then I heard a noise, something beating against the window. I turned. Mercy had heard it too. A bird flew into the window above the desk, over and over.

  Mercy stood and leaned over the desk. She grabbed the window latch and struggled to release it, calling to the bird to wait and she would help it. But the bird kept flinging its body against the glass. And Mercy couldn’t open the window.

  I knew I should help her. I knew that window stuck sometimes and you had to push down on it before lifting up.

  But I just stood there.

  Mercy continued to struggle with the window, calling out to the bird in a frantic voice to wait. To stop. To give her a moment.

  And the little bird hit the window over and over with its body.

  When blood appeared on the glass, Mercy screamed, and I awoke.

  It was a few minutes before dawn.

  I got out of bed to the aroma of strong coffee. A light was on and Clarissa’s bed was empty. She sat at our cramped desk area, tapping madly away on her laptop.

  She had pulled an all-nighter. She looked up at me.

  “Can you proof this when I’m done? It’s due today.”

  “Sure.” I grabbed a clean mug from the microwave cart that housed our coffee maker and poured a cup from the pot. It was as black as tar.

  “Will this kill me?” I asked.

  “Hardly. It will keep you awake, sister.”

  I took a sip. It tasted medicinal, earthy and wild. I forced myself to take another drink.

  “Yeah, you look like you could use it,” Clarissa said, smiling as she typed.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You were having a nightmare or something just now.”

  “I was?”

  “Weren’t you? You were thrashing around and whimpering.”

  My mind conjured the bloody window, the dead bird, and the pitch of Mercy’s scream. I wrapped my hands around the mug, eager for its warmth.

  “I guess it was a nightmare,” I said.

  “Chased by a madman with a knife?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t have that dream either,” Clarissa said. “I always dream I’m on fire. Like I’m in a burning house or something. I hate that dream.”

  I pulled my fingers away from the hot mug.

  “So were you falling off a cliff?” she continued, still drumming away at the little keys on her laptop.

  “No, nothing like that.”

  Clarissa whirled. The tiny diamond stud on her left nostril caught the light from her desk lamp and winked at me. “Oh no, you didn’t dream you were, like, walking down Rodeo Drive in your underwear?”

  Ah, a rich-girl joke.

  “It was nothing like that, Clarissa.” I sank into her canvas beach chair and took another sip of the industrial-strength coffee.

  “Well?”

  I toyed with a string on the chair’s cushion with my free hand. “I dreamed I was in my parents’ house with this girl who’s been dead for three hundred years, and a bird was flinging itself against the window. I woke up when it started to bleed.”

  “A dead girl? You dreamed up a dead girl?” Clarissa couldn’t care less about the bird.

  “She wasn’t dead in the dream,” I said. “She was alive in my dream. But she’s been dead for three hundred years. It was that girl whose diary I’m transcribing.”

  “The witch?”

  “She wasn’t a witch.”

  “But I thought you told me she was hung as a witch in Salem.”

  “But she wasn’t a witch. That’s the whole point. Hardly any of those people were.”

  Clarissa was quiet for a moment. “How do you know she wasn’t?” She turned around and began to type again.

  “She wasn’t.”

  “So why did people think she was?” Tap, tap, tap.

  “I don’t know yet. I’m only two months into the diary.”

  Tap, tap, tap.

  “Don’t you wonder why, though?” Clarissa said. “I mean, she must have done something weird or quirky or strange.”

  I looked at Clarissa’s purple-streaked hair, her glistening nose stud, and the tattooed cherub on her forearm and said nothing.

  “There. Done!” Clarissa pressed a couple of keys on her laptop, and her printer began to hum.

  I sat there, waiting to see if Clarissa really wanted to know how I thought Mercy ended up at the end of a noose. But she just gathered up the pages from her printer and handed them to me.

  “Do you know how many of my friends are totally jealous that I have an English major for a roommate?” she said.

  She grabbed her bathroom bag and headed for the door, apparently uninterested in an answer to that question also. But she turned back toward me before leaving the room. “Anytime you want to go strolling down Rodeo Drive in your underwear, just holler. I’d do it in a heartbeat. That would be a total blast! Can you imagine?”

  Clarissa laughed and disappeared.

  Fourteen

  24 February 1692

  Betty Parris has named Tituba, their servant from the islands, as the one who bewitched her. No one is much surprised. Tituba is not English. She comes from a different world called Barbados, where it is summer all year and where magic is not feared. But why would Tituba cause Betty to suffer so? She is the Parrises’ slave, and she cares for the Parris children when Rev. Parris is away and Goody Parris is unwell. What end would Tituba desire?

  26 February 1692

  The afflicted girls now say Goody Goode and Goody Osborne also torture them! Sarah Goode is indeed a strange woman, but she is not evil. She carries many burdens. Perhaps I would mumble and make strange faces if I had to beg for food and clothing in the dead of winter for myself and my child. And Sarah Osborne is ill.

  My cider is cloudy and sour. It is not setting well.

  29 February 1692

  Papa came home from the Village fearful and angry. Men in the Village have made formal complaints against the women accused. The town magistrates John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin have issued warrants to arrest Tituba, Sarah Goode, and Sarah Osborne. They will be taken to Ingersoll’s on the morrow and publicly examined.

  Papa says we are to go.

  My father called me with a business proposition, as he called it. He asked if I would assist one of his staff members in writing a proposal to develop a multifaceted art gallery.

  “Bens a whiz at technical writing, but this project needs to appeal to a group of inves
tors who speak the language of art, not commerce,” Dad said. “You speak both. The wording in this proposal will sway them one way or the other. I want them to be swayed to build. I need a good writer on this one.”

  I had been sitting in my car in Abigail’s driveway when my cell phone rang, about to pull away, and my mind was somersaulting on the names of three women—Tituba, Sarah Osborne, Sarah Goode. All I knew of these women was the little I remembered from Arthur Miller’s play and Mercy’s agitated thoughts.

  I only half heard my father’s request.

  “You want me to write what?” I said.

  “I want your help. I’m not asking you to write the whole thing, Lauren. I just want your insight on this one. Ben will be able to tackle the technical beauty of this project, but I need a writer who understands aesthetics.”

  I’ve never thought of my dad as a good liar. He doesn’t lie. He doesn’t have to. I wasn’t going to accuse him of lying to me, but he was withholding something. He had at his command a host of artistic people who understood aesthetics and could write.

  I slowly eased out of Abigail’s driveway and onto the road. “I don’t understand why you’re asking me. You’re surrounded by expertise.”

  “I’m asking you because you can do this. And because the investors are members of a family who appreciate art and literature. I know they’d like a proposal crafted for them by my daughter who also loves art and literature. It would give us an edge over anyone else’s design. It would be a wonderful debut project for you, Lauren. You’re perfectly suited for it.”

  I do believe he was complimenting me, but “perfectly suited” seemed a bit of a stretch.

  “How so?” I asked. “I don’t know anything about land use, Dad.”

  “I don’t need you for that. I have architects and civil engineers on my staff. Ben will take care of the technical part of the proposal. I just want you to help him interpret our research data and make sure the proposal fits what this family of investors will appreciate. It’s not the technical ingenuity that’s going to sell them. It’s the aesthetics and attention to the artistic elements. We’re looking at creating a gallery dedicated to art and literature. It’s going to be quite different. I know this kind of project will resonate with you, Lauren. You can’t tell me it won’t.”

  I pulled onto a twilight-lit thoroughfare. “How come you didn’t mention this when I was home for Uncle Loring’s party?”

  “I barely saw you. Between entertaining the other guests and running errands for your mother and aunt, I had only a few minutes to myself. And you were always nowhere to be found, I might add.”

  I was hiding from Raul, Dad, because he made me feel like a fool, and for some reason I actually found him attractive.

  Dad continued. “Besides, we weren’t sure last week we were going to move forward on this one. But now we are. It’s a fabulous project, Lauren. You’ll love what this gallery will house.”

  “How many hours are we talking?” I said, still unconvinced.

  “That depends on you. I’d say ten to fifteen tops for the whole thing if all you do is edit and tweak. More if you want to have more input, and I think you will. You could do it in a couple weekends. I know you don’t work for Abigail on weekends. You could do it here at the house. Or there, if you insisted. But all the drawings, models, and schematics will be here.”

  Uneasiness crept over me. I wanted to do the project, and I didn’t. Dad was right about my interest. That unnerved me as much as anything. I didn’t want to be tricked into a budding career as Dad’s up-and-coming, sonlike heir.

  “Is this part of a bigger plan, Dad?”

  He paused only for a moment.

  “Everything is part of a bigger plan. Don’t think for a minute it’s not. You don’t think I know you’ve got a bigger plan in attending a state school? You don’t think that Abigail has a bigger plan for this transcription you’re doing? Everything small is a part of something bigger. That’s just how it is.”

  “So you admit you’re tying to woo me into coming to work for you,” I said, slightly miffed at his mini-lecture.

  Dad laughed. It was gentle, not unlike Raul’s smooth laughter, like he was amused at my innocence or naiveté.

  “I’ll pay you thirty dollars an hour,” he said, “and you can give it all away to charity if you want.”

  He had admitted nothing.

  “Come home this weekend and look at the plans and the research data,” he continued. “If you’re not impressed, I’ll find someone else. No hard feelings.”

  I flinched as if I’d been pinched. Find someone else. He’d find someone else.

  That thought annoyed me.

  “This weekend?” I said.

  “You have other plans?”

  No. No, I did not.

  “I can come,” I said.

  “Good. I’ll tell your mother. She was just saying she hardly saw you at the party.”

  “There were a lot of people in and out of the house,” I said, turning into my dorm parking lot.

  “I didn’t even get a chance to ask you how your work with that diary is going.” He seemed genuinely interested.

  “It’s going well.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It’s fascinating. Haunting, sometimes. Today I transcribed Mercy’s entry about the first arrests. Three women were accused initially.”

  “Was she one of them?”

  “No. One was a West Indian slave named Tituba. The two others were older women, one named Sarah Goode and the other named Sarah Osborne.”

  “And these are the actual people mentioned in history books?”

  “Yes. They were women Mercy Hayworth knew. She was shocked at their arrests. She couldn’t believe they were witches.”

  Dad was quiet.

  “Dad?” I checked my phone to see if we were still connected.

  “I’m here. Sarah Goode. Yes. There was a Sarah Goode who invented the Hide-A-Bed.”

  Hide-A-Bed? “Dad?”

  “Not your Sarah Goode, though. This was one was born in 1850.”

  “Dad, what are you doing?”

  “Googling her name.”

  I gasped.

  “Oh, here’s yours. Here’s the record of her trial and execution.”

  “Dad!”

  “What?”

  “I’m not supposed …” But I didn’t finish. How could I tell him I’d promised Abigail I wouldn’t look at any information on the Internet until I was done transcribing the diary?

  “Not supposed to what?”

  “Nothing.” Curiosity overpowered me. “What does it say about Sarah Goode?”

  “The grammar is terrible. Couldn’t they spell? Ah. She appeared as a wolf. That’s wolfe with an e.”

  I shivered. “That’s impossible. She wasn’t a witch.”

  “It says her name was in the devil’s book. That’s booke with an e, too. And they spelled devil, d-e-v-e-l-l. She had three birds—two black, one yellow—and the birds hurt the Children, capital C. Doesn’t say which children. I never saw such poor sentence structure. How can you decipher this stuff? Is the diary like this?”

  I didn’t want to hear any more.

  “No, the diary isn’t like that,” I said.

  “Well, there’s just the one Sarah Osborne. Her name comes up in the first page of hits. This one says she maintained her innocence throughout her trial. And she was searched for a witch’s teat, whatever that is. The slave Tituba testified Sarah Osborne was a witch.”

  “She wasn’t.”

  “Osborne died in prison. You know, you really should ask Abigail what she plans to do with the diary when you’re done, Lauren. You should protect your interests.”

  My interests. “I’ll ask her sometime.”

  “So what’s this girl’s last name? The girl whose diary you’ve got?”

  If I told him Mercy’s last name, he would do an Internet search right then, and I would be unable to resist asking him to tell me everything.

>   “Dad, I promised Abigail I wouldn’t do research on my own until the diary was finished.”

  “Why?” He sounded amazed.

  “Well, knowing too much might affect the way the diary comes across as I’m transcribing.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense, Lauren. You already know how it ends. She gets hanged. Besides, you’re just transcribing. I don’t see why Abigail would have you make that kind of a promise.”

  “I don’t know. She’s old. She’s eccentric. This diary is very important to her. Old people sometimes do things that seem a little extreme.”

  “All the more reason to find out what her plans are. I want you to promise me you’ll find out.”

  “I promise. I’ll ask her. When the time seems right.”

  We were both silent for a moment.

  “So you’re coming this weekend?” Dad finally asked.

  “I’ll drive down Saturday morning.”

  “Okay, then. Thanks, kiddo.”

  “Sure, Dad.”

  We hung up.

  The windows were down in my car, and I heard the chirping of birds as they sang the end of the day. In my mind I saw three birds. Two black, one yellow.

  Fifteen

  As I packed a few things to take home with me, my dream from a few nights before filled my thoughts. I saw my empty Paris pictures suddenly teeming with people. In my mind, I heard Abigail asking if I had met up with any high school friends while I was home and I heard my own voice saying no, I hadn’t.

  I pictured Robinson Crusoe—I had begun to read the book—alone on his island with nothing but goats and a mimicking parrot for company. King of his own little universe, but with no subjects to adore him or even usurp him.

  Alone.

  I decided to prove to myself I had friends.

  I turned to Clarissa, who sat cross-legged on her unmade bed, eating ramen noodles raw, crunching them like peanuts while she read from a textbook.

  “You working this weekend, Clarissa?”

  “Of course.” She didn’t look up.