“Let Mercy travel on first.
I have a lesson to finish
and so does Margaret.
Ye shall check our pages
and when they are correct
send us forth to join Mercy.”
I contain my grumble,
the stove of my anger
so hot I got fever.
Mercy grins at me out of
the side of her lips.
“I’ll set a carriage for Mercy
and ye girls shall follow,” Uncle says.
Aunt Ann swells with a new baby,
but none in the house dare speak
about it, for Aunt fears it will curse the birthing.
Aunt says, “I do not think ’tis wise—”
Ann stares at her and she stops
talking like she lost her throat.
Ann tugs my arm.
“Come quickly. I must finish my copy
so I can join her,” she says.
“I don’t want to do that healing
to none anyway. ’Tis work of heathens
and slaves.” I yank away my arm.
After Ann leaves
I rip my paper into dust.
I pound my fist so all them pieces
shower round me, hiding the rain
of my tears. How can I lose
both Ann and Isaac to Mercy?
HEALERS
Mercy Lewis, 17
Benjamin Wilkins’s eyes cling
to me. I toss my cloak
so that it covers his head,
and the room laughs.
Poor old Bray Wilkins
sits in his armchair,
his legs elevated,
his face a place of pain.
His water stopped for over
a week now, and like a stream
clogged by a fallen tree,
his river swells.
His face’s red
and bloated enough to burst.
Goody Wilkins asks,
“Mercy, can ye tell us
what happens here?”
I hush the room
with a lift of my hands
and close my eyes.
When I open my lids
I say, “I see the Invisible World.
John Willard jumps upon
the belly of his grandfather, Bray Wilkins.
The same man I am told tended
Missus Putnam as a child.
He presses down on old Bray Wilkins
hard enough to crack ribs.”
I begin to faint,
draw my backhand
across my forehead,
and my legs go limp.
Benjamin catches me.
His eyes no longer paw.
He looks at me now
as though I am a spirit.
Ann blusters through the door.
“Yes, John Willard,
whose specter I saw whip
my baby sister Sarah to death.
I see him too.”
Ann’s uncle, the Constable,
punches the air where we point
the invisible witches to be.
My legs jerk and my arms spasm
each time he strikes a witch.
They lift Ann and me out
of the Wilkins home,
nestle us in the horse cart
as my feet are too weak
to hold up my body.
Benjamin bounds toward me.
“Grandfather, he looked not pained.
He smiled, teeth and all,
and said his aches were released
for a spell when Constable Putnam
hit those witches. Thank you.”
I nod at him, wave him well.
Parched now
and tired beyond sleep,
I look out at Salem Village
and feel like this place
calls me its own.
TOWN UNREST
Margaret Walcott, 17
Outside the Proctors’ gutted tavern
a silver-whiskered man balances himself
on his tangled branch cane and hollers,
“Good folk cannot all be witches.
A crowd gathers round the yelling
like wasps fly to spilled ale.
“Yea,” most of them agree.
Me and Ann and Mercy would
but duck away, except we stroll
with Uncle and Aunt.
They hold us to eye level.
Uncle says, “How know ye, sir?
Speak ye with the Devil?”
The wasps quiet their clamor.
“These girls be a menace!”
“’Tis true.” One calls from the crowd.
I crumble to see it be Isaac.
He motions for me to follow him
after he speaks.
“These girls be innocent,” Uncle says.
Aunt Ann clasps my hand
meaning to reassure me,
telling me to stay with my family.
I know not whether to move my feet
to Isaac or stay.
A GIRL OR A WIFE?
Margaret Walcott, 17
“Margaret, be you part of the group?”
Ann looks on me like I be a traitor.
“Yea,” I say. “I have nothing
against your group.”
Ann shakes her head.
“We are not fools, you and I,” she says.
“I beg thee, cousin. Thou art given warning.”
I pick up my skirts and march
from the room. I could smash
all around me to shipwreck.
“Think on this well,”
my cousin’s voice rattles
down the hallway.
I will pack and leave this house.
I will go back home and stay
quiet in my house till spring
and I wed Isaac. I’ll not be ruled
by some little brat and her servant.
“Margaret, that dress looks smart on thee.”
Aunt Ann waves me into her room.
“Didst thou sleep with peace
or were the witches at thee?”
I nod. “The witches were ’bout.”
“Poor dear,” she says.
“Come and stay with me as I spin.”
She drafts the wool between her hands.
“I am so glad that you are here.
Ann needs a proper influence.
She looks to that Mercy.”
Aunt spits as she says the servant’s name.
Aunt quits her drafting.
She sits me at her dressing table
and pulls from a box
a necklace of red jewels
liken I never laid eyes ’pon.
“Let me see how this does look on thee.”
Aunt gasps and my jaw does fall wide.
“You shall wear it on thy wedding day.”
“But ’tis very—”
Aunt shakes her finger at me, “I insist.”
“Now come, I shall teach you
how best to treadle the wheel.
When you make a wife
you must know these things.”
She lumbers a bit into the chair
but then her foot
be like one possessed and pumps
fast as a horse at gallop.
“You must keep a constant pressure.”
She releases her foot and the threads
do twist apart.
“Now tell me. What witches?
Who didst thou see last night?
John Willard, did he visit thee?
Our old preacher, Reverend Burroughs?
Or perhaps Charlotte Easty, the other
sister of Rebecca Nurse?”
Aunt looks on me
like I be not only
the light in the room,
but the greatest light
in the house.
JOHN WILLARD
Margaret Walcott, 17
“Oh, he bites me!”
Ann cries and rubs her arm.
The court orders John Willard
to stop biting his lips
and keep his mouth wide.
Abigail screams
and all eyes draw to her.
Elizabeth’s seizures mount
and her joints double and turn
nearly inside out.
Fingers point at the wizard Willard,
but still he claims, “I am innocent
as the child unborn.”
Susannah Sheldon shrieks,
“The Devil whispers in his ear!”
She takes watchful steps
across the courtroom
and collapses ten feet
in front of John Willard.
Constable John Putnam,
another uncle of mine,
carries her forward,
tips a bit under her weight.
They place John Willard’s hand
’pon her forehead. Susannah screams
when he touches her
like she’s been branded
by a hot iron,
when instead she should silence.
The good folk rumble,
“Why does not the touch test work?
Is Willard not a wizard?”
I be not sure what to do.
Isaac’s eyes spear the other girls.
Ann mouths, “Margaret, please.”
I scream loud enough to curdle milk
and tumble into fit, jerk and twitch
better than them all.
I be lifted by Marshal Herrick
and before I feel my feet
leave the ground, my shaking bones
are brushed by the scaly hand
of Goodman Willard.
He touches me, and as the touch test says,
the wickedness flows back into him.
I stop all my rattling.
Pointed fingers and righteous eyes
hang Willard. Order restores.
Ann and even Mercy flash smiles at me
quickly between their spasms.
’Tis Susannah who Mercy severs
with her eyes.
When asked, Goodman Willard
cannot recite the Lord’s Prayer,
but stumbles over it
and adds his own words of the Devil.
He must truly be a wizard.
I did then right,
so why does Isaac turn his back?
WHY SUSANNAH?
Mercy Lewis, 17
We huddle quietly down by the stream,
summer’s full heat upon our backs,
only Wilson wise enough to seek shade
under the maple tree.
Ann speaks to Susannah in a voice
gentler than was my mother’s:
“In court you have fit and scream,
and then when you are touched
by a witch, you are cured.”
Susannah nods, but she looks
as the dandelion seedling
blown by the wind,
as though the meaning of Ann’s words
scatters far from her.
I wait for Ann to repeat herself,
or at the least, to see Susannah
acknowledge that she understands.
But Ann and Susannah just smile
at one another.
Abigail pulls a letter from her pocket,
one she swindled from the Reverend’s desk.
I read aloud a passage:
“Dear Sir,
Girls in my parish and I hear tell,
throughout Essex County,
are falling to Affliction.
It spreads like the fever.
We cannot find room in our jail
for all the witches. Please advise,
brave Reverend Parris,
what sound words hast thou for me?
My flock trembles afraid.
What say I before them at Sunday lecture?”
I hand her back the letter.
“I know this came not easily to obtain.
Thank ye, Abigail,” I say to her.
Ann acts as if this be of trifle import,
this gift from a child, as if she forgets
Abigail and she are but one and the same age.
Elizabeth bows her head.
“We should pray for their souls.”
Margaret looks at Susannah.
“What be it like in your Salem Town?”
“Oh, they be against the witches.”
Susannah pulls up some blades of grass.
“Yes, of course,” I say. “But more exactly,
what of the seers, how behave they?”
Susannah shrugs.
Margaret and I lean in toward her
and Margaret asks, “Well, how do thy
Mister and Missus treat ye?”
“The Shaws give me my chores,”
she says with a giggle, and looks to Ann.
“Well then, and sometimes they don’t.”
“Do you not torment at home?” I ask.
“No. Not so much as when I am about,”
she says. “Is that not as it should be, Miss Ann?”
“Susannah,” I turn her face to me.
“Margaret and I speak to thee at this moment.
Witches do not pinch only
in the courtroom or public squares.”
When Susannah answers me not,
I stand to leave and then, strangely,
so does Margaret. Elizabeth also
stops her praying and rises to return home.
“Come, Abigail.” I offer her my hand.
I expect Ann to rise and join us.
I wait a solid breath. Finally I take steps
away from the riverbank into shorter grass.
Abigail clings tightly to my hand.
She swerves not. She clutches Reverend’s
letter to her side and lets me direct the turns,
speed and style of our walk.
Ann runs up behind us.
“Susannah left for her home.”
I look not on her, nor do I stop my walking.
Margaret snickers.
“I am dreadfully sorry,” Ann says.
“It will not happen again.
Mercy, please. Please tell me
now that thou dost forgive me.”
I swirl to Ann
and spin Abigail with me.
I hug Ann and say in grand tone,
“Of course I forgive thee.
We are friends.”
I hold out Abigail’s hand
and place Ann’s upon it.
“You also are friends.”
Margaret’s mouth unhinges,
and she cannot speak to say
how ill this syrup turns her stomach.
She grabs the arm of Elizabeth
and causes them to take swift leave.
A ROUGH OLD MAN
Margaret Walcott, 17
“That Mercy believe she be
both morning and night.”
I kick at the tree root in front
of the Griggs’s gate.
Elizabeth stares as Doctor Griggs marches
toward us fast enough dust whirls
in his path. He grabs Elizabeth
by the arm, so she stumbles and nearly falls.
“Where ye been?” He looks like a dog
what some other dog stole his bit of meat.
“We were, ah, um,” Elizabeth stutters.
“Praying,” I say, and clasp her hand.
“At the parsonage.”
“Missus Griggs needs your aid!” Doctor Griggs
hollers, but then smiles kindly at me
and swipes his brow with a hankie.
“Ye girls be missing awful lots lately.”
Where Doctor grabbed Elizabeth
a red welt appears on her skin.
She runs into the house.
“Till morrow!” I call after her,
but I can’t rightly be sure she hears my words.
HYSTERIA
Secret of the Girls
Ipswich, Topsfield, Marblehead,
Reading, Andover, Malden,
Boston, Rumney Marsh, Billerica,
Wenham. We see witches
from everywhere, their names
on the wind, whispered tree to tree.
We see specters all, feel
them choked about our necks,
pricking us, raking us.
We pass hand to hand the name
of the witch. Who heard it first,
none can rightly say,
just as none can rightly know
which way the wind blew in first.
All you know is
you must change sail
to catch it.
MERCY IS SENT TO MY UNCLE THE CONSTABLE’S
Ann Putnam Jr., 12
Mother stands like Father.
She ought wear his hat
and ride his mare.
Father lifts Mercy into the carriage
like a coachman.
“For how long will she be gone?”
I ask Margaret,
and she just smiles.
“For how long?”
I demand of Mother,
and she pats my head.
“For how long?” I beg Father.
“As long as she is needed, I suppose,”
he says.
MY NEW HOME
Mercy Lewis, 17