One cup dangles from my left pinkie,
the other two from each thumb,
and the pitcher weighs down
my right side. Neither Margaret
nor Mercy rise to help me.
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
Margaret rolls her eyes.
I pour Mercy her water and she says,
“John Alden was tied neck and heels
until the blood gushed from his nose
and he did confess he was a witch.”
“They stretched his heels behind him
and bound them to his neck?” I ask.
“Yea, so he looked like the crescent
moon,” Margaret says.
I see Goodman Alden’s blood.
I scream.
“Ann.” Mercy’s voice is an axe.
“Quit ye that. Ye sound like Susannah.”
“Yea, Ann, else ye shall be as Susannah to us.”
Margaret purses her lips
just like my mother does at me.
Mercy shakes her head at Margaret.
“Best not to threaten Ann.”
I expect Margaret to rip out two fists
of Mercy’s hair, but she just looks down
at her belly.
Silence holds the room so tight
no one dares even breathe.
NOT AT HOME
Margaret Walcott, 17
Isaac comes not.
I twist in the night
like a wrung-out rag,
wet and worn.
Ann wakes. She covers
her head with her pillow.
I know she misses sleep.
I pack my tapers and stockings
and clothes and such.
My home sounds as a bandage
for this gash I got ripped
across my chest.
Home might feel as angel wings
fanning me softly to dream.
Home might bring Isaac
back to me, as he’ll ne’er step boot
in this place, not with all
the witch-naming folk what live here.
BROKEN KNIFE
Ann Putnam Jr., 12
We stuff into Salem Town’s courtroom.
The wigged men scratch their heads,
shift their papers, ready to decide
if the witch Goody Good,
the beggar woman we first accused
who was known many years to be a witch,
will be put to death.
I hold above my head
the jagged half of a broken knife.
The metal sparkles across the courtroom.
“Goody Good stabbed me in the breast
with her knife until it broke.”
Tucked deep in the back of the room,
a young man clears his voice and says,
“I believe that be part of my knife.
I threw it away evening last.”
“Come forward,” Judge Newton commands.
The young farmhand places the handle
of a broken half knife on the judges’ bench.
“Ann, bring forth your piece.”
Judge Stoughton points his gavel at me.
He puzzles the two knife parts exactly together.
The judge leans over the bench.
His eyes wind up to slap my face.
“In a courtroom one must be truthful.”
Judge Stoughton reprimands,
but he speaks to the farmhand,
stares him down until the boy nods and says,
“Yes, sir,” and slinks back into the crowd.
Mercy tugs my arm after the proceedings.
“Ann, do not cause suspicion.
Steal not knives as evidence.”
I start to explain, but Mercy cuts me—
“You are keener than the other girls.
I expect better from you.”
MORNING STAR
Ann Putnam Jr., 12
“Miss Ann.” Susannah pants
and bends over as she speaks.
She grabs my arm as a brace.
“Ye did so beautiful today.
I could never be calm like ye
in front of the judges and all.
Ye work like a miracle.”
“I was not—” I begin to tell her
how I acted wrongly, but stop.
Susannah pats my shoulder.
“Mighty Miss Ann,” she sighs.
Mother stares at Susannah and me,
a look of disgust painted on her lips.
I look over to Mercy,
but when Mercy sees me
she squares herself
to talk only to Elizabeth.
not telling me what to do.
Susannah bathes me in.
I am sun and all to her.
FASTING
Margaret Walcott, 17
I pin my dress.
The fabric wraps again
round half my body.
My fingers blue ice
even in summer’s heat.
“Maaargaret.” I had forgotten
that voice for a few weeks. Step-Mother
ought to be fined for her hollering.
“Yea,” I say as I skirt into the kitchen.
“I made biscuits this morn.”
She bares all her teeth,
snaggled and black,
something green caught
between them.
“You best eat my food.
You might well have starved to death
at your uncle’s, but not back here.”
I slide past the table and tell her,
“I got preliminary examinations
in the meetinghouse, and then we testify
in Salem’s court for the trials.”
But before I can place my hand
on the door, she wraps up
a few of the crusty things.
“Here then, take them with thee.”
I inhale and reach for the door,
but she holds me back.
“I will see thee at the trial
this afternoon. Judge Stoughton
doth amaze with his questions.”
She swipes her brow.
I fear her swoon will tip her over
and her massive form will crush me
as wheat to flour.
“Good day.” I say it sweet,
but close the door
with what little force I possess.
Three steps down the road
I yell, “Here, boy.”
Ridley sniffs at my hand.
The three biscuits devoured,
he licks his chin for more.
GAMES AT COURT
Mercy Lewis, 17
Judge Corwin adjusts his spectacles.
“Charlotte Easty, many petitions
be laid upon the bench for thee.
What say you to these accusations
of witchcraft?”
Charlotte quivers not, no
speck of madness in her eye.
“I am innocent, sir.”
Magistrate Hathorne points
at Abigail and Ann,
twisted as serpents upon the floor.
“What have you done to these girls?”
“Nothing but pray for them each
night, for the Devil surely torments
them,” Goody Easty says.
The court falls quiet
as the forest after a rainstorm
until we girls
scream out in pain.
I shiver with a cold
I have not known before,
I know not why,
and then I see it in their eyes:
this crowd
carries the hangman’s noose.
Ann ceases her crying.
I see her half-smile.
“Perhaps ’twas not Charlotte Easty
who tormented me.”
Why is she doing this?
I try to signal Ann not now,
not today, but I am too late.
Abigail follows her,
“Yes, Charlotte Easty be not the one.”
The courtroom stomps
and roars like a mob
of angry cattle.
“Do not play, Ann,” I whisper.
“I feel pinched!” I scream out,
but the courtroom chant drowns
my moaning.
They scream, “Release Goody Easty!”
as we girls are shuttled from
a room of unfriendly eyes.
I AM THE RINGLEADER?
Mercy Lewis, 17
“How could they release the witch
Goody Easty, Rebecca Nurse’s
second sister, from prison?”
Ann whines in front of Abigail and Susannah.
I nearly wish to push her into the stream
as we travel back from Ingersoll’s tavern.
You know why this happened,
I want to scream in Ann’s face.
I hate that I must actually say,
“Some are already against us.
We must be steadfast.
We must never admit
the path we take
may be the wrong one.”
I quicken my pace.
Ann’s eyes sparkle with tears
She starts, “But I—”
I fairly well run in the opposite
direction Ann travels home.
I do not even want to hear
her footsteps.
I collapse at Constable Putnam’s
door. They tuck me into my new bed.
My fits must then begin,
and never a cessation.
I convulse so long I cannot stop
twitching—dazed, speechless,
choked violet, on death’s ashen pillow.
A crowd gathers to witness my torture, my demise.
Ann says, “’Tis Goody Easty
who chokes Mercy.
Goody Easty’s specter dances
on the beam above Mercy’s head,
twists a chain around her neck.”
Abigail cries, “Goody Easty threatens
to kill Mercy because
Mercy accused her in the courtroom!”
The girls all fall in line behind
my horse. They follow the path.
Except Susannah,
who never does say
she has seen Charlotte Easty.
We shackle the witch
into the jail’s dungeon,
and my ailments
slowly improve.
I clearly will have to be the driver now.
I must hold the whip,
bear the cold and steer the carriage.
For if I do not,
then men like John Alden,
who aided in killing my family,
and Reverend Burroughs
with his wicked hands
and nasty belt upon wives and little girls,
might also go free.
I step up.
I wind around my wrists
Ann’s slacking reins.
WE ALL SEE IT THE SAME
Mercy Lewis, 17
Charlotte Easty’s led
into the Court of Oyer and Terminer,
her face not deathly pale,
but the sadness in her eyes
greater than that of the sow
next to be slaughtered.
“I am innocent,”
she says without spite.
She looks like the sky
around a star, almost radiant.
“Charlotte Easty came at us
with a spindle,” Ann cries.
“Yea, she be stabbing at us,”
Margaret says.
Ann’s mother pulls herself to standing
and stomps her heel—
“Our spindle is gone missing.”
Magistrate Corwin cannot hush
the whirs of the crowd.
It is now Susannah’s turn
to act, but she forgets.
She sits like a dumb ox.
She forces me to rise from my bench
and lunge into the middle
of the courtroom.
I tumble to the floor
wrestling an unseen force.
Abigail picks up quickly and says,
“Mercy fights Goody Easty’s specter
for the spindle. There! There!”
And she points at me
rolling like a ball of yarn
around the floor.
I arrest, still as a tomb,
and the crowd silences.
All hearts seem to leap from their chests—
And folk worry do I breathe?
Constable Putnam picks me up.
I clasp the spindle
to my breast. My eyes flutter.
I crack awake like a hatching chick.
The courtroom crowd cheers
just as soldiers celebrate victory
on the battlefield.
“Is this your spindle?”
Judge Hathorne asks Missus Putman.
“Yea, that be one and the same,” she affirms.
Charlotte Easty’s petitions
and her eyes like the newborn babe’s
no longer protect her.
The crowd has witnessed
her attempt to murder.
All yell, “Witch!”
She will hang now,
an innocent woman,
and ’tis my fault.
I try to remind myself
that I am avenging
true demons like Burroughs
and Alden, but Charlotte Easty—
why, Lord, must she be sacrificed too?
And yet I am blinded
to any other way.
ANN YET IN CHARGE?
Mercy Lewis, 17
“Well that you all followed
my lead and sent Charlotte Easty
back to her cell,” Ann whispers
harshly at us and then stands to leave.
Wilson sits and will not be stirred
no matter how fierce Ann tugs
his leash.
Does Ann not realize
that Charlotte Easty, an innocent woman,
now will die, so that we will still
be believed? That all of this
might have been avoided had she
not led the girls to release
Charlotte Easty in the first place?
The other girls nod, even Margaret.
“’Twould have been horrid”
—Ann again attempts to force
Wilson to stand and leave Ingersoll’s
with her—“otherwise.”
Abigail begins, “Did not Mercy…”
“Tomorrow at meeting no one
shall cause disturbance. Understood?”
Ann barks.
Ann yanks Wilson’s collar, but
he still holds his place.
She meets the fire of my stare
and hands over his leash.
“I must go,” Ann says.
“Mother needs, well,
something.”
FIRST WITCH HANGING
Mercy Lewis, 17
Black, she wears black,
her petticoats like tar.
The sky is white.
I cannot look to it.
Even her blood
colored black.
I cannot see
but black and white.
Old and dead,
the tree that creeps
from the rock
wears no frock of leaves,
not even in the summer.
Charlotte Easty’s
body convulses, her legs squirm.
The blood gushes
from beneath her blindfold,
from her nose and mouth and ears.
Sh
e dies slowly.
She swings
though no wind blows.
My hands ball.
I could punch down
the clouds.
There is such power
in my hands.
I bend over and retch
like an empty water pump,
for nothing comes out my mouth.
The other girls gnaw
on their nails, stare bewildered
at the body hung on the tree.
Margaret trembles.
Her teeth chatter louder
than shutters unloosed in strong wind.
Abigail opens
her lips to speak.
I lift my finger,
and she reconsiders.
Elizabeth rubs her shoulder
as Doctor Griggs
checks the stopped pulse
of the witch’s body.
She then falls to her knees,
folds and refolds her hands
in prayer.
Susannah stays
wisely out of view.
And Ann, Ann’s big eyes
scour my skin. No matter
what be about, even a hanging,
Ann cannot unleash her eyes from me.
REMORSE
Mercy Lewis, 17
Moon past its peak in the sky,
I wander to the meetinghouse,
crack the door to gloom and dark
and hollowness. One other figure