like an unsteady mare.
She unloads candlesticks
and chocolate pots, chalices
and newly soled shoes from her bag.
I almost wonder if she did not
steal from my uncle the Constable.
“Margaret be done. She sees no more.
She will marry Isaac in the spring,” I say.
Mercy nods at me as if this information
were widespread as the ocean
when I know that only my family
knows of these plans.
“There are papers circulating
against the trials. Know you of this?”
Mercy asks me.
I shake my head “No.”
Father smoked his pipe late
into the night last evening.
The smoke floated me to sleep
as his footsteps paced the floor,
but I heard no talk.
Mercy looks at me as though I am
worth very little, like counterfeit coin,
and says, “Reverend Increase Mather
wrote a paper saying that spectral evidence
cannot be used in court and that we afflicted girls
may be deluded and should not be consulted.”
She lies down on the bed, a grayish color
to her face, and pulls the sheet round her neck.
“Constable’s wife sent me back after she heard this.
Said we girls cannot be trusted.”
“Mercy.” I move to stroke her head,
but she flinches away. “We can fight this,” I say.
“This is over, Ann. There is no more
Invisible World. And we should rejoice.
We have done enough.” Her voice hollows then.
“Please let me alone. I feel ill.”
I stomp outside without my cloak
and try to shiver off my desire
to break into a storm of yelling
and pounding and hurting
anyone who comes my way.
GO HOME
November 1692
After a fire rages,
the forest path dusts away.
It may be safe to walk,
but where do you go
when all directions wear
the same black ashen despair?
GOD’S HONEST TRUTH
Ann Putnam Jr., 12
Father closes the meetinghouse door,
the room empty and full of shadows.
The boarded windows clatter.
Father ushers me to the first pew,
then paces before me, his hands
clasped behind his back.
He grasps a pamphlet.
“Ann, a man who perpetuates
a lie is a fool, but a man who perpetuates
a child’s lie is an idiot. There are many”—
he shakes the paper—“who now say
to consult you afflicted girls
is to consult the ruling devils.”
Father grabs me by the wrist.
“You make me not a fool, child?
You are truly bewitched, are you not?
I ask ye alone, in the house of the Lord,
see you witches?”
I tremble. I stare forward, mute.
He shakes me. “All these months
of writhing and screaming and ye stay silent now?
Has a witch removed your tongue?”
I try to nod, but cannot make the motion.
Father slaps my face.
The sting forces out tears
like when a cup overflows,
but still I do not move or speak.
Unsure whether to stroke my head
or whip me, he picks me up
and lays me down on the bench.
“Well, ye certainly are possessed
if ye are not bewitched.”
Father throws down the pamphlet.
He says to the rafters,
“Reverend Increase Mather and his
Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits
Personating Men—
he gathers forces against us
who fight the Devil for you in Salem, Lord.
He comes at us well-armed and well-manned.”
SERVITUDE
Mercy Lewis, 17
“She will mind the children
and hang the wash.
She will jar the food for winter.”
The volume of her voice increases
like a drunken soldier’s
as she wobbles near the door.
“Out of that bed, girl,”
the Missus orders me.
I feel withered like the air
has been sucked from my body,
but I dress with haste
and begin scrubbing and chasing
the whining children. I pen up
the child old enough to crawl
by turning the benches
round the table on their sides.
Ann Jr. pinches my waist
and I screech, then smile.
Perhaps Ann will help me
clean the basin of dishes.
She picks up a teacup
and dries the porcelain.
“Thank you, Ann,” I say.
Ann leans over as if
to kiss my cheek, and whispers,
“If you are not with us,
you are against us.”
She yanks out a lock of my hair.
I scream and Ann smashes
the teacup to the ground.
The baby and the toddler howl.
“Mother!” Ann yells and produces
tears the size of coins.
“Mercy, what have you done?”
Missus slaps me sound
across the face, a whack
that echoes through the house.
Ann says to her mother,
“But Mercy did not mean
to break the cup. It was the witches.”
Her mother strokes Ann’s head,
does not look at me and shuttles
Ann into the parlor to lie down
beside her.
Ann turns back to me
with the Devil’s smile.
RELEASED
Mercy Lewis, 17
“Mercy.” The trembling voice
taps my shoulder while I trudge
through snow and ice
to gather stove wood.
Elizabeth stoops to help me.
“I can see no more devils and death,
speak no more lies.
I can no longer be a seer.”
“You never did wish to be a seer,”
I say, and stack my arms full
as a logger’s boy.
“What shall I do?”
Elizabeth’s words test my hearing
against the harsh wind.
I would rather swallow
my advice than utter it,
but I say,
“Return to your life before.”
Elizabeth nods as we set down the wood.
I feed the fire as she says,
“Remember that day
we tore off our stockings
and walked in the stream?”
Elizabeth giggles.
“And, did skip meeting.”
“I will always remember it.
’Twas a glorious beautiful day.
An aqua sky, high sun
and a sweet steady breeze.”
I smile. “And a lovely friend.”
I hold her hand tight
until she feels strong.
BABY SISTER
Ann Putnam Jr., 12
The house quiets
after so many footsteps
in and out of our door.
I rock my little sister
Hannah in my arms.
Mother will not hold Hannah
or look on her. The last baby
she held was blue and still,
and
Mother could not nurse it to life.
“Witches killed my baby.
Witches will murder this new child,”
Mother keeps repeating
as she pulls at her bedclothes.
Her bleeding not stopped
since she birthed Hannah.
“I will take care of you, little sister.”
I kiss the baby’s forehead.
“Protect you from the witches
and devils in our midst.”
Mercy appears in the doorway,
her apron clean, her hair brushed
and swept up on her head like a crown.
“Can I hold the baby?” she asks me.
I raise my eyebrows. I stroke
Hannah’s head with my hand.
Mercy looks on us with a smile
soft as down feathers,
and I slowly roll the infant
into her arms.
“All of our kin except Joseph,
my father’s youngest brother,
came to the baptism,” I say to Mercy.
The baby purrs in Mercy’s arms.
Mercy could have her own child by now.
She could be with a husband,
not minding our house and playing
scotch-hoppers with my siblings.
“Is Joseph not the one with whom
your father does not get along,
the one your grandfather favored
and gave most of his estate?” Mercy asks.
“Yes, Joseph is my father’s half-brother,”
I say.
“Is it true that he keeps a horse saddled
and goes about always armed
for fear they’ll arrest him for witchcraft?”
Mercy looks at me with saucer-sized eyes.
She rocks Hannah in her arms, squeezes
the baby close to her chest.
“Yes,” I say.
“Mercy, you do not know Joseph.
He is not like one of us.
He does not believe we fight the Devil.”
Mercy nods. “No, I understand.
He is not really a Putnam.”
I snatch Hannah away from her.
I want to scream, And you
are definitely not a Putnam,
but instead I say,
“I need to put my sister to sleep.”
NOT MY KIN
Ann Putnam Jr., 12
When I learn Mercy
told Elizabeth to quit
my group of seers,
I punch and kick and stomp
my pillow. I feel not better.
I smash the candelabra
Mercy stole from my uncle.
Still I fury. I toss all her clothes
upon the floor and trample
them with my muddy boots.
But I am still mad.
Mercy coos Hannah
on the divan.
I snatch my sister
from her claws.
I say to Mercy,
“You shall never again
tend Hannah.”
The baby screeches full-throat
in her gosling torment.
Mercy raises suspicious eyes.
“Mother says,” I say.
KISS AND FORGIVE?
Margaret Walcott, 17
The Reverend opens
his arms as he reads,
“Canticles chapter one, verse two:
‘Let him kiss me
with kisses of his mouth,
for thy love is better than wine.’”
Feet shuffle and someone
releases a frustrated “humph.”
Isaac sits among the Nurse family
and friends, those who were not hanged
as witches. They all track the Reverend
as he staggers ’bout the room,
like the Reverend were a wolf
they might musket.
Reverend Parris’s voice breaks
like a boy’s, and he clears his throat.
“All true believers are urgently
and fervently desirous of sensible
and feeling manifestations
of the love of Christ. That is what
this text says to us.”
I glance to my left.
Elizabeth hunches in her pew,
her eyes closed, her hands
pressed so hard together in prayer
she could crush her own bones.
She looks guilty as a thief
wearing stolen shoes.
Ann and Mercy sit beside each other,
across the row from me,
but you wouldn’t know
they knew each other’s names.
Ann scoots forward on the bench,
places Mercy behind her
and refuses to look back.
Reverend continues his sermon
and folk shift and murmur.
“Kisses are very sweet
among true friends
after some jars and differences,
whereby they testify
true reconciliation.”
But no one looks to kiss
one another. Only me and Isaac
seem able to do that.
like a great earthquake shook
the village and broke
east from west. Families firm
on their side of the land.
They wish ill, not kisses, on their neighbors,
each side believing the other
conspires with the Devil.
And I just changed my side
of the bench. I scoot closer
to Missus Farrar and lower my head.
INVISIBLE AS THE WORLD WE SAW
Mercy Lewis, 17
Sent to the cordwainer
to pick up shoes for Mister Putnam,
I see six girls stretch into daylight,
released from Salem jail.
They mount their fathers’ oxcarts
pointed northwest toward Andover.
Thin as spider legs,
with blackened hands
and soiled dresses,
still they walk regal.
Their fathers smile
in the way they hold
their shoulders, all of them
grateful as Sunday prayer.
I smile joyous for their release.
“They put up bail for ’em girls,”
a man with a crooked hat
and a missing front tooth
whispers on the street.
“’Tis all come round. Now those
what confessed say they were scared
witless and confessed only what
they were told—that they are innocent,
not witches,” his friend with a cane
and an eye that never moves says,
and licks his lips.
The first old man motions
with his chin to me.
“Is that not one of the afflicted girls?”
I turn my head away from them,
pull my shawl to cover my cheek.
“I surely know not,” the second man
says, and leans on his cane.
“Crazed of mind, that’s what
those afflicted girls be, not no angels
of the Lord,” says toothless one.
“What become of them?” says the man
with the cane.
“Who does know and who does care,
now that the court be closed down?”
The man without his tooth looks on me again.
“You sure that ain’t one of the Afflicted?”
“No, fool, that be some two-bit girl
from the docks.” The second man lifts
his cane to me with a wink and a leer.
They turn their view
to a lady on the street
holding her daughter’s hand.
I toss off my shawl and walk into the crowd.
I look for my shadow tall on the ground.
I look for someone to point at me
and say, “Sinner, face thy punishment!”
But I am less visible than a witch’s specter.
WHEN HE LEAVES ME
Margaret Walcott, 17
I stand too long outside
of the door. The wind blows
and clears his horse’s hoofprints.
“It will only be six months,”
Isaac said, and raised my chin.
“They need as many men
to finish the fort at Pemaquid.
The French boats swarm
the waters already.
And the Canadians press down
from the north.”
I clutched his arm so tight
my fingers branded his skin.
He told me, “I must go.
I will be back.” Isaac kissed
my cheek and mounted his steed.
I stand waiting for him
to turn round, waiting for the winds
and God and the governor
who calls fasts and the convocation
of ministers today, to call off the war
and ship home soldiers, not send
them away to be captured or killed.
Step-Mother yells, “Maaargaret.”
She trots outside.
“Come inside now, you’ll die of cold.”
Whether it be lack of food,
or lack of Issac, I desire for the first time
to put my arms round Step-Mother
and lay my head in her lap.
But when I draw near her
she smells sour as old dog’s tongue
and her manner be suited to fit.