THE HUSH OF SNOW
December 1692
Cold restores order.
Shrill winds muffle
screaming, and the trees twist
more deviant arms and legs
than Affliction.
The witch hunt is snuffed.
The accusers slip
under the silent ice
of indifference.
CANNOT TRUST HER
Mercy Lewis, 17
Cold as a January snowstorm,
I rub my hands by the hearth
and tiptoe into the hallway.
“Now Reverend Hale too
is against us,” Master Putnam says.
I cannot see Master Putnam speak,
but his boots smack the ground
quick and anxious.
“He now believes that the Devil
impersonates innocent people,”
Reverend Parris responds.
Ann bumps my shoulder.
“I thought you did not care
anymore about witchcraft?”
Ann talks as though she stands
on stairs above me and must
stoop to speak with me.
“I don’t,” I say.
Ann smiles sweetly and calls,
“Reverend Parris.”
She licks her lips.
“Father!” She yells loud
as though her hand were on fire.
Ann’s father and Reverend Parris
rush into the room.
“What see you, child?”
Reverend Parris asks.
“Mercy stands about idle,”
Ann says. “And when I told her
Mother asked for aid, she refused
to come.”
I clench my tongue.
None would hear my speech
if I dared.
Master Putnam looks at me,
and with a voice of thorns
he says, “Be off this moment, girl,
to help Missus Putnam!”
The Reverend shakes his head at me,
eyes me as though
I had ripped pages from his Bible.
I gather my skirts. “Yes, sir,”
I say without another look to Ann.
AFTER AFFLICTION
Margaret Walcott, 17
I survey that no familiar eyes be about.
“Elizabeth,” I call from the weaver’s shop.
I wave her come near and ask,
“Why be you in town?”
“I come to buy flour and salt,”
she says like she speaks to a stranger.
We stand looking at each other,
none talking.
“So you are staying longer at your uncle’s?”
I say.
Elizabeth nods yes and tugs down her sleeve,
trying to cover the bruise on her forearm.
I expect her to say something,
but I know not what.
“I will marry Isaac in the spring,”
I finally say, and square my hands
on my hips.
The snow falls in pieces
thick and wet. Elizabeth’s hair
looks full of Queen Anne’s lace.
She sees something over my shoulder
and backs away as though
a beast crept up behind me.
I turn round.
My father looms over me.
“Ye are not to be alone and speaking
on the street, Margaret!”
He snatches my arm
and looks on Elizabeth as though
she has the curse of the leper.
Elizabeth keeps backing
into the street.
I hear the wheels
and run of an oxcart.
“Out of the way!” a voice hollers.
I should grab after her.
But, dear Lord, I cannot move.
Elizabeth trips, stumbles upon
her boot and falls into the street.
A horse whinnies and moans.
A terrible screech sounds,
like a thousand birds crying
all at once.
I start to run forward,
but Father holds me back
and turns me round.
“Do not look behind ye,”
he commands.
And I do as I be told.
UNSTABLE GROUND
Mercy Lewis, 17
Ann flurries into the house
with fierce excitement.
“Elizabeth be dead!”
I cannot stand.
My legs suddenly made of dust,
not bone, I crash to the floor.
“She was run down
by an oxcart.
Some did say
’twas the Devil
taking back his own.”
The tears flood me.
I wish to pound the floor
like a mad gavel
and scream, “Why?”
But none in this house
would care,
so I swallow
the hot iron brand
of my anger.
Ann looks to her mother.
“The driver said he never
saw Elizabeth in the road.”
Missus Putnam nods to Ann
with an almost smile,
“Well, ’tis a pity, but she should
have been more mindful
walking in the road.”
The floor beneath me
opens as a pit in my mind,
bottomless,
and I know I will never find
footing in this house.
RULES
Margaret Walcott, 17
Never will my father speak
of what we girls done
the past year, for the Devil does deceive.
’Tis better to pretend nothing
happened than to admit
we girls were wrong.
But there is no lying in my father’s house,
and I am not to speak
lest I be answering back.
And if I wish to be wed
I best never step boot
out of the house
(except when my father commands).
And I shall eat all what’s served me
and show proper gratitude for it.
But most important of all
I must, at all times,
act a lady
or find home elsewhere.
Father smacks the table,
grabs his coat and hat
and gusts out the door.
Step-Mother sneers at me
like a dockside rat.
She drops the largest basket
of laundry and mending to my feet.
She smiles and gives me
a nasty little “Hmmph,”
testing whether I be fool
enough to talk out of turn.
I be muted now like one what
cut off her own tongue.
I straighten my bonnet.
At least no bastard grows within me.
Father’s edict and Step-Mother’s tricks
be temporary as a storm;
come spring I shall live elsewhere.
Before the hearth, I kneel
and fold prayerful hands,
asking the Lord and my mother
for strength.
I treadle. I mend. I scour
better than the maid.
None says, “Fine work,”
but I know what I have done.
A HANGING TREE IS NOT A FAMILY TREE
Mercy Lewis, 17
On my way back
from town
I lose my trail
in the thick forest snow
and pass Gallows Hill.
I hold my breath
as even after all these months
it smells of blood.
Ghosts wander the
grounds
where no birds lay nest,
no fields bear crops,
no trees can root,
except the scraggly one
which dangled the dead.
“Witch!” I scream it
to the stillness,
for there are none to hear me.
But I wonder if somehow
my mother can hear me now.
I have not thought of her
all these months of trials;
perhaps if I had
no bodies would have
swung from that tree.
Mother, we did wrong,
we were deceived.
Pray we will be forgiven
as we are forgotten.
A villain and a vagrant,
must I lay root elsewhere?
I have accused.
Perhaps I cannot stay here.
ISOLATION
Margaret Walcott, 17
Hollow as a gutted
fish.
Lonely as
driftwood
banked to shore.
Not a friend,
not a foe—
would any really
care if an oxcart
crushed me?
POOR ABIGAIL
Mercy Lewis, 17
She sweeps the meetinghouse floor,
the look of the doe been shot
in her wide blue eyes.
“Mercy!” Abigail runs to unlatch
the doors and let me in.
She clings to me like I am
her mother lost and now returned.
“What be about the parsonage
of late?” I whisper.
She too hushes her voice.
“Betty come home.”
Abigail looks to cry.
“’Tis wretched. The Reverend
be feared they what lost kin
in the witch trials will come
after him.” She glances down
and says in a quiet
that does rival Elizabeth,
“And he blames me.”
She bunches up her sleeve—
scars of burning begin
at her shoulder and line
to her wrist.
“How dare he!” I grab the broom
and charge toward the entrance
to the residence to blame
the monster himself.
“Mercy, I beg thee no.”
Abigail hugs tight my leg
so that I must drag her.
I stop. She is right.
’Tis not worth hanging
to harm the Reverend.
Abigail looks up at me.
“I have written to my aunt
in Maine, and soon I will live there.”
I pat the front wood bench
where we resided most
of the year, fitting and screaming
in Affliction.
I motion Abigail to lay her head
in my lap such that I might
stroke her hair.
“But until you depart,
what will you do?”
With closed eyes
but a direct tongue she says,
“I just never speak
so as to be forgotten.”
FAMILY
Mercy Lewis, 17
Baby Hannah curdles
the night air with her screaming.
I rush into the hall,
but the crying be gone.
’Tis almost as if I imagined
the sound.
I shake from cold,
cannot find warmth
beneath my covers.
I pull my knees
into my belly
and again I hear Hannah.
I light a taper
and creak open my door.
Ann paces outside my room,
rocking Hannah.
“Do you want me to take my baby?”
I ask.
“She is not your baby!”
Ann’s eyes widen as her tongue whips,
“She is not even your sister!”
Ann backs me into my quarters.
“And thank the Lord, for all kin
of yours find death.”
Though I did not mean
to call Hannah my own,
’twas but twisted words,
I wonder what it would be
to rock my own child.
My arms pretend to cradle
a baby against my chest.
I reach behind the wardrobe
until my fingers find the envelope.
The letter from my father long lost,
but the address
to Aunt Mary Lewis Skilling Lewis
is what I seek.
I must believe that some of my kin live,
for my roots did not take to this soil.
No family tree will grow for me
in Salem Village.
I found only a hanging tree
of more death.
I smooth the envelope.
It feels as though
I clutch a ticket
as important as passage papers
to the New World.
HOUSEBOUND
Margaret Walcott, 17
Step-Mother growls
as I hand over my plate.
She removes the bread
and sets the rest down
for Ridley.
“Ann’s new sister, Hannah,
must be a month old by now,”
I say. “Might I go visit them?”
Father stomps into the room.
“Does seem that I heard
a voice in this room.
Or perhaps ’twas the wind,
because no one I know
would talk when not required.”
He swings a scarf round his neck.
“No one else leaves this house.”
The door stays cracked open
behind him. I push it closed.
Step-Mother sits at the wheel.
“Ye are not so important
as ye believed, since the governor
closed down that court.”
She smiles sly as a sinner.
“I will chop the wood.”
I find my mittens under the bench.
“Ye are not to leave this house,”
Step-Mother says.
“Or I will tell your father.”
I feel as to burst.
“He meant I could not
go outside for chores?”
“Watch thy wicked tongue.
I believe that be
exactly what he meant,”
she says without a glance at me.
She tosses trousers which smell
of horse dung on my lap.
Step-Mother commands,
“Get to work.”
Six months, only six months
more in this house.
CARETAKER
Ann Putnam Jr., 12
Baby Hannah cries and cries.
I almost want to just set her down
and go to my room and close the door.
“You want Mother, don’t you.”
I drop the baby in Mercy’s arms.
“I can do no other chores,” I say.
“I thought I was not to tend Hannah.”
Mercy hands Hannah back to me.
“She is hungry.
Give her to the wet nurse.”
“Wet nurse left for a family in Boston;
conditions are better there.”
I roll the infant back to Mercy.
Mercy bounces Hannah,
and she stops crying like
Mercy cast a spell upon her.
“Mother and Father stricken.
I pray we don’t lose them both.”
I lean against the table.
Mercy holds the baby in one arm
and chops the legs off a chicken
with her free hand.
�
�I would be sent to live with Uncle John.
My brothers and sisters
would be scattered all about,” I say.
White feathers gather like piles of snow
on either side of Mercy.
“Yes,” Mercy says.
Her eyes never rise from her work.
My chest heaves.
I huff and fall into a chair.
“That would be dreadful
to lose our house and farm.”
I touch my forehead and say,
“I might have a fever.”
“Ann!” Mother screams,
loud and troubled.
“Mercy,” I plead.
“I have been tending her and Father
for two days. I must rest.”
“What other help do we have?”
Mercy asks. Her eyes are the bull’s
“right before he runs.
“None. They are helping repair
“the meetinghouse so that it won’t
“be dreadful cold every Sabbath.
Father promised the Reverend
“that he would—”
She holds up her hand.
““Just go.”
“The other little ones are napping,”
I say, and limp to my bedroom.
A scream from the nursery
“feels like knives in my side.
I quicken my steps.
“Ann!” Mother hollers again.