what serve on town council
and vote as church members.
After Mother died, Father sold his cargo ship,
built the biggest house in the Village
and wed the sister of Thomas Putnam
to sit on that bench where he does.
Behind my father, the men
of mended trousers
straighten their necks.
I try never to stare
directly at the upright heads
of those what sit behind—
the good sons, all them
not off or lost to war.
My eyes shift ’pon Isaac.
Did he just glance this way?
Nothing best smudge my face.
My hands heat under my gloves.
A drop of water dins my head
and I swallow hard a cough
screaming at the roof of my throat.
I switch fast my gaze
to the row below Isaac,
where sit the Gospel women,
which my father
wishes me to be.
Following the wives
of upstanding men
fall the lesser women,
and I sit behind them, us girls
and servants. The slaves and heathens
are not allowed
in church at all.
MERCY LEWIS
Ann Putnam Jr., 12
Her name is a blessing,
not simple and plain like Ann.
Ann with sticky spiderweb hair,
not the gold that willows
down Mercy’s back, smooth
and perfect as God’s breath.
All the men stop
whatever they are about
whenever she goes past.
HELPFUL
Ann Putnam Jr., 12
“Mercy, let me help you
carry the other bucket,”
I say, and sidle next to her on the path.
We walk along in silence.
I want to ask her how she slept,
what it was like when she lived in Maine,
did she have a horse,
did she see any Indians,
does she like me?
But instead I ask,
“Is Mother well this morning?”
Mercy doesn’t even turn to look at me.
“Yea, she seems quite herself.”
Mercy sets down her bucket,
rubs her hands together.
“I can carry both buckets if you like,” I say.
She shrugs and smooths her bonnet.
I walk a step behind her
all the way home,
just so I can watch
the way she swings her arms.
A KIN TO WHOM?
Mercy Lewis, 17
Two weeks in this new place,
and night comes restless
with wind that claws
over the roof
like trapped cat paws.
When I close my eyes to sleep
I see my mother.
She holds my father’s scalp.
Mouths of my sisters and brothers
gash open in scream.
Yet I hear no cry, no yell, nothing.
Under the bed, I pressed
my hands against my ears.
Bare Indian feet pounded
the floor, blood splattered
like a bucket of paint
hurled against the wall.
Blood raindrops fell
thick as mud, slow as dew.
As before, I cannot budge.
My legs dead wood.
I cannot lift my finger,
cannot blink an eye.
I do not think I breathe.
Like twisted wind
I hear the heavy breath
of the man who slays my mother.
I clasp my hands and pray
that this is just night sleep
and come morrow
I will be with my family.
But I wake in servant’s quarters
under a thin quilt warmed by low fire,
rise to another day of fetching
for Missus Putnam and her babies.
Still I welcome the dawn.
NEVER LEFT ALONE
Mercy Lewis, 17
Little Ann circles, buzzes
I should almost like to shoo her
off my shoulder, but she fixes on me
with those chestnut eyes
like I were her queen.
“Let me put the baby to nap.”
Ann relieves my arms.
Master Putnam shakes open the door,
a gust of wind shoots snow
behind his head like a fountain.
He staggers to his chair.
I untie his boots, yank free
his gloves and rub his red hands
to salve his numb and cold.
His eyes, like a flaming torch,
search over my body,
and I want to be anywhere
but bent at his feet.
Will this new man I serve
be the same as the last?
Wilson barks and shakes madly
his fur so that I am blanketed in white.
Master Putnam withdraws his hands,
“Go and fetch thee some dry clothes.”
My heart ceases panic
as I turn the corner to my room.
“Why are you covered in snow?”
Ann startles me, then gallops to my side.
I point at the dog.
“Well, you had better change
to dry skirts,” Ann says.
“Thank you, Ann.
I had not thought of that.”
Ann blushes. She tags behind me
with a strange eagerness to help me
be rid of my soggy clothes.
I prevent her entering my room.
“Do you not have your gathering
and visit the Minister’s girls today?
Should you not like to find
your cloak and gloves,
and then I will say you are at the stables?”
Ann sprouts up on her toes.
“Oh, yes! I shall find them.”
I close my door, but a whine
and a scratch, and the door is wide again.
“Well then, dear Wilson, my prince,
in with thee.”
LITTLE-GIRL GAMES
Margaret Walcott, 17
“I refuse playing at Scotch-hoppers.”
I roll my eyes at little Betty.
“I did not sneak away
to play them baby games.”
Abigail punches her younger cousin
in the side. “That be a game
for warm weather.”
Ann paces the floor.
Her eyes fire.
“We could play Queen
and her subjects!”
“Fine. I be the Queen,” I say.
“I command ye all
to sit under the table
and speak not at all.”
The three little girls scurry
beneath the table like rabbits
scared into a hole.
I kick up my feet
and fluff my long black hair
in the hand glass. If only
my nose were not so red.
“What now?” Betty asks
after several minutes of quiet.
“You lose!” Abigail laughs.
“Silence!” I hold up my hand.
“You both lose. Stand in the corner.”
The girls’ eyes edge with tears.
Ann crawls from under the table.
“This is dull. Let’s play at something new.”
“This game be fine.” I smile at her.
“We can tell fortunes.” Ann dangles
my favorite before me.
Betty shakes her head.
�
��But that be a sin.”
Ann whispers, “Not if none
does catch us.”
I frown as they gather
a glass of water and four eggs.
“Do we form a circle?” Abigail asks
as though she’s never done this.
I sneeze and my nose does drip.
I lift an arm to swipe it dry
and Isaac Farrar
with his wide shoulders and buttery smile
jumps into my thoughts.
My stomach squirms—
what a fool I acted,
rubbing my nose on my sleeve
in front of him!
I shake my head.
“What then do we do?” Abigail asks.
“Oh, you are a fool,” I say,
and grab the bowl of eggs.
THE SHELL GAME
Ann Putnam Jr., 12
We huddle near the fire.
I clutch Betty Parris’s little hand,
and she clasps Abigail.
Whether it was Margaret or me
or the Minister’s niece
who first learned to read
egg whites in a glass, I know not.
Margaret cups an egg over the water,
then sets it down and says,
“Go on, Ann, let ye take the first egg.”
I crack the shell, scoop out its yolk,
and ask what husband I will make.
We stare at the floating mass
as if it were a cloud,
and wager at the shape.
“It looks like a ship.
See the mast,” Margaret says.
Betty nods.
“A sailor for Ann?” Abigail says,
pawing for her own egg.
I snatch the lot away.
“Or a royal or merchantman,” I say,
and hand the next fortune to Betty.
NOT MINE TO TAKE
Mercy Lewis, 17
I sneak from my work
of spinning and darning
and unlatch the wooden box
wherein hides the necklace
too lavish to be worn upon the neck.
My fingers brush each red stone
of Missus Putnam’s necklace,
a necklace that belonged
to her grandmother before her.
It will one day belong to little Ann.
The weight of the gems
clasps heavy round my neck.
In the looking glass
I turn side and side.
The stones change hue
in differing light.
I used to bounce sun
around the room
with my mother’s hand mirror,
back when my greatest duties
were learning Mother’s recipes
and writing out my passages.
How I despised that endless
copy work and now
what I would not give
to be a lady of correspondence
courted by suitors.
A flicker in the doorway.
I stuff the rubies and gold
deep into the box.
I fall to my knees
as though absorbed in housework.
The baby screams
and the kettle sirens,
and today I miss my mother
and her gentle smile
so far down inside me
I can barely drag myself
up off the floor.
CAUGHT
Margaret Walcott, 17
Past the crooked evergreen
and the brook what lost its water,
on my way home from playing
games on who’ll make me husband,
I cross Ipswich Road.
I rub my eyes. His two blue ones
be looking straight on me.
My pulse starts to gallop
like a steed. But today I trip not.
I track on up to him and say,
“Be you following me?”
His arms be thick enough
to lift the axe of three men.
Isaac’s laughter shakes
through him so fierce
it scatters the snow off his boots.
“Yea, Margaret Walcott,
betwixt tending the stables,
staking out the fields
and bringing wares to town,
I be scouting all the time after you.”
He raises one brow.
“But where hast thou been?”
The color splashes over me,
drenching me red. I hold up my buckets.
“Fetching water,” I say.
“Thou art far from any stream
I know of,” Isaac says,
and shakes his head.
His eyes catch on me
like he be holding lightly
my face with his hand.
“I must then be lost,” I say,
and I pick up my bucket
and my skirts and trot off.
And do so quite a bit like a lady.
ANN PUTNAM SR.
Ann Putnam Jr., 12
Mother never questions where
I have been. She notices not my entrance
into the house. But I note each patter of her foot.
She treadles the spinning wheel
as though she weaves a song
of high tempo. I am mesmerized.
I set to work at her feet.
My hands sting just from drafting her wool.
“There are too many loose fibers.”
Her voice is a whip.
I rub harder the flax between my hands
till the strands be perfect for the wheel.
Mother thanks me not.
“Will you teach me your way
to treadle?” I ask.
But Mother hears me not.
She hears only her own tapping
of the wheel.
She admires her yarn, refastens her bun
and motions me away.
“Go back to your study.”
GIRLS AT PLAY?
Ann Putnam Jr., 12
I check again that we are alone
and crack open the eggshell.
Today what floats to the surface
is shaped like a death box.
I shudder, and we all drop hands.
Perhaps we should have sewn tapestry
or rolled hoops, instead of playing folk magic.
“Maybe your husband will be an undertaker,”
Abigail says.
But a chill colder than winter wind
trembles my arms. I hold in my breath.
Margaret’s face turns dust and ice.
She says, “I fear we let loose
a thing what leads to the grave.”
NOT SUPPOSED TO CONGREGATE
Margaret Walcott, 17
Reverend hands my father
the blue shawl I left
at the parsonage
like some one-eyed fool.
“The girls were
at some sort of mischief
at the meetinghouse.
Betty and Abigail been struck
rightful ill.
Pity Margaret can’t act a lady
such as does her cousin Ann,”
Reverend Parris lectures to Father.
I can feel the leather lash my back
before Father closes the door.
If only they knew Ann
be not only with us
but be always first
with the herbs and chants and telling stones.
While I be strapped
it seems rightful unfair
that Ann be sainted.
I nearly wish to confess
what mischief we all been about,
conjuring that death box.
I swipe the tears from under my nose.
Step-Mother creaks afore my door
on her stubby legs.
“Maaaargaret!�
��
She stretches my name
like it were a hide.
“Be at your chores!”
The mound of mending in my basket
and bruises on my knees
from scouring like our maid
cause me ponder whether
I have enough merriment
with them little girls.
Outside the window
snow falls light and graceful
and perfect,
long as none does touch it.
Isaac must be riding
through this snow,
it covering his arms
and his head all white.
All them soft little flakes
landing ’pon his lips.
I touch my own
and wish to be out of here.
UPROOTED
Mercy Lewis, 17
I am no gypsy.
I seek but soil
and a place to dry my boots.
The boots I am given
at the Putnams’ flap
as I walk.
My toes cannot fill them.
I swaddle my feet in muslin,
pack them to size.
But the stuffing shifts
for the boots are borrowed,
were never intended mine.
A sole stalk that survived
the cruelest winter, I search
for friendly, familiar terrain,
where I can fashion my boots
and trade in the temporary,
a plot of land
where my feet burrow
into the ground
and belong.