Conversion

by Katherine Howe

  For a long minute nothing happened.

  Father Molloy and the dean moved out of our sight line, and everyone in AP US History leaned a few inches to the right, trying to improve our angle.

  “You guys, they’re taking Clara to the hospital,” Leigh read from her phone.

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “Olivia’s in study hall in the classroom next to hers. She just texted me.”

  “Girls, I really think we should—” Ms. Slater started to say.

  “No,” Emma interrupted, her eyes staring steadily out into the quad, and all our heads turned to her.

  “Excuse me?” Ms. Slater bristled.

  “It’s not Clara,” Emma said, and her voice sounded quiet and flat. “Look.”

  We all craned our necks to see the jumpsuit guys hustling the gurney back to the ambulance. The dean and Father Molloy scrambled alongside, whispering to whoever was riding on it. Whoever it was, she was covered in a blanket and strapped down, but even at a distance, and through the wavery fishbowl glass of the casement windows, we could all see that the person was shaking. Trembling.

  Twitching.

  “You’re right,” I said, pressing my palm to the windowpane. “It’s not Clara.”

  It was the Other Jennifer.

  INTERLUDE

  SALEM VILLAGE, MASSACHUSETTS

  MAY 30, 1706

  I reach my sleeve up to wipe my nose. Reverend Green frowns at me, creasing his fine forehead. He’s pleasant to look at, leaning with his elbows on his knees like that, even with the ink staining his teeth. I think of his wife and hiccoughing baby in the hall behind me, their fat housecat gnawing on a chicken bone under the table. I gulp for breath, and start hiccoughing myself.

  I am so alone. Even God has turned His face from me.

  “Ann,” the Reverend says, and he slowly reaches his hand forward.

  He hesitates, and then rests it gently on my knee. His touch feels warm, and under all my wool and linen a rich tingling spreads across my skin. As if he can sense the effect his touch has on me, the Reverend pulls his hand away.

  No one ever touches me.

  “You can tell me,” he says, his voice stiff.

  The baby’s quieted down, and Goody Green is humming. The grubby little girl is babbling to herself, beating on the table with a wooden spoon.

  “Whatever it is,” Reverend Green says, “all you need do is unburden yourself. Give yourself over to God.”

  I take a deep breath, but something bursts in me and I groan, slumping over with my forehead on my hands, my mouth open, keening. I cringe, letting the sadness flow out of me, dimly aware of footsteps coming to the door, a low woman’s voice asking if I’m ill, should she fix me something warm to drink? And the Reverend saying yes, he thinks that would be best, and then getting up to close the door on the retreating footsteps.

  “Ann,” he says, shaking my shoulder.

  His grip is rougher now.

  I shake my head, no, no, no, how can I tell him what a beast I am, what the Devil has got of me? He’ll send me away, they all will, and then I’ll be bewildered and alone.

  “Come now, Ann.”

  He takes my shoulders in his hands and forces me to sit up, my head lolling back on the bench, my hands beating at him to push him away. He keeps his grip. I feel safer with his hands holding me up.

  “I . . . I . . . ,” I gasp, choking on my own horror.

  My vision starts to cloud. Reverend Green’s handsome face swims before my eyes.

  Then a sharp burst of white heat, and my head snaps to the side, bumping against the back of the bench. A rain of stars behind my eyes. I bring my hand to my cheek. My eyes open and travel from the floor to the Reverend’s face. He frowns when he sees that I’m coming back to myself. He sits back in his armchair, rubbing his palm on his breeches.

  “Master yourself, Ann,” he says, his eyes sliding from me. “God sees all. We’re but miserable creatures in His eyes. You may judge yourself harshly, but your judgment is nothing to God. Now. Tell me what’s troubling you, or if you cannot, leave me in peace. I’ve a sermon to write.”

  “I want to lie in the dust,” I blurt.

  Reverend Green brings a finger alongside his temple and narrows his eyes.

  “Why?” he asks.

  I get to my feet and move with some unsteadiness to the window. Its panes are small, lozenge-shaped, in the old style, like the ones in my parents’ house. My house, now. Outside, the sun grows longer, painting the rye field behind the parsonage in deep veins of gold. I’ve been coming to this parsonage since I was a child. My reflection makes a ghost on the windowpane, and I can see the crimson stripes deepening on my cheek from his blow.

  “Is it true, what they say happened to Judge Sewell’s house?” I ask.

  In the reflected glass, I see Reverend Green shift in his chair to face me.

  “What do you mean?” he says carefully.

  “Is it true?” I reiterate.

  “The Lord works in mysterious ways. What’s true to one man, a wonder and a marvel, might not seem so to another, as God didn’t intend it for him.”

  I turn from the window, staring at Reverend Green with desperation.

  “Did rocks fall from the sky and pelt Judge Sewell’s house or not?” I ask him, my voice shrill.

  “I don’t live in Judge Sewell’s house,” the Reverend says. “I can’t speak to it.”

  “But do you believe they did?” I demand. “Has the judge seen signs of God’s disfavor? The village is alive with it. I must know. He’s a godly man. Has he seen signs that God is turned from him?”

  “I’ve heard,” the Reverend says with hesitation, “of an afternoon, that the family praying together, there was heard a great commotion upon the roof, and the judge, being much afraid, ran from the door of his house to behold stones falling from the sky and onto his house.”

  I wrap my arms about my waist. “And his house only?” I choke. “None other of the houses in his neighborhood, nor his neighbors, were bedeviled with the stones?”

  The Reverend clears his throat. “So I’m told. But,” he says, pressing his hand flat to the surface of his desk, fastening his gaze on it as if inspecting the movement of the blood under his own skin, “I’ve not had that from anyone in the Sewell household. It’s a story. I’m surprised to hear you repeating it.”

  “But it’s true,” I breathe.

  The village had been lit up with gossip of it for weeks, and my smallest sister even appeared with a fistful of unearthly pale pebbles, claiming she’d scooped them from the yard of the Sewell house. She rained them all over our hall table, and as each pebble bounced from table to floor, I felt a drop of my soul draining out the soles of my feet.

  If a man such as Judge Sewell can read God’s intent to punish him so clearly, then I can hide from the truth no longer. For what is he? And what am I?

  I’m no one, and I’m nothing.

  To my back the Reverend says, “Were they stones sent by God bearing an awful message? Or were they the fevered musings of a man haunted by guilt? It speaks more of hailstones than brimstone to me. If Judge Sewell’s subjecting his soul to harsh examination, then I’ll wager he’d see falling stones wherever he looked. But—” He hesitates. “I can see that you believe it.”

  “I do believe it,” I say. “And I want to lie in the dust. For my soul is as stained as his, if not more so.”

  The Reverend frowns.

  “Whatever can you mean, Ann?”

  “I’m in the twenty-seventh year of my age,” I tell him. “In my twentieth year I lost my last parent, and took on the care of my brothers and sisters. I’ve no husband, nor hope of one. I work hard. I try to please God. But my soul is burdensome to me. My heart is black. I wish to humble myself before God.”

  Reverend Green’s eyes
brighten with curiosity, and he leans forward.

  And then I begin to talk.

  Chapter 4

  DANVERS, MASSACHUSETTS

  SATURDAY, JANUARY 14, 2012

  Colleen, put it away.”

  I made a show of sliding my phone into my jeans pocket and said, “Sorry, Mom.”

  “Honestly, I don’t know why you can’t just sit with us for five minutes. What’s so important? And sit up. You’ll grow a hump, slouching over like that.”

  “It’s just Anjali, asking about the physics problem set.”

  “I thought you said you were already finished with physics this weekend.”

  “I am, Mom. It’s just Anjali had a question.”

  It was Anjali, that part was true, but her text had said:

  Harvard sq tonite? Plz!

  And I’d texted back:

  What time?

  “Physics,” my father said, reaching across me and my brother, Michael, for the bowl of wild rice. “I always thought I’d do physics in college, did you know that?”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. This was familiar ground, my father’s various imaginary alternative careers. Next he’d be telling me about the track scholarship he would have been offered at UMass if it hadn’t been for his knee injury. Men’s track and field, he always called it, saying the full name of the sport to make it sound more impressive, I guess. My pocket vibrated.

  J says 9.

  Oh, great. Jason.

  Who else is coming?

  I texted something like that. I can never be totally sure when I’m typing inside my pocket.

  “I think you have a really good shot at breaking 750 on the SAT subject, if you can stay focused,” my mother remarked. “But you need to stay ahead of the work.”

  “In fact,” my father continued, “if I’d gone to UMass on scholarship, for men’s track and field, I promised your grandfather that I’d do electrical engineering, with a minor in physics. Did you know he was something of an amateur scientist himself? Pass me the pepper, please, Louisa. Michael, you’re not getting anything else, so you’d better go ahead and eat.”

  “It’s nasty,” said my brother, a shrimpy eighth grader whom I occasionally forgot to pay attention to, despite my best intentions.

  My baby sister, Wheez, passed the pepper to my father and accepted his nod of thanks with a huge, silent smile.

  “I’m glad you decided to go with UMass as your safety,” Mom continued. “But I’d still like you to think seriously about a couple of your other choices. Maybe the ones out of state. I really liked Stonybrook, didn’t you?”

  “I like it a lot,” whispered Wheez. No one pays much attention to her as a rule, and this was no exception. She was talking about the rice.

  “You’ll get no complaints from me, going to UMass,” my father said.

  “Mike. She needs to be prepared in case UMass doesn’t pan out. This is a competitive year. It’s not like when we were in high school.”

  One of my eyes crept down to the edge of my pocket under the dining table to read Anjali’s response.

  J’s friend. Pleeeeease! U have to come.

  Oh, terrific. Jason the yo-boy and one of his yo-boy friends. Jason with the magic below-ass-hovering blue jeans. I once asked Anjali how he kept them from falling down completely, and she just gave me this prissy look and didn’t say anything. Jason the yo-boy with his know-what-I’m-sayin’s and his pimp roll, which, by the way, he only just started doing this year, which I happened to know for a fact because Jason was from Pride’s Crossing and I’d known him in a roundabout way since we were kids. Whenever they were together, Jason rested his hand on the back of Anjali’s neck, with the thumb on one side and the fingers on the other, in this proprietary way that made Anjali all giggly and weird. Then he could steer her closer to him and nudge his nose behind her ear and call her “baby.” The idea of Jason putting his hands on my friend made me feel ill.

  “Of course, then I’d never have met your mother,” my father continued, oblivious.

  “Aw,” my mother said, plopping more rice onto her plate, and some on mine, too, without asking. “BU in the seventies. Berkeley East. Are you sure you don’t want to think about BU? I bet we could sneak an application in, still. You’re a legacy.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, tapping out:

  What about Deena? I bet she’d like to come

  God willing.

  “Dad, may I be excused?” my brother asked, eager to get back to World of Warcraft.

  “Sure, go ahead. But don’t forget you’ve got dish duty tonight. You think you might want to study physics, Colleen? It’s a great field.”

  Nah . . . J just invited you

  Crap.

  “Honey?”

  Not listening, I typed out:

  9 is kind of late

  “Colleen?”

  PLEEEEEASE!

  “Dammit!”

  A fork clattered onto a plate and then my mother was standing behind my chair.

  “Give it to me,” she said, her hand thrust out.

  “Mom,” I started to protest, but my father spoke over me.

  “Come on, Linda,” he said.

  “Five minutes! It’s all I ask!” My mother’s voice rose while she waited for me to surrender my phone.

  I was clenching my fingers around it inside my pocket and glaring at her. Inside my palm the phone vibrated again.

  My father sighed and rubbed his fingertips over his eyebrows and under his glasses. He spoke from behind his hands.

  “Colleen,” he said. “Next time, we’ll leave the phone in your room, okay?”

  “I meant to this time,” I lied. “I just forgot.”

  My mother stalked back into the kitchen, muttering “Forgot!” to the invisible committee to whom she liked to refer my family’s crimes. The swinging door whooshed closed, and sounds of running water and disapproving dishes let me know in no uncertain terms where I stood this particular Saturday evening.

  My father’s eyes followed her out of the breakfast nook and then hung out for a while on the kitchen door before making their way back to me. He sighed with world-weary resignation. I could tell we were done talking about physics.

  “So,” he said. “What’ve you got on for tonight, Colliewog?”

  My father was subject to fits of nostalgia, but he wasn’t a fool.

  “Anjali wants me to meet her and Jason in Harvard Square,” I said. It was hard for me to keep the annoyance out of my voice.

  “Jason Rothstein?” my father said. He leaned back in his chair and toyed with his beer bottle, lifting it and setting it down in a different spot to make a lattice of water circles on the tabletop. “They’re still an item, eh?”

  I laughed. Nobody says “they’re an item” except parents.

  “They are,” I confirmed.

  Dad made more bottle-circle prints until the pattern resolved into a flower. He reached over with a meditative thumb and smeared a stem.

  “Anyone else going?” he asked.

  “Some friend of Jason’s. Some yo-boy who thinks saying ‘all up in here’ is standard speech filler that normal people use in regular everyday conversation.”

  I thought my father smirked, but he wisely kept any further commentary to himself.

  “What time will you be back?”

  “I dunno. Not late.”

  Dad nodded, and picked up his beer bottle. He tipped it to the side, weighing it in his hand, and found it empty. We both sat there for another minute, listening to the water in the kitchen sink shut off with a smack and the tinkle of glassware being taken out of the dishwasher and forcefully put away.

  “It’s just ’cause she’s going to miss you next year,” he said without looking too closely at me.

  My cheeks flushed pink.

  “
I know,” I said.

  My right finger and thumb pulled my napkin through my left finger and thumb, ironing it out in a slowly revolving circle.

  Dad crossed his ankle over his knee.

  “Well,” he said, “have a good time. Call if you need anything. Or if your plans change. Long as we know where you are.”

  “Okay,” I said, getting to my feet. I picked up my plate and made to carry it into the kitchen, but Dad arched an eyebrow at me, looked pointedly at the kitchen door, and then shook his head. I lowered the plate back to the breakfast table and smiled at him. He smiled back.

  “Frankly,” he said, “I like that you’re glued to that goddamn phone. You show me one father who isn’t happy to know he can always reach his daughter no matter what.”

  I grinned, kissed him on the cheek, and scurried back to my room to get ready. I peered at my face, wondering if there was a way to fade freckles and wishing my nose weren’t quite so snubby. I stuck my tongue out at myself, drew dark liner on my eyelids, and texted Anjali.

  Meet at 9 by the newsstand.

  J’s friend better be cute.

  January in Massachusetts can be peripatetic. That’s a two-dollar SAT word, peripatetic, meaning either “wandering around” or “a student of the school of Aristotle.” This time I meant it in the wandering-around sense, both that the weather comes and goes in unpredictable ways, dumping a foot of snow one day and then simmering it into slush the next, and that there was a restlessness in the air, a sense that something was about to happen. Though standing in Harvard Square maybe had something Aristotelian about it, too. Scholarly. Skeptical. Less famous than Plato.

  I stood in my peacoat right at nine, damp with sweat because it was one of those nights that looked cold but wasn’t, waiting for Anjali and them to get there. I didn’t know why I bothered to be on time—Jason was always late. Then when I got annoyed about it, he’d tell me I “gots to chill,” and I’d seriously want to smack him in the teeth.

  Harvard Square is always a scene, and this Saturday was no different. Everyone was out soaking up some of the unseasonable warmth. Some gutter punk kids had started a drum circle in the Pit. The same homeless guy was selling Spare Change News. Grizzled Cambridge types in army surplus jackets hunched over chessboards, timers ticking. Bands of Harvard girls picked their way along the sidewalk, trying to keep their heels from getting caught in the bricks. I leaned against a lamppost, trying to look preoccupied so no weirdos would bother me. It’s tricky, looking indifferent enough to keep weirdos at bay but engaged enough that your friends can find you. I usually go for a mix of busy/preoccupied/mysterious, as if I were a woman freshly arrived off an international flight from Geneva and just here looking for my driver.