Conversion

by Katherine Howe

  “I’m all right, I guess,” I say.

  Seeing Betty Hubbard makes me realize how tired I’ve been. For weeks now I’ve been coiled tight as a snake under a rock, worn down with worry. Sitting next to Betty makes me uncoil some, and all I want to do is rest. If it were warmer, I could sneak off to the hayloft and lie on my back and count the wasp nests under the eaves until I fell asleep. But it’s too cold, and I’ve too much to do.

  I pick up another potato.

  “I was going to the parsonage pretty regular,” I say. “I can’t make heads or tails of Betty Parris. She won’t talk. When it’s just us, she’s well herself, but when the adults are there, she acts like a wooden poppet. But even with just us, she won’t speak. She must be sick, but of what?”

  “Hmm,” Betty Hubbard sniffs. “Why’d you stop going?”

  “Oh.” My welts throb under my sleeve, invisible and insidious. “No special reason. I had chores.”

  Betty Hubbard looks at me under her eyelashes. “Not afraid of that Abby?”

  I glance at Betty, eyes wide, suddenly fearful. What has she heard?

  “I would be,” Betty Hubbard whispers.

  The door to the best room thumps open and Dr. Griggs reappears, followed by my father and my mother, who flits about the two men like a moth around a lamp.

  “. . . be getting there as soon as we can,” Dr. Griggs is in the middle of saying. “If we go now, Thomas, I warrant we’ll be there within the hour, or at least no more than two. Can you?”

  “Indeed,” my father says, groping for his greatcoat. “Ann, I don’t know how long we’ll be. Can you have the girl get us a pone?”

  He’s talking to my mother, who is also Ann. Sometimes he teases me and calls me “Junior,” as though I were an eldest son. I’m not, though. And never can be.

  “Elizabeth!” Dr. Griggs barks to his niece. “I trust you made yourself a boon to this household in my absence?”

  “Oh, yes, Uncle,” Betty chirps, placing down the identical unpeeled potato that I handed her upon her arrival.

  “But what if there’s contagion?” my mother asks from the table near the hearth, where she’s wrapping some corn bread in a napkin to give to my father. Mercy’s standing by watching, as though she’d never heard of a pone, much less how to wrap one up.

  “We’ll be taking every precaution,” Dr. Griggs assures her. “All will be quite well, Goody Putman.”

  It’s a matter of indifference to most people if our name is Putnam or Putman. I’ve even seen my father sign our name both ways. Sometimes I wonder if one is righter than another. If I can secretly be two people at once.

  “Goody Putnam,” Betty pipes up, tying her scarf under her chin in preparation to go. “Couldn’t Annie come with us? I’d be so much quieter if she could be there. She loves Betty and Abigail as much as I do.”

  I’m torn, part of me yearning to flee across the yard to the barn no matter how cold it is and hide in the stall behind our old cow where no one will find me. But I admit to being curious. If Dr. Griggs is called, they must be nearing the end of the praying. I want to know if Abby’ll be found out. I look at my mother, trying to arrange my features into a semblance of filial piety.

  “Betty’s right. Perhaps I ought to go?”

  My mother looks between us, worried.

  “You’re certain there’s no danger?” she asks the doctor. “Thomas, you’ll watch her, won’t you?”

  “Of course,” my father says. “I’m sure the Parrises’ll be only too glad of the extra help. Annie, step lively.”

  I drop my eyes and hurry to the door, assembling my winter garb with an air of submission and obedience. Out of the corner of my eye I can see Betty Hubbard smiling. She winks at me. A smile twitches my cheek.

  “Here.” My mother thrusts the wrapped pone into my hands. “It could be a long night. You mind your father. And Mrs. Parris. Make yourself useful.”

  I nod. “Yes, Mother.”

  Betty and I follow close on the heels of Dr. Griggs and my father, who are murmuring between themselves about Reverend Parris and what we’re likely to find.

  Once we’re settled in the back of the wagon, Betty takes my hand. As the doctor tells the horse to walk on, Betty whispers, “I can’t wait to see them with my own eyes, can you?”

  “I can’t,” I agree. But the gleam in Betty Hubbard’s eye is troublingly bright.

  I don’t know how much time passes. In the parsonage’s hall there’s nowhere to sit, so Betty Hubbard and I stand, tucked in a corner out of the way by a straw pallet rolled up against the wall. The men are all up in the loft, and the excitement of their voices is almost enough to drown out the occasional cries breaking forth from Abby, and now from Betty Parris, too. We hear pounding and shattering and rumbling of feet, and a man’s voice shout, “Grab her! The window!”

  The hall is packed with women, some of them pretending to make themselves useful by stirring a pot or folding a cloth, and some there under pretense of errand, baskets clutched on their laps. A few hands busy themselves with darning. But the majority sit and stare, their eyes steady on the ceiling of the hall.

  “Ann!” a scream rings out. “Oh, Ann, God in heaven, they want me to sign!”

  A commotion overhead as all the eyes in the long hall swivel to me. Betty Hubbard widens her eyes with excitement, and I can tell she’s struggling not to smile. She tugs on my hand under our cloaks and whispers, “You get to go up!”

  “Ann Putnam?” a male voice calls down the loft ladder. “Would someone send up Ann Putnam?”

  “Fetch her,” Mrs. Parris says to Tittibe, who’s standing close to her husband, John, a blocky Indian used by the Parrises as a man of all work. Tittibe and John exchange a look, and she releases his hand and approaches me with a worried expression.

  “Come, my Annie,” Tittibe says.

  She holds her hand out to me. A sheen of sweat gleams on her forehead.

  I take her hand and feel the stares of the village women as Tittibe leads me to the attic stair.

  “Ann! Is someone bringing her?” the impatient voice calls, which I now take to belong to Reverend Parris.

  “Hurry now,” Tittibe says to me.

  On trembling arms and legs I hoist myself up.

  In the loft, I find Betty Parris and Abigail Williams tucked into a trundle together, though I can scarcely see them through the forest of black-coated men clustered around the bed. They are murmuring their bafflement.

  “. . . cannot be a brain fever, for her face is cool to the touch . . .”

  “. . . and what of the marks? Is it a pox of some sort? . . .”

  “. . . the coolness of the feet and the disordered speech must surely mean . . .”

  “Here! It’s the girl she’s asking for.”

  A man I don’t recognize takes hold of my upper arm and steers me roughly to the bedside. I behold Betty Parris, lying stiff as a board, purple rings circling her eyes. Next to her Abby sits bolt upright, hair streaming back from a sweaty forehead, a finger outstretched, pointing at me.

  “There she stands at Ann’s shoulder! Do you not see her? She holds the book out to me, but I will not sign!”

  “What book?” Dr. Griggs asks, looking curiously between Abby and me. “What does she mean, child?”

  “I don’t know of any book,” I say.

  The bite marks under my sleeve are itching something fierce.

  “Ann, tell them! Tell them how we’ve seen their Sabbaths out on the rye field from this very window, where they ate red bread and drank blood like sacramental wine! Tell them how they bade us sign their vile book, but we wouldn’t!”

  “A book!” Reverend Parris gets to his feet and rushes to me. He takes me by the shoulders and shakes. “What is she speaking of? Who conspires against me? Tell me!”

  I feel the force of him, his
fingers digging into my upper arms.

  “I . . . I . . . ,” I stammer, panicking as the many older learned male faces crowd down upon me, all urging me to explain, to tell them, to reveal the truth of what Abby’s saying. And the oddest part is, I feel myself wanting to tell them. They are so keen to know, and I want to obey. Of course I know Abby’s dissembling, I saw that wicked grin, I know she’s reveling in the care that’s been lavished on her these past weeks. But now all the eyes are on me, fine men in periwigs, who’ve been to the college and can read the Word and are accustomed to being harkened to by other men and women and girls like myself. They’re all bearing down upon me, and I’m powerless to find the words they want to hear.

  “Show them, Annie!” Abby screams. “Show what happens when we don’t sign the book!”

  Wordlessly I reach down and roll my sleeve, turning my inner arm faceup to catch the yellow lamplight. Reverend Parris releases my upper arms and steps back that he might see. Dr. Griggs peers down at my arm, squinting.

  I’m on the point of saying that Abby bit me, that she’s a liar and a rogue and they should beat her, but the focused breathing of the roomful of men as they stare at my tender flesh stops my tongue. A silence falls over the company, and even Abby seems to be holding her breath, awaiting the doctor’s verdict.

  Dr. Griggs looks the marks up and down, takes my arm in his hand, and turns it this way and that in the light. Then he stands upright, pressing his lips together in thought and looking each gentleman in the face.

  “Well?” prompts a man whose face I cannot see, obscured as he is by half a dozen others.

  “It’s as I feared,” the doctor says.

  An excited murmur circulates among the assembly.

  “I’d say these symptoms are beyond what’s in the power of natural disease to effect. It’s preternatural.”

  “But what can that mean, Doctor?” Reverend Parris asks, worrying his hands together.

  “I fear, Reverend Parris,” the doctor says, “that these poor girls are under an evil hand. All of them.”

  Chapter 12

  DANVERS, MASSACHUSETTS

  SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2012

  I pulled up the driveway to Emma’s house, flipped off the radio, and leaned my head against the headrest. I was early, and I could see by the movement of silhouettes behind the living room curtains that the Blackburns were clearing the dinner table. I counted heads, and guessed that Mark was probably home for the weekend from Endicott. It was pretty weird, him going to college so close to home. But that’s how they did it in Emma’s family. Her mom liked to keep them all close. Like if she let them get too far out of her sight, something might happen.

  I mustered myself, not really feeling in the mood to socialize. But it was set to be a pretty low-key night. Movies with Emma, just hanging out. We hadn’t done that in forever. I used to go to Emma’s all the time when we were younger, but in the last few years we’d gone out more instead. Partly it was because we were older, and so we could, but if I’m honest, it was also because the Blackburn house was grim. One of those fifties split-levels with cheap siding and a chain-link fence. Thick layers of dust and a greasy smell. Carpet stains.

  Out of the car, doorbell, and Mark answered.

  “Oh, hey, Colleen,” he said.

  He was like the male Emma. Blond, slim, with practically no eyebrows, and permanently tanned. I tried to remember if he still played lacrosse. Damn, he looked good. What was he, twenty? If he weren’t Emma’s brother, seriously.

  “Hey, Mark. Sorry I’m early.”

  “No worries. Come on in.”

  “Emma!” Mark called to the kitchen. I heard the sound of running water and dishes.

  “Hey,” Emma said, emerging from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel.

  She had a funny look on her face, and her parents were nowhere to be seen. Which was weird, since I’d just seen them all through the window. I knew they were home.

  “Hey,” I said, looking between Emma and Mark. The silence between them was hard to quantify. I wondered if I’d interrupted an argument or something.

  “So, d’you want to go out for a while?” Emma asked.

  Mark disappeared into the living room.

  “Um,” I hesitated. I was pretty tired, and we’d already talked about staying in and watching movies. I missed lying on my stomach on the floor of Emma’s room, like we used to do every weekend in middle school. I’d been looking forward to a night like we used to have. But I guess there weren’t going to be any more nights like we used to have. “Sure, I guess. Where do you want to go?”

  “I don’t know. I just feel like going out. I figure, you’ve got the car, right?”

  Of course, if Emma really wanted to go out, couldn’t she just borrow Mark’s car? But whatever. Maybe she’d had a fight with her parents, and that’s why the atmosphere in their house was so off.

  “Sure. Whatever. You want to tell your folks?”

  “Nah. Mom’s having one of her episodes.” Emma enclosed this last word with ironic air quotes. “She felt a headache coming on. It’d be better if we just left.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  I hadn’t even taken off my coat. I was still holding the car keys in my hand. Emma wound a scarf around her neck and said, “Let’s go.”

  “Bye, Mark!” I called.

  No answer.

  Once we were in the car, Emma started spinning through radio stations and said, “Thank you. This is so much better. Want to drive to the water?”

  Emma was a sailor, and I knew that during the winter she pined for the ocean. I liked sitting by the ocean, too—it was one of the nicest things about living where we did, along the water north of Boston. Most of us took the nearness of the ocean for granted. Not me. Definitely not Emma. Maybe that was why the Blackburns liked to stay close to home.

  “Sure. Any place special?”

  “Nah. Beverly, I guess. Or the Willows?”

  The Willows was Salem’s old boardwalk, and one of our favorite places to go when we felt down. But Beverly was closer, and there was a park close to the harbor. Without discussion, I started driving us there.

  A Florence and the Machine song came on, and Emma sang along. I cracked the windows and we let the cold winter night wash over our faces. Emma leaned back in her seat, her knees drawn up, boots on the dashboard, and smiled at me. But it was a sad smile.

  We pulled into the parking lot off the oceanfront park. All the boats had been taken out of the harbor and parked on jacks in the boatyard by the overpass, a spiky forest of masts against the starry sky. Through the cracked windows we could hear waves curling onto the rocks below. The air smelled crisper. Sharper.

  “You want to get out?” I asked.

  “Nah,” she said.

  Instead she rummaged in her jacket pocket and pulled out a small baggie. I pretended not to see what she was up to, ignoring the rustling and the flick of the lighter.

  “You want?” she asked, trying to pass me something small and burning, with a thick, acrid smell.

  I eyed her, my temple resting on my fist.

  “Nah,” I said. “Thanks, though.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  She rolled the window down more and blew a lazy plume of smoke out of the car. She hadn’t even asked me if it was okay. I considered the problem of the smell, but decided that could probably be taken care of with some air freshener.

  We sat for a while, and Emma let out a long sigh. The atmosphere in the car loosened.

  “That’s Clara’s house, over there,” Emma said, gesturing with her free hand.

  “Which one?”

  “That one, with the one light on upstairs.”

  Clara lived in one of those wedding cake houses, painted navy blue with crisp white trim, the kind of house that a self-satisfied merchant built himself in
1880 to show that he’d arrived.

  “I wonder if they’re home.”

  “Dunno.”

  We both gazed at the wedding cake house. It had a widow’s walk on the roof, with what must have been a killer view over the harbor. I reflected that if that were my house, I’d hang out on the roof all the time. I’d be up on that roof right now, if I could.

  “I’m surprised there’s not a news van outside.”

  “Maybe there is. Look.”

  I squinted, and sure enough there was a dun-colored, unmarked van, barely visible in the shadows cast by the naked trees across the street from Clara’s house. And it had a small, unobtrusive satellite dish on its roof.

  “Oh my God. Why don’t they just leave us alone?”

  Emma smiled and said, “The Mystery Illness of 2012. They can’t just drop a story that great. Not when it’s up to seven now.”

  “I can’t believe that. You don’t know who, do you?”

  Emma shook her head, rustling in her plastic bag again. I weighed whether or not to comment. Nobody wants a friend who’s judgmental. But then . . . I’d just ask. Why not.

  “Are you, like, okay?” I asked, trying to keep my voice light.

  I knew she dipped into that on occasion—got it from Mark, was my impression—but this seemed kind of uncharacteristic for her. Weed was more of a lazy summertime activity for Emma. Seasonal. Like eggnog.

  The lighter flicked once, twice as she tried to get the spark going, splashing her face with snaps of yellow light. She took a long drag, held her breath, coughed, and exhaled out the window. She proffered me the joint again out of habit, and I waved it away.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I guess I’m just disappointed.”

  The Harvard interview. A twist of guilt knifed in my gut, followed by one of those unwelcome, secret thoughts: Well, let’s be honest, Em, your grades aren’t up to it. I mean, B-plus GPA? As soon as that thought bloomed in my mind, I pushed it away as disloyal.

  “I’m sorry, Emma. They’re crazy not to give you one. I probably won’t get in anyway.”