Conversion

by Katherine Howe

  “Pica,” Dr. Gupta explained, “is a brain disorder wherein sometimes people eat things that aren’t food. Like dirt, or sometimes pins.”

  I took another wobbly step backward, my hand groping in space for something to hold on to. I felt like I was floating up into the night air, with nothing tethering me to the ground.

  “You do?” I asked.

  Anjali nodded. “Sometimes,” she said, “it’s caused by a nutritional deficiency. Like iron. Like your body makes you eat weird stuff because it’s missing important nutrients. But your stomach can’t always handle it, and so sometimes, things get vomited up.”

  “You’ve been eating pins on purpose?” My mouth contorted with unconscious distaste. “Since when?”

  “Um”—Anjali looked to her mom for confirmation—“I don’t know. I don’t remember eating pins. But my mom says that’s not so unusual, for people with pica not to remember the eating part. Like I’ve blocked it out.”

  “The important thing is,” Dr. Gupta said, “we know what the problem is. And we know how to treat it. Anjali is going to be just fine. So are all the other girls. And so are you, Colleen.”

  “I am,” I repeated. I couldn’t tell if I was asking or agreeing. I wanted to find Spence. I could hear him in the kitchen, letting Jason call him a douche bag.

  “Yes.” Dr. Gupta came over and put her hands on my shoulders. My muscles were so tight, it felt like my shoulders were right under my ears. “Look at you. You’re such a bright girl. You’re working so hard. There’s no need. I think the thing for you to do is to go home and have a nice, long talk with your parents. They can make an appointment for you with your pediatrician. There’s nothing for you to be ashamed of. Conversion disorder is unusual, but it happens, more often than we realize, especially to young women like you. Your parents love you very much, and they only want you to be happy.”

  I hesitated. Dr. Gupta was famous. She was my friend’s mom. She cared about me. And she was telling me I had conversion disorder.

  Everyone thought I had conversion disorder but me.

  “Okay,” I said. I felt dizzy.

  “Come.” Dr. Gupta threaded an arm through mine and steered me back to the safety of the kitchen. “I think Anjali’s right. I think we have enough if you and Spence want to stay for dinner. Do you?”

  I caught Spence’s eye, and he mouthed Suspended and glanced meaningfully at the door.

  “Um, thanks,” I said. “But I think you’re right. I think I should get Spence to take me home. They’re probably wondering why I’m not back already.”

  “All right,” Dr. Gupta said, a reassuring hand on my back. “Next time.” She started walking back down the marble hallway, and Spence and I fell in step behind her.

  Anjali followed us to the front door. She struggled to hide her disappointment in me, but failed.

  “Listen,” she said flatly. “It’s fine, okay? Emma knows you love her.”

  “I’m worried she doesn’t,” I said in a low voice.

  “Maybe talk to her about it,” Anjali suggested. “She’ll understand. She’s just having a really rough time right now.”

  I could feel tears welling behind my eyes, in danger of squeezing out. Anjali knew they were there, I could tell, so instead of saying anything else, she drew me into a long hug. Some of her hair got into my mouth, but I didn’t care. I hugged her back.

  “Let’s do something fun this weekend,” she whispered in my ear. “And no more crazy Emma talk. Okay?”

  I nodded. “Okay.”

  Spence was already outside, unlocking the car.

  “Bye, Spencer,” she trilled.

  “Bye, Anjali,” he said. “Don’t let Rothstein give you any trouble.”

  “Oh, he’s going to give me just the exact right amount of trouble,” she said, grinning.

  I slunk into the passenger seat, staring straight ahead.

  “Well?” Spence said, climbing behind the wheel. “Are you convinced?”

  Everyone was right. I was mentally ill. I had to be. Right? Occam’s Razor. The simplest answer is the one most likely to be true. And the simplest answer was that I had cracked under the stress of my life at St. Joan’s. Lost it. Been torn to pieces by my life.

  But I didn’t feel like I’d lost it. I felt the same as I always did.

  “No,” I said to Spence with new resolve. “Can you drive me to Salem Willows? I’ve got to talk to Emma.”

  INTERLUDE

  SALEM VILLAGE, MASSACHUSETTS

  MAY 30, 1706

  The next day was a Sunday,” I say. “March 20. Meeting day.”

  Reverend Green is twisting his shirt cuffs in his hands. “So in that time, two more witches were named,” he says.

  “Martha Corey,” I confirm. “And Rebecca Nurse.”

  “Ah, yes.” Reverend Green looks pitying around his eyes. “I’ve heard tell of Goody Nurse. Her sisters, too.”

  “Yes,” I say, looking down at my hands. “My mother’d complained of Goody Corey for years. Goodman Corey was quarrelsome with my father. And Goody Corey, his third wife, was well born. My mother felt it keenly.”

  “How did Mary Walcott get a bite on her wrist?” he asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Perhaps she heard about mine. She could have done it herself. She saw how people were treating us, and so she did it. Or perhaps the Devil sent someone’s shape to bite her.”

  A shadow crosses Reverend Green’s face. “Is that what you think?” he asks me.

  “I don’t know,” I admit. “I just don’t know.”

  We file into the meetinghouse on Sunday, as solemn a procession as I ever saw. The aisle parts before us as Abby Williams, Betty Parris, Betty Hubbard, Mercy Lewis, Mary Walcott, and I, joined by my mother and Goody Pope, process in and take our ceremonial seats at the front of the meetinghouse. I can’t hear my own thoughts over the whispering. Goody Corey’s there with her husband, sitting on one of the benches off to the side, and there’s a strange dead space around them, as though no one wants to sit too close. Goody Nurse is absent, which is strange of itself. She never missed a Sunday meeting.

  Reverend Parris sits with his wife, deep circles under his eyes, scanning the face of every congregant who comes through the meetinghouse door. Three more witches, still unknown to him, and they must be in the crowd. Old women, young matrons, worthy gentlemen, laborers, youths, children, frown and smile and whisper in each other’s ears, all gathered to come hear the word of God, some of them to receive the sacraments, and three of them devils.

  The hymn is named and we stand to sing, lifting our voices to the heavens. I close my eyes, letting the music fill me. I think of Tittibe locked in Boston jail with Sarah Good and her sucking babe, and Sarah Osburn, too. I wonder if they’re praying to God. I wonder if the Devil is visiting them that very moment and telling them to be quiet, else he cut off their heads.

  Or perhaps the Devil is here. The thought makes me shudder, and I open my eyes, surveying the singing faces all around me, eyes lifted to the heavens or on some faces closed in concentration, forming the hymn’s words. I think I catch a glimpse of a shadow ducking behind someone’s shoulder, and I whimper, clutching for Betty Hubbard’s arm.

  “Shh, Annie,” she soothes me, but I’m beginning to tremble. I want to run away, I want to flee the meetinghouse and run to our barn, where I can hide in the hayloft and no one can find me.

  Betty Hubbard grips my hand hard and pulls me down next to her as Reverend Lawson mounts the pulpit with the big Bible, opening it for the reading of the Word. He recites a Psalm, but I’m deaf to it. Everywhere I look, I see people staring at me. As soon as I catch them, they look away. Out of the corners of my eyes I keep seeing faint shapes moving, like mice scuttling in the shadows. My grip on Betty’s hand tightens.

  Abby Williams is restless, too, in her seat. She doesn
’t want to be at meeting any more than I do. Not for eight hours, when it’s starting to be spring outside. She keeps snuffling and shifting about on the pew, elbowing Betty Parris, scratching at her clothes and rearranging her skirts around her feet. Mary Walcott pokes her in the ribs to keep her quiet. All at once Abby lets out the loudest, rudest sigh I’ve ever heard. She stands, and stamps her foot.

  “Name your text!” she hollers to Reverend Lawson, who is so shocked he can hardly speak.

  The congregation gasps, and falls into appalled silence. Nobody has ever challenged a minister like this. No one. And certainly not a little nothing of a servant girl. It’s impossible. But it’s just happened.

  “I beg your pardon, child?” intones the visiting minister, peering down at her from over the pulpit edge.

  “Name your text!” she cries again.

  He does so, but I can’t hear him over the whispering of the congregation. “Did you ever see such impudence? It’s the Devil’s doing, surely. She’s in her fits, so she is.”

  Abby hears him, though, and rolls her eyes with drama and despair. “Ugh!” she sighs. “It’s a long text.”

  “Sit down, you!” Reverend Parris shouts from his seat next to his wife, and Mary Walcott drags Abby back to her seat. “You’ll hear the Reverend’s doctrine.”

  “I know no doctrine he had, and if he did name one, I’ve forgotten it,” Abby grouses, folding her arms over her chest and stamping her foot.

  The villagers gathered in the meetinghouse can’t contain their shock and interest; conversation starts to rise among them. Reverend Lawson sees he’s lost our attention, so he clears his throat, beginning a long and meandering disquisition on the Bible passage he’s chosen to elucidate for us today. I can’t sift meaning from his words, so thick is the whispering from the villagers around me. All I hear is my own name, and Abby’s, and the other girls’, and talk of our marks, and the names in the Devil’s book, those that have been named and those that haven’t.

  Across the room Goody Corey gazes steadily upon us, looking down her grand imperious nose, and then she rests her hand on her elderly husband’s arm and he inclines his ear to her. I see her mouth moving and she’s staring at us, but I can’t hear what she says over the whispering. My head is growing light. I’m swaying in my seat, and Betty Hubbard has to wrap her arm about my waist to keep me sitting upright. Abby notices my panic and follows my stare across the buzzing congregation. She spots Goody Corey talking of us to her husband, her fine brows drawn down over her eyes.

  “Look!” Abby shouts, interrupting the interminable sermon.

  She points into midair at nothing.

  “What? Where?” voices around us cry out in baffling, overlapping waves.

  “Look where Goody Corey sits on the beam, sucking her yellow bird betwixt her fingers!”

  Goody Corey screams aloud and claps her hands over her mouth as the congregation bursts into angry speculation. “Where? There? She’s sent her spirit up to sit upon the rafters!”

  Everyone sitting near the Coreys edges away as quickly as they can, and the imperious woman looks about her with a rising sense of panic and indignation.

  “What? No. I’m here!” she cries, pointing a finger at her chest.

  My vision is crowded with whispers and movement and strange shapes narrowing in. I feel my heart thudding in my chest, the sweat flowing freely in my hair, under my arms.

  “I . . .” I’m stammering. My breath won’t come.

  Betty Hubbard looks sharply at me and says, “Annie? Annie, what is it?”

  Something inside me breaks. I close my eyes and open my mouth, and a piercing scream tears out of me. The scream relieves the pressure in my head, and it feels so good that I scream again.

  “It’s there!” I jabber, lurching in my seat. “I see it there! Goody Corey’s yellow bird sits on Reverend Lawson’s hat! I see it plain as day, the Devil’s yellow bird sits on the Reverend’s hat!”

  Hands are clapped over my mouth and wrap around my waist as I thrash, trying to hold me back, but I will not be held back. My words are loose.

  “It’s Goody Corey for certain,” the village around me is saying. “Goody Corey’s one of the nine. Ann Putnam said so. She sees it. Goody Corey’s bewitched Ann Putnam!”

  Chapter 25

  SALEM WILLOWS, SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS

  MONDAY, MARCH 12, 2012

  Almost seven. I didn’t remember what time Emma said she was meeting Tad at the Willows, but I knew I’d find her there.

  The Salem Willows was a park, kind of. It was an amusement arcade on this peninsula that stuck out in the water between Salem and Beverly Harbors. It had been there since forever, at least the nineteenth century, and it was kind of the place where people went when they wanted to feel comfortable. Guys fished off the pier. Skee-Ball and saltwater taffy and spooky fortune-telling machines that described the man we’d marry for a dime. A carousel with these horses with bared teeth and their eyes rolling back in their heads that played organ music and had brass rings for us to grab as we went whirling by. We’d try to chuck them into a clown mouth, and if we hit it, bulbs lit up and bells went off and everyone got an extra spin. The carousel was from the 1860s and had been worn thin by generations of Salem kids sliding on and off the backs of the horses.

  Salem Willows took its name from the willow trees that dotted the lawn, drooping their branches in curtains around the gazebo. They were two hundred years old. When the wind kicked up over the harbor, curling the waves into white ripples and rushing through the willow branches, it sounded like whispering. In the wind we could almost hear the echoes of old ragtime bands, and children laughing, and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s scratching pen.

  Emma and I loved to go there when we were feeling down. It reminded us of when we were kids, and Emma and I would wrap ourselves in the willow branches, coiling them around our bodies and hanging from them, dangling our feet. My mom would drop us off with five dollars each and come back two hours later to find us both sticky and exhausted, ice cream down the fronts of our shirts, with fistfuls of arcade tickets that we wanted to trade for Pixy Stix and rubber spider rings. Emma’s mom didn’t really drive, so it was usually mine who ferried us to and from the Willows in our station wagon, the one that was now speckled with rust in our driveway.

  Spence and I rolled past the gate, squinting for a parking space. The evening sky was pale over the water, and the arcade lights had come on, fat glass bulbs flashing on the outside, interior lit by dull fluorescent lights. I think it was probably prettier in the nineteenth century.

  “You know she’s meeting him here?” Spence asked. “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “How come?”

  Spence wrinkled his nose. “I don’t know. It seems kind of . . . seedy.”

  I frowned out the window, not answering.

  We climbed out of the car, and a breeze from off the water wrapped around me, peeling away my warmth and making me shiver. Spence pulled me to him in an embrace while the wind lifted my hair, tangling my curls into a thicket around my head.

  “I can’t believe I ran away,” I whispered into his chest. “Do you think she’ll ever forgive me?”

  “Come on,” he whispered. “Let’s go find her.”

  The arcade stretched along a sort of midway, with rolling doors open to the outside forming a pavilion, and we peered into the succession of gaming rooms, dodging kids who chased each other around the whack-a-mole, stepping over an errant rolling Skee-Ball. Emma wasn’t there. I checked the old dancing monkeys game—it wasn’t really a game, we just put a dime in and these grinning stuffed monkeys beat castanets together while a Dixieland jazz bit played for a few minutes. When we were kids and I lost her, I could always find Emma by the dancing monkeys. But she wasn’t there either.

  “Gazebo?” Spence asked from a position of safety near the door. His hands we
re in his pockets, like he was afraid he’d get tetanus if he touched anything. I shot him an irritated look. I didn’t want him to be a fancy boy all the time. He ought to be able to be just a normal person sometimes, instead of an Andover kid in a button-down.

  The monkey castanets were deafening, and everywhere I turned, lightbulbs flashed on and off, leaving blue-red afterimages behind my eyelids. The fluorescents bathed everything in a sick green haze. I brought my hand to my forehead, pressing my thumb between my eyebrows in an effort to push away the ache that was burrowing in there. I heard a scream and I jumped, my heart in my throat, but it was just a kid running past me with a balloon in her hands. I reached for the corner of a pinball machine to get my balance.

  “Colleen?” said a voice by my ear.

  “What?” I was confused. It was Spence. God, my head was killing me.

  “You okay?”

  “Um . . . ,” I said. “She’s . . .”

  Spence frowned, taking me by the elbow. “She’s not here. Come on. Let’s go outside.”

  He steered me through the walls of pinball machines, edging warily around a big guy in a sleeveless metal band T-shirt who was swigging a beer and looking disinclined to make room for us to pass.

  “Hey,” said Beer Bottle Guy, folding his arms to make himself bigger. “Watch it.”

  “Dude,” Spence said, running his fingers through his flop of hair. “It’s my girlfriend. She’s kind of faint. Okay?”

  Beer Bottle Guy took one step forward, and for a second I thought things were about to get really, really ugly. “Emma,” I said weakly. “Here. She’s . . .”

  Beer Bottle Guy looked me up and down, and then without saying a word stepped aside for us to pass. I must’ve looked pretty bad. But then a little girl said, “Daddy,” and held her arms up to Beer Bottle Guy, who hoisted her to his hip and turned his back on us with a glare.

  “Come on,” Spence said, his jaw tight. He propelled me outside to the gazebo, away from the cloying stench of cotton candy and ice cream and boiled peanuts. The wind was stronger out there, and the willow branches brushed together around us as I wrapped my arms around myself against the cold.