Suffer a Witch

by Claudia Hall Christian

  If this was her problem, she was going to deal with it. Em groaned at herself.

  Why did she have to be so stubborn?

  Why couldn’t she share her life?

  Em had always taken care of her own problems. No matter what happened in life, she soldiered on. Alone.

  George hated that. She swallowed hard at what she knew was true. He loved her. He wanted to share her burdens. Certainly, he told her that enough.

  But Em could live only one way: her problem, her responsibility. She’d gotten up this morning to get it done.

  Turning onto Phillips Street, she saw George standing on the sidewalk up ahead, staring at Vilna Shul. She stopped walking. He turned to look at her. Even from this distance, she could see him grinning in a kind of “I found you” way. She dropped her head and rolled her shoulders forward in defeat. His shoes appeared on the sidewalk before her, and she looked up.

  “How?” she asked.

  “I’m a witch,” George grinned. He held out his arms, and she let him hug her. “I’ve survived my fair share of Em winters. I don’t really want to go through it again, especially now, when you’re in real trouble.”

  “‘Em winter’?”

  “When you push me away and decide you’re going to do it all yourself,” George said. “God gave me immortality so I could spend it with you. I’m going to do just that.”

  “And . . .”

  “No ‘ands.’” George cut her off. He kissed her hair. “Do you want to tell me your plan?”

  “My plan?”

  “Why are we standing in front of a Jewish cultural center?” George asked.

  “Have I ever told you about leaving Salem Village?” Em asked.

  “No,” George said. “Not a word. Ever.”

  “And how I got this name?” Em searched his face.

  “I know that you’ve always hated your given name,” George said. “I’ve always called you ‘Em.’ I know that you insisted on being called ‘Emogene.’”

  Em looked away from him. They were a building away from Vilna Shul. She took his hand and led him to the Vilna Shul. Taking a key from her purse, she unlocked the metal gate and gestured for him to go up the short flight of cement steps in front of the historic Jewish Center. He took a seat on an outdoor chair on the porch. She sat down next to him.

  “I’ve never been here,” he said.

  Em nodded.

  “How . . .?” he started and then shook his head. “How is it that I feel like I know you so well, and you have a key to the gate? When did you become Jewish?”

  Em smiled.

  “How does one go from being a woman of Christ’s gospel to . . .?” George gestured around him. “And when? I rack my brain. When was the first time we reconnected after . . .”

  He looked around to see if anyone was observing them.

  “I’ll tell you, if you ever stop talking,” Em said.

  “I do talk a lot,” George smirked. He made a show of closing his mouth. “Are you going to tell me?”

  Em smiled. George tipped his head back and laughed. His laughter brought a large, middle-aged man with short, dark hair and a beard with a white Yarmulke on his head to the door of the cultural center. Seeing Em, the man rushed to her, pulled her from the chair, and hugged her.

  “Welcome, Grandmother,” the man said. “Welcome.”

  The man let her go to look at her. He glanced at George.

  “Is this George?” the man asked. He looked at Em, and she nodded. “Welcome, Reverend Burroughs!”

  The man looked back at Em.

  “This is a very good day,” the man said. The man looked expectantly to George and then to Em. “Are you going to introduce me?”

  Em blushed and nodded.

  “George, this is my grandson, Rabbi Isaac Peres,” Em said.

  “Great-great-great — and then some — grandson,” Isaac said.

  George’s face flushed with emotion.

  “Yes, I know,” Isaac said. “One rabbi a generation with knowledge of our grandmother. That is how it’s been in my family since . . .”

  Isaac looked at Em.

  “1692,” Em said.

  “1692,” Isaac said. “Will you come in?”

  “George wants to know our story,” Em said to Isaac.

  “Please do come in,” Isaac said. “We can talk in my office. I have pictures and . . .”

  The man opened the Vilna Shul door and ushered them into the cool building. Em took the blue-grey lace scarf from around her neck and covered her head. George gestured to his head.

  “Don’t worry,” Isaac said. “You are welcome here in any form, George Burroughs. Please, come inside our little center.”

  They walked down a hall but had to stop as a class of third- or fourth-graders came past them.

  “My father will be jealous,” Isaac said when the class had passed.

  “You know he’s teaching Kabbalah at the store,” Em said.

  “No, I did not know that,” Isaac said with a smile. “Stinker. He always has something up his sleeve.”

  Em smiled. They turned a corner and then another before going through an open door to a warm, friendly office. Isaac took a seat behind his desk. George stopped to look at the photos on the wall. He pointed to one, and Em nodded.

  “That’s 1905, Reverend,” Isaac said.

  “Please, call me ‘George,’” he said. “As you may know, I wasn’t ever ordained, and, anyway, I haven’t been a Reverend in a long time.”

  “George,” Isaac said. “I’m Isaac.”

  “Plus, Em only calls me ‘Reverend’ when I’ve annoyed her,” George said.

  Isaac laughed.

  “How can I help?” Isaac asked.

  “I wanted to know . . . everything.” George spoke up before Em could say anything.

  Isaac looked at Em, and she gave a slight nod. Isaac got up and closed his office door.

  “I have never heard the beginning of the story,” Isaac said. Used to helping people tell their truths, Isaac encouraged Em with a kind nod. He sat down. “You start. I will fill in what I know.”

  Em swallowed hard and nodded.

  “I remember waking up,” Em said.

  “In your coffin?” Isaac asked.

  “We were thrown into a mass grave,” George said. “They stacked us up in a crevice right next to the tree they hanged us on. I was hanged in August, so I was below Em. Em in September. She would have been near the top.”

  “My group was the last of the hangings,” Em said. “I was near the top. I’m not sure why because I was hanged right after Sam. And . . .”

  Em took a deep breath and sighed.

  “I remember waking up,” Em said. “It was dark and close. I couldn’t feel my body. I tried to scream, but nothing came out. I was terrified that this was the afterlife. There was no heaven, no God — nothing but this awful, dark closeness . . . and silence.”

  Caught up in her memory, Em stared into space.

  “I smelled rotting flesh first,” Em smiled. “It was probably George rotting somewhere below.”

  “Your first physical experience was the stench of me?” George laughed.

  “True love,” Isaac said. Em and George laughed. “What happened next, Grandmother?”

  “First the awful smell,” Em said. “And then I could hear things: the wind in the stand of Oak trees, the North River spilling into the bay, crickets, and animals moving in the dark. I’d lost my right eye in the hanging and . . . Well, there was nothing to see. I was under Alice — no, under Ann. I wiggled and moved and shoved and . . . Suddenly, the moon shone, and there I was — sitting in a crevice on the barren hill above town next to the bay.

  “I reached for Ann, and she woke with a scream. I mean, we still looked like we’d been hanged. Our heads were like watermelons — bruised — our tongues hanging out. Our garments were soiled with the release brought by death. We couldn’t speak. Alice woke next and then Mary Ayer. We were horrified to be awake and terrified
of being found out. Always the doctor, Ann got us to wash on the edge of the bay. Sam woke, Margaret . . . I think Wilmot — no, Mary woke last. By that time, we had a kind of assembly. Ann took them to the water. I helped stick their tongues in, straighten their heads, things like that.”

  “Your necks didn’t break?” Isaac asked.

  “Short drop and a slip knot,” George said. “It took most of us more than ten minutes in excruciating pain to suffocate. Full death took at least twenty minutes. It’s why they put the bag over our heads. They didn’t want to see our faces turn purple.”

  “A couple of us had heart attacks,” Em said.

  “And still came back?” Isaac asked.

  Em nodded.

  “You touched me,” George said. “I remember feeling this bright warmth come to me. I have dreams about it sometimes, and I feel . . . so safe, like I was finally safe after such a long time of wandering.”

  George nodded.

  “You were out of the ground,” Em said. “They didn’t bury him well. After a month . . . Well, you can imagine.”

  “Took more than a year to heal,” George said.

  Isaac nodded.

  “How are you handling all of this?” Em asked.

  “I’ve tried to work out every detail since I was told, Grandmother,” Isaac said. “My father as well.”

  “And you’re all right with all of this . . . detail?” Em asked.

  “Fascinated at the power of God,” Isaac said.

  Em smiled at him and sat down in one of the armchairs in front of his desk.

  “Where were we?” Em asked.

  “Hanging, awakening,” George said. “Martha and John were hanged on my day.”

  “George Jacobs and John Proctor, too, but their families came for them,” Em said.

  “They didn’t become immortal?” Isaac asked.

  “Not that we know of,” Em said.

  “Just those of us in the crevice,” George said.

  “It’s hard to explain,” Em said. “I thought . . . I mean, I don’t know why I thought this, but I did.”

  She looked at George and then at Isaac.

  “I thought maybe our hanging wasn’t done well,” Em said. “I mean, by the time I was hanged, people were already talking about ending the witch trials. I guess I figured we woke up because they’d botched the hangings. We hadn’t really been dead.”

  “You weren’t revived from death but recovered from passing out,” Isaac said. “That’s denial. ‘They didn’t really do this to me. It didn’t really happen.’”

  “Exactly. That’s what I believed until . . .” Em looked at George. “George and Martha . . . They were . . .rotten. Small animals ate more than one meal from George.”

  “And we woke up,” George said. He took the armchair next to Em.

  “They woke up,” Em said. “The rest were worse — Sarah Good, Susannah, Elizabeth, and Sarah Wildes.”

  “They were hanged in July,” George said. “Bridget in June.”

  “If you can imagine, there was no embalming. It was a warm summer,” Em said. “It was . . . disgusting. The weird thing, well, the whole thing is weird, but a weird thing was that the people who were rotten didn’t mind being rotten.”

  “We were happy to be alive,” George said.

  Em nodded.

  “I don’t know how long we were there,” Em said. “Gallows Hill was outside of town, but you could see it from every part of town. We were there most of the night, cleaning up and getting our functions back, some.”

  “It took years for some of it to come back,” George said. “Especially for those of us who had been dead a while.”

  “Giles,” Em said. “He had been pressed to death a couple days before I was hanged.”

  “He was there, too?” Isaac asked.

  “He was in with us,” Em said.

  “The refuse pile,” George said.

  “You remember that I had sons?” Em asked George.

  “Two,” George said.

  “An hour or so before dawn, I went to my teenaged son,” Em said. “He and I were very close. I knew he wouldn’t be afraid; I knew he would know me regardless of how crazy I looked. He didn’t say a word. Of course, I couldn’t talk. He got the horse and wagon he used for his apprenticeship and brought it to Gallows Hill. He and I moved everyone in the wagon. We had to move fast because dawn was coming. He took Alice home to her husband because she was so adamant. Everyone else, he took to a homestead ten miles or more outside of town.”

  “Whose was that?” George asked.

  “Mine,” Em said. “Well, my late husband’s. He’d bought it for his parents. He hadn’t used it because his parents died before they made it to the US.”

  “They died in England?” George asked.

  “Right,” Em said. “We’d been married in England. They asked us not to go, but . . . Anyway, the house had been torn down, but the barn was still there.”

  “Barn,” George said. “Yes.”

  “Someone had to go, get out of Salem Village, and figure out how we would survive,” Em said. “I was in the best shape, so it had to be me. My son dropped me with Alice. Luckily, John, Alice’s husband, let me tag along with them as far as Boston. They went on to the South — North Carolina, I think.”

  “You just ‘woke up’?” Isaac asked.

  Chapter Five

  “I did,” Em said.

  “I remember Em touching me,” George said. “That’s the first thing I felt since the crushing realization that they weren’t going to stop, that they were going to hang me.”

  “And you didn’t know any of the . . . others,” Isaac said. “You weren’t friends or familiars.”

  “I’d been in the Boston jail with the other women since April,” Em said. “We’d been through so much together that we were more than acquaintances. Still, I think if we never saw each other again, that would be fine, too. I felt strongly that it was up to me because I was in the best shape physically and mentally.”

  Em smiled at Isaac.

  “Alice and John let me off on Beacon Hill,” Em said. “It was just dawn. Like I said, I looked frightful. I needed to find a place to hide. When I did, I found Isaac and the children there.”

  “My grandfather,” Isaac said.

  “Rabbi Isaac Peres,” Em said. “His wife, Emogene Peres, had been hanged for witchcraft in Spain. He knew what had happened to me by looking at me. He and their three young children — two girls and a boy — moved to America to get away from the religious persecution disguised as witch trials. Emogene was supposed to go with them, but . . . She saw them coming for her, for all of them, so she tricked Isaac into leaving with the children. She saved them. He could only watch as she was tried for being a Jew and hanged under the name of witchcraft. Isaac had all of her papers and everything. He offered me a deal right then and there. If I helped him with the children, he would say that I was Emogene.”

  “I didn’t have much of a choice; it was also a pretty great deal,” Em said. “I’d studied religion, so Judaism wasn’t a huge stretch for me. Isaac taught me. He found work on the docks. He found us a home. He lived in the outside world, while I took care of our home. I wasn’t able to say a word, not one, for almost a year. I had to wear something over my face for six months or more. It wasn’t easy, but we made a life. After a year or so, we were happy, and the children thrived.”

  “Sephardic Jews such as us had been chased through Spain and Portugal, hunted in the name of witchcraft,” Isaac said.

  “He was furious about what had happened to me and the others,” Em said. “And he never got over the sacrifice Emogene made for him and their children. He helped me feed and care for the others.”

  Em smiled at the great man’s descendant sitting before her.

  “He was a good, decent man,” Em said.

  “They built a Jewish community here in Boston,” Isaac said.

  “Orphanage,” Em said. “There were so many children who’d lost their
parents, and Jewish orphans had nothing, no one.”

  “They had you,” Isaac said. “Isaac’s son, Solomon, became a rabbi like his father. Isaac’s daughter, Devorah, had married Isaac Lopez, and they’d opened a mercantile in 1716.”

  “You loved him,” George said. “I remember that.”

  “She saved him,” Isaac said. “It’s family lore that my great-great-grandfather would never have survived America without his Emogene.”

  “I don’t think I could have ever replaced Isaac’s Emogene,” Em said. “The loss of her never ebbed for Isaac, but we were happy. Yes, I loved him, his children, and their children. After so much horror and crazy goings-on, it was good to live such a simple life. I loved the big, anonymous city. Still do.”

  “They read every book they could get our hands on,” Isaac said. “It’s our family tradition to read widely and talk about ideas. Even the youngest child is expected to share what they know. While it’s fairly common to do that now, it was unusual in the 1700s.”

  “The Salem Twenty scattered to the winds,” Em said.

  “After the fire,” George said.

  “Fire?” Isaac asked.

  “Five or six years after moving to the homestead — around the turn of the century, I guess — a fire moved through the area,” George said. “We had to move out. I went to England. Sam and John fought the Indians in the Crown colonies. The women went everywhere —to Boston, New York; some joined immigrant populations all along the Eastern seaboard.”

  George shrugged.

  “We had to scatter,” Em said. “By that time, we were healthy and getting around well.”

  “And well known,” George said.

  “People could have easily recognized us,” Em said.

  “Did you have . . . powers?” Isaac asked. “I don’t know what you call them.”

  “Magic?” Em asked. “I did. You?”

  “I didn’t know what it was or how to use that,” George nodded. “That was Em. In her reading, she found books on how to manage this mastery of the elements — fire, water, time, space, air, that kind of thing.”