by Suzanne Weyn
“Thank you for not mentioning me,” I said.
Tituba nodded as she dried Violet’s tears. “He’s mean-spirited and you don’t want to get on his bad side. The people in his church hate him. They would like nothing more than to be rid of him. He’s not wrong to suspect them.”
“I wonder what he’ll say from the pulpit.”
“This Sunday we’ll find out,” Tituba said as she set Violet back onto her feet.
“I can’t go. I’m not a Puritan,” I said.
Tituba shot me a sharp glance. “You are a Congregationalist Puritan now and do not forget it. It doesn’t matter what you once were. You’re a servant in a Puritan household and you will be expected to go to church this Sunday. We all will.”
Later that same day, Tituba told me to ride in the carriage with John Indian and take a trip into Salem Town. He was hired out to work at a place called Ingersoll’s Tavern for part of the day. I was sent with a purse of money to purchase food supplies.
Tituba held out a long brown cape. “This is mine; you can borrow it,” she offered. “Take this bonnet too.” She held out one of the simple white bonnets that tied under the chin. “You have to look proper when you are in town. Besides, it’s very cold. I will make you a cape and bonnet of your own.”
Along the way, I tried to make conversation with John Indian, but he kept his eyes straight ahead. We stopped in front of the tavern and he helped me out, telling me to meet him back there by four. When I asked, he directed me to the food market.
As I walked along the busy dirt streets, I kept a sharp eye for Bronwyn. I didn’t know what I would do if I saw her, but I didn’t want to be taken by surprise.
I also looked for Aakif. Hoping, even as hope felt foolish, that he was here somewhere. He had to be. But he never fell within my sight, no matter how hard I wished to see him.
The market bustled with activity and it was like a game to try to find the various items on Tituba’s list, many of which — like dried cod, salt pork, turnips — I had never heard of before.
I was asking for a pound of dried peas when a hand clasped my upper arm. Whirling toward it, I was reunited with Mary Carmen. We hugged, happy to see each other.
Mary Carmen was also dressed in the cape and bonnet of a Puritan. I was delighted to hear that her place of employment was not far down the road from the parsonage. We would be able to see each other and might even be able to coordinate our market days. It was at the home of a family named Putnam.
“Saint Teresa has appeared to me,” Mary Carmen told me. Her dark eyes were bright with excitement. “She told me that Bronwyn is still on the astral plane trying to get through. The evil thing injured her, but she is still alive.”
Mary Carmen dug through the pocket of her apron and pulled out a blue marble. “In my vision, Saint Teresa told me to meditate on this marble and it would calm my mind. It was in my hand when I came out of my trance.”
“How amazing,” I remarked, taking the marble from her. Reaching into the neckline of my dress, I drew out the blue glass bead that Aakif had given me. Since the day he’d put it on my neck, I had never taken it off. The blue of the glass marble and blue of the bead were exactly alike.
“Did she tell you anything more?” I asked.
“Saint Teresa said a great battle of the spirit is upon us, and that we will be called to act,” Mary Carmen reported with quiet excitement.
I didn’t like the sound of that — especially in the light of the previous night’s events. I told Mary Carmen all about it and her face became pale with fear. She gripped my hand and squeezed. “These poor people,” she said, looking around at the crowd. “This terrible evil has come to them and they don’t even know it.”
“They will know this Sunday,” I said. “Reverend Parris is going to preach about it from the pulpit.”
“Good,” Mary Carmen said. “Then the people of Salem can band together to fight this wicked thing.”
EVIL HAS COME TO SALEM!” REVEREND PARRIS’S VOICE boomed through his church. He pointed a finger at the congregants who sat in the pews facing him. I sat in the last row of pews beside Tituba, John Indian, and Althea. Everyone around me was a slave or a servant of some kind, so we were assigned the seats farthest from the pulpit.
“Salem shall burn with this evil just as Hell itself burns with the fire of Satan,” Reverend Parris continued. He told everyone that he sensed some abomination had settled among them and that some in the congregation had summoned it through witchcraft.
Betty-Fatu!
I heard it in my head. Gazing around, I tried to locate the source.
Betty-Fatu! Look to your right.
The second time, I knew the voice. In another moment, I located Aakif sitting across the aisle from me in the last row of pews among other slaves and servants. He was trying to catch my eye by looking. His concentration was so intense that I’d been able to hear his thoughts.
Our eyes met and he beamed at me.
I met his smile with my own. He was also dressed as a Puritan, though his cape was patched and worn, his white collar frayed. How I longed to leave my seat and go wrap my arms around him. But just to see his dear, handsome face again would have to be enough for the moment.
Being prudent, we both diverted our gazes and faced forward. After a while, from the corner of my eye, I noticed him slowly rise and slip out of the pew. With the merest flicker of his eye, he signaled me to follow. And with a slight tip of my chin, I agreed.
After he had been gone several minutes, I slid from the pew and walked out into the cold, sunny day, searching for him. A pebble skidded past my feet and then another. I realized they were being thrown from a closely packed stand of birch trees several yards away.
It took all my composure not to run to him, but I walked as calmly as possible to the birches. Once we were in the enclosure of trees, I threw myself into his arms, covering Aakif’s face with kiss after kiss. He held me tightly in his strong arms. Then we clung to each other, my head on his shoulder, each loving the warmth and comfort of the other.
“I am so happy you’re here,” I said after several more minutes. “It’s a miracle that we’ve come to the same place.”
“No miracle,” Aakif disagreed. “I heard that they sent you here. When I learned they were also selling off some slaves to Salem, I asked to go so that I could find you.”
“I thought you were going to be a foreman. You abandoned that chance. You shouldn’t have done it, though I’m so happy that you did.”
“They were happy to let me go. They said I was too soft on the workers and that I didn’t know my ‘place.’”
I squeezed him again, so deeply touched that he had come all this way to find me. And now we were together again.
“Listen to me, Betty-Fatu,” Aakif said, stepping back from my embrace but still holding my shoulders. “Can you find a day to come to the shipyard in port?”
“On days when I do the marketing I can get there,” I replied. “Why?”
“I’ve been bought by a family named Osborne who have a one-hundred-and-fifty-acre farm. They are not too bad as masters since Mr. Osborne came to this country as an indentured servant himself. When they discovered I could read and write, the Osbornes hired me out as a shipbuilder. They will allow me to keep some of my salary, which is more than I expected. I will be able to buy my freedom much faster than before.”
“That’s wonderful!” I cried. “How long?”
“I don’t know yet. Sooner than it would have been if things were otherwise.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll stay here and wait, no matter how long it takes.”
“It won’t be easy for us to be together,” Aakif said seriously. “Everyone will be against it. In fact, it might be impossible. And it’s too much to ask of you.”
“We’ll find a way. We’ll go farm out in the country where no one else lives. We’ll live on a boat in the middle of a lake.”
He smiled at me. “You wouldn’t mind that?”<
br />
“Not if I could be with you.”
His smile was radiant; the most beautiful smile I had ever seen.
Aakif’s expression grew serious as a new resolve overtook it. “When I’m free, we’ll figure something out. There has to be somewhere in this big country where two people who love each other can be together.” He gazed through the trees, worried. “I’d better get back. You too.”
He walked back to the church, gesturing for me to wait before following.
Watching him go, I was once more overwhelmed by my love and admiration for him. My Aakif was here in Salem, close by. He had come all this way, gone through so much pain and humiliation to find me. My heart felt as though it would explode with joy.
And so the weeks rolled by, growing ever colder and grayer. As my best-loved holiday, Christmas, approached, I was disappointed to learn that the Puritans didn’t celebrate it. They thought it was leftover from a non-Christian Roman celebration and wanted nothing to do with it.
Despite the austerity of their Puritan ways, life in the Parris family was bearable. Althea was a sweet roommate who loved word games and puns and was always lively. I warned her to stay away from the fortune-telling methods that Abigail was so drawn to. It would only lead to trouble for her, and she agreed.
Unfortunately, Abigail wasn’t content to pursue the future on her own. She drew Betty Parris into her activities. One day I came upon them in the lean-to, holding a lit candle up to an egg. When I asked what they were doing, Abigail explained that the yolk of the egg showed pictures that foretold the future. Curious, I gazed at the egg but saw nothing. I recalled that Mary Carmen had said St. Teresa had seen her vision of God’s mansions in an egg, and that my own ancestors could predict the future. Just the same, I was fearful for their safety. “Mrs. Parris will be very upset if she sees you at this,” I warned them. “For your own good, you should not do this.”
“I’m not afraid of my aunt,” Abigail replied scornfully.
Little Betty Parris didn’t appear to be as confident but she nodded in agreement.
“Suit yourselves,” I said as I took a bucket from a peg on the wall. “I’ve warned you.” As I turned back toward the house, I was startled by a person who had crept upon me silently. It was the beggar woman Sarah Good, an unkempt, crouched woman with wiry gray hair.
It was said that she was not only poor and lacking a home but also mentally unstable. The wild look in her eyes made that claim believable. “Something to eat!” she demanded. “I need food.”
I was about to offer to look in the kitchen when Abigail interrupted. “Go away, you hag!” she shouted. “Here’s something for you!” She hurled an egg that splattered on the woman’s ragged shawl.
Sarah Good raised a gnarled fist to Abigail. “I curse you, brat! You will regret this.”
“You will regret coming here to bother us!” Abigail responded boldly.
The woman hobbled off, muttering curses under her breath. “I can find you something to eat,” I called after her, but she paid no heed.
“Let her be off,” Abigail scoffed.
“Did you have to be so cruel?” I scolded.
“She’s disgusting,” Abigail replied. “And I believe you are a servant and not allowed to speak to me in that tone.”
I was not about to become embroiled in an argument with a spoiled girl, especially when she had a point — as a servant I was in no position to chastise her.
Despite Abigail’s bold display, I knew that the confrontation with Sarah Good had rattled her. By the next day, Abigail had enlisted two older girls named Ann and Elizabeth to join in the egg experiment. By the following day there were five of them, all holding eggs up to candles with the intention of discovering the professions of their future husbands. If Sarah Good returned, she would find herself greatly outmatched.
I COULD HARDLY WAIT FOR THE NEXT MARKET DAY, and it came on a Wednesday, two weeks later. As before, I rode in with John Indian, who said little. I huddled under the cape Tituba had made for me and was glad for my bonnet; the January day was bitterly frigid.
I met Mary Carmen at the market and learned that one of the girls who had been coming to join Abigail, Ann Putnam, Jr., was a member of the family she now served. “Those folks are too quarrelsome,” Mary Carmen remarked. “It’s so disagreeable to be among people who are always fighting not only amongst themselves but also with their neighbors, the Osbornes.”
“That’s where Aakif is,” I told her. “What’s their problem with the Osbornes?”
Mary Carmen told me that Mrs. Osborne’s first husband had left the big farm to his two young sons. Mrs. Sarah Osborne was to be in charge of it only until her sons were old enough to claim their inheritance. But Sarah Osborne remarried the indentured servant on her property, Andrew Osborne, and wanted the will changed so she could inherit the property. John Putnam was her first husband’s lawyer and was fighting her on it.
“I think John Putnam has influence over the Osborne sons and will be able to convince them to let him use their lands since it is right next to his own,” Mary Carmen concluded. “I don’t trust him.”
I told Mary Carmen about Aakif being at the shipyard and bid her a farewell. Finding the shipyard wasn’t difficult since I only needed to follow the sound of hammering to reach it. Hanging from the rigging of a ship in dry dock, Aakif saw me and called my name, waving. He swung down with nimble ease as though he’d been working on ships all his life, and met me on the gangplank. We walked back down into Salem Town together.
He loved the shipbuilding and felt he was learning a trade that could serve him well once he bought his freedom. I told him all that had happened with Bronwyn and her three witch companions, as well as the devilish dog.
“I hear talk of witches everywhere,” Aakif remarked. He tapped his collarbone. “Do you have the bead I gave you?” I nodded that I did. “Then don’t worry about bad juju. The bead will keep you safe.”
“How can you be sure?” I challenged.
“I trust Aunty Honey. She was the one who gave it to me.”
Back at the parsonage, I came in through the side entrance but stopped outside the door, clutching my bags of food. I noticed that someone had left the hatch of the root and grain cellar open. If it had been Tituba, she’d be sorely punished for such an oversight and I didn’t want that to happen, so I set my bags down and went to shut it.
As I bent to shut the hatch, I gasped and jumped back. The gigantic black dog that had been with Bronwyn the other night growled at me from inside the cellar, his eyes burning.
I froze as the hound approached me, not knowing whether to run or stay still. At the top step, the hound leapt up at me.
Pulling myself into a ball, I waited to feel its horrific fangs sink into my flesh. But rather than attacking me, it sailed up over my head and disappeared.
Falling backward to the ground, my heart hammering, I was awash with terror and relief that resulted in a bath of hot tears in my eyes. Wiping them quickly, I sat a moment, looking down at the dark cellar before daring to venture into it.
Inside the cellar, everything had been torn apart. Sacks of dried rye were spread across the floor. Barrels of potatoes were tipped. Jars of pickled vegetables lay smashed on the ground.
As I turned in a circle, looking at the damage, Abigail and her group of fortune-seeking girls appeared in the hatch doorway.
“What have you done?” Abigail asked in a taunting voice.
“I’ve done nothing. I found it this way,” I defended myself.
“Oh, then it must have been Tituba.”
“Not she, either. It was a very large dog that got in here. I saw it.”
“My uncle always keeps this storage space locked. Did the dog have a key?” Abigail asked snidely.
“Of course not,” I snapped.
“Then someone let him in or forgot to lock the door. I see that you have been entrusted with a key,” she said, glancing at the ring of household keys at my waist.
&n
bsp; “What have you come here for, Abigail?” I asked sharply.
“I need rye. We are baking dream cakes.”
“What is a dream cake?” I asked.
“After we eat them, we will dream of our future husbands. That way each of us can recognize him when he comes along.”
“What else is in these cakes?”
Abigail wiggled her fingers, mocking me. “Ohhhh, all sorts of spooky, witchy things — very secret ingredients.” Her brows knit into a frown. “Let us have the rye or I will say you caused all this damage.”
It seemed to me that I had no choice but to let them take the rye they wanted. I didn’t think it would be missed anyway. “Where will you bake these cakes?” I asked.
“Over an open fire in the woods,” Ann Putnam answered, showing the large frying pan she held.
After they’d loaded their pan with rye, the girls left. Only then did I notice the black specks scattered through the remaining kernels of tan rye on the floor. I’d seen rye at home and had never noticed anything like this. I gathered a handful of the grain and poured it into my apron pocket.
After bringing my packages into the kitchen, I took a broom and some rags out to clean the root and grain cellar as best I could. The cellar was always cold, and especially so on a January afternoon, so I worked quickly to accomplish my task and move inside as soon as possible. I was almost done when Tituba appeared in the doorway, her black hair undone and disheveled — clutching a carving knife. Her eyes were lit with a wild fire.
“Tituba! What happened?!” I cried as she collapsed into me, too weak to stand any longer.
“Witches!” Tituba sobbed.
I sat with Tituba in the kitchen and listened to her incredible story. She had been outside scrubbing the lean-to floor when the same three women we’d seen drop the large maple appeared out of nowhere and surrounded her. Bronwyn was inside their circle, accompanied by the black dog. Tituba swore the dog spoke to her in a growl, intoning the words: “Serve me!”
“I will not serve you,” Tituba had insisted.