Tituba of Salem Village (11 page)

She did not tell them that almost every night she dreamed her soul was in Barbados, that it went back there to be warmed by the sun and cooled by the trade wind. She did not tell them that when she awakened in the morning, she lay still without moving long enough to allow her soul to re-enter her body. She had discovered that if she was slightly chilly her dreams of Barbados would be more vivid. But the memory of these dreams lingered, and so she was able to make the girls see the island again. Their eyes followed her as she walked up and down.

Betsey said, “The island is yellow-white in the sun.”

Abigail said, “It blazes in the sun; it is so yellow and the sunlight is so strong.”

“The water is warm,” Betsey said, “And I am swimming in it. In a little pool of blue water all my own. I haven’t any clothes on. Nobody can see me.”

“I smell the sugar cane. They are cooking the cane,” Abigail said. She had her head thrown back, and her eyes were closed. She sniffed as though she really smelt something.

Tituba said, “There is the sweetish smell of rum and the bitter sharp smell of coffee. And the trade wind is blowing across the island. This wind blows all the time. So that you feel just right—not hot, not cold—just warm enough. You don’t go wrapped in shawls and coats and capes. You just wear your dress and your turban to keep the sun from the top of your head. When it rains, it rains hard and then the people stay inside.”

When they stayed inside, they told stories, long intricate stories. The stories got better the oftener they were told. There were people who told just one story, and everybody knew this, and would ask that person to tell his story about the monkey in the garden. The story improved with each telling.

They told these stories in the rainy season in the island. This was the snowy season in Salem Village and a very good time to tell a story. So Tituba started a story about the guppy man and the monkey, how the guppy man discovered that the monkey could talk to the dead. The monkey would call the guppy man in the middle of the night. “Guppy,” she said, “Gupp-e-e-e-e-e-e. He would walk all around outside Guppy’s house.” She repeated the cry over and over, a monotonous rhythmical sound, “Gupp-e-e-e-e-e-e.”

Then she stopped right in the middle of what she was saying because Abigail was staring hard at Betsey. Though Betsey was sitting at the table, she looked as if she were asleep, but her eyes were open. Her unwinking gaze was fixed on a pewter bowl that was filled with water. It had been left on the table. She was staring at it, not moving. She was breathing through her mouth, making a loud, sighing sound.

“Betsey,” Tituba said.

Betsey muttered something unintelligible. “Betsey,” she said again, firmly but gently.

Abigail shrieked, “Betsey!” and grabbed the child by the arm, shaking her.

Betsey screamed and burst into tears. Abigail said, “What was the matter with you? What were you doing?”

Tituba cradled Betsey in her arms. “Hush, now,” she said. “You’re all right. You’re all right.” She was such a thin little child, small for her years, delicately boned.

Abigail said, “What was the matter with her? What was she doing?”

Tituba shook her head, indicating that Abigail was to be silent. “She wasn’t doing anything. She kept looking at that little bowl of water too long and she—well, she fell asleep.”

“Her eyes were open. She wasn’t really asleep. She was making a funny noise. People don’t make noises like that when they’re asleep. They snore like Uncle Parris”—and she made a loud snoring sound, almost a trumpeting, as she inhaled and then exhaled.

Betsey smiled, just a ghost of a smile. Tituba hugged her close as a reward.

Someone banged on the back door. Abigail opened it just a crack, the way they all did. No one ever opened it wide so the person could walk right in. They never knew whether it might be a tramp woman like Goody Good, with a half-snarled demand for food, saying she was freezing or starving, or an Indian. It might be a harmless Bible Indian, and then again, people had foolishly opened the door wide and found an Indian brave in full regalia—his face daubed with paint, his feathered headdress quivering, his nostrils flared, his eyes contemptuous—tomahawk in hand——

“Oh,” Abigail said, and opened the door wide. “’Tis Anne Putnam, Jr., and the Putnams’ bound girl—Mercy. Come in quick, so the heat won’t all be lost outside.”

They took off their shawls and their heavy woolen cloaks and their mittens. Anne warmed her hands before the fire. Mercy looked around the keeping room, eyeing the fire, the dark red curtains at the windows, the freshly sanded floor.

Mercy said, “I see you got a big fire going. Parson must have plenty of firewood.” She put a basket down on the trestle table. “Mistress Putnam sent broth for Mistress Parris, and new baked bread, and hopes she’ll soon be better.” She looked at Tituba and then at Betsey who was sitting on Tituba’s lap, Tituba’s arms around her. “Is she sick, too?”

“No,” Tituba said.

“Then why is a great girl like that lying in your lap? For shame!”

Tituba started to say Betsey is not a great girl—she is only six years old and quite small for her age. But Abigail spoke first. She said deliberately, carelessly, “She had some kind of fit. But she’s all right now.”

“A fit?” Mercy said, staring. “I didn’t know Parson’s daughter had fits. What kind of fit?”

“She seemed to go to sleep.”

“Sleep aren’t fits. With fits they fall down and froth at the mouth. Did she froth at the mouth?”

Abigail shook her head.

“That weren’t a proper fit. With real fits they fall down. Sometimes they call it the falling sickness. Some places it’s called the French king’s sickness. Sometimes their tongues come way out of their mouths.” Mercy’s tongue protruded, demonstrating.

Tituba felt Betsey stiffen in her arms and knew she was frightened. She said, sharply, “You’ve the longest tongue I’ve ever seen, miss. They do say liars have extra long tongues.”

There was a hostile silence. Mercy turned her head away, took off her cap, ran her fingers through her yellow hair, said nothing.

Abigail said, “Tituba was telling us a story about Barbados—the island where she came from, where it’s always warm. They don’t have snow.”

Anne Putnam, white-faced, as delicate-looking as Betsey, said very politely, “Tituba, tell us about the island. We can’t stay very long. It gets dark early, and it’s so cold outside.” Then she added with a coaxing note in her voice, “If we heard about that warm place where you came from, it would help us keep warm on the way home. The thought of it would warm us.”

“No,” Tituba said firmly. “It is too late. You must get started now, or you will be going through the forest in the black dark.”

She helped them with their shawls and their heavy cloaks, and made certain that they had put on their mittens before she opened the outer door. After they left she struggled to close the door. The air that came in felt like ice around her ankles. When she finally got it shut, she stood near the fire, warmed her hands, and then added another log, moved the black pot closer to the fire. Perhaps she should have told a story to Anne and Mercy. They had come two miles through the slush and snow; even jogging along on a farm horse it would be a cold trip going back.

The wind blew a sudden gust of smoke down the chimney. She drew back, eyes smarting, coughing. There was a knocking sound from upstairs. The mistress needed something.

“I’ll go,” Betsey said. “I’ll go.”

Betsey came back to report that the fire had gone out. Tituba and Abigail and Betsey carried wood upstairs, rebuilt the fire. Tituba got the mistress something hot to drink.

When the master came home he found them all upstairs. He was bursting with news. There was something triumphant about him, even the way he entered the room. He hadn’t stopped to take off his greatcoat.

He bent over his wife, patted her hand. “Everything will be just as it should be.” He straightened up, reached inside his coat, brought out a piece of paper.

“Listen,” he said, “listen to this very carefully: ‘January 2, 1690. To all Christian people to whom this present writing shall come, Nathaniel Ingersoll, of Salem Village, in the County of Essex, sendeth greeting. Know ye, that the said Nathaniel Ingersoll, husbandman, and Hannah, his wife, for and in consideration of the love, respect, and honor which they justly bear unto the public worship of the true and only God, and therefore for the encouragement of their well-beloved pastor, the Rev. Samuel Parris, who hath lately taken that office amongst them, and also for and in consideration of a very small sum of money to them in hand paid, with which they do acknowledge themselves fully contented and satisfied, do grant to said Samuel Parris and Elizabeth, his wife, for life, and then to the children of said Samuel and Elizabeth Parris, four and a half acres of land, adjoining upon the home field of the said Nathaniel Ingersoll; the three acres on the south alienated by gift, and the remainder by sale.’”

He let his breath out in a sigh. “We now have more land,” he said. “There is a young orchard on it, and the trees bear fruit every year.” He paced up and down the room. “With an orchard added to the ministry house and land, we’ll be able to live like other folk—not always searching for a home provided by a congregation.”

“This house isn’t ours yet, is it, Samuel?” the mistress whispered.

“It is ours by agreement,” he said sternly. “These are a stiff-necked people, but I will bend them. They will say it is ours, too—the Nurses, the Coreys, the Easteys, the Willards, the Hows, the Bradburys, the Porters, the Hutchinsons. I will bend all of those who now oppose me.” In a quieter voice he said, “Let us join in a prayer of gratitude for this gift.”

They knelt down by the bedframe in the mistress’ room. The master was still wearing his greatcoat. Tituba opened her eyes and looked at him and thought, His face is wrathful, impatient even when he is praying.

Chapter 9

After the January thaw the days became perceptibly longer. By March there were signs of spring—bright green of skunk cabbage in the wet swampy places. The buds swelled on the maples and the ferns sent up brown fronds. In April, Tituba helped John plant corn. The farmers who stopped in at Ingersoll’s told him how to plant it: fish heads in the bottom of the hills, four grains of corn to each hill—one for the blackbird, one for the crow, one for the farmer, and one to grow.

One man had said to him, whispering, hand held before his mouth to keep the sound from traveling, to keep anyone from reading his lips, “In the old country we didn’t say, ‘One for the farmer.’ We always said, ‘One for the corn goddess.’ We said, ‘One for the devil’s bird, one for the crow, one for the corn goddess, and one to grow—’”

John said he’d whispered in reply, “Devil’s bird?”

The man said, still whispering, still holding his hand in front of his mouth, “The yellow bird is the devil’s bird. It doesn’t eat the corn, just picks it out of the hill. Out of devilishness.”

When Tituba worked in the garden, weeding on her hands and knees or hoeing the weeds out of the corn, Puss, the money cat, accompanied her. He walked in and out under her skirt or poked delicately at her hand, pretending to pounce. He got entangled with the weeds, and sometimes loose dirt spattered over his varicolored fur, and then he would flatten his ears and his tail would switch in anger.

Now that spring had come, John was home every night. He stayed until midmorning, planting the minister’s garden. Once again he brought them news of what went on all over the Colony. The men from Boston who came into the tavern were concerned about the new Massachusetts Charter, which would replace the one that had been revoked in 1684. Tituba was far more interested in what people were saying about the master. There was a gradual lessening in the quantity of provisions that was brought in to the ministry house.

John said the folk didn’t say much about the master. Occasionally some said he was greedy, but they’d said that before. He had heard talk that the committee that had hired the master hadn’t been told to promise him the ministry house. “Some say they don’t want a minister who changed his mind about being a minister. He didn’t finish his study at Harvard. He went into the West India trade instead. Then when he failed at that, why, he decided to be a minister and get himself property without working for it.”

He leaned on his hoe and looked around at the cleared land. “It’s a fair piece of land,” he said. “They all know that it’s good farm land—all cleared. A Mr. Burroughs got the stumps out. He was minister here once and a very strong man. They say only a thievish man would be so dead-set on owning a ministry house.”

John built a fence of saplings to keep out deer and rabbits and woodchucks. He said it was called a palisade fence. One of the farmers gave them four young pigs, and he built a pen for pigs behind the barn. Tituba kept the pigs penned and fed them in the pen.

When John said, “Let them run free and root for themselves,” she said, “I can’t chase after pigs. This way I’ll always know where they are.”

By fall, John was building the minister another woodpile. Deacon Ingersoll sent Pim, the bound boy, to help him cut wood. John said Pim worked all right out in the woods. He was a strong boy, and if he had a mind to, he could work just like a man chopping wood.

Tituba felt more comfortable in her mind. They’d been all right so far. They would have plenty of food for the coming winter and plenty of wood. There were two cows in the barn and a mare and a big flock of chickens. The house was snug—the roof had been repaired and the chimneys cleaned out so they wouldn’t catch on fire. The windows were clean. The paths had been weeded, and Tituba had defined their edges so they were clean-cut and straight, and had bordered them with flowers and herbs.

During the summer the mistress had been up and about, able to sew and to walk around outside. True, at the first hint of cold and dampness she had started to cough, and shortly after she had gone back to bed. But she looked better than she had ever looked while they were in Boston.

Sometimes in the morning, when Tituba went outside to water the horse or feed the pigs, she stopped to stare into the stone watering trough. She had discovered that if she looked at it long enough, she could see things in it that were not there—not this pale blue sky, or the trees with their leaves beginning to turn red and gold and orange, or her own reflection. If she stared steadily with an unwinking gaze at the water in the trough, she imagined she saw the coral-encrusted coast line of Barbados, the palm trees, the dark green flags of the cane waving in the fields.