Tituba of Salem Village (17 page)

“My hair?” she said, touching her cap with a protective gesture. My hair? her mind echoed. She knew her face wasn’t pretty, not really. The eyes were too small, and the nose turned up at the end, and her mouth was too wide. But her hair was pretty—long and thick and yellow as saffron.

“Well, I don’t know—I don’t rightly know.”

“You can help me fix myself up while you make up your mind. Tituba gave me some dye from the black walnuts to darken my hair. She said it would be easy to find me with this red hair, but not so easy if the color was changed.”

He untied his bundle. He took a flask out of it and a little wad of wool yarn. “You can do it better than I can,” he said. He sat down on a stool right in front of the fire. “Wet the wad of yarn and then daub it on my hair. Don’t get it on my face if you can help it because it takes a long time to get it off.”

It was like magic. The thick red hair began to turn a deep dark brown as she daubed it with the dye. When she finished, his hair was dark brown, almost black. He didn’t look like the same person. It frightened her. How did Tituba come to know so much? She even knew how to change a person’s looks.

“Have you finished?” he asked impatiently.

“Yes. You don’t look the same. You—”

“Good. You’re next.” He took a pair of leather breeches and a coarse rough shirt out of his bundle, and tossed them on the settle. “Put ’em on. No, first your hair. Here, sit down—” He patted the stool in front of the fire. “Sit right here.”

“I don’t want my hair cut.”

“If you’re going with me, I got to cut your hair. You’ve got to look like a boy. Sit down.” He pulled her by the arm and pushed her down on the stool. He got a pair of scissors out of his bundle and clicked them together. “Take off your cap and undo your hair.”

She took her hair down. It reached way below her waist. He cut it quickly, chopping it off. Long thick strands of yellow hair fell to the floor. He talked while he hacked at it.

“If it isn’t safe for me here in the Village, then it isn’t safe for you either. No matter what happens here, we’ll be blamed for it. You watch and see. If the chimney catches on fire, why it’s the bound boy’s fault. If the cat eats the butter, it’s the bound boy’s fault. If the eggs can’t be found, it’s the bound boy’s fault. Something’s going to happen here. Tituba says all the signs point to it.”

He gave a sigh of relief, “There, you’re all done.”

It was a frightening experience to have her hair cut. Her head felt light as though a weight had been removed. She’d keep those long thick strands of yellow hair, keep it with her, and she could braid it carefully and wind it around her head. When they got to wherever they were going, she could fix it on her head under her cap, and no one would ever know it had been cut off. She touched her head gently. It felt very queer, and she must look all naked just like a sheep that had had its fleece cut off. Pim was picking up the hair very carefully.

One moment she was sitting there fingering those short rough ends of hair, and the next thing she knew, there was a crackling in the fire. She turned to see what would burn fast and hot like that, and she was so furious she couldn’t speak. It was her hair, her pretty yellow hair. Pim had bundled it up and thrust it in the fire, and it was burning, making a great hot blaze. In no time there was nothing left of it but little black things like beads and a smell as of something cooking—meat roasting on a spit or feathers burning. And her head felt hot—her hair burning like that right in front of her made her feel as though her head had been thrown in the fire.

She let out a cry, low, penetrating, and she turned on Pim, and went for his face and eyes, scratching him. He was so startled that he didn’t defend himself, and she scratched both his cheeks.

He got hold of her hands and held them in his iron grip. “What is the matter with you?” he said with a hiss.

“My hair,” she whispered. She tried to shriek and only a whisper came out. “You’ve burned my hair.”

“What were you going to do with it? Carry it around with you? It would be a dead give-away, a boy travelin’ around with that big wad of yellow hair. Haven’t you any sense?” He let go of her hands and shook her and then thrust her away from him.

“You burned my hair. It was all I had.” She could hardly talk. “You go. I won’t go with you. You’re mean—”

“I’m not mean,” he protested. “I’m—well, I know it isn’t going to be easy for me to get clean away. With you along it’s even harder. But this way they’d be fooled. They’ll be looking for a redheaded boy and a girl. We’ll be two boys—one with dark hair. It would give us a little more time.”

She felt of her head, it seemed to have shrunk in size. The hair felt rough, uneven. Her head was cold. It was a terrible thing to lose a part of you that you’d had ever since you could remember, have part of you burned up right before your eyes. His hands had been hard, unfriendly, as they hacked off her pretty yellow hair.

“Here,” he said, just as though he hadn’t heard a word she said. He held out the leather breeches. “Put the breeches on.”

She shook her head, and the short, unevenly cut hair fell forward, covering her face. She pushed it away impatiently. “No,” she repeated, “I’ll not go with you.”

He put the breeches back in his bundle along with the little wad of yarn, the flask, and the scissors. He said, frowning, “If I get caught, I’ll know you told on me. I’ll make you pay for it, Mercy Lewis. If you tell I was here, I’ll—”

“But my hair,” she said. “What’ll folk say when they see my hair?”

“Tell ’em a devil did it. Tell ’em you fought all night with the devil. Here, I’ll turn over the trestle table and upend the stools.” He turned them over quickly and noisily, and he began to laugh. “Where do you keep the Indian meal?” He opened a press cupboard, rummaged through it. “Ah, this’ll do”—as he scattered corn meal all over the floor—“Tell ’em you fought a pitched battle with the devil with Deacon Putnam’s weevily corn meal.”

He picked up his bundle and came towards her, scowling, “If you tell—” he began.

There were slow heavy footsteps from somewhere in the front of the house. “Hurry,” she said, “Deacon Putnam’s coming—” She unbarred the door for him. “I’ll not tell.”

“Tell the old psalm-sayer there was a demon here. Leave the door open—”

When Deacon Putnam entered the kitchen, Mercy was sitting by the fire, her head between her knees, the short yellow hair dangling down. She looked as though she had been beheaded.

“I heard voices, Mercy,” Deacon Putnam said. “The door is open”—he closed it—“and this big fire going. Who was here?”

She moaned, and then she screamed. When he touched her on the shoulder, she jumped up, away from him, crying out, “You devil—you devil,” sobbing and covering her face with her hands. “What else do you want? I’ll not sign. You can cut the rest of my hair straight back to my scalp, and I’ll not sign your book—”

Deacon Putnam said, “There are no devils here, Mercy. It is I, your master, Deacon Putnam.”

She took her hands away from her face, looked at him to see if he believed her. His expression was one of astonishment. He kept looking around the room, at the overturned benches and stools, at the long trestle table that had been turned upside down, at the corn meal scattered all over the floor. He leaned over and picked some of it up, rubbing it between his fingers.

“I didn’t think anyone would ever come,” she sobbed. She had never seen him in his bedclothes before. He had on a nightcap and a thick woolen bedgown. He looked shorter and wider than when he was wearing his day clothes.

“There, there,” he said, patting her shoulder. “What happened? Tell me about it.”

She said that a demon had entered the room. He had an old woman with him. She didn’t know how they got in; she awakened, and they were there. They pulled her off the settle and threatened her, saying that she must worship the demon as if he was God. He kept putting a book in her hand. He said she must sign it, and when she refused, he said he’d cut off her head, and he’d start with her hair. He piled fresh logs on the fire until it was a big roaring fire—flames going up the chimney so high she was sure he was trying to burn the house down.

The old woman had held her down while he hacked off all her hair and then he’d burned it. Afterwards he’d walked up and down in front of the fire, hands behind his back, sneering at her and saying, “Feel the fire, Mercy? Feel it on your head?” He had a slight limp when he walked because he had a shoe on his right foot but his left leg ended in a cloven hoof.

Just in telling it, she got so upset that she began to sob again and to cry out, and she ran towards the fire, and Deacon Putnam had to hold her back, and he shouted for help. Mistress Putnam and Anne, Jr., came running into the room, in their nightcaps and shifts. This made her scream even louder. They slept in feather beds, and they had special clothes to sleep in. She slept in the same coarse linsey-woolsey dress that she worked in, slept fitfully, curled up on that hard narrow settle.

When Anne Putnam, Jr., heard the story, heard about the devil who had cut off Mercy’s hair and burned it, she started to shiver and to shake. When Mercy said, “I could feel my head burning,” she let out a small scream.

Anne Putnam, Jr., suddenly said, “What’s that?” pointing to Mercy’s hand.

Mercy looked, too. Her fingertips were a dark, dark brown, almost black. Some of the walnut stain she’d used on Pim’s red hair had stained her fingers. She did not know what to say so she began to tremble and shake and moan and wring her hands, saying that her head felt cold and that she was afraid.

Deacon Putnam said, “The child said the demon wanted her to sign his book. He probably held her hand on it and thus it was blackened, just from touching it. Is that right, Mercy?”

She nodded and said, “I wouldn’t sign. I wouldn’t sign and I kept saying so—.” She thought, Sixteen years old I am and up until now I have been the serving wench. That’s what they’ve always called me and now, now, I am a child to be treated tenderly.

Anne Putnam, Jr., began to cry. “I am afraid, too,” she sobbed. “I am afraid, too.”

After the Putnams got them both quieted, Mistress Putnam said, “Come, Mercy”—and her voice was kind and compassionate—“you sleep with Anne for the rest of the winter. Tomorrow we will make some shifts for you, so you will have proper clothes for a bed.”

It was very soft and very warm in Anne Putnam’s feather bed. Mercy thought it was almost as though the feathers surrounded you. If you lay on your back, your back was warm and your sides were warm, because you sank way down in the feathers. She’d helped make this feather tick for Anne’s bedframe. The feathers had been most carefully selected, and there had been a great many of them because it had to be extra thick so it would be extra warm.

They were covered by a patchwork quilt, and on top of that there was a thick bearskin rug, the fur side down. She stretched out, full length, and then turned and lay on her side. Part of her front, part of her back were warmed by the feather bed. The bearskin rug warmed the rest of her. When she slept on the narrow wooden settle, it had been in snatches. She had turned and twisted all night long, afraid she would fall off, always cold, and the settle hard and unyielding.

She sighed and settled deep into the warm, soft bed. She pulled the bearskin high up around her neck and finally covered her head because she could feel cold air all around her shorn head. Tomorrow night she’d wear one of Anne Putnam’s nightcaps. Just before she drifted off to sleep, she decided that this deep, soft, warm bed was better than life with the bound boy would have been. The Putnams were always saying, “Better one bird in hand than ten in the wood.”

She dreamed that she was in the woods and that a little yellow bird kept fluttering in front of her, and she twisted and turned to get away from it because the yellow bird is the Devil’s bird. Everybody knows that.

Chapter 14

Tituba was preparing the noon meal. She was stirring the contents of an iron pot that was hanging over the fire. To her surprise, John came hurrying into the keeping room. She had never seen him so excited since they had lived in Salem Village.

He said Pim, the bound boy at Ingersoll’s, had run away and taken four silver spoons, two sets of leather breeches, one pair never worn, Deacon Ingersoll’s finest musket, and all the kitchen knives.

He stopped talking, caught his breath, said, “What would he want with kitchen knives?”

“He could sell them in Boston.”

“And Mercy Lewis—Mercy Lewis—” Here the words tumbled out, one right after another, so fast that Tituba had trouble understanding him. “A devil cut off her hair last night. An old woman and a devil cut off her hair right in Deacon Putnam’s keeping room—”

“What?” Tituba said, and then she frowned. “An old woman? What old woman? How did they get in the house?”

“Come right through the door as though it weren’t there. And when the devil gave Mercy his book to sign and she wouldn’t sign it, why the old woman held her down—a very strong old woman she was. And the devil cut off Mercy’s long yellow hair while he held her by the neck with one of his horny hands.”

Tituba tried to say, “Where—”

John held up his hand, “Wait. I have to tell it all at one time, or I’ll forget some of it. Where was I? Oh, Deacon Putnam woked up, what with the noise and confusion, the devil’s loud hoarse shouts, and Mercy Lewis’ screams, and the old woman’s coarse voice, and the sounds of the struggle—the trestle table knocked over, the stools knocked over, as the devil and the old woman wrestled with Mercy Lewis, holding her, cutting her hair, hacking it off—and then—what then?”

“Deacon Putnam came in?”

“Yes, yes. And the room was filled with the smell of sulphur and brimstone, and the door was wide open, and poor little Mercy sat there on a stool in front of the fire, her head hung over her knees, her yellow hair all short and rough cut. Deacon Putnam said his finest Indian meal was strew all over the floor.”

“No great loss,” Tituba said. “Deacon Putnam’s meal is always full of weevils. Everybody knows that. How did the meal get on the floor?”