Conversion (10 page)

Clara perched in her usual spot, which no one would dare to touch. The Other Jennifer sat on one side of Clara, with a weird silk scarf wrapped around her head in a turban. Elizabeth was parked on Clara’s other side, still in a wheelchair. Every few seconds Clara said, “Tzt tzt tzt HA!” though she seemed better able to keep it quiet instead of crying out at the top of her voice like she had the previous night.

Every single girl in the classroom was pretending not to stare.

Except Jennifer Crawford. She was openly staring.

“Hey,” I said, sliding into my desk next to Deena.

“Hi,” she said.

Her eyes kept slipping to Clara’s corner of the room, but she was clearly trying to keep them from doing it.

“I don’t recognize today’s song. What is it?”

“Huh? Oh. Yeah. It’s ‘Christine.’ Siouxie and the Banshees.”

“It’s goth. Like, really old goth,” Anjali tossed over her shoulder. “Hey, Colleen.”

“Hey, Anj. Goth?”

“Like, really old goth.” Anjali smiled.

I shook my head. “Since when do you know really old goth?”

“Since forever. I mean, Taylor Swift is okay, but come on.”

“Emma, did you know our friends were so sophisticated?”

She slowly nodded, pulling a long hank of blond hair into a mustache under her nose.

“Wow,” I marveled. “All my friends have totally secret lives that I know nothing about.”

“You never asked,” Emma said, smiling out of the corner of her mouth.

I smiled back and settled into my seat, trying just as hard as everyone else not to stare at Clara. Anjali sighed loudly, and I perked up.

“Hey, Anj, guess what.” I leaned forward and prodded her shoulder with a finger.

“What?”

“I got one.”

Anjali spun in her seat, eyes bright, grabbed my forearm, and whispered, “Oh my God. You did?”

I nodded, and for the first time actually allowed myself to feel excited. Anjali had grades just about on par with mine, so we were applying to a lot of the same places. There was some competition there, no question, but she was so focused on Yale, and I didn’t want to go there, that it wasn’t as big a deal as it could have been. Deena wasn’t interested in big schools; she was just looking at little liberal arts colleges. She said she wanted to go somewhere where she could actually know everyone, if she felt like it. Which was a relief, because then we could just support each other without any of that weird pretend-supporting, really-resenting stuff that happens. But Emma, well. Her grades were good and everything, I mean, I’m not saying they weren’t, but they weren’t that great. She was in the humanities AP classes, but not the science ones. And anyway, she was going to stay in Boston for school just like her brother. I was sure of it. She could never leave Danvers. I don’t even think she’s ever left Massachusetts in her life.

“Yeah!”

“When? When?”

“Sunday.”

“What are you guys talking about?” Emma asked.

“Colleen got a Harvard interview!” Anjali burst out.

I hadn’t even needed to tell her where, because we’d both been sweating our respective Ivy interviews for weeks now. After I’d gotten deferred from Dartmouth, I hadn’t heard anything about an interview one way or the other. My guidance counselor said it didn’t matter, but of course it did. Anjali’s Yale interview had been lined up since late December, and she’d gotten one for Cornell, too. I didn’t remember when they were supposed to be, maybe like a week after mine. I guess Judith Pennepacker didn’t feel like she needed to give us any warning. Well, she was right. When Harvard said jump, we jumped. They knew it. We knew it.

“She did?” Emma said in a small voice. She turned to me. “You did?”

“Yeah,” I said, uncertain. I couldn’t read Emma’s face. It looked drawn and masklike, with those oyster-colored eyes.

“When did that happen?” Emma asked.

“Just this morning. I got an e-mail.”

“Oh.” Emma looked back at her desk. “That’s great.”

“I’m sure you’ll get one,” I said, putting a hand on her arm. “It was totally last minute. She’s making me meet her on Sunday. So, like, no lead time.”

“Yeah,” Emma said. She didn’t look at me.

“Sunday!” Anjali squealed. “Oh my God, are you excited?”

“Harvard?” Deena broke in. “Colleen, that’s so awesome.”

“Yeah.” I couldn’t help myself. I grinned.

I was on the point of saying something else, and to be honest I have no idea what it was, because I was interrupted by a commotion on the other side of the room.

“Would you STOP?”

We spun in our seats to see who had spoken.

The Other Jennifer was twisted around in her seat, a fierce glare aimed right at Jennifer Crawford.

Jennifer Crawford was smiling.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just, like, a totally new look for you. I mean, I love it. It’s so Elizabeth Taylor.”

“SHUT UP.”

“Girls.” Father Molloy got up from behind his advisory desk, standing at the front of the classroom with a stern expression. “Come on. It’s been a long week. Let’s not and say we did, okay?”

“What?” Jennifer Crawford said, widening her eyes with false remorse. “I didn’t do anything. I was just complimenting her . . .
turban
.”

“You bitch!” the Other Jennifer hissed.

We all inhaled sharply. It was rare to see open aggression at St. Joan’s. Oh, it’s not like we were innocent lambs who sat around holding hands all day. It’s just that most of our methods were more subtle. If we wanted to make someone feel how truly insignificant she was, there were ways and ways of doing it. Backhanded compliments on a Facebook feed. A subtweet or two. A stare just a second too long, followed by a tiny roll of the eyes. Whispering, always whispering. These were the methods of discipline and hierarchy employed in the halls of St. Joan’s.

Elizabeth slumped in her wheelchair, caught in the crossfire between the Jennifers, trying to pretend like it wasn’t happening. Clara had turned around in her seat, too, and watched with interest. We all waited, wondering what ruling the queen would make.

“Jennifer . . . ,” she started to say.

We weren’t sure which one she was talking to. She worked her mouth for a minute, as if trying to form the words. Her head twitched with the effort.

“Girls . . . ,” Father Molloy tried again. “I really think that—”

But he was cut off when Clara sputtered, “TZT TZT TZT HA,” opened her mouth wide, rolled her eyes in her head, recovered herself, and commanded, “Show her.”

The Other Jennifer got to her feet. She glared at Jennifer Crawford, reached up, and pulled the scarf off her head.

We gasped, horrified.

The Other Jennifer was completely bald.

SALEM VILLAGE, MASSACHUSETTS

MAY 30, 1706

R
everend Green leans forward, his face so near to mine that I can taste his breath.

“You thought,” he says.

He means Betty Parris, that I thought she was playing.

“Yes,” I say. “That first day, I thought once Reverend Parris came home, she’d awake to her senses. But she didn’t. Tittibe put her straight back to the trundle, and rustled Abby down from the loft to get his supper. I’d never heard such things come out of Abby’s mouth as came out of it that day when Betty got put right back in bed.”

From the hall outside the closed study door a girl squeals in laughter, quickly shushed. The Reverend smiles and toys with his mustache in the manner of a young man who has some idea of what foolishness girls can be gotten up to.

“What happened next?” he asks.

“At first, nothing. Betty stayed abed, Abby got bossed about the house left and right, Tittibe giving her extra duties now that Betty weren’t well enough to help. The other children, Thomas and Susannah, carried on with nary a complaint, but then Thomas were a bookish sort of boy who never made much fuss, and Susannah just out of babyhood. The Reverend working away on his sermons, grim as ever, his wife flitting about, full of recriminations, pining for Boston. My mother called on her very often. Sometimes my mother’d take me with her, but I was never allowed to linger with them. I’d be sent up to the loft to look to Betty.”

I have Reverend Green enthralled. His eyes gleam in the firelight, and his pretty mouth with its well-formed lower lip is parted, unaware of revealing his black-stained teeth. A shiver travels up my spine and spreads deliciously over the top of my head. To my shame I feel myself basking in his attention. It’s more intoxicating even than the cider Bridget Oliver used to serve us at her inn, when we’d laugh and sing late into the night while playing at the shovelboard.

I know it well, this feeling. It’s not to be trusted.

“It went on thus,” I say. “Two weeks or so without change. And then one day, early February it was, my mother sent me to the parsonage to drop off some things and ask Tittibe after some onions and a pound of rye meal. That was the day I started to understand.”

“What, Ann? What did you start to understand?”

I gaze on him, and let my eyes smolder with the knowledge I am about to impart.

“To understand,” I say, “what girls are capable of.”

By the time I spot the corner of the slatted fence that marks the kitchen garden of the Parris parsonage, I can’t feel my feet. They’re there on the end of my legs like two stumps of wood, and a new sugaring of snow has been drifting down from the sky since last night, settling on my shoulders, the top of my head, the tip of my nose. I look like I’ve been rolled in goose down. The snow muffles all sound, swallowing my footsteps, so I can hear only the crunch of my footfalls and my own labored breath. My mother’s laden me with a basket of linens she was having our girl mend for Mrs. Parris, as our servant is English and so has a finer touch with a needle than a common Indian woman, or so Mother says.

I stop by the fence corner and drop the basket at my feet, shaking out my arms and flexing the fingers in my mittens to see if I can bring feeling back to them. I stamp my feet but in vain: there’s no blood for them to be had. I shake my cloak and skirts, knocking loose the freshest layer of snow. My breath circles my head like a halo and I pause, listening.

Silence.

I like the quiet in winter. Our house is so busy, with Mother’s friends, Father and his business interests, always a strange hat on the peg near the door. At least one servant, usually two, though one just served out his indenture and he’s left us shorthanded, Mother complains from behind her needlepoint near the fire. And all us children, as many as three to a trundle, which makes for warmer feet in wintertime, but also plenty of wakefulness between the scratching and the snoring and the nightmares of all my younger brothers and sisters.

Usually I linger an extra minute or two on the way to an errand, enjoying the time to myself. But today I’m too cold. I want a hot drink and to rest the soles of my feet near the kitchen hearth, and maybe be asked to stay for supper, even though it would mean enduring Abby’s glares.

Abby hates being made to wait on me. I can’t prove it, but last time I was pretty sure she spat in my peas.

I’m on the point of taking up my linen basket again when I hear it.

At first, I think it must be a bird. My ears twitch and I listen. The birds have been gone for weeks.

There it is again: a high, distant shriek.

It goes on for a long time.

I take up the basket and hurry. The snow sucks and drags at my feet, and I scramble, floundering under the weight of all my layers of wool, wading off the path into deeper drifts, stumbling, falling, catching myself by sinking my arms in up to the elbows in crusts of ice.

As I make my way nearer the parsonage, the shriek grows louder.

My first thought is of Betty. Little Betty’s died.

I raise my fist to beat on the door when it swings open and I behold the ashen face of Mrs. Parris.

“Oh, Ann!” she cries.

She gathers me to her bosom, the linen I’ve brought scattering unheeded to the floor. Inside I spy Susannah hiding under the table in the great hall, her tiny hands pressed over her ears. Tittibe stands rod-straight by the fire, her eyes wide. A man’s voice is bellowing something incoherent in the loft overhead. I catch only snippets of words, like “God” and “cast out” and “merciful heaven.”

The shriek has been interrupted only long enough for the being generating it to draw breath, and then it continues with renewed force. The sound fills the house, almost shaking the rafters. Little Susannah starts to cry.

“It’s been days and days,” Mrs. Parris says, her voice catching. “I can’t . . . I can’t . . . I can’t take much more, Ann. I was at the point of sending for your mother.”

“Is it Elizabeth?” I ask.

Mrs. Parris just looks at me, her eyes raw from crying. She shakes her head.

In the loft I hear a commotion and beating of feet, and the wail is replaced with high screams of “I’ll never sign, no, I never shall, you can’t make me! NO! NO, I WILL NOT SIGN!”

Mrs. Parris gasps and brings a hand to her mouth. Heavy footsteps, and we track their progress across the ceiling. Each deliberate footfall knocks loose a puff of dust from between the floorboards. Through the gaps in the boards we can see a shadow move.

The cries have lapsed into a formless screech, and a low male voice rumbles, “May God have mercy. May Christ bring his everlasting mercy on us all.”

Then the Reverend Parris mounts the ladder and lowers himself back into the hall with an exhausted grunt.

We stare at him, waiting for him to explain to us what’s befallen the creatures upstairs.

“Samuel?” Mrs. Parris whispers.

I’ve never heard Mrs. Parris use the Reverend’s Christian name before.

The Reverend collapses in the armchair at the head of the trestle table and rests his forehead in his hands.

“Tittibe,” he says absently to the slave, who has been lingering in the shadows cast by the low-burning hearth fire.

It’s cold in the parsonage, colder than at our house, everyone wrapped in shawls and extra woolen stockings. With this snow, they should have brought in more wood than that, is what I think, looking at the pitiful heap next to the hearth. I seem to remember some talk between my parents about firewood and Reverend Parris’s living from the parish being cut by some maneuverings by other villagers. Now I see how bad he has it.

He doesn’t name his wish, but she guesses it and sets a mug at his elbow. He takes it without a word and drinks. We wait. The screams continue upstairs.

Reverend Parris casts his eyes up to the attic, then brings his gaze to meet his wife’s.

“Betty continues much the same,” he says. “But Abigail’s worse. Much worse.”

Abigail! I’d had no idea she was unwell. I’d seen her only a few days earlier at Ingersoll’s Ordinary, where she had much to say about the wateriness of the soup.

Mrs. Parris emits a sigh of dismay, and Tittibe murmurs, “Ah, my poor Betty.”

“At meeting I’ll be calling on the congregation to pray for their delivery,” he says, bringing a closed fist to the tabletop. “But I fear the time’s come. You’ve tended them as best you can, and so have I. There’re the other children to consider, the burden this is placing on them. The risk. I’ve decided. A doctor must be called.”

“A doctor!” Mrs. Parris exclaims. “But . . .” She’s on the point of saying something else, but remembers me with a nervous glance and stops herself.

“Indeed. But,” Reverend Parris says, getting to his feet and striding to the window.

His back turned, he says, “Will he even come if I ask him? That’s a question. They think they can starve me out. Think I’ll be broken. Well, they’re wrong. I’ve faced worse.”

He glances at Tittibe, who sees his look and turns her back without a word. She’s been with Reverend Parris since before he was Reverend Parris. Since before Mrs. Parris. A dark look passes between them. One of those island looks.

“I just go check the children, then,” Tittibe says to the kettle over the fire, not addressing either of the Parrises directly.

“There’ll be nothing to pay him with,” Mrs. Parris whispers once Tittibe is up the stairs.

I realize that there’ll be no onions, nor rye meal either, to spare in this house. The Parrises are proud; they won’t want Mother and Father to know. Maybe I’ll tell them I forgot to ask. God forgives a well-meaning lie such as that, surely.

“There won’t,” Reverend Parris agrees. “But one must be found all the same. Someone who might feel it his duty to help. Bill Griggs, maybe. I’ll make inquiries straightaway.”

The screams have continued throughout this entire conversation, but now they coalesce into a bitter howl of “BEGONE, WITCH! Rogue! I want none of you!”

A crash as an object is hurled across the room overhead and shatters.

Presently Tittibe reappears on the attic ladder, her eyes cast down. Once her foot falls on the floor near us, the screams overhead stop abruptly.

The Reverend and Mrs. Parris exchange a look. The only sound is of little Susannah under the table, quietly weeping, unattended.

“Ann,” Mrs. Parris says, touching my arm. “You go up.”

“Me, Mrs. Parris?” I say, scarcely able to find my breath.

“Yes, you. They’ll be pleased to see you. You’ll go up, won’t you?”

I can’t disobey the minister’s wife if she tells me I must go. And so I do.

“Yes, Mrs. Parris,” I hear myself say over the sound of blood rushing in my ears.

I mount the ladder, my arms shaking. The feeling has started to come back into my feet, but they’re not all there just yet, and I struggle to keep my footing on the narrow steps.

When I achieve the loft, in the thin gray light of windows frosted thick with snow, I find Betty in her trundle, eyes open wide, bedclothes gathered tight up under her chin.

And in another trundle, her hair streaming loose over her shoulders, a warm woolen blanket tucked across her lap, sits Abigail Williams.

Grinning at me.