Tituba of Salem Village (21 page)

Apparently he did not hear what she said, or else he did not understand her. He went on beating her and went on shouting, “Say that you’re a witch.” When he stopped it was only in order to catch his breath.

She nodded at him. Then she said clearly and distinctly, “Master, stop. What is it you want me to say?”

“Say that you’re a witch.”

“Very well, master. I am a witch.”

“Where do you go at night?” he demanded.

She felt as though he had looked into her mind. Did he really know that every night in her dreams she went back to Barbados? Every night she saw the island lying in the sun, the yellow-white coral coast line blazing in the sun. She saw the blue water, the palm trees. She dived into the water and could see all the way to the bottom, and she caught a fish between her hands, and it felt as though she were holding a long wiggle. Her hands clutched at it, trying to hold it, and the feel of it always made her laugh.

“How could I go anywhere at night, master?” She said this in a low voice. “I am here at night.”

“Your shape could be elsewhere. The Putnam child says your shape comes in the night and pinches her, and pricks her with a thorned branch.”

He quickly outlined what it was she was to confess to having done. She had made a pact with Satan. She had signed an agreement with him, signing it in her own blood. Satan had dipped a pen in her blood and she had signed, and then Satan had given her the power to travel through space, to enter houses, to go where she pleased. She could sit here in the keeping room, and people would see her sitting at the spinning wheel, and yet at the same time she could be at Deacon Putnam’s, pinching Anne and choking Mercy Lewis. She, Tituba, could be in two places at once.

“And I would not know this, master?” she asked humbly.

“You must know it.” He walked up and down the room. “The folks say you spin linen yarn faster than others do. You weave on the loom faster than others do. You can see into the future. You told Mary Warren that she would lose her shawl and she did.”

“That girl is like a chicken. She could lose her head and not know it.” Her own head was throbbing; her neck ached from the blows he had given her. She thought, I must agree with what he says.

“But you foretold this, Tituba. You foretold this. This is witchcraft.”

Tituba thought, That isn’t witchcraft. I told the girl’s fortune, not a word of it true. You will marry a rich Boston merchant, and you will lose something of value on the way home. Only a way of keeping her quiet and getting her started out of the house. So she went home mooning along the trodden path, thinking I’m going to marry a rich Boston merchant—and what happened, well, she probably ran the horse right under the branches of a tree, and her shawl got pulled off, and she was dreaming about her good fortune and didn’t miss the shawl until she got down from the horse and Master Proctor shouted, “Be ye gone daft? Where’s ye head covering?” Or perhaps her head felt cold, and then she shivered and shook and Abigail had already told her that Betsey and I could “see” things before they happened so she thought I said she would lose her shawl.

“They say you can cure sickness better than Dr. Griggs. Where would this power and this knowledge come from except from Satan? All things go hand in hand—kill and cure, sleep and wake, life—and—death—”

He started walking up and down again. “And now,” he said, “what familiars have you beside the cat?”

“I have none, master. The cat is an ordinary cat.” She said this softly, not wanting to anger him.

“You have the cat,” he said, just as though she had not spoken. “And what else?”

“I have nothing, master. The cat is not my familiar.” Again he paid no attention to what she said.

“When you journey,” he said, “how do you go?”

She shook her head. The movement made her wince, and she held on to her neck. “I do not know.”

He said, “You ride a broomstick. And what of your sister witches?”

“I have no sisters,” she said.

“I mean Good and Osburne. Where do they ride? How do you go? Are all three of you on the same broomstick or pole?”

She did not answer, and he made a threatening motion with the broom. She said hastily, “I don’t know how I go—I go—I go to Barbados, to the island, in my dreams. That is all. Only in my dreams.”

“Then you admit you can be in two places at once,” he said. She made no reply and he said, “If you fly to Barbados every night and yet you are here in this house, then you can be in two places at once. You have just said so. I will have to report what you have told me.” He sounded satisfied. “There will have to be a hearing.”

He went into his study and closed the door. A few minutes later he went up the stairs. She followed him quietly, and stood out of sight in the hall. The door of the mistress’ room was open, and she could hear them talking.

He must have told her that Tituba had confessed to being a witch, for the mistress was saying, “But who will look after me? I will die without Tituba.”

“Abigail is old enough to do what Tituba does.”

“Abigail? She is only a child, envious and sulky. She will never be able to look after anyone. All of her thoughts are for herself. And poor little Betsey is sickly. The child keeps getting thinner and thinner. Her eyes are so sad. She shivers all the time. And without Tituba—”

Tituba, standing outside the door, thought, “Without Tituba?” Why would they be “without Tituba”?

The master said, “I cannot have her here any longer. The Village talks of nothing else. They say the minister’s slave is a witch. His daughter can fly. She’s bewitched. Whenever Abigail is at the ordinary, she is taken in a fit, growling and barking like a dog or screaming that she can fly. It is better for all if an end is made of this ungodliness.”

“I do not believe that Abigail is bewitched.”

“If you had seen her as I have—” He stopped talking and started walking up and down. His footfalls came quite clearly to Tituba’s ear. “Sometimes she looks as though she were flying. Sometimes she seems to be a cat, and she mews and hisses and looks for all the world like a cat. This is bewitchment. And right here in the parish house.”

“I do not believe it,” the mistress repeated. “Abigail is a strange child. She may want more love and attention than we have given her. And perhaps she should have had more to do.”

“We’ve treated her like our own child.”

The mistress said sadly, “That is never possible. There is always a difference.” And then, “Samuel, stay still. It wearies me to watch you walk up and down and back and forth in so small a space as this room.”

He stood still for a moment, and then he started pacing back and forth again. “Just now Tituba confessed to me that she was a witch and that she and Good and Osburne have been afflicting the children.”

“How did Tituba come to say this?”

“I charged her with the crime of witchcraft and she admitted to it,” he said. “I cannot keep her here any longer. It is dangerous to have her here. The farmers say that this witchcraft started under my roof, and this proves I am not righteous enough to withstand the attacks of Satan. They tell frightening stories of dealings with the invisible world that went on here in this house. Tituba says she is the witch who started all of this.”

Then the mistress must have sat up in bed because suddenly her voice came so loud that it startled Tituba, and it must have startled the master, too, because the sound of his footsteps ceased. She shouted, “Samuel, you must have beaten her and abused her to get her to say such things,” and she groaned and fell to coughing.

The master’s footsteps became hurried. Tituba swiftly went down the steep staircase. He must have run down the stairs because she had barely reached the keeping room when he came into the room, calling, “See to your mistress. See to your mistress,” and, not looking at her, shut himself up in his study.

Tituba propped the mistress up in bed and gave her small sips of the brew she had made especially for coughs. When the cough had eased, Tituba tucked the covers in around her, put a fresh log on the fire, and was about to go back downstairs.

The mistress said, “Stay a moment, Tituba.” When Tituba went over to the bed, one of the mistress’ thin hands came out from under the covers. She grasped Tituba’s hand. “I don’t believe in this witchcraft. This wouldn’t have happened if I had been up and about. What did Samuel do to you to make you say you were a witch? Tell me,” she urged, “tell me.” The thin hand pressed against Tituba’s hand.

Tituba remembered John’s description of the hanging of the Witch Glover in Boston, remembered the master shouting, “I will have you hanged,” remembered John’s warning, “These are a cold, cruel people,” and said flatly, “I do not remember, mistress. I do not remember.”

When Betsey was told that Tituba had confessed to being a witch, she said, “If Tiribee is a witch, then so am I.” The master could not get her to stop saying this.

That night after the Parris family had gone to sleep, Tituba told John that when the master had accused her of being a witch she had finally said that yes, she was a witch. John put his head down on the trestle table and wept. She had never before seen him weep. The sight of his great shoulders bowed like that and his head bent over in defeat hurt her like a knife wound in the heart.

She said, “Ah, don’t—don’t,” and touched his arm almost timidly.

He lifted his head at her touch. “Why? Why did you say you were a witch? They will surely hang you”—his voice broke—“and I can not bear it.”

“No,” she said firmly, even as she said it not believing it but trying to comfort him. “They will not hang me.” She wondered how he would have felt if he had touched those girls while they were having fits and his touch had brought them out of their fits, and a great many horrified people had watched as this happened. If, right after this touch test, the master had accused John of being a witch, and kept accusing him, and beating him, wouldn’t he, too, have finally admitted to being a witch?

“They will not hang me,” she said again.

He banged his fist on the table in a sudden fury. “I hear what they say in the ordinary and you don’t. They’re out to hang witches. And the master is going to help them. Don’t you understand? He has to help them. He has to be the best witch-finder of all, or they’ll hang him for a witch or a wizard. They’ve never liked him here. The folk are already whispering that he’s not a proper minister, that he’s a wizard or a warlock. Some even say he’s made an agreement with the black man.”

“With the black man?”

“Yes. They say that’s why the master’s garden is always filled with vegetables, that’s why his cows always give milk—”

She interrupted him, saying, “Who is ‘the black man’? Is he a slave?”

“A slave?” he repeated, astonished. “Of course not. They call the Devil the black man. Quite often they call him the tall black man. The folk here say the master has sold his soul to the tall black man.”

“But, John—” she said, and for a moment she couldn’t speak; terror seized her. “They will hang you.”

“Me? I have not foolishly confessed to being a witch.”

“No,” she said. “But you are a tall black man.”

“What of it? I have always been a tall man, and if folk want to call the dark brown color of my skin ‘black,’ I can not stop them. What difference does it make? Why are you staring at me?”

“John,” she said, urgency in her voice, in her manner. “Show me how Mary Warren and Mercy Lewis and Abigail act in the taproom when they have their fits.”

“They do the same things here,” he protested. “I showed you what they did once before and you said—”

“Show me again.”

“Now?”

“Yes.” She sat down on the settle near the fire, watching him.

He stood up, took a deep breath, and then suddenly jumped up in the air, fell down, rolled over and over, clutching at himself. He pretended to be screaming, and then he pretended to be shouting though he only whispered, “‘Ah, she bites. She bites. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I’ll not sign, old witch. I’ll not sign.’” He crept under the settles and then out again. He pretended to be a dog and barked silently, and then he pretended he was a horse and whinnied and pranced around the room.

Tituba thought his performance better than that of the bewitched girls. He gave one last whinny and came to sit beside her. She said, “When the girls have their fits in Ingersoll’s taproom, you must pretend to have fits, too. Just as though you were bewitched.”

He turned on her and shook her, saying angrily, “Am I to say that you bewitched me? You want me to help hang you?”

She got up from the settle, moving well beyond his reach. “Quiet yourself and listen,” she said. “In all of Salem Village you are the only tall black man. Mr. Preston’s Black Peter is a wizened little man, and Mr. Hutchinson’s Black Joshua is short and light of skin. Sooner or later these girls will cry out that you are ‘the tall black man.’ Everyone will believe that you are a devil—and they will hang you.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Oh, but they will,” she said sadly. “Everything is getting twisted and turned around. Nobody is trying to straighten things out. Some of the folk believe that a devil cut off Mercy Lewis’ hair. There must be other folk who don’t believe this but they will never say so. They are too frightened.”

She paused, waiting for him to say something, and when he didn’t she continued, “If those girls should take it into their heads to cry out that you are the tall black man you will surely hang. None of the folk will dare say, No, this is not true. This man is John Indian, the best wood-cutter in the Village, the best gardener, the best hunter—”

Again she paused and waited for him to reply. There was no sound in the room save the crackling of the fire. He kept staring at the fire, and finally he said, “If I become one of the afflicted and fall down and have fits—What will that do?”

“Then you could not be called a witch or a wizard or a devil. Unless you do this I think they will look at you and think”—here her voice slowed and slowed and slowed like that of a person thinking out loud, trying to remember something, trying to make a connection between two different ideas—“The-tall-black-man, the-tall-black-man, John—Indian—is—a—tall—black—man—and then suddenly they will all be rolling on the floor screaming, ‘Ah, ah, John pinches, ah, ah, John bites, ah, ah, John is sticking pins in me, John was the devil who cut off my hair—’”