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FEBRUARY TEA
PARTY
by Ruth Wildes Schuler
The pale-faced girls sat quietly upon the logs, while the
old black woman demanded, "Boil! Boil!"
She sprinkled tiny bits of greenery into the huge kettle bubbling in the middle of the snow-packed clearing, and then picking up a branch, she peeled back the bark and stirred the scalding brew vigorously.
Raising her deep-set eyes, she finally announced, "It's ready." Elizabeth, Abigale, and the other young girls came forward, one at a time to receive a cup of her tea.
The West Indian slave studied the white faces gazing at her from the frozen landscape, and as they drank, she told them stories of the island where she had been born. "My land was one of constant sunshine. The men and boys laughed and sang all day, while the women and girls danced and swam in the warm blue sea."
The girls took a second cup of the brew, and sipped it slowly, and then the one named Elizabeth suddenly stood up and began flapping her arms wildly. "I feel like a bird," she cried. "Look . . . I have a cock's feet with sharp claws, and I am dancing." She moved her legs in a slow rhythm, and then began to laugh hysterically. "Look," she called to the others. "Look at me."
"Dancing is a sin," her cousin, Abigale announced with horror.
"Sin, sin, sin," the young Elizabeth hissed, and taunted her older cousin by whirling about the clearing many times before collapsing into the snow.
"You're possessed by the Devil," Abigale cried, her eyes widening with alarm.
"Yes, yes," Elizabeth laughed. "And he has a black face like a monkey, red eyes and a mouth that spits FIRE!"
The old woman tightened the smile stretching at the corners of her mouth.
"Tell her that dancing is a sin," Abigale pleaded urgently to the sphinx-faced slave.
"The only real sin is to stifle the powers of imagination," the old woman reprimanded, and she began to stir her brew again. "Come forward and drink, children," she demanded.
They all came forward and accepted another cup of the boiling liquid except for the frightened Abigale, who sat apart brooding upon her log. When the rest of the girls had finished the third cup of tea, a second child arose from her log, and began to imitate the dance that Elizabeth had just done. Elizabeth laughed and mirthfully rolled in the snow.
Soon, one by one, the other girls stood up and started to shriek. They shut their eyes and opened their hands out, clawing at the afternoon air.
The pious Abigale sat rigidly upon her log and shouted, "You are breaking God's law!"
"God's law," the sable-skinned woman murmured. "And what kind of wretched God let me be born into slavery?" The crow's feet at the corners of her eyes drew together tightly. "What kind of God tore me from my kin and kind to be transported to this frozen wasteland, where white faces blend into the white world around them . . . Where virtue is locked within sacraments, and sacraments are locked up within men's souls."
Abigale looked at her with confusion. "I don't understand what you are talking about," she told the wrinkled slave, and turned to her younger cousin, who was now shrieking in the snow. "Elizabeth, please, what would your Father say if he should see you now?"
"He would say, ‘Sin, Sin, Sin!'" Elizabeth laughed, rising to whirl about even more madly than before. "It is always a sin to have fun. Rather that we should work and work and work. Pray, pray, and pray, but never, ever, never have fun, dear Abigale."
The gaunt old woman spoke sharply to the older child. "Have some more tea, Abigale."
The older girl arose from the log obediently, and came forward to accept another cup of the burning brew. "Elizabeth is so naive," she explained to the black woman. "She really believes that things can change. She even thinks this town will change, as if young girls have ever had the power to do anything in this world. Why don't you tell her the truth, Tituba?"
"We can do anything that we must, Abigale," Tituba spoke harshly. "We are our own covenant. Close your eyes, Abigale, and tell me what you see."
Abigale shuddered under the late falling afternoon, and then closed her eyes, reached out her hands and screamed, "I see an old hag." Elizabeth laughed with delight, and ran forward to hug her older cousin.
Tituba let her smile break for the first time, her white teeth contrasting vividly against the stony black features. Overhead the snow began to fall.
Tituba tipped the kettle, and the remains of the boiling
brew spilled into the snow, the little green bits melting into the ice beneath.
It was done now. Vengeance would creep out over the village in
the guise of virtue, and these shrieking specters would bring Salem shades
out of the shadows.
SARAH
WILDES
by
Ruth Wildes Schuler
I can only reflect on the irony of it all on this Tuesday,
July 19, 1692, as I travel in a cart through these Salem streets. From
Number 4 Prison Lane, down Saint Peter Street, up Essex, down Boston Street
to pass over the town bridge.
But I am not alone. Rebecca Nurse, Goody Good, Elizabeth Howe, and Susanna Maritin will share my fate this day. Five of us, all women, to be hanged on Callow's Hill. A conspicuous spot, where we will be spectacles to the town below. An intentious show offered as a deterrent to any future immoral impulses.
My kinfolk came from Topsfield, England, which lies in the Northeastern corner of that county. They titled the flat land there in Essex County until the clay earth had been farmed out. When it was no longer possible to make a living there, my parents sailed across the Atlantic to this new land. In October of 1650, here in this Bay State of Massachusetts.
The earth was rich and my kin were content. Here in this new land, they at last had found religious freedom--a community absent of the rigidities of the Old World. A place where all men and women could live together in harmony under God's law.
A laugh escapes my lips. The spectators lining these streets are startled by my hysterical outburst and are even more convinced that I am indeed--a witch.
My mother and her puritanical illusions. Can you imagine what it is like growing up in such a pious world? Of course, they told me that I should not have been so independent, that it was not fitting for a good Christian woman to speak her mind out so. One of my neighbors testified that I flew out at him and sent a demon to plague him by even turning over his wagon. Mind you, he did not tell that he had borrowed my scythe without approval and that I flew at him only to reclaim what was rightfully mine. Though I am only a farmer's wife, I do have a sense of my own property rights.
Talking to my cats did not help my case either. It was claimed that they were my familiars. With such criteria as that, least half the folks around here are guilty of witchcraft.
But it is I, Sarah Wildes who has been sentenced to hang because of some hysterical half-witted girls. Sentenced just like Bridget Bishop, who went before me to be hanged alone last month on the tenth of June. Hanged from the branches of a great oak atop yonder hill. Poor Bridget, convicted for little more than wearing scarlet and getting herself talked about in this town.
Ah, but those half-witted girls were convincing! I have to give them credit for that. Sometimes they appeared to be deaf, sometimes blind, and they drew their tongues into the back of their throats, then protruded them down on their chins. Their mouths flew open like birds and often seemed to snap out of joint, then they clapped back with force like that of a spring lock.
This cart turns now onto the old highway and we are passing the ledge of the hill overlooking the pond . . . Did you know that the court sent my own constable son to arrest me?
What chance did virtue have against such a theatrical back
drop? The one called Mary Walcott said that I appeared as a specter
with the devil's book grasped in my hands and that I walked beside a tall
black man in a high-crowned hat. She claimed that I threatened to tear
her to pieces.
The cart stops. I am taken from it. I laugh again
as I climb the steps to Gallows Hill. Me, Goody Wildes, meaning the good
wife Wildes!
Yet Deliverance Hobbs told them that she saw me with the devil. I was given little chance to defend myself after that. She claimed that the devil wore a white-crowned hat, and she accused me of distributing red bread and red wine that looked like blood. She said the devil administered his sacrament and drank wine from a tankard, while I offered her fine clothes as a bribe for her to sign his book. Deliverance Hobbs, accusing me to divert attention from herself and the accusation by her own demented daughter, Abigail, who rambles around the woods at night like a wild animal.
Despicable children! Wretched town! It is the court records here that are the real devil's book. And how many more will follow me up these Salem steps?
The centuries pass slowly and I often walk about Gallows Hill when the nights are warm and the moon is full. I rise from the shallow crevice here where they thrust my limp body. Rise up from my grave in the out-cropping of felsite.
I have often pondered the fate of those who passed over to the Other Side with me here on Gallows Hill. Nineteen people and two dogs hanged, and poor Giles Corey crushed to death by rocks piled high upon his chest.
In 1711, the General Assembly of Massachusetts made restitution to my family for my death. Paid them fourteen pounds for the damages inflicted upon me. Justice was rendered, so do not be alarmed if you should hear my laughter on occasion in the summer breezes blowing across this Salem landscape.
MORE TO COME!
