Tituba of Salem Village by Ann Petry

church, came to see the mistress. She brought her daughter, Anne Putnam, Jr., and the Putnams’ bound girl, Mercy Lewis, with her. Mistress Putnam was a tall, thin woman with flashing dark eyes. The daughter, Anne, Jr., was as thin and white-faced as the mother.
    Mercy Lewis, the bound girl, was lively and rosy-cheeked. Her cap kept coming off her head, and a great mass of yellow hair the color of buttercups tumbled down over her face and shoulders.
    Mistress Putnam spoke sharply to her, “Mercy, get your hair under your cap before Pastor comes into the room.”
    Mercy hastily tumbled her hair into place on top of her head and put on her white cap.
    They all went up to the mistress’ bedroom. The conversation made Tituba uneasy. Mistress Putnam said that her sister had died in this house. “But not in this room,” she said, looking around. “We always keep sick people downstairs. She was married to Mr. Bayley who was the minister. Mr. Burroughs’ wife died here, too. He was another of our ministers. He didn’t pay for his wife’s funeral—went off and left all his belongings. We had him arrested and brought back until we could get it straightened out.”
    Tituba found herself wondering, Was it Mr. Burroughs who had fixed the loom so it wouldn’t work? Was his the bent-over figure she had visualized carefully wrecking it?
    “Just before Mr. Parris came, there was Mr. Lawson—”
    “Did his wife die here, too?” Abigail asked, interrupting her. “Tell us about it downstairs. We’d best be going down for Aunt Parris has to rest now.” She said this in such a grown-up way that Mistress Putnam stared at her in surprise.
    After Mistress Putnam’s visit, Tituba found excuses for keeping other callers away from the mistress. She was afraid they, too, might talk about all the ministers’ wives who had died in the ministry house.
    Mary Sibley came often and brought her niece, Mary Walcott, with her. Mary Walcott was an expert knitter. She taught Tituba how to knit the long woolen stockings they all wore. Goodwife Sibley made broths and puddings for the mistress. She had remedies for everything—for coughs and colds, for frost-bitten fingers, for headaches.
    Before the winter snows closed the paths and roads, Tituba came to know many of the bound girls and boys and the slaves who belonged to the farmers in Salem Village. The farmers sent them to the house with provisions for the minister. When there was a knock at the door, late in the afternoon, she knew it would be Black Peter or Mary Black or Cindy, slaves who belonged on nearby farms. Or it might be one of the bound girls, Mary Warren or Elizabeth Hubbard or Mercy Lewis. They brought corn meal, salt beef, salt cod, onions.
    By the middle of December, snow was piled up so high they could not see out of the windows. Tituba and the master dug a tunnel-like path to the barn so they could feed the animals. Tituba did most of the digging for the master tired easily. The woodpile dwindled, and Tituba began to wonder if it would last through the winter.
    They were never really warm. The mistress shivered under the quilts and the blankets piled on the bed in the upstairs room. The little girls said they couldn’t sleep it was so cold in their room. Tituba let them sleep on the settle in the keeping room where John used to sleep.
    She missed John’s visits, and so did the girls. He had brightened the early evening for them with stories and bits of news. He had made them laugh by imitating the speech and the gestures of the farmers and the fishermen. Sometimes he put his hands on his hips and walked back and forth, nodding his head as he talked, copying the exact words and gestures of someone who had been in Ingersoll’s taproom. He could transform himself into an old man, by bending over and putting his hand behind his ear to indicate that he couldn’t hear very well. Or he would pretend to cough and clear his throat, so that you knew the person talking had a rheum in