Susannah Morrow (6 page)

“I imagine your father has many opinions on that score,” Susannah said.

’Twas an insult, I realized. It startled me; I could not believe she’d said it. I said, “My father has a great reverence for
the word of God.”

Susannah touched my cheek, just a brush of her soft skin. “Of course he does. I meant nothing by it, Charity.” She smiled,
so I forgot what it was that disturbed me so. “We should go. They’ll be home before us otherwise.”

It did not take us long to get home—or at least, it seemed that way to me, because my thoughts were so full. ’Twas a lucky
thing that we had laid out the food and the barrels of beer and cider before we’d left, because when we got to the house,
neighbors had already congregated, ready to drink and eat to my mother’s memory. Unexpectedly, I thought how only a few days
before I’d been helping Mama bake groaning cakes. Now we were here, feasting on funeral cake and bread and meat, while she
was gone forever, so far from me that I would never again feel the soft touch of her hand on my hair or hear her quiet “Hand
me the eggs, Charity, my dear” as together we made dinner.

I was so sad suddenly that I could not take another step. My aunt hurried past to greet those just arriving. I let go of Jude’s
hand, and she ran up the path to the house, calling out to some friend she saw hovering near the door while I stood there
feeling weak beneath the weight of my sorrow.

The dark woods beyond the house looked suddenly inviting, but I knew the darkness would come too soon, the shadows on the
narrow pathways would lengthen until they took the shapes of demons and savages. Night was an evil thing, and dangerous besides.
Lately there’d been much talk of Indian raids not so far from here.

No, I would not run. I trudged up to the house. The door was open, and when I stepped inside, I was surprised to see more
people than I’d thought. In the corner, passing a tankard of beer to Jude and her little friend Polly Martin, was Elizabeth
Hubbard. I did not have to look far to see Mary Walcott standing just beyond. I backed up a little, hoping to disappear into
the shadows before she caught sight of me.

I hit my hip hard on something—a corner, a cupboard that hadn’t been there before. In confusion, I turned around. It was no
cupboard. There, just inside the door, were two large chests, each heavily carved, brightly painted. On top of one was the
thing I’d bumped into, something small and rectangular, covered with canvas.

Slowly I reached out. I pulled back the canvas to reveal keys glowing with the fine polish of ivory—an instrument. It was
a virginal, and I knew who it belonged to, just as I knew these trunks held clothes brought all the way from London—more clothing
than I, or anyone in my family, had ever had.

I looked up, right into the mean gaze of Mary Walcott, who made a little prancing curtsy like a stage player, and I heard
her voice again in my head.
They say she’s an actress,
and those words seized and took hold—all these clothes, music, an instrument…

Suddenly I was afraid. I did not know how I should feel or what I should do. I turned to the door and saw my father come in,
and I waited for him to see these things. He glanced at me. “Are you well, child?”

When I nodded dumbly, he looked beyond me to the chests, to the virginal keys glistening in the candlelight. I held my breath.
He looked away again, as if the sight did not distress him—or as if he hadn’t even seen those things sitting there, though
there was no way to avoid them. He crossed the room to where our neighbor Samuel Nurse stood drinking from the bowl of beer,
and clapped a welcoming hand on the man’s shoulder as if nothing was amiss.

I looked again behind me, thinking I’d been mistaken, that perhaps I was seeing things. But the virginal was there. I touched
one of the keys, unable to help myself. The ivory was smooth and warm, as if it had just been played, when it should have
been cold, and that was so disconcerting I drew back. ’Twas an evil thing, I knew, but my father seemed unmoved by it, and
that was so strange I did not know how to reconcile it. Mama had once told me that my father could spot wickedness in any
man, and I believed that. I knew he saw it in me. Why else did he spend every night drilling prayers into my head, girding
me against the Devil? If he saw it in me, why could he not see it in Susannah?

Because it wasn’t there. ’Twas the only answer. My aunt Susannah was no actress; Mary had been passing on vile rumors without
truth. Gossip spread so easily in this village. Were Susannah a stage player, even my mother’s pleas could not have brought
her here.

I looked toward my aunt, who was taking a joint of beef off the fire, reminding me of Mama with every movement, and I was
relieved. Mary was wrong; there was nothing to fear. The only wickedness in this house was my own.

’T
WAS LATE WHEN EVERYONE BEGAN TO LEAVE, BUT THE LEAVING
had nothing to do with the hour. I had known most of these people my whole life; tonight their voices had been loud in the
corners, snatches of arguments I’d heard often these last months falling here and there through the house—rumors that Increase
Mather had failed in getting the new charter from the king and queen in England, worries about land titles revoked and taxes
going ever upward because of the war with the Indians and the French—things I cared nothing for. My neighbors could debate
long into twilight; they had done so many times before, ’twas a favored way to pass the time.

So it was odd the way those conversations stopped when the pastor arrived—so late I’d thought he would not be coming. My father
sat at the table with the other four members of the Village Committee. When Parris came through the door with his family,
they stared at him, their talk dying uncomfortably. The parson seemed unaffected by the deliberate silence. He stood there
smiling until my father had to rise to greet him. After that, my mother’s funeral feast broke up quickly. The sun had set;
the shadows of the woods crowded the pathway, so the threat of Indian attack seemed more real than ever; and the men began
to talk of walking back in groups together, their muskets at the ready, their fingers poised at their powder horns.

Jude and the few other remaining children reeled through the hall, dizzy from too much beer, tumbling into the spinning wheels
and the barrels of salt meat filling the corners, squealing with laughter as they dodged around the churn and the washtubs.
The girls, whom I’d once called my friends, lingered, their smiles wide as they cast their eyes in the direction of the village
boys. I watched them with too many memories of the days when I’d done the same. When the last bowl of beer had emptied but
for the dregs, and the cakes we’d baked were nothing more than crumbs scattered on the table, they finally left. I was glad
when they were gone. My father stood at the door, listening as our neighbors filled his ears with good-byes and murmured assurances
of Mama’s election. The parson and his family were the last to go.

“’Tis no time for sadness, Brother Fowler,” Master Parris said, clutching my father’s arm. “Our good sister is embraced now
in God’s glory.”

Father nodded, but his farewell was low and strained. When the pastor took his wife’s arm and called for his niece Abigail
to lead away his three other children, my father looked relieved. He closed the door too quickly behind them, shutting out
the cold wind, leaving us in a quiet that seemed strange after the noise of the day.

“’Tis getting late,” he said. “You children go to bed. Tomorrow is the Sabbath, and the babe’s baptism.” He looked past me
to where Susannah tended the fire. “’Twould be best if you took yourself up as well, Sister. You’ve a long day to look forward
to.”

She looked up with a little smile. “Aye. Longer still if ’tis your minister giving the service.”

There was no answering humor in Father’s eyes. “The word of God is welcome in any wilderness.”

“I have not said it wasn’t, Brother.”

He looked ready to say something sharp, but then he only started to the parlor. “As you wish, but I’ll say my good-nights.
’Twas a trying day.”

I saw my aunt hesitate. Then she straightened from the fire and called out, “Brother—”

My father turned.

“I may have lost my sister, but I know you buried a wife today, and perhaps…Well, ’twas no easy thing, I know. I bid you…a
peaceful rest.”

It seemed my father relaxed at her words, though I don’t know why I thought it, because his posture did not change. But perhaps
the softening I saw in his face was real and not caused by the dimness of flickering candles. It reassured me; I had been
right to cast my doubts about Susannah aside. “Aye,” he said, and then he saw me standing there. “Charity, Jude, ’tis late.”

I knew that tone. So did Jude. I saw her get up from the settle without question, rolling drunkenly into her step as she went
to the stairs. I followed her, leaving my aunt alone to rake up the fire for the night.

Our room was cold. The nor’easter had left winter in its wake. The chill wind whistled through a crack in the window’s casement,
and I remembered how frigid this room had been last winter, how the ice inside the windows had barely melted the whole day
through. I went to the window, finding the bits of rag I’d stuffed there rotting now, disintegrating to dust at my touch.
Jude was undressing to her chemise and crawling between the homespun sheets of the trundle bed.

“’Tis cold, Charity,” she complained. “My toes are freezing.”

I shoved the rag as best I could back into the crack and told myself to remember to find a new one tomorrow. Then I leaned
close and peered out the window. The moon was rising, full and bright, and the night sky was clear. Against the clapboards
of the house, the oak branches scratched and tapped. “’Twill be a freeze tonight, I’ll warrant.”

Jude was sniffling into the pillow bear now. Soft, muffled cries that it hurt to hear.

“’Tis all right, Jude,” I said quietly. “Everything will be fine.”

“I miss Mama.”

“I know. Me too.”

“She never let my bed be cold.”

I winced. The hole my mother had left seemed suddenly far too big to fill. “I’m sorry. I should have remembered to get the
bed warmer. I won’t forget tomorrow.”

Jude’s sniffling broke into little hiccuping sobs. “I don’t want you to remember. I want Mama to do it.”

“She’s with God now, Jude. You know that.”

“Aye, she is.”

I spun around in surprised disbelief. I had thought ’twas the spirit again, talking to me in my mother’s sweet voice, but
it was my aunt standing there. I took a deep breath to calm myself, and then I saw she held the long-handled bed warmer, and
I felt glad that she would remember such a thing, that she would know of my mother’s habit, and sorrow that I had so easily
forgotten.

She came inside with hardly a sound and went over to the trundle. “But your mama hasn’t really left you, Jude. You must remember
that.”

Jude wiped her eyes, nodding silently. Susannah gestured her away from the bed, and Jude scurried back, hugging herself and
shivering as our aunt took down the covers and ran the bed warmer over the sheets, letting it rest for a moment at the foot.

Then Susannah drew back. “Hurry now,” she said. “Get in before the chill hits again.”

Jude did it without a word. She huddled into the blankets, burrowing down so far that all I could see of her was the length
of her braid trailing over the pillow like a mouse’s tail.

Quickly Susannah slid the bed warmer between the covers of the feather bed she and I would share. Then she knelt again beside
Jude, patting the small, rounded hump of my sister. From beneath the covers came those sniffling sounds again.

“Sssshhh, sssshhh,” Susannah said. “apos;Tis all right to cry, Jude. ’Tis all right.”

“Father says it’s not,” came Jude’s muffled voice.

“Remember what your father said? About being happy because your mama was with God?”

The lump beneath the covers went still. Then I saw the jerk of Jude’s braid as she nodded.

“I think that’s true. I think your mama’s happy now. But I know you miss her, and ’tis no bad thing sometimes to cry over
it.”

The covers came down. Jude’s little pinched face showed again, her red-rimmed eyes and pink nose, and I watched the way Susannah
smoothed back my sister’s light brown hair, gently pulling the loose strands from where they stuck to the tears on her face.
If I narrowed my vision to just her hand, I could pretend it was my mother sitting there, soothing my sister the way she’d
done so often. The only thing different was that Mama would never have told Jude it was all right to cry.

“Jude must learn to control her tears,” I said, correcting my aunt gently. “They will only make Father angry.”

Susannah stopped her stroking and looked up at me, and there was a pity in her eyes that confused me. “Ah, yes,” she murmured,
“’tis best not to make him angry.”

Her answer unsettled me. It sounded again as if she was insulting my father, though I could not decide exactly how that could
be, because her words did not. I found myself wanting to defend him. I went to the shelf beside the bed that held the candle
and grabbed up my Bible. “This is where we must look for reassurance. Come, Jude.”