Susannah Morrow (7 page)

“I don’t want to get out of bed, Charity,” my sister whined. “Father’s gone to sleep already without making us—”

I pointed to the floor beside my bed.

Jude sighed, then dragged herself from her warm covers. I felt a moment of regret that I was making her do it, that I was
not huddled beneath warm bed rugs and toasting my feet in the warmth of the gathered coals, but I knew what Father expected
from us. When Jude was kneeling at the side of the bed, I went down beside her. The floor was cold and hard beneath my knees.
I opened the Bible, letting the leaves fall where they would, and then I began to read. “‘But we are all as an unclean thing,
and all our righteousness are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken
us away—’”

“Oh, Charity,” Susannah said quietly, “can you not find comfort from the Lord instead of punishment? Your mother was buried
today. Allow yourself to grieve.”

I stumbled over the next words, and then the text blurred; I could not read. I saw Jude turn to me, but her face was blurry
too, and I had to look away. “I
am
finding comfort in the Lord,” I said, and though I meant the words to be convincing, they rang soft and muffled by my tears.

“Shall we leave off the prayers tonight?” Susannah said. “Your father will never know if we don’t tell him. Shall I sing you
to sleep?”

I looked at her in dumb surprise.
Your father will never know.
I thought of yesterday and how she’d led me into laying my mother out, her words to Jude—
You shall not tell your father
—and something settled uncomfortable and false inside me.

“Sing?” Jude asked. “You mean…a psalm? Like at meeting?”

“If that’s what you wish,” Susannah said. “You would like that, would you not?” Susannah patted the trundle bed. “Come along,
Jude. Into bed.”

Jude leaped toward that welcoming hand, leaving me kneeling alone by the bed, my limbs numb from the knees down, the cold
working into my hands so my fingers were stiff and unpliable, skeleton fingers clutching my Bible.

Susannah tucked Jude beneath the covers, and my sister shivered and smiled gratefully back at my aunt, already forgetting
her tears. Susannah put her hand to my sister’s hair, and then, without a word to me, she began to sing.

Her voice was soft and sweet. She sang as one used to singing, nothing like the way we stumbled over the psalms in meeting,
each singer imagining a different tune, and none of them well. Susannah’s words were clear and true. I could almost hear the
virginal lending accompaniment. “‘Under the greenwood tree, who loves to lie with me and turn his merry note unto the sweet
bird’s throat.…’”

I could not take my eyes away from her, from how prettily she did it—a tilt of her head, a fluttering hand. As if she were
acting out the song, performing it for our pleasure. I tried not to think it. But the more I tried not to think it, the more
it came into my head.

“‘Come hither, come hither, come hither: Here shall he see no enemy but winter and rough weather.’”

I could imagine her on a wooden stage, singing as she played the virginal, smiling at the audience below.

I heard the Devil in her voice. “Stop,” I said, but my words came too soft, and she kept singing until I nearly yelled, “Stop
it.”

She looked up then and put her fingers to her lips to quiet me, gesturing toward Jude, who was asleep already. Then she finished
the song, the final words trailing off in a lilt. “‘Here shall he see no enemy but winter and rough weather.’

“What is it, Charity?” she asked, rising from Jude’s side and making her way to sit on the bed. “Did you not like the song?”

I was afraid. When I looked at her now, I saw wickedness. I had been seduced again—just as Mama had predicted I would be.
In my grief, I had taken the easy path that Susannah put before me—lies to my father, secrets kept. The Devil was leading
her, and he had known my desires before and answered them. She was what I’d thought—an actress who could lie at will. She
was not my mother. I prayed for the strength to push her away, but my hands were trembling.
If Christ hath no possession of thee, then thou art possessed of the Devil.
I tried to say the words, but ’twas as if I’d forgotten their sounds.

“I worry about you, Charity,” she said quietly. “’Tis not right to keep yourself from grieving this way. Your mama would not
want you to be so brave.”

Those brown eyes of hers looked soft and soulful in the dimness, but this time, I knew her for what she was. The knowledge
gave me strength. ’Twas easier to fight the Devil now, when I knew what he looked like. I would not be deceived so easily
again. “How could you know what she would want from me? I heard what Father said—you’d not seen her for years.”

She winced. “I admit we had not seen each other for a long time. But she wrote me every month. I knew my sister well enough.”

“My mother.”

“Aye. Your mother.” Susannah sighed. “I would have done anything for her, had she asked it. ’Tis why I’m here now. She called
me, and I came.”

That surprised me. “She asked you to come?”

Susannah nodded.

“Why?”

My aunt hesitated. “She longed to see me, I think. As much as I wanted to see her.”

“She never mentioned you. I don’t think she missed you at all. Why ask you to come after so many years?”

Susannah looked thoughtful in a way that made me nervous, and I wished I had not been so cruel. She did not take her eyes
from my face when she said, “I think she was afraid.”

“Afraid? Of what?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps…Perhaps you have the answer to that. I heard what you asked your father today. Tell me, Charity, what
secrets do you think your mother was keeping? What could she have been afraid of?”

The question rattled me. I could not help it; I remembered the day I had told Mama about Samuel. I remembered the smell of
the white hellebore we had gathered, and the wet, moldy scent of the deep shadows of the forest, the stink of the skunk cabbage
in the swamp beyond. I knew I would never forget the look in my mother’s eyes, that terrible fear that had made me cry when
she whispered at me harshly to shush, that I was courting the Devil, and I must never mention such a thing again. Not to her,
not to myself, not to anyone.…

I met my aunt’s gaze as calmly as I could. “I don’t know what she was afraid of,” I said. “Nothing that I knew.”

She saw I was lying. She watched me for a moment more, and then she sighed and got to her feet. “Well, there’s tomorrow still
to find out. And the next day. I’ve more than enough time.”

“You’re staying, then.”

“Aye. Your mother asked for my help. I’ve come all this way to give it. And I”—she smiled bitterly—“I won’t be returning to
London. My life there…’tis best left behind.”

Only two hours before, I would have rejoiced at such news. Now I was in agony over it. She was staying—Satan’s inroads into
my soul had not been enough; now she was here to tempt me still again. I got to my feet, clutching the Bible to my chest like
a shield. I wanted no more of her or of this conversation. I was afraid now, again, and worse than before. Only yesterday,
I had taken confidence from the things she’d said—I remembered so well thinking she and I were alike; she had given me hope
that I could find goodness even with Mama gone.

Now I knew the truth. Susannah
was
just like me. She had not found courage but only weakness when Mama left, and like me, she’d taken the road the Devil offered.

“I’m tired,” I said. When I put the Bible down to undress, I felt naked, unarmed, and so I grabbed it up again as I slid between
the sheets of the bed, stretching my toes toward the bed warmer below. I kept the Bible hard against my chest, lying there
stiffly when Susannah crawled in beside me.

She blew out the candle, and as the room snapped into darkness, I tried to relax into the bed, into the safety of blindness.
I closed my eyes and prayed, though the words got lost in my head, and my feelings were a muddle. I stayed awake long after
Susannah went limp and quiet beside me, and when her breathing came soft and even, keeping time with Jude’s from the trundle
bed below, I lay there thinking about the things she’d said, the things she knew. I thought it would be my fear of her that
kept me spinning into the night, almost till dawn, but it was not. It was something else instead, the simple question that
sparked my memory:
Tell me, Charity, what was your mother afraid of?

The answer so filled my heart I was afraid she would hear it.

My mother had been afraid of me.

I
WOKE TO THE SOUND OF MY NAME, A QUICK CALL THAT CAME TO
me through a dream I could not remember.
Charity. Charity.
I jerked awake to see that it was early still, with dawn breaking in a gray light beyond the windows, the shadows in the
room blue and ghostly. Jude was fast asleep, and there were no noises from downstairs; my father was not awake. There was
no one calling me, no one near, but I couldn’t go back to sleep.

Then I heard it again, not in my head this time, but beside me. I turned in bed, and…She was there beside me, facing me, and
her expression was sad and loving. I felt her warmth; I felt the weight of her body on the feather bed.

“Mama…” I meant to stay still, though I couldn’t help myself; I reached out slowly, as if she were a skittish wild bird, and
touched her hair, and for that one moment, it was hers—thin and wiry, bouncing beneath my fingertips—

Then she was gone, and it was Susannah I was looking at, Susannah’s hair beneath my hand, thick and soft and brown, not gray
at all. My aunt’s eyes opened, and suddenly she was looking at me in sleepy question, and I could not bear it.

I jerked away, turning my I back to her. My disappointment gathered in tears. I thought she would touch me, she would say
something, and I waited.

She did nothing. I was so tight and still I thought I could feel even the movement of the air. I heard her sigh, and then
she relaxed again into the bed, and before long I heard her soft breathing again in sleep.

It was a long time before I relaxed as well. I saw my mother’s face again, and then the quickness of the change—her face on
Susannah’s body, her spirit in Susannah’s heart—but this time I understood what the spirit was trying to tell me. ’Twas a
warning. My aunt Susannah was wicked; she would guide me only closer to Satan’s arms.
Your heart is an open door, Charity. Do not let the Devil in.

I pushed aside the blankets and dressed hurriedly, then went downstairs into the darkness. I heard my father moving around
in the parlor, up early, as I was. I built up the fire and put breakfast on, and when he finally came into the hall, looking
haggard and sleepless, his eyes red-rimmed, he sat beside me at the table and said gently, “Good day, child” while we ate
and waited for Susannah and Jude. I thought of telling him what I’d seen, of the things about Susannah that I knew now, but
he seemed so distracted and distant I could not bring myself to do it. I kept my thoughts to myself as my sister and aunt
came down, and we made our way to meeting.

The meetinghouse stood in the middle of a big clearing, with forest behind it, and Ingersoll’s Ordinary next door. The watch-house
loomed across the street, its thick walls manned always by one of the village militia, flintlock at the ready. The meetinghouse
was one place I always felt safe. If Salem Village had a heart, this building was it, though there were those—including my
father—who said it was the rotten center as well.

It had been many years since the meetinghouse was something to be proud of. The heavy shutters hung at loose angles now, and
at least two of the windows were broken out, covered over with boards. It was on the edge of swampland, so throughout the
summer, mosquitoes swarmed both inside and out. Now the swamp was still and cold; the few brown leaves remaining on the trees
spun to the ground, whipped by a fierce late-autumn wind. Tattered pieces of paper—announcements of wedding banns and sales,
new laws and births—fluttered from the nail-pocked wall beside the meetinghouse door. The latest announcement, of Mama’s death,
was ruffled from melting frost, but not torn, not yet. My father’s handwriting was still distinct and dark as ever, the iron
gall ink unfaded.

My father led us to the door. Behind him went my aunt, who carried two foot warmers, the coals inside glowing meekly through
the holes punched into the hardwood. Goody Penney stood just outside, holding baby Faith wrapped tightly in blankets and clasped
close to her chest. When my father greeted her, she held the baby out to him, saying something I could not hear. He shook
his head and backed away, and so she held the babe to my aunt instead.

Susannah put the foot warmers on the ground and reached for the child. “Ah, how precious she is,” she murmured. She cuddled
Faith so closely I could not see the baby’s face, nothing but the peek of a little gray wool-clad foot. Susannah looked up
at Goody Penney, and her face was alight again, as if some sun somewhere resided inside of her, but I knew it now for what
it was. I watched her carefully and bitterly. “How does she do, Hannah? Is she a good child?”