1692

4th Day

This matter that John Peele rais’d of Father’s having a secret place worked in me so that I spent the entirety of this morning looking through the house that I might discover a hiding place. I found none such but the most queer thing. In a space where a Purlin had pull’d away from a Rafter in the Attic I found hidden some shells and some other much broken worthless things, and also something like a Doll, though none such as I have seen here in Newport. I set these things before me, in my room, and ponder’d upon them. I could not think that either Father or Mother had hidden these things, and I knew I had not, and surely not Dorcas, so there could be none other than Ashes. I wonder’d at them, and then in the next instant felt it as a Stake driven through me.

Of the many things we have heard tided of the late troubles in Salem Village was there talk of a Servant woman of the Islands who had been found to have little Dolls made up in the guise of Townspeople that she might conjure a Mischief to them. Had I most horribly discover’d another such Evidence? And Mother so lately ill! And Father lost!

I went about the rest of the day in a Daze. I could fancy Ashes in a pique, angry with us, spiteful, but I could not fancy her to be in league with the Devil against us. Had she not laugh’d with us, had she not presents from us, had Mother not treated her kindly, work’d alongside her whatever the Chore? Had we not play’d hull-gull how-many when we were younger? Yet here were these queer shells and this terrible Doll. There is now much talk of the townspeople of Salem having seen Evil where there was none, and that by seeing that which was not they had done their own Evil. I would have no such fabricating Blindnesse about me. But is there not as well a Blindnesse in not seeing Evil when it lives with one, yea, even in one’s own Breast?

After supper while Ashes clean’d up I quietly laid the Items on the Kitchen table that she might turn around and see them and I might register her Feeling at their sight. She did so and it was as I dreaded. For she did verily start, looking from the things to me with a most awful shock. Her look was as a Confession to me, and I felt stir in me the most awful Rage that she had kill’d Mother, driven Father’s ship upon the Shoals.

But yet I controll’d myself, demanded of her what these things were, would she explain herself. She did answer then, and neither in our language nor the language of the Islands, but the language of Africa which we had but rarely heard her speak. It came out of her as in a Downpour, having no sense to my ears, yet with such a great Feeling behind it! In time she made me to understand that these things she had with her from her home, that she had had them with her when she was taken, and that she had carried them with her across the Ocean to the Islands and from Barbados to Newport with Father these eleven years ago. That the shells were accounted good omens in Africa, that there was a feather of a bird we have not here, and other things now unrecognizable, and that the Doll was her Doll that her Mother had made for her. She said these things in a state of such Emotion, in a Passion of, oh, I know not how to say it! of Despair and Torment and Anger and a Fear that they might be taken from her. Yet I could not at first credit her, and press’d her upon the matter of Witchcraft, for my mind was still taken by that Notion. She seem’d not to understand me, and her face grew yet more Miserable, and yet defiant of me, at which I felt my Suspicions leak out of me as from a wallow’d bung, and I relented. And in truth the Doll look’d nothing like Mother or Father. Indeed it look’d rather like a draggled Ashes.

I did try then to mend things by saying might we not give the Doll to Dorcas that it might prove again a pleasure to a Child. But at that she snatch’d the things up from where they lay on the table and held them to her. Her face did work again with a most Mysterious emotion. And then with a Wail I have never heard come from a Human throat, she pitch’d the things into the fireplace! I was, I may say, now in a shock myself. Yet I cross’d to the fireplace and pick’d up the Doll which had landed in the ash, and brushing the hot stuff off, gave it her. She ripp’d it from me, and then ran out of the room, upstairs, and I have not seen her since.

I am writing this in the dark. I have set my little table over against the small window of my room, where the Moonlight shines in, and the light from off the Snow. For I am fill’d with something I wish to explain, yet feel I cannot.

Who was it who brought Ashes to New England? Who was it who took her and her Father and carried them away across the ocean? I used to think, when I was little, when I first came to understand that Ashes was not of us, that she came from so very far away, I used to lie in bed and imagine being so stolen. I would imagine someone coming into my room at night and carrying me off to Africa and how horrible that would be. It seem’d surely more horrible than it was for Ashes, for in my childish mind Africa was a place of Darknesse and Evil, and Newport was a place of Goodness and Light. I say in my childish mind, but do I not still think so? For Ashes was taken from a Heathen country and brought to a Christian. And tho’ I understand she must miss her Mother and her Sister, and wonder where her Father is, yet she is brought into the Light and may gain her Salvation and is that not worth a great deal?

But O! if I could have Mother and Father restor’d to me would I not give up my Salvation? How wrong a thing to say! And yet it is true, so weak and feeling a girl am I! To have Mother back from out of the cold ground, and Father about the house, and Dorcas untroubl’d. Tho’ Ashes speaks of Christ and of the Light and comes with us to Meeting, I think I know that inside her it is the same. She would pitch us all as into the fire if she could return home, dark tho’ her home may be. How that strikes me in the Heart! For it is not God or Nature who has robb’d Ashes of her family, but us, we the people of Newport and our like. Is there not a sin in that?