Seven

I kind of broke my promise to Abigail the moment I got back to my dorm room. “Kind of,” because I didn’t promise I wouldn’t look at any plays about the Salem witch trials. I promised not to read historical accounts or Web sites.

I couldn’t go back to my empty room—Clarissa would be working or studying somewhere else—with The Crucible sitting on my bookshelf and not look at it.

I had no trouble rationalizing it. I’d already read the play, and it wasn’t a historical account. It was based on fact, but that was all.

I’d brought quite a few books with me to Santa Barbara my freshman year. Far more than I needed, more than the average dorm room could hold. Half of the boxes of books I brought went back with my parents that same night. As my father replaced the extra books in his company car, he reminded me that if I had gotten the condo like he suggested, I could’ve brought as many books as I wanted.

He hadn’t thought much of my idea to live in a dorm. Not enough security (he still worries I will be abducted and held for ransom), too much partying (even though I am not much of a party girl and he knows it), and not enough attention paid to studies. He had yet to meet Clarissa, the woman who could do it all—stay safe, work, party, and study, all at the same time.

I’m sure he also felt that if I had at my disposal the means to live on my own, in the manner to which I am accustomed, why settle for anything less?

Historically, Duroughs don’t settle.

Clarissa was gone, and the room was quiet except for heavy bass booming from a stereo next door. I was caught up with assignments for my classes the next day, so I made a cup of green tea and eased The Crucible out from its thin space on my bookshelf.

I opened it and fanned through the pages, noting my high school scribbling from my junior English class. I’d highlighted snatches of dialogue, penciled in a few insights from my seventeen-year-old mind, and drawn little daisies in the margins.

The moment I held the pages still and my eyes swept the script, the details of the story came back to me. The names, the places, the remembered fear that someone can say something untrue about you and as long as there is someone else to believe it, you are whatever they say you are.

The remembered names filled my head: John Proctor. Betty Parris. Abigail Williams. Martha Corey. Tituba. Rebecca Nurse.

And I was suddenly aware that these people weren’t merely characters in a play. They had been real. Arthur Miller had fiddled with the details—like creating an affair between John Proctor the accused and Abigail Williams the afflicted, which would have been unlikely, as the real Abigail Williams was only eleven years old—but the people had actually existed. Mercy probably had known them all by name.

And they knew her.

Inside the book, just before the first scene, I found a folded piece of paper. Study notes from my American lit teacher. I read them and remembered.

In 1692, several young girls in Salem, Massachusetts, began having hallucinations and seizures. Unable to account for their afflictions, and believing as most Puritans did that anything unexplainable and terrible was of the devil, the local physician declared that they were bewitched. Fear quickly took hold, and the girls were pressed to name their tormentors. They began to name names, perhaps arbitrarily and perhaps at the coaching of their parents. First to be accused were those considered socially deviant, but soon anyone who challenged the girls or the ruling authorities, or who defended the accused, became accused themselves. Seemingly devout people were suddenly charged with witchcraft, and as panic spread throughout the colony, others began to claim they were also bewitched. Old grievances were aired, grudges were unearthed, and ordinary people were charged, arrested, and many convicted based on little more than the claims of young girls writhing on courtroom floors. In all, more than one hundred forty people were accused of witchcraft, though not all were imprisoned or tried. Nineteen people were hanged in Salem alone.

Your first discussion question is due Friday. Be prepared to discuss one of the following:

My cell phone trilled, and I jumped in my chair as if Abigail had walked in the room and found me cheating. I grabbed my phone and saw the word Dad on the screen. I knew why he’d called before he even asked.

“Hi, Dad.”

“Lauren. So. How goes the job?”

Dad’s not much for small talk. Big talk gets more done.

“Um. I like it. It’s really interesting.” Interesting probably wasn’t the most accurate word, but it fell off my lips first.

“Tell me.”

Those are Dads favorite two words as a parent. Maybe they’re his favorite two words as a CEO too. They sound like an invitation to be heard, and they are. But they are also the means to enlighten. Dad has a fondness for information. He wants to know all that can be known. “Tell me” is the same as saying, “Increase my knowledge,” which is the same as “Empower me.” Dad has always understood that knowledge is power.

“Well,” I began, “the diary is in really good shape. Abigail has a special box she keeps it in that has an airlock. I wear gloves when I handle it. Some of the pages are missing or torn, and sometimes the writing is hard to decipher. And of course, the language is a bit of a challenge. Abigail wants the transcription to be easy to read, so I’m rearranging some of the sentences and replacing the ‘thees’ and ‘thous’ with ‘yous’ and ‘yours.’”

Dad was quiet for a moment. Processing.

“Why does this Abigail want to change the language? It seems to me a transcription should be an exact representation of the original.”

“Well, she’d like it to be readable for today.”

“Readable for who?”

My eyes widened as I held the phone to my ear. I hadn’t a clue who’d be reading it when I was done. Abigail had said nothing about what she planned to do with the transcription. She’d only said she didn’t want Mercy to be forgotten.

“Readable for who, Lauren?”

“Um, well, anyone, I guess.”

“But who’s going to read it?”

Dad was not being belligerent or excessively nosey or even accusatory. He was gathering information. Increasing his understanding.

I quickly decided it didn’t matter to me what Abigail planned to do. I was hired simply to transcribe.

So instead of saying, “I don’t know,” I said, “Well, it makes no difference to me.”

Even though, right then, I knew it did.

“She must have a plan of some sort,” Dad said. “I mean, by the time you’re finished with this project, she’ll have spent several hundred dollars. And for what? If she’s planning on publishing, you should get it in writing that you’re the coeditor. Editor, actually. You might want to ask what her plans are.”

“I don’t think she has any plans.”

“It’s not too late to tell her you want credit on the byline.”

“Well, it’s really Mercy’s story, not mine.”

“Is it worth publishing?” Dad the entrepreneur, always thinking big.

“Possibly. Probably. Mercy was hanged as a witch in Salem. But she was innocent, like most of the people executed for witchcraft back then were.”

“Hanged? As a witch?” He sounded appalled.

“She was innocent, Dad. That’s the point. She was innocent.”

“Not very pleasant subject matter.”

“No. Not pleasant. But historical. It really happened.”

“Kind of a sad way to spend your afternoons.” He said this in a fatherly way. I don’t know how else to describe it.

“Sometimes history is sad.”

“Hmm.”

We were silent for a moment.

“Do you know much about the Salem witch trials, Dad?”

“No more than the average person, I guess.”

“A bunch of teenage girls started acting strange and accusing people of bewitching them. And everyone believed them even though there was no proof. How does a person convince people to believe things they can’t prove?”

My father was quick to answer. “That’s easy. People always believe what they want to believe. Hitler didn’t force anybody to jump on his bandwagon. All those men who jumped on it used their own legs to do it.”

“But how did he convince them to jump?”

“How does anybody convince anybody else of anything? You catch them at a weak moment, when they’re feeling alone or afraid, and you offer them the security of solidarity. Advertising execs use this tactic all the time: Buy this and be like everyone else. Don’t buy it and be the loser no one respects.”

“So I guess the key is to never let yourself feel alone or afraid.”

“No,” he responded. “The key is to never let someone else tell you what to think.”