Hester(50)

She nods to the chicken coops, the yard, and the small buildings. I notice a patch of marigolds coming into bud.

“The town folks didn’t like us being here instead of over on Rice and Pond or up on Roast Beef Hill with the other Black folk. But Ma knew chickens and said this was the right place, and Mr. Higgins didn’t care what the others thought.”

The children come running from the coop but stop when they see me. I raise a hand in greeting and wonder again what secrets Mercy and Zeke are keeping and what Edward thinks is happening here.

“What do you want, anyway?” Mercy demands.

I remember the beeswax that’s softened in my hand. “I brought this for you.”

“Why?”

“I’m going to use it for the ointment when I harvest the pennyroyal. I want you to try it.”

She rolls it in her palm the same way I’ve been rolling the scrimshaw buttons, holds it to her nose, and nods her approval.

“Also, I brought back your glove form, but I still need my own.”

She tells me to wait and returns with a new glove form that smells of the green forest and the branches that were cut to make it.

“Zeke’s gone to see his wife in Lynn,” she says. “Made this for you before he left.”

I try to return her form but Mercy won’t take it.

“Use both, your work will go faster and you can pay my cousin for what he made.” She names a price and I tell her I’ll be right back with the coins. When I return, Mercy is sitting with Ivy between her knees, rubbing the beeswax along the edge of the little girl’s forehead. Ivy’s eyes are closed, dreamlike, and Mercy is humming a low tune. When I put the coins into her palm, she doesn’t miss a stroke.



* * *



ON SUNDAY I take my regular seat in the last row at the East Meeting House beside a family of farmers who are dusted yellow from the fields. The wife is a small, fidgety woman who plumps her skirts when she sits. Some ladies might scorn the family with their smell of fields and manure, but I’m comfortable beside the sons. Their cheeks are covered with yellow fuzz, their wrists are red, and they follow along in the hymnal closer than any grown man.

I bow my head when it’s time, sit and rise with the others, but I don’t hear anything. I see the Easty family fill two long rows and remember their ancestress was hanged. I watch Captain and Mrs. Silas from the back and wonder if anything is written in the Salem history book about their slave ships.

Nat spoke of Susannah Martin who left seven children when she was hanged, and Martha and Giles Corey whose own nephews made the accusations and then took their uncle’s property when they were carted away to jail. And this is what I think of now—not God or the minister or the sermon or even the colors and my needle, but the accused and the accusers living side by side after the witch trials were over. Of John Hathorne refusing to admit he’d been wrong, even after the accusers begged forgiveness for bringing false witness against their neighbors. Of little Dorcas, the red-haired girl in Nat’s story—maybe she was hanged and even the record keepers were too horrified to put it in writing. If I have learned anything these months in Salem it’s that history isn’t what’s written or told. History is hidden away in dark corners and shadows, just as Nat says.

And yet there is the lovely Easty daughter holding a babe of her own in church this morning. And there is Nat’s uncle Robert Manning, who grows fruit trees in his famous orchard, praying with his eyes closed and his voice raised to God. All of us standing, sitting, praying, and living with the weight of all that came before. All of us holding secret longings and desires.



* * *



I DON’T WALK through town after church but take the path that runs along the sea. Gulls are overhead, the smell of roasting nuts and coffee beans and the flecks of yellow hay pepper the air. My heart pounds as I round the bend and see the rock where Nat and I sat last week. I know it’s foolish to hope he’s there now, but still I’m disappointed when the boulder is empty and there’s no sign of the hour we spent here, no body or spirit waiting for me as if the days never passed.

I lean against the boulder and spy a scrap of pink and red tucked into a crook between two smaller rocks. It’s not fabric, I discover, but a thorny branch of pink hawthorn flowers twined together with a single rose.

I look high and low, toward the sea and away. Starlings, crows, and sparrows sit in the hemlocks that circle the rocky outcrop. There’s no May tree, no rosebush. The flowers can’t have found their way here by anything but a human hand. His hand.

My body fills with great, buoyant joy. I find a scrap of cloth in my pocket and quickly stitch a simple letter A with red thread. The cloth fits in the palm of my hand. I roll it like a tallow candle and slide it into the shallow where I found the flowers. He said if I want love then I must stitch love. I trace my own fingers across my palm just as Nat did, and remember the feel of his touch.



* * *



THE FLOWERS WATCH me, and I watch the flowers. For three days and nights I labor over Felicity’s gloves. The rose and hawthorn blossoms stand in a cup of water on my table, their vibrant colors and fragrance leading me into an enchantment I cannot resist. Embroidery may be women’s work, but as the hours pass in a dazzle of color and cloth I imagine a shop of my own and a business far away from Felicity and Edward. Petals, stems, leaves, and fruits pour out in designs I have only imagined in my mind’s eye, and when I finish a long stem of roses it is as if they are arms reaching for an embrace.