THE FIRST WITCH OF CAMBRIDGE #4
They say witches can’t cry, but they’re wrong, for we cried together on that day.
I went to the dock and crossed the river by ferry.
I wore a black cloak and carried my belongings in a leather satchel.
On the other side, I made my way along the marshes, passing Harvard College, riding through the Common where sheep were set loose to feed on the tall grass.
The world was dark, spinning in the sky.
I would think of all the women who had been hanged, and the ones who would now be set free.
Someday I would have a shoemaker make me a pair of red boots, and I would wear them every day to honor my mother and the women who were judged by men like my master’s son, men who saw evil where there was none, who took it upon themselves to translate the words of God into a language that suited them.
I chose a new name for myself: Rose for the blooms that turned from white to red in my hands, Bridewell so that I’d always remember the prison from which I’d escaped.
I taught myself to write so I could give evidence to those who followed me, and every word was meant for the women in my family.
You have found me after all this time for a reason.
If you don’t know your history, you have no way to change what your fate might be.
If you don’t know who you are you can never save yourself or those you love.
You can never walk through the darkness unafraid.
I bought acreage with my mistress’s silver.
I was forced to use another name when I did so.
I called myself Rob Bridewell, and I dressed like a man when I signed the papers, for women were not allowed to own property.
That was the reason I let other women settle here, no matter their financial situation.
We are the women descended not from Eve but from Lilith, Adam’s first wife, the woman Adam had cast into the wilderness because she would not do his bidding.
She was his equal, created from the same dust as he and not from his rib, and so she possessed a will of her own.
Lilith’s name means night bird, but the Puritans are convinced it refers to a night witch, the bat woman who is a dark-eyed thief that can enter their houses and enchant them.
The men who hunt us tell themselves they must. They say they do so because women are weak and must be herded like sheep.
They write the laws and enforce them no matter the cost, yet thoughts of us terrify them in the middle of the night, waking them from their trivial dreams, in which they are the heroes of their own small lives.
We are the life-givers and the death-givers, we raise children and create the world, yet they call us witches.
Even when the trials ended, the judges were replaced by gangs of men who vainly searched for us with ropes in their hands.
They say we need to be punished for hurricanes, famine, any sort of pox.
When they look at us, they don’t see their own failures as clearly.
They lose their land with bad investments, they shoot one another, they fail their own sons, they’re afraid to look in the mirror, and each and every time they blame us.
They prefer the girl who ate the apple, the one made from Adam’s own rib, who has been blamed for all of mankind’s evil.
Let them call us she-devils, let them say we steal children from their beds.
We know who we are. We are the women who nest in trees to gaze at stars, who can never drown.
We are one with the earth, we hear its heartbeat when we lie in the grass and close our eyes, magic is all around us, in the snow and the rain.
We are descended from a single word, wicken, which means to use magic.
That is what is inside of us. Not fear, but hyacinths and reeds, lakes and clouds, everything that we breathe in and all that we breathe out.
More and more women arrived from Boston and Salem to build their homes on my property.
They had been cast out of their houses due to the charms they kept by their bedsides, or their gardens filled with nettle and rue, or the children they decided to have when unwedded or not to have at all.
They have been accused of many wrongdoings: prophecy, divination, speaking with devils, speaking with angels, using herbs for their own purposes, helping other women who were in need.
The land I bought was land no one else wanted.
The other women helped me clear out branches and stumps and plant an orchard; in return they could stay as long as they liked.
On the night of the full moon, we danced the old dance with steps created at the beginning of time.
It joins us to the world around us as we attempt to repair what the first men who came to this country tried to destroy.
It took an entire day to walk the length of my property, and I didn’t use more than I needed.
Let there be foxes and turkeys, let there be a thousand blackbirds wheeling across the sky, let there be ripe apples in the fall, and dusty green tomatoes each summer.
Let there be blueberries all spring so that the bears could eat their fill, their mouths turning a vivid blue.
Women slept in fields, sometimes more than a dozen, dusted with pollen.
Some of my neighbors wept for the loss of families who no longer spoke to them, others cursed those who had abandoned them.
We were well aware that if we didn’t have each other, we would have no one at all.
We told the stories we’d been afraid to speak aloud.
We walked past the brambles, and each time we did, we held our hearts in our hands.