2.

Summer

In the first few weeks of summer, Catherine says to Sarah: “More ashes. Move your hand like this and scrub. You are too easy with it. Vinegar won’t hurt your soft hands. Scouring paper will do the trick before long, and you’ll be grateful since fire won’t bother you then. This is called rosemary, not Thee-of-Little-Hands. Rosemary is a girl’s name. You steep it here, in this. Months. Many months.”

Sarah’s knees burn from the work, heat bathing her hair in sweat. Drops scatter upon fresh-polished wood, mocking her progress. From the kitchen window she can see the garden and its milk-green light teasing her, asking her to step into the yard where, not many months ago, she had seen her father crane his neck to the band of stars, and say, “Shall we go, Ezekiel?” She lowers her eyes.

Since she began learning from her mother, her body aches every night, her back feels older than her age, knots crawl up her shoulders into her neck, so each night she must spend an hour digging at the hot cords. And each night, after she has tended to her neck, she prays a new prayer: Lord, help Mother to be strong, help Ezekiel to be strong, help Father to be strong . . . but when she reaches her own name, she cannot utter the words. She does not know how to be strong, not in this way, not after what she has seen. She cannot look at anyone the same way again. In the square when she greets Deborah Inverness or Goody Munn or any of the other women, she imagines them joining her father and brother and the Dark Man in the forest clearing at night, their faces altered by flame, by the surrender she had witnessed in her father’s face. Sin has always seemed distant, impossible, something only those outside of Cana could fall prey to. Now she knows this is a lie. Sin lives in her own home.

Her mother sits behind her on an old stool that wobbles each time she crosses her legs. Sarah cannot tolerate the sight of such childish disorder, as though her mother has suddenly forgotten herself. She tries to hide her irritation. Only recently she had wanted to learn everything from this woman, to take up her duties in this house as a grown woman would. Now she feels as though her mother has betrayed her, for she must have known something of the reverend’s secret life. Sarah has been played a trick on, coddled so she would never understand the truth of this world. A woman must hide all effort, but must she also hide all sin? Is this but another duty Sarah must lea