Salem Witches & Other Things That Burn

By Emily Tyler

Featured art: Frieze by W. Campbell & Co.

When they took Papa away, Mother didn’t cry. When the two men, bigger and stronger than any man I had ever seen, slammed the door after dragging Papa out, she sighed as if she had been holding her breath for a week. Then she went into the kitchen and did the washing up from dinner. She was humming; she hummed when I couldn’t make a sound because there was so much tightness in my throat.

I tore into the kitchen and picked up one of the drying plates, and I threw it on the floor. The fragmentation said everything I needed to. I stared at Mother so hard that I hoped she might shatter just like the plate. The humming stopped. She looked at the shards on the floor for a moment, and then back at the serving bowl she was scrubbing.

“You know where the broom is, Adeline.” She said this in the same exact way she had asked me to pick up my shoes that morning, like it was just a dropped plate, like her world was completely unchanged.

I did know where the broom was. I took it from the closet, and I jammed it in the corner of the fireplace in Papa’s study, where she would never think to look for it.

The next morning, Mother put a bowl of oatmeal in front of me. I watched the curlicues of steam rise off the top and then studied the patterns in the cinnamon. I squinted at a shape that could have been a pair of glasses, which made me think of Papa, which made me remember that Papa hadn’t been wearing his glasses when the men took him away, and now he wouldn’t have them. How would he be able to read?

Mother had finished her oatmeal and coffee, and I had not even touched my spoon. She cleared her throat.

“Do you know what happened to the broom?” She asked. Not accusatory, just breakfast talk. “I looked for it last night, but it wasn’t in the closet.” I didn’t respond. She must have known that I took it, but she didn’t just say so, which made me even more angry. She sighed.

“Maybe you and William could go to the park today. It looks nice outside.” I finally snapped my eyes up to hers. I had a million mean words I wanted to spit out at her until I saw the heaviness in her shoulders and the purple lines swooping under her eyes.

“What’s going to happen to Papa?” It came out in a whisper. Mother’s lips pressed into a hard line.

“He was dangerous to have here. His papers, the books he read–”

“What’s going to happen to Papa?” I said louder. I couldn’t look at her anymore.

“I think,” she said slowly, quietly, “he might go to prison.”

I jumped up from the table and ran out of the kitchen. I wanted Papa; I wanted to hear his voice imitating the opera singers on the radio to make me laugh; I wanted to feel the joy of hearing him come home from the university. But Papa was gone, so I ran to the place that was closest to him: his study.

I checked on the fireplace to make sure the broom was still there. It was. The fireplace reminded me of the most important thing Papa taught me.

It was a Wednesday night two years ago, and Papa was smoking a cigar on the porch. Mother didn’t like that he smoked cigars, so he had only one every week, on Wednesday, because it was the most far away from Sunday. She always coughed loudly when he came inside from his weekly indulgence, but I think she was faking because the smell didn’t make me cough. I didn’t really like it, but it also made me feel calm because it was Papa’s smell. I was reading Alice in Wonderland again, tracing my fingers over the letters on the inside page, where Papa had written with his loopy scribble, “For Adeline, on her ninth birthday, 1945.” I had been wanting to ask him a question, but I was scared he would think I was childish.

“Papa,” I finally asked, “Do I cry too much?” The smoke that started to leave his mouth spilled out in a graceless puff. Whenever he laughed, the bridge of his nose crinkled and reminded me of William and other boys my age.

“I don’t think you can cry too much. If anything, people don’t cry enough,” he said. I almost dropped my book. This seemed like a strange thing for a grown-up to say, especially a father because men don’t cry. But sometimes people said Papa had too many radical ideas.

“Why are you asking?” He asked. The wood of the porch creaked and shifted as Papa sat down next to me.

“Johnny at school said I cry too much. I just get scared sometimes, and I just…cry.” I dug a hole in the ground with the tip of my shoe. I was too scared to look at Papa because I’ve never seen him cry, so what would he think of me? A warmth in my cheeks scalded me like when Johnny pointed at me and laughed in the schoolyard that day.

Papa gently nudged my foot with his. I smiled a little.

“I get scared sometimes, too.” He whispered it like it was a big secret and we were in cahoots. “My heart goes really fast, and I feel like I’m going to choke,” he said. I turned to him with eyes wide. He knew the exact feeling!

“You know what helps me?” I shook my head and leaned in closer. “I like to imagine a special room. It’s my own room, where I’m completely safe and calm. It’s in a cabin, and there’s a big fireplace, and a radio, and all my favorite records and books. There’s a picture of you, and there’s a picture of your mother. And there’s a big, soft chair that’s comfortable enough to sleep in. I imagine myself being there, and all the sounds and smells of the fire and how it feels when I put my hands near it and how soft the chair feels. And I feel less scared.” I could picture the room too. I imagined the best chair from Grammy and Grandpa’s house, where he grew up, and a Harry James record would be playing. Maybe he’d be smoking a cigar, too. I leaned my head against Papa’s shoulder and breathed in the smell of his coarse jacket. This is what my room would smell like.

While he was working in the evening, I would sometimes peek into Papa’s study, and he never told me to leave, but I knew he went in there to work by himself. I liked to sit right outside the door, though, and listen to the sound of the typewriter keys and the quiet radio because he played music that Mother didn’t allow. I liked lady singers who Mother said were scandalous, especially Ella Fitzgerald. Whenever Lady Ella came on the radio in the sitting room, Mother would jump out of her chair like it had caught fire and wrench the knob; anything she landed on would be more acceptable. But in his office, I could hear Papa whistling along.

He eventually said I could come in and sit in his office if I promised to be very quiet. I brought books and arithmetic homework and leaned over his desk with a pencil between my teeth, just like him.

The fireplace in Papa’s study was the only one in the house anyone used. I could almost imagine the warmth drafting from it and see flecks of red and orange embers in the cold ashes, even though there had been no reason to light a fire in months. I closed my eyes and imagined myself in Grammy’s chair. The flowers on the cushion were blurred on the seat because it was so old. Grammy held me in this chair when I was a baby, and she said I tried to pick the chrysanthemums right off the wings that had reminded me of the blinders on a racehorse. Maybe this is the same chair Papa imagined. I conjured the popping of dry branches; I smelled the bittersweetness of the smoke. I felt myself sinking into the chair, and I imagined he was squished right next to me.

“I miss you, Papa,” I whispered. I could almost feel his hand patting my head affectionately. Everything will be okay, he’d say. If I told myself enough times, maybe I would believe it.

I felt calmer than I had all night, when I tossed and turned and feared that the big men were hurting Papa. There was no need for vigilance and false bravery in Papa’s study. I fell asleep, praying that Papa felt calm too.

I crouched on the edge porch with William a couple days later. It was the fourth day of summer, but he hadn’t come over yet, and that’s how I knew he had heard. We sat in a taffy-stretched silence.

“I heard your Papa got arrested,” he finally said. “Momma told me. I’m really sorry.” He lifted his hand, and it hovered above my knee for a moment before he pulled it away and patted his own instead.

“It’s Mother’s fault,” I said in a gravelly voice. Since the oatmeal breakfast, I hadn’t said a word to mother. I had barely spoken aloud. William’s brows furrowed; the sound of my voice surprised him too.

“Oh. How do you know?” He asked. I didn’t have time for my best friend to distrust me, though. I’d always been loyal to him.

“She’s not even sad. She’s happy that he’s gone, and she said he was dangerous,” I snapped. “But Papa’s the best man in the world. He wouldn’t hurt anyone or do anything bad.” William took off his hat and started turning it around in his hands for something to do. He did this when he felt uncomfortable.

“But,” he started. I knew I would not care for what he said next. “Your mom is also really nice. Remember when she made us honey cookies almost every day last summer? And she loves your papa, right?” I ground my teeth together. I knew it wasn’t fair to yell at William because he didn’t do anything wrong.

“Would you put someone you love in prison?” I asked. William started pacing the length of the porch. This conversation was not becoming any easier for him.

“Well, no, but…maybe your mom’s trying to protect you.” He watched the ground intently, taking care to tread in the same footprints in the dust. I wanted to grab his arm as he passed me to make him look at me or maybe shake him by the shoulders. Why wasn’t he agreeing with me?

“You think Papa’s dangerous?” I dared him to respond. My shoulders inched up close to my ears, like I was ready to pounce on a wrong answer.

“No,” he said. My shoulders relaxed. “But his work might be.”

I pushed myself off the porch and took care to run my shoulder into William’s as I stomped inside. I didn’t bother to shut the door nicely. I ran into Papa’s study.

I had gone in there every day to breathe in the smell of chamomile and paper. Papa and I went on lots of walks in the South Salem Hills or just around the neighborhood, and we collected fallen ferns and flower buds. He liked to squish them between the pages of his big books, and they came out more vibrant and immortal. I liked the chamomile flowers best because they smelled good, and Papa liked ferns and wooly sunflowers. He said they looked nice with the chamomile on a canvas, and he liked to make art out of the flowers for our house.

Sometimes while I was in Papa’s study, I whispered into the fireplace because maybe Papa would be thinking about his special room, and maybe he’d hear me. He might have needed to know I still loved him.

“I don’t care what anyone else thinks. I know you’re a great Papa. I don’t think anything you do is bad,” I whispered. “You’ll get to come home soon,” I promised.

I turned on the radio. “Peg o’ My Heart” was playing, the brand-new recording by Three Suns. It didn’t have any words, but Papa always hummed along, so I did too. I imagined that I was a beautiful lady in a movie as I swayed to the accordion’s pulls.

The next song faded it, and I knew the violins immediately­–it was an Ella song.

“Somewhere, there’s music, how faint the tune,” I sang. It was a song that Papa and I loved, and I sang loud like he could hear me. “Somewhere, there’s heaven, how high the moon!”

I didn’t hear Mother open the door.

The music stopped. I spun around to face the radio, and Mother was standing there, her finger still pressing the off switch so hard that it almost looked white. I didn’t say a word. Neither did she. Her chest was rising and falling with shallow breathing, and the frizziness of her hair, backlit by the sun behind her, made her look like an angry lion. She snatched up the radio, and her fingernails made dents in the varnished wood before she stormed out of the room with the radio. I think that was the first time she was ever in the study. Tears burned my eyes and made the office go blurry. I crouched to the floor in front of the fireplace and crawled inside. This is the closest I could get to Papa.

The stone was freezing underneath my cheek, and it cooled the anger blazing in my face. Tears fell sideways into the soot, and I saw them mix with the light dusting of ash in the very corner of my vision. I pressed the heels of my hands to my face so I wouldn’t cry anymore.

“I hate her so much. I need you here, Papa. Please, come home.”

One week after they took Papa away, I still had not spoken to Mother since she told me what she did to him. Since the radio incident, she had tried to talk to me on occasion, usually inoffensive statements about the weather or the perfect ripeness of the blueberries she brought home. I did all my chores right after I woke up so she would have no reason to speak to me, and then I spent the day either in Papa’s study or collecting fronds and flora.

All the time, I was thinking about Papa and the things I would say to him if he were here. I wanted to tell him that the lovegrass and hollyhock we pressed in the dictionary three weeks ago looked nice. I really wanted to tell him that I tried reading one of the books on his shelf, Animal Farm, and I thought the talking animals were funny, but I didn’t really understand what they were saying. He must have liked it though, because he had a lot of things underlined. But more than anything, I wanted to hear him laughing at a joke on the radio or at frogs chasing each other in the pond.

At dinner that night, after Mother told me to stop stabbing a potato with my fork, I noticed that her left hand was bare. I made a point of not looking at her when I could help it, so I wondered how long her wedding band had been gone. Did that mean she wasn’t married to Papa anymore? Did she just give up on him? Could she do that, if he didn’t do anything bad? I impaled the potato one last time and left the table. I think Mother sighed, and maybe it sounded sad, but I didn’t look back.

I came up with a plan. The next morning, I marched to William’s house. I hadn’t seen him since our fight, and even though I missed Papa the most, I found myself wishing I were walking around the pond or reading with William instead of by myself.

“Adeline!” He was surprised when he opened the door, but he also smiled.

“Momma! I’m going to play with Adeline!” He called over his shoulder before he swung the door shut.

We started walking back to my house. It felt strange, at first, to be with another person.

“I need your help,” I told him when we stopped by the pond to skip a few rocks. He agreed.

“You have to pinky promise,” I said. We linked our fingers, and I was relieved he didn’t ask what he was going to help me with first. He wasn’t going to like it.

When we got back to my house, he followed me upstairs and down the hall to Mother and Papa’s room.

“What are we doing in here?” William had never had a reason to come in here, and there was something that felt intrusive about going into the bedroom of a friend’s parents.

“I need you to be my lookout. Mother went to the Safeway, but I don’t know when she’ll be back,” I said. William shifted on his feet and looked over his shoulder, at the carpet, anywhere but at me.

“What are you going to do?” He asked. I started rifling around in the jewelry box on Mother’s dresser.

“Mother took off her wedding band. I’m going to find it. I don’t want her to sell it or anything,” I said. I stopped digging around in the costume jewelry to look at him.

“You pinky-promised,” I reminded him. He was still looking at the carpet and tracing the swirls in it with his foot. He sighed and took a couple steps into the hallway, but not really enough to give me enough warning if Mother came home. I knew he hated that I was using him, but it was less about having a lookout and more about having someone to talk to who could talk back. The house felt too big when I was alone.

The ring was not in the jewelry box, so I moved to the top drawer of her dresser, where she kept the fancy jewelry that Papa gave her every year. I sifted through the broaches and pendants, the things that were too big to be the ring. I lifted the tray out of the drawer, and in the corner of the dresser, there was a ring, but it wasn’t the wedding band. It was a gold band with a raised square in the middle, and a tiny diamond in the center. Mother had shown this to me a few years ago when she told me the story of how Papa asked her to marry him. She said he presented it to her on a bed of pressed of violets because her favorite flower, and those flowers were still in a frame on top of the dresser.

I put the ring in the pocket of my dress. Mother wouldn’t miss it.

Before I put the tray back in, I saw a folded sheet of paper. This drawer was full of things from Papa, so maybe this was a letter from him! I unfolded it carefully and read it. I knew right away that it wasn’t from Papa from the handwriting.

“I know about your husband,” it read in all capital letters.

“I know about his commie friends. I saw him at labor union rally. Report his activities to Portland bureau office by Jun 30, or I will. I will not leave you and your daughter out of my report.”

There was no signature, but there was a picture. Papa, one arm around another man and the other high in the air. His suit jacket and vest he wore to teach classes was on the ground behind him, and his sleeves were pushed up. The man he was next to held up a sign that said, “This way to progress!” Across the street from them, another sign said, “Higher Wages, Shorter Hours!” The shade of the sign shadowed the man’s face, but Papa’s shone in the sunlight, or maybe from the brilliance of his smile. My heart beat faster. This was a dangerous picture, I realized. Even if Papa was a good man.

“William!” I shouted. He bounded into the room.

“What’s wrong? Did you find the ring?” He asked. I shook my head and shoved the note at him. I didn’t let him see the picture. I tucked that into my pocket, too.

William scanned the note and passed it back to me, and he didn’t say he told me so. He didn’t say Mother was right or that Papa was wrong. He just held out his arms and gave me a hug. I hadn’t hugged very many people. Even Papa didn’t give a lot of hugs, but William’s family did. I suddenly understood why; this is what being in front of the fire in Papa’s room would feel like.

“Will you help me get rid of this?” I whispered, pointing at the note. William nodded.

I went to Papa’s study, and William brought some firewood from outside.

“What’s this?” He asked, awkwardly pulling something out of the fireplace. I had completely forgotten about the broom.

“It’s a broom,” I said. Explaining that I hid it from Mother seemed embarrassing now.

William built a fire like he learned in scouts, and soon, the room was stuffy with heat.

I threw the note from the stranger into the fire. I pulled the picture out of my pocket and ripped it down the middle. I threw the half with the man holding the sign into the fire, but I put the half with Papa’s triumphant and smiling face back into my pocket. We watched the fire consume the evidence until the fire snuffed itself out.

After William left, I put the broom in the kitchen, right in front of the sink, where Mother could find it.

---

Emily Tyler (she/her) is an Integrated Language Arts major from Cincinnati. She spends her free time reading and snuggling with her two cats.