Is it that I changed, or everything else did?
I am walking toward the village market like I did numerous times before. Around me is still the little Salem town I know. There are men, women and children wearing coarse linen dresses, strolling down the street. Stacks of wood lie lazily beside the street. Horses storm by at times.
But today, I feel like everyone, everything around me is casting glances at me, fearfully and suspiciously. My back prickles, as if it is being stabbed by a thousand needles. Only, what hurts me aren’t needles, but their looks.
Shame veils over my heart. I feel my cheeks burning up. I am now a witch’s daughter.

A puerile voice yells at my lowered head, “My friend Carrier! Such a shame that your mother is a witch. But anyway, it’s a good thing she is now caged inside heavy bars or else who knows how she would torture you? Poor Carrier. Lest you worry she laid curses upon your home, I shall inform you that my home welcomes you at any time.”
Although it is she, my mother, who brought me to endure this unbearable shame, she is still my mother. My mother.
My head rings with anger. All of a sudden, all the emotions I tried to bury since yesterday my mother’s witch trial crushes my limits to anger, chagrin, grievance, and loneliness. They burst out furiously with a deafening cry, “My mother is not a witch! My mother is not a witch! Why can’t you see? I hate you, I curse you all! Foolish men!”
I breathe furiously.
Heads turn toward me. But I see in their eyes only distrust, loathing and fear. And so, I run.

I wipe the tears away from my face with disgust. It is only now that I find I’ve never missed my mother so much. I desperately need someone to comfort me, to sooth me, to sweep away all the fury that is in my heart. Like how mother did for me before. But now she is gone, probably weeping behind the steel bars of Salem Town Prison.
Although the judges try their best to convince her to confess to her witchcraft, mother denied it with a clear conscience. But denial doesn’t mean anything does it? No one believes her. They think it is she who brought the pox and the drought into our town by witchcraft. But I know she didn’t. I’d rather believe that she didn’t.

While the night passes, I hug my blanket closely to my empty heart and quietly shed tears.
Interruption comes with the clicks of steel chains and men hollering. I run downstairs but see father with his hands tied behind his back and a look of despair on his face.
What? Why?
I am arrested for witchcraft because I said on the street that I will curse them all. “Curse” is a witch’s word.
Panic and fear writhe around in my head, I am unable to think, unable to see.

Judges bearing big wigs stand before me. But what catches my eyes is a gray, thin figure below the judges’ seats that now seems so fragile. Mother.
“Child,” The judge starts, “I understand that you are trying to defend your mother, but are you really willing to sacrifice yourself for her? A witch?”
“Why do you say so?”
“Witchcraft! You are accused of witchcraft and you must be hanged for it! All witches should be hanged for that matter! But, we do have some sympathy for young, ignorant children like you. Tell us who is the source of your witchery, so we can eradicate this evil force! And we might consider a probation for you if you can indeed help us destroy it.”
The word “hanged” strikes my heart with tremendous force, making it sink in right away.
Hanged, death.
How right, am I truly ready to willingly dedicate my young, vital life to defend my mother? To try and show the world that she is not a witch at all while the world chooses to neglect the truth? I am too young to die, even if it is for my mother!
I can sense my mother looking at me. But my shameful, ignoble thoughts drain my courage to return her gaze.
“Child, if it is your mother who forced you into this witchery then you should tell us. If it is indeed so then you are not the one to blame, you will not have to face an end to your vibrant life.”
How shall I choose? To make a useless struggle and tell the truth and be hanged together with mother? Or to “admit” that it is she who forces me into witchery, so I can live freely again?
My head aches. My heart aches like hell.
Sorry mother, but I think a mother should do whatever it takes to save her daughter. After all, it is her duty, isn’t it?
I try to keep my eyes away from her crouching figure.

“Yes. My mother is a witch. She forced me to sign the devil’s book…”

They lead me to the town prison after the trial. They say that they still need mother’s confession to support my innocence. And by then I realize what a foolish decision I made. I should never have confessed anything, like mother. But I said that mother is a witch. That certainly will break her heart. Albeit, in the end, it does nothing for we will still need mother’s confession.
Crucified Jesus, how angry will mother be when she hears what I said? Will she ever forgive me for my cowardice? For my betrayal? How will she react?
My mind repeats the same questions while I know the answer to them deep down in my heart. Mother will never ever forgive me.
With her heart broken and so disappointed in me, will she help me still? Or will she deny her guilt like she did yesterday, wait for the condemnation and be hanged with me, her faithless spineless daughter?
I think I will die.

To my surprise, that afternoon, mother confesses.
The judge tells me that she admitted that she practices witchcraft and that she forced me to practice dark magic too. So, I shall be released after mother is hanged.
I do not understand why mother is doing so. I betrayed her, I turned her down, I abandoned her. After all these horrible things I’ve done to her, she chose to forgive me and free me by sacrificing herself? Why?

Dawn quietly approaches.
Mother’s bare feet reach out for the steps of the stool where she will be hanged. She does not hesitate. She drags her bleeding feet over the wooden edges of the steps.
One, two, three, four. The top.
She turns toward the psyched crowd waiting for her, an evil being, to be hanged. My eyes meet hers almost instantly.
In her clear blue eyes, I see no anger, no disappointment, only warmth, tolerance and a richness of love.
Silently, she mouths the words “I, Love, You, Forever”, and places her neck on the coarse rope.
Beneath her kicking feet, the sun sets slowly and peacefully.
A last kick of her feet, a last struggle, comes to an end as her body slumps limply on the rope…
Tears stream down my face while perplexity hovers in my heart. Still, why?

That “why” remains unsolved until my own little infant is handed over to me. In that very instant, I understand that I would do anything, literally anything and everything, to protect him. I can do nothing else but to tolerate him and love him, because he is my child.