A Frayed Lie

Some say it was the fungus ergot, found in rye and cereals that led to the girls’ symptoms of delusions, convulsions and vomiting. Others blame the simmering tension amidst neighbors: the after affects of war, mixed with a paranoid fear of outsiders, a fear of the devil, a fear of everything in their tiny cold New England colony.

The fog rolls in and settles itself between the pages of the puritans’ bibles, circles around the small minded memories of a small pox epidemic that took many. The few that it didn’t were left completely on edge, unhinged, afraid.

In the distance of the imperceptibly rotting wheat fields that barely belong to these land thieves and enslavers, many hanging ropes impatiently sway, waiting. Haunting chords, tight to the gallows by way of a fraying if not already frayed knot.These drooping loops hold the moon as rehearsal for the real thing

Speaking of rehearsal, the hands of Betty Page are quivering in this high school’s production. Either she is so in character or has has completely forgotten to set a prop. Abigail, played by a senior, is decidedly confident and extremely off-book. She says her line:

“Tell them you were dancing. You were just dancing.

All it was was dancing.”

As a line it is a good one. But a lie. A legend, a ghost story, a myth- conjured by Arthur Miller, like many men trapped under the spell of his own misogyny and cursed within the context of his own generations’ hunt.

No matter. The teen girls and me know what is true. Dancing is never just dancing. The witches knew this too.