Tituba of Salem Village

When Reverend Parris is in Boston, Mistress Sibley gathers four of the girls in the parsonage. She mixes rye meal with the girls’ urine into a batter and bakes the batter into a cake after first stopping up the chimney. As the cake bakes, the kitchen clouds with thick smoke. Mistress Sibley’s dog eats the cake, and Tituba, not buying into the witch cake idea, heads outside for air where she meets first Sarah Good, who comes by to say she is following Tituba’s prophecy and leaving Salem; then another neighbor, the ancient Mistress Osburne, arrives looking for some of Tituba’s herbs for medicinal tea. Tituba invites the two women to come into the house. She does not know that once the cake has been eaten, the first people who enter the room are said to be witches. Tituba enters, followed by Sarah Good and Mistress Osburne. Abigail identifies the three as the witches who have bewitched her.

The town whispers about Tituba—how the minister’s garden thrives when other gardens do not and how the minister’s farm animals are fat and healthy while others are starving. Tituba tells John, who worries the town is looking for witches to hang, “Hard work is what makes this place run smoother” (187). Nevertheless, that evening, Tituba pours water into a small bowl and sees a vision of her talking to the Reverend, who is seated at a table and writing furiously.

When Reverend John Hale arrives from Boston, John and Tituba realize the seriousness of the girls’ antics. At the meeting house, with the three women accused of witchcraft watching, Abigail runs about wildly, screaming about Satan. Tituba is asked to touch Abigail—the touch test would confirm Tituba is a witch if Abigail’s troubled spirit quiets upon her touch. That is exactly what happens: “I am doomed,” Tituba thinks (191).

When Tituba returns to the parsonage, an angry Parris confronts her. To have his slave accused of witchcraft might mean the termination of his appointment. He is determined to get a confession. He reviews the charges against her and tells her she needs to confess the following: When she spins flax, her fingers are so fast they must be bewitched; she talks to the farm animals; she has a familiar in the feral cat she adopted; she tells fortunes.

When the Reverend pushes her, Tituba admits she dreams of Barbados—Parris takes that as evidence that, like a witch, she can be two places at once. Frustrated by Tituba’s resistance to confessing, the Reverend Parris strikes her repeatedly “like a crazed man” until, reeling from the blows, Tituba says what Parris wants to hear: “I am a witch” (195). But she refuses to blame Abigail: “She may want more love and attention than we have given her” (199).

Later Tituba cautions her husband. The girls are claiming the Devil is a tall black man and, given that John is the only tall, black man in Salem, the town may come for him. Tituba tells him at the meeting house he must pretend to have a fit just like the girls. If he seems bewitched, the town will not accuse him of sorcery.

Two days later, Tituba, fearing her arrest, gets out the thunderstone from Barbados. The old native magician had told her that if she held the stone tightly and felt it move, she would avoid death. She tries it and feels the stone move. She is arrested just hours later. She is taken to the meeting house through a “howling mob” chanting, “Die, witch” (218). When she gets into the meeting house, fearing they will find the thunderstone and accuse her of magic, she tosses her precious stone into the fireplace.

She is alone with Reverend Parris. He shows her a document and tells her she must make an X at the bottom. It is her confession. She cannot read and has Parris read it to her. She refuses to sign a document that says she tried to hurt those girls. Tituba is then escorted to the big meeting room—on the way into the building, a great oak timber that had rested against the structure for years suddenly falls loudly to the ground. The strange occurrence gives Tituba pause: “How easy to believe that a god had spoken” (219).