by Kelly Link
Sunset orange blazed on the side of the car. The woman still hung out of the doorway.
“Emma Gulch is her aunt! Lives east out in Zeandale!” she shouted. “Try to get word to her. God bless, child!” the woman waved with one hand and held on to her hat with the other. The air above the train shivered with heat. There was a wuffling sound of fire, and a clapping and clanking, and the brakeman did his dance. All of it moved like a show, farther down the track, fading like the light. The light was low and golden.
This was the time of the afternoon the little girl most hated. This was the time she felt most alone.
“What’s your name?” Johnson asked her.
“Dorothy,” said the little girl. She held up her white dress to make it sparkle.
“What’s that stuff on your dress?”
“It’s a theater dress,” said the little girl. Her eyes stared and her mouth was puffy. “The theater people in Kansas City give it to me.” She had stayed with them last night, and she liked them. “Are you going to stay with me?” she asked Johnson.
“For a little while, maybe.”
“I’m hungry,” she said.
“Well I ate up all my pie, or I surely would have let you have some.”
The place was silent. The station had a porch and a platform and a wooden waiting room. The tracks ran beside a river. Dorothy could see no town. She recognized nothing. She pushed the hair out of her eyes. Nothing was right.
“Where is everybody?” she asked. She was scared, as if there were ghosts in the low orange light.
“Oh, next train won’t be here till past six. Come on, I’ll show you where you can set.”
He walked on ahead of her. He didn’t hold her hand. Mama would have held her hand, or Papa. She followed him.
Her ticket was pinned to her dress, along with a set of instructions. “Will this ticket get me back to St. Lou?” she asked. If there was nobody coming to meet her?
“I don’t know,” said Johnson, and held open the door of the waiting room. It had bare floors of fine walnut, wainscoting, a stove, benches. There were golden squares of light on the floor.
“You must be tired. You just rest here a bit, and I’ll see if I can’t find somebody to go fetch your aunty.”
Don’t go! Dorothy thought. She was afraid and she couldn’t speak. Stay!
“You’ll be okay. We’ll get you sorted out.” He smiled and closed the door. Dorothy was alone.
This was the time when Mama would lay the table. Mama would sing to herself, lightly, quietly. Sometimes Dorothy would help her, putting out the knives and forks. Sometimes Dorothy would have a bath, with basins of warm water poured over both her and her little brother, Bobo. Papa would come home and shout, “How’re my little angels?” Dorothy would come running and giggling toward him. Don’t tickle me, she would demand, so he would. And they would all eat together, sunlight swirling in the dust as shadows lengthened.
No dinner now.
And later people would come around, and they’d all talk and sometimes ask Dorothy to stand up on a chair and sing. The chairs would scrape on the floor as they were pulled back in a hurry, for cards or a dance. Papa would play the fiddle. They would let Dorothy sit up and drink a little wine. People would hold Bobo up by his arms so that he could dance too, grinning.
So what happened to little girls with nobody to take care of them? How did they eat? Would it all be like that trip on the train? The train trip had seemed to go on forever, but this was even worse.
She was afraid now, deep down scared, and she knew she would stay horribly, crawlingly scared until dark, into the dark when it would get even worse, until she tossed and turned herself asleep.
Toto sighed and shivered, waiting out the terror with her.
The dust moved in the sunlight, and the sunlight moved across the wall, and no one came, and no one came. Time and loneliness and fear crept forward at the same slow pace.
Then the front door swung open with a sound of sleighbells on a leather strap, like Christmas. Dorothy looked up. A woman in black stood in the doorway, carrying a basket.
“Are you the little girl who’s waiting for her aunty?” the woman asked. Dorothy nodded. The woman smiled and came toward her. There was something terribly wrong.
The woman’s arms were too long. The bottom of her rib cage seemed to stick out in the wrong place, and she walked by throwing her hips from side to side and letting her tiny legs follow. As she moved, everything was wrenched and jolted. Dorothy backed away from her, along the bench.
“I brought some chicken with me,” said the woman, smiling, eyes bright. Her face was young and pretty. “My name’s Etta, what’s yours?” Toto sat up from the floor, ears forward, but he did not growl.
Dorothy told her in such a low voice that Etta had to ask her again. “And the dog’s name?”
“Same,” said Dorothy. Etta sat down on the bench some distance away and began to unfold a red-checked cloth from the basket. Some of the fear seemed to go. “He’s got the same name as mine.”
Etta plucked out apples and cold dumplings and some chicken and passed them on a plate.
“The same name. How’s that?”
“My mama got the two of us on the same day. So I’m called Dorothy and he’s called Toto. That’s short for Dorothy.” Dorothy had the drumstick.
“Would Toto like some chicken?” Etta asked.
Dorothy nodded yes, with her mouth full. She stared at the woman’s pretty face as she held out a strand of chicken for Toto. Dorothy was confused by the woman’s height and manner. Dorothy was not entirely sure if she was a child or an adult.
“Are you middle-aged?” Dorothy asked. She did not understand the term. She thought it meant people who were between childhood and adulthood.
“Me?” Etta chuckled. “Why no, I’m twenty years old!”
“Why aren’t you bigger?”
“I’m deformed,” Etta answered.
Dorothy mulled the word over. “So am I,” she decided.
“Oh no, you’re not, you’re tall and straight and real pretty.”
“Am I?”
Etta nodded.
“So are you,” Dorothy decided. The long arms and the twisted trunk had resolved themselves into something neutral.
Etta went pink. “Don’t talk nonsense,” she said.
“You’re real pretty. Are you married?”
Etta smiled a secret kind of smile. “I might be someday.”
“Everybody should be married,” said Dorothy. It appealed to her sense of order.
“Why’s that?” Etta asked.
Dorothy shrugged. She didn’t know. She just had a picture of people in houses. “Where do you live if you’re not married?”
“With my Uncle William.”
“Could you marry him?”
Etta chuckled. “I wouldn’t want to. There is someone I could marry, though, if you promise not to tell anyone.”
Dorothy nodded yes.
“Mr. Reynolds,” whispered Etta, and her face went pink again, and she grinned and grinned.
Dorothy grinned as well, and good spirits suddenly overcame her. “Mr. Reynolds,” Dorothy said, and kicked both feet.
“People tell me I shouldn’t marry him. But do you know, I think I might just do it anyway.”
Dorothy was pleased and looked at her white shoes and white stockings. “Now,” said Etta. “What we’re going to do is wait here till your aunty comes. And if she can’t come here today, then we’ll go and spend the night at my house and then go to your aunty’s in the morning. Would you like that?”
Dorothy nodded yes. “Is it nice here?” she asked.
“Nice enough,” said Etta. She told Dorothy about the trees of Manhattan. When the town was planned, every street had a row of trees planted down each side. The avenues had two rows of trees planted on each side, in case the road was ever widened. So, Manhattan was called the City of Trees. Dorothy liked that. It was as if it were a place where everyone li
ved in trees instead of houses. Nimbly, Etta packed up the remains of their dinner.
Then they went to the window. Dorothy saw Manhattan.
There was a white two-story house on the corner of the road, with a porch and a door that had been left open. Dorothy could hear a child calling inside. There was a smell of baking. It looked like home.
And there were the trees, as tall as the upper floor. Beyond the trees, there was a honey-colored building. The Blood Hotel, Etta called it. There were hills: Blue Mont with smoke coming out of its top like a chimney; College Hill, where Etta lived.
“Are there any Indians?” Dorothy asked.
Not anymore, Etta told her. But near Manhattan, there had been an Indian city.
“It was called Blue Earth,” said Etta. “They had over a hundred houses. Each house was sixty feet long. They grew pumpkins and squash and potatoes and fished in the river, and once a year they left to hunt buffalo. They were the Kansa Indians, which is why one river is called the Kansas, and the other is called Big Blue. Because they met right where the Kansas lived.”
Dorothy saw it, a river as blue as the sea in her picture books at home. The Kansas River was called yellow, and Dorothy saw the two currents, yellow and blue mixing like colors in her paint box.
“Is it green there?” she asked. She meant where the blue and yellow mixed.
“It’s green everywhere here,” Etta answered. They went back to sit on the bench. Etta told Dorothy about Indian names, Wichita and Topeka. Topeka meant “A Good Place To Find Potatoes.” That made Dorothy laugh.
“But any place is what you make it,” said Etta. “You’ve got to make it home. You’ve got to do that for yourself. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Dorothy began to play with the bows on Etta’s dress. Etta put her arms around her and rested her head against Dorothy’s. They were nearly the same height.
“It’s difficult, because everybody wants to be loved. And you think you can’t have a home unless you are loved by somebody, anybody. But it’s not true. Sometimes you can learn to live without being loved. It’s terrible hard, but you can do it.”
Then she kissed Dorothy on the forehead.
“The trick is,” said Etta, pulling Dorothy’s long black hair from her face, “to remember what it’s like to be loved.”
Dorothy fell asleep. She dreamed of knitting and the black piano and her paint box and picture books and all the things that had been left behind.
“Dorothy. Dorothy, darling, wake up.” Someone was speaking. Dorothy opened her eyes to see a woman’s face. Her skin was brown; the lips looked bruised; the flesh around the eyes was dark. “Hello, Dorothy. I’m your Aunty Em.”
Toto gave one fierce bark of alarm and wriggled his way back onto Dorothy’s lap. Dorothy was confused and rubbed her eyes.
“She’s tired,” said another woman. Dorothy remembered who Etta was.
“Of course, it must have been a terrible odyssey for her. I was so sure she would be on the number five! Dorothy, are you all right?”
Dorothy nodded yes and slipped down from the bench. Aunty Em moved away from her. “Etta give me some chicken,” explained Dorothy.
“And a great kindness that was! Why, Etta, you must have been here for hours!” Aunty Em had a face like a horse, strong and full of bone. She had huge gray teeth. She stood still, her attention fastened on Etta. Bloated with sleep, Dorothy was confused. Were they supposed to be going?
“It was no trouble,” said Etta. “Johnson Langrishe told me she was here, and I remembered how I felt once upon a time.” Etta glanced at Dorothy.
“All the way from College Hill,” said Aunty Em, grabbing Etta’s hand, her face crossed with concern. “In your condition.”
Etta’s smile went a bit stale. “My condition isn’t so very delicate. I’d gone to market, it was easy for me to bring some food.”
“The whole county knows how hard you work. Oh, Etta, I’d just love to set and talk, but we’ve got to get going before dark. Dorothy? Are you ready to go home?”
Dorothy solemnly nodded yes, she was.
“Well, then, come along. Etta, I’ll give you a hand.”
“I don’t really need one,” chuckled Etta.
“Of course not,” said Aunty Em, but didn’t let go. They walked toward the door.
My trunk, thought Dorothy, looking behind her. What was going to happen to her trunk? She saw her dresses folded inside it.
“Dorothy dear, come along.”
“My trunk,” said Dorothy and found that she was near tears.
“Oh!” said Aunty Em and put her hand across her forehead. “Yes, of course.” She pushed open the door and called, “Henry? Henry, please to come and give our little girl a hand with her trunk?”
Aunty Em kept talking, standing in the doorway. “I was just saying to Henry the other day that we don’t see enough of you good people out on the west side of the city.” Aunty Em’s smile blazed, her eyes were hooded. “How is your Uncle Isaac? We never see him these days, running the entire state of Kansas by himself it seems!”
There was a clumping of boots. Aunty Em stood aside for a terrible, looming man who walked past her without speaking.
“Miss Etta Parkerson, Henry,” said Aunty Em, in a gentle, chiding voice.
The man had a long beard of varying lengths and his hair was plastered to his scalp, curling at the tips. He wore a somewhat striped shirt and an open vest with patches of food on it.
“Morn’,” the man said. There was a distinct whiff of manure. Toto hopped up onto Dorothy’s trunk to defend it. He began barking, bouncing in place.
“Here, dog,” said Dorothy, so softly only Toto could hear. He came to her whining, and she picked him up and hugged him and buried her face in his fur. Uncle Henry grunted as he lowered her trunk onto the floor.
“Out of the way, dear.” As Dorothy turned, Aunty Em ushered her through the door. The very tip of her finger touched Dorothy’s shoulder and then jumped back as if from a hot skillet.
Dorothy knew that Aunty Em had just remembered the Dip. She thought Dorothy carried disease. She didn’t want to touch her.
And Dorothy, who wanted everything to be pretty, soft, full of lace, stood outside on the veranda and looked at the street and a rough, gray, unpainted wagon. Toto wriggled free and dropped to the floor of the porch. Etta pulled Dorothy to her and hugged her.
“Isn’t she a little heroine, though?” said Aunty Em. “All the way from St. Louis by herself.”
“I’d say it was an epic journey,” said Etta, giving Dorothy a little shake, and spoke to her alone. “And it’s not over yet. You’ve still got to get to Zeandale.”
“Oh, you know Henry and I regard ourselves as Manhattanites!” Aunty Em corrected her with a chuckle.
Uncle Henry came backward through the door, pulling the trunk. Toto began to bark again and harassed Henry’s heels.
“Gone’n brought her dog,” muttered Henry.
“I can see that, Henry,” said Aunty Em, voice low, her eyes avoiding Etta. Her hair was raked back tightly into a bun, and her hands pulled at it. There was a row of curls across her forehead.
“Zeandale’s nice too,” murmured Etta. Toto whimpered, circling Dorothy’s heels. Everything was confusion.
“Can . . . can we give you a lift up the hill, Etta?”
“Very kind of you, Mrs. Gulch, but I have my uncle’s pony and trap.”
“You musn’t overtax your strength, dear.”
“I won’t,” promised Etta.
“Well, then,” sighed Aunty Em, as if everything had been delightful. Her smile returned as gray as a cloudy day. “We must be on our way. Do remind me to your dear Aunt Ellen. And may I drop into Goodnow House next time I’m in town? I would so love to see you all.”
“Of course,” said Etta.
“And thank you so much. Say thank you, Dorothy.”
“Thank you, Etta.”
“Thank you Miss Parkerson,” Aunty Em correcte
d her.
“Thank you, Dorothy,” said Etta quickly. Then she kissed Dorothy on the forehead again. Dorothy could feel it, as if it glowed. For a moment she felt as though nothing could hurt her.
Dorothy sat on the trunk in the back. She looked backward as the station, the town, disappeared in trees.
“Well I must say, Dorothy,” said Aunty Em. “You do make your acquaintances from the top social drawer!”
The wagon wheels thrilled over the surface of a stone bridge across the river and into shade. Overhead there was a high bank of clouds.
“Believe it’s going to rain at last,” said Uncle Henry.
“Hallelujah,” said Aunty Em, her eyes fixed on the clouds. Then she turned and tapped Dorothy on the knee. “Out of the wagon while we go up the hill, Dorothy. Spare poor old Calliope.”
Dorothy didn’t understand.
“Calliope is our mule, Dorothy, and it’s not fair to make her haul us up hills. So we’ll have a nice walk.”
The road had been baked into ruts. Aunty Em took her hand, and they walked in twilight into trees. “You should have been here in spring,” said Aunty Em, “and seen the sweet William.” Her face went faraway.
“I can remember going up this road for the first time myself,” she said. “I was sixteen and your mama was nine, and we walked through here. It was just a track then. We walked all the way to Papa’s plot of land. Through these beautiful trees. And then we saw the valley, like you will soon, all grass and river, and we camped there. And we slept under the stars by a fire, looking up at the stars. Did your mama ever talk to you about that, Dorothy?”
“No,” said Dorothy. “No, Ma’am.” Her mother had never spoken about Manhattan.
“Did she talk about your Grandfather Matthew? How he came here and built a house?”
Dorothy thought she better answer yes.
“Your grandfather came out here just like Etta’s uncles, for the same reason. To keep Kansas a free state. And he worked on Manhattan’s first newspaper, and then for the Independent with Mr. Josiah Pillsbury. We are educated people, Dorothy. We are not just farmers.”
