Was_a novel

by Geoff Ryman

  Right in the middle of the room, Dorothy changed. She had no shame left. If Uncle Henry walked in, she would not turn around. Let him see it, it would be nothing new to him. Nothing meant anything to her. She put on the bottle-green dress because it would not be so uncomfortable when she sweated and would not show the dust as the blue one would. She rolled the blue one up like a towel around the brown boots Uncle Henry had brought her back from Manhattan two years before. She could wear her old ones. She looked around the small dark room. It had never done her any harm. There was the bed and the new dresser with its rows of ill-assorted plates. The room had a face that seemed to smile. The old clock on top of the wardrobe. The Bible, and all of Aunty Em’s old books in rows. The new table rocked when you tried to cut bread.

  It might have been a home. Goodbye, she said to the room, but not the people in it.

  She could imagine what would happen later that afternoon. Emma would come back from Meeting and call for her. “Dodo? Dodo?” she would say and then walk out to the barn. She would realize that Dorothy wasn’t there. She would pace around the floor for a time, hoping that Dodo had only gone for a Sunday walk. Then she would think. She would check her cupboard and cry aloud, covering her mouth when she saw the dresses were gone. Alone in the house, she would cover her face and weep.

  When Henry finally came back in, she would blurt out to him, “Henry! Dorothy’s gone!” Henry would try to look sad, and he would stand over Emma and pat her on the back and say, There, there, Em, and she would say: She stole my dresses! And they would decide that maybe it was worth the price of a few dresses to have Dorothy gone. And the house would return to silence.

  Dorothy forgave them, almost forgave herself. They had all failed, failed in the most fundamental way—to make a way of life that was possible. Dorothy felt fear now, fear of the world beyond the familiar fields. She had no reason to suppose it would treat her any more kindly than her own kin. And she saw them in her mind and surprised herself with a mild stinging of tears in the bottom of her eyes. The Aunty Em she hated seemed to melt away. In her place was a woman who was nothing like as old as she looked, a woman who had not been loved since her father died, and who did not know how to say what she really felt and who hated her life, dressing in black, saving her good clothes for occasions that never came, stabbing at the rotten socks, trying to keep them together, stabbing them and her fingers with the needle. Too late. And Henry. Poor soft old Henry who could only have power over children. It was as if they had all stood back-to-back, shouting “love” at the tops of their lungs, but in the wrong direction, away from each other.

  But goodbye, goodbye as fast as I can. If Dorothy had to eat one more meal from the hands of Aunty Em, it would choke her. If Uncle Henry so much as glanced at her covertly, something kindling again in her eyes, she might kill him.

  Was there anything else she needed? Dorothy remembered that there was one thing only that was indisputably hers. She went to the summer kitchen, and from under her pillow she took the child’s dress. She stood in the yard and took one final look, not to remember, but to forget, and then Dorothy walked.

  There was no softening haze over the fields. It was a strange day, fiercely bright, but cool, very cool in a Kansas August. When a day was as fierce as that, it always meant it would be cloudy by noon. Dorothy was glad it was cool; she could walk farther. The corn would be tall; it would hide her as she walked. She could not be seen on the roads. The sunlight on the corn leaves engraved them with lines. The soil underneath was baked as firm as any roadway, in hard clumps that tickled Dorothy’s hardened feet.

  Dorothy began to skip. Witch, witch, Wichita. Which witch from Wichita, witch? Which Wichita? She was going to Wichita, to be a whore, but now, just for now, the sun was shining, and just for now, she could be a kid, one last time. She spun around and around and around. She knocked a stalk of corn. Goddamned corn, the whole country was corn. It used to be a prairie, full of sage and groundhogs. Her hands were like a scythe as she spun. She could feel herself chopping the corn down. She staggered spinning, giddy. Gol-danged corn, she thought and tore up a stalk of it by the roots. She began to march with it over her shoulder, like a soldier, and she began to sing a Civil War song and march to it:

  When Johnny comes marchin’ home again

  Hurrah! Hurrah!

  And it felt as if she were going home, or somewhere. She slashed at the corn with the stalk in her hand until it broke. She kicked at the corn, knocked it over, tore it up, broke it, giddy and grinning, and began to spin again, spin around, harder and harder, to spin the world away, spinning out of the plowed rows, through the corn itself, breaking the order of the lines, spinning until her stomach rebelled. It clenched and suddenly poured out the breakfast of grits in another circle, a great arc of gray and inferior food. The last breakfast from Aunty Em. Dorothy was free from that too.

  Chuckling at the sudden outbreak of utter foolishness, Dorothy allowed herself to be spun onto the ground. The ground seemed to tilt up to receive her, and Dorothy was on her back, looking up through corn leaves to the sky, to the clouds gathering overhead, and the sky and the clouds seemed to spin above her. They seemed to spin and stay in one place at the same time, moving and not moving. The world’s turning all the time. Only we can’t see it.

  Dorothy turned and looked at the ground. An old black beetle struggled up and over the clumps of gray dirt that looked the size of boulders. There were hills and forests under the leaves. The ground was splashed with pallid shadows and pallid fading sunlight, and the corn was taller than trees. It whispered, calling her name.

  It was another world. Dorothy wished she were that small, to live hidden under the leaves. She would ride field mice and live in a burrow that had a little smoking chimney, and she and the other little people would dance and laugh and spin until they were giddy and hide when the big people came. Maybe when you grew up, part of you was left behind, to live unnoticed under the leaves.

  The leaves began to rattle in a breeze. Was it cooler? Dorothy stood up. My green dress is dusty, she thought, but she didn’t mind. I don’t want to look like an adult just yet.

  Maybe I’ll just walk through these fields the rest of my life and no one will find me. I’ll wear corn leaves or cobwebs, and I’d build a sod house so far underground that they’ll plant the corn right over it. And I’ll sit in my house and hear the plows go overhead and laugh. I’d rock back and forth and have the gophers in for dinner.

  But it was time to move on. Dorothy began to walk again, reeling as if drunk. She stumbled on the baked clods of earth that were as hard as stone. The sun went behind a cloud and stayed there.

  Did she really want to walk to Wichita? Was there anything else she could do? She could try to find her father and live with him. She didn’t know his first name. Only Gael. And that may have been made-up. Gaelic to Gael. He was Irish and an actor, and she wouldn’t know him if she saw him. And he would not know her. He was probably dead, or in New York.

  Dorothy came to the end of Uncle Henry’s fields. There was a screen of leaves between her and the end of her known world. The sky got darker. There looked like being a storm. She would have to walk through rain and mud.

  And suddenly she hid her face and wept. What was she going to do in Wichita except starve and beg and get dirty and smelly and used? Who did she know in Wichita? Who did she know anywhere? No one in Manhattan, where people looked straight through her. No one in the only place she could remember living. All Dorothy needed was extreme cleverness, and fearlessness, and love and a home, and she had none of those things. Dorothy needed magic. She needed some magic spell that would change her, give her different clothes, a clean face. She needed magic to scoop her up and drop her down in Wichita as a famous actress. She dreamed of being rich, of taking the train, of being met by carriages, of wearing pretty clothes and having doormen greet her.

  There w
as no way out. No way back. She kept walking. She began to have another fantasy, that she was walking backward. She was walking backward through the years, and she was going to walk back home, to St. Lou before the diphtheria, to find her mother and father waiting for her, in the home she did not remember, away from Is, into the land of Was.

  She pushed aside the last of the corn leaves and found a pasture of sunflowers.

  They were wild, multistemmed with tiny yellow blossoms. They bobbed in a gathering breeze. They looked like a field of lamps. Dorothy stepped down from the barbed-wire fence, her adult dress held up around her ankles.

  She ate the sunflower seeds, like the Indians did when they had lived in a place they called Blue Earth. If only there were Indians, real Indians that she could go and live with.

  The she heard a giggle under the leaves.

  High-pitched, as if the gophers had acquired human voices.

  “Hello?” she asked. “Hello?” She crouched, looking under the leaves, thinking to see children. The Jewells had children. She remembered them. One was small and hard and jealous. What was his name? And the other one was tall and shambling. A scarecrow on a Sunday. Would they have yellow sunflower faces? They would have sunflower faces. She looked but couldn’t find them.

  “Hello?” she called again, chuckling kindly, so they could hear she meant no harm. Then she thought: were the sunflowers laughing? And then she heard deep voices.

  Wichita ta ta

  Wichita ta ta

  It was a chant.

  Wichita ta ta

  Wichita was an Indian name, it was the name of the tribe of Indians the white adults had pushed aside, marched into the desert so that they died. But some of them escaped. They had stayed in Kansas, to live secretly under the cornfields. They had finally, finally come out to dance.

  Wichita ta ta

  She saw them, under the sunflowers. They were tiny brown men no taller than her knees. They were naked except for the feathers of birds and they were slightly wizened, like children that never grew up, or adults who had decided to stay children. They danced in a circle, chanting. They were Indians who had won. They were the Indians of Oz.

  Wichita ta ta

  Topeka

  Manhattan

  Ha ha

  Tan tan

  The gophers were standing in a ring to watch. There was a slight change to the sound.

  Wichito to

  To to

  Topeka

  Wichito to

  To to

  Toto

  And suddenly she heard a dog bark, far away.

  All the sunflowers began to bob and bend in a gathering wind. There was a low animal whine from all around her. The wind plucked at her adult clothes and there seemed to be smoke. It trailed across the ground between the flowers, over her shoes. Smoke from Indian fires? The air was full of dust and smelled suddenly of soil. The chant went on: Toto, Toto.

  Suddenly, all the sunflowers broke free. They rose up, leapt into the air, and spun away as Dorothy had spun.

  Wichito to

  Topeka

  The sunflowers spun smiling all around her, like the scythes of her hands. There was a blast of wind and dust. Dorothy’s dress was whipped about her legs. It spun around her like a sheep caught in barbed wire. The dust was flowing now like a wide thick river. She was standing in the middle of it. Dust blew up into her eyes, stinging, she had to look away.

  The dust was making her weep. The Indians kept chanting. She let her eyes water, to clear them, and when she opened them again, the whole of the field had risen up into the air, spiraling sunflowers, a plowed line of dirt drawn up into the air like soda through a straw. Still blinking, Dorothy looked up and saw it.

  A twister. A twister.

  And Dorothy froze. She went stock-still.

  The twister loomed over her as huge as a man, spinning, turning, trawling its vast single foot lazily across the fields.

  Dorothy thought she was calm. I made it, she thought. It came out of me. I spun and spun and I made it, as twisted as I am. And now it’s coming for me. There is no place to hide. I ran away, and there was no escape. I ran into the fields, the one place you are not supposed to go in a cyclone, and I can’t go home. You need to have a burrow in the earth. And that was what I wanted. Somewhere to live hidden. And now I’m going to die. I’m going to die.

  It seemed to her suddenly to be the way out, to let the wind blow her away, like dust, to somewhere else.

  She watched the twister as it came, passive as she had been before Uncle Henry. She waited as if for a lover. She was unable to move.

  Then suddenly there was a bright, fierce little bark, a sound like shattering mirrors. Dorothy looked down, and there was Toto, bouncing with rage, turning around and around in the dust.

  Toto, she tried to say, but the wind pulled the breath out of her lungs.

  He was full of life and anger. You don’t want to die! he seemed to say. Run!

  Dorothy broke free. She screamed and covered her eyes. With a thrill of self-love, she began to run.

  Toto ran with her, yipping, on tiny terrier legs, circling her ankles. She ran blindly, arm across her tender eyes.

  In a twister, you set the horses free, free to run. Some know to run away from the twister. Some run into it, and no one knows why. Some want the twister, betrayed by something inside them.

  Toto shepherded her. He drove her away from it, toward the hills, out of the valley. She ran with long hungry strides over the broken earth toward shelter, the Aikens’ house. She ran listening for the howl of wind in a peach orchard. The twister turned and changed shape, the blast sucking one way and then exploding in another. Our Father who art in Heaven.

  The cyclone was behind her, then in front of her, dodging like a clever, nasty boy weaving his way toward a touchdown. Toto barked. This way! This way!

  Hallowed be thy Name.

  The wind clutched at her adult dress and tore at it viciously.

  Thy kingdom come.

  Lost in a world of burning dust.

  Thy will be done.

  The ground beneath her suddenly gave way. She felt her boots flood with water.

  On earth as it is in Heaven.

  She had run into the wallows. She felt the mud suck at her feet and pull her down. Oh God, don’t do this, oh God, I’ll be good. I promise. Dorothy fought her way forward, thrashing with her hands. Hands were cut. Was it a thorn bush? Dorothy fell forward into rolls of barbed wire.

  It had been nailed to stakes, to keep it secure, pegged firm, a maze of wire to be stretched around the fields and to encircle the wallows. It was a great extended hollow tube of wire, a second twister. Dorothy’s arms and chest were enmeshed in its embrace. She thrashed against it, arms working their way deeper into it. The mud pulled down. The wire held.

  The twister wanted her. It roared in anger and pulled. Dorothy was snatched up. The wire sang. The wire extended like a spring; the mud pulled down. One end of the wire broke free. Dorothy found a fence post and grabbed it and held, and the loose spiral of wire turned around and around her, lashing her to the post, holding her to its wooden bosom as if to say, I will keep you, Dorothy, I will keep you in Kansas. The wire whipped around her, binding her tighter and tighter. The mud tried to pull her down. Overhead was the flock of sunflowers. They still giggled. Dorothy was held.

  And in the dust, part of the dust, there was a nittering. Dorothy felt a cold wet nose. Toto climbed up onto her lap. She could feel his shivering warmth; she could feel his rough, loving tongue.

  And the dress, the old dress slipped free from under her arm.

  Dorothy blinked. How had it become so clean? It seemed to her that it was white, blazing white and covered in sequins. They flashed in the sunlight that peeked un
der the clouds. It ascended.

  The dust was as thick as syrup and Dorothy had to close her eyes. Dust sizzled on her face like fat dancing on a hot, hot pan, and her skin was scoured. She stroked Toto with her raw hands; she could feel his fur like pine needles. You led me right, dog, she thought. The wire held her.

  The wind shrieked and scraped. It passed singeing over her, enveloping her, brutalizing her with its love, like any love she could remember.

  Then, as if something had popped, everything went still. Dorothy had time to open her eyes. In the center of the twister, the air was almost clear and everything was a beautiful blue. Blue Earth. Everything stood up straight, the grass, her hair, the wire, all hauled toward Heaven. She seemed to see buffalo. Swirling up into it. All the extinct creatures had been pulled into Heaven. Dorothy had time to be glad. The twister drank the air out of her lungs. The Indians sang:

  Wichita ta ta

  to to

  tot tot

  ta ta

  Then the singing stopped.

  Waposage, Kansas

  November 1956

  The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was kept off most public library shelves until the 1960s because librarians considered it hackwork. When Cornelia Meigs edited a 624-page Critical History of Children’s Literature for Macmillan in 1953, there was not a single mention of Baum in the book. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz does appear in the fourth edition of May Hill Arbuthnot’s Children and Books, revised by Zena Sutherland and published in 1972—but it does not appear in the first three editions, and in the 1972 edition, it is simply listed among “Books that Stir Controversy.”