Was

by Geoff Ryman

  “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 lived 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 mustn’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 corrected 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.”

  None of it made sense. Everything was so strange. It was like a dream. Dorothy knew that she would never wake up from it.

  “There,” said Aunty Em, at the top of the hill.

  More shadows, more trees, fields.

  “Isn’t it pretty? Prime river-bottom land. They talk about pioneer hardships. Well, we must have been lucky. What we had, Dorothy, was pioneer beauty.”

  What Dorothy saw on the other side of the hill was flat, open land. There would be no secret places in Zeandale like there had been in St. Louis, no nooks and crannies, no sheltering alleyways. Even the trees were small, in planted rows, except on some of the farther hills, and they looked dim and gray. White, spare houses stretched away at regular intervals between harvested fields. Dorothy could see a woman hanging up sheets. She could see children chasing each other around a barn. The soil that was gray on top was black where broken open.

  “We’ll get you back home and give you a nice, hot bath, first thing,” said Aunty Em. She was still thinking about the Dip.

  It took another hour to get to Zeandale. They turned right at a schoolhouse and went down a hard, narrow lane. The wagon pitched from side to side. Its old gray timber threatened slivers. Dorothy pushed with her feet to stay seated on the trunk as it was bumped and jostled.

  Ahead there was a hill, mostly bald, with a few patches of scrub. To the right of that, more wooded hills folded themselves down into the valley. The lane bore them around to the right toward the hills. The sky was slate gray now; everything was dim. As the wagon turned, Dorothy saw something move beside the lane. Had it stood up? Its sleeved flapped. As it walked toward them, Dorothy saw it was a boy. He was whipping his wrist with a long dry blade of grass. As he neared the wagon, he doffed a floppy, shapeless hat.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Gulch, Mr. Gulch.”

  “Good evening, Wilbur,” said Aunty Em.

  “Mother saw you leaving this afternoon, so I thought I’d just set by the road till you came back along so I could hear the news.”

  “I brought the news with me,” said Aunty Em. “Wilbur, this is my little niece, Dorothy, come all the way from St. Louis to live with us. Isn’t she the prettiest little thing?”

  “Sure is,” said Wilbur. He had a long, slightly misshapen face, like someone had hit him, and he had a front tooth missing.

  “This is Wilbur F. Jewell, Dorothy, one of our neighbor’s boys.”

  “Hello,” said Dorothy. Across the fields, there was a white house, with two windows, and an extension. “Is that your house?”

  “Yes indeed.”

  “It’s lopsided,” said Dorothy.

  “Dorothy, this is Kansas, and in Kansas we take account of manners. The Jewells came here like your Grandfather Matthew and built that house themselves.”

  “We should have built a new one by now,” said Wilbur quietly.

  There was more chat. Some long-term trouble was spoken of: banks and payments. The smoke from Wilbur’s house was blue and hung in the air like fog.

  “Tell your mother I’ll be along as soon as I can,” said Aunty Em, sounding worried. The neighbors parted. Wilbur walked backward, waving his hat.

  “Let’s hope the rain don’t wash the crops away,” called Uncle Henry from the wagon.

  “Goodbye, Will!” called Dorothy. She liked the way he was put together, like a bundle of sticks.

  Aunty Em sat straight and still for a while, and then seemed to blow out as though she had been holding her breath. “Well!” she exclaimed. “Boy his age with nothing better to do than sit all day by the road like a scarecrow on Sunday! What is his father thinking of?”

  “I reckon ol
d Bob Jewell’s giving up,” said Uncle Henry. His voice went lower and quieter. “The land can break a man, Em.”

  “Depends on the man,” sniffed Aunty Em. She was pulling her hair again.

  Home came slowly toward them. Home was small and gray, a tiny box of even, unpainted planks of wood, with a large stone chimney and no porch, just steps. It nestled between two hills that reached from opposite directions into the valley. Dark twisted woodland reared up behind it. The barn sagged. Dorothy took account of manners and was silent. Toto began to bark over and over.

  Aunty Em covered her ears. “Dorothy, try to still your dog, could you?”

  “Ssh, Toto,” said Dorothy. Deep in his throat, teeth slightly bared, Toto kept growling.

  There were fields, but tall marsh grass grew up among them, even in the drought.

  “Dorothy,” said Aunty Em. “See that grass there? That marks a wallow. Now you must be careful of the wallows, whenever you see them. They’re quicksand. Children disappear into them. There was a little girl who got swallowed up in the buffalo wallows and was never found again. So when you play, you go up those hills there.”

  Dorothy believed in death. “Yes, Ma’am,” she said very solemnly.

  Toto still growled.

  Hens ran away from the wagon as it pulled into the yard. Toto snarled as if worrying something in his mouth and then scrabbled over the running boards. “Wow wow wow wow!” he said, haring after the hens.

  The hens seemed to explode, running off in all directions. Aunty Em jumped down from the wagon, gathering up her gray skirts. She ran after Toto into the barn, long flat feet and skinny black ankles pumping across the hard ground.

  “That’s going to get your aunt into a powerful rage,” said Uncle Henry, taking the mule’s lead.

  Inside the barn there were cries like rusty hinges and the fluttering of wings. Hens scattered back out of it, dust rising behind them like smoke, pursued by Toto. Aunty Em followed with a broom made of twigs.

  “Shoo! Shoo!” she said in a high voice.

  “He won’t hurt them, Aunty Em!” said Dorothy.

  Aunty Em brought the broom down on Toto with a crackling of twigs. He yelped and rolled over. She whupped him again, and he kicked up dust and shot under the house.