Was

by Geoff Ryman

  Then Dorothy knew what she had to do. She placed the thick flesh below her thumb into her mouth. That would satisfy Aunty Em. That would propitiate her. As her teeth overcame the resistance of her flesh, Dorothy had a single thought that mingled comfort and distress.

  The thought was this: at least Aunty Em had not seen her naked. But Uncle Henry had seen her. He had been lying awake in the night.

  Dorothy never remembered when it began. One day, she got snow deep into her boots. Her toes were an agony. Beyond a certain point, cold burns as harshly as fire. Dorothy wept with cold all the way home, scurrying into the winter kitchen in a kind of flatfooted shuffle. She dropped down on the floor and tried to tear off the boots, but her hands were white and blue and as lifeless as sausages. She could not undo the laces. Uncle Henry knelt in front of her and pulled the boots off and rubbed her bare feet.

  “Poor little toes,” he said, smiling tenderly at them.

  After school, when he met her at the bridge over the river, he would walk out to her, and back to the cart, holding her hand. Sometimes if the cold was too bad, if she couldn’t talk, he swept her up in his arms and carried her, and how grateful Dorothy was. She didn’t even mind when he suddenly kissed her, his mouth full of dead and rotting, reeking teeth.

  The snows melted, and the road to the farm became a muddy track, mashed up by wheel tracks and the back-and-forth marching of their own boots. They would go into the barn sometimes before going into the house. Henry would grin naughtily and pull Dorothy in with him. They both understood. They were escaping from Em. They would play together in the straw. He would begin to tickle her, again. It was not so much fun, being tickled all the time.

  When did it begin? Dorothy never remembered, it crept up on them so stealthily. One day he did not meet her at the bridge in the evening. The Allens were passing by, laden with stores. What was Henry Gulch thinking of, leaving the child to wait in a winter afternoon with cold descending? Up here with us, Dorothy, they said, though they had never been particularly kind to Dorothy before. Kindness foxed Dorothy. It made her go wary and suspicious. She did not even know that she was enraged at Uncle Henry.

  When the Allens let her off, Dorothy went into the barn to find him. Uncle Henry’s back was to the door. He wasn’t doing any chores, he had no tools in his hand; he had simply been standing with his back to the door. And then he turned and looked at Dorothy as if he hated her.

  What have I done now? thought Dorothy in dismay. She had come to think of Uncle Henry as her only friend, even if he did smell. Henry glowered at her, darkly, and he seemed to loom larger in the half-light. He seemed to fill the lopsided crib they graced with the name of barn. His eyes burned. Dorothy said nothing. She shook her head, trying to say: I’ve done nothing. I didn’t know I’d done anything. I didn’t mean to do anything. Henry stood stock-still, full of what looked like rage.

  Dorothy crept back toward the house. Every limb felt weighted down by cold. She wanted to lie down and die. Whatever was wrong with her, the bad blood, had done it again. Even Uncle Henry hated her. She thumped slowly up into the wooden house.

  “Evening, Dorothy,” said Aunty Em briskly, looking up from her account book. She wore little round spectacles, and her eyes blinking behind them looked huge, like a frog’s. “Nice day at school?”

  “Yes, Mmm.”

  “Nice drive back with your uncle?”

  Aunty Em didn’t know. Aunty Em didn’t know Henry had not come for her. That must mean he really hated her, to do that and not tell Em. He must not have ever wanted her to come back.

  “Yes, Mmm,” replied Dorothy, devastated. The house seemed to be made of bone.

  “Once you’ve got yourself warmed up, there’s some cuts I fetched up from the cellar for frying. They’ve still got enough lard on them, so you won’t need to use any more. Waste not, want not.”

  Aunty Em went back to her business. Dorothy cooked the evening meal, watching her hands move, as if they were someone else’s. The months-old pork, sealed in its own lard, was gray and flabby and slightly damp from delayed putrescence. Dorothy watched it smoke and steam. There was a scar on the bottom of her thumb. She took rags to bed with her at night. She watched the smoke rise and wished her bad blood could be similarly consumed, burned clean. She wished she could be burned clean. Perhaps if she drank carbolic, that would burn her clean from the inside, and then she would die clean.

  Uncle Henry clumped into the house, with eyes as desperate as butterflies flitting. He was smiling. It was a thin smile, keen and sharp, and his movements were changed. Gone was the dear, slow, sad Henry. This man flickered, hands and eyes darting. Dorothy passed him a plate of food and he did not look at her. When she sat down, he turned away, crossing his legs in the other direction. Dorothy ate the tired old pork as if it were her due. It tasted of old wooden floors and rancid fat. They would all smell each other, all through the night.

  “That was a right smart supper, Dodo, thank you,” said Aunty Em, with a smile. The only thing Dorothy knew about dodos was that they were extinct.

  “Don’t you worry about the washing-up,” said Aunty Em. “You just get on with your home studies. Henry, please could we clear a space for Dodo’s books?”

  Henry said nothing, but stood up and went out into the night.

  Aunty Em looked at Dorothy, smiling crookedly. “I surely hope he manages to produce something tonight.”

  They were all bound up tighter than drums with pork and no vegetables. Aunty Em’s face was kind. It was taking Dorothy into her confidence, as if she were almost an adult. This confused Dorothy mightily. No! she thought. It’s too soon for that. She didn’t want to be treated like an adult. She wanted to be treated like a child. She wanted to be sat on someone’s knee and be told a story; she wanted to sit on someone’s knee and do nothing, leave the work behind.

  “Dorothy,” chuckled Aunty Em. “No need to be shocked, child, there are some things that are perfectly natural to talk about sometimes.” She stroked Dorothy’s hair with fondness.

  “Now you get settled in,” said Em with a sigh, and stood up and collected the dishes with a fine clattering of clay.

  The next morning Henry got up and gave her a ride in to school and neither of them mentioned that he had left her alone, waiting at the bridge. They sat coldly side by side but at a distance. He did not even ask her how she had found her way home.

  Dorothy passed the day at school in even deeper silence than usual, hugging the books that she yearned to lose forever.

  In the afternoon, she walked back down Poyntz and along the road toward the bridge. She had made plans. If Henry was not there, she would slip back into the school and sleep by one of the stoves. But Uncle Henry was there, blue in the dusk, waiting for her, holding the horse’s lead.

  And that night, as he led the horse and the cart toward the barn, he grabbed her wrist, and pulled her with him. Inside the barn, he held her to him and blurted out a kind of a sob. He rested his shaggy, smelly head on her shoulder and neck, and his cheeks were damp and he pressed her to him.

  He did love her after all. Dorothy went weak from gratitude. She hugged him back, and his huge, rough hands pushed her even closer to him. The whole length of his body was against her, and he kissed her cheek. Was he saying he was sorry? He must be. Dorothy kissed him back. She meant to kiss him on the cheek, but he turned his head and their mouths met. That startled Dorothy and she jumped back. He worked her shoulder, and his smile crumpled and went grim. He turned away, and Dorothy wondered again if she had done wrong.

  The next day, the ride was joyful. Uncle Henry sang old campfire songs. Dorothy had never seen him like that. She giggled and he turned his eyes toward her and they had a sparkle she had never seen before. It suddenly occurred to her that Uncle Henry had once been young. He would have been a young, broad-shouldered man with sparkling eyes. And bad teeth.

  So when did it begin? Every evening in the barn, or sometimes in the woods, when it was dark, he would pull
the wagon to a stop and hidden under lap robes, he would tickle her. Dorothy was getting bored with being prodded and tickled. Henry kept looking back and forth up the road as if it were something naughty, something bad. She pitied him. Poor Henry, old Henry, she thought, and she hugged him. Was that bad? He was just hugging her, and he loved her, so was it bad?

  His hands were blunt and large and rough. They kept rubbing her shoulders. When did they begin to rub her legs?

  She remembered him cupping both her tiny breasts in his hands. “Pretty little things,” he had said, forlornly. Even then, Dorothy was not sure that it was bad. He looked into her eyes. His eyes were blue and large, cold and soft at the same time, and his cheeks were always bright red on deep brown and covered with tiny purple veins all over the surface. He looked lost.

  “Do you like it when I touch you there?” he asked.

  She didn’t like it, not really at all. It was private and it wasn’t nice, but he was Henry and he loved her.

  “You’re so kind, Dorothy. You’re so good to old Henry.”

  One evening in the barn, his trousers came down, and she saw his thing, and she knew then that this was bad.

  “No, honey, no, Dorothy, don’t look away, don’t look away from old Henry. Here, look, I put it away, see?”

  The only thing that Dorothy had thought was good about her life was bad. All her life was bad; it was something to do with her. She must be bad, if this was what happened. The thought of her badness made her go still. It must have made him go still too.

  He didn’t do it right away. He tried to hold off. But it was too much for him, alone with the flat wilderness, his drying fields, and Em. Finally he did it, quickly, in the barn, while Em sat with her books. The thought of her own badness made Dorothy go small and still. Dorothy looked at the straw and the wooden beams and knew that everything would change. When he was done, he was scared. He pulled up his trousers and began to weep. “Oh God, oh salvation. There’s no praying that can heal this.”

  She knew it was truly terrible then. Dorothy watched, as if pork were frying. He did not look at her. He will hate me now, she knew. She was ready. It was all she deserved. There was more blood. More bad blood. She was so full of that bad blood, it just oozed out of her.

  “You better get into the house,” he murmured, looking away from her.

  That night at dinner there was a terrible silence. Even Em could sense it. She was full of rage. It was Aunty Em’s turn to cook and she banged down the plates and the coffeepot. She had boiled up some jerky and some dried corn and that was all they had to eat. Dorothy thought she must have seen them, that she must know. The silence was terrible, but Em did not notice anything unusual. For Em, the silence was always there, and always terrible. Em was oblivious to her own rage, but Dorothy ate in suspense. Later, Dorothy went out into the darkness and threw up, quietly so Em couldn’t hear. There is no pit, Dorothy thought, no hole in the ground deep enough and black enough to cover me. There was a hook on which they hung the bodies of the hogs. It went right up through their guts. Dorothy thought of putting the hook through herself.

  Once again, Henry did not come for her after school. Dorothy had known that he would not. He’ll be scared, she thought, beginning to feel contempt for him. He’ll keep well away. He might be so scared, he won’t do it again. Either way, she knew she could no longer count on Henry for anything. He might send her away. He might want to keep her near and do it again. He might ignore her and pretend that nothing had happened. There was nothing good that either one of them could do. She hitched a ride home with Max Jewell. He had grown up nice and polite and was very interested in Dorothy. He asked her all sorts of questions about Manhattan and tried to catch her eye. Dorothy saw Uncle Henry in him and answered coldly, yes or no.

  It took a week. Uncle Henry let other people take her back home for a whole week. Neither one of them said anything to Aunty Em. Max had found repeated excuses to come out to town, in order to give her a lift back. That in itself was ominous. It might be good to discourage Max.

  Finally Uncle Henry showed up, waiting at the bridge. Max was there too. Max called hello to Henry, somewhat unwillingly, and his quick crumpled smile in Dorothy’s direction was one of apology. Max assumed quite rightly that she might not want to ride with some smelly old man.

  Dorothy felt herself go into abeyance. She watched herself. What, she wondered, am I going to do? She saw herself climb down from Max’s wagon.

  “Thank you, Max,” she murmured. It sounded like a farewell.

  She got into the wagon. Henry waved Max away. Henry pulled hard on the reins to keep the wagon still. Henry waited until Max was out of sight, disappearing over the top of Prospect.

  “We don’t share no blood,” Henry said solemnly. “We’re not blood kin.”

  That meant nothing to Dorothy. Did he mean that he had no bad blood? Did he mean that only she did? She waited, as an animal waits when it’s cornered by a predator.

  “I’m just older than you, that’s all.” He tried to smile, but there was a shaking in him. “You aren’t going to do nothing, are you, Dorothy? You aren’t going to go away, are you? ’Cause old Henry, he needs you. You are the light of his life. You are the only beautiful thing. And a man needs that, Dorothy.”

  He paused and looked at the wall of trees, full of spring buds, climbing the side of the hill. The buds gathered together on the trees looked from a distance like a slightly purple mist. “We’ll have to be careful of her. We’ll just have to watch our step. In summer, the corn will be as high as you like.”

  He means we’ll do it in the corn, thought Dorothy. He’ll wait for me here, and we’ll go into the corn. He wants to go on doing it.

  “She can’t live forever.”

  He wants Aunty Em to die.

  Then he gave her a ride home, a chaste distance from her. It was already late, so they walked into the house, Dorothy first, Henry a few minutes later. Chores, he told Dorothy. Got a few things to do. You just go right on in. He was lying.

  The next day, they went into the barn. “I got to do it,” said Henry, grinning. “I just can’t keep away. You are a wicked, wicked little thing.” He smiled and rubbed his nose against her, and she went still and cold and quiet as ice.

  “You like that, you like that, don’t you?” he said, and it made no difference that she didn’t answer.

  It went on and on and Henry got rougher and rougher with his raw hands. Yes, I’m bad, thought Dorothy. I’m bad, I’m bad, I’m bad. She could feel herself twist inside. She hated Henry’s smell, she hated his body, she hated the barn. And she wanted Aunty Em to see them.

  She wanted Aunty Em to see them, so bad she could taste it. Her so God-fearing, her so church-loving, to walk in and see her husband pig-backing a kid, pig-backing me, doing what you should be doing Em, you old dried piece of beef jerky. You should see this. I can just hear you yelping.

  So she pulled up Henry’s shirt, and she pushed his trousers down, so that there would be no mistaking. No one hugs a child with their milk-white bottom bare in early spring unless they’re doing that.

  And one day, muddy, bleak, not so cold, his trousers were down around his knees, and he kept pulling them up, chuckling, “Don’t do that, honey,” and Aunty Em yelled out, real close to the barn.

  “Henry, where are you?”

  Henry gasped and ducked away, scuttled around behind the bales of hay. Dorothy stayed where she was. Her dress fell back down by itself, but she would not have pulled it down. Her flannels were still down around her thighs. She leaned against the post and waited.

  Aunty Em came in, carrying a pan. Mocking her, Dorothy made a coy little-girl motion with her hips and head. Little old me do anything wrong?

  “You seen your uncle?” Em asked.

  “Sure, he’s just around there,” said Dorothy and pointed.

  Em looked between Dorothy and the hay. “What you doing there?” said Em to Henry. “Why didn’t you answer?”

  Henry
stood up. Down on his knees, he had managed to hoist and fasten his trousers. “Thought I saw a rat,” said Henry, looking straight at Dorothy. Dorothy’s eyes went wide. Did I do something wrong, Uncle?

  “Well, get up off of the floor and tell me when we can get into Manhattan. I can’t use this pan. It’s finally gone through.”

  “Friday. We’ll go Friday.”

  “High time too. Dorothy, if you’re through in here, come in and sweep up.”

  “She’ll be ‘long momently, Em,” said Uncle Henry. “She’s doing some chores in here for me.”

  “All right, but send her along.” Aunty Em left, sensing something too big to even acknowledge. She left scowling.

  Pause. Dorothy looked at Henry, with that cold curiosity.

  He took two steps toward her and whupped her right across the mouth and onto the floor. Dorothy tasted blood, in triumph. Yup, yup, that was right. That was what it was. Now she could hate him.

  “What the hell are you trying to do?” he said, whispering, shaking in fear. “You want her to know or something?”

  “Did I do something wrong, Uncle Henry?” she asked in a little-girl voice. “She asked where you were and I told her.”

  “You just keep quiet. You just keep quiet about everything. Oh Jesus!” He hid his face.

  “What am I going to tell her about my mouth?” she said. Dorothy puffed out her lips as she spoke to make it sound as though she were hurt worse than she was, all swollen.

  “Tell her you fell. You’re pretty good at making up stories.”

  “Like you are, Uncle,” said Dorothy very quietly.

  She was silent and smiling, and she knew that the smile said: Why should I lie for you? Give me a reason. Then she spoke.

  “You gonna bring me back something nice from Manhattan?” she said.

  Uncle Henry looked scared again. He leaned over and helped her up. He started to brush her dress. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll do that.”

  Dorothy smiled sweetly at him, so that he couldn’t see all her teeth were red.