Finding Dorothy

by Elizabeth Letts

  “Baum’s Bazaar,” Frank said. “That’s what I’m aiming to call it. And it will be no ordinary dry-goods concern. I’m planning much more of an emporium.”

  Maud smiled as she listened to her husband’s good cheer. He’d borrowed from a few friends, scraped together some savings, and was going to enter the business of shopkeeping, but, as usual, Frank had a way of making the mundane sound spectacular.

  The main street of Aberdeen surprised Maud, flanked with an improbable mix of weighty brick establishments and spindly frame-built storefronts that looked as if they might be about to blow away. With the train depot firmly anchoring one end, the commercial hub of the town was crowded with people and horse-drawn wagons, but just beyond the end of the busy thoroughfare lay a flat unbroken expanse of wavy grass extending as far as the eye could see. The sky, more prominent than any of the buildings, seemed to have a personality of its own—now blue, now gray, and now a startling pink and orange. From a distance, the prairie appeared to be a study in monochrome muted greens, but up close it burst with yucca flowers, blue sage, and butterflies. Something about this juxtaposition, this showboating rendered so tiny and insignificant by God’s majesty, brought a smile to Maud’s lips. Her first unguarded impression of Aberdeen, Dakota Territory, was that the town was nothing more than a vaunted practical joke—man’s attempt to put his mark on something so vast, so untouchable, that his efforts were bound to come to nothing.

  Frank had secured them a modest rental near downtown, and Maud set out to make it comfortable, unpacking her crates, ironing each crewel lace antimacassar, unwrapping the majolica, and lining up her volumes of Tennyson and Sir Walter Scott on a shelf. Each September sunrise turned the horizon into a vast expanse of fiery reds and yellows. In the morning, outside the window, she could hear the song sparrow’s trill, and sometimes she could almost imagine that she was still home in New York. But as soon as she stepped outside, she was faced with an unfamiliar world. When she and the boys ventured two blocks to the south, the small neighborhood of houses gave way to the limitless expanse of switchgrass, blue grama, and needle-and-thread, where red-winged blackbirds sang out their sounds of conk-luh-ree, conk-luh-ree, and where, apart from the birds warbling and the rustling prairie grass, the stillness was so profound that silence almost seemed to carry its own tune.

  * * *

  —

  MAUD HAD ARRIVED IN Dakota Territory anxious to see her sister, but she had not fully understood just how vast Dakota was—and how difficult it was to get to anyplace that wasn’t on the railroad line. The closest town to Julia’s homestead was almost eighty miles north of Aberdeen, a good ten miles from the nearest train depot. To her frustration, Maud realized that it was no easier to see Julia now than it had been when she was back in Syracuse. Maud had received several worrisome letters about how her sister’s new baby, James, was not feeding well. Maud wrote back, urging her to come to Aberdeen, where it would be easier to procure medical treatment, but Julia’s answers were always noncommittal.

  By the end of the first week, Maud’s new house was all set up. She was sweeping the kitchen floor when peals of laughter brought her outside to their rough patch of prairie grass, where she saw both boys and Frank lying flat on their backs staring up at the sky, which was studded with fluffy white and gray clouds that were sailing fast across the wide blue expanse like barks on a heavenly river.

  “Choo-choo train!” Bunting called out, pointing to a cloud formation as it skidded past.

  “Elephant!” Robin cried.

  “Lion!” roared Frank. “And that there is none other than a bear—” Seeing her, he broke off. “Come on down, Maud,” he called out, reaching up to tug on her hand.

  “Those aren’t mythical beasts, Frank Baum, those are rain clouds! Get up off that damp ground and bring the boys inside before the three of you catch cold!”

  “Nonsense!” Frank cried. “We are not lying on the damp ground. Why, we’re watching a parade, aren’t we, boys?”

  “A circus parade!” Robin lisped.

  “With elephants and lions,” Bunting said.

  “And don’t forget the bears!”

  Frank tugged harder on Maud’s hand. A million things flitted through her mind: the heap of potatoes that was only half-peeled, the fire she needed to light in the stove now that the cool September evening was beginning to close in, the dinner to cook and the dishes to wash and the mending she wouldn’t get to until both of the boys were in bed.

  “Hurry up! Maud dear, a seventy-six-piece brass band playing the ‘Sons of Temperance March’ will be coming by soon. You don’t want to miss it!”

  “Yes, come on, Mama!”

  Off in the distance, a bell jangled on the harness of a passing dray horse.

  “That’s it,” Frank called out. “I can hear it starting up already.”

  In spite of herself, Maud clambered down, arranged her skirts, and lay on the spiky grass next to the three boys staring up at the sky. As if the heavens wanted to prove her instinct right, she immediately felt a fat raindrop fall on her forehead.

  But there was no stopping the irrepressible Frank. He had started to hum, whistle, and thigh-slap a fair approximation of a marching band, and the four Baums lay on the grass, watching the clouds skidding by on the giant prairie sky, calling out one after another, “I see the fife!” “There’s the trombone!” “Lookee there—it’s fourteen cornets!” until a loud thunderclap shook the ground and the boys and Maud jumped up, leaving Frank still lying on his back, grinning, shouting out, “Why, what’s the hurry? That’s nothing but the big bass drum!”

  At that moment, the heavens unleashed a torrent of rain. Maud grabbed each of the boys by the hand and hurried them inside. First she peeled off their wet shirts and then hurried to get the fire started in their Oakland stove. She made the boys sit near the fire until each had drunk a cup of warm milk from the back of the stove, while the storm grew more furious, lashing the windows and rattling the panes.

  “We shouldn’t have let them out in the cold like that,” Maud said, wrapping a shawl around each boy’s shoulders.

  Frank came up behind Maud, pulling her close and resting his head on hers.

  “Don’t worry so much, Maudie. The boys are healthy. A little cold won’t hurt them. They’re thriving in this healthful country air.”

  As Maud turned around and gazed into his large gray eyes, a feeling rose up in her, a heat like melting silver that ran down the sides of her face, along her arms, and down her belly.

  The family settled in quickly, and Maud could tell that Frank and the boys were thriving in their new home. Only her concern about Julia weighed upon her. Since writing to say that the baby was sick, Julia had sent no more letters. Maud feared this was a bad sign—if the baby was doing poorly, she might have no time to write.

  Then, a few weeks after their arrival in Aberdeen, Frank came home from town with a telegram.

  ARRIVING SATURDAY STOP BABY SICK STOP

  “I wonder how she got the money for the tickets,” Maud said. “She wrote several times that she hadn’t enough.”

  “How indeed,” Frank said, then whistled a happy tune.

  “You bought the tickets?”

  Frank smiled. Maud flung her arms around her husband. “Thank you, thank you!” she said.

  * * *

  —

  MAUD WAITED IMPATIENTLY AT the depot. Julia’s train was delayed. When at last she saw the signalman illuminate the green lantern, she scanned the flat horizon for the first sight of an approaching train. The last time she had seen her sister, Maud had been too weak to sit up to say goodbye. How peculiar, how unpredictable that she now waited for her sister on the platform of this distant town—Maud healthy and hale, and Julia nursing a sick child.

  At last, Maud spotted a faint smudge of black against the blue sky. A few minutes later the train
pulled into the station, and soon Maud saw a woman who resembled her sister—and yet, could that worn-looking woman truly be Julia?

  But yes, she had raised her hand in greeting.

  Julia had never been tall, but now her figure was stooped, her face sunburnt and lined, her clothing faded. One of her arms gripped an infant swaddled in grayish flannel, while her other hand held the small hand of a wan-looking girl of about seven. The girl’s face was thin, framed in a halo of golden strands that had pulled from her messy plaits. Her eyes, a dark violet, sunk deep in their sockets, seemed to mirror the stormy Dakota sky, and her chin was small and pointed. In her arms, she held a cheap, naked doll of porcelain bisque, a Frozen Charlotte, who stared with unblinking painted eyes.

  “I’m Magdalena,” the girl said gravely. She curtsied stiffly, then coughed, her chest rattling as she held a grimy handkerchief to her mouth and whispered, “How do you do, Aunt Maud?”

  Maud leaned down, smiling brightly at the awkward little girl, hoping to put her at ease, then turned to her sister, who was fussing with the swaddled baby, her thin lips puckered.

  Maud reached out her arms—and without a word, Julia handed over the baby. Maud’s heart tugged at the familiar weight of a babe in arms. The baby looked like a little old man with a pale face punctuated by two rheumy blue eyes. He felt limp in her arms.

  Maud looked up and met her sister’s glance.

  “Darling, darling Maudie. You look ever so much yourself. The last time I saw you…” Maud held up her hand, but Julia continued: “I wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again.”

  “This poor little one…” Maud said.

  “He’s not holding anything down,” Julia said.

  “We’ll nurse him back,” Maud said. “Just like you did for me. That’s a promise.”

  “Oh, Maudie,” Julia said. “It is so good to see you!”

  * * *

  —

  BY THE TIME THE doctor arrived, a few hours later, Maud had stoked up the fire in the sheet-iron stove so high that the room was uncomfortably warm. Julia stripped baby Jamie’s layers of clothing, removing his long white dress, his flannels, his binder, and two diapers. Maud floated a soft shawl onto the wicker weighing basket, and Julia held the baby close, covered by a flannel blanket, while the doctor fiddled with the scales, adjusting the weight to zero. Only when all was ready did Julia reluctantly remove the blanket from Jamie’s body and place him in the scale’s basket. Laid out naked on Dr. Coyine’s scale, his layers of swaddling gone, baby Jamie’s condition was visible to Maud for the first time: his sunken body, his bloated belly, the sticklike legs and scrawny arms. His skin had a grayish cast. The doctor fiddled with the brass weights and made some marks with his pencil in a small notebook, then hooked his stethoscope in his ears, lay the bell against the baby’s distended midsection, and listened intently. At last, he gently palpated each quadrant of the abdomen, then placed his two forefingers on the belly, tapping with the other two, to elicit a hollow percussive sound, turning his head to listen to it carefully.

  Jamie was strangely passive throughout. Maud knew that most infants would be crying by now, but he appeared to be sleeping, his translucent eyelids fluttering open only to fall shut. At last, the doctor nodded to Julia that he was finished. She quickly threw a thick flannel over the infant, picking him up and holding him against her breast.

  “Let’s start with his weight. Eleven and a half pounds,” the doctor said. His voice was gruff and gravelly but betrayed no emotion. “He should weigh at least fifteen by now. He is suffering from catarrh of the bowel. You must follow my feeding instructions precisely.”

  Tears glistened in Julia’s eyes as she listened to the doctor’s instructions. Maud gently began to wrap the baby back up: one diaper, then a second, then his binder, then his leggings, until the tiny, shriveled infant was fully swaddled again. Awake now, the baby bleated with little strength. Julia picked him up and rocked him gently, humming softly while tucking the tails of his blanket around his spindly legs. At last he gave up fussing and quieted.

  * * *

  —

  AFTER THE DOCTOR HAD GONE, Maud stood at the stove. Into a clean quart jar, she emptied the contents of one Fairchild’s peptonizing tube, a yellow powder that promised to partially digest the baby’s milk. The smell of the peptonizing powder reminded her of the sanitarium. She poured in a gill of cold water, stirred for a minute, and added a pint of fresh, sweet milk, then screwed on the lid and placed the jar into a bath of warm water. She noted the time on the clock. The doctor had ordered that the baby’s milk be peptonized for fifteen full minutes.

  When that had passed, Maud filled the glass bottle and affixed the India-rubber nipple. She scooped the baby up from his cradle and carried him to Julia, who sat slumped over with her eyes closed. Julia looked as if she’d aged a decade in the last three years. Her face was creased from too much sun, her hair had lost its lustrous sheen and was now a faded tawny color flecked with gray, and her body, once gently curved, was now hard and wiry. But it was her sister’s hands that had changed the most—her fingers thickened, her palms callused, her forearms crisscrossed with scars and bruises from fieldwork. On the table next to her, the lamplight shining through its amber glass, was a bottle of Godfrey’s Cordial, a patent medicine.

  Maud hadn’t the heart to awaken her sister, so she settled herself into the rocker to feed the baby. She tested the milk on the inside of her wrist, then licked it up. Peptonizing the milk gave it a bitter taste, and the flavor almost gagged Maud as it brought vividly to mind her own long illness and convalescence. She wondered that a baby would take such a strong flavor, but this was what the doctor had ordered.

  Baby Jamie would not drink the milk from the bottle. His small body felt limp in her arms, and he kept drifting off to sleep. She tickled his cheek, but he took only a halfhearted suck before turning his head away, the milk dripping down his cheek.

  At first, Maud was so intent on the baby that she scarcely noticed Julia’s daughter, Magdalena, who was hovering near the hearth, playing with her doll. She seemed used to being ignored and played quietly, careful not to disturb her sleeping mother. But now and again, she would look up with her deep-set eyes, a watchful expression on her face.

  Maud coaxed the infant into swallowing some of the milk. She worried the corner of his mouth with the tip of the nipple, hoping to encourage him to suckle, but it only seemed to irritate him, and after a few attempts, he started to cry. Julia’s eyes fluttered open.

  “I must have dozed off for a moment. Oh, now listen to my poor dear thing.”

  “Mama!” Magdalena said, but Julia was looking only at the baby, a worried frown on her face, so Magdalena returned her attention to her doll.

  Julia reached over and picked up the bottle of medicine from the table beside her.

  “Give him a few drops of this,” Julia said. “They call it ‘mother’s friend.’ It always seems to soothe him.”

  Maud looked at the medicine skeptically. Matilda had always held patent medicines in great suspicion. “Perhaps we should consult the doctor first.”

  Julia shrugged, then uncorked the bottle and poured herself a dose. Maud watched with concern.

  “For my sick headaches,” Julia said.

  “Come with me, Magdalena,” Maud said. “Let’s go into the kitchen. I’m making a pie, and you can help me crimp the edges.” The little girl’s eyes widened, but the hint of a smile lightened her expression. She quickly gathered up her doll and scampered after her aunt.

  “Let me see your hands, dear,” Maud said, filling a washbasin with warm water from the stove.

  Looking at the floorboards, the girl jammed her hands into her skirt pockets.

  Maud knelt down so that she could look her niece straight in the eye.

  “You don’t want to show me your hands?”

  Magdalena shook h
er head, her eyes downcast, a single pucker creasing the center of her chin.

  “You can’t help me with the pie unless your hands are clean. You don’t want to help me with the pie?”

  A round circle of pale skin showed that the girl had washed her face before setting out, but closer to her hairline was a rim of smudged dirt. Maud held out her own hands.

  “Show me your hands, sweet pea.”

  Shyly, Magdalena pulled her hands from the folds of her skirt. Maud noted the black crescents of her fingernails. The girl blinked at Maud, her mouth puckering. “I tried to get them clean,” she said. “But we didn’t have any more soap. Mama said she was going to make more but the baby was too sick.”

  Setting aside the pie-making project, Maud washed the girl’s hands; intertwining Magdalena’s small fingers with her own, she worked up suds with a bit of lye soap. Then Maud laid out a slice of bread with butter and fresh chokeberry jam and put a kettle on the stove to heat the bathwater. When the girl had finished eating, Maud set to work on her matted braids. Magdalena submitted stoically to Maud’s comb, grimacing only when Maud tugged on the knots, but when the big kettle started singing, Maud picked up the shears.

  She considered asking Julia’s leave, but she didn’t want to disturb her, and there was no choice in the matter. Maud guessed the girl’s hair had not been fully combed out in months.

  Magdalena looked at the scissors, white-eyed as a spooked colt.

  “I’m sorry, sweet pea, it’s just that your hair is too tangled to comb out. I’m going to cut your braids off. If you don’t like it, it will grow out in no time.”

  Five minutes later, Magdalena’s hair hung below her chin, and the comb slipped through without resistance.

  As Maud poured the hot water into the large washbasin, the room filled with steam. She stripped the girl down next to the warm stove. The girl’s tiny frame was knobby and unsubstantial. Dark tan lines ran across her forearms and lower legs and the back of her neck. Maud tested the water, added a bit of cold, swirled it, then picked up her spindly niece and placed her into the warm water. Magdalena sat quietly in the bath, allowing Maud to scrub her until her skin was rosy and her hair was clean.