The children each planted a tree around the schoolhouse and that tree was named after them. It was as if a piece of each child had been left behind to grow.
Dorothy would lie down on the ground with Uncle Henry covering her, and she would look past his face. The trees would lean over as if in sympathy, and Dorothy would let her spirit fly up to them, to hide amid their leaves, to reside in them. She would make herself part of them. She felt herself bend and sigh with them; she felt buds and soft green leaves at the tips of her extremities. She was out of reach of Uncle Henry then. He could not touch her then. She was a tree. There were trees called Dorothy all over the hillsides.
In summer the corn came up and they would lie down between the rows. Henry brought a sack along for her to lie on. So the dirt wouldn't show, and she would look away from his face and up at the underside of the corn and see the fluted ridges of its leaves, the dance of the low afternoon sun through them. The hiss and rattle of the wind in the corn seemed to call her name.
Sometimes he would call her back. He would try to make her speak. She couldn't even hear what he said. You stink, Henry, she thought. You got wrinkles all over. You farmer. You stink like a hog.
"Do you love me, Dorothy?" he asked her.
"Course I do," she told him.
Manhattan, Kansas-1882
In a show of rebellion, Adolf decided to run away from home. Somehow Alois learned of these plans and locked the boy upstairs. During the night, Adolf tried to squeeze through the barred window. He couldn't quite make it, so took off his clothes. As he was wriggling his way to freedom, he heard his father's footsteps on the stairs and hastily withdrew, draping his nakedness with a tablecloth. This time Alois did not punish him with a whipping. Instead, he burst into laughter and shouted to Klara to come up and look at the "toga boy." The ridicule hurt Adolf more than any switch, and it took him, he confided to Frau Hanfstaengl, "a long time to get over the episode."
Years later he told one of his secretaries that he had read in an adventure novel that it was proof of courage to show no pain. And so "I resolved not to make a sound the next time my father whipped me. And when the time came-I can still remember my frightened mother standing outside the door-I silently counted the blows. My mother thought I had gone crazy when I beamed proudly and said, 'Father hit me thirty-two times!' " -John Toland, Adolf Hitler, as quoted in For Your Own Good: The Roots of Violence in Child-rearing by Alice Miller
Dorothy and Emma, her little ally, came to be called the Furies, or the Kindly Ones. The schoolteachers called them that. The schoolteachers knew Greek.
The teachers made sure no other children sat near the Furies. If a child did, and she had nice long hair, it would be tied to the back of her chair in so many knots that the hair would have to be cut off. Pockets were found full of ink. Cowpats were placed on the seats of chairs. The Furies talked to each other, loudly, while the teacher, Mr. Clark, spoke. At least Mr. Clark was better-looking than Henry. Dorothy hated him, too. The Furies developed a horrible screeching laugh that they used together. The other children went still with fear.
The schoolteachers knew Greek and that gave them the right to beat children. The boys, that is, were regularly beaten. It was thought to be good for them. Toughen them up. Some boys, the timid ones, were very difficult to beat, because they didn't do anything wrong. Even the teachers thought they were sissies.
"Can't stand a kid without any gumption," they might say. "That Jenks needs a hiding, just to wake him up."
And the chance would finally come. Somebody would throw a spitball, and blame Jenks. Mr. Clark would pretend to believe him. Mr. Clark was kind. He believed that beating Jenks would be for his own good, to make him less different from the other boys.
"Why did you do it, Jenks?" Mr. Clark asked, silkily. The other children squawked with laughter. The Furies screeched. They all knew the game that was being played.
"I did not do it, Sir," said Jenks, appalled.
"Did he do it, class?" asked Mr. Clark.
"Yes!" the class shouted.
It was very gratifying. Jenks began to cry. "But I didn't, Sir. I didn't do it!"
"Why should you be treated any different than anyone else, Jenks?" Mr. Clark asked. "Jenks, I think we better go to the Principal's office."
There was a theatrical gasp from the children. Jenks was going to get the Strap. The children terrified themselves deliciously with tales of the Strap. They said it had spikes on the end. It was a dark and terrible thing. Jenks began to blubber with fear. "Mr. Clark," he begged, his voice a whine.
"Angela. Take charge of the class, please." Angela was Class Monitor, a two-edged sword, who led the mayhem when he was out of the room, and then organized the tidying up before he came in, so that he did not have to deal with it. He knew that. The class knew he knew that. The class knew he secretly approved of a bit of mayhem as long as it was kept absolutely hidden.
Angela sat on the teacher's desk. "Jenks, getting the Strap. I never. I never would."
"They won't give him the Strap," someone said, knowingly. Jenks's grades were too good.
"They have to now, Mr. Clark said he would, and it would look too bad if he didn't. Who else do we want to have the Strap?"
Dorothy barked out a laugh and stood up. She looked at them all with undisguised scorn. "All of you. All of you little smarty-pants. You all think it's so great. I'd like to take you all and whip your asses."
Silence.
Jenks came back into the room with a face the color of sandstone from weeping. He couldn't sit down. But the class didn't laugh at him or tease him. They didn't lean forward whispering out of the corner of their mouths, asking him about the exploit. Something was wrong. The class looked cowed and silent. "Thank you, Angela," Mr. Clark said. He thought perhaps that Angela had simply kept them firmly in line.
Or maybe, maybe they hadn't thought it was right. Well then, if Jenks didn't do it, they should have told me the truth.
That Dorothy Gael, the children thought. We got to do something about that Dorothy Gael.
But the terror of the Strap meant there was one unbreakable rule: You never told, you never snitched. They couldn't snitch, and if they did, what would Dorothy do, what revenge would she extract? What, what could they do about Dorothy?
One day in spring term, her ally, Emma, said something. That was what broke it. Nobody knew for certain what it was that Emma said. She whispered it, but it sure was something Dorothy Gael didn't like. Em had trusted Dorothy a bit too much and grown too familiar. She teased her about something, her size, maybe, or her shoes, her dress. Maybe it was something about her family. Evangeline Thomas claimed she heard Emma whisper the word "Henry."
There was the word "Henry" and Dorothy Gael's face twisted up like a painting of the Devil, and her lips pulled back in concentrated hatred, and she slapped Emma across the face. The noise was so loud that Mr. Clark dropped his chalk. Emma wailed in shock.
"Dorothy Gael. Did you hit her?" Mr. Clark knew that this was his chance.
Dorothy said nothing. Her face was puffed out like an adder, arrested in an expression of utter rage and turmoil that unmanned Mr. Clark for a moment. He had never seen an expression like it on a child's face.