"What has the child said?" she demanded to know, hands on hips. She stamped her foot. "I've been part of this town, woman and child, for going on thirty years. Will somebody tell me?"
People were unable to tell her. The words stuck. Their eyes skittered like ball bearings on grease. "Some things," they said, "are best left alone. You mustn't fret, Emma. No one believes her."
"Believes what?" Aunty Em yelped. No one would answer.
So she knew it was really terrible. And she also knew, really, what had happened. Emma knew her husband and herself and the life they led. For that very reason, she did not even begin to contemplate the truth. Instead, Emma made a point of coming into town with Uncle Henry, made a point of parading with him, normal as could be.
They looked normal. They were normal. Em was upstanding and bitter, made ugly by years of sun and drought and dissatisfaction. What could be more normal? Her husband was docile and sweet and unloved, confused and in terror and desperate for the next piece of sport, uncertain that there would ever be one. Underneath the dust and the poverty, the people of Manhattan saw themselves in Em and Henry, and they didn't want to look too deep.
"Mind you," some of the nastier males said, when drunk and alone with each other, "if I lived with a woman as fulsome as Emma Gulch, I'd be looking elsewhere, too."
The "elsewhere" and the "too" meant that they knew, really, what had happened.
But they decided, on balance, to blame Dorothy. Dorothy, they decided, had been lying. She was an unpleasant, ungrateful child with a diseased mind. She would contaminate the other children if left near them. The young, they said, must be protected. They spoke about Dorothy's mother, Em's sister, in dark tones.
"Now that sister of hers was…" theatrical pause, "an actress." The word meant so many sinister things in Kansas. "She went off with one of them fast crowds, went East to St. Lou, and married some minstrel Irishman. Just look at the result. All these years, I wondered what was eating Emma Gulch, and now I know. She's been fighting this, that child, her sister. Mind you, it runs in families." The dark hint was that Emma Gulch had had to fight against it too, the lure of fast crowds. They all had to fight against quickness. They all resented their children, because children were fast and had to be taught to be slow. They all had to be what was called good, and it was a constant battle.
Dorothy Gael ceased to exist. She went into Manhattan only once more. She walked by herself the whole distance, for Aunty Em would not have allowed it. She walked into Manhattan and no one saw her, and no one spoke to her, and no one served her in a store. She was invisible, like the Indians. She walked past the schoolyard and only one child saw her, a little boy in the first grade. He ran to his older sister. She glanced at Dorothy just once. None of the others saw her at all. They jumped rope for a while and then turned and went in before the bell. Dorothy watched them go in, and waited. She thought maybe one of the teachers would come out and chase her away. Even that did not happen.
It was quite remarkable. The children would have taunted or physically wounded a less monstrous transgressor. The teachers would have surely come out and threatened her. But Dorothy had become a legendary figure of fear, as if the Devil would breathe fire on the children, on the teachers, if they got too close to her.
Dorothy was not upset. For so long her only hope in life had been to be left alone. She asked for no better for herself, because she believed what they believed, and believed that her punishment was just.
So. No one would talk to her, she was beyond hope, and that was that. She turned and left the school and felt herself go quiet and still inside. She stayed that way. Badness had not been enough. Badness had not protected her. It was a shield that had cracked. So she was deprived even of that proud sensation. She was not bad; she was nothing, a hole. She was an adult.
She was set to work by a baffled, wounded Aunty Em.
"I don't mind telling you, Dorothy Gael, that I am ashamed, deeply ashamed of you. You've got yourself kicked out of school, closed the door on your chances of success, so you better learn to work, and you might as well learn here. You'll have to get used to it."
Dorothy ceased to talk. She ceased to talk altogether. She washed the clothes; she fed the hogs; she shoveled muck; she looked after the hens; she swept the floor; she cooked; she sewed; she scrubbed, all without speaking. She ate without speaking. That suited Aunty Em, who could only bear to speak to Dorothy to tell her what to do next, or to tell her to do it more quickly. There was sometimes a quiet dreaminess to the child that annoyed Em. It made her work slowly. Ponderously, tamely, Dorothy did exactly what she was told. No more. She would sit until told to do something else. She would sit staring all day, if not told exactly what to do.
Em found she had no heart for business. She would open the books to begin her accounts and couldn't go on. She would sit, hand pressed over her mouth, her thoughts bitter with a sense of failure. Must everything in her life turn out so badly? Even little Dodo? It was too much, too much for Emma to bear. What else in life was there for her? Pushing Henry, pushing the dry land, pushing herself until she died? Aunty Em grew to hate the clumping of Dorothy's boots.
Uncle Henry avoided Dorothy out of terror. His escape had been too narrow. His escape had changed him inside. He loathed Dorothy now, hated the very sight of her as she had once hated him. And he hated himself as much as Dorothy had hated herself. He could not bear to be with her or with himself. Each of them was utterly and completely alone and stranded, in the newly whitewashed house with its extra room in the beautiful valley, with its trees and hills and its Kansas River.
Dorothy was fed corn and cornbread and sometimes a scrap of meat or a slice of lard. Dorothy grew fat and malnourished. Her plump legs jiggled when she walked. She ate her meals outside the house or in the barn.
She slept in the summer kitchen. It was honey-colored inside, the wood being raw. It was hot in summer, sleeping near the still warm stove. In winter, the wind rattled through the shakes. Aunty Em let her have dung and twigs to burn, but that meant the stove had to be lit each night, and Dorothy didn't bother. The blankets were as cold as the snow outside. She started to sleep on the hay in the barn where the animals were kept. It was warmer.
She liked it there. It smelled of the horses. She accepted banishment as her due. She knew she was not being punished for the act. People did not believe the act had taken place. But she thought the punishment was fit for what she had done. She was even grateful for escaping so lightly. If this is what people did when they said she was lying, what would they have done to her if they had known the truth? Dorothy learned not to pay much mind to anything at all.