Geoff Ryman - Was

I did not call him Toto. That is the name my mother gave him when she was alive. It is the same as mine.

That was where Dorothy had to stop writing.

The Substitute went very still and quiet. Dorothy knew he had finished reading, but he didn't say anything. Dorothy guessed that it wasn't very good. Nothing was very good, but that was as good as she could make it. So he had to say something.

He coughed and still didn't look up at her, and he said in a very rough voice, "Thank you, Dorothy."

Then he managed to look up and Dorothy saw that his face looked horrible and that he was trying not to cry. "I'm very glad," he murmured, "that you have something to love as much as that little animal."

You stupid, stuck-up, New York freeloader. You skinny little balloon-faced squirrel.

"I don't have a dog!" Dorothy shouted. Her voice went thin and screeching, and she kept on shouting, as loud as she had ever shouted, shouted to bring the walls down. "I don't have a dog because Aunty Em killed him! He was the only thing I got to take with me from home and just 'cause he barked and chased the hens, she killed him, and she didn't even tell me, so for years and years every time I heard a dog bark I thought it was Toto, and I run and I run after him, calling out his name, and she heard me do that and she never said nothing, she just let me call, because she hates me, she makes me work, and she never feeds me 'cause there's never any food and I'm always hungry and I don't have nothing and she never gives me nothing, and I can't say anything."

The Substitute was on his feet and the class gaped in amazement. The child had gone hysterical, just as suddenly as a roll blind when it snaps up. He tried to take her in his arms.

He tried to take her in his arms and she screamed. It was a horrible sound, a sound like a spaniel caught in a bear trap, a horrible wrenching yelp that turned into a thin, piercing, seagull wail, and she pushed the Substitute away.

"And every day Uncle Henry does it to me, he pushes me up against a wall or down into the dirt, and takes up my dress and he does it to me, with his thing, he does it to me!"

The other children heard. The Substitute gathered her up and tried to bundle her out of the room, but she fought. She pummeled him about the face. His glasses broke. "You stupid, stupid squirrel. Why did you have to come here? You stupid, stupid man!"

And then the great galumphing gal curled up onto the floor and wept like a baby.

She tried to dig a hole in the floor. Her hands were gouging at the varnished wood. She curled up smaller and tighter and tried to dig, her eyes closed, her mouth closed, like a mole, and when he tried to stop her, when he grabbed her wrists she fought and was as strong as he was. Finally he let go, and she went still. She went still, making a small, squeezed, wheedling little sound.

"If she gets up, keep her here!" he told the class. He turned and ran. He heard his flat feet clatter in the corridor, and he felt his bad heart beat. At first the Principal didn't believe him.

"Collapse? Dorothy Gael? That girl has the constitution of an ox."

"Even an ox can die of heartbreak," said the Substitute. "There's been something terrible going on. She shouted it out, and all the children heard."

"Did they indeed? What's she been doing, stealing peaches? All right, Mr. Baum, I'll come and see."

She was still there on the floor, no longer wailing, but shivering, and she had stuck her thumb in her mouth. Professor Lantz walked in and one of the children giggled. They were all biting their nails.

"DeEtta," the Principal said to his assistant, "take the children out into the yard, please."

"Come on, children, there's nothing more to see here," said Mrs. Warren as the children gaped in wonder.

"What she said!" breathed out one of the girls.

The Principal looked up and waited until the children had left. He was taking Dorothy's pulse rate. It was a scientific thing to do.

"All right, Mr. Baum. What did she say?"

The Substitute found he couldn't say it. He had had a delicate upbringing. The Substitute could feel his cheeks roasting with embarrassment. He sighed and hissed with the difficulty of even finding words for it.

"Out with it, Mr. Baum, there are only us men here."

"She says that her uncle has relations with her."

For just a flicker, as if time had blinked, Professor Lantz went still.

"I mean, what she actually said was that he pushed his thing up her." Frank Baum felt his voice suddenly shudder and go weak. He was nearly in tears.

"Buck up, man," said Professor Lantz. "It doesn't surprise me. Dorothy Gael is quite capable of imagining anything. She said this in front of the other children?"

"Yes," said the Substitute, overwhelmed by the horror of it.

"Dorothy Gael," said the Principal, as if the child were not curled up under his hands, "is a very wicked creature. At times she almost convinces me of the truth of demonic possession. She has said before, herself, that she lies about everything. She is capable of uttering any untruth and, I'm afraid to say, of thinking up all manner of foulness by herself. You do not know the girl, Mr. Baum." The Principal was fat and had to grunt as he stood up. Without realizing it, he made a gesture of wiping his hands.

"We'll get your relative, Dr. Lyman, in to have a look at her. And then we will bundle her up and send her home and ask her never to come back to this school."

The Substitute followed him out of the room glancing back and forth between him and the girl. "Are you sure? Are you sure you should send her home?"

"Where else does she belong, Mr. Baum?"

"Whatever else may be true, she is desperately unhappy there, Professor Lantz. Please! Look at her! What would make a child try to dig her way into the floor?"

"I don't know," said Professor Lantz, looking back with a half smile. "Perhaps a handsome young actor from New York."

The Substitute found that dismay was turning to anger. You are going to blame me for that in there? "What," the Substitute asked, drawing himself up, "what if what she said is the truth?"

Professor Lantz stopped smiling and his gaze went steely.

"There must be a reason for it!" exclaimed the Substitute.

"The only reason," said the Principal, "is fantasy. Fantasy is pretty unhealthy as a general rule. I will remind you, Sir, that you are an itinerant actor invited here to teach class for a few days at the suggestion of Dr. Lyman. You do not know Dorothy Gael, nor her guardians, the Gulches. You could not hope to meet more God-fearing or civic-minded people. Her uncle takes her to and from Manhattan every day, the distance of four miles each way, simply to bring her here since her last school failed to effect any improvement. She gets the best care her people can afford. Particularly since she must be a very great trial to them. And I am afraid, Sir, that we will not be requiring your services tomorrow. After creating that incident in there I think you can see why. Cigar smoke and all."

The Professor waved his hand in the air as if to wipe away the stench of smoke, of actor, of fantasy.

Dr. Lyman arrived, with a weary glance at his worthless young cousin. "Sexual hysteria," he pronounced, having heard the story from Professor Lantz. "There's not much I can do for her, except take her home. Which under the circumstances I will do gratis. Not my normal policy." He glanced up again at the actor. "Frank, perhaps you would care to assist."

"I will ride back with her," said the Substitute.

"No," said the Doctor. "You will not."

They got the great lump of a girl to stand. She really was huge, the size of a grown woman and stronger than most boys her age. The Substitute took her hand, and she grasped his firmly, but he had the feeling she did not know who he was. The flesh on her face hung dead and limp and yellow. She was quite tame. She stepped up onto the Doctor's coach as if somnambulating. The effect was curiously ladylike. She sat tall and straight. The face had a faraway expression, almost refined, and the Substitute had time to see that the face was beautiful. With the anger and the pain fallen from her, Dorothy Gael would have been a beautiful woman.