An Ordinary Woman Star Finds Herself in Oz. And also, fuck Oz.

Once upon a time, an ordinary woman star fell out of the sky and landed in Oz.

Her name was Dorothy Madonna.

She was not from Kansas.

This caused immediate problems because everyone in Oz seemed convinced that a woman named Dorothy was supposed to be from Kansas, and whenever Dorothy explained that she was not, they looked at her with the strained patience reserved for people who refuse to remember their own biographies correctly.

“But surely you want to go home,” they said.

Dorothy did not know what they meant.

She had been an orphan long before she became a falling star.

There had been parents once, but they were dead, and there had been other people who might technically have qualified as family, but belonging and blood had turned out to be entirely different substances.

So Dorothy had learned to make things.

She made meals.

She made rooms warm.

She made stories.

She made herself get up in the morning.

And in Oz, she began making a family.

First she found a cat.

He was not especially large, but she named him Lion because he was extraordinarily brave.

The Ozians said this was confusing.

Dorothy did not care.

Then she found a great shepherd-mix dog wandering beside a road and called him Toto.

The Ozians feared Toto because he was large and watchful and followed Dorothy everywhere.

“He looks dangerous,” they whispered.

Toto was dangerous primarily to unattended sandwiches.

He guarded Dorothy in the ordinary way herding dogs guard what they love: with his eyes, his body, his presence, and an unwavering conviction that everyone ought to remain in approximately the place he had assigned them.

Later Dorothy walked into a cornfield and made herself a son from straw.

He loved pumpkins and corn and old maps and questions nobody else thought to ask.

She made herself a daughter from discarded tins she collected along the road, fitting the pieces together carefully until the girl stood shining beneath the Ozian sun.

The girl was strong, bright, musical, and much softer inside than anyone who saw the metal understood.

It was not a traditional family.

Oz noticed.

Oz noticed everything.

At first they invited Dorothy places.

Then they canceled.

Then they invited her again.

Then they acted surprised when she arrived.

Sometimes she was welcomed warmly by people who ignored her the following week.

Sometimes she was told she was one of them right before being reminded of all the ways she was not.

There were benches Dorothy could not sit upon.

There were worship services she could attend only if she behaved properly.

There were songs everyone knew except her.

There were phrases people repeated that seemed to signal goodness, although Dorothy could not determine what they actually meant.

There were loyalty tests hidden inside ordinary conversations.

Do you admire the Wizard?

Do you fear the Witch?

Do you wear green on the correct days?

Do you believe Oz is the greatest place that has ever existed?

Do you want to go to Kansas?

Do you understand why everyone should want to go to Kansas?

Dorothy failed nearly every test.

Sometimes accidentally.

Eventually on purpose.

She did not give a fuck about the Wizard of Oz.

This was considered a character flaw.

Everyone else seemed fascinated by him.

They spoke about the Wizard constantly.

Some adored him.

Some despised him.

Some devoted their entire identities to proving that the people who adored him were fools.

Others devoted their identities to proving the opposite.

Dorothy had seen actual stars being born and dying in deep space.

She had watched whole constellations shift.

A man behind a curtain did not hold her attention for very long.

Neither did Kansas.

The Ozians described Kansas reverently as Home.

They showed Dorothy pictures of it.

Everything there was black and white.

There were flat fields, small houses, fences, and the suggestion that if Dorothy were sufficiently grateful she would understand why returning there should be the great ambition of her life.

Dorothy stared at the pictures.

“It looks like Canvas,” she said.

Nobody knew what Canvas was.

Dorothy didn't either, exactly.

It was simply some place she'd heard about where everything looked washed out and unfinished.

This answer was added to the list of concerns regarding her attitude.

“She lacks humility,” the Ozians concluded.

Dorothy considered this.

From the perspective of a star, humility seemed to be an extremely peculiar human performance.

Stars did not apologize for burning.

Moons did not make themselves smaller so planets would feel important.

Nebulae did not bow.

Black holes certainly did not submit résumés proving their modesty.

Dorothy was perfectly capable of admitting when she was wrong.

What she could not understand was the Ozian definition of humility, which appeared to mean knowing exactly how much smaller you were expected to behave in the presence of somebody wearing a larger hat.

And the Ozians had enormous hats.

Their important people wore tremendous hats.

The more important the person, the wider the brim.

Some hats required structural reinforcement.

At parades, the most powerful Ozians appeared in hats so enormous that attendants walked beside them to prevent the wearers from tipping over.

Around their necks hung great golden chains bearing medallions shaped like pieces of cake.

Cake was extremely important in Oz.

Nobody could explain why.

There was ceremonial cake.

Victory cake.

Memorial cake.

Patriotic cake.

Religious cake.

Anti-Witch cake.

Pro-Wizard cake.

Cake celebrating people who had received other cake.

The highest-ranking Ozians wore several cake medallions at once.

There was icing everywhere.

On banners.

On buildings.

On speeches.

On history.

Whenever something ugly happened in Oz, someone immediately piped decorative icing around it and presented it again.

Dorothy found the entire spectacle exhausting.

To her it looked like crap piled into a pretty arrangement.

Apparently this observation also demonstrated that she lacked humility.

Then there was the Witch.

The Ozians said the Witch was evil.

Absolutely evil.

Historically evil.

Unambiguously evil.

The Witch, meanwhile, announced that the Wizard was evil.

Absolutely evil.

Historically evil.

Unambiguously evil.

The forest animals had opinions too.

Whenever Dorothy entered the woods, squirrels emerged from trees shouting,

“THE WITCH WILL SAVE US!”

Birds fluttered overhead crying,

“HELP HER! HELP HER!”

Rabbits distributed tiny pamphlets.

But when Dorothy returned to Oz, everyone shouted,

“THE WITCH IS DESTROYING EVERYTHING!”

“Douse her with zero soda!”

“Take her broom!”

“Bring it to the Wizard!”

“Then perhaps he will finally send you to Kansas!”

The zero soda puzzled Dorothy most of all.

The Witch had enormous reserves of it.

She offered Dorothy some once.

“No thank you,” Dorothy said.

“It has no sugar.”

“That isn't the issue.”

“It has no calories.”

“I still don't want it.”

The Witch narrowed her eyes.

This was apparently another loyalty test.

Dorothy failed that one too.

Eventually she began to suspect that the Witch barely existed at all.

Not literally.

There was certainly a woman wearing black somewhere, making speeches and ordering zero soda by the case.

But the Witch—the monstrous Witch the Ozians described—was something Oz continually manufactured because Oz needed an enemy.

Without the Witch, nobody could explain why the hats were necessary.

Without the Witch, nobody could justify the cake medallions.

Without the Witch, people might begin asking uncomfortable questions about the Wizard.

Even the Witch needed the Wizard.

Without him, what would she put in the sky?

The arrangement was remarkably efficient.

The Wizard needed the Witch.

The Witch needed the Wizard.

Their followers needed each other.

Everyone remained terrified, furious, loyal, and extremely busy.

Then both sides came for Dorothy's family.

Not together, of course.

Each side insisted the other side had done it.

The Wizard's people said Dorothy had failed to demonstrate sufficient loyalty.

The Witch's people said Dorothy's refusal to join them made her complicit with the Wizard.

Lion was frightened.

Toto was struck.

The straw boy was torn open and scattered across a field.

Dorothy spent hours gathering him handful by handful.

The tin girl's body was dented.

One arm was nearly pulled loose.

Dorothy sat beside her children afterward with a needle, thread, hammer, oil, bandages, glue, and a terrible silence inside her.

Something ended there.

Not her kindness.

Not her capacity for love.

Her participation.

When the family was repaired as well as families can be repaired after people have decided they are symbols instead of people, Dorothy packed a wagon.

Oz assumed she would finally take the Yellow Brick Road.

She did not.

She found a dirt trail.

Nobody had decorated it.

Nobody had named it.

Nobody stood beside it selling miniature Wizard figurines.

It simply disappeared between the trees.

Perfect.

Dorothy followed it.

At the end of the trail she found a cottage.

Seven dwarfs had apparently lived there at some point, although Dorothy had no idea where they had gone.

They had left the place filthy.

There were socks under chairs.

Crumbs in drawers.

Tiny cups everywhere.

A suspicious stain on the ceiling.

And leaning against the kitchen wall was the Witch's old broom.

Dorothy picked it up.

She swept the floor.

Miles away, the Witch was preparing her nightly message in the sky.

THE WIZARD WILL DESTROY YOU!

Unfortunately, she had misplaced her broom.

This caused a forty-five-minute delay while her staff attempted to locate it.

Eventually the Wizard himself sent her a replacement from the Witch's Amazon gift list.

Free delivery.

Crisis resolved.

The sky message resumed.

Dorothy knew nothing about this.

She was busy making the cottage into a home.

She planted tomatoes.

Beans.

Herbs.

Pumpkins for her straw boy.

Flowers for her tin girl.

She built a fence Toto could patrol.

Lion slept in the sun.

And Dorothy planted apple trees.

This caused an ideological emergency in Oz.

Apples had recently become politically significant.

Nobody remembered exactly when.

One faction declared that the apple represented knowledge.

Knowledge was sacred.

Knowledge was liberation.

Knowledge was resistance.

Therefore Dorothy's apple pies were offensive because she was taking the sacred symbol of knowledge and turning it into domestic food.

“She is trivializing knowledge!” they cried.

“She is literally consuming enlightenment!”

“She has reduced intellectual liberation to dessert!”

The opposing faction was horrified for an entirely different reason.

To them the apple represented forbidden knowledge.

Disobedience.

Sin.

The disastrous moment when women began asking questions nobody had authorized them to ask.

Therefore Dorothy's apple pies were equally offensive.

“She is feeding sin to children!” they cried.

“She is celebrating disobedience!”

“She is normalizing forbidden fruit!”

Both groups produced essays.

There were public statements.

People who had never met Dorothy discussed what her pies revealed about the moral condition of Oz.

Someone published a drawing of Dorothy wearing an enormous serpent around her shoulders.

Another produced a pamphlet titled:

THE DANGEROUS POLITICS OF PIE

The knowledge faction said:

“If she truly respected the apple, she wouldn't bake it.”

The anti-knowledge faction said:

“If she truly respected morality, she wouldn't eat it.”

A third faction emerged arguing that apples had never been political until Dorothy made them political by refusing to explain whether her pies were political.

Someone started to say something about figs and pears, but someone else pulled a trap door lever, and that someone was disappeared from all records.

The Wizard's office released a statement.

The Witch released a longer one.

A professor wearing three cake medallions appeared on Oz television and explained that Dorothy's silence itself constituted a powerful statement.

Dorothy, meanwhile, was standing in her kitchen trying to decide whether the next pie needed more cinnamon.

Her daughter tasted the filling.

“More.”

Dorothy added cinnamon.

Outside, the straw boy carried pumpkins into the shed.

Toto slept beneath the table.

Lion had discovered a patch of sunlight on the windowsill and appeared determined never to move again.

Dorothy rolled another crust.

There were no yellow bricks outside her cottage.

No Emerald City.

No Wizard.

No Witch.

No loyalty oaths.

No enormous hats.

No cake medallions.

No benches telling her whether she was permitted to sit.

No one asking when she intended to go home.

Because Dorothy had finally understood something Oz never had.

Home was not the place somebody sent you when you had completed their quest correctly.

Home was not a reward.

Home was not conformity.

Home was not Kansas.

Home was the place where the creatures you loved could sleep without being tested.

It was a kitchen table.

A patched straw shoulder.

A repaired tin arm.

A huge dog snoring beneath a chair.

A brave little lion asleep in the sun.

An apple pie cooling beside an open window.

And a dirty old witch's broom resting by the door because, stripped of everybody else's symbolism, it turned out to be extremely useful for sweeping.

Some nights Dorothy stepped outside and looked back toward Oz.

She could see its green glow beyond the hills.

Occasionally another message appeared across the sky.

THE WITCH IS COMING.

Then:

THE WIZARD IS LYING.

Then:

PROTECT OZ.

Then:

SAVE OZ.

Dorothy looked up from her garden.

She had once been a star.

She knew what a real sky looked like.

And she knew the difference between light and advertising.

“Fuck Oz,” she said.

Then she went inside.

There was pie.