Dorothy said nothing.

"So maybe he has found your mama," said Uncle Henry. "And your little brother. Maybe they're all together, just like they used to be."

"Maybe Wilbur's there too," she said. She still thought of Wilbur sometimes.

"I should think that's right," said Uncle Henry. "So you say your prayers, and be a good little girl, you'll join them one day. They'll be waiting for you at the gate."

"By that time I'll be too old, and I won't care," said Dorothy.

But she didn't stop hoping. She just knew she had to hide it. Whenever she heard a dog bark, she would look up in hope.

But in another sense, Toto was always with her, silent and invisible, bouncing and spinning around her as she walked to and from school, or sleeping by the rusty stove while Dorothy did her homework. She could almost feel him, tiny and coarse-haired, growing warmer next to her at night.

She told stories to herself to account for why he was still there. She could see the stories happening very clearly. There were thieves and they came and tied Aunty Em up and were going to steal money from the tin box behind the flue, but Toto came back and saw them and fetched Uncle Henry, and the thieves were foiled, so Toto was a hero. Aunty Em let him lick her face.

Dorothy daydreamed many things, walking back and forth from the crossroads. She daydreamed that an angel came down, right in the middle of school, where all the other children could see her. And the angel said that because Dorothy was so good, she could have three wishes. And Dorothy would wish that her mother was back, and that her father came back, and that they all lived together in St. Louis. And the angel would smile and say, "Your wishes are granted," and there would be a great wind that would pick Dorothy up and blow her through the sky, back home.

She daydreamed the size of gravestone she would have. She thought that gravestones were earned by goodness, rather than paid for by money, and she imagined her gravestone, as big as a house, with angels carved all over it. Then she felt guilty because she knew her mother didn't have one like that.

She felt guilty remembering her mother. To dream that her mother was back, rocking Dorothy in her lap, singing to her, divided Dorothy in two. Because the mother who Dorothy remembered, soft-faced with pursed lips, was nothing like the mother Aunty Em talked about. She wasn't wild, she was hardworking. She had to practice the piano and she had to rehearse. She wasn't a poor, silly little thing. She was sensible and kept a cleaner house than Aunty Em did. She was often away and tried to make it up to Dorothy. Dorothy remembered her mother kneeling down on the floor with her to make cakes in the shape of men with sugar faces. She was sure she could remember her mother and her father having a snowball fight in the park. She could also remember her mother on the settee, sobbing, clasping her hands and saying, "Dear God, please don't let me ask him back. Don't let me call him back." Outside on the street her father was walking away.

To imagine she was back with her mother would remind Dorothy that something was wrong. Aunty Em was wrong. And Dorothy loved her Aunty Em. She had to love her. Everything depended on Aunty Em now. Her mother may have been beautiful and kind and sometimes terrible, but she couldn't help Dorothy. She wasn't there.

Dorothy would have to divide and find different places to keep things within herself. Memories here, love here, hate there, dreams here, school there. And hope?

She talked to Toto as she swept the floor, as she told Aunty Em she loved her, as she greased Uncle Henry's boots.

"Toto, you bad, bad dog," she would tell him, in imitation of Aunty Em. She would whup him, and he would cower in the corner, shaking. She would beat him mercilessly with the broom, kick him in the ribs and out of the door.

"Sit up and beg," she would tell him, and he did, feet pumping helplessly in midair, waiting for an answer that never came.

On the wall, there was an old sampler, slightly charred in one corner. It was signed in needlework: Millie Branscomb, aged 8, 1856.

"There is no place like home," it said.

And there wasn't, not anywhere.

Culver City, California-February 1939

We have also seen, that, among democratic nations, the sources of poetry are grand, but not abundant. They are soon exhausted: and poets, not finding the elements of the ideal in what is real and true, abandon them entirely and create monsters. I do not fear that the poetry of democratic nations will prove insipid, or that it will fly too near the ground; I rather apprehend that it will be forever losing itself in the clouds, and that it will range at last to purely imaginary regions. I fear that the productions of democratic poets may often be surcharged with immense and incoherent imagery, with exaggerated descriptions and strange creations; and that the fantastic beings of their brain may sometimes make us regret reality. -Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

If I only had a heart, lamented the Tin Man, close on half a century ago. In our contemporary fantasies, the androids are made of sterner stuff… -Sheila Johnston, in a review of the movie Robocop, from The Independent, February 4, 1988

It was five-thirty when Millie got to work. Five-thirty in the morning, that is. Took the bus. Knew most everybody on it. They all worked for the studio too. She said Hello to them; they murmured back. She got a couple of minutes' shut-eye, forehead on hand. She could feel the cough and throb of the bus through her elbow as it rested on the edge of the window.

A few minutes before they arrived, Millie put a fresh piece of Wrigley's Spearmint in her mouth, gathered up her bag and thermos flasks, and got up. She stood by the middle door, early, to avoid the exodus. Practically the whole dang bus got off at MGM.

The morning smelled of unburned gas and it was dark. There were pools of light around the studio, Millie said hi to Joe at the gate. She always brought him a thermos of coffee.

"Hi, Joe. Boys here yet?" she asked him.

"Yup. They'll be in the chair. Most of the kids are here too." He thanked Millie for his coffee and passed her yesterday's empty thermos.

"Welp. Off to work," said Millie. "Say hello to Joyce for me."

Millie had been over to their place. Lived in Santa Monica, right near her. Nice, ordinary people. Most of the people working at Culver were nice, except for the bigwigs and some of the actors. Even most of them were okay. So how many folks are wonderful at five-thirty in the morning?

Sometimes actors were. There were some of them who were just never offstage. They'd talk to you and keep you entertained while you worked. It was one of the many good things about this job.