There was a life before the plains, but Dorothy, though she tried, couldn't remember it.

The girl hung up her blue and white checkered dressed dry in her bedpost.

Uncle Henry clawed at the dirt with the hoe outside.

Aunt Em sat on the floor next to the basin, but the thrice used water as she scrubbed away

lunch from the plates to prepare them for dinner, a cycle, a circle constantly turning.

They rose, they worked, they ate, and then they slept,

only to rise and work again. Dorothy and her small bed over by the window, M. and Henry

and their larger bed on the other side of the room, the room that was their living room,

kitchen, and bedrooms all in one. The memory before this place where, on a clear day,

you could see forever and nothing all at once on the endless Kansas horizons was gone. But the

life still remained in Dorothy. For now, on the nights when she sat outside and helped Aunt

M with the stitching, glancing up to watch the heat lightning in the nights when she sat outside and helped Aunt Em with the stitching, glancing

up to watch the heat lightning in the distance, she would sit and listen to the woman,

the woman who had been, in her words, a pretty young wife. The sun and the wind and the endless toil

had changed her, she said, not looking for Dorothy to respond, but to hear, as

if the words themselves held some power, as if speaking of the past helped to fade a little

more slowly.

She had a spark in her eyes when she came here.

The sun took that.

Em didn't mind hard work. It wasn't the hard work,

it was the constant work, the steady wearing down of the days and the years, until she glanced

in the mirror and didn't recognize the face looking back at her. On those nights, she would talk about

...