(people who read the first section--the intro--will note that I changed the name of the main character from Gabby to Manizha)
CHAPTER ONE:
Over the Rainbow
Manizha was halfway aware of the fact that there weren’t often tornados in Washington State. Not even tiny ones. Yet the wind-swirl coming near her mother and grandmother’s house was a tornado, just like she’d seen on TV, and it was picking up speed. The tornado was gray against the dim April sun and looked like Manizha’s twenty-five cent toy top, which was gray and black and made pretty patterns when spun.
Clinging to her cornhusk doll, Sally, Manizha put her front three fingers in her mouth and sucked on them, watching the tornado as it came closer. She thought it was kind of exciting, and wondered what would happen if her house, cow and car were swept away while Grandma was at the grocery store.
Auntie usually took Mommy to the grocery story because Mommy couldn’t go by herself anymore. She got lost and would start crying, or refused to buy anything but sweets, and anyway she had lost her license when Manizha was six after the “episode.” Today Mommy couldn’t go to the store because of her headache. She’d spent the whole morning moping about, whining to Grandma, begging that her head hurt too much and her limbs were disjointed.
Mommy hadn’t changed her clothes in a couple of days and she had that wild look in her eyes, so finally, flustered, Grandma had gone to the store, promising Manizha a beautiful birthday cake and a special present if she watched Mommy for forty-five minutes.
It was Manizha's seventh birthday.
Now Manizha was standing on the porch, her homemade dress flapping in the wind, moccasins on her feet, dark brown hair blowing and tangling in front of her wide, brown eyes. She clutched her doll. The tornado was coming such a lot closer to their home. Manizha was beginning to panic.
She dropped Sally on the porch and ran into the house.
The house smelled of frybread, of sweet grass and beeswax, of cigarette smoke and Muffin, their dog. The carpets were brown and the coach was big and soft. Mommy was laying on it with a washcloth on her head and a gingham thrown over her body. The Price is Right was on TV.
Manizha ran up to her.
“Mommy!” she shook her leg. “Mommy come and look! There’s a tornado coming!”
Mommy sat up slowly.
Mommy wasn’t Native American like Manizha and Daddy. Mommy had ash-blonde hair and blue eyes. Her skin was white and she had pale, prominent features. Mommy was Russian, which is not Native American at all. Sometimes people used to whisper about Manizha’s mother, when they went to the reservation for Pow Wows. But then Daddy stopped seeing Manizha, and they didn’t go anymore, so it didn’t matter.
“What’s wrong, Manizha?” Mommy asked, sincerely afraid.
“There is wind coming and it’s storming!”
Mommy grabbed Manizha’s hand and they ran out onto the porch.
The tornado had blown away the fence that kept the cow in. It’d ripped in half the cowshed. It was right in Manizha’s front yard, just off to the side of the porch.
Manizha’s mother started laughing.
“Lookie, Manizha! Lookie! It’s just like the Wizard of Oz! It’s just like Dorothy!”
Her mother started singing, “Follow the yellow brick road, follow the yellow brick road,” and it made Manizha feel panicky and squelched up on the inside. She started crying a little bit and wished Grandma were there.
Manizha’s mother was hysterical with joy. She turned around and faced her little daughter, putting thick hands on tiny shoulders.
“I’m going to go to Oz, Manizha,” Mommy said. “I’m going to go to Oz. Let me just get my shoes!”
Mommy ran into the house and Manizha sat down on the porch, hard. Her body was swelling with the bigness of it all: having a tornado in her yard, Grandma being at the grocery store, mother in the house. The chicken shed had already been ripped from the ground and flung away, chickens sailing through the air and squawking.
Manizha’s eyes grew wide and she scooted herself against the beam on the porch. She picked up Sally and put her in the crook of her arm.
The tornado started to blow the other direction, toward the field. Manizha stuck her fingers in her mouth again and wondered if the whole crop would get sucked up, like chocolate milk a straw.
It had blown just a few feet away when Manizha’s mother ran out onto the porch. She had put on a flowery scarf and a big dress up hat. She was wearing cloggy red shoes over her socks.
Manizha stayed dead still.
Mommy bent down and grabbed Manizha’s hands.
“Are you coming to Oz with me?” she asked, ecstatic.
Mommy had smeared her ruby red lipstick all over her face. She had Manizha’s glitter eye shadow on.
“Mommy…” Manizha said.
Her mother turned around and ran down the porch, stumbling in her silly shoes.
Manizha was both horrified and intrigued. If her mother really went to Oz, Manizha wanted to go to. But Manizha didn’t think her mommy was going to Oz. Manizha had thought Oz was just a made-up thing with a girl in a frock to tell kids to have a good heart and stuff. She didn’t think you could go there actually.
Muffin had come out onto the porch. His body tensed up, tail stuff, front paw lifted, when he saw the tornado. He started barking. Manizha dropped Sally and grabbed onto Muffin’s collar.
“No Muffin, shhh.”
Her mother was running across the yard, through the wreckage of a chicken coop. The tornado was only ten or twelve feet away from her, and she was already being lacerated by swirling, wreckage-clumped air around it.
She turned around and blew Manizha a big, smacking kiss.
Manizha screamed.
Mommy ran into the tornado.
Manizha watched, horrified and electric. The tornado picked Mommy up a few feet. She spun around wildly, arms coming out of the sides. The hat flew off, sailing as wildly as the chickens had.
As quickly as it’d licked her mommy up, it spat her out, and for a moment, Manizha’s mother sailed, a broad, sickly smile on her face. Then she fell with a thump into the wreckage of the cowshed.
Manizha sat very still on the porch, petting Muffin until he got bored and went inside. She watched the tornado as it spun across the field, siphoning up the wheat and blowing it away. Then it died down, and Manizha walked into the house, shutting the door.
She sat down on the couch and wrapped herself in the gingham, turning up the volume on The Price is Right.
Half an hour later Grandma came home with Manizha’s birthday cake. It was vanilla.
Grandma was in a state of frenzy. She’d seen the tornado from the highway but had stayed well away for her own safety. She was practically shrieking.
“Where’s your mother, child? Where’s your mother?”
“Oh,” Manizha said, taking a bit of frosting off the cake with her fingers, “She’s gone off to Oz.”
I am enthusistic to read more.
