*
The forest invaded by dead animals and the soft smoky light motionless, lingering between the trees. And, when you think of it now, Dorothy’s face is above the treetops and her dress smells of sex and sugar, her arms perspire as she reaches out to you, and she swears at the sun-bleached umbrella blowing over all the time, and her hands and arms are covered in liver spots. The sun burns so fiercely through the treetops and her eyes are black lakes you want to drown in and she strokes the fabric of your dress, stars and smiles and snow, and she swats the bluebottles away from your face.
Dorothy?
Dorothy?
Are you there, Dorothy?
DOROTHY (over by the hotel room window): I’ll do whatever you want, my sunflower.
VALERIE: As long as you don’t wear those vile pearls.
DOROTHY: My white pearls. They’re my favorite pearls.
VALERIE: Not at the funeral, not at my funeral.
DOROTHY: Whatever you want. No artificial pearls, no plunging necklines, no fur, no make-up. Tell me what to put on and I will.
VALERIE: Dorothy?
DOROTHY: Yes, Valerie?
VALERIE: I’m so scared of dying. I’m so scared of dying on my own.
DOROTHY: It’s only heaven, my darling . . . only heaven can love you for yourself alone and not your yellow hair.
VALERIE: I don’t have yellow hair.
DOROTHY: I know, but never mind. It’s just a metaphor.
VALERIE: I don’t have yellow hair.
DOROTHY: It doesn’t matter anymore, Valerie. It’s not important what you call it. You’re my little yellow-haired girl.
VALERIE: But I think I’m gray-haired now. And it’s getting thin. It’s falling out, horrible piles of it lying on the sheet when I wake up.
DOROTHY: Don’t be afraid, baby.
VALERIE: I’m so light now, just a cloud. I have no hands. I miss my hands so badly.
Valerie
The sun burns through the umbrella. The brown, ferrous-smelling river water unmoving, stagnant. Dorothy and Louis still down by the riverside on their day out, drinking beer and lying outstretched on a blanket in the heat. Transistor radio, sweaty cheese, beery kisses, picnic.
You go down to the river’s edge alone. Your feet in dark mud, in river slime, birch trees reaching for water, specks of rotting surface pollen. You will remember forever the magical light, the sludgy water creatures, distant bird calls, rolls of ponderous clouds above. The shade of the trees, a shimmering green yearning and for what, you do not know, just a beast in your stomach wanting out and shafts of light descending through the green darkness. Just a song somewhere that sounds like a legend, but not here; a garden full of kindling, a wasteland, a leap of snow leopards hunting across the plain. You want only to hold that song, to possess that foreign language and the legend living and breathing in the river.
Your feet slide in the brown, vile-smelling muck and you do not know how you are going to catch up with all the longing and how you will cope with it if you do. You just know there is a song, like a legend, but not here, not now, only green darkness. The swaying crowns of the trees, dapples of light all around, making you tired and dizzy, and when you fall asleep by the river you dream you are flying high above snow-capped mountains and people applaud you far below.
*
And when you wake, Louis is under the treetops and the heat has gone and the sun is embedded in flashes of light shooting into your eyes as you open them and the backs of your thighs are stuck to the shiny surface of the backseat and covered in pondweed and mud and the unreal intensity of the light serves as darkness when you later recount it to Cosmogirl:
the darkness descended when I was nearly seven. We were on a picnic by the river. Dorothy was there. Louis was there. The light was so strong I didn’t know which way to turn. When I woke, Louis was next to me. I didn’t see Dorothy. The leaves cast shadows on his hands. I was lying on my back and Louis was there. My dress was pure white. I never had a white dress after that. He put his hands underneath my white dress. I let him. I let him. Then darkness. The light through the trees on his hands.
Manhattan Criminal Court, New York, June 3, 1968
Arraignment Hearing, Night-time
Apparently it is raining outside, which concerns you not in the slightest, because inside the courthouse there is no weather at all, just stone and wood and dark suits and the sweet little traffic officer, William Schmalix, in his white gloves. All the questions are the wrong ones and outside in Madison Square Park you have kneeled and reached into the pants of untold strangers. You are wearing Cosmo’s yellow top and underneath it nothing moves.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Judge David Getzoff summons Valerie Solanas in the case of New York State versus Valerie Solanas.
VALERIE: Thank you so much. It’s not often I shoot someone and have the honor of coming here.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Everything you say here can later be used against you.
VALERIE: I don’t doubt it.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Personal circumstances of the accused. Valerie Solanas. Age: thirty-two. Address: none. Marital status: single. Profession: unknown, the accused states she is a writer. No previous criminal record. Born in Ventor, Georgia, April 9, 1936.
VALERIE: Hey, hey, hey you. Mister. What do you know about love?
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: You are accused of homicide or attempted homicide. The charge is not yet established.
VALERIE: Aha.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Do you know what day it is?
VALERIE: I know I should have done a bit more target practice, Mister.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Do you know where you are?
VALERIE: As far as I can see, I’m not anywhere I want to be.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Do you have a lawyer?
VALERIE: No, but I have no objection to appearing outside history.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Do you need a lawyer?
VALERIE: I need a kiss.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: I’m asking if you need a lawyer.
VALERIE: I regret that I missed. If a lawyer can help me undo that, I’ll gladly have a lawyer.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Do you remember why you shot Andy Warhol?
VALERIE: Unfortunately, I tend to remember slightly more than I need to. And in this case, there was someone who had too much control over my life and I found it rather hard, to cut a long story short, to adjust to it.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: Why did you shoot Andy Warhol?
VALERIE: You should read my manifesto if you’re interested in joining S.C.U.M.’s supporters. It will tell you who I am.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: You handed yourself in to a traffic officer yesterday on Fifth Avenue. Why did you do that?
VALERIE: Because I wanted some company. Because I was fed up. And he seems really nice, William Schmalix. And clever. I’ve never seen such a tiny policeman before and he still managed to arrest me.
MANHATTAN CRIMINAL COURT: This is the final time I will ask about a lawyer. You will need defense counsel. Can you afford a lawyer?
VALERIE: I want to defend myself. This, unlike so much else, will remain in my own competent hands.
Ventor, Georgia, Summer 1945
Men Back in the Factories After the War
The tarot cards are lying fanned out in strategic places around the house. Dorothy predicts that everything will be fine and there will be new children in the house and new desert flowers and the house will stop being a shithole and Louis will stop staring into the distance and the grapes and wild animals will survive out there where there is only sand and stones and merciless sun. As long as Louis is there, she is happy and busy and convinced she will succeed in growing sunflowers and sweet peas. As long as Louis is there, she drenches the house in soap and washes the sheets and nightshirts overnight and serves cornflakes with milk and syrup for breakfast and forever has new projects: a bath in the kitchen, a saucy hat, piles of dead butterflies in glass jars, solar panels on the roof, a new flavoring for the winemaking machine, and myriad underwater dreams of a future for Valerie somewhere else. A shift in the breeze inside you when she gazes at you with her dark eyes, convinced you are a changeling in need of special sustenance and special books and games, a stranger to her, unexpected but secretly wished for, like winning on the horses without having placed a bet.