Elizabeth, We're Not In Kansas Anymore

In the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy's house in Kansas is drawn up into the inside of a tornado. After riding the top of the cyclone, the house is deposited abruptly on the ground in a new world. Dorothy survives this wild ride and as she steps out of the front door of her house, we are transported with her into a world that is completely different from the one she is used to. This new world is full of color and beings that she has never seen before. As she tries to navigate her way through this place, it is clear that Dorothy's version of sanity and reality is nothing like what she encounters there. At times she cannot decide if this new place is better or much worse than her home in Kansas. Talking scarecrows and lions that walk upright give way to witches and flying monkeys and a wizard that seems to want to see her dead. She must learn who to trust and be willing to take help when it is offered to her, even when that help doesn't seem as if it could save her.

In “A Question of Power by Bessie Head”, a woman named Elizabeth has an experience that could be seen as the mirror image of Dorothy's. The frightening beings and unreal visions live inside Elizabeth's head and inside her house. Her home is not the safe and comforting place that a home is supposed to be. She is tortured by her inner demons and frightened by opaque spirits that seem to want to see her dead. It is outside Elizabeth's house that she finds reality and some small threads of sanity. For Elizabeth, Kansas and home is outside her front door.

For Elizabeth, a lonely and frightened young woman who is a refugee from her own country, there are no friends or familiar places for her to cling to. She starts out teaching in the village school, but her growing insanity makes it impossible for her to keep her job. When she is at home in her bed, she can fight her wars with the demons and monsters that stalk her. But when she steps out in public, she has to try to maintain a semblance of normalcy. At times that semblance cracks and she cannot help but show her inner fear and torment to those around her. When that happens a few times, she can no longer hide her troubles from the village. It seems as though Elizabeth will have to hide in her house and fall into total madness. But a stroke of good luck comes to give her a reprieve. Elizabeth finds work at the experimental garden in the village that is being run by a man named Eugene, who is also a refugee from her home of South Africa. Eugene understands Elizabeth's loneliness and despair and tries to offer her a place where she can work and not have to communicate if she doesn't want to. In the garden Elizabeth finds a kind of peace that she cannot know anywhere else. The warmth of the sun beating down on her head and the smell of the dirt and plants there calm her soul. She finds a kind of sanity in working the ground and planting vegetables. It seems that while she is at the garden there is a tether holding her to the earth and to reality. She helps the others working there to turn what was a piece of dry, wasted land into a green and productive paradise. The neat and straight rows of vegetables make her happy and seem to represent a kind of orderliness that she craves in her life and in her mental landscape.

Elizabeth meets other people working in the garden, but two of those people become important lifelines to reality and sanity. They are as opposite as two people can be, and both become very important in her life. One is Tom, a young white man who comes to her village to build the garden. Tom tells Elizabeth that he travels from village to village building garden plots and helping the people of the villages to start gardens. He is an eccentric young vagabond with no roots, who seems to implicitly understand Elizabeth and how to communicate with her. He listens to her words and takes them seriously and tries to answer her in intelligent ways. When Tom visits her house for dinner, he makes himself at home by washing up at her kitchen sink before they eat. He seems to almost baptize himself every time he comes into her home. Tom is so sensitive to Elizabeth's world that at one point we think he might hear one of her spirits talking to her. Elizabeth is comforted by Tom's presence after she gets to know him. Just talking to him helps her to make some sense of what she is thinking and saying. Tom is not frightened by Elizabeth. In fact he sees her almost as a kind of prophet and listens to her intensely. He seems to know that it is important to understand what Elizabeth is saying not only for himself but for her. Later on in the story when she is at the most violent stage in her mental anguish, she tries to send Tom away. But he refuses to give up their friendship and will not stay away. Tom's steadfastness is one of the thin lifelines that holds Elizabeth back from the pit of madness and suicide.

Another important friendship that comes to Elizabeth through the garden is that of Kenosi. Kenosi is a mysterious woman and at first it is hard to tell if she is Elizabeth's friend or not. She barely speaks and shows little emotion. She asks nothing of Elizabeth except that she get out of her house and go to the garden to work with her. Kenosi appears on Elizabeth's doorstep early in the mornings and waits for her to be ready to walk to the garden. She seems to be a strong person, but there is no clue as to where her strength comes from or what is going in inside her head. At times it almost seems as if maybe Kenosi were struggling with her own inner demons. At first Elizabeth wonders what she wants from her, but after a while she accepts Kenosi's presence in her life as a given. When Elizabeth gets to the point in her depression and madness that she cannot get out of her bed, Kenosi appears at her bedside and insists that she get up and go to the garden. Kenosi seems to need Elizabeth's presence as much as Elizabeth needs hers. There is a bond there between the two women that cannot be explained by regular means. When Elizabeth is drowning in her own mental river of madness, Kenosi is there to hold her head above the surface and help her to breathe. She seems to instinctively know that the garden is where Elizabeth can find her comfort. Her daily reappearance holds Elizabeth back from the pit just as Tom's friendship does.

Neither of these two people are consciously trying to save Elizabeth. It is their immediate and steadfast humanity that is the hand that Elizabeth needs to hold to keep her from falling. Always before in Elizabeth's life there was no one to count on, no one she could hold on to. Her love of the garden opens the door to these two people and enables them to become what she needs. They have no answers for Elizabeth when it comes to how she can find her way out of her madness. But when she steps through her doorway and out into the world, they are there to travel on the journey with her. The ordinary compassion of these two people help to save Elizabeth from the darkness and terror of her own mind.

Elizabeth finds that she is her own great and powerful Oz and that if she takes the chance of help from these two creatures of the real world, she can find her way back to Kansas and home.