I know the Wicked Witch of West Pearce. She doesn’t have green skin but tanned skin. She had black hair, but it faded to brown near the ends after being bleached by the intense summer sun. She had a sly, cackling voice that was constantly calling, “Morrrgan?” Depending on the Witch’s mood, it was either a question or an unquestionable command. She didn’t have a pointed, black hat. Rather, we all wore hats with wide, round brims and a velcro strap that ran under one’s ponytail. The point was to keep hair off the sandwiches; they never did any good.

The customers sometimes reminded me of her flying monkey minions, though they sometimes turned against her too. They came in with their haughty, narrowed eyes and charred hearts. Seemingly harmless, they were ready to run their claws down the glass, beat their chests, and screech wildly until they got what they wanted. It was a sad life, being in that stingy place when I knew the Emerald City was awaiting me at the end of a shift and not knowing which one it would be.

I was Dorothy: flown in the doors by a tornado of mere chances and desperate to get home to where I belonged. But I was by no means the only Dorothy there. Plenty of us had naively come through those doors, only to have our expectations crushed. One soon learned that, armed only with Mike, the Wizard of Oz who rarely showed his face, never brought good news, and relied on us to save his precious shack; Vina, the Cowardly Lion who would no sooner hold our stares than she would jump off a cliff; and Sara, the Tin Man with no heart for any of us, we were no match for the Wicked Witch.
The veteran Dorothy said she no longer believed there was a Good Witch that brought us all to Oz. She had lost her faith in reaching the City long ago and believed that Oz was more of a dumping ground for society, as smelly and unwanted as the dumpsters outside. And what did that say about us? The real authority there, and we all knew it, was Rosa--that very Wicked Witch--and her mutant primates. They were all disgusting, with their black, burning tears, and their fake smiles. When we looked at them, it was easy to understand why the veteran Dorothy said what she said. We were the dregs in the bottom of Mike’s coffee cup. He watched us as we ran around without satisfaction or purpose, and he relished in his only power against us: that the wall he claimed to have built around the Emerald City was as tall and featureless as polished china, making it was impossible to enter the City without going through the gate the way he wanted. Or so we all thought.
Eventually, though, I realized that the Wicked Witch was actually not so wicked--just misunderstood. She was emotional, yes, hard to please, and callous; but, there was another side to her. The Son of the Witch was the best thing that ever happened to her, and yet, did anyone ever ask about the Son’s father? He was a truly Wicked man who cursed the Witch and beat the Witch and taught her to be Wicked. I can hear her shrieks rattling the windows of Hell as though I had been there. She was just a Dorothy once… just an innocent Dorothy like me, so I found myself relating to her in the strangest ways. Change was not a story that pleased her anymore nor did it please me. But, I could still close my eyes and swallow it like a nasty pill, and she had long lost even that ability. The Witch knew that stagnancy brought pain, but change brought worse: unknown.
I tried to teach her the language of the Emerald City. I drew her chameleons and butterflies and talked about semicolons. She wanted to learn; she had a real desire to. Though she’s tried numerous times to get through the gates of the Emerald City, she’s never actually succeeded. She didn’t speak the correct language of Oz, so she couldn’t pronounce the password, and they banned her from the City. She saw the images of her future more clearly than anyone else I’d ever seen, and the future she imagined didn’t involve snitchy minions. She wanted to learn to play the piano and guitar; she wanted to believe in a Savior; she wanted to marry someone who wouldn’t make her ugly and Wicked inside. Rosa told me of the evils that led her to her current state stuck outside the City gates: how she walked through deserts because she could see the green light ahead, how her long-forgotten brother drank himself to death, how she heard the wolves howl at night like they were following her and waiting for her to fall asleep forever, and how she became an object without a name.
For the first time after a year and a half of wandering aimlessly through dark forests of plants with glowing eyes, I finally understood. There is no Emerald City for us, only this awkward state between banishment and acceptance. We cannot follow the yellow brick road because it does not exist. Yet, we keep looking; and we keep sniffing red flowers hoping, believing that they will be stray poppies. At least then if we sleep, we’ll close our eyes knowing that we were close to the fields outside the City walls. But there is nothing out there for us, only what we make of our lives in between. No matter how hard we work, Oz cannot let us in the gates because he himself does not know the password. There is no password; there is no gate. Wizard, Witch, or Dorothy, we’re all searching for the same thing. Maybe there is a Good Witch out there somewhere, but no one can really know for sure. All we can do is either keep holding on to or let go of that faith. Neither answer is correct.
Rosa--that very Wicked Witch--could not accept this. She still wanted to believe that the City was waiting for her, just as long as she waited long enough. She finally left her Son’s Wicked father, but by that time the Wickedness was already in her blood, inside her heart. I begged her to understand; I begged her to follow the highway instead, but she refused. In the last few weeks, she realized, I think, that I was right and that I was going to leave. And after years of being lied to and manipulated, I was surprised when leaving turned out to be as simple as that. I just walked through the door and was gone; I followed the black paved highway and never looked back. The lights of opposing cars flashed across my vision in protest; the intersections were all red; they gave me the chance to return. But I couldn’t obey the signs. That day I was my own person, breaking their norms and making my own life.
I know the Wicked Witch of West Pearce. She’s never seen Kansas before.