Miss Spitfire (11 page)

By the time Captain Keller passes by the window
on his way to the office, I've heard Helen's stomach gurgle more than once.

Striding up to the casement, he calls, “Good morning, Miss Sull—Sullivan.” The sight of his daughter sprawled across the floor startles him into choking on my name, but he manages to keep his composure. Until he sees Helen's untouched breakfast sitting next to my empty plate, that is. Then his eyes narrow and his brows hunch together.

“Miss Sullivan, do you have any idea what time it is?” His tone is deliberately even.

“I don't,” I tell him, returning his glare level for level.

My insolence stuns him for the length of a breath. “Miss Sullivan,” he says again, a dash of venom lurking under his tight-lipped gentility, “it is nearly ten o'clock. Don't you think Helen has been deprived of enough in her life?”

Anger radiates through me until I hear it pounding in waves against my ears. I have it in mind to let him know that she hasn't been deprived of nearly enough. But the edge in the captain's voice warns me I'm walking a fine line with him.

“I'll deprive her only as long as she disobeys,” I return, battling to keep my voice level. “She'll have her breakfast as soon as she dresses herself.” He doesn't answer. I risk a jab. “Is that so unreasonable, Captain Keller?”

His jaw stiffens. “When Helen is ready, send Percy
to the kitchen for a plate of hot food,” he directs, lifting his chin to glance coolly down at me.

“Hot food is a privilege,” I snap. “If Helen wants a warm plate, she'll have to dress sooner.”

Puffing himself up with authority, the captain tugs at his cuffs, then straightens his collar. “Miss Sullivan,” he begins.

I feel myself shrivel.

“Do you know what we said to the Yankees when Lee surrendered to Grant?” he asks.

My head jerks up. “I don't.”

“‘You only won because you had more Irish'” the captain finishes, and marches away toward town.

Openmouthed, I watch him go. “I won,” I murmur to myself.

And it only took ten days.

Helen holds out until just after noon.

Percy comes in with the dinner tray and stands in the doorway, befuddled by Helen, lying still on the floor amid her dress and stockings. “Walk right by her,” I tell him, “and put it on the windowsill.” When the smell of the hot food passes over her, Helen gives a little snuffle. Percy glances at me, his eyebrows raised. I shake my head and beckon him to the window. The minutes tick past without so much as a tremble from her. And then the slightest puff of a sigh stirs the tangled hair across her forehead, and I see her fingers creep across the floorboards toward a stocking. If I'd blinked, I would have missed it.

I feel a shift inside me as a smile breaks my face. “Take that cold dish of breakfast away please, Percy. It looks like Helen is ready for dinner.”

From then on things are different. As if by magic I have not had any trouble at all with Helen since. Captain Keller stops in morning and night, but he never interferes. Both of them have tested my limits and found Miss Spitfire does not budge.

The first time I take Helen outside for a frolic in the garden, she pushes my guiding hand away and stumbles off the porch on her own. “Go on, then, if you think you know the way,” I tell her.

Exploring with her feet, she shuffles along, her hands searching the air. Keeping myself between Helen and the big house, I follow along as she muddles her way toward the boxwood hedges.

As soon as she touches them, her confusion vanishes. She blinks, and without warning, gestures fly from her fingers, one after another. “What's all this?” I wonder, bemused by her enthusiasm. Mingled between motions I can't decipher are a jumble of elaborate pantomimes: She tugs at her chin as if pulling on imaginary whiskers, makes motions of hoeing and digging, mimes doffing a cap, milking a cow, and pumping water. I hold my breath, waiting for her to bolt, for the big house stands perhaps twenty paces away.

“Surely you know where you are now,” I say aloud To my surprise, Helen makes no move toward her home. She only picks her way along the shrubbery, never letting go with both hands at once. Then I
understand. The bushes don't reach to the house, and there is no path here. With nothing and no one to guide her, the space between the buildings might as well be miles.

Now when we go out, I put my signs into her hands. Every afternoon we tour Ivy Green from end to end. Before long I've learned the name of every man and beast on the property and relayed them all into Helen's palm.

Her mind tantalizes me with glimpses of brightness. Already she can spell “doll,” “cake,” “card,” “hat,” and “key.” She hasn't any idea what the signs mean; I could have trained her just as easily to clap hands or turn in a circle instead of spelling. But it isn't important for Helen to make sense of what she's doing yet. What matters is her fingers don't hesitate to make the letters when I give her the objects. Laura Bridgman learned the same way—first matching the words to the objects by rote, then the great leap: understanding.

My only worry is Dr. Howe never mentioned
how
he got Laura to make that leap. I don't think he knew himself how it happened. All I can think to do is to do my best and leave the rest to whatever power manages what we cannot.

Even beset with such difficulties, I'm thankful every minute for this little bower. We eat our meals out on the piazza, shaded by vines so luxuriant they
cover the garden beyond. Percy brings the meals and takes care of the fire, so I can give my entire attention to Helen.

The more I find to busy her restless limbs, the more normal she becomes. When I first came, her movements were so insistent that no one could help feeling there was something unnatural and almost weird about her. The simplest things, stringing beads or crocheting, consume enough of her attention to funnel some of that frenzied energy away. Now when the boredom creeps up on her, she comes to me, filling an imaginary string with beads or working her fingers under my nose like the crochet needles until I put something in her hands. I have little fear of her fists now, though she still refuses to be led and knocks everything in her path aside rather than step askance. Far be it from me to judge her for that, though—she blunders into far less with her hands and feet than I do with my tongue and temper.

In the open fields I show her how to tumble, turn somersaults, and roll down hills. We bend our backs inside out, arching over the ground like bridges. Sometimes I enlist the servant children for a game of crack-the-whip, and Helen frolics among them like any child her age. When they tire and try to drift away, she stands before them and snaps her arms back and forth to show she still wants to play.

In the late afternoon we return, panting and scented with tramped grass, sweat, and sunshine. From time
to time I smuggle crickets home in my pockets, then drop them into Helen's hands for the impish delight of seeing her splutter with astonishment as they spring from her palms like living firecrackers.

When the weather turns temperamental, we stay indoors and exercise with a set of dumbbells until she's mastered the movements I learned to the tune of Verdi's “Anvil Chorus” at Perkins. Captain Keller is so tickled by his daughter the strongman he's promised to fit up a gymnasium for her. One cloudy afternoon she feels the rumble of thunder even before I've heard it and goes searching for the weights herself, pumping her arms up and down until I understand and pull the dumbbells from their shelf.

On especially good days I take our lunch out into the yard, and we picnic under the trees. Helen gathers wildflowers to weave into clumsy chains, and I pluck blossoms from the azalea bushes to fit over our fingertips like caps for elves. Bedecked as finely as any fairy queen, she snuggles into a large grandfather oak with a crotch of roots like an armchair. While Helen sits, stroking a sheltered clump of violets, I play the muse, spelling songs and poems into her free hand.

I only wish I knew more music than laments and tavern songs. Once, a palsied old man told me he knew a reel called “Annie Is My Darling,” but nothing so rare as a fiddle existed in the almshouse, and no tune of any kind would sputter from his toothless gums.
Even the melodic poetry my father used to recite for me in Gaelic is no more than a hazy recollection. Little wonder—I couldn't understand a word, but the mournful sound of it thrilled me. Giving up on the words, I hum with Helen's hand on my throat, trying to recapture the cadence and coax the contours of the sounds from my memory.

In the end I recite everything from nursery rhymes to Byron and Shakespeare. Helen pays most attention to the childish ditties and finger plays, for I make my hands leap and skip like rabbits to their bouncy rhythms. The pertinence of “Bessie's Song to Her Doll” tickles me so, I recite it over and over.

I inch toward affection with her, but Helen dances out of my reach. She accepts my touch, so long as I'm spelling, helping her dress and wash, or teaching her a new pattern with the beads or crochet needle. If I try to kiss her or hold her in my lap, she wrests herself away. At least she's stopped screaming at the touch of my skin.

At night I dare to caress her. Propped on my elbow beside her, I trace the fine bend of her brow or brush my fingers under the curve of her chin. Such a pretty child she is, with her brown-gold hair and round cheeks. I wish I could draw her in close to me, to feel the murmur of my voice humming the old Irish songs.

Instead I have to settle for the Perkins doll. She nestles near and tight, rests her cheek against my skin, and lets my eager fingers stroke her curls. But oh, how I wish she had breath and weight and warmth.

I try to remember I've been hired as Helen's teacher, not her friend, not her companion. I came to earn a living, and kisses from a blind child, no matter how dear, won't pay my way in the world.

“And yet, touch is all she has,” I whisper to the doll. “Why isn't mine good enough?” I'll confess, those first days I was hard on her, but I never harmed her. I
never thrashed her without reason, the way my father beat me.

And what if I had? Children forgive so much for the sake of a tender moment. I know I did.

Many a night my mother hid me at the sound of Dad's footsteps, yet there were times when I'd crawl like an adoring pup into his lap. I remember how often he came stumbling home, the bawdy songs spilling from his lips. Verses from “John Barleycorn” and “Ugly Mrs. Fen” made my poor mother stir in her bed, but she never said a word unless he started into “Easy and Slow.” Then she'd be up shouting, “Shut that mouth in front of your daughter!” Sometimes I'd dare to creep from my corner, for if he spied me, he'd wink and whisper the last verse for my ears alone:

Oh, how I loved him then.

If I can find a reason to love as worthless a man as Thomas Sullivan, I don't know why Helen can't feel the kindness in me.

How strange to think there was a time when my fingers and lips worked separately. It's been only a few years since I learned to spell my own name, and now all day long I spell—speak, the curve of Helen's fingers riding the waves of my hand like a small boat. When Captain Keller appears at the window, I have to wind my fingers together to keep them from weaving words as we talk.

Today Helen and I have a long conversation about “mug” and “milk.”

No matter what I do, Helen confuses the two. Each time she points to the mug, she spells “milk.” When she spells “mug,” she mimes pouring and drinking.

“That's what I get for trying to show two words at once,” I sigh. I should have given her the empty mug first and added the milk later. Now everything's muddled. I wonder if she thinks the milk is part of the mug.

“Milk,” I tell her, dipping one hand into it and spelling into the other. I pat her hand, and she makes the letters
m-i-l-k
. Next I let her drink the milk and make her spell it again.