Miss Spitfire (14 page)

“Fine, fine,” he answers with a wave of his hand. “Is that Helen's supper there?”

“It is.”

“And why haven't you given her the rest of it?”

“I have. She doesn't want it.”

“Doesn't want it?” He crosses his arms and drums his fingers against his elbows. “She must be homesick. If this keeps up, you'll have to return to Ivy Green.”

My stomach twists like an overwrung shirt. “But she's so much more docile, Captain Keller,” I implore. “If she doesn't spend half the day whirling about like a cyclone, she's sure to eat less.”

“Perhaps, Miss Sullivan, perhaps,” he says, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. “But the child must eat. See that she gets enough. I shall not see her deprived.”

I nod. I don't agree with him, but for once I'm afraid to argue. Worn as I am by loneliness, the idea of returning to Ivy Green hardens my worries into a cold brick. I've worked so hard to bring Helen under my control. Even if the Kellers are willing to discipline her, I'm not fool enough to think Helen will obey another master without a fight.

Turning to go, the captain smiles and shakes his head. “She's learned more than I thought possible, Miss Sullivan.” The words tumble from my ears to my stomach like a tubful of wet laundry.

More than he thought possible?

What have I taught Helen these last ten days? Nothing remarkable—how to wash herself, feed herself. How to knit a scrap of wool. I've taught her no more than the average imbecile can learn—keep clean, keep quiet. And this from a child who spoke at six months old. Would the Kellers settle for so little?

A fluttering catches my eye. I look down and find my own fingers spelling out my agitation. Clasping them together, I thrust my hands between my knees to steady them. But I can't keep my thoughts from whirling.

I don't know which is worse: returning to Ivy Green and the endless tug-of-war over Helen's behavior, or the idea that Helen's own parents would leave her mind to rot in her head so long as she keeps quiet and doesn't make a mess. It's hardly more than anyone expected of me, and I was nothing but a blind poor-house
orphan. It's hardly more than anyone expects of a well-trained pet.

The thought drives me from my seat by the window, propelling my feet round and round the place where Helen sits stringing her beads in endless patterns. “I'm supposed to be a teacher, not a monkey trainer,” I tell her. The procession of beads continues: precise, perfunctory. “But I've hardly taught you a thing, have I? I've done no more than mold you into a copycat.”

Picking up one of the strings, I run it through my fingers like a rosary, examining its design. This is not one of the simple wood-glass-wood combinations I showed her. The pattern is more than a dozen beads long.

“And no one but me is willing to delve into your head,” I marvel. “They'd sooner starve your mind than see a few untouched morsels on your supper plate.”

Unless I can prove Helen's mind needs as much nourishment as her body.

From that moment I throw myself wholeheartedly into Helen's education. Following Dr. Howe's example, I make myself hold regular lessons at set times. I line the objects in a row and drill her again and again. But I spend the whole day long spelling, pouring words across her palm like streams of water.

All the day through I talk into Helen's hand. Not only single words, but whole conversations. When I speak, she touches my throat, feeling the buzz of my voice. Nothing like thought crosses her face, but the vibrations hold her transfixed, and I wonder if she has any sort of a memory of her own voice.

Trouble is, I don't know how to gauge Helen's progress. Measured in the amount of cake Helen consumes each day—I give her a bite as a reward each time she spells a word correctly—our work would fill a pantry. But even that mountain of cake hasn't taught her a thing. She copies new words day after day, never forgetting the old ones, and never shows a hint of understanding. It's as if her fingers have a memory all their own, separate from whatever sense lies sealed behind her eyes and ears. If it weren't for the cake, she'd show little more interest in spelling than she does in the hairbrush or washbasin.

And yet she prompts me to spell words now, patting my hand as though she wants to know the name of something. But the way she moves is so mechanical, her face so flat and uncurious, that I'm sure she's only mimicking me. She's come to expect a finger motion to match any object we touch, the way rain follows thunder. When I spell a word at her request, she ignores it, using nothing but her gestures to get what she wants. And she never bothers to repeat a word unless I cue her with that same patting.

One day under the pecan tree she finds a broken robin's egg. She brings it to me and pats my hand. I spell “egg,” then double my hands on the ground, the way I saw her do that first morning in the kitchen. She squats and cups her hands like a bowl with the egg inside.

N-e-s-t,
I spell. She grunts and searches through the grass. “Looking to raid the nest, you little vixen?” Instead she finds a pecan and brings that to me. I spell “pecan,” and her search shifts from eggs to nuts.

When her pockets are full of pecans, she makes a
hammering motion. I spell “hammer” to her, making her repeat it, then she makes her way along the path to the barn and kicks at the door until a stable hand comes running.

“Pat her hand” I command him. He gives me a sideways glance but does as he's told. I stand close by, praying for Helen to spell to him. Instead she shakes his fingers loose and makes the hammering motion again.

I slump with disappointment.

Shrugging, he plucks a wooden mallet from the wall of tools, and Helen scampers off.

As I watch her crack open the pecans on the brick path, I seethe with frustration. The feeling reminds me of my blind years—tantalized by the half sights around me, with no way to make sense of them.

Sitting in Uncle John's pasture, I'd twine my hands through the grass, twisting the long blades. My fingers told me they were slim and smooth as snakes' tongues, but my eyes couldn't distinguish one blade from another. No matter how near the ground I crouched, I saw only a blur of green as featureless as a woolen blanket. Knowing my eyes couldn't show me the grass as it truly was made me rip great clumps of it from the ground.

I grow to love and hate her homemade signs. She has signs for all sorts of things—people, objects, and even verbs. Many of them she's invented since we've come to the little house. They prove her instinct to
communicate, but I'd like to scream each time she creates a gesture for a word I've already taught her, like “bead,” “hammer,” “crochet,” “dumbbells,” and “crack-the-whip.”

Almost every day one of her signs confounds me. One afternoon she tugs at my sleeve in the middle of a lesson. Linking her fingers, she brings the heels of her hands together, like a hinge.

“What's this?” I ask. With a shake of my head I continue my spelling. Frowning, she shoves my hands aside and repeats her sign. I shrug. Her face constricts, and she works her hands in the jawlike motion once again, then waits.

I don't have the first notion what she wants. I haven't taught her the name of any object that opens and shuts that way. “What is it—a book? A door? Chattering teeth?” When I don't respond, she pushes her hands into my face, pounding them together. Surprised by her intensity, I bar her with an arm and try to sit her back down. Her eyebrows furrow; heat rises from her skin. Huffing, she gropes over the table. Nothing in reach satisfies her. Once more she levers her hands before my face, imploring me with her unnamed want.

I shake my head. I can't even tell her I don't understand, not really.

The anger grips her before my eyes. Her hands slow; her body shakes. I watch her chest heave faster and faster, see her fists ball. She makes the sign one
last time, then throws back her head and wails.

“I don't know how they could take this as mindlessness,” I whisper as the sound penetrates me. “Anyone can see your brain is screaming to be let loose. But you don't even know what you're struggling toward, do you?”

Even in Tewksbury I had it better than Helen—I knew there was a way out of my prison.

•   •   •

One day the wards rustle with quiet commotion. “Investigation,” I hear them say. “A commission from Boston.” Amid the whispers of public scandal and outrage I hear the name Sanborn, and my heart begins to race. It's been four years since I learned that name—
Frank B. Sanborn is the man you want to see about going to school,
someone said—and this is the first time I've heard it outside of my own dreams.

My situation is so ridiculous I want to sob with frustration. I'm not even certain Mr. Sanborn is among the commission, and blind as I am, how can I possibly recognize a man I've never met? But if I am to get out of this place, this is my only chance. From ward to ward I follow the tight bunch I hope are the investigators, straining to hear something that might tell me if any of them is Mr. Sanborn.

By the time they reach the big stone gate, I'm quivering with the desperation. Hurling myself into their
midst, I cry, “Mr. Sanborn, Mr. Sanborn, I want to go to school!”

I collide with a mass of legs and elbows. Woolen coat sleeves smear the tears across my cheeks. A hand grasps my arm. “What is the matter with you?” a voice asks.

Suddenly spent, I can only stammer, “I—I can't see very well.”

“How long have you been here?” asks another.

“I don't know.”

The voices rumble together, but they say no more to me. Someone pushes the hair from my face, straightens my apron. A handkerchief drops into my hand, and before I've realized what's happened, the men are gone. I stand there hiccuping, wondering what's to become of me, if anything at all. As I drag my feet away from the gate, my fingers find a bit of embroidery on a corner of the handkerchief, and once again I have a hope to cling to. Spelled out in fine floss are the initials FBS.

•   •   •

I wish I knew how to tell Helen that my spelling is her way out. “The key is in your very grasp,” I whisper. My fists clench, then go slack.

Her breath spent, Helen sinks to the floor, moaning. The mournful sound of it makes me want to curl away and hide. I soothe her the only way I know how: I swing the door open, then lift her to her feet and coax
her out to the garden. There she creeps under a hedge and buries her face in the broad ivy leaves.

“There's at least some feeling alive in you,” I sigh. The thought brings little consolation. Can she possibly realize what makes her so miserable?

She can't tell a soul how she feels. She can't even think it to herself. No wonder she spends her days kicking and screaming—what else is she to do with herself? Watching her huddle among the cool leaves for comfort, I wonder if she lashes out in fear as well. She must feel so small when the rage overpowers her. I shake my head at the thought of it: This brazen tyrant could actually be terrified by her own feelings.

Determined to spare her another frustration-tempest, I concoct a multitude of strategies for breaking into Helen's mind. I teach her verbs—“sit,” “stand,” and “walk”—guiding her from one action to the next like a puppet on a string. I try to connect my words with her gestures, spelling
m-o-t-h-e-r
if she rubs her cheek,
e-a-t
when she makes a chewing motion, or
b-a-b-y
when she rocks her arms back and forth. Nothing changes. In desperation I spell out the very ideas I'm trying to force into her head letter by letter:
A word is a symbol. It stands for an object. Its meaning is the same to everyone who uses it
.

Day after day the mug-milk difficulty torments me. No matter what I do, Helen persists in confounding
the two. I fill glasses, teacups, and bowls with milk, hoping to distract her from the notion of the mug entirely. I let her follow my hands pouring the milk from one vessel to another. Each time she tastes the liquid, she answers my tap with
m-u-g
. When I produce the mug to correct her mistake, she switches her reply to
m-i-l-k
. I snatch it from her and fling the horrid thing into the garden. A moment later my resolve returns, and I march outside to retrieve it. Set on unsnarling Helen's confusion, I return to the little house and begin all over again.

One evening at milking time I take Helen to the barn. After setting the mug under a particularly patient cow, I hold one of Helen's hands under the streams while I spell “milk” into the other.

No good.
M-u-g,
she insists.

With a groan I flop my head onto the cow's warm flank.

The next day I leave the mug at the little house and wet Helen's lips with milk hot from the cow's teat. Even with the taste on her tongue, she spells “mug” when I ask. I squirt a creamy jet into her face, my throat gravelly with the discouragement.

I wonder if a better teacher could have unlocked Helen's thoughts by now. I have more faith in Helen's mind than I have in my abilities. At least I know there's something inside her, scrabbling to get out. What is there in me but worry and doubt? Dr. Howe called for patience and zeal in educating the deaf-blind. I don't
know if I have either. Back on Uncle John's farm I had patience enough to lure birds into my bare hands, but I'm so flummoxed by Helen's stalled progress I'd like to shake her until the pieces of her lessons fall into place.

By the end of the week Captain Keller insists Helen return to Ivy Green. I can hardly argue. I asked to keep her sequestered only as long as it took for her to obey and depend upon me. I've accomplished that much, at least. But there's no guarantee my teachings will hold, and I have never been good at leaving anything behind, good or bad. So much has already slipped through my fingers.