Miss Spitfire (2 page)

More than that, I'm afraid Helen's family expects too much from me. If they've read the newspaper articles about Laura, they're prepared for a miracle. They don't know Laura's “miraculous” education was hardly perfect. It's true she learned to communicate, but her sentences are strange, as though her thoughts have been translated from an unknown language or strung together by a machine. Even if I manage to duplicate Dr. Howe's success, there's no guarantee the Kellers will be satisfied.

Which reminds me of the most worrisome problem of all: No one, not even Dr. Howe himself, has repeated his achievement in the fifty years since he and Laura made history. I've read all of his reports on Laura, and I know his methods like the Our Father, but except for Laura, Dr. Howe's methods failed with every deaf-blind student he met. If the Kellers are hoping for another Laura Bridgman, I don't know how I—an untrained Irish orphan—can please them. I can't tell them there may never be another Laura Bridgman; I can't afford to lose this job.

I have nowhere else to go.

There's not a relative alive who'd have me, and I wouldn't know where to find them now anyhow. I'd die of shame if I had to go back to Perkins a failure. Just to get on this train I had to borrow the fare from Mr. Anagnos. Besides, the way some of the institution's benefactors see it, I overstepped my welcome among the blind students and teachers the moment my sight was restored. Even then there was nowhere to send me
but back into the hands of the state, and incorrigible as I was, not one of them had the heart to do that.

Like a forlorn child, I wish for the doll that's packed away in my trunk. The blind girls at Perkins pooled their pocket money to buy it for Helen, and Laura Bridgman herself sewed the clothes for it with her cool, thin hands. I'm eager to give it to Helen, yet at the same time part of me wants it for myself. I've never had a doll of my own, and my lonely heart tells me this trip might be easier if I had something to hold on to. At least at Tewksbury I had Jimmie, for a little while.

Tewksbury.

For most people it's only a name. They know, in a formal way, it's the Massachusetts state almshouse. They think it's a shame people end up there. They read about it in the newspaper, sigh and shake their head, then turn the page.

It's not like that for me. Tewksbury was nearly five years of my life. I almost thank God I was too blind to see most of it.

•   •   •

When Jimmie and I arrive, they try to separate us. “Boy to the men's ward, girl to the women's,” they bark.

Jimmie whimpers. I fight. Like a beast, I kick and scratch and tear at them. I scream like the banshees in the stories my father told when he was only drunk enough to be cheerful.

They relent and send us both to the women's ward,
though Jimmie has to suffer wearing a girl's apron. We spend the first night in the dead house, unaware of the corpses piled about us.

Little changes about our lives when we're sent to Tewksbury. We're used to being poor and unwanted. We've always known drab and shabby rooms. All we have to adjust to is the constant hum of the insane, the laughter of whores, and the clatter of the metal cart that hauls the bodies to the dead house.

Our days form a pattern. We play in the dead house, cutting out paper dolls and taunting the rats with our scraps of paper. We learn to avoid the touch of the deranged and diseased. We play with the foundlings before they wither and die.

It's not such a bad life.

We have each other.

Until May.

The lump on Jimmie's hip grows until he can't stand up without screaming from the pain. A doctor is summoned. He bends over Jimmie's bed, then puts his hand on my shoulder and says, “Little girl, your brother will be going on a long journey soon.” When I sense his meaning, more from his voice than his words, terror sweeps over me and cruel fingers grip my heart. The pain makes me beat out at the doctor in a rage. Scowling at me like I'm a grotty dishrag he can't be bothered with, the doctor seizes my arms and threatens to send me from the ward. I cease my clawing and surrender instantly. I'll let no one but God separate us.

And He does.

I'm sound asleep when they roll Jimmie's bed into the dead house. When I wake and sense the emptiness in the dark where his bed should be, I'm filled with wild fear—I know Jimmie is dead, as surely as I know where they've taken him. But my anger is gone, and with it my strength. Only crippling dread remains. I can't get out of bed, my body shakes so violently.

Somehow I calm myself and make my way to the door of the dead house. The sound of its latch starts the trembling all over again. I feel my way to Jimmie's bed and pull myself up on the iron rail. I touch his cold little body under the sheet, and something in me breaks.

My screams wake the whole ward.

•   •   •

The very thought of it makes me tremble. I clutch at my bag and struggle to do as Tim, the driver who took me from the almshouse to Perkins, told me: “Don't ever come back to this place. D'ya hear? Forget this, and you'll be all right.”

I wish it were that simple. It's been seven years since Tewksbury, and still the memories creep up on me, seizing me with melancholy, restlessness, and despair if I'm not careful. I know Tim was right. I shall try to keep all this to myself and never tell the Kellers what I've come from. I shall be lonely, but I shall not be sorry I have come. The loneliness in my heart is an old acquaintance.

It's six thirty by the time I reach Tuscumbia. Sweltering in the southern heat, I watch the people come and go in their breezy spring clothes, and realize all at once how dowdy I must look. I step from the train and squint through the harsh sunlight at the faces about me. No one shows any interest in my arrival.

Finally a young man in a light suit catches my eye. As he looks me up and down, from my frumpy gray-and-red bonnet and burning eyes to my bedraggled dress and the felt bedroom slippers on my aching feet, the old shame of poverty darkens my cheeks. He looks almost as amused as the girls at Perkins did when I arrived from Tewksbury with neither nightgown nor toothbrush, unable to write my own name.

“Anne Sullivan?” He says no more, but I know from his tone that we shall never be friends.

“Annie,” I tell him. My mild Irish lilt, so easy to hide in Boston, stands out like a gunshot among the soft-edged southern voices. The young man's eyebrow rises as though he fancies I've stepped off a boat straight from county Limerick.

He leans forward and takes my bag. “Mrs. Keller is in the carriage.”

I follow him to the carriage, where a woman, not so much older than myself, waits. There's no sign of Helen. My anxiousness blooms into disappointment. How much longer until I see what's in store for me?

“Kate Keller,” the young man announces with a careless sweep of his arm in my direction, “
Annie
Sullivan.”

Mrs. Keller is tall and blond, with the kind of smooth skin I've seen only in the fashion plates Jimmie and I used to cut from the
Godey's Lady's Book
to paste on the walls of the dead house. She smiles—a warm smile, but a desperate one too.

“Oh, Miss Annie, it's so good to see you at last. Thank you so much for coming.”

At the sound of her voice a great weight rolls from my heart. She speaks with such sweetness and refinement—as though her words come from the throat of a lily. I don't hesitate a moment when she extends her hand to help me into the carriage.

“Do you have any luggage?” she asks.

“I do. One trunk.”

“James, go and see about Miss Sullivan's trunk.”

“Yes, ma'am.” His courtesy toward her seems to pain him. I watch him go, curious about Mrs. Keller's authority over him, for this James looks nearly twenty years old.

“Well, you can't accuse him of being too forward,” I remark.

“James is my stepson, Miss Annie,” she explains.

Leave it to Miss Spitfire,
I think. It'll take a shoehorn to pry my foot from my mouth. I steal a glance at her face. It shows no trace of anything but kindness.

“Captain Keller's first wife died some years ago,” Mrs. Keller continues.

Captain
Keller. Holy Mother, I'd forgotten Helen's father fought with the rebels in the War Between the States. Dr. Howe would turn over in his grave if he knew a Perkins girl was working for someone who once owned slaves. I'd turn over in my own grave, if I had one.

I nod and try to smile through this newfound worry, but she takes no notice. “It's just wonderful to have you here.” Again that hopeful smile. “We've met every train for two days.”

Her friendly grace warms me like an arm round my shoulders. Before I know what I'm saying, I confess, “I think I've been on every train in creation in the last two days.”

She laughs. “You'll feel better after a hot meal and a good night's sleep.”

I hope to feel much better once I've met Helen,
I
want to say. But I'd rather sever my tongue than risk being rude to this woman. Mr. Anagnos would marvel at my restraint if he could see me now—the girl who once threatened to scratch his eyes out.

James returns. “They'll deliver Miss Sullivan's trunk tomorrow,” he announces, climbing into the driver's seat.

The words stumble out of my mouth before I have a chance to catch them. “Are we that close to—to home?”

“Only a mile, Miss Annie,” Mrs. Keller tells me.

Excitement and anxiety roll in my stomach quicker than the turning of the carriage wheels as James drives us through the little town. The bright southern sun makes my eyes water, but the landscape helps quiet my restless thoughts. Tuscumbia looks more like a New England village than a town. Blossoming fruit trees line the roads and lanes—there are no streets—and the good, earthly smell of the ploughed fields floats on the air.

For a little while I can almost forget about Helen as the sights and smells of springtime melt away my memory of the gray Boston winter I left behind. Blooms lie draped over every bough like dainty shawls, and the green lawns glow in the early evening light. Modest redbuds and slender dogwoods texture the breeze itself with sweetness.

It shall not be hard to live in a place like this.

A nudge from Mrs. Keller interrupts my reverie.
Pointing down a long, narrow lane ahead of the carriage, she says, “Our house is at the end of there. We call it Ivy Green.”

As the horse ambles round the corner, I can scarcely sit still in my seat. Finally the house comes into view, and it's all I can do to keep from jumping out of the carriage and pushing the slothful creature faster.

Captain Keller waits in the yard for us. As the carriage pulls up alongside him, I see in an instant how James Keller will look twenty years from now, for they share the same strong face and smooth, even features. The captain's brown hair is quite thin on top, though, and his beard looks like a fistful of fine copper wires bristling down over his necktie. He fairly boils over with exuberance as he helps me from the carriage and pumps my whole arm up and down with his hearty handshake.

“Welcome to Ivy Green, Miss Sullivan,” he booms.

I have to catch my breath to answer him. All that comes out is, “Where is Helen?”

He chuckles and takes my arm, leading me toward the house. I'm so eager to meet my little pupil I can hardly walk.

Stately magnolia and live oak trees anchor the lawn, curtaining the yard with their shade. Beyond them stands the house, plain and chaste as a cottage-not at all the grand plantation manor I'd expected. The walls are a crisp white, and the tall front windows have green shutters. An abundance of English ivy creeps all along the foundation and up the trunks of the trees.

Ten yards or so from the porch Captain Keller stops and pats my hand. “There she is,” he says, nodding toward the doorway. “She's known all day that someone was expected, and she's been wild ever since her mother went to the station for you.”

Helen stands on the porch, her cheek pressed against the railing's drapery of honeysuckle. Her chestnut hair is tangled, her pinafore soiled, and her black shoes tied with white strings. Her face is hard to describe. It's intelligent, but lacks mobility, or soul, or something. I see at a glance that she's blind. One eye is larger than the other, and protrudes noticeably. The familiar words ring in my ears before I can stop them:
She'd be pretty if it weren't for those eyes.

But none of that matters. Something in me stirs when I see her, something that has lain still and cold since the day my brother died. She seems so utterly alone, her look so familiar, for a moment I imagine I'm seeing the shadow of my own child-soul. My arms ache to touch her, the desire so strong it startles me.

My foot is scarcely on the first step when Helen
races toward me with such force that I'm thrown backward against the captain. I right myself and try to take her into my arms, but she squirms from my caresses and writhes against my attempt to kiss her cheek, dissolving my sympathy into hurt.

Her hands roam everywhere at once-my face, my dress, my bag. Like a swift little pickpocket, she yanks the bag away from me and tries to open it. She struggles for a moment, then feels every inch of it. Finding the keyhole, she turns to me and twists one hand in the air like a key, pointing to the bag with the other. I'm delighted by her intelligence, in spite of this dismaying audacity.