The train raced down the tracks, then the Pullman’s whistle shirred the air three times, loudly, shaking us. “South Station,” Peter said, squeezing my hand.
When we clambered off the train, the metal steps clacking beneath my low-heeled shoes, the air was filled with the scent of leather briefcases from commuters rushing past, of pretzels and ham sandwiches from open lunch stalls, and then the sudden rush of chill air as someone, far off, opened the great doors to the streets of Boston.
“Where are we going? What do you see?”
All around us, Peter said, war posters gleamed from the station’s walls: “Patriots! Use cornmeal! It Saves Wheat!” urged a green and red one; “Buy a Bond of the Liberty Loan and Help Win the War!” shouted another.
“Look at that messy pack of kids. Italians, I’ll bet,” Peter said. He described the vast crowds of immigrants, most of them clutching straw baskets filled with matches, their voices a kind of strange music in the vast hall.
“Oh, perfect,” Peter said.
“What?”
“Here comes one of the mothers, barreling toward us. She’s left her six kids sprawled on a bench, and she’s got her baby rocking in a sling in her arms. Jesus, she’s almost here. Let’s get a move on.”
Within seconds I smelled the sharp scent of talcum powder and felt the woman’s hand sticky from a pear she had been feeding the child.
Peter tried to pull me away, but I resisted. “Yes, she’s Helen Keller.” Then to me he said, “You won’t believe this: she wants you to touch the baby for good luck. Is she crazy?”
“People do it all the time,” I said. “Once a lady in Wrentham came to King’s Pond just to swim where I’d been. She said she wanted to be in the ‘angel water.’”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. They think I’m a miracle. That’s what people want, some of that. So if she wants me to hold the baby, please, yes.”
People believed something magic would be theirs if they touched me. Yet Peter knew, as few did, the price of that miracle: I always needed a constant companion, someone with me, day, night, day—to dress me, lead me through strange rooms, protect me from harm, even at a cost to themselves. It’s why Annie once said, “I sacrificed my life so Helen could have one.”
I wanted to be like that mother, my own hands sticky with pear juice. So when she gave me the child I pulled its warm body close in my arms, and when it bit me, hard, I welcomed the sting. “Is she beautiful?” I asked Peter, my arms cool after he handed the baby back.
“Most babies look the same, squashed faces, kind of like pups. Even John’s daughter—”
“You saw her?” I stood still.
“John couldn’t get to the hospital without me. Two nights ago—he called me when Myla was in labor; I gave them a ride. You didn’t think he’d have cab fare, did you?”
“Was he …”
“Drunk? Couldn’t tell.”
“That should have been Annie’s girl.”
“Judging by the circles under John’s eyes, and the thinness of his wallet, Annie’s better off. It’ll be no picnic raising that kid.”
“Peter.”
“It was right up the street, in fact. Charity ward at Boston Hospital. You wouldn’t believe the scene. If you want to know the truth, Helen, John tried to call Annie that night. Right after Myla gave birth. He went to a pay phone—I know because I had to lend him a nickel.”
“But Annie never heard from him.”
“I know. The minute after he dialed her number he hung up. He had to go back to Myla and the baby.”
“Of course. Babies need attention.”
“As far as I can tell they don’t leave time for much else.” He lifted my bag, smoothed my hair, and turned me toward the exit. “Come on, lady, we’ve got a speech to give in a half hour and a marriage license to track down after that. I can barely keep track of you, and you can barely afford me. Thank God we don’t have another mouth to feed.”
“How right you are,” I lied.
The space around us seemed suddenly too large. Peter led me toward the exit; crossing the station, he eagerly grasped my hand. He hurried me past the children crowding the doors, his whole body pressed forward to get outside, fast.
“So, Helen, if you ever have a … scare. . . you’ll talk with me, right? If you’re in trouble?”
“You mean pregnant?”
“Yes.”
“Peter, do you think there’s anyone more important to me than you?”
“What matters is that we’re married.”
“Now you’re talking,” I said.
“We’ll live in Wrentham, cut our expenses, let Annie recuperate.”
“That’s a picture I like.”
I lied so easily, to keep him with me.
Peter turned the revolving door, stepped in with me, and in the crush of people we were swept out to the sidewalk with the city roaring around us. Peter drew in his breath: away we walked, into the sunshine of the day.
Chapter Twenty-eight
We had outwitted Mother. Annie was too sick to push Peter away. But the events that would start to unfold in Boston would prove that the future was out of our hands. We were too delirious with happiness. Peter hailed a cab outside South Station, and as we sped through the Boston streets I rolled down the backseat window to inhale the city’s dense air. The thrum of hundreds of people, the odor of trolley cars and warm brick buildings made me giddy. As we swung closer to downtown I suddenly sat up straight: the car’s engine vibrated at a red light.
“Catholic,” I said. “A wedding.”
“What are you babbling about?” Peter edged closer to me on the warm backseat.
“Church. It’s a Catholic church across the street, right?”
“Yep.”
“And there’s a wedding party. They’ve just come out onto the steps.”
“Right again.”
“The door’s wide open and the bride’s holding lilies.”
“You’re a …”
“Genius,” I said. “Did you think I can’t tell what’s going on outside? It’s the incense.” I told him that’s how I recognize a Catholic church, by the aroma of incense and palm, its open door giving off a different scent from the Episcopalians, whose churches smell of cool marble, leather books, and mothballs.
“St. Peter of Columbine.” Peter read the sign outside the church. “They’re flowing out after a midday mass. Too happy to be Episcopalians. This is perfect,” he laughed. “The divine Miss Keller can tell what kind of buildings we pass. What next? You’ll drive the cab?”
“Why not? We just passed the Trinity Church—the Episcopalian church—three blocks back. It’s across from the Boston Public Library. Annie and I gave a talk there last spring. We’re on Boylston Street, and soon we’ll come to Boston Public Gardens; the Boston Common is just beyond it.” I felt the cab lurch forward, and then turn left. I leaned into Peter as we moved closer to the Common.
“All right, smarty. Thanks for the guided tour.” Peter handed me a Braille copy of my speech. “We’ve got ten blocks to go, so let’s get a little work in. Let’s run through it one more time.” He inhaled the fall air.
“I don’t want to talk about speeches. I want to talk about weddings. Yours and mine. I’ll wear white.”
“There might be a problem with that.” Peter laid his hand on my thigh.
“Are you saying I’m not pure?”
“I’m saying you’re the purest thing I’ve ever seen.”
At times what I say or do is turned against me. In 1891, when I was eleven, I sent Michael Anagnos—the head of the Perkins School for the Blind—a gift that would change me forever. I’d written a story called “The Frost King.” Anagnos couldn’t wait to publish it to national acclaim: “Look at blind and deaf Helen Keller! She can write; she can create; she is not what blind and deaf people are thought to be!” He claimed my story was astonishing.
But soon enough he and the Perkins School charged me with pl
agiarism: the story was too close to one published years ago. Had Annie read me the story when I was a child? Had I inadvertently thought the story was mine? Had I, in my dark and silent world, made the words my own, because words were all I had?
At Perkins, Annie and I were led into a classroom to face a panel of eight officers of the school. Annie was asked to leave; I faced my interrogators alone. The blood throbbed at my temples and I could hardly answer during the hours of questioning: Was I a liar? Had I stolen the story? Did I know those words weren’t mine? Even worse: Had Annie put me up to this, for fame and renown?
I wished I could have disappeared into the sky.
I wished Annie hadn’t burned with disappointment.
I wished not for what people thought I wanted—sight, sound. I wished only to speak for myself and to not be a burden cursed with pleasing those who carried me. And if I made a mistake, would Annie, and others, leave me? If I was isolated, how would I live?
God forbid I should utter a mistaken word.
That night, after I’d been sent home from Perkins, I lay in my bed, weeping. I’ve said in my books that I wept as I hoped few children had wept. I felt so cold, I imagined I should die before morning. I can say now, as I’ve said before, that if this sorrow had come to me when I was older, it would have broken my spirit beyond repair.
Later I learned that the board had voted and were tied; Anagnos cast the vote in my favor, to exonerate me. But I never wrote a story again. I watched my words carefully: one mistake and my reputation would be shattered. I was an acorn, a snowflake, a leaf a man could hold in his hand, easily broken.
“We’re almost there, Helen,” Peter spelled to me. From the cab’s open window I smelled the pond water from the swan-boat area in the Boston Common. I inhaled the scent of Peter’s tobacco. His warmth comforted me. Soon we would marry; Peter would protect me. I would help him write and publish. No one would get in our way.
I turned toward him and spelled into his hand. “I can’t wait to be alone with you.”
“Not long, my pet. We’ve got a sleeper car for the train back.”
“But I’m not tired.”
“Me neither.” Peter brushed my leg with his hand, and I moved closer to his scent of musk, tweed, and smoke. But the cabdriver must have turned around to stare. Peter shifted away.
“It’s going to be a knockout, that speech of yours. It’ll be all over the press.”
“Perfect. No one will suspect we’re about to sneak off. They’ll be too busy talking about Helen Keller, the rebel girl. Taking on President Wilson in her speech, no less.”
“He deserves to be taken on. We have no right to be heading toward war …” His palm warmed under my fingertips. “And you’re just the girl to do it.”
“I’m not a girl.”
“Sorry. You’re a beautiful woman. And you’ll knock it out of the park today. I’m betting on you,” Peter said.
“I’m not a gambler.” I dropped his hand.
“Well, I am, Miss Keller.” He took my hand back. “And you’re a sure thing.”
I wasn’t always a sure thing. After the plagiarism scandal at Perkins I had felt hollowed out, bereft. Annie brought me back to Tuscumbia. But even there, a cloud of suspicion hung over me. All that broiling summer Annie spelled into my hand, but I wouldn’t respond. A rage twisted inside me. A feeling of a hand slipped over my mouth. No one—not Annie, not Mother or Father—could reach me.
But I was not entirely alone.
Listless, I sat on the front porch. Daily, the servants plodded across the floorboards and gave me water, or porridge hot and sweet. Humiliation still burned in me. But as their footsteps faded across the porch, I sat up. I suddenly knew: we—the servants and myself—I’m ashamed to say it, were in some way the same.
Even though the South had lost the Civil War, families like ours were still on top. Our servants were descended from slaves. They were powerless, trying to find their way after the war, forced to build gaiety out of sorrow. But so was I. Like them, I was invisible, vulnerable, easily shamed: a self-hatred burned at our core.
Later that fall Annie wrote to Michael Anagnos at the Perkins School that I was “restored to myself.” But that wasn’t true. I wasn’t restored to myself. I was different. From then on I knew that my life would be dedicated not only to the blind in later years, but also to anyone who was vulnerable, unable to speak.
My lot would be to side with the marginalized.
I was no longer frozen in my grief. I had a voice, and I intended to use it.
Even so, as the cab lurched up the steep hill of Beacon Street toward the rally, I became unsure, even panicked. What Peter couldn’t know, not in the caustic way I had to learn, was that my success as an advocate for others had its price: loneliness. I’d been isolated from the deaf-blind community: they called me a plaster saint, because my successes were held up to them as impossible feats that only I could achieve. One deaf-blind man, very successful, found a statue of me at his place of work and promptly hid it.
I will never fully belong to any world. Not any. But I refused to be isolated. I was defiant, ready to break into a new life. Still, when Peter put the Braille copy of my speech in his pocket, I was more determined than ever not to be left alone. “Did I ever tell you that I once said any man who married me would be marrying a statue?”
“I love art,” Peter spelled into my open hand.
The cab stopped, and Peter pulled out his wallet to pay. I felt his hand waver, then go still.
“Let me.” I slipped my wallet into his hand. “Why don’t you hold on to my wallet while we’re here. It’s so easy to lose.”
“And you’re so easy to see through.” Peter handed back the wallet. “I’ll take the cab fare, since this is official Helen Keller business, but carrying around a wallet embossed H.K. just doesn’t suit me.”
“It’s just that …”
“Helen, you have more money, and you’re more famous. It’s something I can’t forget.”
Peter said the Massachusetts Statehouse loomed on our left, with its dignified brick facade and shining gold-leaf dome, and a statue standing on the side lawn.
“Ah, Miss Anne Hutchinson, a woman after my own heart. An early Boston colonist, hmm, in the 1700s, no—” Peter paused. “Okay, the plaque says she was around from 1591 to 1643.” He put his arm around my waist.
“I know my history.”
“You didn’t go to that fancy school for nothing. But just for once, Helen, let me be the fountain of wisdom.” Peter said Anne Hutchinson actually believed she had the right to express her own views; she told those Puritan boys there were other ways to think. “That riled them up: she was expelled from Massachusetts for preaching her own beliefs. She was a smart aleck.”
“Like me?”
“Absolutely. People were drawn to her. She raised their hackles. In the 1600s she said women’s souls were as important as men’s—”
“She was right about that,” I said.
“Even had prayer meetings just for women at her house—a regular rabble-rouser, like you, Miss Keller.”
“And what did she get for it?”
“The usual. Banishment from proper society—sent to what’s now Rhode Island to live her life in exile—and an early death.” Peter tightened his hand on my waist.
“Lovely.”
“Don’t forget, they made a statue of her, to remind everyone of her virtues.”
“Statues are for smashing.” I opened the door.
Chapter Twenty-nine
The vibrations of a marching band shuddered up my calves as Peter and I stepped out of the cab. In the chill wind of Boston Common Peter took my arm and guided me along the sidewalk, where I felt the streams of people pushing past.
“What’s going on?”
“It’s unbelievable. There’s a whole marching band, fully suited up, blaring their horns and beating their drums right down the middle of Beacon Street, and, wait, behind them a regiment—looks like
an army regiment. There must be six, ten, no, twelve columns of kids—boys, really—all suited up in uniforms. Volunteers, ready for the slaughter.” Peter pulled me back from the crowd.
“But isn’t it the day of our rally?”
“You got it, sister. How handy that they’re out marching, to remind the faithful of the importance of war.”
“Don’t call me ‘sister.’” I pulled his hand under my coat.
“Right. Mrs. Fagan, I should have said.”
I walked by Peter’s side into Boston Common.
“Banners everywhere,” Peter said. “Extolling the war. And the boys—they look fifteen, eighteen, like babes, really—gawky, chewing gum, tramping past—are they in training? Wait, yes, Boston Reserves Unit 18. They’re part of this clamor for young guys to get ready in case we go to war. Preparedness, that’s Wilson’s whole idea: let’s get a hundred and fifty thousand young men into the army and ready to die.”
As they tramped past in their heavy army boots, I inhaled the oily scent of their guns. The European war was coming closer.
“It’s unbelievable,” Peter’s hand spelled rapidly. “Wilson’s campaigning for reelection with the slogan ‘He Kept Us Out of War.’ But he signed the National Defense Act last June, remember? Now he’s building up the national guard to four times its size, says he’ll make our navy as powerful as any in the world, and has these high school kids out in droves as recruits for the army. Tell me, Helen, exactly how is he keeping us out of war?”
“Our whole country is blind,” I said.
“You said it. Don’t they read the newspapers? Over one million soldiers killed in the battle of the Somme since July—one battle, Helen, and one million dead. And it’s still going on.”
“Are people clapping?”
“Oh, only about two hundred prowar people—they’re crowding the sidewalks, cheering these poor kids on. The traffic on Beacon Street’s stopped to let them cross.”
Helen Keller in Love Page 14