Helen Keller in Love

by Kristin Cashore

  “The Star of Happiness.” That’s what Annie called me during the four years we performed as the “serious part” of a vaudeville show. From Boston to Los Angeles, in theaters ripe with the scent of workers’ boots and whiskey, we went on stage twice daily. I was thrilled; Annie, despondent. For our act she parted the velvet curtains to walk alone onto a stage arranged to look like a residential parlor. Silk dress rustling, the theater’s cigar smoke stinging her eyes, Annie stood beneath the hot lights to call out that no matter what trials I faced, I always met them with optimism and love.

  Then I came onstage.

  Guided to Annie by the tart scent of her rose perfume, I was exuberant. Backstage I had put on my own makeup, and as I walked out to my audience I smiled as I inhaled their warmth. Then Annie spoke my words. I was the Star of Happiness, because I knew the most important thing in life: love. Love and connection to others. That is what brought true happiness, I said. And I meant it. Music came up as our act ended. As the curtain fell, I felt the audience’s wild applause through my shoes.

  But we didn’t do vaudeville just for love.

  We also did it so that Annie would have money as she grew old.

  No matter that our fellow performers included a man who ate tadpoles. I was proud of myself. In our hotel, Annie, however, spelled into my hand just before sleep, “We have been miscast in life.”

  So we fell into debt that summer of 1916. Nothing new. We’d been in and out of debt for years and had tried everything: we had tried not reading the investment reports, we had tried tying them in bundles and putting them in sacks, we had tried making money by lecturing, vaudeville, but by age fifty Annie was worn out. This cough seemed a good reason to do what she had always fought so hard against. To lie down.

  And if she wanted to escape, it would be my duty to provide for the one person who gave up her life so I could have my own.

  Then just as the bedsprings shuddered and Annie’s heavy body leaned into the bed she said the magic words: “Helen, we’ve got to have Peter full time as your secretary when we get back home. I just can’t do it anymore. I’m going to make some arrangements. He needs to live nearby.”

  I’d never felt so alive—or afraid.

  Chapter Five

  A marble cell of dark. Without sight or sound, sometimes my life felt like a prison. But in our Wisconsin hotel room, where the smell of cornfields and night rain filled the air and I knew Peter would be by my side, that cell of dark broke open.

  I sat head up in Annie’s room, shoulders back, feet planted solidly on the wooden floor. I was going to be left alone with a man for the first time in my life. “Are you sure?” I asked Annie, my hands searching for her mouth. I lip-read her response by pressing one finger on her throat, one on her lips, and another on her nose, so I could “listen” to her words. I didn’t want to mistake her answer.

  “For God’s sake, what choice do we have?” I felt the dry, wry tone of her voice through my hands. “Stuck in this godforsaken town with another talk to give tomorrow, and no way to get home by train if I’m this sick—he’s our savior, Helen. A flawed one, that’s for sure. If you saw the way he eats—crumbs all over his fingers—and I’d rather break stones on the King’s Highway than hear him spout off about politics. If I hear one more thing about those young girls who jumped to their deaths from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, landing on the streets of New York, I’ll scream.”

  I didn’t move.

  “Perfect he isn’t, not even close.” Annie’s fingers rapped my palm. “But he’s all we’ve got.”

  I said nothing, as if my breathing would give me away. The clock on the wall above my chair made a ratcheting vibration as one minute, then two went by.

  “But he’s still a man.” Annie’s palm gave off the tautness she always had when she felt an enemy was near. “You’re not to let him touch you. From here up,” she gestured from my waist to my mouth, “nothing. And from here down.” She passed her hand over my waist, hips, and upper legs. “Absolutely nothing.” I was so taken aback that I wanted to jump up and leave the room.

  The upholstered chair beneath me scratched. “Yes,” I joked back, to get her mind off how much I wanted Peter to touch me with those fingers of smoke, whiskey, and twine. Instead of answering me Annie leaned forward. The door to her room shuddered as if someone was outside.

  “Who is it?” I asked Annie.

  “A crowd of latecomers tromping into the lobby, no doubt. They shouldn’t come in this late. I saw them clambering out of their car this morning after a hiking trip to George’s Falls.”

  Hoping to keep her attention on them—on anything, instead of Peter—I said, “A whole family and they didn’t bother to come to our talk?”

  “Barely anyone comes to our talks as it is. Don’t you see?” She tried to lie against her pillows in bed, but her cough forced her up, and I held her as she bent almost double, her back under my hand a long tense coil. Then she got her breath and went on.

  “We used to talk about your ‘miracle’: how you came to read, write, go to Radcliffe—succeed. That’s what audiences want to hear. They don’t want to hear you now, going on about President Wilson and your ideas that this war is a capitalist disaster. For God’s sake, Helen, you can’t encourage people to form a general strike and refuse to go to war.”

  “Why shouldn’t I?” I said. “The capitalists don’t care—”

  “I already heard that speech,” Annie said, “when you gave it in Carnegie Hall. Helen,” she shook my arm, “come out of the clouds. I just counted the receipts from tonight’s lecture: it’s half of what we got this time last year.” She dropped my hand and exhaled so hard I felt it in my bones.

  “In your talk tomorrow, no talk about war. Not a word. And drop that letter to the Germans in the trash. Do you hear me?”

  “Do I hear you?” I almost started a joke, but then remembered that Peter might laugh, but not Annie, not now. “I don’t want to argue.” I shifted toward the door to the porch. “Peter’s going to take me on stage tomorrow?” I asked again. “Where is he now? Is he still out there?” I felt her stiffen. I moved toward the door and swung it open.

  “Close that door.” She walked up behind me and put her hand on the doorknob. “Were you raised in a barn?”

  A warm wind mixed with the scent of brandy as she swung the door shut. “But Peter?” I said. My palm still held some of the warmth of his thumb.

  “He’s still out there.” Annie turned to the windows that faced the front porch. “You should see him. Pacing the floorboards like a loyal dog.” She paused. “What on earth is he waiting for? Why doesn’t he go to his room for the night?”

  “He’s waiting for me,” I said. Annie’s palm turned hard, almost metallic. Her suspicions rose between us, tightening the night air. “Why would he be waiting for you?”

  I kept my fingers still in Annie’s hand.

  “He works for us.” I was afraid to breathe. “Maybe he’s waiting for us to tell him to go.” Just like that she threw her blanket off, crossed the room in a sslap-sslap-sslap of her bare feet, and swung open the door. Peter’s footsteps moved quickly across the porch floor, until he plonked up the hotel’s stairway to his room, where he would stay until the next day.

  “No funny business tomorrow, Helen. I mean it.”

  “Trust me.” I lied so easily. I took her hand and squeezed it good night.

  When I felt my way to the door, then down the hall, the pine paneling rough under my hands, it was all I could do to stand at the bottom of the stairwell and then go on to my room beside Annie’s instead of climbing those stairs to Peter.

  Chapter Six

  “Do you dream in color?” people ask me. “In your dreams can you see?” I wrote a book about how the world comes to me through scents, taste, and that divine medium: touch. In that book I wrote of a dream I had about Annie. I was ashamed to admit that dream, but now it’s time to say it once and for all.

  The night Annie told me we w
ere almost out of money and that she was sick, I fumbled my way into my room but avoided the bed. I could not sleep. Instead I sat heavily in the desk chair by the door and read in the dark. My fingers traced the Braille pages so easily. But even that wouldn’t calm me.

  Because Peter would be my private secretary for the rest of the summer.

  As morning’s faint sunlight fell on my arms I pitched into an uneasy sleep.

  And I dreamed that Annie was perched high above Niagara Falls as I pushed her straight to the waters below.

  When I woke up, that image—heavy, murky in its shape—hovered at the dark edge of my memory. The Wisconsin air was heavy with rain, a sodden scent, and I couldn’t wait to see Peter, tell him I needed him by my side that day. If I didn’t go to him then, I might not go. So as the heavy thud of farm trucks labored up the road outside, I felt my way to my closet, picked a fresh dress from the first hanger, then crossed to my door and slowly made my way up the stairway. In my own house I have memorized everything—tables, chairs, rooms—and walk quite fast. But in new places I am lost; I can’t find my way even from one room to another without a hand on my shoulder to guide me.

  In my well of dark, I held the railing, climbed one stair, two, until my foot reached a pocket of air. I was at the top of the stairs. One door, two, three, I worked my way past the first three rooms and stopped nervously outside the fourth door.

  Two quick raps woke Peter. He opened the door and led me into his room, around the coffee table to sit on the settee by his windows. He leaned back easily against the cushions, the scent of night, whiskey, and tobacco on his skin.

  “Come on. Spill the beans. What is it?” he said, as if it were a normal occurrence for a woman to bang on his bedroom door at seven a.m. I shifted beside him, aware of his palm on my arm. “Okay,” he said after I told him Annie was too sick to take me on stage that morning, and that I needed him with me, well, all day. “We’ll trot over to the café, have a bite to eat, then do your show.”

  I paused, but he didn’t seem to notice. I felt him flip his wrist to the side, and guessed he was checking his watch. “Right, we have enough time,” he said. “I’ll get ready, then we’ll shoot over there.”

  Still I didn’t move.

  “Or, maybe you’ve had breakfast?” I stood stock still, and he paused.

  “How would I get breakfast without Annie, or you?” I finally said. “The waiters don’t know fingerspelling, and I can hardly read the menu or tell them my order, you know.” I smiled, but I could feel in his fingers the realization that I really couldn’t go out and do the simplest things on my own.

  “Well, let’s get on it,” he said, and strode off toward the stairs. The carumph of his footsteps receded from me in a rapid tap, tap, tap, and then, as I leaned against the doorjamb, they came right back.

  “Another blunder.” He gave me his arm. “I lead you, right?” And when he stepped off quickly down the hall and led me out into the day, the weak rays of early sun fell on my bare arms. We crossed the bumpy grass toward the restaurant and the scent of waffles and hot coffee, the mist of the distant lake rising in the air. When I tripped over a thick root sticking out of the grass, Peter clumsily grabbed my arm, lifted me back to my feet, and said, “Don’t even think of saying it.”

  “That cliché?” I said back, eager to feel the sinewy warmth of his arm as I hung on.

  He sped me across the grass. We got to the restaurant and he pulled out a chair for me, its metal frame sending a tingling up the backs of my legs as he dragged it across the floor. He said, “Yes, don’t say that cliché.”

  “About the blind leading the blind?” I tucked my napkin into my lap, hungrier than I’d ever been.

  “That would be the one.”

  He slid a menu across the table to me. I felt a sudden vibration as he pushed his chair away from the table. “Nature calls. Pick out whatever you want. I’ll order when I get back.” I felt his footsteps receding, and I picked up the menu, its creased edge pin sharp in my grip.

  Waiting. The curse of the deaf-blind. Not only couldn’t I read the menu myself, I also couldn’t ask one of the waiters to read it for me, either. Menus weren’t in Braille, and the waiters—like most everyone—didn’t know the manual fingerspelling language I used. So I tapped my feet, sat up straight, and pressed my hands into the cool tabletop, waiting for Peter’s footsteps to thud across the floor so he could translate the menu.

  I sat taller, to suppress my impatience. It was infuriating, this waiting. I was thirty-seven years old. And like a child, an infant, really, I was at the mercy of others. Hour after hour of my life was spent waiting. Waiters brushed past my chair, the scent of raspberries and sugar trailing from their trays as they passed.

  “Onward, missy.” Peter returned, scented of pine soap, and when he pulled out his chair he sat close to me, his leg brushing mine. He picked up the menu.

  “Read it?” I spelled cautiously into his hand.

  “Yes, ma’am. Even the descriptions.”

  I leaned forward.

  “If being your private secretary is this much work, you’re going to have to pay me extra.” His voice hummed through my hand.

  “I’ll pay whatever you want.” I pressed my fingers closer to his lips. I couldn’t wait to taste the pancakes with wild blueberries, pockets of flavor in my mouth.

  Over breakfast we practiced my talk, until the bell clanged its metallic thong into the air at ten and Peter led me across the grass to the Chautauqua tent, all the while saying he didn’t know why the American flag hung so easily over the tent when we were approaching war.

  That morning he and I bounded up the three wooden steps to the makeshift stage, the rustling of the crowd a welcome wave of warmth. After flattening his tie against his shirt with one hand, and then faltering a bit—I felt his weight press heavily into the wooden floorboards—his voice rang out into the air. For ten minutes he told the crowd of how at age seven I was a child with no language who fought Annie at every turn, but after weeks of spelling words into my hand Annie finally took me to the water pump in our yard. In the heat of the day Annie splashed that water over my hand, her fingers flying in mine: w-a-t-e-r. W-a-t-e-r. I leaped up, awakened. Everything had a name. Life penetrated my muffled world.

  Beside Peter, I held his arm, and the way he pulled me close told me that the story thrilled him.

  The crowd applauded my “miracle” for so long, the stage reverberated under my feet.

  The truth is, I don’t remember the moment at the water pump. For two decades I’ve heard it hundreds of times. I know it like my name. I’ve stood by Annie as she told crowds in Boston, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and tiny towns like Albion, and Rock Creek, Michigan, about my awakening. I’ve even written about it in my books. But I have no memory of it at all.

  What I do remember is this: It was June 1888. Annie took me to be examined by Alexander Graham Bell, then a prominent doctor for the deaf in Washington, D.C. Was there any way my hearing might be improved? I was eight years old. Dr. Bell said no, I would never hear. But he told Annie that he had an exciting new invention. It allowed anyone who didn’t know manual fingerspelling to “talk” with the deaf.

  “This could work for Helen,” Dr. Bell said to Annie. She spelled his words to me, and then he slid a large, bulky “glove” over my small hand. Printed on it were letters of the “normal” alphabet. Raised, they could be felt by the wearer. I felt them on my palm. Dr. Bell tapped first the h, then the e. Then, he pressed down harder, on the l two times. Last came the o.

  “Hello,” I answered back. A feeling of intense pleasure flooded through me.

  With my free hand, I took his. I had “spoken” to someone without Annie interpreting. Dr. Bell said that with practice, hearing people could easily learn how to use his invention to talk to me. “Helen will have freedom,” he said to Annie, who spelled his words to me.

  I couldn’t wait.

  All the way back to Tuscumbia on the train I spelled to
Annie that soon I would be able to speak with Father, who never was good at the manual fingerspelling, and my Auntie Ev, or anyone else.

  “No,” Anne spelled back. “It’s not a good idea.” She said I wouldn’t need to communicate with others because while she was with me, she would tell me everything I needed to know. I wouldn’t need to talk to anyone else.

  She wanted to keep me close because of her own loneliness. People say together we were miraculous. We were. But we were also isolated; loneliness engulfed me in those years. I’m older now. I realize I want more than a story frayed from its telling.

  As the Wisconsin crowd’s applause receded, the stage became still. I held Peter’s hand more tightly in mine as, fingers tense, he introduced me to the crowd: “For twenty-five years Helen Keller has called for the rights of the deaf and blind around the world. But she has more to say than that,” Peter said, spelling his words into my hand, then giving me a nudge so hard I almost bolted forward.

  So as Peter called out my words to the audience, while I spelled them into his palm, I said everything Annie warned me against: the floorboards of the stage jutted out and warped beneath my shoes as I stepped forward, my hand in Peter’s, aware that he would boom my words out to the waiting crowd. “Let no capitalists send our innocent boys to slaughter. We’ve suffered long enough at the hands of a government that sends boys to war for its own profit. This must stop. Strike, strike, strike against the war.”

  I believed then that Peter would set me free.

  When the crowd filed out, the show’s manager came up on stage to give us our night’s wages. Right after he left Peter said, “Helen, is this really all you get for all this work?” He told me he’d taken out the manager’s 20 percent, and then the thirty dollars for his own salary. “The ticket sales were lower than ever, and twenty people asked the manager for their money back,” he added.