When they married, we three lived in Wrentham, where John helped me pin up the big red Bolshevik flag in my bedroom. He made my life a red flag—bold, outspoken, alive.
I knew the rumors: that John had married Annie because he secretly loved me. Yes, his hand flooded mine with warmth when he spelled Shakespeare to me the days Annie’s eyes hurt her too much to read. Yes, we dazzled each other: nights sitting up late, reading John’s Socialist newspaper The Call, where Margaret Sanger listed her demands for birth control to be made legal. I believed him when he said anything was possible for women. We plotted a move to Schenectady, New York, where he’d be the Socialist mayor and I’d be in charge of helping the poor, and we’d drive to Lowell as strikers flooded the streets, thirty thousand strong. Life coursed through me in those years.
The truth is, I thought of him as my brother. Annie was his lover, his wife.
Yet it was because of Annie’s dedication to me that she never fully gave herself to him.
“Don’t blame yourself, Helen. Who’s here now? You and me. It seems I made the right choice. At least, when I come back—if I come back—I’ll have a purpose. Helen, we’ll go on tour again. The audiences will listen. Because at least we’ll still have your story to tell.”
We were stitched together, the room a small pocket, with little air.
All night I sat beside Annie, wiping the sweat from her forehead, holding a cup of water to her lips when she coughed. With my hands on hers I remembered when I was seven and Annie was my teacher. She was twenty-one and slept beside me in my small bed, and between us every night I placed my doll, Nancy. One morning I woke up and there was only an empty space where my doll should have been. I patted my way across the bed and my hands came upon Annie. She was rocking Nancy, combing her hair. When I reached for the doll, Annie pulled it away.
She played with my dolls many nights, for years.
So I did the only thing I could this night. As she slept, I held Annie in my arms like a child.
Chapter Thirty-two
It was out of my control, what happened next. Over lunch Mother handed me a letter, but she didn’t tell me what it said. “This is no way for you to ring in the New Year,” she spelled. I felt the clink of her fork against her plate. It was all I could do to sit still, delicately slicing roast beef, dabbing my mouth with a napkin. It was twenty-four hours away from my wedding day. I could hardly eat, so I was glad for the distraction of the letter.
“What is it, Mother? Read it, please.”
“No. You’re not going.” I felt a wave of air as she pulled the letter away. “You’ll be in Alabama with me, anyway. This goes right in the trash.” She scraped her chair as she moved away from the table, but I followed her to the kitchen.
“Annie would never, ever, keep something from me. If the letter has my name on it, it’s mine. You must read it to me. It’s not up to you to decide what I can and cannot see,” I spelled into her hand.
No betrayal is greater to me. When another person decides what I should know I bristle with anger. No one is going to tell me how I should perceive the world. I felt Annie’s footsteps approaching. “What’s going on here?” Annie rapped me on the wrist.
“Mother won’t let me read my own mail. I told her she has no choice.”
“Helen, don’t talk to your mother that way.” Then Annie spelled to Mother and me, “Kate, please give me the letter. After all these years I can handle Helen.”
I waited while she read. Then Annie said, “Congratulations, Helen. You’re invited to speak at Carnegie Hall on New Year’s Day. I’m sure all of Manhattan will be there. These antiwar people can’t think of anyone better to rouse the crowds against Wilson’s war than you, my dear. Too bad you can’t go.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, how will you get there, Helen? I’ll be coughing up blood in Puerto Rico and you’ll be eating mincemeat pie at Mildred’s in Alabama. I doubt your mother is going to haul you up to New York, and you can’t go alone. Face it, Helen, our days as rabble-rousers and independent women are over.”
“That’s what you think.”
I stood up.
The vibrations of Peter knocking on the front door made me turn from Mother and Annie. Knowing it was he, they both left the room. Alone, I couldn’t wait to tell Peter. The money we’d get from the talk in New York might help me keep the farmhouse, if only for a few months; I was sure he’d be thrilled to accompany me to speak out against the United States entering the war with Germany. Yes, he would be my translator on the great stage of Carnegie Hall, my voice, my life.
When he rapidly crossed the dining room to me, I gave him the letter. He read it, and pushed it away.
“That’s nothing. Look at this.” He pulled out an envelope and put it in my hands.
“Is this …”
“The marriage license, yes. It came this morning. Let’s get Annie’s trunks moved to the front hall and then we’ll plan our escape. Helen, dear, let’s leave this afternoon. We can be in Boston by two, and be wed by three.”
“This afternoon? Peter, Annie’s still here. You know I can’t …”
“Can’t what?”
“Leave before she’s gone.”
“Helen, the longer we stay here, the more likely it is that your mother and Annie will find out, and then we’ll never leave at all.”
“I’m here until Annie goes. And that’s the end of that.”
“Yes, boss.” Peter withdrew his hand from mine.
I had been special too long. Yes, I was dependent in painful, even excruciating ways, but because of my dependency too many people gave me what I wanted, acquiesced to me, so I got used to having my way. Now I wish I had slipped out the front door with him, and sped to Boston.
I wish I had fled that very instant.
Peter’s footsteps faded as he crossed the dining room. I followed him down the hallway, patted my way past Annie’s trunks by the front door, and turned to the pantry, where Peter’s scent of cigarettes and pine rose from the walls. I crossed the linoleum floor to him.
“What are you doing?”
“Now that Annie’s shipping out, my job description has expanded.”
“You got a raise?”
“No. I got her most-hated job, taking out the trash.” The slight clank of the trash bin’s metal lid told me he’d opened it. “Hold your nose, Miss Smell-Sensitive.” I felt a thump as Peter deposited the bin by the back door. “Wait a minute.” He paused while tying it up. “What’s this?”
“What?”
Peter pulled a book from the trash and put it in my hands. “Most Cherished Baby Names. Annie must have filched it from John’s apartment the night she stole their baby stuff.”
“When she got home she must have thrown it in the trash.”
Peter paused. “You know what else she brought back from John’s? A false sense of what it means to have a child: it’s not all cooing and nights around a warm fire.”
“You’re an expert on fatherhood?”
“I’ve seen John. The man’s rail thin, smoking nonstop, and happy, yes, I’ll give him that, but do you think he’ll write anything good for the Herald now that he’s got that kid crying for food day and night? Give Myla two months, a year at most. She’ll have John hawking carpets at Filene’s department store, his bald spot shining under the lights.”
“That’s not true.”
“Just you watch. By the time the kid’s first birthday rolls around John’s name will have faded from the newspaper world faster than you can say papa.”
“So all fathers suffer the same fate? They lose their dreams?”
“Luckily I’ll never find out. It’s just you and me. Here’s to Margaret Sanger and birth control.” He pressed me against the back door, his hands suddenly tangled in my hair, his hips pressed into mine.
“Peter, we’re in my house. Mother and Annie are right upstairs.”
“It’s high time you said good-bye to them and, oh, to this house, too.”<
br />
“This house?”
“Looks like you’re going to get a pretty penny for this shack of yours.” Peter traced my palm with his fingers. “Annie’s found a buyer. With the money we’ll get a smaller place. Not a cracker box, Helen, but two bedrooms.”
“Two?”
“Yes. Ours.” He traced my face and pressed me hard against the door. I held my breath. “And a shared study. We both have work to do.”
I took a deep breath. I knew I’d have to share my secret sooner rather than later. I couldn’t put it off. I’d tell him when we got to his house; I’d tell him that evening, regardless of what he might say. But as we moved down the back steps Peter still held the book in his hands. The slight movement of air told me he was flipping through the pages, and then he stopped. “Helen,” he said, “is it true that your name means ‘light’?”
“Read more closely. It means ‘brilliant light.’”
“What your mother must have thought when you went blind.”
“Why, Mr. Fagan, are you developing a soft spot for my mother?”
“I wouldn’t go that far.”
I waited, the driveway cold beneath my shoes.
“Peter, what does your name mean?”
“The rock.”
“You’re steady.”
“Yup. And I roll over whatever is in my way.”
Nine months, maybe less. I may hold a baby in my arms. I’ll spread, grow larger, fast. I’ll need new clothes, I’ll need to tell Peter that I have no idea how to be a mother, how to care for a daughter or a son. Poor child. All her—or his—life, the center of attention, simply because of me. People will say the child is the next miracle. And Peter and I? Even more delirious with—what? This lightning strike of joy.
Peter opened the trash can, and I felt a whoosh of air as he dropped the book into it. He guided me into a kitchen chair, rattling the table when he sat in the rickety one next to mine, and then pulled my foot into his lap, untied my shoe, and massaged my heel.
“What are you doing?” I pulled my foot away, but he grabbed my arch and held it.
“Checking to see if you have cold feet.”
“Very funny. And what about you? No nerves?”
“Why should I worry? Okay, you won’t go with me today, but Annie leaves tonight; I’ve booked train reservations for us both tomorrow morning; a quick ceremony at Boston City Hall and boom—you’re Mrs. Peter Fagan. Once we’ve tied the knot, I’m your legal mate, and no one, not even your dear, lovely mother, will be able to separate us.”
“You think of everything. Almost.”
“What do you mean, ‘almost’?”
“Shall we send out wedding invitations?”
“It’s a bit late for that.”
“Annie postponed her wedding to John so many times he threatened to write ‘Subject to change without notice’ at the bottom of their invitations.”
“Too bad she went through with it.”
“Too bad he left.”
“She didn’t see what was coming.” We moved Annie’s trunk to the front hall and sat down. A great sadness filled me, and I don’t know why I said this, but I did. “No matter how it turned out, she doesn’t have any regrets.”
“Helen, that’s not true. Annie’s never gotten over John leaving.”
“Fine. But you said yesterday to always stick to your story, and that’s mine. She loved her husband, she tried, and it—”
“Crashed and burned.” Peter stacked the small suitcase atop the trunk.
“She had no regrets,” I said.
When Peter turned to the hall telephone to order Annie’s cab, I stood alone on the rug, my fingers moving as if repeating my words. But when Peter hung up, recrossed the hall, and took my hands, he held them so tight, I couldn’t say a thing.
Chapter Thirty-three
Books are the eyes of the blind, I wrote in one of my publications. But nothing I ever read gave me instructions, a manual, on how a woman like me breaks away from her family to start a new life. I had only my desperation to get away, my craving for Peter, my foolish belief that I could have everything normal women had.
Peter released my hands. “Annie’s asleep, your mother’s napping, too. Helen, I want to be alone with you one more time before we marry. Come to my place this afternoon. We’ll have an hour alone, maybe two. We’ll be back for dinner …”
“No.” I backed away. “I’m too nervous.”
“Come on. We can practice our lines in the car. I’ll say, ‘I, Peter Fagan, do take thee, Helen Adams Keller …’”
“I know my lines. Let’s practice something else.” I leaned over and kissed him.
“Ah, a girl after my own heart.” He led me across the kitchen, out the back door, and down the steps. I couldn’t wait for him to open the car door and start the engine; I couldn’t wait to be alone with him, as if it were the first time.
At Peter’s house something inside me tipped and spun. The cool scent of fresh water filled the air when we walked in the front door. “Oh, perfect.” Peter dropped my hand. “Just what I need. Instead of seducing you, it looks like I’ll be repairing a broken water pipe instead.” Peter plopped me into a chair by the front window. “Water’s spurting from the damned pipe, all over the floor.” In moments I felt a chut-chut-chut as Peter dragged a wooden ladder across the floor. “Damned cheap house. Flimsy construction. There’s a leak in the back hallway, and no one to fix it. This place was probably a slave shack before Annie rented it for me.”
“We citizens of Massachusetts never owned slaves.”
“You sure did. Whole packs of them in the 1600s and 1700s.”
“Well, I personally never owned slaves.”
“Come on, Miss Born-in-Alabama. The Keller family churned out Southern cotton for centuries. They must have had the help of slaves. Or do I have my history wrong?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He just propped the ladder against the wall and climbed the teetery rungs. I held the ladder in place with all my strength.
I don’t see black, white, or even gray, but I’ve known from a young age that nothing is simple, or clear-cut. Everything has its price. “Did the Keller family own slaves?” Annie asked my father when I was eight. Every night in the Tuscumbia dining room Annie threw herself into a pitched battle with my father about the Civil War. “Yankee horse thief,” my father ranted at Annie, refusing to answer. “Coming down here and criticizing our way of life. Why don’t you go back where you came from?” He shook his fist at her.
“Fine,” Annie said. “I can’t wait to be back where people are treated with dignity.”
“Dignity?” my father said, as Annie quickly spelled his words into my palm. “You’re telling me the North treats its people better than the South does? Listen to me, Miss Sullivan. It is Miss, isn’t it?”
“You know it is,” Annie snapped back.
“Well, Miss Sullivan, we may have owned slaves, but we didn’t send our white girls, our white women, out to work.” He said this last word as if it hurt.
I sat by Annie, quivering.
“You think work is a dirty word?” Annie said. “Look around at all your finery. Maybe you didn’t work for this, but back in your father’s generation some slaves on the Keller plantation certainly did. Why don’t you acknowledge that all you have came from the backs of slave labor? Slaves made your life of leisure possible. Yes, Captain Keller, I work. I don’t depend on the labor of others to support me.”
My father waited a long time to answer. Then he said, “Why, Miss Sullivan, we lost our money after the Civil War. But the little that’s left, yes, some of it came from the old slave-owning days of the South. And that’s what makes your paycheck so fat.”
Annie said nothing.
“So tell me, Miss Sullivan. Do you still think you’re so almighty free?”
I remember Annie shaking with rage in the dining room. Part of her salary, or at least the home she lived in with me, came from a past of which she wanted no pa
rt. But since that day, I’ve understood that nothing is black or white.
I was still holding the ladder. “Peter, we have only an hour together here. Why don’t you come down? Call a plumber, that’s what Annie and I do when there’s a leak.”
“Numbers. I want numbers,” Peter climbed down and took my hand. “How many times in the past year, when you and Annie didn’t have two nickels to rub together, did you call some poor soul to fix something in that rattletrap house?”
“I don’t know. Five, maybe ten times.”
“And how many times did they get paid?”
“Peter.”
“Don’t ‘Peter’ me.” He pushed the ladder away and held my hands. “You know as well as I do that Annie either charmed them into doing the job for free or tossed their bills in the trash when they left. Am I right?”
“Peter, you know the answer. But I’m glad she did. Have you seen the bill for Annie’s trip to Puerto Rico? She refused to go to that sanatorium in New York. She’s rented a cottage outside San Juan, where she says she can rest. So she’ll need to pay for the ship, a car, a room, and food for three to six months.”
“One thing about being blind, no one ever tells you the cost.”
“On the contrary. I know the cost of everything.” Maybe that’s why the idea of having a child frightened me less than it did Peter. I had my principles, but blind and deaf, totally dependent on others for my life, my sustenance, I knew that nothing came without a price. And I was willing to pay it. If I had to take more money from Carnegie to support myself and this child, well, I would swallow hard and do it.
Peter led me toward his bedroom. “Helen, you’re one of the lucky few who make money, and even luckier still because you’re about to marry a great guy like me.” He shut the door to his room and pulled me to him. “But, Helen, tell me. Just how many deaf-blind women have kids?”
Helen Keller in Love Page 17
