The Miracle Worker

by William Gibson

  VINEY [VAGUELY]: I dunno, Miss Kate, somehow she didn’t have much of a appetite tonight—

  KATE [A BIT GUILTY]: Oh. Dear.

  KELLER [HASTILY]: Well, now. Couldn’t say the same for my part, I’m famished. Katie, your plate.

  KATE [LOOKING]: But where is Miss Annie?

  (A silence.)

  JAMES [PLEASANTLY]: In her room.

  KELLER: In her room? Doesn’t she know hot food must be eaten hot? Go bring her down at once, Jimmie.

  JAMES [RISES]: Certainly. I’ll get a ladder.

  KELLER [STARES]: What?

  JAMES: I’ll need a ladder. Shouldn’t take me long.

  KATE [STARES]: What shouldn’t take you—

  KELLER: Jimmie, do as I say! Go upstairs at once and tell Miss Sullivan supper is getting cold—

  JAMES: She’s locked in her room.

  KELLER: Locked in her—

  KATE: What on earth are you—

  JAMES: Helen locked her in and made off with the key.

  KATE [RISING]: And you sit here and say nothing?

  JAMES: Well, everyone’s been telling me not to say anything.

  (He goes serenely out and across the yard, whistling. KELLER thrusting up from his chair makes for the stairs.)

  KATE: Viney, look out in back for Helen. See if she has that key.

  VINEY: Yes, Miss Kate.

  (VINEY goes out the rear door.)

  KELLER [CALLING DOWN]: She’s out by the pump!

  (KATE goes out on the porch after HELEN, while KELLER knocks on ANNIE’S door, then rattles the knob, imperiously.)

  Miss Sullivan! Are you in there?

  ANNIE: Oh, I’m in here, all right.

  KELLER: Is there no key on your side?

  ANNIE [WITH SOME ASPERITY]: Well, if there was a key in here, I wouldn’t be in here. Helen took it, the only thing on my side is me.

  KELLER: Miss Sullivan. I—

  (He tries, but cannot hold it back.)

  Not in the house ten minutes, I don’t see how you managed it!

  (He stomps downstairs again, while ANNIE mutters to herself.)

  ANNIE: And even I’m not on my side.

  KELLER [ROARING]: Viney!

  VINEY [REAPPEARING]: Yes, Cap’n?

  KELLER: Put that meat back in the oven!

  (VINEY bears the roast off again, while KELLER strides out onto the porch. KATE is with HELEN at the pump, opening her hands.)

  KATE: She has no key.

  KELLER: Nonsense, she must have the key. Have you searched in her pockets?

  KATE: Yes. She doesn’t have it.

  KELLER: Katie, she must have the key.

  KATE: Would you prefer to search her yourself, Captain?

  KELLER: No, I would not prefer to search her! She almost took my kneecap off this evening, when I tried merely to—

  (JAMES reappears carrying a long ladder, with PERCY running after him to be in on things.)

  Take that ladder back!

  JAMES: Certainly.

  (He turns around with it. MARTHA comes skipping around the upstage corner of the house to be in on things, accompanied by the setter BELLE.)

  KATE: She could have hidden the key.

  KELLER: Where?

  KATE: Anywhere. Under a stone. In the flower beds. In the grass—

  KELLER: Well, I can’t plow up the entire grounds to find a missing key! Jimmie!

  JAMES: Sir?

  KELLER: Bring me a ladder!

  JAMES: Certainly.

  (VINEY comes around the downstage side of the house to be in on things; she has MILDRED over her shoulder, bleating. KELLER places the ladder against ANNIE’S window and mounts. ANNIE meanwhile is running about making herself presentable, washing the blood off her mouth, straightening her clothes, tidying her hair. Another Negro servant enters to gaze in wonder, increasing the gathering ring of the spectators.)

  KATE [SHARPLY]: What is Mildred doing up?

  VINEY: Cap’n woke her, ma’am, all that hollerin’.

  KELLER: Miss Sullivan!

  (ANNIE comes to the window, with as much air of gracious normality as she can manage; KELLER is at the window.)

  ANNIE [BRIGHTLY]: Yes, Captain Keller?

  KELLER: Come out!

  ANNIE: I don’t see how I can. There isn’t room.

  KELLER: I intend to carry you. Climb onto my shoulder and hold tight.

  ANNIE: Oh, no. It’s—very chivalrous of you, but I’d really prefer to—

  KELLER: Miss Sullivan, follow instructions! I will not have you also tumbling out of our windows.

  (ANNIE obeys, with some misgivings.)

  I hope this is not a sample of what we may expect from you. In the way of simplifying the work of looking after Helen.

  ANNIE: Captain Keller, I’m perfectly able to go down a ladder under my own—

  KELLER: I doubt it, Miss Sullivan. Simply hold onto my neck.

  (He begins down with her, while the spectators stand in a wide and somewhat awe-stricken circle, watching. KELLER half-misses a rung, and ANNIE grabs at his whiskers.)

  My neck, Miss Sullivan!

  ANNIE: I’m sorry to inconvenience you this way—

  KELLER: No inconvenience, other than having that door taken down and the lock replaced, if we fail to find that key.

  ANNIE: Oh, I’ll look everywhere for it.

  KELLER: Thank you. Do not look in any rooms that can be locked. There.

  (He stands her on the ground. JAMES applauds.)

  ANNIE: Thank you very much.

  (She smooths her skirt, looking as composed and ladylike as possible. KELLER stares around at the spectators.)

  KELLER: Go, go, back to your work. What are you looking at here? There’s nothing here to look at.

  (They break up, move off.)

  Now would it be possible for us to have supper, like other people?

  (He marches into the house.)

  KATE: Viney, serve supper. I’ll put Mildred to sleep.

  (They all go in. JAMES is the last to leave, murmuring to ANNIE with a gesture.)

  JAMES: Might as well leave the l, a, d, d, e, r, hm?

  (ANNIE ignores him, looking at HELEN; JAMES goes in too. Imperceptibly the lights commence to narrow down. ANNIE and HELEN are now alone in the yard, HELEN seated at the pump, where she has been oblivious to it all, a battered little savage, playing with the doll in a picture of innocent contentment. ANNIE comes near, leans against the house, and taking off her smoked glasses, studies her, not without awe. Presently HELEN rises, gropes around to see if anyone is present, ANNIE evades her hand, and when HELEN is satisfied she is alone, the key suddenly protrudes out of her mouth. She takes it in her fingers, stands thinking, gropes to the pump, lifts a loose board, drops the key into the well, and hugs herself gleefully. ANNIE stares. But after a moment she shakes her head to herself, she cannot keep the smile from her lips.)

  ANNIE: You devil.

  (Her tone is one of great respect, humor, and acceptance of challenge.)

  You think I’m so easily gotten rid of? You have a thing or two to learn, first. I have nothing else to do.

  (She goes up the steps to the porch, but turns for a final word, almost of warning.)

  And nowhere to go.

  (And presently she moves into the house to the others, as the lights dim down and out, except for the small circle upon HELEN solitary at the pump, which ends the act.)

  ACT II

  IT IS EVENING.

  The only room visible in the KELLER house is ANNIE’S, where by lamplight ANNIE in a shawl is at a desk writing a letter; at her bureau HELEN in her customary unkempt state is tucking her doll in the bottom drawer as a cradle, the contents of which she has dumped out, creating as usual a fine disorder.

  ANNIE mutters each word as she writes her letter, slowly, her eyes close to and almost touching the page, to follow with difficulty her pen-work.

  ANNIE: “ . . . and, nobody, here, has, attempted, to, control, her. The, greatest, proble
m, I, have, is, how, to, discipline, her, without, breaking, her, spirit.”

  (Resolute voice)

  “But, I, shall, insist, on, reasonable, obedience, from, the, start—”

  (At which point HELEN, groping about on the desk, knocks over the inkwell. ANNIE jumps up, rescues her letter, rights the inkwell, grabs a towel to stem the spillage, and then wipes at HELEN’S hands; HELEN as always pulls free, but not until ANNIE first gets three letters into her palm.)

  Ink.

  (HELEN is enough interested in and puzzled by this spelling that she proffers her hand again; so ANNIE spells and impassively dunks it back in the spillage.)

  Ink. It has a name.

  (She wipes the hand clean, and leads HELEN to her bureau, where she looks for something to engage her. She finds a sewing card, with needle and thread, and going to her knees, shows HELEN’S hand how to connect one row of holes.)

  Down. Under. Up. And be careful of the needle—

  (HELEN gets it, and ANNIE rises.)

  Fine. You keep out of the ink and perhaps I can keep out of—the soup.

  (She returns to the desk, tidies it, and resumes writing her letter, bent close to the page.)

  “These, blots, are, her, handiwork. I—”

  (She is interrupted by a gasp; HELEN has stuck her finger, and sits sucking at it, darkly. Then with vengeful resolve she seizes her doll, and is about to dash its brains out on the floor when ANNIE diving catches it in one hand, which she at once shakes with hopping pain but otherwise ignores, patiently.)

  All right, let’s try temperance.

  (Taking the doll, she kneels, goes through the motion of knocking its head on the floor, spells into HELEN’S hand:)

  Bad, girl.

  (She lets HELEN feel the grieved expression on her face. HELEN imitates it. Next she makes HELEN caress the doll and kiss the hurt spot and hold it gently in her arms, then spells into her hand:)

  Good, girl.

  (She lets HELEN feel the smile on her face. HELEN sits with a scowl, which suddenly clears; she pats the doll, kisses it, wreathes her face in a large artificial smile, and bears the doll to the washstand, where she carefully sits it. ANNIE watches, pleased.)

  Very good girl—

  (Whereupon HELEN elevates the pitcher and dashes it on the floor instead. ANNIE leaps to her feet, and stands inarticulate; HELEN calmly gropes back to sit to the sewing card and needle.

  ANNIE manages to achieve self-control. She picks up a fragment or two of the pitcher, sees HELEN is puzzling over the card, and resolutely kneels to demonstrate it again. She spells into HELEN’S hand.

  KATE meanwhile coming around the corner with folded sheets on her arms, halts at the doorway and watches them for a moment in silence; she is moved, but level.)

  KATE [PRESENTLY]: What are you saying to her?

  (ANNIE glancing up is a bit embarrassed, and rises from the spelling, to find her company manners.)

  ANNIE: Oh, I was just making conversation. Saying it was a sewing card.

  KATE: But does that—

  (She imitates with her fingers)

  —mean that to her?

  ANNIE: No. No, she won’t know what spelling is till she knows what a word is.

  KATE: Yet you keep spelling to her. Why?

  ANNIE [CHEERILY]: I like to hear myself talk!

  KATE: The Captain says it’s like spelling to the fence post.

  ANNIE [A PAUSE]: Does he, now.

  KATE: Is it?

  ANNIE: No, it’s how I watch you talk to Mildred.

  KATE: Mildred.

  ANNIE: Any baby. Gibberish, grown-up gibberish, baby-talk gibberish, do they understand one word of it to start? Somehow they begin to. If they hear it, I’m letting Helen hear it.

  KATE: Other children are not—impaired.

  ANNIE: Ho, there’s nothing impaired in that head, it works like a mousetrap!

  KATE [SMILES]: But after a child hears how many words, Miss Annie, a million?

  ANNIE: I guess no mother’s ever minded enough to count.

  (She drops her eyes to spell into HELEN’S hand, again indicating the card; HELEN spells back, and ANNIE is amused.)

  KATE [TOO QUICKLY]: What did she spell?

  ANNIE: I spelt card. She spelt cake!

  (She takes in KATE’S quickness, and shakes her head, gently.)

  No, it’s only a finger-game to her, Mrs. Keller. What she has to learn first is that things have names.

  KATE: And when will she learn?

  ANNIE: Maybe after a million and one words.

  (They hold each other’s gaze; KATE then speaks quietly.)

  KATE: I should like to learn those letters, Miss Annie.

  ANNIE [PLEASED]: I’ll teach you tomorrow morning. That makes only half a million each!

  KATE [THEN]: It’s her bedtime.

  (ANNIE reaches for the sewing card, HELEN objects, ANNIE insists, and HELEN gets rid of ANNIE’S hand by jabbing it with the needle. ANNIE gasps, and moves to grip HELEN’S wrist; but KATE intervenes with a proffered sweet, and HELEN drops the card, crams the sweet into her mouth, and scrambles up to search her mother’s hands for more. ANNIE nurses her wound, staring after the sweet.)

  I’m sorry, Miss Annie.

  ANNIE [INDIGNANTLY]: Why does she get a reward? For stabbing me?

  KATE: Well—

  (Then, tiredly)

  We catch our flies with honey, I’m afraid. We haven’t the heart for much else, and so many times she simply cannot be compelled.

  ANNIE [OMINOUS]: Yes. I’m the same way myself.

  (KATE smiles, and leads HELEN off around the corner. ANNIE alone in her room picks up things and in the act of removing HELEN’S doll gives way to unmannerly temptation: she throttles it. She drops it on her bed, and stands pondering. Then she turns back, sits decisively, and writes again, as the lights dim on her.)

  (Grimly)

  “The, more, I, think, the, more, certain, I, am, that, obedience, is, the, gateway, through, which, knowledge, enters, the, mind, of, the, child—”

  (On the word “obedience” a shaft of sunlight hits the water pump outside, while ANNIE’S voice ends in the dark, followed by a distant cockcrow; daylight comes up over another corner of the sky, with VINEY’S voice heard at once.)

  VINEY: Breakfast ready!

  (VINEY comes down into the sunlight beam, and pumps a pitcherful of water. While the pitcher is brimming we hear conversation from the dark; the light grows to the family room of the house where all are either entering or already seated at breakfast, with KELLER and JAMES arguing the war. HELEN is wandering around the table to explore the contents of the other plates. When ANNIE is in her chair, she watches HELEN. VINEY re-enters, sets the pitcher on the table; KATE lifts the almost empty biscuit plate with an inquiring look, VINEY nods and bears it off back, neither of them interrupting the men. ANNIE meanwhile sits with fork quiet, watching HELEN, who at her mother’s plate pokes her hand among some scrambled eggs. KATE catches ANNIE’S eyes on her, smiles with a wry gesture, HELEN moves on to JAMES’S plate, the male talk continuing, JAMES deferential and KELLER overriding.)

  JAMES:—no, but shouldn’t we give the devil his due, father? The fact is we lost the South two years earlier when he outthought us behind Vicksburg.

  KELLER: Outthought is a peculiar word for a butcher.

  JAMES: Harness maker, wasn’t he?

  KELLER: I said butcher, his only virtue as a soldier was numbers and he led them to slaughter with no more regard than for so many sheep.

  JAMES: But even if in that sense he was a butcher, the fact is he—

  KELLER: And a drunken one, half the war.

  JAMES: Agreed, father. If his own people said he was I can’t argue he—

  KELLER: Well, what is it you find to admire in such a man, Jimmie, the butchery or the drunkenness?

  JAMES: Neither, father, only the fact that he beat us.

  KELLER: He didn’t.

  JAMES: Is it your contention we won the
war, sir?

  KELLER: He didn’t beat us at Vicksburg. We lost Vicksburg because Pemberton gave Bragg five thousand of his cavalry and Loring, whom I knew personally for a nincompoop before you were born, marched away from Champion’s Hill with enough men to have held them, we lost Vicksburg by stupidity verging on treason.

  JAMES: I would have said we lost Vicksburg because Grant was one thing no Yankee general was before him—

  KELLER: Drunk? I doubt it.

  JAMES: Obstinate.

  KELLER: Obstinate. Could any of them compare even in that with old Stonewall? If he’d been there we would still have Vicksburg.

  JAMES: Well, the butcher simply wouldn’t give up, he tried four ways of getting around Vicksburg and on the fifth try he got around. Anyone else would have pulled north and—

  KELLER: He wouldn’t have got around if we’d had a Southerner in command, instead of a half-breed Yankee traitor like Pemberton—

  (While this background talk is in progress, HELEN is working around the table, ultimately toward ANNIE’S plate. She messes with her hands in JAMES’S plate, then in KELLER’S, both men taking it so for granted they hardly notice. Then HELEN comes groping with soiled hands past her own plate, to ANNIE’S; her hand goes to it, and ANNIE, who has been waiting, deliberately lifts and removes her hand. HELEN gropes again, ANNIE firmly pins her by the wrist, and removes her hand from the table. HELEN thrusts her hands again, ANNIE catches them, and HELEN begins to flail and make noises; the interruption brings KELLER’S gaze upon them.)

  What’s the matter there?

  KATE: Miss Annie. You see, she’s accustomed to helping herself from our plates to anything she—

  ANNIE [EVENLY]: Yes, but I’m not accustomed to it.

  KELLER: No, of course not. Viney!

  KATE: Give her something, Jimmie, to quiet her.

  JAMES [BLANDLY]: But her table manners are the best she has. Well.

  (He pokes across with a chunk of bacon at HELEN’S hand, which ANNIE releases; but HELEN knocks the bacon away and stubbornly thrusts at ANNIE’S plate, ANNIE grips her wrists again, the struggle mounts.)

  KELLER: Let her this time, Miss Sullivan, it’s the only way we get any adult conversation. If my son’s half merits that description.

  (He rises.)

  I’ll get you another plate.

  ANNIE [GRIPPING HELEN]: I have a plate, thank you.

  KATE [CALLING]: Viney! I’m afraid what Captain Keller says is only too true, she’ll persist in this until she gets her own way.