KATE: No, she’s home.
(A pause. ANNIE tries to make ladylike small talk, though her energy now and then erupts; she catches herself up whenever she hears it.)
ANNIE: You—live far from town, Mrs. Keller?
KATE: Only a mile.
ANNIE: Well. I suppose I can wait one more mile. But don’t be surprised if I get out to push the horse!
KATE: Helen’s waiting for you, too. There’s been such a bustle in the house, she expects something, heaven knows what.
(Now she voices part of her doubt, not as such, but ANNIE understands it.)
I expected—a desiccated spinster. You’re very young.
ANNIE [RESOLUTELY]: Oh, you should have seen me when I left Boston. I got much older on this trip.
KATE: I mean, to teach anyone as difficult as Helen.
ANNIE: I mean to try. They can’t put you in jail for trying!
KATE: Is it possible, even? To teach a deaf-blind child half of what an ordinary child learns—has that ever been done?
ANNIE: Half?
KATE: A tenth.
ANNIE [RELUCTANTLY]: No.
(KATE’S face loses its remaining hope, still appraising her youth.)
Dr. Howe did wonders, but—an ordinary child? No, never. But then I thought when I was going over his reports—
(She indicates the one in her hand)
—he never treated them like ordinary children. More like—eggs everyone was afraid would break.
KATE [A PAUSE]: May I ask how old you are?
ANNIE: Well, I’m not in my teens, you know! I’m twenty.
KATE: All of twenty.
(ANNIE takes the bull by the horns, valiantly.)
ANNIE: Mrs. Keller, don’t lose heart just because I’m not on my last legs. I have three big advantages over Dr. Howe that money couldn’t buy for you. One is his work behind me, I’ve read every word he wrote about it and he wasn’t exactly what you’d call a man of few words. Another is to be young, why, I’ve got energy to do anything. The third is, I’ve been blind.
(But it costs her something to say this.)
KATE [QUIETLY]: Advantages.
ANNIE [WRY]: Well, some have the luck of the Irish, some do not.
(KATE smiles; she likes her.)
KATE: What will you try to teach her first?
ANNIE: First, last, and—in between, language.
KATE: Language.
ANNIE: Language is to the mind more than light is to the eye. Dr. Howe said that.
KATE: Language.
(She shakes her head.)
We can’t get through to teach her to sit still. You are young, despite your years, to have such—confidence. Do you, inside?
(ANNIE studies her face; she likes her, too.)
ANNIE: No, to tell you the truth I’m as shaky inside as a baby’s rattle!
(They smile at each other, and KATE pats her hand.)
KATE: Don’t be.
(JAMES returns to usher them off.)
We’ll do all we can to help, and to make you feel at home. Don’t think of us as strangers, Miss Annie.
ANNIE [CHEERILY]: Oh, strangers aren’t so strange to me. I’ve known them all my life!
(KATE smiles again, ANNIE smiles back, and they precede JAMES offstage.
The lights dim on them, having simultaneously risen full on the house; VINEY has already entered the family room, taken a water pitcher, and come out and down to the pump. She pumps real water. As she looks offstage, we hear the clop of hoofs, a carriage stopping, and voices.)
VINEY: Cap’n Keller! Cap’n Keller, they comin’!
(She goes back into the house, as KELLER comes out on the porch to gaze.)
She sure ’nuff came, Cap’n.
(KELLER descends, and crosses toward the carriage; this conversation begins offstage and moves on.)
KELLER [VERY COURTLY]: Welcome to Ivy Green, Miss Sullivan. I take it you are Miss Sullivan—
KATE: My husband, Miss Annie, Captain Keller.
ANNIE [HER BEST BEHAVIOR]: Captain, how do you do.
KELLER: A pleasure to see you, at last. I trust you had an agreeable journey?
ANNIE: Oh, I had several! When did this country get so big?
JAMES: Where would you like the trunk, father?
KELLER: Where Miss Sullivan can get at it, I imagine.
ANNIE: Yes, please. Where’s Helen?
KELLER: In the hall, Jimmie—
KATE: We’ve put you in the upstairs corner room, Miss Annie, if there’s any breeze at all this summer, you’ll feel it—
(In the house the setter BELLE flees into the family room, pursued by HELEN with groping hands; the dog doubles back out the same door, and HELEN still groping for her makes her way out to the porch; she is messy, her hair tumbled, her pinafore now ripped, her shoelaces untied. KELLER acquires the suitcase, and ANNIE gets her hands on it too, though still endeavoring to live up to the general air of propertied manners.)
KELLER: And the suitcase—
ANNIE [PLEASANTLY]: I’ll take the suitcase, thanks.
KELLER: Not at all, I have it, Miss Sullivan.
ANNIE: I’d like it.
KELLER [GALLANTLY]: I couldn’t think of it, Miss Sullivan. You’ll find in the south we—
ANNIE: Let me.
KELLER:—view women as the flowers of civiliza—
ANNIE [IMPATIENTLY]: I’ve got something in it for Helen!
(She tugs it free; KELLER stares.)
Thank you. When do I see her?
KATE: There. There is Helen.
(ANNIE turns, and sees HELEN on the porch. A moment of silence. Then ANNIE begins across the yard to her, lugging her suitcase.)
KELLER [SOTTO VOCE]: Katie—
(KATE silences him with a hand on his arm. When ANNIE finally reaches the porch steps she stops, contemplating HELEN for a last moment before entering her world. Then she drops the suitcase on the porch with intentional heaviness, HELEN starts with the jar, and comes to grope over it. ANNIE puts forth her hand, and touches HELEN’S. HELEN at once grasps it, and commences to explore it, like reading a face. She moves her hand on to ANNIE’S forearm, and dress; and ANNIE brings her face within reach of HELEN’S fingers, which travel over it, quite without timidity, until they encounter and push aside the smoked glasses. ANNIE’S gaze is grave, unpitying, very attentive. She puts her hands on HELEN’S arms, but HELEN at once pulls away, and they confront each other with a distance between. Then HELEN returns to the suitcase, tries to open it, cannot. ANNIE points HELEN’S hand overhead. HELEN pulls away, tries to open the suitcase again; ANNIE points her hand overhead again. HELEN points overhead. A question, and ANNIE, drawing HELEN’S hand to her own face, nods. HELEN now begins tugging the suitcase toward the door, when ANNIE tries to take it from her, she fights her off and backs through the doorway with it. ANNIE stands a moment, then follows her in, and together they get the suitcase up the steps into ANNIE’S room.)
KATE: Well?
KELLER: She’s very rough, Katie.
KATE: I like her, Captain.
KELLER: Certainly rear a peculiar kind of young woman in the north. How old is she?
KATE [VAGUELY]: Ohh— Well, she’s not in her teens, you know.
KELLER: She’s only a child. What’s her family like, shipping her off alone this far?
KATE: I couldn’t learn. She’s very closemouthed about some things.
KELLER: Why does she wear those glasses? I like to see a person’s eyes when I talk to—
KATE: For the sun. She was blind.
KELLER: Blind.
KATE: She’s had nine operations on her eyes. One just before she left.
KELLER: Blind, good heavens, do they expect one blind child to teach another? Has she experience at least, how long did she teach there?
KATE: She was a pupil.
KELLER [HEAVILY]: Katie, Katie. This is her first position?
KATE [BRIGHT VOICE]: She was valedictorian—
KELLER: Here’s a
houseful of grownups can’t cope with the child, how can an inexperienced half-blind Yankee schoolgirl manage her?
(JAMES moves in with the trunk on his shoulder.)
JAMES [EASILY]: Great improvement. Now we have two of them to look after.
KELLER: You look after those strawberry plants!
(JAMES stops with the trunk. KELLER turns from him without another word, and marches off.)
JAMES: Nothing I say is right.
KATE: Why say anything?
(She calls.)
Don’t be long, Captain, we’ll have supper right away—
(She goes into the house, and through the rear door of the family room. JAMES trudges in with the trunk, takes it up the steps to ANNIE’S room, and sets it down outside the door. The lights elsewhere dim somewhat.
Meanwhile, inside, ANNIE has given HELEN a key; while ANNIE removes her bonnet, HELEN unlocks and opens the suitcase. The first thing she pulls out is a voluminous shawl. She fingers it until she perceives what it is; then she wraps it around her, and acquiring ANNIE’S bonnet and smoked glasses as well, dons the lot: the shawl swamps her, and the bonnet settles down upon the glasses, but she stands before a mirror cocking her head to one side, then to the other, in a mockery of adult action. ANNIE is amused, and talks to her as one might to a kitten, with no trace of company manners.)
ANNIE: All the trouble I went to and that’s how I look?
(HELEN then comes back to the suitcase, gropes for more, lifts out a pair of female drawers.)
Oh, no. Not the drawers!
(But HELEN discarding them comes to the elegant doll. Her fingers explore its features, and when she raises it and finds its eyes open and close, she is at first startled, then delighted. She picks it up, taps its head vigorously, taps her own chest, and nods questioningly. ANNIE takes her finger, points it to the doll, points it to HELEN, and touching it to her own face, also nods. HELEN sits back on her heels, clasps the doll to herself, and rocks it. ANNIE studies her, still in bonnet and smoked glasses like a caricature of herself, and addresses her humorously.)
All right, Miss O’Sullivan. Let’s begin with doll.
(She takes HELEN’S hand; in her palm ANNIE’S forefinger points, thumb holding her other fingers clenched.)
D.
(Her thumb next holds all her fingers clenched, touching HELEN’S palm.)
O.
(Her thumb and forefinger extend.)
L.
(Same contact repeated.)
L.
(She puts HELEN’S hand to the doll.)
Doll.
JAMES: You spell pretty well.
(ANNIE in one hurried move gets the drawers swiftly back into the suitcase, the lid banged shut, and her head turned, to see JAMES leaning in the doorway.)
Finding out if she’s ticklish? She is.
(ANNIE regards him stonily, but HELEN after a scowling moment tugs at her hand again, imperious. ANNIE repeats the letters, and HELEN interrupts her fingers in the middle, feeling each of them, puzzled. ANNIE touches HELEN’S hand to the doll, and begins spelling into it again.)
JAMES: What is it, a game?
ANNIE [CURTLY]: An alphabet.
JAMES: Alphabet?
ANNIE: For the deaf.
(HELEN now repeats the finger movements in air, exactly, her head cocked to her own hand, and ANNIE’S eyes suddenly gleam.)
Ho. How bright she is!
JAMES: You think she knows what she’s doing?
(He takes HELEN’S hand, to throw a meaningless gesture into it; she repeats this one too.)
She imitates everything, she’s a monkey.
ANNIE [VERY PLEASED]: Yes, she’s a bright little monkey, all right.
(She takes the doll from HELEN, and reaches for her hand; HELEN instantly grabs the doll back. ANNIE takes it again, and HELEN’S hand next, but HELEN is incensed now; when ANNIE draws her hand to her face to shake her head no, then tries to spell to her, HELEN slaps at ANNIE’S face. ANNIE grasps HELEN by both arms, and swings her into a chair, holding her pinned there, kicking, while glasses, doll, bonnet fly in various directions. JAMES laughs.)
JAMES: She wants her doll back.
ANNIE: When she spells it.
JAMES: Spell, she doesn’t know the thing has a name, even.
ANNIE: Of course not, who expects her to, now? All I want is her fingers to learn the letters.
JAMES: Won’t mean anything to her.
(ANNIE gives him a look. She then tries to form HELEN’S fingers into the letters, but HELEN swings a haymaker instead, which ANNIE barely ducks, at once pinning her down again.)
Doesn’t like that alphabet, Miss Sullivan. You invent it yourself?
(HELEN is now in a rage, fighting tooth and nail to get out of the chair, and ANNIE answers while struggling and dodging her kicks.)
ANNIE: Spanish monks under a—vow of silence. Which I wish you’d take!
(And suddenly releasing HELEN’S hands, she comes and shuts the door in JAMES’S face. HELEN drops to the floor, groping around for the doll. ANNIE looks around desperately, sees her purse on the bed, rummages in it, and comes up with a battered piece of cake wrapped in newspaper; with her foot she moves the doll deftly out of the way of HELEN’S groping, and going on her knee she lets HELEN smell the cake. When HELEN grabs for it, ANNIE removes the cake and spells quickly into the reaching hand.)
Cake. From Washington up north, it’s the best I can do.
(HELEN’S hand waits, baffled. ANNIE repeats it.)
C, a, k, e. Do what my fingers do, never mind what it means.
(She touches the cake briefly to HELEN’S nose, pats her hand, presents her own hand. HELEN spells the letters rapidly back. ANNIE pats her hand enthusiastically, and gives her the cake; HELEN crams it into her mouth with both hands. ANNIE watches her, with humor.)
Get it down fast, maybe I’ll steal that back too. Now.
(She takes the doll, touches it to HELEN’S nose, and spells again into her hand.)
D, o, l, l. Think it over.
(HELEN thinks it over, while ANNIE presents her own hand. Then HELEN spells three letters. ANNIE waits a second, then completes the word for HELEN in her palm.)
L.
(She hands over the doll, and HELEN gets a good grip on its leg.)
Imitate now, understand later. End of the first les—
(She never finishes, because HELEN swings the doll with a furious energy, it hits ANNIE squarely in the face, and she falls back with a cry of pain, her knuckles up to her mouth. HELEN waits, tensed for further combat. When ANNIE lowers her knuckles she looks at blood on them; she works her lips, gets to her feet, finds the mirror, and bares her teeth at herself. Now she is furious herself.)
You little wretch, no one’s taught you any manners? I’ll—
(But rounding from the mirror she sees the door slam, HELEN and the doll are on the outside, and HELEN is turning the key in the lock. ANNIE darts over, to pull the knob, the door is locked fast. She yanks it again.)
Helen! Helen, let me out of—
(She bats her brow at the folly of speaking, but JAMES, now downstairs, hears her and turns to see HELEN with the key and doll groping her way down the steps, JAMES takes in the whole situation, makes a move to intercept HELEN, but then changes his mind, lets her pass, and amusedly follows her out onto the porch. Upstairs ANNIE meanwhile rattles the knob, kneels, peers through the keyhole, gets up. She goes to the window, looks down, frowns. JAMES from the yard sings gaily up to her:)
JAMES:
Buffalo girl, are you coming out tonight,
Coming out tonight,
Coming out—
(He drifts back into the house. ANNIE takes a handkerchief, nurses her mouth, stands in the middle of the room, staring at door and window in turn, and so catches sight of herself in the mirror, her cheek scratched, her hair dishevelled, her handkerchief bloody, her face disgusted with herself. She addresses the mirror, with some irony.)
ANNIE: Don’t worry. The
y’ll find you, you’re not lost. Only out of place.
(But she coughs, spits something into her palm, and stares at it, outraged.)
And toothless.
(She winces.)
Oo! It hurts.
(She pours some water into the basin, dips the handkerchief, and presses it to her mouth. Standing there, bent over the basin in pain—with the rest of the set dim and unreal, and the lights upon her taking on the subtle color of the past—she hears again, as do we, the faraway voices, and slowly she lifts her head to them; the boy’s voice is the same, the others are cracked old crones in a nightmare, and perhaps we see their shadows.)
BOY’S VOICE: It hurts. Annie, it hurts.
FIRST CRONE’S VOICE: Keep that brat shut up, can’t you, girlie, how’s a body to get any sleep in this damn ward?
BOY’S VOICE: It hurts. It hurts.
SECOND CRONE’S VOICE: Shut up, you!
BOY’S VOICE: Annie, when are we goin’ home? You promised!
ANNIE: Jimmie—
BOY’S VOICE: Forever and ever, you said forever—
(ANNIE drops the handkerchief, averts to the window, and is arrested there by the next cry.)
Annie? Annie, you there? Annie! It hurts!
THIRD CRONE’S VOICE: Grab him, he’s fallin’!
BOY’S VOICE: Annie!
DOCTOR’S VOICE [A PAUSE, SLOWLY]: Little girl. Little girl, I must tell you your brother will be going on a—
(But ANNIE claps her hands to her ears, to shut this out, there is instant silence.
As the lights bring the other areas in again, JAMES goes to the steps to listen for any sound from upstairs. KELLER re-entering from left crosses toward the house; he passes HELEN en route to her retreat under the pump. KATE re-enters the rear door of the family room, with flowers for the table.)
KATE: Supper is ready, Jimmie, will you call your father?
JAMES: Certainly.
(But he calls up the stairs, for ANNIE’S benefit:)
Father! Supper!
KELLER [AT THE DOOR]: No need to shout, I’ve been cooling my heels for an hour. Sit down.
JAMES: Certainly.
KELLER: Viney!
(VINEY backs in with a roast, while they get settled around the table.)
VINEY: Yes, Cap’n, right here.
KATE: Mildred went directly to sleep, Viney?
VINEY: Oh yes, that babe’s a angel.
KATE: And Helen had a good supper?