Letters to Helen

The following is an excerpt from a novel-in-progress titled HK.

Helen Keller at age ten, with Anne Sullivan

Photo: American Foundation for the Blind

February 4, 1998

 
Dear Helen Keller,

Let me introduce myself. I am a writer and sometimes college English teacher. I am forty-one, American, married, middle class. Also, like you I am blind, though not deaf. But I live the sort of life which would have been unimaginable for a blind woman of your generation, a life made possible in large measure by your life and work.

But I am not here to send you dispatches from the future, updates on conditions for disabled people today. I'm writing to ask you about an event in your life which I feel still has reverberations for people with disabilities today. I'm talking about the winter of 1892, when you were eleven, and you were tried for plagiarism. You were a student—the star student—at the Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston. You had written a story called "The Frost King," as a gift for Mr. Michael Anagnos, the director of Perkins. He liked it so much he printed it in a school publication distributed to benefactors and friends of the Institution. People read it and noticed that your story closely resembled a published story by a Mrs. Margaret T. Canby, called "The Frost Fairies." They questioned you about it, and you denied ever having read Mrs. Canby's story. Your teacher and companion, Anne Sullivan, denied reading it to you. There was not a copy in the library at Perkins, or at your home in Tuscumbia, Alabama.

After a lot of questions, it came out that someone else had read it to you, three years earlier, when you were still learning to communicate with the finger alphabet, still acquiring vocabulary. When people spoke or read to you, you did not understand every word, and could not always distinguish speaking from reading, because it was all just words spelled into your hand. So when someone read you Canby's story, you absorbed the gist of it without remembering that it was a story in a book. Then, later, when you sat down to write a story for Mr. Anagnos, the gist of the story came back to you, spontaneously, as if it were your own.

That was the explanation. But the explanation was not quite enough for them. They staged a sort of trial. Anagnos and eight teachers questioned you at length. Sullivan was barred from the proceedings. She was on trial as much as you were. She had achieved a certain level of celebrity for teaching you to communicate, and they felt they had to offer the public some definitive proof that she was not perpetrating an elaborate hoax. They needed to assure the world that Perkins was a legitimate educational institution worthy of private and public support. So they put you on trial. They interrogated you thoroughly while Sullivan waited outside. Finally, they exonerated you. Your explanation became the official story. And life went on as before.

But what made the incident all the more galling was that to prove that you had not consciously copied Canby's story, you had to answer a lot of very tricky questions: "If you didn't copy it, where did your idea come from? How do you know it came from imagination rather than memory? How do you know the difference between imagination, memory, dream, and reality?"

These are questions for psychologists, neurologists, philosophers, not for an eleven-year-old girl, even one as eager to please as you were.

And you were always a little shaky on these issues anyway. Dreams, for instance. Sometimes you woke in the morning and the dream still lingering in your mind would seem more vivid and real to you than waking life. One minute you'd be floating around in a rowboat with your dog Lioness licking your face, or standing on a table eating a bunch of bananas, or sitting in a wild cherry tree feeling a thunderstorm coming up. And the next minute you'd be lying in bed smelling bacon cooking somewhere, and you found it hard to say which sensation was most real.

But the part of this plagiarism incident which bothered you most was the effect it had on your writing. Years later you wrote, "If words come to me too easily it is a good sign they are not my own. I forget them with regret and think of others." When most writers feel words coming too easily they call it inspiration and try to keep at it. "Forget dinner. I'm on a roll."

But what gets me is how during the incident itself, the trial, the inquisition—whatever you want to call it—you just sat there and took it. From all the accounts I've read, yours and others, you stayed calm, cool and collected. You answered all their questions, in full sentences, not so much as a tremor or misspelling. I mean, Helen, get real. If ever there was an occasion to throw a fit, this was it. There you were, eleven years old, accused of plagiarism of all things, with a bunch of adults questioning you with straight faces and at great length about the provenance of your ideas. You were within your rights to overturn furniture, kick a few shins, throw something through a window. If it were me, I would have sat on my hands and refused to answer. But not you. From all I understand (and I guess the point is I don't understand), you just sat there, and took it, answering everything they threw at you until they were satisfied and let you go.

Was it shock, Helen? Is that what kept you passive, docile, and dumb in the face of such provocation? Was it the simple disbelief that comes when what's happening to you bears no resemblance to rational reality? But even so, Helen. You didn't so much as shed a tear. Afterwards, yes, for hours you lay in bed sobbing, wishing you were dead. Eleven years old, wishing you were dead.

Later, you received words of support and encouragement from many quarters. Your old friend Alexander Graham Bell expressed his dismay at the false accusation. Your future friend Mark Twain called the panel of inquisitors a bunch of "decayed turnips" and grumbled that no writer worth his salt would ever claim his ideas to be purely original. Even Mrs. Margaret T. Canby wrote a letter to say she believed you were telling the truth. You felt vindicated by all this, of course. But you must have also felt it was all too easy for them after the fact, all too little too late.

I know you never forgot the incident. I'd wager there was not a day in the seventy-seven years of your life which followed when you did not think about it. It would come back to you out of nowhere, unbidden. There you'd be, sitting at your desk, typing a letter to your editor, or standing on a stage receiving a bouquet of flowers from a little girl, and the next moment you'd feel yourself propelled backwards through time, to your eleven-year-old self, standing in a cold classroom while the air around you vibrated with hostility and doubt, and the being inside you writhed at the injustice and humiliation.

So what I want to know is not how you got over it, because I know you never really did. What I want to know is how you got through it. I can believe shock. Shock I can buy. But you were there, I wasn't. Perhaps you could put a finer point on this, add some detail. I have my reasons for asking. So anything you could do to illuminate this matter would be greatly appreciated.

 
Sincerely,

GK

 
February 5

 
Helen,

Help me out here. I'm having trouble getting my mind around this event. I mean, exactly how do you put an eleven-year-old child on trial for anything, much less plagiarism? But try as I might, I can't let it go either. So walk me through it, Helen.

It's 1892. As near as I can calculate, it's late February, early March. It's Boston, the Perkins Institution for the Blind. I imagine it taking place in a large classroom or maybe an auditorium. Not that they would have invited an audience. But they would want to lend the proceedings an air of formality. I imagine you seated at a large table on a hard, straight-backed chair. There's a larger table facing yours. At it sits Mr. Michael Anagnos, flanked by the eight teachers who are serving as judge and jury. When you write about this later you will note that four of them were blind and four were not. You did not know this at the time. And you never found out for sure which teachers they were, though I imagine you and Anne Sullivan did a good deal of speculating about it. But on the day in question, you don't even know how many of them there are.

Since it is winter and Boston and a large room in a nineteenth-century institution, I imagine the room is cold. Your clothes are stiff with starch. Inside your clothes you are warm and cold at once. A trickle of sweat has already slid from your armpit down your side to your waist. Perhaps knowing that this would happen, Anne Sullivan—Teacher, as you always call her—insisted on the starch. For the same reason, she yanked up your stockings with such force that your toes still feel curled under inside your shoes. She also pinned your hair off your temples with particular tightness, an extra pin on each side.

I know all this because I know what it's like to be a blind child. I know how the idea is inculcated that image matters. All the maternal admonitions about sitting up straight and keeping your clothes clean take on special meaning when the child is blind. "Don't make a spectacle of yourself. Don't be an eyesore." We've all been through that. Your Teacher had been through it herself. She was blind through most of her adolescence, until she got someone to pay for an operation. But her early experience of blindness made her a freak for grooming, yours as much as her own. For instance, she was always on you about your nail-biting, and your habit of fussing with your hair.

Today, she tied a black ribbon in your hair, explaining, "Black shows respect." You always like to know what color things are and what colors connote. Black is for mourning, you thought this morning, but did not say it. Mourning for what, you wonder now. Who died?

So you are there, in a cold room at the Perkins Institution, Boston, February, maybe March, 1892, wearing your Sunday best. Your spine is straight. Your chin is lifted. Your hands are on the table in front of you, carefully folded to conceal your ragged nails. There's another teacher sitting next to you to interpret for you. We'll call her Miss Lawson, for want of a better name. Excuse me if I free-lance, Helen. Your account omits a lot of detail. I imagine her being of a somewhat subordinate status to the other teachers present. Maybe she's a trainee, even a senior student. You know she is there, but she is not speaking to you yet. She does not touch you. The air between you is taut and chilly.

You wish Teacher were here with you, but she is not. She is on the other side of the door to your right, waiting too, probably pacing. She told you this was how it must be. You must go through this on your own. It is the point, she said. To remind yourself of this you keep repeating to yourself, "Leave Teacher out of it."

You cannot articulate it yet, but you sense that part of what's going on today has to do with the fact that Teacher's life here at Perkins is different from the lives of the other teachers. For one thing her salary is paid by your father, and for another she is always with you. The other teachers all have rooms in another part of the building, while Teacher's room is next to yours. Teacher sits next to you in class and spells into your hand and speaks aloud for you. She sits next to you at meals while the other teachers sit at a separate table. She is with you when people come to meet you in Mr. Anagnos's office. Once one of the other little girls said to you, "I wish I had a Teacher of my very own." You wonder if some of the other teachers wish they had their very own Helen.

Resentment is the word for that, Helen. You've sensed it even from Mr. Anagnos. He and Teacher have had a few run-ins—disagreements, they say—about you and how best to teach you. Mr. Anagnos has known Teacher a long time, since she was a student here, back when she was blind. Teacher has told you that they respect and admire each other, but sometimes you've felt something else between them.

So you are here alone and Teacher is outside the door pacing the hall and Miss Lawson (or whatever her name is) sits beside you. She takes your left hand, turns it over and starts spelling into it. "Mr. Anagnos and the rest of the panel have some questions for you, Helen. You must answer the questions as best you can. You must try to tell the truth. You must say what you know to be true, not what others have told you."

I imagine that strikes several nerves at once. Why is she telling you, of all people, to tell the truth. You always tell the truth. Truthfulness is one of your defining principles. And the saying, "I cannot tell a lie," has been on your mind lately. Washington's Birthday and the school pageant were just a week or two ago. But you don't want to think about that now. Now you sense again that they are being unfair to Teacher. Not only is she excluded from the room, but they are talking behind her back. The phrase, "not what others have told you," is about Teacher. At least you think that's what they mean. But you say none of this. You simply spell back, "Yes, Ma'am. I'll do my best."

Like an involuntary twitch, you smile at the front of the room. You lift the corners of your mouth. You show off your teeth. Your head tilts to one side, and a heavy ringlet of your hair slides forward and settles against your cheek. You have a nice smile, a bit forced perhaps, a beauty pageant smile. You can't help it. Your mother told you always to smile when addressing persons directly. But in the same instant you sense this may be the wrong time for smiling. If Teacher were here she would tell you, "Not now, Helen."

Solemn, you tell yourself. It is a solemn occasion. Show respect. Black shows respect. Northerners show respect by looking solemn. You pull the corners of your mouth back to level, and close your lips over your teeth. Slowly, solemnly, not in any way which could be construed as fidgety, you raise your hand and lift the stray curl back behind your shoulder.

Miss Lawson says, "Mr. Anagnos would like you to tell, in your own words, when the idea for the 'Frost King' story first came to you."

You say, "It was this past autumn. I wrote it at my home in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Actually, I wrote it at Fern Quarry, about fourteen miles from Tuscumbia, where my family has a summer home. I wrote it as a gift for Mr. Anagnos's birthday. I wanted to give him—"—"you"? you think. Should you be addressing him directly? Would that be better, more polite? If Teacher were here she would tell you. But she is not, so you stick to the way you started. "I wanted to give him a gift to show my appreciation for all he's done for me, my gratitude for the education I'm receiving here at Perkins."

There is a pause. You know it is a longer pause than it needs to be for Mr. Anagnos to ask another question. They must be talking about something. It occurs to you that these words you have just spoken, "appreciation," "gratitude," are Teacher's words. When you finished the story she wrote these very words in almost the same sentences in a cover letter. Is this what they're discussing now? Do they have the letter there in front of them?

Miss Lawson says, "But the idea, Helen. When did the idea first come to you?"

You have no answer for this. Time is tricky. Memory is tricky. You remember deciding to make a gift to Mr. Anagnos. You remember telling Teacher. She said you should write a story, "a little story" she said, like the ones you'd written for him before, or for your parents, or for class. So you sat down and wrote, "Once upon a time." Words followed. You wrote and wrote. You didn't think what words to put next. They simply came to you somehow. Your fingers moved on the keys of the brailler. The page filled up. Then there was a pile of pages. Then you wrote "the end" and it was done. But you can't remember when the idea came to you, or how. You can't remember thinking about it, making decisions, weighing options, changing your mind.

You say, "I like to write stories which explain things. Like the stories in Greek Mythology." You say this for Mr. Anagnos. He likes Greek Mythology, likes anything to do with ancient Greece and Rome. You have often talked together about these things. You go on, "I like those stories because they help me understand things, and remember them. And . . . " you interrupt yourself suddenly, pulling your hand out of Miss Lawson's as if off the hot stove. You were on the verge of saying, "Teacher was telling me. . . ." You know you must leave her out of it. You say, "I had been thinking about the seasons of the year. Autumn. How the leaves change color and fall off the trees."

But it was Teacher who told you this. About the colors. You knew about the falling leaves already. The leaves fell in Tuscumbia too. You liked to feel them falling. You could stand very still and feel them drifting down around you. You liked to scoop up handfuls of them and bury your face in them. You liked the smell of them, and the smell of them burning. When they raked them into piles, you would run and jump into them. You loved the shifting feel of them as you landed, the way a gust of wind would make them swirl around you like baby chicks swirling around your hands when you threw the feed.

But it was Teacher who told you about the colors. She said that in Alabama the leaves only turned dull yellow and brown, but in New England, where she came from, they turned many colors. She said when it happens the forests would become blazing tapestries of color. Those were the words she used. You had to ask her what a tapestry was. Blazing you knew from fire. The leaves were the colors of flame—red, orange, yellow. Hot colors. But you can't think of this without remembering that it was the first time it occurred to you that Teacher came from somewhere else. You knew that Teacher had come. You could remember a time when there was no Teacher. But you never thought where Teacher might have been before that. When she talked about New England and the blazing tapestries, it occurred to you that she had been somewhere else, somewhere she might wish to return.

But you can't allow yourself to think about this now. Keep Teacher out of it, you tell yourself. Because thinking about her now makes your throat clench and your eyes sting. You say, "I wanted to write a story to explain why the leaves change color in the fall."

Miss Lawson says, "Do you remember reading a story called 'The Frost Fairies'? Or someone reading it to you?"

"I read it last week," you say. Did you read it yourself or did Teacher read it to you? Another bead of sweat forms under your arm and slides rapidly down your side. So much has happened in the last week, so many questions, so much confusion. Did someone braille it for you or was it in braille already? Or did Teacher spell it into your hand? You flutter the fingers of your free hand, trying to remember, to recall the feel of the story, but you cannot. Quick, quick, you're thinking, because they will know this. If you say the wrong thing they will have the book there to prove it.

Last week was the Washington's Birthday Pageant. You played the part of Autumn. The memory makes you wince. You carried a sheaf of grain and a basket of wax fruit, and wore a wreath of autumn leaves in your hair. The night before the pageant, Sunday night, during the dress rehearsal, you were talking to one of the other teachers, and said something about Jack Frost. She said, "Who told you about Jack Frost, Helen?" You said that Teacher must have told you. She said, "What else did she say about frost?"

You hesitated. You actually drew back from her. There was something in the way she said it which made you afraid. Her fingers, spelling into your hand, were hard and unfriendly. It was as if her knuckles and fingertips had turned into tiny iron mallets. Her words bruised your palm and you drew away from her.

Later you told Teacher. She did not speak. She did not move. She sat perfectly still. The flesh of her palm seemed to draw back from your fingers. Then she got up and started pacing.

"But before last week," Miss Lawson asks. "Do you remember reading it before last week, or someone reading it to you?"

"No," you say. "I cannot remember reading it before. When I read it last week it seemed familiar to me. It reminded me of my story. But I do not remember reading it before last week." You pause. There is no human warmth in the air. It quivers. It bristles with energy. But it is not warm. There is no warmth coming from Miss Lawson either. Teacher is always warm. She says she is always cold, but she always feels warm to you. She gives off her warmth but cannot feel it herself.

You know she is out there, on the other side of the door, pacing. You press the soles of your shoes hard against the floorboards hoping to feel the vibrations of her pacing footsteps, but you can't. You know what her footsteps feel like. And when she paces the vibrations run right up the bones of your legs to your spine. It's surprising that such a small body can produce vibrations like that. She is small. You're only eleven but you're almost as tall as she is. When you hug her, you feel all her bones just inside the skin. When you hug yourself you feel more flesh. But when she paces it feels almost like a big man carrying a heavy trunk or load of coal. She paces when she is angry. She has been pacing a lot recently. She is pacing now. You are sure of it. But you cannot feel it.

And you feel nothing coming from Miss Lawson. You feel nothing coming from the front of the room where you know they are sitting. They are not talking then. They expect more from you. You suck your lower lip between your teeth. Your lip is chapped. There's a sore spot on the right side because you've been biting it. You straighten your lips again. You lift your chin. "I can't remember reading it before last week, but I know that it happened," you say. Your mouth twitches—almost a smile. "It's why we're here today."

This may be wrong Helen. This may be me putting words in your mouth, your hands. It's the sort of thing I'd say. Cut through the pretense. Make them call you a liar since that's what they're there to prove. That's me—the hostile witness. You, Helen, would be more compliant. You may even believe they want to believe you. And you are always so eager, so hopelessly eager to please.

You say, "I know that it happened," and let it go at that.

"When did it happen?" Miss Lawson spells.

"Three and a half years ago," you say. "When I was eight. It was summer. It was in Brewster on Cape Cod. At the home of Mrs. Hopkins." Is Mrs. Hopkins here, you wonder. You inhale quickly through your nose, but you can smell nothing, no one. The room is too cold. Smells don't travel as well in the cold. Mrs. Hopkins used to be here, you know. She was a teacher here. She was Teacher's teacher, and her friend. She made Teacher the dress she wore when she first came to you in Tuscumbia. But Mrs. Hopkins is retired now, which means she has gone to live in her house in Brewster.

"It was the summer I first came to Boston," you continue. "The summer I first came to Perkins and first met all of you."

Again your lips twitch. But you stop the smile in time. This is no smiling matter. They may not be pleased to remember when you first came to Perkins. Perhaps what you have done is so bad, they wish you'd stayed away.

"You know that's when it happened," Miss Lawson is spelling into your hand, "but you don't remember it? How can that be, Helen?"

It can be because it is, you think but do not say. Memory is like that. You know you were there. You have been there since. When you go there you remember being there before. You know certain events took place there, but do you remember the events, or only the telling of the events?

What was the question? How do you know but not remember? What a question. It amazes me that you don't call them on it. You know a lot of things you don't remember. You know you were born, but you don't remember that. You know that when you were eighteen months old you got a fever and when it passed you were deaf and blind, but you don't remember that either. Is that in question now too? How are you supposed to know how you know what you know and how you remember what you remember? You're eleven years old. You should say, "Get serious people. Are you listening to yourselves?" But that's not how you operate. You really want to answer this question, really want to prove to them that you acted in good faith, just a little girl wanting to do something nice for the nice man who runs her school, not a ruthlessly calculating plagiarist bent on personal gain and self-promotion.

Think, you tell yourself. "Think," Teacher tells you and taps you on the forehead. "Use your brain." But that is not how you think of thinking. You know you have a brain in there, and that the brain is where ideas, and memories and dreams, take place. But to you, it doesn't feel like the place where you know things. You know things because you touch them. You pick them up. You run your hands over and around them. You know things through your hands, the squared-off patch of palm where words are spelled, the soft pads of your fingertips where you feel the dots of braille. What you know you know as texture and vibration. You feel it in your hands, your chest, the tuning fork of your ribs, the soles of your feet. You taste too, of course. And you smell things. But when you inhale scents through your nose they go down your throat and feel like tastes. They do not rise into your brain.

Miss Lawson touches your arm. You say, "I'm thinking," then add, "I'm trying to find the right words to explain."

Then you say, "Back then I didn't know as many words as I know now. The things I could name were things I could touch. I knew the word for water, but I didn't know the word for cloud." You lift your free hand to point overhead, then drop it, not wanting them to think you don't know there are no clouds indoors. You say, "When people read books to me," you say "people" because it was not just Teacher. It was your mother. It was Mrs. Hopkins. "When people read to me I did not always understand every word. I might understand every tenth word. Even when I read to myself in braille, I did not understand every word. Sometimes I would just skip to the words I knew."

I know how much it costs you to admit this, Helen. You feel shame at your former self's ineptitude. You wish you could claim to have known more then. You wish you had always been the super-star student you are now. I know how much it costs you, because I've been there myself. When I was eleven I lost my sight but I passed as sighted for a long time. I felt ashamed to say, "I can't read that," or "I can't see where you're pointing," because it made me sound stupid.

But this is the price you have to pay, Helen. You have to expose your former self's lack of understanding. That's the whole point. Back then you didn't know, didn't understand.

You go on. "Sometimes, after the person" (not just Teacher), "had finished reading to me, I would ask questions, or I would ask them to tell the story to me again. And I didn't always know for sure if they were reading me the story again or telling it using other words. And other times someone would tell me a story which might have been from a book or might have been made up right there, out of . . .," your free hand moves in the air, fingering it like cloth, whole cloth, thin air, "out of thin air," you say, "out of imagination. I couldn't always tell which was which. Now, sometimes when I read a story on my own it seems familiar to me and I think someone must have read it to me before I fully understood. And sometimes I think it's because a lot of stories are like a lot of other stories. Like stories in Greek Mythology." Again this is for Mr. Anagnos. You want to remind him of all the conversations you've had together, how he always used to praise you, how he called you his special friend. But thinking this makes your lower lip quiver. You suck it between your teeth and clench it. You go on, "I think this is what must have happened with 'The Frost Fairies.' I think someone must have read it to me that summer in Brewster. I think parts of the story stayed in my memory. But I cannot remember it happening."

Again there is a pause. You sit very still. You try not to breathe hard. You feel some movement in the air, small ripples you know are speech. At last Miss Lawson takes your hand and says, "Are you sure this is what happened? Are you sure no one told you to say this?"

"Yes. I'm sure. This is what happened," you say, without a pause, because you must keep Teacher out of it. Though of course she did tell you to say this. She paced back and forth across your room, and then sat beside you and told you all this. The words were slightly different, but there are only so many ways to say some things. But you believed her. You always believe her, because it is through her that you know everything you know. Why would you not believe her? Then, on an impulse, you add, "I did not copy that story on purpose. I would never do that. I know that would be wrong." Because it hurts you that they could think this of you. That he could think this of you—his special friend.

It occurs to you suddenly that you have no way of knowing whether Miss Lawson is really repeating what you're saying. Her hands are so tentative, her spelling so slow. Maybe she's merely paraphrasing, giving the gist. Who is this Lawson woman anyway? You pull your hand away from her and spell into the air. Then you stop. You spell in the air to Teacher sometimes, but you are not sure this is universally understood. You do not know if they are even looking at you. For all you know they have turned their backs.

Miss Lawson's fingers are in your palm again. "But are you sure, Helen? Are you sure Miss Sullivan did not tell you to say this?"

"I am sure." You are determined to keep Teacher out of it. "No one told me to say this."

She says, "Are you absolutely sure that when you wrote 'The Frost King' you thought it was your own invention, your own original idea?"

She says, "Did Miss Sullivan tell you to write that story? Did Miss Sullivan tell you that story and tell you to write it down?"

She says, "Do you remember or are you just saying what Miss Sullivan told you to say?"

"Asked and answered," I want to say. "You're just badgering the witness now." I would be stalling for time, hoping to give you a minute or two to collect yourself. Because, I don't know about you Helen, but this is all getting a bit too fast and furious for me. I can barely keep typing. My hands are cold. I'm actually shivering. You, I can't tell. You are so busy trying to prove you're not lying, and trying to keep Teacher out of it, that it's as if you actually haven't noticed that the questions have taken an ugly turn. The harder you try to shield Teacher from blame, the more central she becomes. And then, what happens to you? Your edges fray. Your core wobbles. You become beside the point, and that scares me. Granted, I have the advantage of a hundred-plus years of hindsight and a more cynical nature than yours, but even so, Helen, even so.

But what scares me more is the possibility that you know only too well what they're doing to you. You feel yourself disintegrating and the only defense you have is to keep hurling back the words, "Don't look at Teacher. Look at me. Look at me. Look at me."

Hold that thought, Helen. Give me a minute and I'll get back to you.

 
Afternoon

Let's backtrack. Plagiarism. What does plagiarism mean to an eleven-year-old child? It means copying. Copying is bad. When you copy another child's test paper (not that you could do this, Helen) it's bad. But sometimes copying is all right.

When I was seven years old I wrote a story which closely resembled BlackBeauty. Naturally there were differences. My version was written in the vocabulary of a seven year old, and it included a lot of crayon drawings. But the idea was identical. No one accused me of plagiarism. Quite the contrary. They praised me. Everyone thought it was great—so creative, when in fact, I had created nothing original. And I knew it. I thought it was something I was supposed to do.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and all that. But also, children learn by copying. Copying is encouraged in certain pedagogical contexts. And not just for children. I'm in the office at the moment and could pull seven or eight college English textbooks off my shelf which contain sample essays for students to imitate. If you weren't so busy with other things, I could scan one into the computer so you could read it for yourself. Of course, the authors of those books assume college students understand that they are supposed to emulate the form of the samples, not the content.

In fact, that's how you were educated. You were taught, if not to copy, at least to compare. Teacher would give you a topic to write about. Then she'd compare your composition with ones in books or in the Youth's Companion or other magazines. She'd say, "In the book, everything has a color. You need to say what color the dog is, Helen. You need to say it's a brown dog." Then she'd read you a sentence from your composition and a sentence from the book. You'd balance a sentence in each hand, weighing the words. Then she'd say, "You could call it a chocolate-brown dog. That would suggest it was a likable dog, a sweet-tempered dog."

At first Teacher had to tell you when and where to make these additions. Later, you developed a real knack for it. When you learned that Mr. Anagnos liked everything about ancient Greece and Rome, you wrote a series of compositions. You wrote about how the marble columns of the Parthenon were "brilliant white." You'd learned that brilliant also means very intelligent, very bright. Inventors like your friend Dr. Bell are brilliant, people say. You think it's fitting that the Parthenon should be associated with intelligence. You wrote that Rome was "bathed in honeyed sunlight." You know that sunlight sometimes feels like a warm bath, only dry, and that sunlight is usually some shade of yellow or gold. You like the idea that if sunlight had a taste it would taste like honey.

Everyone praised these compositions. Mr. Anagnos said your language was like poetry. But where did they think you got that language? You have never been to those places. How did you know all these things? How did you know to put these words to these things? From books you'd read and things people told you. How else?

But it wasn't like that with "The Frost King." There was none of that labored, associative thought-process. You didn't have to tell yourself, "Add a color here. Put a sound there." It all just happened. You went into a kind of creative trance, and when you came out of it, there was the story all done. You'd like to explain this to them. You thought it was the ultimate goal, to achieve such fluency with the language that a whole story could flow from your head, down your arm onto the page.

But Miss Lawson is saying, "How can you know something happened and not remember it unless Miss Sullivan told you it happened?"

It's not right, Helen. It's just not right. They're not asking you about plagiarism anymore. They're asking you to explain how your mind works, and I don't think that's something a child of eleven should be expected to know. And because you are a child of eleven, you are oblivious to this. You think they're still accusing you of lying, accusing Teacher of lying. So you're arguing at cross-purposes, getting nowhere.

But they're adults and should know better. I try to imagine them sitting there shoulder-to-shoulder, coming up with such questions. I try to imagine him, Mr. Anagnos, your special friend. There he sits at the center of the long tribunal table, the Director of the Perkins Institution, the man in charge. The only man present, in fact. He is fifty-five, widowed, childless. He is a distinguished-looking man, mostly bald, with a full beard cut square around the chin. His correct, somber suit is conservatively tailored. His linen is immaculate. His hands are immaculate. His bearing is at once aristocratic and kindly.

He cannot like what's happening here today. "It isn't right," he thinks to himself. He is an educated and humane man. Why else would he have taken this position at this institution? Some might point out that his coming here when he did allowed him to leave his native Greece at a time of great turmoil. But he is still a humane, compassionate man.

He sighs. He feels the tension around him, the eight teachers who sit at the table on either side of him. He knows which are neutral in their opinion of this matter, which for you and which against. Not that any of them is really against you. You're only a child after all. The antagonism is all directed at Teacher. They all remember her from when she was a pupil here. They know how she is, know her willfulness and her ambition. Some would like to see her taken down a notch. Some bear grudges. And with just cause, Mr. Anagnos would readily admit. She was a handful, a spitfire, as he always thought of her. She was quick, quick-witted, quick-tempered, also headstrong and occasionally disrespectful. Once an exasperated mathematics teacher asked her, "Is your brain ever awake, Miss Sullivan?" and she replied, "Yes, when I leave your classroom."

Mr. Anagnos finds the corners of his mouth curling upward. He lifts his hand to his mouth and coughs to cover this. He was always having to deal with such shows of insubordination. More than once he'd been obliged to threaten her with expulsion and other forms of discipline. But in spite of that, he always liked Teacher. He admired her spirit even when it got in his own way. It made him lenient and protective. When he chose her to go to Tuscumbia and be your Teacher, others objected. Some complained that her own education was too inadequate to qualify her. Others even alleged that she received special consideration only because she was so exceptionally pretty. Jealousy makes people say such things, Mr. Anagnos knows. He chose Teacher because he hoped it would make her settle down, give her a useful purpose in life. And it did. She settled into a zealot's monomania. She has become so prickly when it comes to you, so protective. She cannot tolerate the least question about her methods. She is so young, so excitable. And she has a tendency to exaggerate, stretch the truth. Those first letters she wrote about you from Tuscumbia seemed so implausible. Though she was using methods developed here at Perkins, no one could quite believe the rate of success she claimed to be having with you. "Moderation, Miss Sullivan," he wrote more than once. "Moderate your claims. Moderate your expectations. The child's progress may level off." But when he saw you for himself he could see how easy it was to be caught up in her enthusiasm.

Success had gone to her head, Mr. Anagnos would have to say. She finds it too easy to take full credit for your education. And there's something else. He glances at the door and pictures her out there in the hall, pacing to and fro, hugging herself for warmth, and blowing on her hands. Her face has changed dramatically these last four years, he's observed. Her eyes seem to have shrunk, receded into their deep sockets. This may be a residual effect of her trachoma and the surgeries which cured it. But it makes her look at once haggard and ecstatic, like the martyred saints always look in icons. She is tireless when it comes to you, unrelenting. More than once Mr. Anagnos has had to caution her about working you too hard. "A child needs recreation too," he's reminded her, "an occasional outing, a day of rest."

He sighs. There are those present who have lost all patience with Teacher, and are willing to believe the worst about her. Mr. Anagnos shifts in his chair. He is uncomfortable with this. He is uncomfortably cold. He feels the cold in his joints. The older he gets, the longer these Boston winters seem to him. It is when he most longs for the warmth and sunshine of his homeland. He looks at you, seated there on your hard chair. He likes you. He even admires you, to the extent that a grown man can be said to admire a little girl. You are sitting perfectly still now. Your posture is very correct, he notices. Your clothes too. Your navy blue dress with its crisp collar and cuffs and the ruffle around the yoke is very becoming and entirely suitable.

He likes blind people, having lived and worked among them for so many years, blind children, especially blind girls. They have a certain quality. He likes to see them walking the hallways in little groups, a line of three or four girls, trailing their hands along the wall to guide themselves. They seem so dainty and graceful, like little dancers. There's something ethereal and other-worldly about them. They can be quite pretty, perhaps because they are so guileless and unaffected. He enjoys complimenting them. He'll meet a group of two or three in the hallway and say, "Don't you look lovely today?" And they'll curtsey and giggle behind their hands, pleased to have pleased him, but utterly without pride or vanity.

He looks at you. You are different. You draw attention. There's something elemental about it. It's as if you radiate energy which magnetically attracts the eye. A stranger walking into a room full of children would instantly point at you and say, "Who is that little girl?"

"This is the celebrated Miss Helen Keller," Mr. Anagnos always says. And you hold out your hand and drop a curtsey as you've been taught. You smile, lifting your face to show off your pretty teeth, tilting your head so your hair moves onto your shoulders in a soft mound of curls. You are a delightful child, so cheerful, so pleasing. You demonstrate the finger alphabet. You demonstrate how you can read lips. Mr. Anagnos has let you touch his own lips and throat in many such demonstrations. You always tell him how his whiskers tickle. He feels your strong, eager hands on his face now. He lifts a hand to stroke his beard as if expecting to find your fingers there.

He has watched how people are around you. He has seen grown men's faces transformed by wonder to see you do these things. He has learned to count on you. The most stolid benefactor can melt in your presence, and instantly double, even triple the amount of his donation. There's no denying that you're good for business. Perkins has benefited from your presence here, and not just financially. Now it has the reputation as the finest, most pedagogically advanced institution of its kind in the world, surpassing even the school in Paris. You, Helen, have a lot to do with that reputation. Mr. Anagnos has told your miraculous story countless times, because people cannot get enough of you. In fact, that's the reason he published your "Frost King" story. He'd been a bit pressed, so rather than taking the time to write a list of your recent accomplishments as he usually did, he decided simply to reprint your story so the Board of Trustees and other readers would have a concrete example of your ongoing progress. How he regrets this now.

He looks at you there across the room. People are drawn to you. The light is drawn to you. It's not that you are an exceptionally pretty child. By today's standards you'd be considered a little chunky. But by the standards of your own day, you'd be considered robust and healthy. You're large for your age. Your abundant hair frames your face and shoulders. You have a fine, fair complexion. Your pale eyes are open, because you, like most blind children, have been taught always to keep your eyes open. Your face is lowered slightly. Your eyes seem to be focused on a spot on the floor between your table and his. Not quite focused though. You're not really looking at anything there. It's as if you're remembering something, summoning an almost forgotten image. At the same time you look alert, waiting for something, as if you heard a sound somewhere and are waiting to hear it again. He blinks twice, but when he looks again, the impression is as strong as ever. You look for all the world as if you are thinking.

As if, Helen. As if.

He shakes his head to clear the fancy. Surely you are not thinking in the same sense that he is thinking. He is uncertain. He is of several minds about you. You challenge his imagination, Helen. His reason rebels. No one has ever had to deal with these issues before you. You are only the second deaf-blind person he's ever met. The first was Laura Bridgeman, the first deaf-blind child to learn to communicate with the finger alphabet. But communication for her meant something more modest. She learned to communicate basic needs, basic preferences. "May I please have sugar in my tea?" is the sort of thing she will say. She is an old woman now, still living here at Perkins, in a secluded room on the fifth floor. She spends her days at lace-making and other needle work. Blind females are often very deft with the needle. She reads a verse or two from the Bible each day. At five o'clock she has a dish of porridge or thin soup. That is her life, and she seems content with it—a modest, rather pious woman. Mr. Anagnos enjoys visiting her once or twice a week. She is a soothing presence.

Not like you, Helen. You unsettle the mind. He has stood over you watching you type and more than once had the impression that the words appearing one by one on the page are somehow connected to thoughts as they form inside your head, when he knows it is really a matter of rote memorization and retrieval. You have a prodigious memory, startling recall. Still, it's something like watching the performance of a skillful magician. He cannot believe his eyes. He knows he must not believe his eyes. And yet. . . . Then other times he's had long conversations with you about abstract subjects, classical philosophy, theology. It's hard to call them conversations. He is not particularly adept at the manual alphabet. But when he's found the patience for it, he's marvelled at your ability to ask and answer questions, to refine opinions, to construct arguments. He has actually felt himself communing with a mind as powerful and supple as a grown man's.

He thinks, "Perhaps this will chasten her," meaning Teacher, but maybe also meaning you.

Then he thinks, "This is wrong. It is wrong to subject a child to such questions."

But it doesn't matter what he thinks. Because he published your story this has become a public matter now. Everyone—the Trustees, the benefactors, the general public—will be watching to see how he handles it. Can he really be so gullible, they are asking themselves, to believe that a child like you, stone deaf, stone blind, could actually produce something with such whimsy, such poetry and color? It is easy for them to think the worst of him. He has been here long enough to consider himself an American. He associates with only the best people, the best families, educated and compassionate men like himself, men who value his cultivation, appreciate the fact that he can recite Homer in the original. Still, he is not one of them. He has been Director here for nearly twenty years, but he does not forget that the Trustees originally named another man, whose only qualification, as far as Mr. Anagnos could see, was that he was native-born. And while they praise his work here, he knows that some remember he is only the son of a village baker. His acceptance in their world is only provisional. He knows that the slightest deviation from correctness in dress, manner, or speech will make him drop in their estimation. Or rather it will only confirm what they have always thought, but never said aloud. He has lived in their world long enough to sense the words at the back of their minds.

One snowy night a man coming out of a tavern bumped into him in the street. The man was clearly a laborer of some sort, clearly inebriated. He had to cling to Mr. Anagnos's shoulders to steady himself. Mr. Anagnos could still remember the way the man's hands stood out in contrast to the fine, somber stuff of his own overcoat. They were hands roughened by labor, the knuckles bulbous, the nails ragged and discolored. The skin was chapped and red with a sprinkling of coarse orange hairs. The man's clothes were patched and worn. The skin of his face was ruddy from drink and smeared with orange-brown freckles. His nose appeared to have been broken more than once, a misshapen lump in the middle of his face. The man peered unsteadily into Mr. Anagnos's face. His eyes drifted sluggishly from his hat, to his well-groomed beard to his immaculate collar just visible above his muffler. The man's lips were twisted into a lopsided grin, as if he was about to make a good-natured joke at his own expense, then clap the other man on the shoulder and part as friends. But then the man's vision seemed to clear. He stared into Mr. Anagnos's eyes. The man's eyes were a watery blue, framed by pale lashes. Then the lids squeezed together, and his eyes became sharp slits of icy color. The man said, "Dirty wop," and flung Mr. Anagnos aside with such force he stumbled off the curb into the rushing gutter.

He lifts his hand. He flicks the air as if shooing a fly. He says, "Go ahead, Miss Lawson. Ask the next question."