3 of 24

Write now Article Tools

The story goes that Helen Keller looked back at her childhood as she grew older. This is her fictionalized version as I imagine she would write it: The inside was dark. The outside, I was later to learn, was luminous at night and flooded with sunshine during the day. The luminosity was the moon's attempt to come to terms with the inside darkness; and the daylight was at best an off and on thing, acting in accordance with the solar system and its advisers. Yet both the moon and the sun had their downsides when neither shone and pitch darkness reigned in heaven and drizzling rain dampened the spirits on earth.

Yet at the age of five, how was I to know that? How was I to know that the inside was dark because my lights had not only been turned off, my telephone lines had also been downed? I had no one to talk to and nothing to listen to; so it seemed reasonable to me these many years later as I lay dying, that since I had nothing to say, knowing nothing, I kept quiet.

That, of course, is only partially the truth since it does not stop even those today with the moon and the sun and cell phones and computers who still jibber jabber on about nothing. That too is not the truth. It's only a wayward thought hoping to fill up my vacancies by peddling junk. Now that I have halted a little of my senses before all completely leave, the truth of my muteness had more to do with untrained vocal cords. But that was learned later, and only by the sense of feel of which I had plenty.

The inside was dark on that fateful morning when my tactile sense perceived a shimmering ray of light illuminating the nothingness of my being. My keeper was walking me toward the big house, the dwelling into which I was born and where I spent the first nineteen months of my happy gurgling and listening and cooing life.

These memories came flooding back as the field hand pumped water over my hands at the insistence of my keeper. I say keeper but she was my teacher. We lived alone in a little cottage nearby that my father built for us. He could no longer stand to be around a daughter that acted more like an animal than a human being. For all involved, including my teacher and me, it was best that we live alone where my maniacal tantrums would disturb no one and where, by the grace of God, I could open a window or two against the inside darkness.

As the cold water ran down over my hands and the squeaky pump rhythmically and silently-to my ears-flooded water over my dirty feet, my teacher lovingly lifted

• 1
• 2
• 3
• next page >>

Add your voice

Know something about Short stories: Empathy?
We want to hear your view. Write now!