Flowers for Algernon

classes excites me. I wish I could sit and talk with them over coffee in the Campus Bowl Luncheonette when they get together to argue about books and politics and ideas. It's exciting to hear them talking about poetry and science and philosophy—about Shakespeare and Milton; New­ton and Einstein and Freud; about Plato and Hegel and Kant, and all the other names that echo like great church bells in my mind.

Sometimes I listen in on the conversations at the tables around me, and pretend I'm a college student, even though I'm a lot older than they are. I carry books around, and I've started to smoke a pipe. It's silly, but since I belong at the lab I feel as if I'm a part of the university. I hate to go home to that lonely room.

April 27

I've made friends with some of the boys at the Campus Bowl. They were arguing about whether or not Shakespeare really wrote Shakespeare's plays. One of the boys—the fat one with the sweaty face—said that Mar­ lowe wrote all of Shakespeare's plays. But Lenny, the short kid with the dark glasses, didn't believe that business about Marlowe, and he said that everyone knew that Sir Francis Bacon wrote the plays because Shakespeare had never been to college and never had the education that shows up in those plays. That's when the one with the freshman beanie said he had heard a couple of guys in the men's room talk­ing about how Shakespeare's plays were really written by a lady.

And they talked about politics and art and God. I never before heard anyone say that there might not be a God. That frightened me, because for the first time I began to think about what God means.

Now I understand one of the important reasons for going to college and getting an education is to learn that the things you've believed in all your life aren't true, and that nothing is what it appears to be.

All the time they talked and argued, I felt the excite­ment bubble up inside me. This was what I wanted to do—go to college and hear people talk about important things.

I spend most of my free time at the library now, read­ing and soaking up what I can from books. I'm not con­centrating on anything in particular, just reading a lot of fiction now—Dostoevski, Flaubert, Dickens, Hemingway, Faulkner—everything I can get my hands on—feeding a hunger that can't be satisfied.

April 28

In a dream last night I heard Mom screaming at Dad and the teacher at the elementary school P.S. 13 (my first school before they transferred me to P.S. 222)….

'He's normal! He's normal! He'll grow up like other people. Better than others.' She was trying to scratch the teacher, but Dad was holding her back. 'He'll go to college someday. He'll be somebody.' She kept screaming it, claw­ing at Dad so he'd let go of her. 'He'll go to college some­day and he'll be somebody.'

We were in the principal's office and there were a lot of people looking embarrassed, but the assistant principal was smiling and turning his head so no one would see it.

The principal in my dream had a long beard, and was floating around the room and pointing at me. 'He'll have to go to a special school. Put him into the Warren State Home and Training School. We can't have him here.'

Dad was pulling Mom out of the principal's office, and she was shouting and crying too. I didn't see her face, but her big red teardrops kept splashing down on me.. Ђў.

This morning I could recall the dream, but now there's more than that—I can remember through the blur, back to when I was six years old and it all happened. Just before Norma was born. I see Mom, a thin, dark-haired woman who talks too fast and uses her hands too much. As always her face is blurred. Her hair is up in a bun, and her hand goes to touch it, pat it smooth, as if she has to make sure it's still there. I remember that she was always flutter­ing like a big, white bird—around my father, and he too heavy and tired to escape her pecking.

I see Charlie, standing in the center of the kitchen, playing with his spinner, bright colored beads and rings threaded on a string. He holds the string up in one hand turns the rings so they wind and unwind in bright spin­ning flashes. He spends long hours watching his spinner. I don't know who made it for him, or what became of it, but I see him standing there fascinated as the string untwists and sets the rings spinning</emphasis>

She is screaming at him—no, she's screaming at his father. 'I'm not going to take him. There's nothing wrong with him!'

'Rose, it won't do any good pretending any longer that nothing is wrong. Just look at him, Rose. Six years old, and—'

'He's not a dummy. He's normal. He'll be just like everyone else.'

He looks sadly at his son with the spinner and Charlie smiles and holds it up to show him how pretty it is when it goes around and around.

'Put that thing away!' Mom shrieks and suddenly she knocks the spinner from Charlie's hand, and it crashes across the kitchen floor. 'Go play with your alphabet blocks.'

He stands there, frightened by the sudden outburst. He cowers, not knowing what she will do. His body begins to shake. They're arguing, and the voices back and forth make a squeezing pressure inside him and a sense of panic.

'Charlie, go to the bathroom. Don't you dare do it in your pants.'

He wants to obey her, but his legs are too soft to move. His arms go up automatically to ward off blows.

'For God's sake, Rose. Leave him alone. You've got him terrified. You always do this, and the poor kid —'

'Then why don't you help me? I have to do it all by myself. Every day I try to teach him—to help him catch up to the others. He's just slow, that's all. But he can learn like everyone else.'

'You're fooling yourself, Rose. It's not fair to us or to him. Pretending he's normal. Driving him as if he were an animal that could learn to do tricks. Why don't you leave him alone?'

'Because I want him to be like everyone else.'

As they argue, the feeling that grips Charlie's insides becomes greater. His bowels feel as if they will burst and he knows he should go to the bathroom as she has told him so often. But he can't walk. He feels like sitting down right there in the kitchen, but it is wrong and she will slap him.

He wants his spinner. If he has his spinner and he watches it going round and round, he will be able to con­ trol himself and not make in his pants. But the spinner is all apart with some of the rings under the table and some under the sink, and the cord is near the stove.

It is very strange that although I can recall the voices clearly their faces are still blurred, and I can see only gen­eral outlines. Dad massive and slumped. Mom thin and quick. Hearing them now, arguing with each other across the years, I have the impulse to shout at them: 'Look at him. There, down there! Look at Charlie. He has to go to the toilet!'

Charlie stands clutching and pulling at his red check­ered shirt as they argue over him. The words are angry sparks between them—an anger and a guilt he can't identify.

'Next September he's going to go back to ES. 13 and do the term's work over again.'

'Why can't you let yourself see the truth? The teacher says he's not capable of doing the work in a regular class.'

'That bitch a teacher? Oh, I've got better names for her. Let her start with me again and I'll do more than just write to the board of education. I'll scratch that dirty slut's

eyes out. Charlie, why are you twisting like that? Go to the bathroom. Go by yourself. You know how to go.'

'Can't you see he wants you to take him? He's frightened.'

'Keep out of this. He's perfectly capable of going to the bathroom himself. The book says it gives him confi- dence and a feeling of achievement.'

The terror that waits in that cold tile room over­whelms him. He is afraid to go there alone. He reaches up for her hand and sobs out: 'Toi— toi…' and she slaps his hand away.

'No more,' she says sternly. 'You're a big boy now. You can go by yourself. Now march right into that bath­ room and pull your pants down the way I taught you. I warn you if you make in your pants you'll get spanked.'

I can almost feel it now, the stretching and knotting in his intestines as the two of them stand over him waiting to see what he will do. His whimper becomes a soft crying as suddenly he can control no longer, and he sobs and covers his face with his hands as he dirties himself.

It is soft and warm and he feels the confusion of relief and fear. It is his, but she will take it away from him as she always does. She will take it away and keep it for herself. And she will spank him. She comes toward him,