Flowers for Algernon

'She got an A! She got an A!'

'No!' shrieks Norma. 'Not you. You don't tell. It's my mark, and I'm going to tell.'

'Now wait a minute, young lady.' Matt puts his newspaper down and addresses her sternly. 'That's no way to talk to your brother.'

'He had no right to tell!'

'Never mind.' Matt glares at her over his warning finger. 'He meant no harm by it, and you musn't shout at him that way.'

She turns to her mother for support. 'I got an A —the best mark in class. Now I can have a dog? You promised. You said if I got a good mark in my test. And I got an A A brown dog with white spots. And I'm going to call him Napoleon because that was the question I answered best on the test. Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo.'

Rose nods. 'Go out on the porch and play with Char­lie. He's been waiting over an hour for you to come home from school.'

'I don't want to play with him.'

'Go out on the porch,' says Matt.

Norma looks at her father and then at Charlie. 'I

don't have to. Mother said I don't have to play with him if I don't want to.'

'Now, young lady'—Matt rises out of his chair and comes toward her—'you just apologize to your brother.'

'I don't have to,' she screeches, rushing behind her mother's chair. 'He's like a baby. He can't play Monopoly or checkers or anything… he gets everything all mixed up. I won't play with him any more.'

'Then go to your room!'

'Can I have a dog now, Mama?'

Matt hits the table with his fist. 'There'll be no dog in this house as long as you take this attitude, young lady.'

'I promised her a dog if she did well in school—'

'A brown one with white spots!' adds Norma.

Matt points to Charlie standing near the wall. 'Did you forget you told your son he couldn't have one because we didn't have the room, and no one to take care of it. Re­member? When he asked for a dog? Are you going back on what you said to him?'

'But I can take care of my own dog,' insists Norma. 'I'll feed him, and wash him, and take him out…'

Charlie, who has been standing near the table, playing with his large red button at the end of a string, suddenly speaks out.

'I'll help her take care of the dog! I'll help her feed it and brush it and I won't let the other dogs bite it!'

But before either Matt or Rose can answer, Norma shrieks: 'No! It's going to be my dog. Only my dog!'

Matt nods. 'You see?'

Rose sits beside her and strokes her braids to calm her. 'But we have to share things, dear. Charlie can help you take care of it.'

'No! Only mine!… I'm the one who got the A in his­tory—not him! He never gets good marks like me. 'Why should he help with the dog? And then the dog will like him more than me, and it'll be his dog instead of mine. No! If I can't have it for myself I don't want it.'

'That settles it,' says Matt picking up his newspaper and settling down in his chair again. 'No dog.'

Suddenly, Norma jumps off the couch and grabs the history test she had brought home so eagerly just a few minutes earlier. She tears it and throws the pieces into Charlie's startled face. 'I hate you! I hate you!'

'Norma, stop that at once!' Rose grabs her but she twists away.

'And I hate school! I hate it! I'll stop studying, and I'll be a dummy like him. I'll forget everything I learned and then I'll be just like him.' She runs out of the room, shrieking: 'It's happening to me already. I'm forgetting everything… I'm forgetting… I don't remember anything I learned any more!'

Rose, terrified, runs after her. Matt sits there staring at the newspaper in his lap. Charlie, frightened by the hyste­ria and the screaming, shrinks into a chair whimpering softly. What has he done wrong? And feeling the wetness in his trousers and the trickling down his leg, he sits there waiting for the slap he knows will come when his mother returns.

The scene fades, but from that time Norma spent all her free moments with her friends, or playing alone in her room. She kept the door to her room closed, and I was for­bidden to enter without her permission.

I recall once overhearing Norma and one of her girl friends playing in her room, and Norma shouting: 'He is not my real brother! He's just a boy we took in because we felt sorry for him. My mamma told me, and she said I can tell everyone now that he's not really my brother at all.'

I wish this memory were a photograph so that I could tear it up and throw it back into her face. I want to call back across the years and tell her I never meant to stop her from getting her dog. She could have had it all to herself, and I wouldn't have fed it, or brushed it, or played with it—and I would never have made it like me more than it liked her. I only wanted her to play games with me the way we used to. I never meant to do anything that would hurt her at all.

June 6

My first real quarrel with Alice today. My fault. I wanted to see her. Often, after a disturbing memory or dream, talking to her—just being with her—makes me feel better. But it was a mistake to go down to the Center to pick her up.

I had not been back to the Center for Retarded Adults since the operation, and the thought of seeing the place was exciting. It's on Twenty-third Street, east of Fifth Av­enue, in an old schoolhouse that has been used by the Beekman University Clinic for the last five years as a cen­ter for experimental education—special classes for the handicapped. The sign outside on the doorway, framed by the old spiked gateway, is just a gleaming brass plate that says C. R. A. Beekman Extension.

Her class ended at eight, but I wanted to see the room where—not so long ago—I had struggled over simple reading and writing and learned to count change of a dollar.

I went inside, slipped up to the door, and, keeping out of sight, I looked through the window. Alice was at her desk, and in a chair beside her was a thin-faced woman I didn't recognize. She was frowning that open frown of un­concealed puzzlement, and I wondered what Alice was try­ing to explain.

Near the blackboard was Mike Dorni in his wheel­chair, and there in his usual first-row first-seat was Lester Braun, who, Alice said, was the smartest in the group. Lester had learned easily what I had struggled over, but he came when he felt like it, or he stayed away to earn money waxing floors. I guess if he had cared at all—if it had been important to him as it was to me—they would have used him for this experiment. There were new faces, too, people I didn't know.

Finally, I got up the nerve to go in.

'It's Charlie!' said Mike, whirling his wheelchair around.

I waved to him.

Bernice, the pretty blonde with empty eyes, looked up and smiled dully. 'Where ya been, Charlie? That's a nice suit.'

The others who remembered me waved to me and I waved back. Suddenly, I could see by Alice's expression that she was annoyed.

'It's almost eight o'clock,' she announced. 'Time to put things away.'

Each person had an assigned task, the putting away of chalk, erasers, papers, books, pencils, note paper, paints, and demonstration material. Each one knew his job and took pride in doing it well. They all started on their tasks except Bernice. She was staring at me.

'Why ain't Charlie been coming to school?' asked Bernice. 'What's the matter, Charlie? Are you coming back?'

The others looked up at me. I looked to Alice, waiting for her to answer for me, and there was a long silence. What could I tell them that would not hurt them?

'This is just a visit,' I said.

One of the girls started to giggle—Francine, whom Alice was always worried about. She had given birth to three children by the time she was eighteen, before her par­ents arranged for a hysterectomy. She wasn't pretty—