Read The Miracle Worker for Free Online Page B

ANNIE watches, pleased.)
    Very good girl—
    (Whereupon HELEN elevates the pitcher and dashes it on the floor instead. ANNIE leaps to her feet, and stands inarticulate; HELEN calmly gropes back to sit to the sewing card and needle.
    ANNIE manages to achieve self-control. She picks up a fragment or two of the pitcher, sees HELEN is puzzling over the card, and resolutely kneels to demonstrate it again. She spells into HELEN’S hand.
    KATE meanwhile coming around the corner with folded sheets on her arms, halts at the doorway and watches them for a moment in silence; she is moved, but level.)
    KATE [ PRESENTLY ]: What are you saying to her?
    ( ANNIE glancing up is a bit embarrassed, and rises from the spelling, to find her company manners.)
    ANNIE: Oh, I was just making conversation. Saying it was a sewing card.
    KATE: But does that—
    (She imitates with her fingers)
    â€”mean that to her?
    ANNIE: No. No, she won’t know what spelling is till she knows what a word is.
    KATE: Yet you keep spelling to her. Why?
    ANNIE [ CHEERILY ]: I like to hear myself talk!
    KATE: The Captain says it’s like spelling to the fence post.
    ANNIE [ A PAUSE ]: Does he, now.
    KATE: Is it?
    ANNIE: No, it’s how I watch you talk to Mildred.
    KATE: Mildred.
    ANNIE: Any baby. Gibberish, grown-up gibberish, baby-talk gibberish, do they understand one word of it to start? Somehow they begin to. If they hear it, I’m letting Helen hear it.
    KATE: Other children are not—impaired.
    ANNIE: Ho, there’s nothing impaired in that head, it works like a mousetrap!
    KATE [ SMILES ]: But after a child hears how many words, Miss Annie, a million?
    ANNIE: I guess no mother’s ever minded enough to count.
    (She drops her eyes to spell into HELEN’S hand, again indicating the card; HELEN spells back, and ANNIE is amused.)
    KATE [ TOO QUICKLY ]: What did she spell?
    ANNIE: I spelt card. She spelt cake!
    (She takes in KATE’S quickness, and shakes her head, gently.)
    No, it’s only a finger-game to her, Mrs. Keller. What she has to learn first is that things have names.
    KATE: And when will she learn?
    ANNIE: Maybe after a million and one words.
    (They hold each other’s gaze; KATE then speaks quietly.)
    KATE: I should like to learn those letters, Miss Annie.
    ANNIE [ PLEASED ]: I’ll teach you tomorrow morning. That makes only half a million each!
    KATE [ THEN ]: It’s her bedtime.
    ( ANNIE reaches for the sewing card, HELEN objects, ANNIE insists, and HELEN gets rid of ANNIE’S hand by jabbing it with the needle. ANNIE gasps, and moves to grip HELEN’S wrist; but KATE intervenes with a proffered sweet, and HELEN drops the card, crams the sweet into her mouth, and scrambles up to search her mother’s hands for more. ANNIE nurses her wound, staring after the sweet.)
    I’m sorry, Miss Annie.
    ANNIE [ INDIGNANTLY ]: Why does she get a reward? For stabbing me?
    KATE: Well—
    (Then, tiredly)
    We catch our flies with honey, I’m afraid. We haven’t the heart for much else, and so many times she simply cannot be compelled.
    ANNIE [ OMINOUS ]: Yes. I’m the same way myself.
    ( KATE smiles, and leads HELEN off around the corner. ANNIE alone in her room picks up things and in the act of removing HELEN’S doll gives way to unmannerly temptation: she throttles it. She drops it on her bed, and stands pondering. Then she turns back, sits decisively, and writes again, as the lights dim on her.)
    (Grimly)
    â€œThe, more, I, think, the, more, certain, I, am, that, obedience, is, the, gateway, through, which, knowledge, enters, the, mind, of, the, child—”
    (On the word “obedience” a shaft of sunlight hits the water pump outside, while ANNIE’S voice ends in the dark, followed by a distant cockcrow; daylight comes up over another corner of the sky, with VINEY’S voice heard at once.)
    VINEY: Breakfast ready!
    ( VINEY comes down into the sunlight beam, and pumps a