Free Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes Page B

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 control 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 P.S. 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 confidence 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 bathroom 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