Free Miss Spitfire by Sarah Miller

husband and me. Pain twists her lips. Her gaze follows the captain out the door behind her, then moves to Helen. Tears gloss her eyes as she turns them up at me.
    My voice is little more than a whisper. “I won’t hurt her, Mrs. Keller.”
    Her mouth sags. She draws a breath and nods. “Boys,” she says to James and Simpson, and goes out. The brothers follow her. Last of all Miss Eveline rises to leave. At the sideboard she pauses, then pulls a key from the drawer.
    â€œYou stay sharp, now, dear,” she says solemnly, placing the key in my hand. The concern in her voice closes my throat. “Our Helen is smarter than all those other Kellers put together.”
    I nod, then lock the door behind her.

Chapter 13
    I had a battle royal with Helen this morning.
    â€”ANNE SULLIVAN TO SOPHIA HOPKINS, MARCH 1887
    Helen kicks and screams for a full half hour after her parents desert the table. It’s almost more than I can bear. Her otherworldly sounds are strangely, horribly familiar. How many nights did those same sounds lull me to sleep at Tewksbury? Only, in the almshouse it was the feebleminded patients that made them. Long into the night they’d yowl and cry without meaning to, their minds too weak to control even the thin muscles of their throats.
    Half an hour I struggle to ignore Helen and eat my breakfast. The food almost chokes me. I’m stinging with hunger, but my sore mouth aches, and Helen’s racket sets every nerve in my body to jangling. I’d dearly love to pin her down and stuff her face with a napkin, but I refuse to fuel her tantrum with any sort of attention.
    As if the screaming isn’t enough, the little witch tries at odd moments to yank my chair out from under me. If I don’t hold myself rooted to the spot, I’m likely to pounce on Helen and tear the screaming mouth from her face.
    Finally, finally, her war whoops cease, and she crawls up the side of my chair to see what I’m doing. She gropes her way along my arm to my fork, then stops. I brace myself as Helen reaches for my cheek, but she only wants to feel my jaw as I chew.
    She reaches for my plate. I brush her hand aside. She stamps a foot and reaches again. I shove her back with a dismissing wave. She moves to the other side of me and reaches once more. I block her with an elbow in her chest. Her little lips purse like a dried-up rosebud, and her face goes red.
    Her hand darts to my arm and pinches a tiny bit of flesh between her fingertips, clamping tighter than a sparrow’s beak. It’s as if she’s arrowing all her pent-up frustration into my skin. Before I can gasp from the pain, my hand shoots out and strikes her full on the cheek.
    Startled, Helen blinks and releases me, only to dive in a second later with both hands.
    I slap her harder.
    She twists my skin between her fingers, grinding the flesh until I can feel the bones beneath the pads of her fingers. I cry out, smacking her again. The soundrings through the room. I sit frozen, waiting for the Kellers to appear.
    Nothing happens.
    Helen retreats and returns to her circuit round the table. At her mother’s place she gropes about the plate. Finding no familiar hands, she searches the empty chair for Mrs. Keller. A bewildered look falls across her—I think it’s the first expression besides greed or anger I’ve seen on her face all week. Baffled, she moves to James’s place, then Miss Eveline’s, Captain Keller’s, and Simpson’s, growing more frantic as she goes.
    Reaching me again, she jerks away with a snort. For a moment she stands still, working her mouth like a ruminating cow. Then she slinks to her plate and crawls up onto her chair.
    â€œWell, look at you,” I muse as she begins eating her own food with her fingers. “If you weren’t so charming, you could pass for a lady.” Without silverware, eating with her fingers is the best Helen can do. “But you can do