Free The Miracle Worker by William Gibson Page B

we?
    ANNIE: Maybe you all do. It’s my idea of the original sin.
    JAMES: What is?
    ANNIE [ WITHERINGLY ]: Giving up.
    JAMES [ NETTLED ]: You won’t open her. Why can’t you let her be? Have some—pity on her, for being what she is—
    ANNIE: If I’d ever once thought like that, I’d be dead!
    JAMES [ PLEASANTLY ]: You will be. Why trouble?
    ( ANNIE turns to glare at him; he is mocking.)
    Or will you teach me?
    (And with a bow, he drifts off.
    Now in the distance there comes the clopping of hoofs, drawing near, and nearer, up to the door; and they halt. ANNIE wheels to face the door. When it opens this time, the KELLERS—KATE in travelling bonnet, KELLER also hatted—are standing there with HELEN between them; she is in a cloak. KATE gently cues her into the room. HELEN comes ingroping, baffled, but interested in the new surroundings; ANNIE evades her exploring hand, her gaze not leaving the child.)
    ANNIE: Does she know where she is?
    KATE : [ SHAKES HER HEAD ]: We rode her out in the country for two hours.
    KELLER: For all she knows, she could be in another town—
    ( HELEN stumbles over the box on the floor and in it discovers her doll and other battered toys, is pleased, sits to them, then becomes puzzled and suddenly very wary. She scrambles up and back to her mother’s thighs, but ANNIE steps in, and it is hers that HELEN embraces. HELEN recoils, gropes, and touches her cheek instantly.)
    KATE: That’s her sign for me.
    ANNIE: I know.
    ( HELEN waits, then recommences her groping, more urgently. KATE stands indecisive, and takes an abrupt step toward her, but ANNIE’S hand is a barrier.)
    In two weeks.
    KATE: Miss Annie, I— Please be good to her. These two weeks, try to be very good to her—
    ANNIE: I will.
    ( KATE, turning then, hurries out. The KELLERS cross back of the main house.
    ANNIE closes the door. HELEN starts at the door jar, and rushes it. ANNIE holds her off. HELEN kicks her, breaks free, and careens around the room like an imprisoned bird, colliding with furniture, groping wildly, repeatedly touching her cheek in a growing panic. When she has covered the room, she commences her weird screaming. ANNIE moves to comfort her, but her touch sends HELEN into a paroxysm of rage: she tears away, falls over her box of toys, flings the box too, reels to her feet, ripscurtains from the window, bangs and kicks at the door, sweeps objects off the mantelpiece and shelf, a little tornado incarnate, all destruction, until she comes upon her doll and, in the act of hurling it, freezes. Then she clutches it to herself, and in exhaustion sinks sobbing to the floor. ANNIE stands contemplating her, in some awe.)
    Two weeks.
    (She shakes her head, not without a touch of disgusted bewilderment.)
    What did I get into now?
    (The lights have been dimming throughout, and the garden house is lit only by moonlight now, with ANNIE lost in the patches of dark.
    KATE, now hatless and coatless, enters the family room by the rear door, carrying a lamp. KELLER, also hatless, wanders simultaneously around the back of the main house to where JAMES has been waiting, in the rising moonlight, on the porch.)
    KELLER: I can’t understand it. I had every intention of dismissing that girl, not setting her up like an empress.
    JAMES: Yes, what’s her secret, sir?
    KELLER: Secret?
    JAMES [ PLEASANTLY ]: That enables her to get anything she wants out of you? When I can’t.
    ( JAMES turns to go into the house, but KELLER grasps his wrist, twisting him half to his knees. KATE comes from the porch.)
    KELLER [ ANGRILY ]: She does not get anything she—
    JAMES [ IN PAIN ]: Don’t—don’t—
    KATE: Captain.
    KELLER: He’s afraid.
    (He throws JAMES away from him, with contempt.)
    What does he want out of me?
    JAMES [ AN OUTCRY ]: My God, don’t you know?
    (He gazes from KELLER to KATE . )
    Everything you forgot, when you forgot my mother.
    KELLER: What!
    ( JAMES