Helen Keller in Love by Kristin Cashore Page A

to stand up and couldn’t see the floor.
                        Mrs. John Murray
    I felta slight movement of air as Peter dropped the letter. Then he said: “Germany fights England, blockades it for months, keeps out even medicines, and this boy goes blind. For what?”
    His anger rose.
    “I know I’m missing something. But remind me, Helen. What is this war for?”
    We sat together not speaking.
    Finally I said, “We’ll send the mother a check. Annie and I send money to people like this every day.”
    “For what? To help this one woman, yes. But that won’t stop the problem.”
    “Then we’ll send money to the British League for Blind Children.” I handed Peter the letter; a slight shudder told me he opened the file drawer to drop the letter in.
    “Damn these selfish capitalists. They just want to wage war. Don’t you get it, Helen? Don’t you see how one donation won’t really help this boy?”
    It took Peter a minute to realize I wasn’t going to say anything.
    I kept silent about the hundreds of checks Annie and I sent out every month, every year, to people who pulled us aside on trains, in the streets, in hotel lobbies after our talks, saying they needed money for someone they loved who’d lost their sight, the truth was we sent money all over the place. Even when we didn’t have enough for ourselves.
    “Poor kid,” he said finally. “What he’s going to suffer.”
    “Poor mother,” I said right back.
    Mother, mother. The image of my own mother—even then on a train heading north—came to mind. But I tried to banish it. I can’t think about her because when I do it is like thinking of a long night. A cool night, at times. At times light with a breeze. But underneath, thunder clouds and the threat, always, of a storm.
    I can’t remember losing my eyesight, or my hearing. That was my good fortune—to forget those days and nights of fever, of pain. But Mother? She remembered it all. It was seared into her, made one with her flesh: the minute she passed her hand over my eyes and I did not blink she said to herself, “It is finished.” A kind of dusk fell around her, too. Sometimes, with the birth of her two other children—my sister, Mildred; my brother, Phillips Brooks—or on her travels with Annie and me across the country, that dusk would lift. But most of her life was lived in a shadow of grief that she couldn’t save me. The intolerable, blurred image of what I could havebeen.
    “Hold your horses.” Peter’s hand in mine brought me back. “This just may be the ticket.” Peter placed another letter in my hands.
    “What is this?”
    “A way to help. You’re invited to address an antiwar rally in downtown Boston. A few weeks from today. They say they want the world-renowned Helen Keller to inspire the crowds, help keep the U.S. out of this damned war.”
    “I’ll do it.”
    “Not so fast. If you’re so world renowned, why do they want you to speak for free?”
    “I’m sure it’s not for free. They must be offering an honorarium?”
    I felt a slight vibration as Peter shook the letter and read on: “Twenty dollars! That’s not even horse feed.”
    “They don’t need to pay me. They need to raise money to stop the war.”
    “At last count, Helen, you have six outbuildings that need roofing, a lawn that’s going to seed, and Annie’s treatment, if she needs it, won’t be free. Now where will you get the money for that?”
    “I …”
    “By the way,” Peter went on. “Your mother gets here tomorrow. Who paid for her train ticket?”
    “Annie and I …”
    “And whenshe gets here, who pays for her food?” Peter fingered the silky dress I wore. “If she’s anything like you and Annie Sullivan—two women who appear to have a severe allergy to anything on sale—who will pay for her trips to Newbury Street for the perfect new shawl?”
    “She’s my mother. She needs me.”
    “That sounds strangely familiar.” He traced my jaw so softly.