The Story Of My Life By Helen Keller (Chp#2)

 Story of my life by Helen Keller Chapter Two

  I cannot recall what happened during the first month after my illness I only know that I sat

in my mother's lap or clung to her dress as she went about her household duties my hands felt every object and observed every emotion and in this way, I learned to know many things soon I felt the need for some communication with others and began to make crude signs a shake of the head meant no and a nod yes a pool meant come and a push go was it bread that I wanted then I would imitate the acts of cutting the slices and buttering them if I wanted my mother to make ice cream for dinner, I made the sign for working the freezer and shivered to indicate cold my mother moreover succeeded in making me understand a good deal I always knew when she wished me to bring her something and I would run upstairs or anywhere else she indicated indeed I owe to her loving wisdom all that was bright and good in my long night i understood a great deal of what was going on about me at five I learned to fold and put away the clean clothes when they were brought in from the laundry and I distinguished my own from the rest i knew by the way my mother aren't dressed when they were going out and I invariably begged to go with them i was always sent for when there was company and when guests took their leave i waved my hand to them I think in vague remembrance of the meaning of the gesture one day some gentleman called on my mother and I felt the shutting of the front door and other sounds that indicated their arrival on a sudden thought, I ran upstairs before anyone could stop me to put on my idea of a company dress standing before the mirror as I had seen others do i anointed my head with oil covered my face thickly with powder then I pinned a veil over my head so that it covered my face and fell in the falls down to my shoulders and tied an enormous bustle around my waist so that it dangled behind almost meeting the hem in my skirt thus the tired I went down to help entertain the company i do not remember when I first realized that I was different from other people but I knew it before my teacher came to me i noticed that my mother and my friends did not use signs as I did when they wanted anything done but talked with their mouths sometimes I stood between two persons who were conversing and touched their lips i could not understand and was vexed i moved my lips and gesticulated frantically without result this made me so angry at times that I kicked and screamed until I was exhausted i think I knew when I was naughty for I knew that it hurt ella my nurse to kick her and when a fit of timber was over I had a feeling akin to regret but I cannot remember any instance in which this feeling prevented me from repeating the naughtiness when I failed to get what I wanted in those days a little colored girl martha Washington.

 The child of ourcook and belle an old setter and a great hunter in her day were my constant companions martha washington understood my signs and I seldom had any difficulty in making her do just as I wished it pleased me to domineer over her and she generally submitted to my tyranny rather than risk a hand-to-hand encounter i was strong active indifferent to the i knew my own mind well enough and always had my own way even if I had to fight tooth and nail for it we spent a great deal of time in the kitchen kneading dough balls helping make ice cream grinding coffee quarreling over the cake bowl and feeding hens and turkeys that swarmed about the kitchen steps many of them were so tamed that they would eat from my hand and let me feel them one big gobbler snatched a tomato for me one day and ran away with it inspired perhaps by master goblin's success we carried off to the wood pile a cake which the cook had just frosted and ate every bit of it i was quite ill afterward and I wonder if retribution also overtook the turkey the guinea fowl likes to hide her nest in out of the way places and it was one of my greatest delights to hunt for the eggs in the long grass i could not tell martha washington when i wanted to go egg hunting but I would double my hands and put them on the ground which meant something round in the grass and martha always understood when we were fortunate enough to find a nest I never allowed her to carry the eggs home making her understand by emphatic signs that she might fall and break them the sheds where the corn was stored the stable where the horses were kept and the yard where the cows were milked morning and evening were unfailing sources of interest to martha and me the milkers would let me keep my hands on the cows while they milked and I often got well switched by the cows for my curiosity the making ready for christmas was always a delight to me of course I did not know what it was all about but I enjoyed the pleasant odors that fill the house and the tidbits that were given to martha washington and me to keep us quiet we were sadly in the way but that did not interfere with our pleasure in the least they allowed us to grind the spices pick over the raisins and lick the stirring spoons i hung my stockings because the others did I cannot remember however that the ceremony interested me especially nor did my curiosity cause me to wake before daylight to look for my gifts martha washington had a greater love of mischief as I two little children were seated on the

veranda steps one hot july afternoon one was black as ebony with little bunches of fuzzy hair tied with shoestrings sticking out all over her head like a corkscrew the other was white with long golden curls one child was six years old the other two or three years older the younger child was blind that was I and the other was martha Washington we were busy cutting out paper dolls but we soon grew weary of this amusement and after cutting up our shoe strings and clipping all the leaves of this honeysuckle within reach I turned my attention to martha's corkscrews she objected at first but finally submitted thinking that turn and turnabout is fair play she sees the scissors and cut off one of my curls and would have cut them all off but for my mother's timely interference belle our dog my other companion was old and lazy and like to sleep by the open fire rather than to romp with me i tried hard to teach her my sign language but she was dull and inattentive she sometimes started and quivered with excitement then she became perfectly rigid as dogs do when they point a bird i did not then know why belle acted in this way but I knew she was not doing as i wished this begs me and the lesson always ended in a one-sided boxing match bell would get up stretch yourself lazily give one or two contemptuous sniffs go to the opposite side of the hearth and lie down and I wearied and disappointed went off in search of Martha many incidents of those early years are fixed in my memory isolated but clear and distinct making the sense of that silent aimless dayless life all the more intense one day I happened to spill water on my apron and I spread it out to dry before the fire which was flickering in the sitting room half the apron did not dry quickly enough to suit me so I drew nearer and threw it right over the hot ashes the fire lipped into life the flames encircled me so that in a moment my clothes were blazing I made a terrified noise that brought vinnie my old nurse to the rescue throwing a blanket over me she almost suffocated me but she put out the fire except for my hands and hair, I was not badly burnt about this time I found out the use of a key one morning I locked my mother up in a pantry where she was obliged to remain three hours as the servants were in the detached part of the house she kept pounding on the door while I sat outside the porch steps and laughed with a glare as I felt the jar of pounding this most naughty prank of mine convinced my parents that I must be taught as soon as possible after my teacher miss sullivan came to me I sought an early opportunity to lock her in her room i went upstairs with something which my mother made me understand I was to give to miss sullivan but no sooner had I given it to her then i slammed the door locked it and hid the key under the wardrobe in the hall i could not be induced to tell where the key was my father was obliged to get a ladder and take miss sullivan out through the window much to my delight months after I produced the ghee when I was about five years old we moved from the little vine-covered house to a large new one the family consisted of my father and mother two older half-brothers and afterward little sister Mildred my earliest distinct recollection of my father is making my way through great drifts of newspaper to his side and finding him alone holding a sheet of paper before his face i was greatly puzzled to know what he was doing I imitated this action even wearing his spectacles thinking they might help solve the mystery but I did not find out the secret for several years then I learned what those papers were and that my father edited one of them my father was most loving and indulgent devoted to his home seldom leaving us except in the hunting season he was a great hunter I have been told in a celebrated shot next to his family he loved his dogs and gun his hospitality was great almost to a fault and he seldom came home without bringing a guest his special pride was the big garden.

 where it was said he raised the finest watermelons and strawberries in the country and to me, he bought the first ripe grapes and choices berries i remember his caressing touch as he led me from tree to tree from vine to vine and his eager delight in whatever pleased me he was a famous storyteller after I had acquired language he used to spell clumsily into my hand his cleverest anecdotes and nothing pleased him more than to have me repeat them at an opportune moment i was in the north enjoying the last beautiful days of summer in 1896 when I heard the news of my father's death he had had a short illness there had been a brief time of acute suffering then all was over this was my first great sorrow my first personal experience with death how shall I write in my mother she's so near to me that it almost seems indelicate to speak of her for a long time, I regarded my little sister as an intruder i knew that I had ceased to be my mother's only darling and the thought filled me with jealousy she sat in my mother's lap constantly where I used to sit and seemed to take up all her care and time one day something happened which seemed to me to be adding insult to injury at that time I had a much petted much abused doll which I afterward named nancy she was alas the helpless victim of my outburst of temper and of affection so that she became much the worse for wear i had dolls that talked and cried and opened and shut their eyes yet often spent an hour or more rocking her i guarded both doll and cradle with the most jealous care but once I discovered my little sister sleeping peacefully in the cradle at this presumption on the part of one to whom as yet no tie of love bound me I grew angry i rushed upon the cradle and overturned it and the baby might have been killed as my mother not catch her as she fell thus it is when we walk in the valley of twofold solitude we know little of the tender affections that grow out of enduring words and actions and companionship but afterwards when I was restored to my human heritage mildred and I grew into each other's hearts so that we would content to go hand in hand wherever caprice led us although she could not understand my finger language Nora her childish battle. 

End of the chapter.