Now I understand one of the important reasons for going to college and getting an education is to iearn that the things you’ve believed in all your life aren’t true, and that nothing is what it appears to be.
All the time they talked and argued, I felt the excitement bubble up inside me. This was what I wanted to do-go to college and hear people talk about important things.
I spend most of my free time at the library now, read ing and soaking up what I can from books. I’m not con centrating on anything in particular, just reading a lot of. r fiction now-Dostoevski, Flaubert, Dickens, Hemingway, Faulkner-everything I can get my hands on feeding a hunger that can’t be satisfied.
April 28-In a dream last night I heard Mom screaming at Dad and the teacher at the elementary school P. S .13 (my first school before they transferred me to P. S .222)....
“He’s normall He’s normal! He’ll grow up like other people. Better than others.” She was trying to scratch the teacher, but Dad was holding her back. “He’ll go to college someday. He’ll be somebody.” She kept screaming it, clawing at Dad so he’d let go of her. “He’ll go to college someday and he’ll be somebody.”
We were in the principal’s office and there were a lot of people looking embarrassed, but the assistant principal was smiling and turning his head so no one would see it.
The principal in my dream had a long beard, and was floating around the room and pointing at me. “He’ll have to go to a special school. Put him into the Warren State Home and Training School. We can’t have him here.” Dad was pulling Mom out of the principal’s office, and 50 she was shouting and crying too. I didn’t see her face, but her big red teardrops kept splashing down on me....
This morning I could recall the dream, but now there’s more than that-I can remember through the blur, back to when I was six years old and it all happened. Just before Norma was born. I see Mom, a thin, dark-haired woman who talks too fast and uses her hands too much. As always her face is blurred. Her hair is up in a bun, and her hand goes to touch it, pat it smooth, as if she has to make sure it’s still there. I remember that she was always fluttering like a big, white bird-around my father, and he too heavy and tired to escape her pecking.
I see Charlie, standing in the center of the kitchen, playing with his spinner, bright colored beads and rings threaded on a string. He holds the string up in one hand turns the rings so they wind and unwind in bright spinning flashes. He spends long hours watching his spinner. I don’t know who made it for him, or what became of it, but I see him standing there fascinated as the string untwists and sets the rings spinning....
She is screaming at him no, she’s screaming at his fa-ther. “I’m not going to take him. There’s nothing wrong with 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.” 51 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.
