The Miracle Worker: Act III

The stage is totally dark, until we see ANNIE and HELEN silhouetted on the bed in the garden house. ANNIE’S voice is audible, very patient, and worn; it has been saying this for a long time.

In the bedroom upstairs, we see VINEY unhurriedly washing the window, dusting, turning the mattress, readying the room for use again; then in the family room a diminished group at one end of the table—KATE, KELLER, JAMES—finishing up a quiet breakfast; then outside, down right, the other servant on his knees, assisted by MARTHA, working with a trowel around a new trellis and wheelbarrow.

The two weeks have been normal, quiet, all you say. But not short. Interminable.

There are of course all kinds of separation. Katie has lived with one kind for five years. And another is disappointment. In a child.

In the garden house the lights commence to come up; ANNIE, haggard at the table, is writing a letter, her face again almost in contact with the stationery...

...HELEN, apart on the stool, and for the first time as clean and neat as a button, is quietly crocheting an endless chain of wool, which snakes all around the room.

ANNIE. “I, feel, every, day, more, and, more, in—” [She pauses, and turns the pages of a dictionary open before her; her finger descends the words to a full stop. She elevates her eyebrows, then copies the word.] “—adequate.”

ANNIE. It’s worse on my vanity! I’m learning to spell. It’s like a surprise party, the most unexpected characters turn up.

JAMES. Kate. [KATE halts, waits.] What does he want from me?
KATE. That’s not the question. Stand up to the world, Jimmie, that comes first.
JAMES [A pause, wryly]. But the world is him.

KATE [Almost wistful]. How—serene she is.

KATE [Almost wistful]. How—serene she is.

She disentangles one foot from the wool chain and sets the chair before HELEN.

HELEN, at its contact with her knee, feels the plate, promptly sets her crocheting down, and tucks the napkin in at her neck, but ANNIE withholds the spoon.

KATE. [Hesitant] But—not—
ANNIE. No. Not that they mean things. It’s still a finger game, no meaning.

She spells back in her sleep, her fingers make letters when she doesn’t know! In her bones those five fingers know, that hand aches to—speak out, and something in her mind is asleep, how do I—nudge that awake?

KATE painstakingly spells in air.

KELLER. And what would another week accomplish? We are more than satisfied, you’ve done more than we ever thought possible, taught her constructive—
ANNIE. I can’t promise anything. All I can—

KELLER [No break].—things to do, to behave like—even look like—a human child, so manageable, contented, cleaner, more—

HELEN is playing with BELLE’S claws; she makes letters with her fingers, shows them to BELLE, waits with her palm, then manipulates the dog’s claws.

You make us see how we indulge her for our sake. Is the opposite true, for you?

HELEN dutifully pats the dog’s head and resumes spelling to its paw.

HELEN lifts her hand out dripping, wipes it daintily on BELLE’S hide, and taking the tumbler from ANNIE, endeavors to thrust BELLE’S paw into it.

She bends in compassion to touch her lips to HELEN’S temple, and instantly HELEN pauses, her hands off the dog, her head slightly averted.

[ANNIE, extending her own hand, grips HELEN’S; the two hands are clasped, tense in the light, the rest of the room changing in shadow.]

[But KATE is trembling with such impatience that her voice breaks from her, harsh.]

HELEN, with her hand free, strokes her cheek, suddenly forlorn.

[She tries to disengage HELEN’S hand; KATE lays hers on ANNIE’S.]

Be bountiful, it’s at her expense. [She turns to JAMES, flatly.] Please pass me more of—her favorite foods.

But the moment ANNIE, rising, reaches for her hand, HELEN begins to fight and kick, clutching to the tablecloth and uttering laments.

It’s not unnatural, most of us take some aversion to our teachers, and occasionally another hand can smooth things out.

[He puts a fork in HELEN’S hand; HELEN takes it. Genially.]

ANNIE gets her breath, then snatches the pitcher away in one hand, hoists HELEN up bodily under the other arm, and starts to carry her out, kicking.

ANNIE [Savagely polite]. Don't get up!

ANNIE. Don’t smooth anything else out for me, don’t interfere in any way! I treat her like a seeing child because I ask her to see, I expect her to see, don’t undo what I do!

She thrusts out with HELEN under her arm, but HELEN escapes up the stairs and ANNIE runs after her. KELLER stands rigid.

She’s right, Kate’s right, I’m right, and you’re wrong. If you drive her away from here it will be over my dead—chair, has it never occurred to you that on one occasion you might be consummately wrong?

KATE rises in trepidation to mediate.

KATE rises in trepidation to mediate.

[KELLER stops her with his raised hand; his eyes stay on JAMES’S pale face, for a long hold. When he finally finds his voice, it is gruff.]

JAMES sits, and a moveless silence prevails; KELLER’S eyes do not leave him.

ANNIE has pulled HELEN downstairs again by one hand, the pitcher in her other hand, down the porch steps, and across the yard to the pump. She puts HELEN’S hand on the pump handle, grimly.

She pumps till the water comes, then ANNIE puts the pitcher in her other hand and guides it under the spout, and the water, tumbling half into and half around the pitcher, douses HELEN’S hand.

HELEN drops the pitcher on the slab under the spout; it shatters. She stands transfixed.

ANNIE freezes on the pump handle: there is a change in the sundown light, and with it a change in HELEN’S face, some light coming into it we have never seen there, some struggle in the depths behind it; and her lips tremble, trying to remember something the muscles around them once knew, till at last it finds its way out, painfully, a baby sound buried under the debris of years of dumbness.

HELEN plunges her hand into the dwindling water, spells into her own palm.

Then she gropes frantically; ANNIE reaches for her hand, and HELEN spells into ANNIE’S hand.

[HELEN has no time to spell back now, she whirls groping, to touch anything, encounters the trellis, shakes it, thrusts out her palm, and ANNIE, while spelling to her, cries wildly at the house.]

KATE and KELLER go to their knees, stammering, clutching HELEN to them, and ANNIE steps unsteadily back to watch the threesome, HELEN spelling wildly into KATE’S hand, then into KELLER’S, KATE spelling back into HELEN’S; they cannot keep their hands off her, and rock her in their clasp.

They try to embrace her, but she has something else in mind.

KATE comprehends it, their first act of verbal communication, and she can hardly utter the word aloud, in wonder, gratitude, and deprivation; it is a moment in which she simultaneously finds and loses a child.