The Story of My Life

I cannot recall what happened during the first months 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 motion, and in this way I learned to know many things.  Soon I felt the need of some communication with others and began to make crude signs.  A shake of the head meant “No” and a nod, “Yes,” a pull 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, indicating 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 good 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 and aunt 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 the guests took their leave, I waved my hand to them, I think with a vague remembrance of the meaning of the gesture.  One day some gentlemen 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 any one could stop me, to put on my idea of a company dress.  Standing before the mirror, as I had seen others do, I anointed mine head with oil and covered my face thickly with powder.  Then I pinned a veil over my head so that it covered my face and fell in folds down to my shoulders, and tied an enormous bustle round my small waist, so that it dangled behind, almost meeting the hem of my skirt.  Thus attired 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 had 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 my fit of temper 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 coloured girl, Martha Washington, the child of our cook, 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 consequences.  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 the hens and turkeys that swarmed about the kitchen steps.  Many of them were so tame that they would eat from my hand and let me feel them.  One big gobbler snatched a tomato from me one day and ran away with it.  Inspired, perhaps, by Master Gobbler’s success, we carried off to the woodpile 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 cow 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 odours that filled 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 stocking 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 as great a 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 corkscrews.  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 wearied of this amusement, and after cutting up our shoestrings and clipping all the leaves off the honeysuckle that were within reach, I turned my attention to Martha’s corkscrews.  She objected at first, but finally submitted.  Thinking that turn and turn about is fair play, she seized 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 liked 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 vexed me and the lesson always ended in a one-sided boxing match.  Belle would get up, stretch herself lazily, give one or two contemptuous sniffs, go to the opposite side of the hearth and lie down again, 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 on the sitting-room hearth.  The apron did not dry quickly enough to suit me, so I drew nearer and threw it right over the hot ashes.  The fire leaped into life; the flames encircled me so that in a moment my clothes were blazing.  I made a terrified noise that brought Viny, 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 burned.

About this time I found out the use of a key.  One morning I locked my mother up in the pantry, where she was obliged to remain three hours, as the servants were in a detached part of the house.  She kept pounding on the door, while I sat outside on the porch steps and laughed with glee as I felt the jar of the 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 than I slammed the door to, 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 key.

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, a little sister, Mildred.  My earliest distinct recollection of my father is making my way through great drifts of newspapers 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, and 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 county; and to me he brought the first ripe grapes and the choicest 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 story-teller; 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 the summer of 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 of my mother?  She is 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 outbursts of temper and of affection, so that she became much the worse for wear.  I had dolls which talked, and cried, and opened and shut their eyes; yet I never loved one of them as I loved poor Nancy.  She had a cradle, and I 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 over-turned it, and the baby might have been killed had my mother not caught her as she fell.  Thus it is that when we walk in the valley of twofold solitude we know little of the tender affections that grow out of endearing words and actions and companionship.  But afterward, when I was restored to my human heritage, Mildred and I grew into each other’s hearts, so that we were content to go hand-in-hand wherever caprice led us, although she could not understand my finger language, nor I her childish prattle.