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to be showing Mrs. Keller that there is candy in my trunk for her. My chest begins to unknot. Helen’s attempts to communicate are crude, but they make me hopeful that she can learn. Nodding, her mother shoos Helen back toward the steps.
    With Helen’s help I put my few things away. Her hands explore everything that comes from my bag. Nothing reaches its drawer without being touched and smelled, then modeled or paraded round the room. I can’t help but laugh at the sight of her standing before the dresser mirror wearing my bonnet, cocking her head from side to side just as if she could see.
    â€œWhere did you ever learn that? You must be quite the little mimic.”
    While Helen amuses herself with my things, I look about our room. It’s a large, comfortable room, with little in the way of knickknacks or decorations—probably more to do with Helen’s roving hands than anything else. My bed stands behind the door, facing the window. On one side of the window is a fireplacewith a narrow painted shelf boasting a handsome mantel clock and a pair of painted china vases. On the other is the dresser and the only other breakable objects in the room-a large washbowl and pitcher. Helen’s little sleigh bed sits in front of the dresser, facing the door. Her playthings lay piled in a heap between the foot of her bed and the doorway. A school desk also has its place in that corner. A writing table with two rocking chairs sits before the window.
    So this is what a child’s room is supposed to look like,
I think. What would Jimmie and I have done in a room like this, up to our knees in toys? Jimmie, who sneaked the scissors from the doctors’ bags so we could make paper dolls out of the
Police Gazette,
and never complained when I snipped off their heads by mistake. When one of the doctors caught us, he shouted, “If either of you so much as looks at my instruments again, I’ll slice off your ears!” But Jimmie only laughed and told me, “You’re a better slicer with those scissors than any doctor, Annie.”
    Stooping down, I pull a small book from the pile Helen has cast aside. It’s the little red dictionary Mrs. Hopkins gave me as a going-away gift. My spelling has always been atrocious. I would have liked a book of poems or Shakespeare better, to remind me of what I loved best at Perkins; the fastest friendships I made were within the lines of
Macbeth,
King Lear,
and
The Tempest
. Though their words twine constantly through my thoughts, I’d relish the look of them on the page.
    Still, the stoutness of this dictionary, its size and shape, please me. I run my fingers along the spine, savoring the feel of the leather. I lay it on the nightstand with a satisfying
thump
.
    It almost looks like it belongs there.
    I wish I felt the same.

Chapter 5
    She is very quick-tempered and wilful, and nobody, except her brother James, has attempted to control her.
    â€”ANNE SULLIVAN TO SOPHIA HOPKINS, MARCH 1887
    Next morning it takes me a moment to remember where I am. It seems I’ve overslept. Helen’s bed lies empty, and there’s not a sound in all the house. I wash and dress quickly, then go downstairs in search of company.
    Alone, I explore the house. Mrs. Keller gave me a quick tour last night, but I was too tired to notice much more than my held-over supper plate and my bed. On the first floor are four square rooms, divided into pairs by a wide hall. The parlor and dining room lie to the left of the stairway, and two bedrooms to the right. The captain, Mrs. Keller, and baby Mildred sleep at the front of the house; the captain’s spinster sister, Eveline, has the room at the back. Last night I discovered that James and his teenage brother, Simpson, share the upstairs room across from mine.
    There’s no sign of anyone about—not a breakfast dish or an unmade bed to be seen, so I wander out the back door into the sunshine.
    Outside it’s much more