Flowers for Algernon

“We have a hundred and six of them here,” explained Winslow, “as a special study sponsored by the federal government.” 158 What an incredible thing! How much less they had than other human beings. Mentally retarded, deaf, mute-and still eagerly sanding benches. One of the boys who had been tightening a block of wood in a vise, stopped what he was doing, tapped Winslow on the arm, and pointed to the corner where a number of finished objects were drying on display shelves. The boy pointed to a lamp base on the second shelf, and then to himself. It was a poor job, unsteady, the patches of wood-filler showing through, and the varnish heavy and uneven. Winslow and the teacher praised it enthusiastically, and the boy smiled proudly and looked at me, waiting for my praise too. “Yes,” I nodded, mouthing the words exaggeratedly, “very good… very nice.” I said it because he needed it, but I felt hollow. The boy smiled at me, and when we turned to leave he came over and touched my arm as a way of saying good-bye. It choked me up, and I had a great deal of difficulty controlling my emotions until we were out in the corridor again.

The principal of the school was a short, plump, motherly lady who sat me down in front of a neatly lettered chart, showing the various types of patients, the number of faculty assigned to each category, and the subjects they studied.

“Of course,” she explained, “we don’t get many of the upper I. Q. ’s any more. They’re taken care of-the sixty and seventy I. Q.’s-more and more in the city schools in special classes, or else there are community facilities for caring for them. Most of the ones we get are able to live out, in foster homes, boarding houses, and do simple work on the farms or in a menial capacity in factories or laundries—”

“Or bakeries,” I suggested.

She frowned. “Yes, I guess they might be able to do that. Now, we also classify our children (I call them all children, no matter what their ages are, they’re all children here), we classify them as tidy or untidy. It makes the administration of their cottages a lot easier if they can be kept with their own levels. Some of the untidies axe severely brain-damaged cases, kept in cribs, and they will be cared for that way for the rest of their lives…” 159 “Or until science finds a way to help them.”

“Oh,” she smiled, explaining to me carefully, “I’m afraid these are beyond help.”

“No one is beyond help.”

She peered at me, uncertainly now. “Yes, yes, of course, you’re right. We must have hope.”

I made her nervous. I smiled to myself at the thought of how it would be if they brought me back here as one of her children. Would I be tidy or not?

Back at Winslows office, we had coffee as he talked about his work. “It’s a good place,” he said. “We have no psychiatrists on our staff-only an outside consulting man who comes in once every two weeks. But it’s just as well. Every one of the psych staff is dedicated to his work. I could have hired a psychiatrist, but at the price I’d have to pay I’m able to hire two psychologists-men who aren’t afraid to give away a part of themselves to these people.”

“What do you mean by `a part of themselves´?”

He studied me for a moment, and then through the tiredness flashed an anger. “There are a lot of people who will give money or materials, but very few who will give time and affection. That’s what I mean.” His voice grew harsh, and he pointed to an empty baby bottle on the bookshelf across the room.

“You see that bottle?”

I told him I had wondered about it when we came into his office.

“Well, how many people do you know who are prepared to take a grown man into his arms and let him nurse with the bottle? And take the chance of having the patient urinate or defecate all over him? You look surprised. You can’t understand it, can you, from way up there in your research ivory tower? What do you know about being shut out from every human experience as our patients have been?”

I couldn’t restrain a smile, and he apparently misunderstood, because he stood up and ended the conversation abruptly. If I come back here to stay, and he finds out the whole story, I’m sure he’ll understand. He’s the kind of man who would.

As I drove out of Warren, I didn’t know what to think. The feeling of cold grayness was everywhere around me-a sense of resignation. There had been no talk of rehabilitation, of cure, of someday sending these people out into the world again. No one had spoken of hope. The feeling was of living death-or worse, of never having been fully alive and knowing. Souls withered from the beginning, and doomed to stare into the time and space of every day.