Flowers for Algernon

At first, I wasn’t sure whether or not she really recognized me, but then she gasped: “Charlie!…” She didn’t scream it or whisper it. She just gasped it as one might do coming out of a dream. “Ma…” I started up the steps. “It’s me…”

My movement startled her, and she stepped backwards, kicking over the bucket of soapy water, and the dirty suds rushed down the steps. “What are you doing here?”’

“I just wanted to see you… talk to you…”

Because my tongue kept getting in my way, my voice came out of my throat differently, with a thick whining tone, as I might have spoken a long time ago. “Don’t go away,” I begged. “Don’t run away from me.” But she had gone inside the vestibule and locked the door. A moment later I could see her peering at me from behind the sheer white curtain of the door window, her eyes terrified. Behind the window her lips moved soundlessly. “Go away! Leave me alone!”

Why? Who was she to deny me this way? By what right did she turn away from me?

“Let me in! I want to talk to you! Let me in!” I banged on the door against the glass so hard it cracked, and the crack spread a web that caught my skin for a moment and held it fast. She must have thought I was out of my mind and had come to harm her. She let go of the outer door and fled down the hallway that led into the apartment.

I pushed again. The hook gave way and, unprepared for the sudden yielding, I fell into the vestibule, off balance. My hand was bleeding from the glass I had broken, and not knowing what else to do, I put my hand into my 182 pocket to prevent the blood from staining her freshly scrubbed linoleum. I started in, past the stairs I had seen so often in my nightmares. I had often been pursued up that long, narrow staircase by demons who grabbed at my legs and pulled me down into the cellar below, while I tried to scream without voice, strangling on my tongue and gagging in silence. Like the silent boys at Warren.

The people who lived on the second floor-our landlord and landlady, the Meyers-had always been kind to me. They gave me sweets and let me come to sit in their kitchen and play with their dog. I wanted to see them, but without being told I knew they were gone and dead and that strangers lived upstairs. That path was now closed to me forever.

At the end of the hallway, the door through which Rose had fled was locked, and for a moment I stoodundecided. “Open the door.”

The answer was the high-pitched yapping of a small dog. It took me by surprise.

“All right,” I said. “I don’t intend to hurt you or anything, but I’ve come a long way, and I’m not leaving without talking to you. If you don’t open the door, I’m going to break it down.”

I heard her saying: “Shhhh, Nappie… Here, into the bedroom you go.” A moment later I heard the click of the lock. The door opened and she stood there staring at me.

“Ma,” I whispered, “I’m not going to do anything. I just want to talk to you. You’ve got to understand, I’m not the same as I was. rve changed. I’m normal now. Don’t you understand? I’m not retarded any more. I’m not a moron. I’m just like anyone else. I’m normal-just like you and Matt and Norma.” I tried to keep talking, babbling so she wouldn’t close the door. I tried to tell her the whole thing, all at once. “They changed me, performed an operation on me and made me different, the way you always wanted me to be. Didn’t you read about it in the newspapers? A new scientific experiment that changes your capacity for intelligence, and I’m the first one they tried it on. Can’t you understand? Why are you looking at me that way? I’m 183 smart now, smarter than Norma, or Uncle Herman, or Matt. I know things even college professors don’t know. Talk to me! You can be proud of me now and tell all the neighbors. You don’t have to hide me in the cellar when company comes. Just talk to me. Tell me about things, the way it was when I was a little boy, that’s all I want. I won’t hurt you. I don’t hate you. But I’ve got to know about myself, to understand myself before it’s too late. Don’t you see, I can’t be a complete person unless I can understand myself, and you’re the only one in the world who can help me now. Let me come in and sit down for a little while.”

It was the way I spoke rather than what I said that hypnotized her. She stood there in the doorway and stared at me. Without thinking, I pulled my bloody hand out of my pocket and clenched it in my pleading. When she saw it her expression softened.

“You hurt yourself…” She didn’t necessarily feel sorry for me. It was the sort of thing she might have felt for a dog that had torn its paw, or a cat that had been gashed in a fight. It wasn’t because I was her Charlie, but in spite of it.