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 stood— undecided.
"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. I've 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 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.
Dont 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.
"Come in and wash it.
I've got some bandage and iodine."
I followed her to the cracked sink with the corrugated drainboard at which she had so often washed my face and hands after I came in from the back yard, or when I was ready to eat or go to sleep.
She watched me roll up my sleeves.
"You shouldn't have broke the window.
The landlord's gonna be sore, and I don't have enough money to pay for it."
Then, as if impatient with the way I was doing it, she took the soap from me and washed my hand.
As she did it, she concentrated so hard that I kept silent, afraid of breaking the spell.