His mother straining forward to lash at him, just out of reach now so that the belt swishes past his shoulder as he writhes and twists away from it on the floor.
"Look at him!" Rose screams.
"He can't learn to read and write, but he knows enough to look at a girl that way.
I'll beat that filth out of his mind."
"He can't help it if he gets an erection.
It's normal.
He didn't do anything."
"He's got no business to think that way about girls.
A friend of his sister's comes to the house and he starts thinking like that!
I'll teach him so he never forgets.
Do you hear?
If you ever touch a girl, I'll put you away in a cage, like an animal, for the rest of your life.
Do you hear me?…"
I still hear her.
But perhaps I had been released.
Maybe the fear and nausea was no longer a sea to drown in, but only a pool of water reflecting the past alongside the now.
Was I free?
If I could reach Alice in time—without thinking about it, before it overwhelmed me—maybe the panic wouldn't happen. If only I could make my mind a blank. I managed to choke out:
"You… you do it! Hold me!"
And before I knew what she was doing, she was kissing me, holding me closer than anyone had ever held me before.
But at the moment I should have come closest of all, it started: the buzzing, the chill, and the nausea.
I turned away from her.
She tried to soothe me, to tell me it didn't matter, that there was no reason to blame myself.
But ashamed, and no longer able to control my anguish, I began to sob.
There in her arms I cried myself to sleep, and I dreamed of the courtier and the pink-cheeked maiden.
But in my dream it was the maiden who held the sword.
PROGRESS REPORT 12
June 5
Nemur is upset because I haven't turned in any progress reports in almost two weeks (and he's justified because the Welberg Foundation has begun paying me a salary out of the grant so that I won't have to look for a job).
The International Psychological Convention at Chicago is only a week away. He wants his preliminary report to be as full as possible, since Algernon and I are the prime exhibits for his presentation.
Our relationship is becoming increasingly strained.
I resent Nemur's constant references to me as a laboratory specimen.
He makes me feel that before the experiment I was not really a human being.
I told Strauss that I was too involved in thinking, reading, and digging into myself, trying to understand who and what I am, and that writing was such a slow process it made me impatient to get my ideas down.
I followed his suggestion that I learn to type, and now that I can type nearly seventy-five words a minute, it's easier to get it all down on paper.
Strauss again brought up my need to speak and write simply and directly so that people will understand me.
He reminds me that language is sometimes a barrier instead of a pathway.
Ironic to find myself on the other side of the intellectual fence.
I see Alice occasionally, but we don't discuss what happened. Our relationship remains platonic. But for three nights after I left the bakery there were the nightmares.
Hard to believe it was two weeks ago.
I am pursued down the empty streets at night by ghostly figures.
Though I always run to the bakery, the door is locked, and the people inside never turn to look at me.
Through the window, the bride and groom on the wedding cake point at me and laugh—the air becomes charged with laughter until I can't stand it—and the two cupids wave their flaming arrows.
I scream.
I pound on the door, but there is no sound.
I see Charlie staring back at me from inside.
Is it only a reflection?
Things clutch at my legs and drag me away from the bakery down into the shadows of the alleyway, and just as they begin to ooze all over me I wake up.
Other times the window of the bakery opens into the past and looking through it I see other things and other people.
It's astonishing how my power of recall is developing.