A Stitch of Time by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-05-10T04:00:00+00:00

20

A few nights later, Jonah and I were chatting over the phone. He was well aware that my go-to conversation topic these days tended to be Helen Keller, so he asked if I had encountered any new information about her that I found especially interesting.

Of course! I said. Did you know that the very first thing Helen published created a pretty big controversy? It even started a rift between her and her closest friends.

Don’t think I ever heard about that, he said. What happened?

She was still a kid, really, I said. A short story she wrote was published, but soon after, people noticed that it had striking similarities to another story written by a different author. A contemporary. She had no memory of reading the story and didn’t have a copy of it in her braille library. She sincerely thought the story was her own invention, but suddenly, she was under extreme scrutiny.

I explained that the most likely scenario was that the story had been signed into Helen’s hand at some point and she had simply forgotten it happened. She was only twelve years old at the time, meaning she had only been using language for four years. This fable would’ve been coming to her alongside her history homework, her Latin, Greek, and French instructions, her rudimentary exposure to the life cycles of plants and animals. During that massive influx of new information in the form of words, someone probably signed the story, or some elements of the story, into her palm, making this quick transfer of nonessential material little more than an afterthought. But soon after she published the story under her name, she was forced to defend herself. Everything from her intelligence to her intention was called into question.

Wow, Jonah said. That’s heavy.

It was hard for me to imagine how Helen created her systems of managing incoming information, sorting and prioritizing it. The field of her learning had been so parched, and then, all at once, it was drenched. It must have been so easy to misunderstand things as she was putting ideas into categories. I struggled with that sort of thing myself.

Can you imagine explaining copyright law to a twelve-year-old? I asked Jonah. Any twelve-year-old. Now, try to introduce the concept to a deaf child’s hand. . . .

Uh-huh, Jonah said. His tone was a little distant.

Jonah?

Mmm.

Have you drifted off somewhere?

Jonah snapped back to attention. Oops, he said, flustered. Sorry.

No problem. I can get so absorbed in this stuff. What were you thinking about?

Forget it, he said. It was totally unrelated, and I promise it wouldn’t at all further this discussion. Remind me what you were saying?

Oh, it’s totally fine, I said. We can change the subject and discuss what’s on your mind now. What is it?

Well, he said. If you must know . . .

And I must. I smiled into the phone. I must!

I was just thinking about sex, he said. With you, of course.

Now it was my turn to be flustered. I was always surprised when our conversations took a turn like this.

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