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 are severely brain-damaged cases, kept in cribs, and they will be cared for that way for the rest of their lives..."
"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 Winslow's 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.
I wondered about the house-mother with her red-blotched face, and the stuttering shop teacher, and the motherly principal, and youthful tired-looking psychologist, and wished I knew how they had found their way here to work and dedicate themselves to these silent minds. Like the boy who held the younger one in his arms, each had found a fulfillment in giving away a part of himself to those who had less.
And what about the things I wasn't shown?
I may soon be coming to Warren, to spend the rest of my life with the others ... waiting.
July 15—I've been putting off a visit to my mother. I want to see her and I don't. Not until I'm sure what is going to happen to me. Let's see first how the work goes and what I discover.
Algernon refuses to run the maze any more; general motivation has decreased. I stopped off again today to see him, and this time Strauss was there too. Both he and Nemur looked disturbed as they watched Burt force-feed him.