Helen Keller Really Lived: A Novel

Chapter Three. “Helen Keller Really Lived”

Helen Keller Really Lived 81 Not Okay: A True Crime Story, by Selina Van Staal Chapter Three “Helen Keller Really Lived” Even though Selina always scored the highest on both the verbal and math sections of the Iowa test, their mother decided that Selina’s sister was “the verbal one” and her brother “the math and science one.” Cara was “the verbal one” because she wore glasses and was always reading Laura Ingalls Wilder and Judy Blume books. Cara was also “artistic” (even though Selina was the better drawer) because she liked to make things, such as multistory dollhouses out of cardboard boxes, each room wallpapered with sample paper from Pete’s Paint and Paper Palace. But then 82 Elisabeth Sheffield when she was fourteen years old, she got contact lenses and stopped reading. She did continue to make things like trompe l’oeil trellises on the walls and window treatments piecing silk brocade swatches from high end fabric stores—until B. burgorferi wrecked her brain. Julius was “the math and science one” and “artistic” as well, because in the sixth grade he got a score in the eighty-fifth percentile on the math section and a haiku published in the middle school magazine. Selina’s mother wanted him to become a medical doctor and a poet like Doctor Zhivago in the novel by Boris Pasternak that was also made into a movie. Well Julius became neither, though he did continue to write poetry after his discovery of cannabis in the eighth grade. Of the three Van Staal children, Selina exhibited the most potential, as demonstrated by high scores on standardized tests, if less than tiptop grades. The less than tiptop grades were probably due to Attention Deficit Disorder. This tragic condition that afflicts many more people than commonly realized in Selina’s case sometimes led to missed or incomplete assignments. So you could say it all ADDS up, or up it adds, if you want to avoid a dangling preposition. Anyways, Selina could achieve high test scores without even studying. This is because you can often figure out the answer by looking for clues in the question. Selina aced many a test by just thinking about the questions. Helen Keller Really Lived 83 The only problem with using thinking as a test-taking strategy is that sometimes you can think too much. For instance, one time Selina was the only child in the class who got the pop quiz question (designed solely to give extra points to all the idiots who had flunked the last social studies test) wrong. The quiz consisted of a single True/False statement: “Helen Keller Really Lived.” Well, had she? Blind, deaf, almost totally dependent like some over-sized toddler on her babysitter Annie Sullivan? What kind of life was that? Selina checked false. Selina would not make that kind of mistake on the NCLEX—RN test. Going on the free study guide and sample questions you could download from the Internet, it looked to be a piece of cake. The kind so soft and moist with processed fats and sugars you do not even need to chew, as the multiple choice questions practically answer themselves. For example: A mother calls the clinic to report that her son has recently started medication to treat Attention Deficit Disorder/ADD. The mother fears her son is experiencing side effects of the medicine. Which of the following side effects are typically related to medications used for ADD? Note: more than one answer may be correct: A. Agitation. B. Insomnia C. Sleepiness. D. Poor Appetite. 84 Elisabeth Sheffield Well the “Note” already gives half the answer away, that there is more than one answer. Then you just have to figure out which answer does not fit with the others. It is true that poor appetite and sleepiness sometimes go together, but anyone who has ever tried cocaine recognizes that A, B and D are a classic combination. You do not even need to know that ADD in children and sometimes adults is treated with stimulants, which seems counterintuitive though there is probably a logical explanation for it somewhere or other, if you want to waste time looking on the Internet. At the same time, even in science things do not always make sense. Because things do not always make sense, even in science, Lyndon’s husband, Doctor John Asani, was interviewing Selina for the position of...