In “Mon­key Pants,” the chap­ter intro­duces Dodo, who finds him­self in the Pennhurst State Hos­pi­tal for the Insane and Fee­ble-Mind­ed recov­er­ing from seri­ous injuries sus­tained from a fall off Miss Chona’s roof. As he lies immo­bi­lized in a steel crib, he meets a boy dubbed Mon­key Pants, a painful­ly thin child con­tort­ed into an awk­ward posi­tion that resem­bles a mon­key. Dodo feels an imme­di­ate con­nec­tion and empa­thy, nam­ing him after his appear­ance, though he nev­er learns Mon­key Pants’ real name.

Dodo’s trau­mat­ic mem­o­ries of the acci­dent and feel­ings of dis­ori­en­ta­tion are com­pound­ed by the sights, sounds, and smells of the hos­pi­tal. His expe­ri­ence involves ter­ri­fy­ing hand­cuffs, con­fu­sion upon arrival, and a sense of iso­la­tion when he real­izes no one is com­ing for him. The atmos­phere of the hos­pi­tal is oppres­sive, filled with a suf­fo­cat­ing smell that makes him feel claus­tro­pho­bic and nau­seous, cul­mi­nat­ing in him vom­it­ing on an atten­dant, which leads to being restrained with a strait­jack­et.

Upon awak­en­ing, he finds him­self alone with Mon­key Pants. They share a moment of con­nec­tion despite Dodo feel­ing over­whelmed by grief and long­ing for home. Dodo’s inter­ac­tions with Mon­key Pants reveal a fierce desire to com­mu­ni­cate, even as the lat­ter strug­gles with his own lim­i­ta­tions. What fol­lows is a pro­found explo­ration of their friend­ship, marked by the recog­ni­tion of their shared plight and the chal­lenges they face with­in the bru­tal con­fines of the men­tal insti­tu­tion.

Mon­key Pants’ efforts to com­mu­ni­cate become a dance of frus­tra­tion and per­se­ver­ance, illu­mi­nat­ing their respec­tive strug­gles. Despite the inad­e­qua­cies of their phys­i­cal forms, a bond is formed—Dodo rec­og­niz­ing the wis­dom in Mon­key Pants’ ges­tures, which appears to con­vey the impor­tance of silence and sur­vival in a world that seems indif­fer­ent to their exis­tence. The chap­ter illus­trates a poignant moment of sol­i­dar­i­ty as Mon­key Pants inten­tion­al­ly soils him­self to redi­rect the atten­tion of oth­ers away from Dodo, exem­pli­fy­ing a touch­ing act of friend­ship amidst adver­si­ty.

You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

M
12
Mon­key Pants
onkey Pants was the first per­son Dodo met on Ward C‑1. He lay in
the only oth­er crib in the room. A boy around his age, just six inch­es
away. Inside a steel crib adja­cent to where Dodo lay in trac­tion in his own
steel-caged crib in a hot, over­crowd­ed ward of nine­ty beds. It was the first
stroke of luck Dodo had had in a while.
His neigh­bor was a small, painful­ly thin white child with dark hair—
about eleven or twelve, Dodo guessed. He wore no hos­pi­tal gown but rather
a dia­per and an under­shirt, and was con­tort­ed in a way that seemed
impos­si­ble. He lay on his side in a ball, his neck and shoul­ders hunched,
curled in an odd tan­gle of twist­ed hands and feet, one leg impos­si­bly
reach­ing toward his face—the ankle near­ly at his chin—the oth­er leg lost in
a cacoph­o­ny of twist­ed arms, elbows, knees, and fin­gers, with one hand
thrust out of the twist­ed cacoph­o­ny of limbs gath­ered near his chest to cov­er
his eyes. The boy looked as if he had tied him­self up in knots and was
hid­ing from him­self.
Dodo had nev­er seen any­thing like it. But because the child was twist­ed
impos­si­bly and curled like a pri­mate, Dodo called him Mon­key Pants, for
he looked like a mon­key with no pants. In real­i­ty, Dodo nev­er learned his
real name.
It was the impos­si­ble sight of Mon­key Pants that brought Dodo back to
con­scious­ness and real­i­ty, as the explo­sion of suf­fer­ing and shock that had
descend­ed on him dur­ing the first few days at Pennhurst State Hos­pi­tal for
the Insane and Fee­ble-Mind­ed was com­pound­ed by the injuries sus­tained in
his fall off Miss Chona’s roof. The fall had reduced him to a state of
absolute immo­bil­i­ty. He broke both ankles, shat­tered his hip, and snapped
his right fibu­la. He lay in the Pottstown hos­pi­tal hand­cuffed to a bed, in
trac­tion, for a week. The hand­cuffs nev­er left him after he regained
con­scious­ness even though he was in trac­tion. The cops were obvi­ous­ly
mad.
But the hand­cuffs were removed when he arrived by stretch­er at the
Pennhurst admis­sions office, where anoth­er doc­tor exam­ined him.
He arrived there con­fused, for he was tak­en to the institution’s hos­pi­tal
wing, not back home to face the music for the dis­as­ter at Miss Chona’s. The
fact that Aunt Addie and Uncle Nate were not at the hos­pi­tal was not a tip-
off, because he had nev­er been in a hos­pi­tal, even after he lost his hear­ing.
He sim­ply assumed that the white hos­pi­tal peo­ple were prep­ping him for
the arrival of his aunt and uncle, who would take him home.
But after sev­er­al min­utes of lying on the stretch­er and not see­ing his aunt
and uncle any­where, he became impa­tient, and he began to strug­gle to get
out of bed. Two atten­dants held him down while the doc­tor pro­duced a
nee­dle full of some­thing that made him woozy, and after a few moments, he
was in a fog.
The doc­tor mea­sured his height, esti­mat­ed his weight, moved his arms,
checked his eyes, spoke to Dodo briefly, which Dodo could not under­stand
for the doc­tor was a mum­bler with a for­eign accent, and even if he weren’t
a mum­bler, the fog made it impos­si­ble for Dodo to deci­pher what the doc
said to him. It took all of a half hour for the doc­tor to declare him an
imbe­cile.
The atten­dants placed a hos­pi­tal gown on him and gath­ered his effects,
which some­one, prob­a­bly Aunt Addie, had care­ful­ly packed, includ­ing a
shirt, a tie, some small­er items, shoes, socks, and sev­er­al mar­bles he always
car­ried around for good luck that Miss Chona had giv­en him, and put them
in a bag. He nev­er saw them again.
He was wheeled out past two sets of doors and down sev­er­al long
cor­ri­dors, and then some­thing ter­ri­ble began to seep into the dense fog that
had low­ered onto his brain. His sense of smell, always keen, had height­ened
since he’d lost his hear­ing, and while he had caught a slight sense of a new
ter­ri­ble scent, a tinge, a kind of warn­ing, just a slight one, like a tiny thread
com­ing loose on a shirt, when he first awoke, it rose quick­ly and
dis­ap­peared, like a gob­lin that sud­den­ly pokes his head out of the floor for a
moment, then van­ish­es. Just a brief flick­er of some­thing awful.
But now, as the stretch­er wheeled out of the cheery, pol­ished, gleam­ing
floors of the admis­sions office and spun through sev­er­al sets of doors and
cor­ri­dors, through an under­ground tun­nel and up a ramp, the cheery
atmos­phere gave way to a dim cor­ri­dor, and the odor grew and mor­phed
and devel­oped its own life. It seemed to sprout from the gran­ite walls as the
stretch­er moved, like moss or vines ris­ing from the floor and cov­er­ing the
walls, the smell becom­ing a liv­ing, breath­ing thing, gorg­ing on the walls,
the win­dows, and final­ly him, evolv­ing from strong to hor­ri­ble to
over­pow­er­ing. He felt as if he were drown­ing. As the stretch­er spun through
the cor­ri­dors, turn­ing one cor­ner and the next, he near­ly passed out, but the
motion kept him con­scious, and the smell poured on him, com­ing again and
again, stronger and stronger, mor­ph­ing into new life the way his sun­flow­ers
grew in back of Miss Chona’s yard. He loved watch­ing them grow, smelling
them as they did. They smelled so won­der­ful he often imag­ined that it was
the fra­grance that made the flow­ers, not the oth­er way around. Their
fra­grance gave won­der­ful mes­sages. Pret­ty. Hap­py. Joy­ful. But the smells
here bore a dif­fer­ent mes­sage. Cru­el­ty. Anger. Pow­er­ful lone­li­ness. And
death. And as the stretch­er rolled deep­er into the cor­ri­dors, his throat final­ly
surged, and the con­tents of his stom­ach ran up his throat.
He raised his head and vom­it­ed over the side of the stretch­er. The vom­it
land­ed on the pants of one of the atten­dants accom­pa­ny­ing him, where­upon
the two men stopped, depart­ed for a moment, and returned with a
strait­jack­et. They sat him up—his legs still in traction—and placed it
around his chest and arms, tight­ened it, then pro­ceed­ed. He was rolled to an
end cor­ner of a long room tight­ly packed with beds—Ward C‑1—and left.
He tried to sit up, but he could not move, so he lay on his back,
exhaust­ed. He sobbed for a bit, then slept.
When he awoke and turned his head to look about, Mon­key Pants was
the first thing he saw.
They were only six inch­es apart, and at the first sight of Mon­key Pants
twist­ed into hor­ri­ble knots, Dodo burst into tears again.
Mon­key Pants seemed non­plussed by it all. Seem­ing­ly unmoved, one
eye peered through the tan­gle of arms and legs non­cha­lant­ly as Dodo wept.
Dodo not­ed the boy’s non­cha­lance and felt the boy was being cru­el, and he
decid­ed to tell some­one about Mon­key Pants and, at the very least, not look
at old Mon­key Pants any longer.
Dodo was in trac­tion and couldn’t shift onto his side, but he could turn
his head, so he looked in the oth­er direc­tion.
There was no one on his oth­er side, but the sight was not reas­sur­ing.
There were rows of beds in the crowd­ed ward, all of them mer­ci­ful­ly emp­ty,
for it was day­time and appar­ent­ly the peo­ple had gone else­where.
So he turned back to Mon­key Pants, who peered at him with one eye
through tan­gled arms and legs.
The two boys stared at each oth­er a long time, and in that moment, Dodo
had his sec­ond stroke of luck that day, the first being that he’d been dropped
on the ward in the mid­dle of the day when the ward atten­dants had already
parad­ed the unlucky patients to the day room. For Mon­key Pants, whose
con­di­tion in thir­ty years would fall into the yaw­ing labyrinth of spin­ning
med­ical ter­mi­nol­o­gy known as “cere­bral pal­sy,” a clum­sy, use­less term,
near­ly as use­less as the idea of con­fin­ing a child with his phys­i­cal
chal­lenges to an insane asy­lum where he was nor­mal­ly sedat­ed every
morn­ing, had some­how been for­got­ten by the nurse who doled out the dai­ly
knock­out drops that day. As Dodo stared into the eye of Mon­key Pants, he
could see, clear as day, that there was a boy in there.
“Mon­key Pants,” he said.
The boy could only see him with one eye, the oth­er eye cov­ered by his
hand. But the eye peer­ing at Dodo moved slight­ly. The eye­brow raised just
a bit. Then Mon­key Pants shift­ed his fin­gers and revealed a sec­ond eye.
Then Dodo saw, or thought he saw, Mon­key Pants chuck­le.
He could not hear it, but the tan­gle of limbs he was star­ing at shift­ed
slight­ly. He knew what a pleas­ant chuck­le looked like.
The fact that Mon­key Pants laughed at him irri­tat­ed him, so he said it
again. “Mon­key Pants.”
And he saw it this time. For cer­tain. Mon­key Pants low­ered his hand and
his mouth moved into a twist­ed grin. Then he spoke.
His face twist­ed with the effort, and Dodo couldn’t under­stand him at all
because he could only lip-read. More­over, Mon­key Pants’s lips moved
about in an odd man­ner. But Dodo felt so grate­ful to talk to a liv­ing per­son.
It was as if some­one had opened a win­dow and cranked in a blast of fresh
air. They hadn’t let any­one come to see him at the hos­pi­tal. He caught the
lips of one of the police­men guard­ing his room telling a nurse some­thing
about his attack­ing peo­ple. And while he had no chance to explain to
any­one, even Aunt Addie, what had hap­pened, he knew what­ev­er trou­ble he
was in involved white folks, and that was a prob­lem. If only Miss Chona
was here, she would straight­en it all out. She would help him explain. Aunt
Addie and Uncle Nate would be cross, but they, too, would help. Where
were they? Then the thought of Miss Chona lying on the floor with her
dress pulled up, shak­ing so crazi­ly, and the ensu­ing strug­gle with Doc
Roberts, and the mem­o­ry of Aunt Addie’s furi­ous face as he ran off from
the police over­whelmed him and the tears came again.
The casts on his legs itched. He had a headache. He need­ed to go to the
bath­room and was afraid he would soil him­self. He felt insane­ly thirsty. He
raised his head and looked about the room again. Not a soul. There were
emp­ty beds every­where, and in the mid­dle of the far wall, a glass enclo­sure
in which atten­dants sat to watch the patients. The atten­dants’ room was
emp­ty.
He turned back to Mon­key Pants and sobbed. “I want to go home.”
Mon­key Pants shift­ed. The spasm of bun­dled arms and legs seemed to
twist even more as he painful­ly, slow­ly extract­ed an arm from around his
head, show­ing a dark head of hair and an angu­lar, hand­some face. His
mouth moved again, but his face and mouth puck­ered and Dodo could not
read his lips. He shook his head, not under­stand­ing.
Mon­key Pants paused for a moment, seem­ing to recon­sid­er, then moved
his eyes.
His eyes looked left. They looked right. They looked up. They looked
down.
Dodo, star­ing at him, cried impa­tient­ly, “What you doing, Mon­key
Pants?”
Much lat­er, he real­ized his good for­tune. The two of them had been alone
in the ward on that first day, and what an incred­i­ble stroke of good for­tune
it had been, for his injury and a mis­di­ag­no­sis of his men­tal abil­i­ties had
placed him in a ward of so-called low­er func­tions. The atten­dants had led
the entire ward, a piti­ful drugged group of human­i­ty, nine­ty men in all, on a
dai­ly parade from the ward to the day room, an emp­ty room bare of
fur­ni­ture save two bench­es, to stare out the win­dow for hours, toss feces at
one anoth­er, and bang their heads against the walls if they so pleased. The
two patients assigned to clean the ward of urine and feces, bur­nish­ing the
floor with a pol­ish­er before turn­ing their atten­tion to the two “babies,”
Dodo and Mon­key Pants, two boys among men, to clean their beds and
their bod­i­ly waste, mov­ing them from one side to the oth­er like pieces of
beef, had not arrived. They were alone. And for the first four hours,
Mon­key Pants gave Dodo a spell­bind­ing, extra­or­di­nary per­for­mance lec­ture
on the art of sur­vival in one of the old­est and worst men­tal insti­tu­tions in
the his­to­ry of the Unit­ed States.
But this did not come eas­i­ly. Watch­ing Mon­key Pants give a lec­ture was
like watch­ing an octo­pus try­ing to shake hands with a flamethrow­er.
Noth­ing worked right. The boy fought to com­mu­ni­cate. His chest
con­strict­ed. His lips con­tort­ed. His limbs flapped around wild­ly in spas­mic
bursts. They seemed to have their own mind about which direc­tion they
want­ed to go in. He worked like a mad­man, his limbs flail­ing, mouth
mov­ing in unin­tel­li­gi­ble bursts, then stop­ping as he exhaust­ed him­self, only
to con­tin­ue after catch­ing his breath, only to exhaust him­self again. This
hap­pened sev­er­al times before Dodo deduced that Mon­key Pants was try­ing
to say some­thing impor­tant.
“What do you want?”
Mon­key Pants went at it again, but the flail­ing limbs and spas­tic shak­ing
head didn’t make sense, and after some effort and squint­ing, Dodo burst
into tears of frus­tra­tion and despair.
“What’s wrong with you?”
The out­burst and tears did not bring sym­pa­thy. Instead, Mon­key Pants’s
frus­tra­tion and impa­tience began to show. His chest con­strict­ed and his
limbs thrust about in squirm­ing impa­tience with even greater agi­ta­tion,
which caused Dodo to stare in amaze­ment, for there was clear irri­ta­tion in
the move­ment.
Then just as sud­den­ly, Mon­key Pants quit. His thrash­ing arms and legs,
which pound­ed against the iron bars of the crib, stopped. He lay on his back
and his legs and arms slow­ly came togeth­er and rose like spider’s legs,
wrap­ping around each oth­er in an impos­si­ble fash­ion near his head. And
from there, with his legs and arms twist­ed like pret­zels and crammed near
his chest and head, he stared at Dodo, his gaze as steady as head­lights.
Dodo watched as Mon­key Pants’s eyes went up. Then down. Then up.
Then down. Then left. Then right. Then the same busi­ness again. Up.
Down. Left. Right. He was try­ing to say some­thing. What?
Unable to make nei­ther heads nor tails of the busi­ness, Dodo grew tired
of it, and a song sud­den­ly flew into his head. Why this hap­pened, he was
not sure. But the loss of hear­ing had not decreased his love of music.
Indeed, it had inten­si­fied it. He often dragged his uncle Nate to a dress­ing
room back­stage at Mr. Moshe’s dance hall where Uncle Nate lis­tened to
records on an old turntable kept back there. He liked to place his hands on
the phono­graph speak­er to hear the music as the record played. It didn’t
mat­ter that he could hear just a tiny bit of it. Just the act of lis­ten­ing fired
the music inside him. And when Uncle Nate some­times led a group of
work­ers clean­ing up Mr. Moshe’s the­ater in singing his favorite old gospel
hymn, “I’ll Go Where You Want Me to Go,” Dodo sang along out of tune,
much to the amuse­ment of the men.
“I know a song, Mon­key Pants,” he said. “Wan­na hear it?”
With­out wait­ing for an answer, he sang.
I’ll go where You want me to go.
I’ll say what You want me to say.
Lord, I’ll be what You want me to be.
Mon­key Pants stared, unblink­ing, wide-eyed, his eye­brows lift­ed. His
face eased into some­thing like a smile, and in that moment, Dodo felt
com­fort­ed and a lit­tle less lone­ly.
Mon­key Pants sud­den­ly became agi­tat­ed again. Lying on his back, he
began to rock, twist­ing to the left and right, his thin gawky arms and legs
mov­ing crazi­ly as he attempt­ed to fur­ther unrav­el his face from his arms
and legs. It seemed impos­si­ble. His arms and legs awk­ward­ly twist­ed
them­selves togeth­er like spaghet­ti then pulled apart, then wrapped
them­selves around each oth­er again; but with great effort, his limbs began
to unbend them­selves and his arms arced toward the ceil­ing. His right arm,
which seemed to move on its own more than any oth­er part of him, seemed
to free itself first. It swung wide into the air over his face toward the ceil­ing,
then pinned itself to the right side of the crib, as if a pres­sure hose had burst
loose and sprayed water every­where. The left arm fol­lowed, grasp­ing an
ankle that seemed to want to move on its own, slow­ly push­ing a crimped-up
leg off his chest and away from him, so now his upper body was once again
clear of his ankles, legs, and feet. Then the left arm swung out wide through
the bar of the steel crib toward Dodo.
Dodo could see the boy’s face ful­ly now as he lay on his back, his head
turned toward him.
The two boys stared at each oth­er, and in that moment, a remark­able
thing hap­pened.
It was as if the mag­ic of the hymn Dodo offered up had marched into the
room. Both boys became ful­ly aware of the plight of the oth­er. A
knowl­edge, a wis­dom, passed between them that no one out­side of them
could possess—a knowl­edge that they were boys among men, with
remark­able minds trapped inside bod­ies that would not allow one-
thou­sandth of any of the thoughts and feel­ings they pos­sessed to emerge.