In the chap­ter titled “The Mar­ble,” Dodo, a young boy, finds him­self in Ward C‑1 of Pennhurst, an insti­tu­tion filled with men fac­ing var­i­ous strug­gles. The ini­tial days are a blur of con­fu­sion and pain, exac­er­bat­ed by the impact of med­ica­tion. Tran­si­tion­ing from the com­fort of his own room above Miss Chona’s gro­cery store to the harsh real­i­ties of a ward with over two hun­dred men is trau­mat­ic. Dodo expe­ri­ences a mix of fear and despair, sur­round­ed by strange patients and gruff atten­dants. His immo­bil­i­ty due to injury saves him from the feroc­i­ty of the ward’s chaos, allow­ing him to con­nect with anoth­er patient, Mon­key Pants.

Despite being near­ly deaf, Dodo bonds with Mon­key Pants as they attempt to com­mu­ni­cate. Their ini­tial attempts are clum­sy, with ges­tures and facial expres­sions serv­ing as their only means of exchange. Dodo is drawn out of his depres­sion with Mon­key Pants’s pres­ence. Par­tic­u­lar­ly, a blue mar­ble becomes a focal point of their con­nec­tion, evok­ing mem­o­ries of his past life and instill­ing a sense of hope. As they spend time togeth­er, they devel­op a rudi­men­ta­ry form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion through ges­tures, paving the way for deep­er under­stand­ing.

Days pass, and Dodo’s frus­tra­tion with the lim­i­ta­tions of their com­mu­ni­ca­tion sur­faces, espe­cial­ly con­cern­ing the marble’s ori­gins. In a break­through moment, they estab­lish a code that maps let­ters to Mon­key Pants’s fingers—a sys­tem that allows them to spell out words. They dis­cov­er that the mar­ble was a gift from Mon­key Pants’s moth­er, gen­er­at­ing a sense of shared expe­ri­ence and part­ner­ship in their lone­ly exis­tence.

Their friend­ship evolves fur­ther when dan­ger appears in the form of a men­ac­ing new atten­dant. This fig­ure under­mines the safe­ty Dodo has only just begun to feel, height­en­ing the ten­sion with­in the ward. Mon­key Pants instinc­tive­ly warns Dodo about this new threat, draw­ing them clos­er togeth­er as they nav­i­gate the com­plex­i­ties of friend­ship amid adver­si­ty. Through­out the chap­ter, themes of resilience, the need for con­nec­tion, and the strug­gle against des­o­la­tion are poignant­ly explored through the expe­ri­ences of the two boys.

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.

W
21
The Mar­ble
ard C‑1 had three shifts of atten­dants, and they seemed to change
con­stant­ly, so it was a full five weeks before Dodo first saw Son of
Man. He nev­er saw him till he saw him, as they say, for the first days at
Pennhurst were a blitz of shock from sor­row and suf­fer­ing. His mind was
drunk on hazy med­i­cine for long stretch­es, which made focus­ing
impos­si­ble. The over­whelm­ing smell, the fear, the sil­hou­ettes of bod­ies that
hov­ered over his crib to stare, munch at his food tray, pluck at his ears,
occa­sion­al­ly wheel him out for this or that, change his bed­ding while
grunt­ing and curs­ing, all blend­ed togeth­er in a kind of fuzz. Some of the
activ­i­ty came from curi­ous patients. Oth­ers were atten­dants. In his drugged
state, Dodo could not tell who was who.
More­over, the trans­for­ma­tion from liv­ing in his own room in the back of
Miss Chona’s gro­cery store with his own bed, lamp, com­ic books, and
card­board air­plane that dan­gled on a string from the light bulb over­head to a
ward of two hun­dred men in an insti­tu­tion that housed three thou­sand souls
was such a shock that Dodo might have died in those first days were he not
in trac­tion. His immo­bil­i­ty actu­al­ly saved him, for he was an active, ath­let­ic
child by nature, with arms and legs that lived in con­stant motion. But now
he was in pain, drugged, and immo­bile, all of which kept him still and
allowed his body to heal. While it did, he learned how to talk to Mon­key
Pants.
Their com­mu­ni­ca­tion was helped by his near deaf­ness. He could hear
very lit­tle, thus his atten­tion was not dis­rupt­ed by the spine-cur­dling nois­es
of the ward, which made sleep for nor­mal-hear­ing new­com­ers just about
impos­si­ble. The moan­ings, groan­ings, coos, burps, sighs, growls, yells,
chirps, yelps, chor­tles, cack­lings, farts, chat­ter­ings, and howl­ings of his
fel­low res­i­dents went over his head. They plun­dered his food tray when it
was left by his bed until he learned to gob­ble it down imme­di­ate­ly, and after
that, most ignored him, wan­der­ing about the ward like ghosts, men in
“john­nies,” or hos­pi­tal gowns, a few in their under­wear, and one or two
who tore their clothes off and marched about naked. Those first few days
were the hard­est, for civil­i­ty from the over­worked atten­dants was not
wast­ed on the so-called lunatics. His linen chang­ers were gruff, coarse men,
shov­ing his trac­tioned and ban­daged limbs aside impa­tient­ly, ignor­ing his
howls of pain, mouthing what appeared to be oaths as they did so. Only
after a few days did he real­ize that some of those chang­ing his bed­ding and
toss­ing him about as he sobbed pathet­i­cal­ly were not atten­dants at all but
rather fel­low patients. His inabil­i­ty to exe­cute even the most basic
func­tions, such as turn­ing on his side and scratch­ing his back while lying in
trac­tion in a steel crib in a room that stank hor­ri­bly left him in a kind of
hor­ri­fied trance a good part of the time. But his body was only twelve. It
want­ed to live. It want­ed to heal. And Mon­key Pants turned out to be a
curi­ous soul, in pos­ses­sion of some­thing that drew Dodo’s mind out of its
fog and depres­sion, yank­ing him out of the dread that soaked him every
sec­ond.
A mar­ble. A blue one.
Mon­key Pants pro­duced it from beneath his pil­low short­ly after Dodo
arrived, hold­ing it in his left hand, over which he had some con­trol and
strength, as opposed to his right, which seemed near­ly use­less.
“Where did you get that?” Dodo asked.
Mon­key Pants replied with a curl­ing of the lip.
“Where?”
And so it began.
At first, it seemed impos­si­ble, for nei­ther boy knew sign lan­guage. But
Dodo could speak and Mon­key Pants could hear, and just the act of try­ing
to com­mu­ni­cate with some­one, any­one, brought Dodo a bit of light. Before
Pennhurst, oth­er than occa­sion­al for­ays into Miss Bernice’s yard next to the
store, he’d lived most­ly in a world of adults, ignored by most of them save
Uncle Nate, Aunt Addie, and Miss Chona. With Mon­key Pants, he found
him­self the cen­ter of atten­tion with some­one close to his age. And while
their com­mu­ni­ca­tion was crude at first, their unwrit­ten under­stand­ing that a
thou­sand thoughts lay in the head of the oth­er forged their com­mon ground.
In the begin­ning, Mon­key Pants did most of the talk­ing, for he was
curi­ous with many ques­tions, where­as Dodo was depressed and with­drawn.
But even­tu­al­ly curios­i­ty took over, and after a few days of Mon­key Pants’s
squirm­ing and grunt­ing efforts to com­mu­ni­cate, Dodo took over,
inter­rupt­ing him with many ques­tions. Mon­key Pants’s respons­es, ges­tures,
and facial expres­sions at first seemed mean­ing­less, and sev­er­al times the
two were halt­ed in the mid­dle of their dis­course by Dodo sud­den­ly burst­ing
into tears, at which point Mon­key Pants would patient­ly wait till the
bawl­ing stopped and begin again with a series of ges­tures and wig­gles. The
ges­tures were earnest and insis­tent and forced Dodo to answer, even though
he was often unsure of what his new friend meant. But they had hours to
while away in those first days, and by the end of the first week, the two
estab­lished a few crude modes of talk­ing.
Raised eye­brows from Mon­key Pants meant “yes,” fur­rowed eye­brows
meant “no.” “Maybe” was a slight rais­ing of the left fore­arm. A balled left
fist and fore­arm across the chest meant “watch out,” “bad,” or an exple­tive.
A more pro­nounced lip with the same meant “real­ly watch out,” “pain,” or
“trou­ble.” Crossed fore­arms, with the left hand pin­ning the right hand down
on the chest meant “dan­ger.” The show­ing of teeth meant “good” or “tastes
good” or “okay.” Mon­key Pants could not con­trol his spasms, which kept
his head and every limb of his body in some sort of shake. His right hand
was hope­less­ly curled into a use­less fist, and his legs would occa­sion­al­ly
spasm uncon­trol­lably. But he could, with effort, con­trol his left hand, left
wrist, and left fore­arm all the way up to his shoul­der, which gave him the
use of all five fingers—a valu­able tool, for it was that hand that poked out
of his crib and ges­tured through the bars to Dodo and shook his crib to
awak­en him when Mon­key Pants felt the need.
It was from that left hand that the mir­a­cle of com­mu­ni­ca­tion occurred.
It began with the mar­ble. After pro­duc­ing the mar­ble and allow­ing Dodo
to hold it sev­er­al times and demand­ing it back by ges­ture, Mon­key Pants
sought to com­mu­ni­cate some­thing about it. He was unsuc­cess­ful each time.
Dodo, for his part, coun­tered with ques­tions of his own that brought on
fur­ther frus­trat­ed com­mu­nica­tive ges­tures from Mon­key Pants until the two
gave up. Were it any oth­er sub­ject, Dodo would have let the mat­ter drop.
But he loved mar­bles. They remind­ed him of Miss Chona—who’d pro­vid­ed
him with so many mar­bles he had to store them in a jar—and his aunt and
uncle, whom he missed so dear­ly. He pre­sumed all three were angry at him
for what had hap­pened at the store, for not one of them had come to fetch
him or even see him. He delud­ed him­self that per­haps the three were busy
gath­er­ing all kinds of mar­bles to bring him as a spe­cial gift so he might heal
faster and get out. But that delu­sion fad­ed more and more each day, and
most nights he fell asleep with tears in his eyes.
Only the mar­ble kept him hope­ful, for despite his guilt, a tiny part of him
believed that the kind woman who doled out so many of those pre­cious
mar­bles to him would for­give him. So each day Dodo asked Mon­key Pants
to pro­duce the mar­ble from beneath his pil­low, and inquired as to where he
got it. After sev­er­al hun­dred ges­tures and facial expres­sions from his friend,
Dodo sur­mised that Mon­key Pants had got­ten the mar­ble as a kind of gift
from some­one. Who that per­son was, he was unable to deter­mine. That
frus­trat­ed him, and one after­noon while Dodo was pok­ing for answers,
Mon­key Pants became frus­trat­ed and turned his head away in bored
irri­ta­tion.
Dodo, though he could not hear his own voice, knew how to raise it, for
the vibra­tions in his head told him so, so he spoke loud­ly. “Stop being
stu­pid!” he said.
Mon­key Pants turned back to him, fac­ing him through the bars of the
crib, his spas­tic head shak­ing back and forth, his expres­sion say­ing, “What
do you want me to do? I can’t make you under­stand.”
“We’re not fin­ished,” Dodo said.
So they went at it again, dri­ven only by the aching lone­li­ness of their
exis­tence, two boys with intel­li­gent minds trapped in bod­ies that would not
coop­er­ate, caged in cribs like tod­dlers, liv­ing in an insane asy­lum, the
insan­i­ty of it seem­ing to live on itself and charge them, for despite the
hor­ri­ble­ness of their sit­u­a­tion, they were cheered by the tini­est of things, the
crin­kle of an eye­lid, an errant cough, an occa­sion­al sat­is­fied grunt or burst
of laugh­ter as one or the oth­er bum­bled about in con­fused impa­tience at the
oth­er, try­ing to fig­ure out how to com­mu­ni­cate the ori­gins of Mon­key
Pants’s pre­cious mar­ble. It was out­ra­geous.
For­tu­nate­ly, time was some­thing they had a great deal of, and they made
good use of it. They had noth­ing to do all day dur­ing those first weeks, for
the dead­en­ing rou­tine was the same. The patients were awak­ened at sev­en.
Linen, dia­pers, and hos­pi­tal gowns were removed and changed—or
some­times not. Those who could be washed were washed. Oth­ers who
could be washed some­times weren’t. Those who were mobile were parad­ed
to the toi­let by an atten­dant. After the toi­let, the parade of so-called lunatics
was led to the cafe­te­ria by two day-shift atten­dants, then direct­ly to the day
room down the hall, where they stayed till just before lunch. They were
then marched back to the ward briefly, then to the cafe­te­ria for lunch, then
to the day room again until din­ner. After din­ner, there was a rare activ­i­ty
that usu­al­ly was noth­ing but going to the day room again, then all were put
to bed by 8 p.m. The two boys in cribs were fed where they lay, along with
a third patient, a young man who lay total­ly unmov­ing and moan­ing in a
crib at the far end of the ward near the day atten­dants’ desk. Usu­al­ly, the
two atten­dants on duty switched off, one man­ning the desk in the morn­ing
while the oth­er led the patients to the cafe­te­ria and the day room, then they
switched in the after­noon, leav­ing the desk manned with one atten­dant who
nor­mal­ly slept or read while the oth­er did the heavy lift­ing of lead­ing the
ward around. The desk was always staffed by one atten­dant, and who­ev­er
was there seemed sat­is­fied that the boys spent the day amus­ing each oth­er.
They were not a both­er. They were one less thing to do.
But the boys were solv­ing a puz­zle. And after the third week, the
break­through came when Mon­key Pants point­ed with his fin­ger to Dodo’s
cast and made sev­er­al ges­tures. Dodo deduced, incor­rect­ly, that Mon­key
Pants want­ed to ask him what hap­pened and why he was wear­ing the cast,
which brought back the whole busi­ness of what hap­pened at Miss Chona’s
store, and he burst into tears.
“I want to go home,” he cried.
Mon­key Pants stared at him, his eyes immo­bile, seem­ing­ly unmoved.
See­ing this made Dodo angry. “For­get your dumb mar­ble, Mon­key Pants.”
He closed his eyes, shut­ting him out.
Mon­key Pants reached over and shook Dodo’s crib.
Dodo opened his eyes. “What!”
Mon­key Pants tapped the bars of his crib five times.
“So what. You can count to five.”
Mon­key Pants shook his head, insis­tent. He tapped again on the crib
bars. Five times. Then held up the mar­ble. Then held up his thumb.
This piqued Dodo’s inter­est. “Do it six times if you’re so smart.”
Mon­key Pants frowned a “no,” and tapped five times again.
“What you want, Mon­key Pants?”
Mon­key Pants tapped again and again, point­ed to the mar­ble, to his
mouth, then reached across into Dodo’s crib and pinged Dodo with his first
fin­ger and thumb.
Dodo, irri­tat­ed, snapped, “Hey!”
Mon­key Pants went wild with enthu­si­asm, his head bounc­ing on his
pil­low.
“Hey what?”
Sev­er­al shakes of “no.”
“What?”
Mon­key Pants’s head shook a “no.” He moved his mouth, and Dodo,
see­ing his mouth move, took a wild guess, know­ing vow­el sounds looked
alike, think­ing he’d said, “Hey,” so he retort­ed. “Hey your­self.”
More enthu­si­as­tic wild ges­tures by Mon­key Pants.
“Hey?” Dodo said.
Yes. Mon­key Pants nod­ded.
“Hey what?”
No. Mon­key Pants shook his head.
“Just hey?”
Yes. A nod.
It took all day, with Mon­key Pants pan­tomim­ing, grunt­ing, grind­ing, and
point­ing, for Dodo to fig­ure out that Mon­key Pants was not nod­ding “yes”
to “hey” but rather to “A,” the first let­ter of the alpha­bet, which he final­ly
made clear by point­ing to one of the atten­dants seat­ed at his sta­tion eat­ing
an apple.
“Your thumb means ‘A’?”
Mon­key Pants point­ed to the man and raised his eyes, which meant
“yes!” and shook his head wild­ly. It was a break­through. The first let­ter of
the alpha­bet!
It took two more days for Dodo to fig­ure out that the let­ter B was the
first thumb also. So were the let­ters C, D, and E.
From there, the rest of Mon­key Pants’s one-hand­ed for­mu­la rolled out
quick­ly.
His thumb rep­re­sent­ed let­ters A through E.
The next fin­ger rep­re­sent­ed F to J.
The mid­dle fin­ger, K to O.
The fourth fin­ger, P to T.
The pinkie cov­ered the last six let­ters, U to Z.
Twen­ty-six let­ters of the alpha­bet. Five fin­gers. Five per fin­ger. Six for
the pinkie. Dodo was exhaust­ed from fig­ur­ing it out, for it had tak­en them
sev­er­al days of two steps for­ward and one step back, using the word
“apple” as a start. But with­in days, he became sure of the code. They
checked it and rechecked it using var­i­ous words, “man,” “food,” “cake,”
“ice cream,” and, of course, “mar­ble,” a word of the great­est inter­est to
Dodo. When he deci­phered that word cor­rect­ly three times, and it was clear
to them that they were both sol­id on their new lan­guage, Dodo declared,
“Mon­key Pants, you’re so smart!”
Mon­key Pants waved his hand impa­tient­ly, for he was starv­ing to talk.
He began wav­ing his palm and fin­gers one through five again, motion­ing
for Dodo to hur­ry up and decode the let­ters he’d spelled. He began by
ask­ing Dodo his name in their sign lan­guage, but Dodo ignored that, for
while he, too, was excit­ed, there was the ques­tion that had fired their
friend­ship from the very first. So he ignored Mon­key Pants’s extend­ed
fin­gers and asked impa­tient­ly, “Where did you get the mar­ble?”
Mon­key Pants rolled his eyes and patient­ly spelled out as Dodo spoke
the let­ters. He held up his mid­dle fin­ger.
“K? … L? … M?”
Rais­ing of the eyes. Yes. Then he held up his fifth fin­ger.
“U? V? W? X? Y? Z? … Y?”
Rais­ing of the eyes. Yes.
“Y.”
Then clos­ing of the eyes.
“New word?”
Rais­ing of the eyes. Yes.
Mon­key Pants began spelling the rest. Dodo’s eyes care­ful­ly scanned the
fin­gers and his lips moved as Mon­key Pants spelled M.Y. M.O.T.H.E.R.
It was tax­ing, but the rid­dle was solved. Dodo sighed hap­pi­ly, then
asked, “Where is she?”
But Mon­key Pants did not answer. Instead, his eyes shift­ed to some­thing
past Dodo, then widened in fright. He balled his fist and crossed both his
fore­arms over his chest, the sign for “dan­ger.”
Dodo looked behind him as a shad­ow crossed the win­dow and blocked
the bar­ren light for a moment, then moved past the edge of his crib to the
foot. Dodo glanced at Mon­key Pants, but he’d turned away and his knees
drove up toward his face and his body took a curled stance, which Dodo
had learned was Mon­key Pants’s posi­tion of fear.
Dodo looked down at the foot of his crib to see a slim, dark fig­ure
stand­ing there, star­ing.
He was a tall black man, hand­some, with deep brown skin and a long
mark on his fore­head from an old wound of some type. His skin was
smooth, his hands long and bony. Thick arms and shoul­ders filled his white
attendant’s uni­form and his broad chest roared out from beneath it. He was
a man of strength, clear­ly, with a face that bore a gen­tle sar­don­ic grin, as if
to say “I’m here now and every­thing will be fine.” His deep-set eyes were
calm, but there was some­thing behind them, a mut­ed wild­ness and thirst
that awak­ened a ter­ri­ble fright in Dodo, for he was a child who lived by
sight and vibra­tion.
“You the new boy?” the man asked.
Dodo stayed mute, feign­ing mis­un­der­stand­ing.
“You lip-read? That’s what they say. They say you read lips.”
Dodo stayed still.
The man reached out a huge hand and stroked Dodo’s fore­head. It was
the first kind ges­ture he’d felt in weeks. And Dodo would have nor­mal­ly
wept with joy at the first kind hand that didn’t flip him over, turn him this
way and that, and grunt with dis­plea­sure after clean­ing his ran­cid sheets, for
while one leg had been moved out of trac­tion and was heal­ing, the sec­ond
still remained in a cast. The white atten­dants appeared afraid to touch him,
and that hurt, for he was a child of touch and feel. He was starv­ing for a
lov­ing touch. But there was some­thing about the gen­tle stroke of the man’s
hand that ran across his face, down his cheek, across his chest, down his
navel, and toward his pelvis before slow­ly lift­ing away that ter­ri­fied him.
“What’s your name?”
Dodo shrugged.
The man smiled.
“Don’t mat­ter,” he said, run­ning his large fin­ger across Dodo’s head.
“We’ll get to it.” Then with a quick glance over his shoul­der at the nurs­es’
sta­tion, which was emp­ty, he sud­den­ly grabbed Dodo’s good leg at the
thigh, lift­ed him off the mat­tress with one hand, snatched the hos­pi­tal
john­nie up high with the oth­er, and peered at his soft, smooth bot­tom. “You
pret­ty as a pea­cock, boy.” Then he gen­tly low­ered him.
“Pret­ty as a pea­cock.”
Then he left.
No soon­er had the man turned away than Mon­key Pants was rat­tling his
crib with his strong hand, his left, his fin­gers ges­tur­ing wild­ly, his eyes wide
with fright.
“Who is he?” Dodo asked.