Chapter 2

The other kids in town saw me like I was the plague, scattering whenever they spotted me.

"Run! Dummy Daisy is coming! Stupidity is contagious!"

Sometimes they couldn't get away fast enough, and rocks would come flying.

My forehead bled, warm and sticky, blurring my vision. Everything was red.

I cried my way home. Mom was cooking by the stove, she didn't even turn her head.

"What's there to cry about? So what if a dummy gets hit a couple of times? It won't kill you."

She pulled up her apron and roughly wiped my face. Blood and mud mixed, forming scabs that caked my face, making me even dirtier.

She looked at my face, a flicker of satisfaction in her eyes.

"That's good. Now you really look like a dummy."

From then on, I couldn't have friends, couldn't wear clean clothes, and couldn't look at anything with words.

I secretly peeled off discarded newspapers and magazines she used to patch holes in the walls, hiding them in the woodpile to read.

By the faint glow from the fireplace, I'd slowly decipher one word after another.

When she found out, she burned them all. Sparks flew onto my hand, blistering my skin with thumb-sized burns.

"What are you looking at? Can you even understand? Remember, you're a dummy! Have you ever seen a dummy read?"

Her eyes were wide, cold, filled only with stark terror.

She was terrified of me becoming normal, terrified of losing that meager income.

Days turned into years. The disability benefits rose from $350 to $500, then to $800.

My perceived disability became Mom's and my most stable source of income, and her lifeline, clutched tightly in her hand.

When I was twelve, a Social Worker, Mr. Hayes, came to our town, visiting house by house.

When he arrived at our place, he frowned, looking at me cowering in the corner, dirty and smelly.

He offered me an apple, asking gently, "Little one, how old are you?"