Page 24 - DAPHNE HART - MY MAMA STORY (AUDIO VERSION)

I took a puff from it—I coughed and vomited. I thought I was about to
die. He laughed and thought it was funny.

I never did it again and never smoked all my life.

Thinking about it later, that was a horrible thing to do to a child.
I guess to him, that was very funny.

I can still hear that stupid laugh of his.

My brothers were mean and backward in school, and along with the

other mean kids, they would tease me—because by this time, I stuttered
really badly. My mother tried everything to help me get rid of the

stuttering; she would make medicine of all kinds. Whatever she heard

about, she would try it. I did not get a fair chance, neither in school nor
in life.

My younger brother, although he wasn't bright in school, could fix
anything and everything that was broken. We called him Mr. Fixer

Man. We had a clock once—the kind you wind up and it stands on three

legs—it was broken. He took it apart and fixed it before leaving for
school, and that thing worked forever. He fixed plenty of other things,

too.

Before we had a telephone, he would run wire through two condensed

milk cans and go a far distance away, and we could still hear him

talking to us. He was such a genius. But like myself, he didn’t get the
chance.

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