Fifteen days before I was born, my sister died at only a year and a half old. She had been the first and only child in the household where my father and uncle lived.
So when I was born, nobody welcomed me warmly. They put me in a cradle, fed me, covered me, and left me to whatever fate awaited me.
My aunt told me that they even pushed me under the bed so that, if I cried, I would be heard less. They paid little attention to me.
My aunt took care of me because my mother was ill and grieving. That went on for about ten or fifteen days.
They said I was ugly, thin and dehydrated, and that I almost did not survive.
My aunt told me that my mother had a dream in which a woman dressed in black came to her carrying a child.
When the woman held out the child for my mother to take into her arms, she saw that the woman had no hands from the elbows down, and was holding the child with the stumps of her arms.
My mother was terrified. She screamed in her sleep and woke up.
The dream frightened her deeply, and everyone also told her that it was a sin that she had not started breastfeeding me, that she had not accepted and cared for me, and that my aunt had instead begun raising me as her own child.
My mother repented and finally accepted me.
I had just started school when they told me this story.
I kept thinking that one day I would leave them because they had been so cruel to me. The story settled deeply into my child’s mind, emotionally reinforcing the feeling that I was somehow unnecessary.
And so, whatever I did, I tried to do it diligently and well, hoping to be praised, rewarded, kissed, or shown some tenderness.
Many other stories grew out of this, situations that I deliberately staged myself — like the time when all the children had scarlet fever except me...