I could have done so much with my life, but it has all gone to ruin with one decision. Many years ago, as a teenager, I found doing well in school to pose no challenge to me. While the ‘pipsqueaks’ - the generally compliant students who sat in the front, were shy and lacked courage, I was not afraid of talking and argued when need be. When a pipsqueak in the front requested to learn how to factor an equation, the teacher, Mr. Castor, attempted to help. By repeating, “Oh, just look at page 239, section 4”, and gesturing at the book, he expected Sonia to understand the concept.
A moment after, and after a murmuring of the people around me, Odessa, a student next to me, screamed “Sit down Mr.Castor. You don’t know crap. Norma, go up to the front
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Mr. Castor shuffled to the side, since he knew he didn’t know the subject well enough to understand it. As I reached for the chalk on the underside of the chalkboard, I said, “ Factoring is finding what to multiply to get an expression”, which immediately registered in her understanding.
After the explanation, Lewis called out a problem. Lewis was the other genius in my class, and faced no difficulty in school, much like me.
A moment only passed when the answer flashed in my head, and I wrote the problem on the board. Another problem was called, this time much harder than the previous one. This time it took me much longer to solve it. But even so, I found the answer quickly. Around the school, I guess you could say I was a sort foreigner, since I came from Mississippi. Sonia, on the other hand, had spent her entire life around the school, and was familiar with the place. Even so, she kept her head down when talking, and tried to remain as inconspicuous as possible. I guess it was because she had a lack of faith in her
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Somehow, I had gotten pregnant. I did not know how, nor did I know why, I simply woke up one day with a squirming lump in my lower abdomen. While other students were studying for upcoming tests, I was expelled from school for having a child. The news was later announced in the school which I was expelled from; me the mathematical genius, the prodigy, expelled from school and now the mother of a child. After a few months, I got pregnant again, and a few months after that, pregnant again. To cope with the mistakes I had made, I resorted to drugs to numb the pain. So many