Read a Word

I love to read and I read for hours a day. When I was a child my mother told me I couldn't read. She took me to the psychologist when I was seven and I had to real aloud from a book I hated and say why I hated it: 'Hey Mama, she said,' I remember saying aloud to Mr. Brown. "It's fake! nobody talks like that." My mother said that I didn't read because my bio dad sent me a letter that he remarried (to wife number three). She theorized that I was traumatized by his marriage and had a 'mental block' and was suddenly unable to read anymore (after reading the letter). Meanwhile I was in the advanced reading group in elementary school. We were reading The Secret Garden in Miss Wood's third grade class. I kept a running list of every book I completed taped to the side of my desk. Sometimes I got up in the middle of the night to add another title. When I had insomnia my step-father slipped me books to read. He gave me Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver. I was 11. My step father would wake up at 5 AM and read before my mother was awake. If my mother caught me (or anyone) reading she demanded we stop and pay attention to her or do some dumb thing for her. I would hide in my room with the door shut in order to read a book or I'd read at night after she was asleep. I remember reading James and the Giant Peach at my Grandmother's Brighton Beach apartment. I read Gone with the Wind at another friend's house. Our house was full of books, the New Yorker Magazine two daily newspapers and yet I never saw my mother read a word. She was the one who was traumatized and couldn't read.