Cindy Goff

1971

My first grade teacher hit me with the bell curve because I drew periods big enough to sit on. She put me in the slow corner with the son of an apple picker. We never spoke. We just looked at pictures of beauticians and construction workers. Once he touched the back of my neck, and I began saying apple before every word: applewe applewould applelike appleto appleleave Appalachia. Since the teacher had undergone a double mastectomy, no vowels were left in her alphabet, so she couldn't understand our language even though her desk was covered with apples. By spring, stems started poking through the son of the apple picker's skin, and he was taken out of school. By process of elimination, I was my own baseball team.

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