The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

“I could get my foot fixed,” I said. “Even now. I don’t have to be a cripple.
You don’t have to be ashamed of me.” A thought went through my head:
Susan isn’t ashamed.
Mam’s face turned red. “I’m never paying to fix your foot.”
“It would have been easy to fix, when I was a baby.”
“Oh, that’s lies! You can’t believe what people say! Lies! I told your father
—”
My father. I’d read about him in the newspaper clipping in Mam’s drawer.
I said, slowly, “He would have fixed me.” It was a guess.
“He wanted to,” Mam said. “He was the one that wanted babies. It was him
always rocking you, singing to you.”
I felt tears dripping down my cheeks. I hadn’t even realized I was crying. I
said, “You never wanted us. You don’t want us now.”
Mam’s eyes blazed. She said, “You’re right, I don’t.”
“You never wanted us,” I said.
“And why would I?” Mam said. “It was all him, calling me unnatural,
wanting babies all the time. Then I got stuck with a cripple. And then a baby.
And then no husband. I never wanted either of you.”
Jamie made a little noise. I knew he was crying but I couldn’t look at him
yet. I said, “So you don’t need to keep us now. You won’t have to pay. We’ll
be gone in the morning. We’ll be gone for good.”
Mam got up. She took her purse and hat. She turned back to look at me. “I
can get rid of you without paying anything?”
I nodded.
She grinned. It was her stuffing-Ada-into-the – cabinet grin. “Is that a
promise?” she said.
All of my life I would remember those words.
I said, “Yes.”