Special Needs and Baseball

Chapter 1: Mrs. Matthews

"MAMA!!!" Screamed Eadie as she involuntarily thrashed around in her bed. "MAMA, MAKE IT STOP, PLEASE! IT'S BURNING, IT'S GONNA KILL ME!!!!!"

In went the injection into the base of her spine, and she passed out; cold.

Mrs. Matthews worked as a cleaning lady in a wealthy household north of town, and her daughter, Edythe, or Eadie, probably had several undiagnosed mental disorders and was a sickly child. Not able to afford what help they need besides medication that they were merely guessing her child needed, it was a life that mainly involved many, many hours cleaning while her daughter went to the only place she could belong: a bunch of boys.

Mrs. Matthews, of course, was a bit hesitant the moment her daughter came thundering home after the first day of kindergarten saying that she actually had friends. But after she met the boys, she was able to see that they were what her daughter needed. And so she allowed, while she was at work (minus Sundays, because she insisted Eadie needed to rest one day a week), to let her daughter play baseball all day.

As she tucked her daughter in, now long passed out, she brushed a few stray hairs out of her pale, sallow face. Kissing her in the forehead, she left the bedroom, leaving the door open. She sat down in her hickory rocking chair and just picked up her needles for the new afghan she was knitting when a truck drove by.

She walked to the window, and saw the most peculiar thing—a moving truck! Who on earth in this street was moving? Then again, there was that old house down the block that nobody had lived in for years.

Mrs. Matthews hoped that they head a child who could be friends with her daughter.