Before I died,I won five million pounds

When I was five, I was hit by a truck. By some miracle, I survived—but both my legs were crushed. My parents took three thousand dollars in compensation from the driver, and that was the end of it. That day, I lay in bed at home, writhing in pain worse than death itself. My mother boiled two eggs, fed them to me, and told me to rest. I never saw her—or my father—ever again. A neighbor, moved by pity, brought over a bowl of porridge and sat by my bed to feed me. Before leaving, she slipped a piece of rock sugar into my mouth. “Poor child,” she murmured. “You’ve had such a hard life. Take this, and maybe in your next life, you’ll be born into a kinder family.” I couldn’t speak, only made faint, broken sounds. Later, hunger clawed at me so fiercely that I rolled off the bed, searching for anything to eat. There was nothing in the house. In desperation, I scooped up handfuls of dirt and shoved them into my mouth. A gray-haired woman walked in just then and stopped me. “Good heavens! You can’t eat that. Come, Grandma will take you home.” She carried me in her frail arms to a small cottage. Each day, she went out to work in the fields while I sat in the doorway, waiting for her to come back. Every evening, she’d bring me a wildflower she’d picked along the road for me. She even made me a tiny walking stick so I could hobble outside and see the world beyond our door. One day, pointing to the basket of vegetables she’d just brought home, I asked: “Grandma, I want some pork. Can you grow meat, like you grow vegetables?” Our neighbor Roger’s family often ate pork, flaunting it in front of us and sneering: “The old madwoman and her crippled brat want to have meat! What a day-dream!” I’d hear them laugh like that all the time. I wanted to shout back, but I could never catch up to them on my broken legs—I’d always end up falling, face-first in the dirt. I couldn’t quite read Grandma’s expression then, but I remember that the next day, she cooked a bowl of braised pork for me. I picked out two small pieces, chewing them slowly, afraid to eat more. “Finish it all. There’ll be more tomorrow.” Grandma said, dumping the rest into my bowl. And so I did. I believed her. The next day, I told Roger proudly that Grandma could grow meat. He pointed at me and laughed, calling me a fool. That evening, several villagers gathered outside our door. “That cripple said you had meat yesterday. So you’ve still got money, huh? Must be hiding a stash somewhere.” They tore through our house, overturning boxes, smashing bowls, finding nothing. “Where’s the money, old hag?” one of them shouted. Grandma stayed silent. In anger, I flung open the box of grasshoppers I’d been keeping. They sprang out in a wild flurry, burrowing into clothes and hair. The villagers shrieked and fled, slapping themselves, but soon came back, pulling the insects off and crushing them underfoot. When they finally saw there was truly nothing to take, they left. After that, because Grandma’s vegetables grew better than anyone else’s, the villagers stripped her fields bare. She began leaving for the fields earlier each morning and coming home later at night, yet we still went hungry. When winter came, my whole body trembled with the pain. In the dead of night, I would curl up in Grandma’s arms, sleepless and shivering, as she gently massaged my legs to ease the torment.