Matty
My grandmother's name was Martha Belle, Matty for short. She and her four sisters were named after oyster boats on the Chesapeake Bay. At least that's what my mother told me; my sister swears it was canal boats on the Erie Canal; but this is my story, so oyster boats it is. Matty was the youngest of the sisters. When she was still a baby, she contracted scarlet fever, or perhaps the quinsy; in any case, this was in the days before antibiotics and she was gravely ill. Her sisters had been awakened in the night and gathered in the kitchen where they were told that the baby had died before her father had noticed a tiny gasp for breath and, holding her by the feet, pounded her back until a mass of phlegm fell from her throat and she began to breathe again. Scar tissue from the infection tightly tethered her tongue to the floor of her mouth and fever damaged her hearing. Young Matty was deaf and dumb.