About five days later President Truman announced the end of the war.
It was all anyone could talk about after the church service the next Sunday. Except my daddy. He didn’t stand under the oak tree in the churchyard and smoke with the rest of the men. Evidently he went off by himself someplace while me and Momma and the girls visited with our friends.
Like always, the young people met behind the church while the adults stood around out front. It was hot and sunny, so we sat in the grass, and of course Junior brought up the subject of that bomb. “Didn’t I tell you the war would be over any minute?” he said.
I could see he thought the bombing was a good thing, and of course all the other young people thought so too. “Won’t be long until they show us a moving picture of it,” said Junior. He was talking about the newsreels they show at the movie theater.
My friend Peggy Sue spoke up then. “Junior,” she said, “maybe you could go to the picture show with me and Ann Fay next week.”
Well, I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing. For years, Peggy Sue’s momma took just the two of us to the movies on Saturday afternoons. But this summer we hadn’t hardly gone at all. I guess it was too much to expect that we would pick up right where we left off before the polio epidemic. But still, I was hoping our friendship would get back to normal.
We never let anyone tag along to the movies—not my twin sisters and not Junior Bledsoe either. I gave Peggy Sue’s foot a little kick and tried to give her a look that said, Don’t you dare. But she wasn’t looking at me for anything in the world. She had a plan. If there’s anybody I know who can get what she wants, it’s Peggy Sue Rhinehart.
I’d understand if it was her new friend Melinda she wanted to take along. In fact, I was pretty sure she was already taking Melinda on the Saturdays she didn’t ask me. But why in the world would she want Junior to go along to the movies? That’s what I wanted to know.
I got to wondering if she invited him just in case the two of us ran out of things to talk about. Me and Peggy Sue had been friends since before first grade. But all of a sudden she was thinking about movie stars, boys, and swing dancing. She’d tried dragging me along to a dance. I told her my daddy wouldn’t let me. Which was true. But what would I want to go to a dance for? I just wanted to get from one place to the next without falling on my backside. Seemed like every move I made was something to calculate beforehand. Such as getting in the car.
The next Saturday, when Mrs. Rhinehart came to take me to the movies, I rode in the front seat with her. It was easier than climbing in the back.
I had my fingers crossed that she would drive right past Junior Bledsoe’s lane. But she turned in and drove up to his house. “I hope you don’t mind,” said Peggy Sue. I couldn’t see her from where I was sitting, but I could just imagine the determined look in her blue eyes.
“Well, I’m not crazy about it,” I said. “Especially if he wants to see a James Cagney picture.”
“Don’t worry about that. I told Junior we would see Lone Texas Ranger.”
“A cowboy movie?” I’m pretty sure Peggy Sue heard the disgust in my voice. “How’d you let him talk you into that? You hate westerns as much as I do.”
“Oh, they’re not all that bad,” said Peggy Sue.
Then Mrs. Rhinehart spoke up. “Honey,” she said, “I was under the impression the three of you had agreed on this.”
“Ann Fay, do you mind if we see a western just this once?” pleaded Peggy Sue. “Next time we’ll make Junior watch our show.”
Next time? I saw Mrs. Rhinehart watching me, waiting for my answer. I thought how many times she’d took me to the movies and bought my ticket even. I sure didn’t want to start a squabble between her and Peggy Sue. “All right, then,” I said. “Just this once.”
By that time Junior had come out of the house. Mrs. Rhinehart bent her seat forward so he could climb in the back with Peggy Sue. I didn’t say much on the way to the movies because I was a little bit mad. And I didn’t get any happier as the day went on.
At the theater Peggy Sue sat between me and Junior. And all of a sudden she seemed especially interested in gunfights. I might as well have been home by myself. They talked so much I almost wondered if they was even watching the movie.
I didn’t see much of it either. For one thing, I wasn’t interested, and for another, I was busy worrying about school starting the next week. If my two best friends didn’t talk to me, why would the eighth graders at Mountain View School want to?
I fretted over it so much that on the first day of school I woke up with a tummy ache. Momma gave me some pink medicine, but I still had to hurry to the johnny house on account of diarrhea.
On the way back I bumped into Daddy sitting on the steps. He was wearing overalls and I wanted like crazy to put mine on too—the ones he gave me before he went off to war, when he told me to be the man of the house in his place. They were too small by now. But staying home in tight overalls would’ve felt a lot better than going to school in the brand-new dress Momma had made.
“Come sit for a minute,” said Daddy. He pulled me to his lap and leaned my crutches against the porch floor. Then he put my head against his shoulder and started talking. “You can’t have a tummy ache every day.”
He waited for me to say something. But I didn’t. So after a minute he spoke up again.
“It’s got to be hard,” he said. “Going to school on crutches and being a year behind. But you and I both know—if anyone can do hard things, it’s Ann Fay Honeycutt.”
My daddy has always been like that. So kind and sensitive that if someone else felt pain, he would feel it too. Especially if that someone was me. I wanted to stay there with him all morning, listening to the grasshoppers flicking around in the dry grass.
He shook me real soft and said, “It’s the first step that’s the hardest. Remember what Franklin Roosevelt said—‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’”
I knew it was fear making my tummy hurt and sending me to the toilet. But I didn’t admit it. I just asked, “Do you think President Roosevelt was ever afraid?”
“I think he was. After all, he was a famous politician when polio struck. And I’m sure he wanted to be strong for his family. Then he became president and had to be strong for all of us.” Daddy was quiet for a little while and then he said one more thing. “I think polio was the thing that scared him. But he didn’t let it make him weak. Maybe polio made him stronger than he already was.”
Of all the things my daddy could have said, he picked the perfect thing. Polio made him stronger than he already was.
So I hugged him one last time, and when I did, I wiped the tears that were starting to come—right onto the collar of his shirt. I didn’t want him to see me crying.
But if I know my daddy, he probably felt my tears anyway.
When I got back inside, Momma handed a paper sack with my lunch to Ellie and said, “Carry this for Ann Fay.” She pointed to my notebook on the kitchen table and handed Ida two yellow pencils with a rubber band around them. “Take these for your sister.”
Ida and Ellie didn’t complain. I think they were proud to be helping me for a change. When the school bus stopped by our mailbox they let me get on first.
I hadn’t thought about how I’d climb into the bus. So I had to think fast. I laid my crutches on the bus floor one at a time while I held on to the shiny handrail. Then I unlocked my ugly, miserable brace and pulled myself up.
The bus driver waited patiently and greeted me just like she’d always done. “Morning, Ann Fay. You can sit on the front seat. And the twins too.”
When the bus started moving, I heard a boy asking how come they had to fill in from the back and we got to sit up front. Someone else said to him, “Can’t you see that Ann Fay Honeycutt had polio?”
It made me want to go to the back of the bus. To plop down in my old seat. But I had already called enough attention to myself. So I whispered, Polio made him stronger than he already was.
And then another voice popped into my head. It was Imogene Wilfong saying, It mostly hurts at first. After a while it starts to feel better.
I have to say, that made me smile.
The bus stopped at Whitener’s Store and a bunch of neighborhood children got on. Ruth Whitener, who owned the store, had six children of her own. Her daughter Jean grinned real big when she saw me. “Hey,” she said.
After that there was only one more stop and then we were at school.
Even though I had the front seat I waited until last to get off the bus. Jean Whitener and her friend Beckie waited too. They were older than me, but Jean offered to carry my school supplies so Ida and Ellie could go straight to their classroom on the lower hall. “And I’ll carry your books in the afternoon,” said Beckie.
I hated using crutches on steps. There were only three steps at the side entrance to the school, but they slowed me down. Jean and Beckie waited real patient for me and walked with me down the shiny wooden hallway. I was glad it was them and not my little sisters taking me to my classroom. As it was, people turned and stared when they heard my brace clicking down the hall.
Everyone in the eighth grade stared too. I knew most of them, at least a little bit. But none of them was my friends in the way the ninth graders were. I made the mistake of choosing a desk in front of Rob Walker. It wasn’t two seconds later I heard him muttering under his breath, “I’m not sitting next to no cripple.” And just like that, he went to a seat across the room.
I felt my ears get hot. “It mostly hurts at first,” I told myself.
But Rob didn’t let up. Before the morning was out he went by my desk on the way to the pencil sharpener. He made a point of leaving plenty of room between me and him, but he made sure I knew he was there. “How ya doing, Click?” he said in a loud whisper.
Click? It took me a minute to realize he was making fun of my noisy brace. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t been in school even two hours before polio had earned me a nickname.
Later, when we left the classroom and all the other girls had friends to walk with, I said Imogene’s line again. I said it at recess while I was sitting on the wooden bench by the dusty red ball diamond, watching the other students play softball.
After Mrs. Barkley helped the class choose teams she sat on the bench beside me. “How’s it going so far?” she asked.
I shrugged. What did she expect me to say—I’m so excited to be in your class instead of Mrs. Hamrick’s? I liked Mrs. Barkley already, and not just because Peggy Sue had liked her. I could tell she was a good teacher. But I wished I’d had her when I was supposed to be in eighth grade.
I didn’t know what to say about how things were going. What should it be like? After you have polio, I mean. Were other people supposed to carry your books for you the rest of your life? Did you have to sit at the front of the bus with your little sisters while everyone else sat in the back and talked about you? And warm the bench at recess?
“I used to play softball real good,” I said. I don’t know why I said that. Maybe I thought Mrs. Barkley would try to understand. I used one of my crutches to write a big A in the soft red dust at my feet.
“I know,” she said. “I saw you out here playing when you were in seventh grade. You had a knack for hitting the ball where other players couldn’t catch it.”
“Really?” I looked at her. “You noticed that?”
Mrs. Barkley laughed. Her gray eyes twinkled. “I’ve been watching you, Ann Fay. I’m glad you’re finally in my class. It won’t be the way either of us expected it to be. But you and I are about to have a good year together.”
I didn’t know what she meant by that. But all of a sudden I thought maybe sitting on the bench wouldn’t be so bad. Not if she was there beside me.
When it was almost time for the class to go in, Mrs. Barkley told me to get a head start. “I’m sending everyone to the restroom,” she said. “You can go there after you stop by the drinking fountain.”
I stood up, locked my brace, and headed by myself toward the big brick school building. The ground was sloped uphill and a little bit stony, so I had to watch where I set the tips of my crutches. I’d fallen plenty of times at the hospital when I was learning to walk. And more after I got home. If I was to fall down at school, I didn’t think I would survive the humiliation.
I walked right by Peggy Sue’s class on the way to the bathroom. The door was open but I kept my eyes on the floor. I hoped all my old friends were busy working and not looking out the door.
But Peggy Sue must’ve heard my braces clicking. By the time I made it to the girls’ bathroom she was right behind me. “Hey,” she said. “Isn’t Mrs. Barkley the best teacher ever?”
“Yes,” I said. “So far, anyway.” I went into a stall and leaned my crutch against the door. I heard Peggy Sue in the stall beside me.
“Mrs. Hamrick is trying to act strict,” she complained. “Junior says she grades really hard. If what he says is true, I’m in trouble for sure.”
“Well,” I said, “if it came from Junior Bledsoe it’s probably exaggerated. He loves to tell a good story.”
“I love to listen to him,” said Peggy Sue. “Isn’t he the cutest thing?”
I just about fell in the toilet when she said that. And it wasn’t on account of having polio either—I was in shock.
“Peggy Sue!” I said. “I hope you’re not telling me you have a crush on Junior Bledsoe. If you are, I will just throw up in this commode.”