If the world was made of water I could’ve walked without crutches a lot sooner. Even with all the exercising Janice made me do, I couldn’t wait to go in the pool each day. Getting around in that mineral water was so easy that I was sure I could walk the second I got out.
But moving my muscles on dry land was a whole other story.
For weeks I worked with my physio. I learned to focus on each little muscle—and if some just wouldn’t do their job, I had to substitute others instead. It took a lot of concentration, and during the dry exercises I would get wet from sweating so bad.
The exercise I dreaded most was when she made me lay on my stomach with my arms stretched above my head, raising them off the table as slow and as high as I could. I maybe got as high as four inches. Eventually. But I sweated buckets to do it.
Still, I could feel my left arm getting stronger.
My legs got a workout too, of course. Especially my left one—lifting itself with that heavy brace. I begged Janice to let me get rid of it. But she insisted I needed it for support.
Eventually I got my turn on the walking court. Janice was in front and Toby, the push boy, was behind me when I first walked between the parallel bars. “Don’t worry,” said Toby. “I won’t let you fall.”
But from the way I hung on to the bars, I reckon he thought I didn’t believe him. “You don’t have to squeeze them, Ann Fay,” he said. “You’re liable to melt the paint.”
So I let up just a little.
When I took that first step, my friends were on the sidelines cheering like I’d hit a home run on the softball field back home. At Warm Springs every new movement was something to root for. We all encouraged each other to keep on trying. It was hard to stay in the dumps around that place.
After I was there about six weeks, Gavin’s parents came to visit. And wouldn’t you know? Mamaw and Papaw showed up on the very same day.
They watched us exercising on the walking court and joined in the cheering for anybody who was doing their exercises. By then I was learning to go up and down the steps with only the handrails. But just for fun, using my Canadian crutches, I showed how I could go up those stairs backwards.
Papaw was impressed. “Now if that ain’t the bee’s knees!” He slapped Gavin’s daddy on the back. “Can your boy do that?” His voice sounded extra loud.
I saw Gavin’s father pull away just the teeniest bit. “My boy had surgery on his back,” he said.
“Well, of course,” said Papaw. “Maybe next week, then.”
I rolled my eyes at Gavin to let him know how embarrassed I was. Suddenly everything about Mamaw and Papaw seemed all wrong. I noticed that Mamaw’s hat smelled like mothballs. And Papaw had a spot of ketchup on his tie. He might as well have wore overalls! Or a sign that said COUNTRY BUMPKIN.
Don’t get me wrong—I think the world of them. But when my grandparents left, I was mostly relieved. They didn’t fit in so well at Warm Springs.
Gavin’s family was a different story. Later, while we were waiting to go in the dining room, I learned that his father owned a department store. No wonder his mother wore such nice clothes! I heard her telling Mrs. Trotter that she was holding a garden club meeting at her house the next week.
“I just can’t imagine your mother picking green beans,” I said.
Gavin laughed. “Me either! She mostly grows orchids.”
“Oh.” Talk about being a country bumpkin! All of a sudden I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere. Not back home where people didn’t understand how it felt to have polio. And not in Warm Springs trying to mix with high society.
Since they came from Florida, Gavin’s parents planned to stay in a guest cottage on the grounds. After supper they played games with us in Georgia Hall. Then his mother went to the baby grand piano and played hit songs like “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” and “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree (With Anyone Else but Me).”
Someone handed out song sheets so we could sing along. Some people kept right on playing games, but you could see them nodding their heads to the music. Suzanne and I leaned on the piano and sang.
I looked around at all the smiling faces. I saw people in wheelchairs who’d been flat on their backs when I first came to Warm Springs. And others who’d graduated from wheelchairs to crutches. Just like me, they was learning to think of themselves as something besides cripples.
Roosevelt had really started something when he came to Georgia. I felt proud to be part of it. Just the thought of it made me sing louder. But then, out of nowhere, I got this feeling like I shouldn’t be enjoying myself when my family was going through Lord-knows-what back home. So right there, while I was singing “Happy Days Are Here Again,” a sadness washed over me.
I thought about the singing at the little colored church near my home, and suddenly I wanted to hear those songs. So I asked Gavin’s mother if she could play “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.”
She started right in, and I sang along. At the end she scooted over a little and patted the piano bench. “Sit here, Ann Fay,” she said. “I want to hear you sing some more.” Then she played “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen.”
Well, we hadn’t sung more than a few lines when I heard this great big voice singing behind me. But it felt like it was all around me. I tell you, it was so beautiful it put the cold chills on my arms. I just wanted to stop singing and listen. I turned and saw that it was Mr. Botts! I did stop then and just stared. But he motioned for me to keep singing. I tried to match my voice to his, but I know I sounded puny beside him.
When we got done, everyone clapped and Mr. Botts said, “Ann Fay, they like it. Sing some more.”
“Mr. Botts,” I said, “it’s you they’re clapping for. Where did you learn to sing like that?”
A sadness crossed over his face then. “Polio interrupted a lot of things,” he said. He didn’t explain any more. He just took his fancy metal wheelchair with his crutches strapped to the back and rolled out the door of Georgia Hall.
I guessed he didn’t want to talk about what polio had interrupted. But he had sure made me curious.
Sam wheeled his chair into the spot that Mr. Botts had left empty. “I guess you know,” he said, “that before he got polio, Mr. Botts was training with William Hinshaw. And Mr. Hinshaw sang for the Metropolitan Opera in New York.”
Of course, I didn’t know any of that. I’d never even heard of William Hinshaw. But I just said, “Now, ain’t that something!”
“Ain’t?” said Sam. “Ann Fay, you’ve got to start using the King’s English. Anybody who can sing the way you do shouldn’t go around talking as if you’re not educated.”
It wasn’t the first time Sam had fussed at me about the way I talked. He was right, of course! If I stopped and thought about it, I knew ain’t wasn’t a real word. And I knew when to use words like saw and seen and come and came. It was just easy to slip into talking the way people back home done—I mean, did.
But I was learning to talk more like people at Warm Springs too. For instance, nobody at Warm Springs called themselves crippled. We were polios. To hear people talk, you would think it was something to be proud of. After all, hadn’t the president of the United States been one?
Somewhere along the way I had stopped thinking of polio as a weakness and started realizing it could make me strong.
Of course, Daddy had told me that very same thing on the first day of school when I didn’t want to go. He was talking about Roosevelt. “Maybe polio made him stronger than he already was,” he said.
I knew I didn’t come from high society. And my daddy never went past ninth grade. But sometimes I thought he was the smartest man in the world.