July–August 1944
With Momma gone to the hospital, all her jobs fell on me. I figured that included writing to Daddy about Bobby. I didn’t want him worrying about us, but I knew he would want to know something as important as Bobby having polio.
So one day I finally sat down and wrote it straight out for him to see—although I tried to put a good face on it.
Dear Daddy,
We miss you something awful. I don’t know if you heard about the polio epidemic. It got so bad they shut down a camp and turned it into an emergency hospital in Hickory.
Well, everybody says what happened next was a pure miracle. In just three days they had a regular hospital with beds and doctors and nurses. If that hospital needs anything, it just puts out a call. The donations start pouring in like water.
The bad news is, Bobby is there. He collapsed one day while we was working in the garden. He seemed fine one minute, but the next thing I knew, he couldn’t move. Momma is there with him, so me and the girls are taking care of things around the house.
But don’t worry about Bobby. They have polio doctors from all over the country working there—even a doctor from the president’s Warm Springs place. And smart people who study epidemics.
I read in the paper where Life magazine even come and took pictures of the hospital, but I don’t know when it will come out.
Junior looks in on us every day, and of course I’m being the man of the house just like you told me. You would be proud of the garden, even if it does have more weeds than you can shake a stick at.
If Bobby was here he would say, “Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the bedbugs bite.” If I could, I would send you one of his pictures, but I had to burn them and his toys because of the polio germs.
Well, I better go now. But don’t ever forget—I love you better than pinto beans and cornbread.
Your daughter,
Ann Fay
I sent that letter off with a prayer that the war would be over soon and my daddy would be home again. And Bobby and Momma too. All of us put back together.
But for now, I knew I had to make the best of it. In the evenings I read the newspaper—after I was done washing the clothes, cooking meals, and working in the garden.
I read everything in it, even the Colored News, which mostly told about their special church programs, like gospel quartets. And personal news, like who just sent their sons off to the war. It put me in mind of that colored soldier that got on the train the same time as my daddy.
Every day the paper had something on the front page about the polio hospital. One day it showed a picture of an iron lung. It looked like a big metal barrel on a stand. There was lots of buttons and meters on it and some little windows on the side—I reckon so the doctors and nurses could look in or maybe reach in and take care of the patient.
There wasn’t nobody in it, so I couldn’t really tell how my brother would look in one of them. And I for sure couldn’t figure out how it worked. But I remembered how Junior said only a person’s head would be sticking out. It made me feel all lightheaded just to think about my little brother being trapped in one of them. He should be running around in the back yard with Pete right now.
One thing I read in the paper just stuck with me. At the end of an article about that hospital it said, “The first case of polio was reported in Wilson County today. A thirteen-yearold white girl came down with the disease.”
Well, I don’t live in Wilson County, but the rest of it sounded like me. When I went to bed that night, I kept hearing that sentence in my head: A thirteen-year-old white girl came down with the disease. Those words floated in and out of my dreams and kept me half awake until I couldn’t tell what was dreaming and what was real. I spent the night wiggling everything from my toes to my nose just to prove to myself that I didn’t have polio.
When I woke up the next day I almost give up on reading that paper. But then Ida started pestering me to read it to her and Ellie. So sometimes I would tell them what it said. The good stuff, anyway.
“The polio hospital is bright and sunny,” I told them. “It says they have really good doctors. And lots of volunteers—the women from the Hickory Country Club are providing food for the people at the hospital. It says they need baby beds and electric fans, but everything else has been donated.”
“Like what?” asked Ellie.
“Like hotplates and sheets and lots of blankets for the Kenny treatments.”
“What’s the Kenny treatments?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m sure they make Bobby feel better.”
It seemed like the epidemic was just getting worse. Every day the papers told about some camp or special program that was closed because of infantile paralysis. It even said the Catawba County schools wouldn’t open on schedule. And that included Mountain View, our school.
At first the Hickory Daily Record had said the emergency hospital would be equipped for forty patients. But about three weeks later the paper said they had ninety patients. Volunteers was working around the clock, building new wards for all them people who had polio.
The polio news was always right there on the front page. And all around the polio news was articles about the war. I read the parts that wouldn’t scare my sisters. Like when the Yanks—that’s the American soldiers—took some city back from Hitler. If a soldier from Hickory got killed, I didn’t dare mention it because the girls would think Daddy was dead. And to be honest, it always give me that feeling too. I knew it could be him any day.
We kept watching the mailbox for letters from Daddy. Even the girls could tell if he sent one or not, since it come in a special brown envelope. It was called V-mail—V for Victory. It had an oval-shaped window in it for our name and address to peek through. The letter was always in Daddy’s handwriting, but it wasn’t his ink—it was just a picture of the letter he wrote.
On the radio they said V-mail saved lots of money on stamps. They said the army could take pictures of the mail and send it to the United States on a roll of film. Then they printed it out and sent it to the soldiers’ families.
Daddy wrote back fast after I told him about Bobby.
My dear little children,
I know you have a heavy load to bear right now. But you know you can do whatever you put your mind to. Ida and Ellie, I’m counting on you helping Ann Fay. Don’t make her do all the work.
Your momma is doing the right thing staying so close to Bobby, even though it’s hard for you. If you need anything, be sure to call on Junior or Bessie. They’ll do good by you.
Don’t worry about me. The good Lord is keeping me safe, and I will come back to you just as soon as we get done fighting this war.
I reread your letters every chance I get. I pray for each one of you by name and I can see your sweet faces in my mind. Don’t forget to pray for me.
Love,
Daddy
Daddy was right about Junior and Bessie Bledsoe. Junior come by every day to drop off some food Bessie had fixed or just to help me in the garden.
Sometimes the girls would help real good. But other times they come up with excuses like headaches and tummy pains. If they argued with me the least little bit, I’d back right down. I knew if I had let Bobby play when he wanted to, maybe he wouldn’t be in that hospital right now.
The first corn and tomatoes got ripe while Momma and Bobby was at the hospital. I hated that because I knew Momma had a hankering for tomato sandwiches and corn on the cob.
And speaking of tomato sandwiches—one day I broke a promise I made to Peggy Sue a long time ago. I took my little sisters for a picnic in Wisteria Mansion.
I don’t know what got into me. I guess I got to thinking, what if Bobby never got to see that place? It would be a crying shame if a body had to go through this world without a glimpse of how beautiful it can really be. Not that I expected Bobby to die or anything. But the thought would cross my mind once in a while—especially at night when the house seemed so empty and quiet, when all I could hear was the twins stirring in their bed and the clock ticking on the wall and the crickets singing outside my window. Sometimes I would go curl up on the girls’ bed just to feel them breathe.
I reckon I took the girls to the mansion on account of I was scared I might miss my chance if I didn’t do it now. And then again, maybe I was just trying to escape to a place that was free of trouble.
Anyhow, we made tomato sandwiches. I even sprinkled a tiny bit of sugar over some blackberries and we packed them up and went off for some adventure.
“Where are we going?” asked Ellie.
“Back behind them vines to a special place where bad things don’t happen.”
Well, I reckon them girls needed to see a place like that as much as I did, because the next thing I knew, I was leading them with their eyes shut through the tangle of wisteria vines.
“Now,” I said when we was inside the mansion with the thick wall of wisteria vines and the pine trees all around us. “Open your eyes.”
“Ooooh,” both girls said at the same time. From the way they stared, I could tell they never expected it to be so light and beautiful inside.
“Of course, it looks much better when the wisteria is blooming,” I told them. “There’s nothing in the world as beautiful as that. But you’ll have to wait till next spring to see it.”
The girls ran from room to room exploring all the nooks underneath the little groves of trees and pointing out the windows where there was gaps between branches.
After we ate our picnic, we crossed a log over the creek and followed a path that led to the river. By the time we got to the river they wanted worse than Christmas to get in the water. I did too, but I knew it was my responsibility to keep them out. “You heard what that doctor said on the radio. Stay out of the water, on account of most of the people who got polio was swimming or fishing before they got it.”
“Huh,” said Ida. “You just told us nothing bad ever happens in here.”
“Yeah,” said Ellie. “I’m fixing to get in the water.”
Them girls had me there for a second. But I thought real fast.
“Well, that’s true,” I said. “But this river is the dividing line. And we ain’t taking no chances. If you get close to that water I’ll beat you with a hickory stick.”
Sometimes I felt like I had turned into a mean old woman, what with my daddy going to war and my brother getting polio. Sometimes I wanted to rip them overalls right off and throw them in a fire. I didn’t think no thirteen-year-old girl should have to burn her brother’s toys and tell her sisters they couldn’t go swimming in the river.
And that night at supper I was thinking I shouldn’t be eating sweet corn and tomatoes when my momma couldn’t have any and might not even get a taste of them if she stayed at the hospital with Bobby all summer long.
But later, when I was drifting off to sleep, I remembered something I had heard on Junior’s radio about farmers donating their garden foods to the polio hospital. And right then and there I started cooking up a plan.