September 1944
Once I got it in my head to get that wisteria away from the garden, nothing would stop me. I got every tool I could find—Momma’s biggest butcher knife, Daddy’s handsaw, and his scythe. I marched down past the garden with them tools, dragging a shovel behind me.
I started hacking with the butcher knife. When I got to where it was rooted into Daddy’s ditch, I dug it out with the shovel. I used all of those tools to chop, cut, saw, and dig that vine out of my garden.
And I noticed something when I did. The handle on every tool was made of the same thing—hickory wood. I knew it by its straight grain. And my daddy had told me tool handles are made of hickory because it don’t break easy. Same as he told me Roosevelt was tough as hickory.
For some reason, that hickory wood give me the gumption to do that job. I told myself I was tough as President Roosevelt and a hickory nut tree put together. I didn’t care how many blisters I got or how wet with sweat my overalls was—I was fixing to lick that vine!
But I had other work to do too. The dirty clothes was piling up in the washtubs on the back porch. I would’ve put them off until the next day, but Peggy Sue’s mother was actually planning to take us to the picture show again. I knew she was still nervous about polio, but I wasn’t about to miss my chance.
After I cut the wisteria back about six feet past the ditch and had it all pulled out of the cherry tree, I put my tools away and started cranking the water bucket down into the well. I used the first bucket to pour over my head.
The water was so cold I went from sweating one minute to shivering the next. I stripped off my overalls and shirt and used a washrag to scrub myself. The muddy water sent little red rivers dripping off my elbows and running down my body.
When I was cooled off and cleaned up, I cranked up more than twenty buckets of water to put into Momma’s wringer washer and rinse tubs. About halfway through, I thought my back couldn’t take no more. It started to aching and I felt like an old woman all of a sudden. My legs ached too.
I sat down on the porch floor and drunk a big dipper of cold water and told myself to get up and be tough. Me and Momma put some of the water into big kettles to boil on the stove so the whites would come clean.
Finally we plugged up the washer and turned it on.
It took us the rest of the day to wash them clothes and run them through the wringer and the rinse tubs. Momma hung them on the wash line.
She didn’t snap the wrinkles as hard as she always done. But she hung everything up in her same old particular way. Largest to smallest with the seams turned back. Underwear on the back row where people going down the road wouldn’t see it—even though no one ever goes down our road. And every pair of socks matched up like twin sisters. She always had a pride about how she done her laundry, and I figured if any job would keep her going it was washing clothes.
When the wash was all done but the folding, we ate some potatoes and fried okra.
I was planning to read the newspaper to Momma while she folded the clothes.
But by the time I sat down to read, I felt like an old woman for sure. There was a hard hurting in my back and the tops of my legs. And my left leg felt heavy as a sledgehammer.
“I knew that wisteria was going to be the death of me,” I said. “And now I’m so stiff I can’t hardly move.”
Momma give me a worried look and put down the pair of socks she was folding in to itself. She come to where I stood and put her hand on my head. “You’re warm,” she said. I seen the worry wrinkles on her forehead.
“Oh, I’m not sick—just tired, that’s all. I’ll just read the paper and then I’ll go to bed.” I sunk down on the sofa and opened the paper. First I read a few stories on the front page about the war.
I didn’t read the latest news about the polio hospital because I never knew how Momma was going to take it. So I started turning the pages to find Hometown Girl. But it felt like every page was a whole book. My fingers couldn’t hardly do the job.
Somehow I found the page and started reading the story, but then my head started to hurt. It hurt so bad I didn’t even want to read. But I was determined because I knew I had got Momma interested.
Of course she could’ve read it for herself, but I had got so used to taking care of her, I didn’t even think about that. I just kept on reading until the words started sliding out of my sight. At first I didn’t know what was happening, but then I seen that the paper had slid right out of my hands.
I felt it slide down my leg and onto the floor, and I heard the words I was reading slip off into a whisper. My momma was overtop of me then, shaking me and fanning me with the paper. She brought a wet cloth and put it on my head and another one on my neck and chest, and it felt like the coldest thing I could think of. It felt like Bobby’s skin on the day we buried him.
I tried to push the cold cloth off, but I couldn’t lift a finger. Momma said, “Ann Fay, see if you can put your head to your chest.” I didn’t know why she was saying it, but I tried. I just couldn’t do it. I felt her tears dropping on my face, and I heard her saying, “Oh no, not you too. Not my baby girl.”
I never knew Momma thought of me as her baby until I heard her say it. But when I did, I give up trying to be tough. I didn’t worry about overalls and responsibility or hickory wood. I just laid helpless on the couch and let my momma take care of me.
She said she was going after Junior and the truck and we was going to the emergency hospital.
And then she was gone, and I was there staring at the ceiling. A fly was walking across it, and I thought how that fly might be the one that brought polio back to our house.
I prayed for my legs to move and Junior to come quick. Well, this was one time when Junior didn’t come running. Him and Bessie must’ve been visiting some neighbors. Momma told me she couldn’t find them anywhere, so she took Daddy’s truck, which was sitting in the yard. My momma can’t drive no more than I can—not as good even, because at least Daddy would let me sit on his lap and steer sometimes or help him shift the gears. But Momma never even tried to drive.
Well, like I told Junior, where there’s a will, there’s a way, and my momma had the will to take me to that hospital. She picked me up and carried me out to the truck and laid me in the front seat. “My baby girl is not riding to the hospital in a hearse,” she said.
Every move she made hurt me. But I knew she was doing her best to take care of me, so I tried not to cry out. She climbed in the truck and put my feet up on her lap and drove off.
It was a bumpy ride because she wasn’t good at shifting them gears. Every jerk felt like it was slamming my body against a rock chimney. I know I moaned and cried because I remember my momma saying, “I’m sorry, girl baby. I’m sorry. But I’m not letting you go to that hospital in a hearse. We’re almost there. It’ll only be another minute.”
It wasn’t another minute. It was maybe thirty minutes to the hospital. My momma jerked and stalled that truck and started it up again at every stop sign. The whole time, she was praying, “Oh, Lord God, dear Jesus, please don’t take my baby girl. She’s all I got now.”
I felt bad then for taking the twins away from her, so I tried to tell her they was coming home soon. I tried to tell her Daddy was coming home from the war too, but I didn’t believe it. And I couldn’t get no words out. My head felt like it was splitting wide open.
So I give up trying to talk. I just listened to her pray. “Please don’t take my baby girl. She’s just a little baby girl.”
And I reckon that’s what I was, on account of not long after I got to the hospital they put me in a diaper.