September 1944
They got me out of the truck and put me on a cot, quick as my momma jerked to a stop. They took me into a tent with a screen door and a sign on the outside that said ADMISSION TENT.
I thought them doctors and nurses was trying their best to torture me. I squeezed Momma’s hand while the doctor stuck a needle in my back.
“Hush, honey,” I heard my momma say whenever I cried out. “It’s gonna be all right.” But I could tell from the sound of her voice that she was scared. Somehow it made me feel better, hearing her worry over me for a change.
While I laid there and suffered, it hit me that God was punishing me for working Bobby till he dropped. I was the cause of him dying. I told myself that whatever them doctors done to me wouldn’t be bad enough to pay for what I done to Bobby.
Just when I felt like I got Momma back, they took her away. I heard them telling her to go home because the health officer would be coming out to see her in the morning. I knew right then Momma was going to burn every little thing of mine just like I done with Bobby’s.
I heard Momma worrying over them putting me in an iron lung. But the doctors told her I didn’t appear to have that kind of polio. I didn’t want Momma to leave me, but I didn’t complain because I wasn’t a tiny boy like Bobby. I was the man of the house, and I had to face this like a man.
They took off all my clothes and put me in a little diaperlooking thing with strings to untie it on the sides. And they put a halter on my top. I like to died of embarrassment. Here I was with hardly a stitch on and all kinds of doctors poking me all over. But I reckoned it was part of my punishment, so I didn’t argue. I closed my eyes and tried to keep the tears from leaking out the edges.
They finally give me a gown and put me to bed in another place, but I was so sad and tired and my legs hurt so bad I didn’t pay no attention to where I was. A nurse with a white mask was rubbing my legs real gentle, but even that hurt me so bad it took my breath away. So she just held my hand and sung “When the Lights Go On Again.” It was comforting to hear her singing about the end of the war, even if it did sound a little strange through that mask.
When she started in singing, her song was all mixed up with a noise like something crawling on the outside of a tent I was in. Then I heard where the tent started to rip and a wisteria vine poked itself through the hole and curled itself around the poles that held up the tent. It climbed down those poles and started coming right toward me.
I knew all I had to do was get in my daddy’s truck and leave so it wouldn’t grow itself around me. But my legs wouldn’t move. “Daddy!” I screamed. “It’s fixing to choke the life out of me. Help!”
I seen my daddy then, but there was an ocean between us. He started toward me, walking on water. But the wisteria sucked up all the water and wrapped itself around my daddy. Then it wrapped itself all around me too. We was wrapped up like two caterpillars in the same sweet-smelling cocoon. And my daddy kept saying, “Don’t worry, Ann Fay. When we get outta this dark place, we’re gonna fly.”
I tried to kick my way out, but my legs wouldn’t move. It seemed like I struggled for days to get free of it.
Then all of a sudden I seen a bright light off in the distance. I reached out for it. I pushed my heavy eyelids open and it was broad daylight. I was staring at the ceiling and it was a tent for sure, but it didn’t have no holes in it and there wasn’t no wisteria in sight. I knew then it was a nightmare I had.
I started looking around and seen that the tent was mostly just the roof of that place I was in. There was a wood floor and wood going about four feet up the walls. On top of that was a window screen that went up to the tent ceiling. And there was flaps rolled up that could be let down in case of rain. I seen there was about twenty beds in that one tent room. I turned my head to the right and was never so shocked in all my born days.
Right there in the bed beside me—not three feet away—was a colored girl. And her big eyes was staring right at me.
I jerked my head away real fast, and when I did, I heard her snicker. I reckon she got some pleasure out of surprising me like that.
I knew from the newspapers that the polio hospital took coloreds, but it never crossed my mind that they would put them side by side with white people.
Then the colored girl started talking. “You were sure enough out of your head when they brung you in,” she said. “I thought they had gave me a crazy white girl for a neighbor.”
I didn’t like her calling me crazy. So I didn’t give her the satisfaction of an answer.
After she seen I wasn’t going to say nothing, she spoke up again. “Then I got to figuring it was just the fever making you holler out like that,” she said. “I had it real bad too, at first. I was burning up so bad I was calling for the fire department.”
I waited a spell and then I snuck a peek at the colored girl. When I did, she was still staring. So I stared back at her. But she kept her eyes right on me.
“Hey,” she said. “My name is Imogene Wilfong. What’s yourn?”
I reckon she thought we was going to be friends. But I hadn’t ever been that close to a colored before. I sure hadn’t thought about making friends with one. Instead of telling her my name, I looked away.
Next thing I knew, a nurse come to my bed with pieces of dark wool cloth. She wrapped it around my legs like she was measuring them with it. Then she started cutting it.
“I’m getting your Kenny pack ready,” she said.
I remembered reading about Kenny packs in the papers. I knew they was made of army blankets, but I didn’t have no idea who Kenny was or how an army blanket could help polio.
“Who’s Kenny?” I asked. “And how does his packs make you feel better?”
Imogene snickered. “Miss Emma, tell her who Kenny is.”
The nurse said, “Sister Elizabeth Kenny. She was an army nurse in Australia who found a better way to treat polio. If it weren’t for her, the doctors would be putting your legs in splints. Or your whole body in a cast. But the children they did that to—well, they just froze up that way and never got better. Thanks to Sister Kenny, you’ll probably learn to walk again.”
Miss Emma slipped a piece of that wool under my backside, wrapped it around the front of me, and pulled it tight before she cut it to size.
“That stuff itches,” I said.
But Miss Emma didn’t pay me no mind. She just kept right on explaining. “Sister Kenny is in the United States now, teaching her methods to polio specialists. She says muscles need to be limber. So we heat the wool and wrap it around the parts of you that polio has affected. The heat relaxes your muscles and gets them ready for therapy.”
Imogene snickered again, and I didn’t think it was because the nurse’s voice sounded funny behind her mask. It was more like she knew some secret the nurse had forgot to tell me. Seemed like that girl had plenty to snicker about.
It wasn’t long till the nurses got real busy with Kenny packs. They rolled in big silver pots on stands with wheels. You should’ve seen the steam coming out of them pots. The nurse pulled a piece of wet cloth out of the pot and it was steaming too. She waved it in the air a little and said, “Now just relax and let the heat do its work.”
Then she started wrapping the hot cloth around my leg. I was so shocked I screamed right out. “Stop!” I hollered. “You’re scalding me!”
“I’m sorry, honey,” she said. “I have to do this. We put them through a wringer to get the extra water out. So it’s not going to burn you. But I have to do this. It’ll make you feel better.”
She put them on both my legs. And on my left arm and my hips and belly too. I tried to kick them off, but my legs wouldn’t kick. I shrunk away as best I could, and moaned.
Then somehow, through all my moaning, I heard a voice beside me.
“It mostly hurts at first,” the voice said. “After a while it starts to feel better.” And then I heard it again. “It mostly hurts at first. After a while it starts to feel better.”
Over and over like a momma’s bedtime song, the voice said it. And somehow it helped me. I laid real still and listened, and I could feel the tears oozing out of the corners of my eyes.
I opened my eyes and stared into Imogene’s. They was brownish green and gentle and loving—like a momma’s eyes. Her voice was soft and sweet—like a momma’s voice. “It mostly hurts at first,” she whispered. “After a while it starts to feel better.”
I didn’t say nothing. I just stared into her eyes to get me some comfort. I pulled up the corner of my sheet and bit it as hard as I could.
The nurse wrapped a layer of rubber and then dry cloth on top of the hot wool and pinned everything in place. Imogene explained. “The rubber keeps the bed from getting wet,” she said. “And the cloth holds the heat in.”
I laid there and listened and tried not to cry, and then I heard the nurse say, “You’re all done for now.”
“Oh, boy,” said Imogene. “I reckons it’s my turn.” All of a sudden she was hanging on to her sheet too.
Miss Emma was fixing to put a Kenny pack on her. She waved the wool in the air a little, and I could see the steam leaving it. Then she took the hot wool and started wrapping it around Imogene’s chest. I heard Imogene suck in her breath real hard.
“You’s killing me, Miss Emma,” she said.
Miss Emma just kept on working and Imogene moaned.
I could see that hot wool bothered her every bit as much as it did me. I wanted to say something to make her feel better, but I didn’t know what to say—except what she said to me. So I said it.
“It mostly hurts at first,” I whispered. “After a while it starts to feel better.”
Imogene looked at me all surprised-like. “Is you telling me you believed that pack o’ lies?” she asked. Then she started to laugh.
I laughed too. I laughed because I knew that it wasn’t no lie. I really did feel better. Those wool packs was starting to cool off a little. And not only that, it seemed like the hard pain in my legs and backside was starting to let up.
There was another reason I laughed. I laughed because I had a new friend.
I had got to be friends with a colored girl.