Blue (9 page)

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.

September 1944

I found out real quick that polio picked on whoever it took a notion to hit. Some of us was white, and others was colored. Some was rich, but lots of us didn't have a dime to spare.

Now we was all in the same predicament—stuck in a row of hospital beds with no way to get out unless we fell out. Whenever I looked around, I seen girls who was as bad off as I was, or worse. Just like me, they couldn't even walk to the bathroom when they needed to.

And when we used the bedpan, we didn't have no privacy because we was all in one big open ward. But at least all us girls was shamed together. I reckon that's why we become such good friends.

When the Kenny packs got cold, the wool itched worse than a rash of poison ivy. And we couldn't do a thing but lay there and suffer. I laid there in that strong-smelling wet wool every day except Sunday.

After they took the packs off, the physios—that's the physiotherapists—would massage our muscles to limber them up. My physio was Miss Ruth.

She had short brown hair and big brown eyes that was always twinkling. And she wanted me to get well almost as much as I did. I reckon that's why she worked me and my muscles so hard.

And another thing—I had to lay with my feet pressed flat against a board at the foot of the bed. It wasn't one bit comfortable.

“That so you don't get drop foot,” Imogene said. “Some folks gets it and they feet goes to pointing down and won't never come back right again.”

Imogene told me who all the nurses was and where they was from. Seemed like just about every one of them come from someplace else. One even come from California.

Imogene pointed out the convicts to me too. “They was so desperate for help they brung prisoners in here to work,” she said. “But don't you worry over it. They just as good as the next person. And some of them is better, for true.”

Imogene told me she was from Greensboro. She said she had six brothers and sisters. And her daddy was in the army.

Naturally, I thought back to that day at the train station when I watched my daddy and a colored soldier going off to war at the same time. And all of a sudden I understood something. I understood why I felt like
I
was the one starting out on a journey.

Meeting Imogene was part of that journey.

“I reckon just about everyone's daddy is in the war nowadays,” I said.

She said her daddy was at an army camp for coloreds, waiting to be shipped out. “I heard tell of some colored soldiers going overseas,” she said. “But my daddy been in the army for more than a year and he ain't been sent out yet.”

“Well, then I reckon you know he won't be killed,” I said. I told her I would give anything to know my daddy would come home from the war. I told her about the overalls he give me and how he taught me to climb trees and do fractions.
How to pray and not give up when things get tough. I told her my daddy always said,
That's my opinion and it's worth two cents.
“But if you ask me,” I said, “every word that comes out of my daddy's mouth is pure gold.”

I told her about my momma and my twin sisters, but I didn't tell her about Bobby.

I asked a nurse named Hazel when my momma could come see me.

“The doctors sent her home to get some rest,” said Nurse Hazel. “She can't see you anyway, as long as you're in the contagious ward. So she might as well take care of the home place.”

“I don't think my momma can take care of herself right now,” I said. “Much less the home place.”

I give Peggy Sue's telephone number to the nurse and asked her would she send a message to Junior to look out for my momma.

The next day Junior called back and told Nurse Hazel that Momma was in good hands.

I said, “Well, I knew I could count on Junior and Bessie.”

“That young man said your momma snapped out of her bad spell when she brought you to the hospital,” said Nurse Hazel.

Two days later I got a letter from my momma, and sure enough, she sounded like her old self.

Well, that scared me—her saying she didn't know what she would do without me. Did Momma think I might die?

I closed my eyes and thought about Bobby. I thought how he was in here for more than a month before he died. If he could last that long and still die, maybe I could too. I hadn't been there even a whole week yet.

I wondered what dying felt like. Did it feel like the sharp pain in my muscles? Or more like drifting off to sleep? That night I tried my best to stay awake because I thought maybe I wouldn't wake up.

Nurse Hazel come around to check on us and seen that I had my eyes open. “Hey,” she said. “Aren't you sleepy tonight?” She pulled a stool up by my bed and started singing,
“Now I lay me down to sleep, angels watching over me, my Lord …”

I laid there and listened to the whole song. It reminded me of the bedtime prayer my daddy used to say with me. It even had that part in there—
“If I die before I wake, angels watching over me, my Lord. Pray the Lord my soul to take …”

That done it. I couldn't hold it back no longer. “Am I gonna die?” I asked.

“Oh,” she said. “Is that what's keeping you up?” She pulled my sheet up around my shoulders and tucked me in just like my momma used to do. “Honey,” she said, “most polio patients don't die. And this hospital hasn't lost many patients at all.”

“My brother died,” I said. “He was here for over a month before he died.”

“I know,” she said. “I remember Bobby. But he had two kinds of polio—your kind and the kind that affects the lungs.”

All of a sudden I started to cry.

She gripped my arm. “I'm sorry about your brother. I bet you were the best big sister in the world.”

“No,” I moaned. “I killed him.”

“Oh, no, honey. You didn't kill him. He had a bad case of polio.”

“But he told me he was sick and I didn't believe him. I made him work in the garden. Then all of a sudden he couldn't move a bit.”

“So that's why you think it's your fault,” said Nurse Hazel.

“And that ain't all,” I said. “On top of all that, I had to burn every last one of his toys and even his picture drawings so the twins wouldn't get polio too. We don't have one single thing to remember him by. Even our dog, Pete, followed him to the hospital and never come back.”

“Pete?” asked Nurse Hazel. “Polio Pete was your dog? Oh, my Lord, honey. Of course he couldn't come back. I mean—” She clapped her hand over her mouth like she was keeping something awful from coming out of it.

“What?” I asked. “Do you know where Pete is?”

Nurse Hazel pulled the sheet up around my shoulders and run her hand along my arm. “I'm sorry about your dog,” she said.

“Where is he?” I asked. “Tell me! I need to know why Pete never made it home. We was counting on him to come back.”

“Oh, honey,” said Nurse Hazel. “I don't want to say it.” She smoothed the hair away from my forehead and tucked it behind my ears. “Pete disappeared from the hospital a few weeks ago. At first we thought someone stole him. But then one day we found him. He had crawled way back under the hospital.”

Nurse Hazel's voice got real slow and whispery then—like a mystery was showing itself to her. “Somehow Pete must have known about Bobby,” she said. “I guess your Pete died of a broken heart.”

Then she put her head down on my arm. I think she was crying, only she didn't want me to see it. But it was a comfort to me just knowing Nurse Hazel loved my brother and his dog. I reckon I fell asleep with her patting my arm. At least I don't remember her getting up and leaving.