Polio Arriving

Sensitive theme: Child hunger/neglect

Polio Arriving

Pittsburgh, PA

August 1952

Children have no business changing baby’s diapers. Wait. Since children are changing other kids’ diapers, I can attack the girl.

Small hands left unwashed (I could go into it further if you want me to, but you get my meaning) doing the work her mother can’t or won’t, yeah. There’s my chance, my time, my opportunity. Polio arriving.  

Her mother won’t leave her bed, so I suppose this girl felt responsible to see after her hungry baby sister left wriggling, crying, sobbing in a drawer since there is no crib, so they put some linens down in the lowest dresser drawer and keep the baby in there.

The baby’s father? When I come into the picture, he’s on the road. Again. A truck driver. That’s how he makes the money for this small family, so he’s not here often. Well often enough. You see, one of the reasons the mother won’t leave her bed? Another baby. Yes. The drawer baby is only three months old, but mama knows all the signs. Another one. She cannot quite believe her bad luck.

She doesn’t say this to the girl. She just. Stays in bed all day. Partly because of the constant desire to vomit her insides out but also, she cannot.

She cannot face this life. So she doesn’t.

The girl, only nine, thinks last summer at grandma’s, before absent stepfathers, before sad mamas, crying babies or milkmen who come and deny them their weekly delivery which was supposed to have milk, bacon, eggs and bread in it but white man in the white uniform just says her: “No more milk until you pay your bill.” Nobody eats.

If, and if she had her potholder money, money she makes from selling the potholders she makes on her little loom out of rags, she could get on the trolley with the baby in her arms (no carriage either) and ride to grandma’s house for FOOD and help. But baby just messed on herself. So.

No phones here or there (money again) so she must walk. It’s not a close walk, but she can walk it, to get a grown up to help them since she cannot rely upon the absent man who wants her to call him “Dad” but he keeps leaving them with babies and no food.

Diaper changed, hands unwashed, the girl picks up Baby, ready to make the trip.

“I’m leaving.”

No response.

“We’ll be at grandmas, ok?”

No answer from the lump in the bed, the only bed in the apartment. The girl could cry, but she doesn’t, I’ll give her that. Nothing to do but to leave, leave this sad small apartment with her miserable mother crying about her life. Their life.

Pittsburgh is coated in bad air, sticky humid weather and horror for little Black girls who have too many chores and not enough playtime or fun. Walking back to last summer, the girl lived with her grandparents. She helped plant pole beans and tomatoes in the soil in her grandmother’s garden. She planted flowers, dreamed dreams, read books, and played Robin Hood with Evie who lived up the street from her grandparents. Holding this stupid girl baby and moving forward, ever forward she thinks of the berry pies her grandmother would make for her to eat. Oh, and the fresh cooked greens, rhubarb and corn harvested from her grandmother’s bounteaous garden. She’d have all the milk she could drink and no mean man telling her no.

She walks on. Sometimes, the baby slips down her skinny body, which is starting to sweat. Baby is not big, but she does get heavy, heavy for a skinny young girl who hasn’t had the best meals in recent months so sometimes, she stops and sits on the curb, baby on her lap, until she feels better. When she stops, she slips a thumb in her mouth, wishing it were a lollipop, but pull of the sucking still calms her to face the fact that she must hold on to this baby and get back to walking.

One of the breaks she takes is right before she must climb one of Pittsburgh’s endless hills. The hazy air presses on her lungs, the heavy baby presses on her, and this walk seems like forever. The trolley swishes past and again, she wishes she had potholder pocket money, but mama took the last to pay the milkman before she could spend it on chocolate baby candy or licorice or crow’s feet candy.

Now. The last hill. She hikes the baby up in her arms and sets one foot in front of the other, not stopping until she reaches the top.

There.

Another rest and only a short walk to Grandma’s house.  Back to last summer.   

But what’s this? A bit of luck for her. An uncle on his way home (he’s been in the club all night) and spots her, sitting on the curb, baby sister balanced on her lap, thumb in mouth, resting. He takes the baby up, not as proficiently as the girl, so Baby squawks, but takes her up, grabs the girl’s hand, and off they go.  

She stinks of baby and sweat and August because the first thing Grandma does is heat water for washing. While scrambling eggs and frying bacon rashers, Grandma calls to her teenage aunt, to stop dawdling and take the baby sister for a bath and bottle.

Free of baby stink, she tucks into her plate while her grandmother slips her an inch-high slice of homemade light bread spread thick with berry jam. It’s not pie, but the next best thing. Baby sister sucks on a bottle on her young aunt’s lap and she is glad of it.

She knows nothing of the adult squabble between her uncle, aunt and both of her grandparents but she doesn’t care because the warm, soft, salty sweetness of the good hot food slipping down, down, down inside of her and settling into her stomach, anchoring her in the kitchen chair, weighing her down at Grandma’s house where she really belongs.

Hi there? They don’t know. I’m there too, doing multiplication in her skinny body. I’m settled in her stomach, aided by the nutritious food, preparing for my attack on her thin limbs, especially in the muscles of her arms, left deficient from holding Baby Judy for so long.

Soon, she’ll complain of a headache and a fever. Fourth grade starts in a few weeks, but she will not be there because she will be in bed herself, unable able to walk or or play or hold her baby sister or even breathe well. She’ll be forced into the huge cylindrical iron lung at the Stavely Home for Crippled Children when she will have to live away from her family. But hey, they have food there.

Later she’ll learn all about Dr. Salk across the river in another part of Pittsburgh working hard on a vaccine so baby sister (and her brother) will have no encounter with me. Good for them.  

Still, when Calla does learn about him, she does not hate me. She knows our encounter made her strong and able to face life. Her sister and the brother to come? Not so much.