Comfort

by Joyce Moyer Hostetter

  There was lots of kneeling and reading prayers and things we never done at my little church in North Carolina. But I told myself it was the same God who my family was worshipping right that very minute in our little country church.

  I liked knowing what my family was doing back home each day. Church on Sunday and maybe visiting with the neighbors in the evening. Then on Monday it would be the regular routine—breakfast, Daddy’s job, and school for the girls. And Momma at home scrubbing the house or doing laundry.

  I got into a routine of my own at Warm Springs. Breakfast. Water therapy. Dry therapy. “Rest! Rest! And more rest!” And of course meals in the dining room and games in Georgia Hall.

  And school even, right there on the campus. Some teachers went into the medical building, to the patients’ beds, to work with them. But I had to go to class. With Olivia and Gavin and all the others who were ambulatory. Because of our handicaps we were closer than my class back home was. Except for Mrs. Barkley and Peggy Sue not being there, I liked this school a lot better.

  When I wasn’t in school or therapy, I was usually with Suzanne. We worked on her scrapbook. And we joked about how we’d have to divide it between us when it was time for me to leave. One day Suzanne brought a camera and Ma Harding took pictures of us together. When she got them developed we put one in the scrapbook. And I sent one to my family.

  Dear Momma, Daddy, Ida, and Ellie,

  I am having a good time in Warm Springs. What about you? Is everything fine at home? Please tell me what’s going on up there. Ida and Ellie, after all the times I helped you study your spelling words, the least you can do is write me a letter!

  Daddy and Momma, remember Mr. Botts? He said to give you his regards.

  I have lots of friends here and all the staff is so good to me. I’m sending you a picture of me with Suzanne in front of the practice stairs. Just think! Pretty soon I will be walking up and down those steps.

  I love the pool the best. It’s hard to explain how the water feels. But it’s so easy to move around in. It makes you believe you can overcome anything. Just watch and see if I don’t come home in no time at all!

  Love from your daughter,

  Ann Fay

  As busy as Momma was, she found time to write to me.

  Dear Ann Fay,

  I sure do miss you around here. But we are fine and the twins are learning to help out.

  It seems like the minute you left they gave up playing with paper dolls and dollhouse toys. Now they are putting on plays with the front porch as their stage. For some reason every story they make up includes Junior and his car.

  Virginia Setzer gave birth to her new baby the day after you left. She had a girl. Donna Benfield’s baby is two weeks overdue already.

  I hope you are doing well and aren’t feeling homesick. Are you working on your therapy? I can’t wait to see how you improve. We pray for you every night at the supper table.

  Love,

  Momma, Daddy, Ida, and Ellie

  I folded Momma’s letter and thought about what she said and what she didn’t say. She didn’t come out and say that the twins was growing up without me there to take care of them. But it almost sounded that way.

  She didn’t say a word about Daddy. That could mean just about anything. Was he doing so good that she didn’t have to mention it? Or so bad that she couldn’t bring it up?

  And what she said about those new babies—well, it just wouldn’t let go of me. Both their daddies had served in the war. They both came home early on account of injuries. The Benfield man had even lost a leg.

  I couldn’t help but wonder what else those soldiers had lost. Did they forget how they were before the war? Could they hold down a job? Or take care of their families?

  I figured in some ways those new babies were lucky. Even if the war did ruin their daddies, they would never know the difference. It wasn’t like they ever knew them any other way.

  I was pretty sure that having a treasure and losing it is much harder than never knowing what you missed.

  I missed the way my daddy used to love the sound of his young’uns playing. Now it seemed like he hated noise of any kind. I missed the way he used to play with us. Now he didn’t do much of anything except smoke cigarettes and whittle. I missed Daddy being the man of the house, and loving my momma, and taking care of all of us like we was his most prized possessions.

  Now I wasn’t sure if he prized any of us anymore.

  But then I thought about him working for Mr. Rhinehart every day. And how he was doing it so I could be at Warm Springs. I took Daddy’s shoestring from around my neck and kissed my little wooden Comfort.

  And I knew that Daddy had never really stopped loving any one of us. He was just having a hard time showing us what was inside of him.

  20

  Valentines

  February 1946

  There was a commissary at Warm Springs where you could buy drinks and candy and other snacks. It seemed like Olivia and Gavin and Suzanne were buying treats about every other day.

  But not me. When I left home the Hinkle sisters had give me spending money. But as much as I loved Cracker Jacks or Coca-Cola with peanuts in it, I tried to stay away from the commissary. I wanted to save my money for souvenirs to take home to my family.

  Then, not long after I got to Georgia, the U.S. Mint come out with brand-new dimes with FDR’s face. It seemed like everybody was making sure they had some.

  So I got in line for dimes too. I sent one to each of the girls and to Momma and Daddy for Valentine’s Day. Of course my family could get their own new dimes in Hickory, North Carolina, but just the fact of these coming from Warm Springs made them seem more valuable.

  Ida and Ellie both sent me valentines made with red paper and ribbons and lace and even buttons. I could see Momma had let them dig into her sewing things! Momma and Peggy Sue made me cards too. And Peggy Sue filled me in on things at school.

  Dear Ann Fay,

  How is life in Georgia? Are there any swell guys down there? As for me, I have given up on Junior Bledsoe. He doesn’t even know I exist. Good grief! How could he not know? I’ve been around for his whole entire life (almost).

  Anyway, remember Hudson Whisnant? He wants me to be his girl. So I am. Of course, my parents will not let me go anywhere with him until I’m sixteen, but at least I see him at school every day. Whatever will I do when school is out for the summer?

  Melinda likes Barry Lail. Personally, I don’t know what she sees in him. He thinks he’s the cat’s meow and all the girls do too. You know he has a new girl practically every week.

  As you can see, you are missing out on lots of excitement. Hurry on back!

  Your friend,

  Peggy Sue

  I had wrote to Peggy Sue telling her about Warm Springs, but I guess it hadn’t sounded too exciting to her. I wasn’t surprised she gave up on Junior, since I never did understand what she liked about him in the first place. Like she said, we had known him for as long as we could remember. As far as I was concerned, he was more like a brother to both of us.

  He did send me a valentine, though. That really shocked me on account of how he said he wasn’t going to write. And he didn’t, actually. He just sent a store-bought card with his name signed to it.

  The card said, So I’m a lemon. How about a little squeeze?

  When I showed it to Olivia she said, “Don’t let Gavin see that. He’ll be jealous.”

  “Junior Bledsoe ain’t nobody to be jealous over,” I said. “And Gavin wouldn’t care a hoot in the first place.”

  “I’m telling you, he’s all swoony over you, Ann Fay,” said Olivia.

  Well, I didn’t believe it. Gavin was nice to me, but he was nice to everybody. And he was very popular with everyone. “Did he tell you he likes me?”

  “Not in so many words,” said Olivia. “Gavin is a very private person.”

  Well, good, I thought. I’m a private person too. I liked Olivia, but if I was sweet on a boy I wouldn�
��t tell her. She would probably split wide open if she was expected to keep a secret. I had started hiding my diary under my mattress in case she got to feeling nosy.

  But all that talk of Olivia’s made me start watching him when I thought he wasn’t looking. In the dining room he sat about two tables away from me and almost straight behind Sam. I could listen to Sam and still keep my eye on Gavin.

  Just like Sam, Gavin was usually talking. But the difference was, the people at his table would be laughing and hanging on to every word. He could tell a story so good that even Olivia would stop talking. If I got too bored with Sam I would imagine I was sitting at their table.

  Every so often Gavin would glance my way and catch me watching him. Of course I’d always look away. But for a second there, just before I did, it was almost like our eyes would have a quiet conversation. It made me wonder just the least little bit if Olivia was right. And if Gavin did like me special—how would I feel about that?

  Like Olivia said, romance was in the air at Warm Springs. For the first time in my life I started thinking about it for myself.

  21

  Magic Hill

  March 1946

  One evening in March, when the weather was turning warmer, Suzanne decided to have a party at her house. A bunch of us from Warm Springs piled into a couple of cars.

  A few able-bodied men loaded wheelchairs and crutches into the back of a truck and off we went. Even Ed Frogge went along!

  As much as I loved being at the foundation, it felt great to go someplace else. Of course Sam started in on a history lesson as soon as we were off the grounds. “This town didn’t used to be called Warm Springs,” he said. “It was Bullochville before Roosevelt came here.”

  While Sam went on about the improvements FDR brought to Georgia, I thought how amazing it was that a place so tiny could become so famous and so important. All because of one man. And polio. And healing water bubbling up out of the ground.

  Suzanne lived in a white house with a big yard full of trees. She took me to her room. I just couldn’t get over it. For one thing, it was painted strawberry red. And for another, she had a shiny wood bed with pineapples carved into the four posts. And lots of scrapbooks in the room. “See,” she said, “I’m a scrapbook fiend.”

  She showed me the Life magazine with her picture in it. Sam was right—she was mostly behind a big white column, but it showed just enough of her face that you could tell who it was. Out in front of her was the colored man playing the accordion for Franklin Roosevelt with tears running down his cheeks.

  “It was a day you could never forget,” said Suzanne. And just looking at that picture I could feel the sadness of that day all over again.

  Soon we went out to the screened-in porch with everyone else and drank lemonade and ate cookies made by Suzanne’s mother. We sat in a circle and played games and told stories about people getting into mischief at Warm Springs—about people shooting peas into the light fixtures with their forks. And having wheelchair races.

  Suzanne asked her mother to bring sugar for Ed Frogge because he likes his lemonade extra sweet. But secretly she told her momma to put salt in the sugar bowl. So when Ed took a big swallow, you should’ve heard him growl. Then he started wheezing and coughing, and I thought for a second he was going to choke to death. But that was just Ed’s way of getting Suzanne back. He was fine, really. Every last one of us laughed till the tears was running out of our eyes.

  When we finally settled down, someone told a ghost story, and that was the beginning of a whole bunch of spooky tales. It was fun scaring ourselves.

  Gavin said there is a place in Florida called Spook Hill where cars actually roll uphill. He told an Indian legend about some chief killing an alligator that was raiding his village. “So now,” said Gavin, “the ghost of the alligator haunts the place. Trust me, it’s real spooky sitting in a car that rolls uphill.”

  “Maybe you don’t know this,” said Sam, “but Georgia has Magic Hill, right over in Manchester. Of course it’s not real.”

  “It’s real all right!” said Olivia. “One of the attendants told me about that place. Betty said she was at Magic Hill one night with her soldier boyfriend and they parked for a while. When they were ready to leave, their car wouldn’t start.”

  Sam rolled his eyes and took over the story. “So they went to find help. And when they got back, their car was sitting about a hundred yards uphill! But it didn’t happen to Betty,” he said. “I read it in the newspaper. A local woman claimed it happened to her.”

  Well, you should’ve heard the racket on Suzanne’s porch then. There was a big discussion about all the different people who claimed this strange thing had happened to them.

  Someone said Magic Hill was just a legend.

  “Actually,” said Sam, “it’s an optical illusion. I’ve read about those things. There’s more of them in other places around the world.”

  Olivia said, “Why don’t we just get in the car and go to Magic Hill?”

  Well, we all loved that idea. So we said our goodbyes and thank-yous to Suzanne’s family. Her mother said Suzanne could ride along for the fun. The drivers helped us into our cars, and off we went.

  Somehow I ended up sitting beside Gavin. It’s hard to say if my goose bumps came from going to Magic Hill or from the company I was keeping.

  Manchester was just a hop and a skip from Warm Springs. Soon we saw a sign ahead:

  SWITCH OFF MOTOR

  RELEASE BRAKES

  So the fellow who was driving said, “Here goes. Are you ready?”

  He turned off the engine. And it got real quiet then, as if every single one of us had quit breathing. Except Ed Frogge in the front seat. You could hear him wheezing, of course. And that just added to the spookiness. Everyone in the back seat grabbed each other’s hands and waited.

  Maybe that car did roll uphill. Maybe not. It was hard for me to know what was real and what wasn’t. My mind was on Gavin holding my hand. And thinking he had give it a little squeeze.

  But then again, maybe not.

  I’m pretty sure the car didn’t move an inch. But Ed and Olivia both declared it rolled a good ten feet. And the polios in the other car started hooting and hollering so loud I figured maybe they did get a spooky ride.

  When it was all said and done, it didn’t matter one way or the other what happened. People believed what they wanted to about ghosts and Magic Hill. I decided I didn’t trust any of it.

  Except the part about having a good time in a car with my friends and one of them being a boy. Who just happened to be holding my hand.

  That was magic enough for me.

  22

  Singing

  March 1946

  If the world was made of water I could’ve walked without crutches a lot sooner. Even with all the exercising Janice made me do, I couldn’t wait to go in the pool each day. Getting around in that mineral water was so easy that I was sure I could walk the second I got out.

  But moving my muscles on dry land was a whole other story.

  For weeks I worked with my physio. I learned to focus on each little muscle—and if some just wouldn’t do their job, I had to substitute others instead. It took a lot of concentration, and during the dry exercises I would get wet from sweating so bad.

  The exercise I dreaded most was when she made me lay on my stomach with my arms stretched above my head, raising them off the table as slow and as high as I could. I maybe got as high as four inches. Eventually. But I sweated buckets to do it.

  Still, I could feel my left arm getting stronger.

  My legs got a workout too, of course. Especially my left one—lifting itself with that heavy brace. I begged Janice to let me get rid of it. But she insisted I needed it for support.

  Eventually I got my turn on the walking court. Janice was in front and Toby, the push boy, was behind me when I first walked between the parallel bars. “Don’t worry,” said Toby. “I won’t let you fall.”

  But from the way I hu
ng on to the bars, I reckon he thought I didn’t believe him. “You don’t have to squeeze them, Ann Fay,” he said. “You’re liable to melt the paint.”

  So I let up just a little.

  When I took that first step, my friends were on the sidelines cheering like I’d hit a home run on the softball field back home. At Warm Springs every new movement was something to root for. We all encouraged each other to keep on trying. It was hard to stay in the dumps around that place.

  After I was there about six weeks, Gavin’s parents came to visit. And wouldn’t you know? Mamaw and Papaw showed up on the very same day.

  They watched us exercising on the walking court and joined in the cheering for anybody who was doing their exercises. By then I was learning to go up and down the steps with only the handrails. But just for fun, using my Canadian crutches, I showed how I could go up those stairs backwards.

  Papaw was impressed. “Now if that ain’t the bee’s knees!” He slapped Gavin’s daddy on the back. “Can your boy do that?” His voice sounded extra loud.

  I saw Gavin’s father pull away just the teeniest bit. “My boy had surgery on his back,” he said.

  “Well, of course,” said Papaw. “Maybe next week, then.”

  I rolled my eyes at Gavin to let him know how embarrassed I was. Suddenly everything about Mamaw and Papaw seemed all wrong. I noticed that Mamaw’s hat smelled like mothballs. And Papaw had a spot of ketchup on his tie. He might as well have wore overalls! Or a sign that said COUNTRY BUMPKIN.

  Don’t get me wrong—I think the world of them. But when my grandparents left, I was mostly relieved. They didn’t fit in so well at Warm Springs.

  Gavin’s family was a different story. Later, while we were waiting to go in the dining room, I learned that his father owned a department store. No wonder his mother wore such nice clothes! I heard her telling Mrs. Trotter that she was holding a garden club meeting at her house the next week.