“No, it’s my toy, it’s not to throw away,” I said. “It’s MINE! I dropped it on the floor. I wanted you to get it for me.” It was impossible for me to get out of my high-barred crib, but I thought she misunderstood and needed me to explain this to her.
The powerful authority, in her tight crisp white uniform and pointy hat, answered, “No, you can’t have it anymore. Any toys dropped on the floor are put in that bag and we give them to orphan children.” And she walked away. That was that.
I was stunned. This was an alarming disappointment, and it felt unfair. I began to cry.
This incident did teach me to never drop my playthings upon the floor, but I have to say, I cannot imagine a more pitiful group of little kids—though perhaps none of us were orphaned— than a ward full of children suffering from polio. I remember this sometimes when I see a Toys for Tots campaign and hope no mean nurses take the donated toys from some hapless kids. I wonder if unknowing kind people donated the toys we played with and sometimes let slip from our tiny fingers, to be distributed to children “less fortunate than us.”
The next time my mother visited me, I asked her who “orphan children” were and pointed out that my toy was in that bag over there and was going to be given to them. When she explained that these were children with no mommy and daddy, I saw that their situation was quite sad and felt remorse not only for my error but for begrudging them my toy. This was my first memorable ethical or moral conflict: Was I a bad child? Was I a fortunate child?
I suppose it’s possible that there was concern for germs from any toys that had fallen upon the floor, but then why display them so painfully nearby and tell us they were going to be given to more deserving children—children who would appreciate them enough to learn more control over their hands? Who evidently grew up faster than we did? I read an account of another polio girl who said that when she left the hospital in which she was rehabilitated, her toys were burned to prevent contamination. But this was my toy; I was the only one who had touched it.
Our temperatures were taken daily. I thought at one point that this might have been a method used to determine whose virus might still be active and to keep us isolated. However, since I was never moved, I assume that the other children were not moved either, except to eventually to be released, so probably the temp-taking was general monitoring. In any case, if any of us had had any type of infection, it would have been noticed immediately.
Originally, I was given an oral thermometer. I managed it as well as any well-behaved three-year-old might. The nurse would stick it in my mouth under my tongue, walk away, and come back in a few minutes to remove it, and usually I lay there until she returned—but one day I kneeled in the crib and looked out to watch the procedure as it was administered to other kids, and the thermometer dropped out of my mouth and fell to the floor. This was followed by the loud clink of the glass breaking, the fascinating splattering of the silver mercury, and a flurry of consternation as the nurse rushed back to admonish me and clean up the mess. Forever after, I got a rectal thermometer—a humiliating experience, especially in a roomful of other people, and one I’d not had since I was a baby. (This was, of course, just a short time before, but seemed long in my past, a third of my life ago.) I cried and begged not to have to endure this “baby” method, but was denied my requests for the rest of my long months of internment, verbally reminded of my transgression and why I’d lost my big-girl privilege, until I stopped asking. (My mother did provide me the dignity of oral temperature readings when I left the hospital.)
A few times a week, we children would have a short segment of fun in warm Jacuzzi baths. The littlest of us who were able to sit up were placed three at a time in long, porcelain-finished or ivory-colored baked-enamel metal bath tubs, probably six or seven feet long by two feet wide and maybe two feet deep. They were stand-alone tubs, close to floor level, with a rounded edge at the top, not the kind where you could sit on the edge easily, and of course we had to be lifted in.
We loved being together in the tubs, splashing away, and I know none of us thought of it as therapy. It was a little bit of social playtime, in contrast to our usual existence there, never touching any other kids, separated by our cribs. It was fun—an opportunity to be warm and wet and silly together. These were the too-rare good times.
Another big event, which happened once in the six months, was that we were taken down the hall in a convoy of wheel-chairs to another room. It was darkened except for one end, which was well lit; I remember the floor having big dark green and white linoleum tiles. There were lots of white and dark green balloons all over the place, on the floor and all around— perhaps they’d released them from the ceiling to create a fun atmosphere. And guess who appeared? Clarabelle the Clown, of Howdy Doody TV fame! He went around the room honking his horns on his little communication box. You may remember that Clarabelle never spoke on TV, he just honked yes or no from the box at his waist. I remember nothing else about the hospital show except the subdued excitement of Clarabelle walking by me at somewhat close range, and the many balloons. Then it was over, and we were wheeled back to our cribs.
People who visit kids in hospitals are saints. Hopefully that’s what that famous singer, Howard Keel, was up to, and not only something suggested by his publicist.
In a picture of the old Ambassador Club after it was turned into the rehab facility, I saw the spacious, high-ceilinged room with the large-checkered floor I’d remembered, though portrayed in black-and-white photography. In the photo it appeared to be an adult dining room, with tables of varying sizes laid with white tablecloths, either left as it was previously or set up newly for staff or patient meals. It was amazing to see that photo sixty years later and have my memory confirmed, adding credence to my other memories.
Me and my half-sister, LaVonne, around 1950.
4
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next steps in rehab
At some point in my hospital detention, we began physical therapy. This was Dr. Kabet’s remarkable restorative program. I don’t know if there were prerequisite signs that preceded candidacy, or if everyone got a trial crack at it. I started with a physical therapist exercising me for flexibility and strength. Without this therapy, I might have lost what limited, three-year-old strength I had. It involved my pushing my foot against an adult’s hand— powered from my newly weak knee and hip, since I’d lost all movement in my ankle—and having my limbs manipulated (for instance, having my legs moved as if I were on a bicycle).
My right leg was paralyzed below the knee (and still is), although the virus had affected me up to the musculature above my waist. My trunk on the right side is slightly smaller than the left, and I’m right-handed, so, you’d expect more muscle development on that side. I actually didn’t realize this was the case until I was somewhat mature and noticed that my right breast was a bit smaller than the left, and that the marked smallness of my right hip was somewhat reflected in that side of my back and rib cage. I don’t think anyone other than me would notice the trunk difference. The hip dissimilarity, however, is quite obvious. (As I grew, my hip and pelvis bones became elongated and deformed, in a natural attempt to compensate for the eventual two-inch length difference in my legs.)
It was believed then that any potential paralysis recovery would take place in the first year, which has since been shown to be essentially true in my case and in most others. Those who contracted polio as adults or near adults were usually able to generate more strength from their rehab, and often were eventually able to do much of what a normal person could do, with more initial strength in their mature limbs. However, they have often been the ones, later in life, who experience first and earliest what is termed post-polio effects or syndrome—a condition indicative of deterioration of motor neurons—having pushed their weakened muscles and especially motor neurons beyond what they could sustain for a lifetime. Polio survivors of the mid-1900s pushed themselves because the consequences were not known. Today, in countries where younger
people have experienced polio, doctors can advise them to manage their energy more effectively over their lifetime. Everyone’s neurons wear out eventually, to a greater or lesser degree, and for a polio patient, this often comes too soon.
Defying the odds predicted at the onset of polio, eventually someone in charge at the Santa Monica facility decided that I could attempt to walk. I was outfitted with little half-crutches called “Kenny sticks,” named after Sister Elizabeth Kenny, an Australian unaccredited nurse who devoted her life to rehabilitation of polio patients and other disabled people. (Nurses in Christian hospitals in Australia were apparently addressed as “Sister”; she was not a nun.) Easter Seals provided most of the funding and training for my therapy, which amounted in 1951 to approximately $1,000—around $9,500 in 2017 dollars. I don’t know who paid for all the polio patients’ treatment—whether it was a public program to address the epidemic, whether my parents paid to have me there, or if the foundation donated the service. Although many think the March of Dimes paid for all polio treatment, they did not; they paid primarily for the inoculation program and for some treatment. Their policy was to ask people to pay what they could afford, and to never turn away any polio patient. The Kabet-Kaiser Institute was not, as far as I have been able to verify through my research, funded by The March of Dimes, nor was my treatment.
The sticks did look like miniature crutches, with wing nuts allowing adjustment for the child’s height. They were cut off about halfway up the forearm, with a cuff made of heavy, khaki-colored cotton braid that looked like it had a former life as army cot bracing. Perhaps this was early recycling. I put my tiny hands through the cuffs to grasp the wooden handles and held on tight, having been told that the nice physical therapists were going to teach me to walk again.
In the physical therapy room, the smooth floor was laid out with painted or colored paper shoeprints, not much bigger than my own small feet, making the area look as if some invisible elf had just been through the hospital. (Today I think with gratitude of the conscientious person who cut out all my footprints.) Next to the footprints were little disks representing the place to put my Kenny stick tips. The left prints and disks were red, and the right ones, the polio side, were light powder blue. My sticks each had a grosgrain ribbon bow tied on, red for left, blue for right. I was to put forward my left foot and my right stick, cross-coordinated.
I didn’t have the concepts of left and right just yet, at three. I associated red with left and blue with right ever after, and probably because “left” meant strong to me, and was the foot I was taught to start out with consistently, I have always said “left and right” rather than “right and left,” as seems to be the norm with most people, who are of course right-handed and right-oriented, as I mostly am as well. So, red shoeprint and blue crutch disk were parallel with each other, and then, set out in exactly my own tiny gait distance, blue shoeprint and red crutch circle for the next step. My arms made up for the strength that was lacking in my right leg, and if I wanted to stand in one spot without falling over, I could spread the sticks out to the side and their rubber tips would grab the floor slightly and help me stand up.
I learned to walk in this way, one foot forward with opposite crutch, other foot with other opposite crutch, repeat, repeat, repeat, until I became a little four-legged creature who could move on her own. Freedom. I’ve always enjoyed watching dogs and cats walk, how they coordinate their four legs. I thought they walked as I did with crutches, but upon closer scrutiny, I learned that’s not true. A human using arm cuff crutches walks like no other animal. Some years ago, when one of the Star Wars movies came out, they had these monster metal robots with bendable legs in the back and straight sticks in the front, and the way they moved reminded me of how I walked with the Kenny sticks, and the way I walk now when I use my Lofstrand/Canadian arm cuff crutches.
Also essential was some bracing on my right leg, which was somewhat atrophied in comparison to my other leg. This is a state that became more pronounced throughout my growing years as the normal leg continued to reach for adulthood while the polio leg lagged behind. (By age twenty, my right leg was two inches shorter than, but also half the dimension of, my left, more normal, stronger leg.) Along with high-topped “baby” shoes to support my ankles, I wore a heavy metal brace that attached to the right shoe and had a lever on either side of the knee that pulled straight up in order for me to bend my knee whenever I wished to sit. I pinched my little fingers repeatedly in those levers, but I needed the brace in order to stand. When I walked, it was with a normal, slightly bent knee on one side and the braced leg rigid.
Under the brace, I wore a thing the doctors and rehab people called my “twister-resistor.” It was a gray cloth elasticized band about an inch and a half wide that had a thin red stripe down the middle. The band hooked onto the outside of my high-topped shoes near the toes, and crossed over to the inside of my calf and around the back of my leg to the outside of my thigh. (It may have attached to the top of the brace as well—I can’t quite remember.) This helped to keep my foot and knee oriented forward instead of tending to flop outward in a duck or “plié” position.
In 1998, after my mother had died, I found a letter that she had written to my father when I was learning to walk again. He was in northern California, looking for a home delivery milk route to buy, while I was in the hospital in Santa Monica in 1951. I believe he was doing this so we could get out of plague-ridden Los Angeles. Mother wrote to him that she’d been watching me with the therapists in my walking lessons from behind a window with one-way glass. After the lesson, she told the therapists that she thought they were not being strict enough with me.
“We find that Francine is a very sensitive child,” they told her. “She gets upset when she is reprimanded, and is discouraged by that type of instruction. However, when we encourage her, she is a model student and wants to do her best.”
My mother found that to be an odd philosophy and was very surprised that it worked, given what a strong-willed child she thought me to be.
I wish that I could have known about this anecdote throughout my childhood, in order to remind her of this insight when her own strict Swiss-German-English upbringing was repeatedly visited upon me, the resulting effect being essentially to alienate me from my mother and to confuse for many years my perception of what a mother’s love looked like. I wish I could have used the grown-up words, “Mama, that doesn’t work with me. It just makes me more upset, especially when you spank me.” Instead, all I could do was cry my heart out alone in my room and become resentful toward her.
Mama often told me that her dad would say that children should be seen and not heard, as an illustration of how much more liberal she was than her father, but also indicating that he may have been right. In the mornings, before I was school-aged, she held me on her lap, cigarette in hand, and sang to me and read me stories. She told me I’d call out in a singsong in the morning, “Maa-ma, come and wrap me up in the blue blaanket!”—an invitation to our morning cuddle. Mother loved babies on up through toddler age, but she felt older children needed to be shaped and disciplined or they’d become lawless, ill-mannered heathens. Judging from families I’ve seen in supermarkets, she may have been correct, but I’d rather have had a longer leash.
In my twenties, in the 1970s, I knew a lovely ceramicist who was a friend of a friend. I visited her shortly after my affectionate young cat, Shalimar, whom I’d saved in a rainstorm on Hallowe’en when she was only five weeks old, had died of leukemia. The next time I saw her, she gave me a stylized little porcelain figurine of Shalimar and me cuddled up together. On one of those visits, her little daughter had a tantrum about something that she was told not to do; my acquaintance was firm in her “no,” and the child ran to her room in tears. The mother looked at my girlfriend and me and quipped, “Put another quarter in the therapy jar,” and we went on with the conversation. I was impressed that she actually considered herself in any way responsible for her child’s mental heal
th or the development of her psyche. My mom made the very least transgression (like looking in her purse) seem like a major one. Her methodology did keep me in line, but the cost was our intimacy.
My mother came to the rehab facility each day to visit me for an hour or so, and sometimes she would take me out to the beach behind the old building. Once enjoyed by the Ambassador Club and Edgewater Beach Hotel patrons, it was now used by a very few members of the public who either did not know that the building was full of polio patients or were not deterred by fear of contagion as some might have been.
We would go down in the elevator and make our way around the building to the beach on the west. I would be in the Taylor Tot push cart. Mama would bend down and hand me a saltshaker, large in my tiny hands.
“Okay, when we get near a bird, shake the salt on its tail. It won’t be able to fly, and we might be able to catch one.”
Off we’d go, wheeling along the lawn or the edge of the sand where it was firm enough for the Taylor Tot, and Mama would run, pushing me from behind. We were racing!
We’d get near a bird, and it would take off.
“Oh, we missed that one. Let’s try another one!”
“Okay! Look, more birds, there, Mama! Let’s go!” I’d point with one hand and grip the saltshaker in the other.
We’d take off again and run after another bird. Of course, the birds flew away as soon as we got within six feet of them— our charging cart and the squealing little human in it were audible from yards away—but I never caught on to that and always was excited by this escape from institutional life.
I have to hand it to my mom; the bird catching game was pretty clever. Those jaunts were one of my few joys in those six months, along with the Jacuzzi baths, the one visit from Clarabelle, and the weekends spent at my parents’ apartment.
Not a Poster Child Page 3