In kindergarten, I was attracted to a handsome kid named Darrel who had a slightly pompadour haircut and what we’d now call a James Dean aura. He moved away from our school district the next year. Despite this, and despite the fact that he wasn’t showing much interest in any case, I thought about Darrel a lot. Really, do five-year-olds usually think about boys that much? I have no idea, but my recollection is that most of my friends were more interested simply in playing with children in general without getting in trouble. Girls mostly wanted to play with dolls and run, only one of which I could do, and boys were generally a bit of a pain in the butt—they were too rough and too goofy—but in my home, males were more important than females.
Occasionally, we’d go over to Vallejo, not far from San Francisco. This was a big trip for us, a drive of two hours or more on the two-lane valley highway of the early 1950s. We’d see a polio doctor there at Kaiser Foundation Rehabilitation Center. The doctors in that big medical facility were the ones prescribing the changes for me in using or not using a brace, Kenny sticks, shoes, and other equipment, and monitoring my progress or stability. Driving those two hours was our only option: there was no doctor in Yuba City who was familiar with polio.
When I was six, Yuba City was one of many small towns participating in the spring 1954 polio vaccination trials. I was lined up in the dark hallway of the old brick school with maybe fifty other kids. No one had told us why we were standing there, so I asked my beloved kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Overstreet, thinking the wait must be for something fun.
“You are all going to the nurse’s office to have a polio shot,” she answered calmly.
“No!” I screamed. “I’m not going to have one! No!” I began sobbing, tears streaming down my cheeks, and started to flee back into the kindergarten room.
Mrs. Overstreet, stunned and unaware that I had the worst needle phobia possible, took me by the arm and said, “Francine, all the children in the school have to have one. It’s just a shot; it won’t be that bad.”
I kept pulling away from her and screaming, now in a full meltdown frenzy and scared beyond measure. All the other children were now terrified as well, of course, thinking I knew something really monstrous about polio shots, since I was the only one who’d had polio.
Another teacher came to see what the problem was, and she and Mrs. Overstreet carried me kicking and screaming to the nurse’s office down the hall and around the corner. I had the shot; it hurt, but no more than the shots I’d had daily in the hospital.
My parents were asked to get my future shots elsewhere.
The next time I was due for a polio vaccination, I was tricked into the expedition.
“Let’s go,” Daddy said. “I’m taking you someplace in the car.”
“Where are we going, Daddy?” I asked.
“It’s a surprise!”
I was now excited to go on this unusual outing alone with my dad, in the daytime. Every time I went someplace in the car with him, such as the Foster’s Freeze, my mother was always with us. We drove about four miles in the DeSoto, over the Feather River bridge and into Marysville, and pulled up in front of an ivory-painted building that didn’t really look like a place where fun could be had.
It was a doctor’s office, of course, and I got my second shot that day. This time I did not have a fit, but I felt cheated about the “surprise.” My dad, however, was good at minimizing this sort of thing.
“We couldn’t tell you because you’d get upset, but see? It wasn’t so bad!”
Apparently my mother had anticipated my potential tantrum and had insisted, “You have to take her. I’m not going to do it.”
There were different strains of polio, so the vaccination process then required multiple injections at intervals of a few weeks or months. Even though I’d had the disease, there was no assurance at that time that I would not get a different strain.
I was subdued as we walked to the car from the clinic. Daddy opened the door on the passenger side, and I climbed in, holding on to the doorframe in order to steady myself—and WHAM! He slammed the DeSoto door on my tiny fingers. I’m guessing he was a little nervous too, over tricking his little girl and also getting a potentially upsetting event over with.
I cried out in pain and fear, “Open the door, Daddy!!!”
The look on his face was one of horror. Eyebrows up in the middle, just like that day in the hospital years before, and jaw dropped open, aghast. It took only a second for him to realize what had happened and swing the door open, whereupon I removed my hand from the frame and inspected it in awe.
Daddy took my little hand in his. “Does it hurt?”
It did, but not that bad, considering. The round padding all around the door and the slight gap in the doorframe had left almost enough room for little bitty fingers. He tested my fingers and saw that they were not broken. We were both relieved, and it certainly was a far more frightening, dramatic, and memorable incident than the measly shot.
My mother’s first and my third vaccination was a droplet on a sugar cube, much later, in 1961. Much easier going down, although this was Dr. Albert Sabin’s formula (who had been competing to get his vaccine out before Dr. Salk), and was live virus. Although very few people have gotten polio from this type of live vaccine, it has happened, and it is currently being discontinued worldwide, despite its ease of use.
6
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not a poster child
The March of Dimes was a campaign initiated to pay for polio vaccinations and patient care. Most victims of polio were small children, who were the most prone to severe aspects of the disease. Little children with smiling faces, braces, and Kenny sticks were portrayed on coin collection placards with a hundred slots for dimes, or on posters with a jar for money attached. These organizational promos implored donors to send in “even a dime”—the equivalent of ninety cents or so these days.
I saw these promos in stores, churches, gas stations, anywhere that people might be spending or receiving change. This is how the term “poster child” was born, though it has come to mean “a perfect example.”
Once an older child at church stopped me in the hallway and said, “I saw your picture on the March of Dimes poster!”
I was so surprised. “I don’t think so . . .” “Yes, it was you!” she insisted. “She had brown hair just like yours!”
Then it happened again. Not long after, a kid at school said the same thing. And then a lady in a grocery store kindly bent down and said, “I saw your picture on the March of Dimes poster, dear.”
At that point, no longer a skeptic, I thought that my picture was actually being used for the March of Dimes poster child, and I was a little excited to learn this. I looked forward to seeing myself the next time I saw a placard around town. There I’d be, Francine Allen, the poster child. But I soon saw that none of the posters had my picture, though the girl was about my age— around six—wore a brace, used Kenny sticks, and had hair similar to mine (although hers was not in the meticulous ringlets my mother created to draw attention away from my limp; I needed to look pretty, Mama’s reasoning went, in order to make up for my defect—a concept I have never been able to drop).
I asked my mother if I was going to be the March of Dimes girl, and she assured me that I wasn’t, and that there were no posters out there with my picture on them. I was a little disappointed, but what bothered me more was that people didn’t recognize that it was not me, that any little girl with Kenny sticks and brown hair looked the same to them. It made me a little angry that that was my identity: The March of Dimes Poster Girl. Especially since I was experiencing none of the imagined benefits of being famous. It is possible that people thought, What a brave little girl, when they saw that poster, and that they also thought this about me. But I didn’t think of that when I was six. I was just slightly perturbed that I didn’t have a face to people—that I was identified by a limp, a brace, and crutches.
I was not a poster child—not in reality and not in ter
ms of the smiley, optimistic, never-bothered attitude that is often wished for in disabled people. Others feel better if a crippled person reflects happy accomplishment. Certainly, that winsome courage is more appealing for the purpose of collecting donations! I was also not pathetic or helpless, though the poster was designed to elicit such thoughts about being a brave little crippled girl. (Please don’t misunderstand: I am glad people did respond and fund polio vaccination and treatment. I just didn’t like being thought of as pitiful.)
I was not always brave, though I had to be much of the time, and I was not always accepting of my plight, and I did not always bear it with a smile, though I was told in my twenties, “You were always such a happy-go-lucky kid around the neighborhood.” It’s true that when I was out, I was happy. Happy to be with other kids, happy to be able to swing higher than I should, happy to be on the park carousel while someone else ran and pushed it to dizzying speeds, happy to have Daralyn pumping me around town on her bike, happy to get an A in school.
Also happy not to be getting the spanking of my life with a Hi-Li paddle for something I did—or didn’t do. “Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about,” Mama would say. (I learned not to ask for the Hi-Li paddle toy with the elastic and ball when we went to Sprouse-Reitz.) Sometimes I lay in bed and contemplated running away: What would I pack in my tiny toy suitcase? . . . My favorite doll, a pair of underpants, some shorts and a T-shirt, I decided. But where would I go? To Marilyn Mercer’s house two blocks away? Her mother would turn me in.
I often lay there and cried and wished for a different life, a different mother. It was not my odd little leg so much as it was my other circumstances that bothered me. But eventually I’d accept that there was no escape, so the best thing to do was have fun and make friends, go to church and school, join Bluebirds, try to be normal, do whatever I could enjoy. I did all that at every opportunity, and cried when I felt overwhelmed.
I’ve read in several books that it was not unusual for us polio kids to be spanked or beaten, even to the point of abuse, sometimes more than other kids in the family were. It was made clear to me early on that exceptions were not going to be made just because I was crippled, and I should learn to do things myself, on my own, without expecting any help or special treatment. I was taught to be as independent as possible. These attitudes or methods are a common thread recounted by other polio kids, but certainly not all parents were so strict. In my case, I was treated no worse than my much older half-siblings. My mother beat my brother with wooden coat hangers until they broke. (No wonder we rarely saw him after we moved north; the story was always that he couldn’t travel because his lungs were damaged from the tuberculosis he’d contracted at sixteen.)
My transgressions ranged from talking back to spilling something to not doing what I was told soon enough, and I assume my sister and brother had the same parameters for behavior.
I know that my mother loved me. She was just afraid I would grow up not knowing right from wrong, according to her code, which she believed to be universal among good people. On a trip home I took to visit her as an adult, she let me in on a little secret: she said she cried every time she spanked me. Today, I wonder about the truth of this—and at the time I wondered why she kept doing it if it upset both of us so much.
My own assessment of my spankings, which echoes what other polio survivors—and normies, too—have said, is that the 1940s and 50s were an era in which “Spare the rod and spoil the child” was a common attitude among parents. My mother said this to me more than once, quoting her father. She was a great one for platitudes: “A penny saved is a penny earned,” she liked to say, and I knew early on that this one came from Ben Franklin; he and my mom might have started a thrift savings bank. If, on the other hand, someone was cheap and not thinking of lasting value, she’d say, “He’s penny-wise and pound-foolish.” When I learned to darn socks—yes, we actually darned our socks—her favorite was, “A stitch in time saves nine.” (I felt liberated when at long last I had enough income to throw away socks with holes in the toes.) “Waste not, want not,” while Mama cut the toothpaste tubes open to get at the last of the stuff. “Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop,” if I said I was bored. “They robbed Peter to pay Paul,” if someone used savings to pay a debt. “Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face,” if I said I wasn’t going to play with so-and-so anymore. (It surprised me that such a gruesome phrase ever garnered any popularity.)
These were the sorts of words of wisdom my mother imparted with regularity, accompanied by the bobblehead movement she used for emphasis. Not too many heart-to-heart talks, but these admonitions echo in my mind whenever I have the temerity to make a mistake. I hear myself repeat them occasionally, and then either cringe or chuckle.
My mother was concerned that I be taught that I could be the same and do the same as other children—something I’ve also learned was common in polio families—so I would need to try harder than others, not only physically but in school and all endeavors. This was good news/bad news. It was good to be encouraged, but it was a major problem to think I would one day be able to run or dance as an equal, or have the energy to engage in normal activities, or especially be seen as the same as everyone else. Mama seemed to think that if I tried hard enough, I might be able to build up my lost musculature—a medical impossibility. There was an underlying message that I needed to be an even better person than others in order to be accepted.
I believe my mother was embarrassed to have a handicapped child, a common feeling among polio kids’ parents. I do not remember my dad ever conveying that sentiment; I was just his cuddly little girl who stuck by him in the backyard or sat on his lap while he read the paper. But when it came to Mama, if I made mistakes as a child, my parameters were narrower and my punishment came swifter, because I had something to make up for and there was no room for error. I needed to be perfect. And I was so very far from perfect.
More than once Mother said, “Sometimes I feel like going away and never coming back,” with a meaningful look that communicated how hard I made her life. That frightened me: it raised thoughts of how I would live without a mother, and also made me feel despicable.
I did talk back to my mother at times—around second grade especially, as I was learning to stand up for myself—and I think I did not respect her as much as she thought I should, and perhaps not as much as she may have deserved. She had only wanted to be my father’s wife.
Things my mother said and did eventually led me to understand that she feared I would be a burden, would be considered unattractive, would be rejected by men, would never marry, would live with her forever. One polio memoir I read told the story of how the young girl held the flat of her palm on her paralyzed thigh above her knee when she walked, to prevent her leg from buckling when it was tired. I used to do this as a child (and still do sometimes, especially now that I am experiencing new weakness in my atrophied leg). The girl’s father chided her for this innovation and insisted she not do it—it looked strange and drew more attention to her limp, he said—even though not pressing her hand there sometimes made it more difficult for her to walk.
This kind of treatment—the thinking that I was too willful, when will was what I needed to develop more than other kids, or that I was not trying hard enough to walk normally—set up within me some self-doubt, but also a strength that was sometimes seen as defiance.
7
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getting around the neighborhood
After I outgrew my brace, the polio doctor did not suggest that I continue to wear any kind of heavy support. What I did wear was an apparatus encircling my calf below my knee, a foam band with a layer of leather or other material on the outside, which was punched with metal brads through which a lacing could be tied. To this foam band, hollow stretchy rubber tubing was hooked at the top, like a long piece of half-cooked brown macaroni, about eight inches long. The other end hooked to the laces near the toe of my shoes. This helped hold my foot up, since wit
hout it, I was at great risk of tripping, with my foot just hanging there at the end of my leg. I also continued wearing a “twister-resistor” full-leg-length elastic band for a couple of years, which wrapped around my leg and trained my leg and foot to remember to point forward. (After I stopped wearing it, it was clear that my leg had a very short and unreliable memory. I had to think about each step I took and still must do so.) The elastic must have attached to my underpants leg with a safety pin or alligator clip.
High-topped lace-up shoes also gave my ankle some stability (although other children called them “baby shoes”), as without them I rolled my foot in, and walked almost on the inside of my ankle, a condition that worsened through childhood.
My left leg continued to grow at a normal pace and was further strengthened by the extra work it was doing. Standing on one leg—required for activities like hop scotch—was only possible on my left. I could never, and still cannot, leave my weight totally on my polio-affected leg for more than one second, or I begin to list to one side, and will fall if I don’t put my weight down on my strong foot immediately or grab on to something stable.
My polio leg and foot grew as well, but so very slowly that soon my mother was buying two pairs of shoes in different sizes—sizes that diverged further and further through the years. By the time I reached high school, and had fortunately almost stopped growing and become a definite short person, my feet were more than four sizes apart, one in children’s sizes and one in women’s sizes, making it difficult to buy a matched set.
Not a Poster Child Page 5