Backbone > Frankly Speaking

Polio, My Polio
By Frank Crocitto

There was a howling in the streets that night, long, demonic wails scooped-up and whirled by the wind, and the damp, early fall spread a sickly sheen over the asphalt. Large flat leaves fell, heavy and despairing, into the dark gardens and along the dimly lit sidewalks. Car lights glittered off the ubiquitous wet.

In his bed, propped on pillows, the pale boy lay in a soft delirium. The rest of the house, the kitchen, the steps, the front hall, was full of hasty footsteps. To the boy the sounds were far-off and pleasant as raindrops. Sometimes he felt so well his face would break into a wan smile. His feeling of well-being came because he knew things were changing; life outside him and life inside him was going through its course; everything was passing. Dreamily he listened to the gentle scrape of his breath, coming in and going out.

Then his uncle arrived, and he opened his eyes. His uncle was cheery, as usual, and the boy’s heart would lift whenever he came. He was buoyant and healthy and his presence seemed to herald good times. He was smiling, a wide smile, showing his big, horsy teeth, and he tapped the boy’s feet through the thick, dark army blankets, encouragingly.

—What d’ya see? Tell me what you see, the uncle urged, as if he had the hopes of a basketball coach.

—What do you mean? the boy responded vaguely. Everything seemed inscrutable to him.

—How many fingers do I have up?

—Two was the answer.

—Nah, come on, Frankie, no kidding. Tell me how many you see.

Eventually he drifted away. His voice, murmured to the boy’s mother leaning at the doorway, had the sound of disappointment in it. He said things and touched her. But soon she was crying in the living room.

—How were we supposed to know, she cried inconsolably. We thought he was kidding. God, oh God!

Yes, the boy remembered that, all of that, but it was all in the past, so far away that it seemed to have happened to somebody else. It started with a pain in his left side like the pain when he had run too hard. Then it would pass, like a runner’s pain. But as school went into its second week he felt the point of it pressing deeper, as if it were a long icicle. So he would rest, sitting on some low fence, until it ebbed enough for him to continue up the two blocks to the school. His friends accompanied him like pallbearers, suspicious at first, then solicitous, as it became clearer Frankie wasn’t pretending. Finally, on a Tuesday, on his return from lunch, the icicle in his side remained and he had to throw himself on some strange lady’s lawn to get some relief. His friends carried him home.

His mother accused him of acting, his father accused him of acting, even as they put him in bed, even as he lay there looking through the blinds at the light flitting among the leaves of the sycamore tree. Once in bed he tired of disputing with them. He would doze for a while and read for a while and fall into a doze again. By the third day he couldn’t make out the letters on the page. He dreamt about Captain Nemo and the silence in his great submarine. A doctor came one afternoon, the usual doctor, a big man.

The prescription was written for a red liquid in a square bottle which they gave him in tablespoons. The medicine was syrupy and sweet as cherries and the taste made the boy happy. In the sleep that followed his taking the medicine, the boy found himself in happy places, by the seashore, by the lake where they had rented a cottage, and in those dreams he was always warm. Soon chills set in, and though his mother piled blankets on him he was so cold his teeth would clack like a typewriter. Then his mother would cry.

The boy seemed to be waiting behind his eyelids, no longer interested in action, or thoughts, or desires. He shivered and he waited. To soothe his fever his mother would wipe his brow and cheeks with alcohol and sometimes his whole body. She said he was “burning up" but he felt he was frozen.

At the end a specialist came. He tapped at the boy's body; he listened to his chest; he took his temperature, all the while shaking his head like a dandelion in the wind. The boy smelled a chemical on his clothes. He stared at the thin, purple lines that crisscrossed the doctor’s nose. When he was done the doctor shoved his gear into his black bag and went off angry, and in a hurry. He kept calling the boy’s mother, “Madam”—“but Madam”—“but you don’t understand, Madam...”

There were heavy footsteps on the stairs, the footsteps of strangers. They stamped through the house and broke into the thick still air of the boy’s room.

—OK Sonny boy. We’re here.

As they wrapped him in the dark green army blankets the boy heard his mother wailing and cursing God who is supposed to take care of people. The big men wrapped him tightly as if he were a baby being wrapped in swaddling clothes. Then the bigger of the two lifted him, tossed him over his left shoulder and with heavy steps carried him through the house and down the steps, announcing to the mute bystanders that “he’s light as a feather.”

With sirens howling the ambulance raced through the dark, wet streets. And the boy, eyes wide, watched the flashing streetlights and listened to the scream of the sirens and he wondered where he would end up.

The hospital had white on the upper half of its walls and green on the lower half. The bare light bulbs hurt the boy’s eyes so he closed them wearily. Into his ears came the steady drip of a faucet, dripping flatly into a metal sink. He no longer felt cold.

What had happened to him—and where was he—and what were his friends doing—were all vague questions that passed through his mind, mere shreds of concern. There were some passing pictures too. But he couldn’t remember what made red different than blue. He felt himself dissolving like salt in a glass of water. He was thirsty but he had no interest in drinking.

Then he heard his mother, her deep voice and the sound of her high heels on the marble floor. She was raising her voice. His father was there too; he was trying to calm her. She was insistent.

—What can we do, madam? the doctor repeated.

—He’s my only son! she screamed. He can’t die.

—You must resign yourself, madam.

—I won’t resign myself, you miserable dog! He has to live!

After a while she became quiet. The doctor confessed they did indeed have something, a few things, but none of them tested.... After that there was silence and the drip of the faucet in the cold sink.

When the light crept into the boy’s room the next morning he opened his eyes. His mother’s face was there, a round, beautiful face. He felt warm at the sight of her. Her face was heaven to him.

—See, stupid, you nearly died last night. You know that. All because you don’t listen and you do what you want and you think you know better than anybody and you think you’re Superman. I wish God would have taken you because you’re going to be the death of me. I swear to God.

She squeezed him so hard he gasped as he said,

—Aawh, ma.