They told me they didn't have any vacant beds in Miss Agnieszka's group and I would be placed with Ms. Zosia's children.  It was only temporary, they said, and I would be transferred shortly.  Besides, I would like other children even if they were not exactly like me.  That is what they said.  I didn't understand.  Where I came from nobody was exactly like me so I couldn't assign any sense to what they were saying.  The words, unattached to any meaning, floated chaotically in a stairway leading to the second floor ward.  With every step up the alabaster stairs the contours of the world left behind were slowly fading.  Even my mother's face was moving as if painted on a flag swayed by the wind.   

We reached the second floor, passed through a swing-door, and entered a long corridor.  Squeezed between bedrooms on one side and restrooms on the other, both ends of the corridor were dark and narrow, but at the center the walls on the bathrooms' side sharply ended giving a way to an open space lightened by huge French windows.  Across from one of these window was my bedroom.  It had four white beds.  Three were occupied.  One, with lowered rail and an ironed pajama lying on a pillow, was waiting for me.  When I was left alone, I put the pajama on, lifted the rail, and lied down.  Few minutes later, they asked me through slightly ajar door if I was sleeping.  I pretended I was.  

I was still pretending, when an hour later, Ms. Zosia came to announce the end of the afternoon nap.  With a voice ringing like morning bells, she cheerfully woke up everybody.  I sat up.  Ms. Zosia welcomed me with a sincere enthusiasm.  I wanted to say something nice too but just then I noticed that the girls around were not polio patients, they were children with cerebral palsy or Down's syndromes.  I was paralyzed.  That was a mistake.  Didn't they know that polio children were intelligent?  We had orthopedic shoes, crutches, or even wheelchairs, our arms or legs were thinner and shorter than they supposed to be, but we were smart.  Being intelligent was the only argument supporting our claims to normalcy.  They did IQ tests, didn't they?  So, what I was then doing here with THEM?  I looked at Miss Zosia, question marks filling both my eyes, but she seemed not to notice.  So I put on wrinkleless and depersonalizing sanatorium's clothes: a covered with faded flowers apron tied over a starched poplin shirt and a skirt, and I joined everybody for an afternoon snack.   

After I removed pieces of dates, figs, and overcooked raisins from the cake I looked around.  I didn't see even one child with polio.  Some children hardly talked, some had to be fed.  Most had runny noses.  Some had little bubbles of saliva foaming around their mouths.  I felt ashamed and embarrassed, as if everybody around were naked.  As if I were naked.  As if the most intimate part, whatever it was, of our human existence was left uncovered and vulnerable.  Even worse, I felt exposed.  Since Sanatorium was full that season, Ms. Zosia group didn't have its own playroom.  We ate and played at the center of the hallway or on the street's side balcony, where even people walking behind the Sanatorium's gate could see us.   

I do not remember exactly what I was doing in the days that followed.  In the mornings I must have attended all kinds of therapies.  The afternoons I spent on the balcony trying not to be visible to people peeking through the Sanatorium's gate.  I always sat backwards to the railings unlike most of other children who would stare for hours at everything on the outside.  I do not remember any painting or drawing, but simple extrapolation of my prior experiences tells me, that we certainly did both.  I do not remember trips to the Sanatorium's garden.  It is possible that due to the severity of physical problems our group didn't go there, or went there rarely.  I am sure I must have written letters to my mother asking her to take me out immediately.  But I do not remember that either.  I do remember, however, that I constantly doubted myself.  Was I less smart than other polio children?  Was I retarded?  How retarded?  How come I didn't notice that sooner?  Was I abandoned by negligence or was I punished for something I had done before?  

The hope that my confinement was only temporary was undermined by the fact that a new girl, who came two weeks after me, was admitted to Miss Agnieszka's group, while I still lingered in the hallway.  Yes, I met other children with polio during morning hours of physiotherapy.  They knew I was just like them, but they still felt uncomfortable around me because my presence forced them to cope with the questions what had I done to deserve this and if it could happen to them.  We rarely talked.  In a few days I became relatively mute and somehow slower in my reactions.  That was not entirely bad, as everything seemed also less obvious and hence less painful.  I was released from the obligation to be acutely aware of the environment and others and I allowed myself to drift in the mist of reduced involvement with the world.   

At the end of August we had a swimming competition.  Although I didn't swim well I advanced to semifinals, and then I was disqualified for cheating by pushing myself from the bottom of the pool.  That wasn't fair; the pool was so shallow -three feet at its deep end- that it was impossible not to touch its bottom.  Being disqualified wasn't upsetting. It meant no more swimming.  I didn't like swimming anyway because the deep end of the pool with its rusty drains and tiles covered with orange residue made me feel queerly.  The only upsetting thing was that I wouldn't get a prize.  I really wanted a prize.  Well, not just any prize but a toy bed with a doll and a potty.  If you pushed the button the doll got out of the bed and landed on the potty.  She did that every time you touched the button and she stayed on the potty for as long as you held the button down.  She never missed.  I never, never saw anything so wonderful.  I really, really wanted that toy.  But since I was disqualified it was obvious that someone else would get it.  That someone was Evelina.  She had shoulder length crutches and leg braces made out of metal and sheepskin.  Even with their help she walked slowly and with huge difficulties.  She barely talked.  She was in Ms. Zosia group.  She was Down's.  She won the third place.  Since only two boys were ahead of her, the doll with a bed and a potty was hers.   

I wasn't really surprised when that afternoon, I found the little toy-bed with a doll and a potty standing next to my bed.  I thought Evelina dropped it by accident.  I picked it up and carried it to her.  She said it was mine.  Just like that.  She gave it to me.  I do not remember her exact words but she put the toy back in my hands and smiled with just a left corner of her lips moving slightly up.  I didn't know what to say.  I wasn't used to receiving presents from other children.  Getting something from a child, even sharing a thing for a short while, always required hard bargaining or shameless begging.  I wasn't good at either.  But now I didn't even ask.  I stood in front of Evelina, speechless and confused, until I heard the nurse calling on us to go to beds.  I took the toy.  

As I played with it I heard calming, rhythmic breathing of three girls:  I pushed the toy's button, the doll jumped on the potty.  I released the button, she returned quickly to her bed.  "None of us" - I thought -"would do that as nimbly as the doll did".  I laughed silently and placed the toy in the corner of my bed, but I couldn't sleep.  How did Evelina know what I wanted?  And even knowing how could she part with such a marvel?   But most importantly why did she give me the doll?  After all, I must have appeared to her as artificial as the doll and equally alien.  So then, was she inviting me to be her friend or was she providing me with a companion of my own kind?  What did she try to say? "Come, play with us" or "Please, play with this doll since you do not accept us?"  I felt tired, and anxious.  I waited for the afternoon nap to be over.  I waited.  I didn't want to play with the toy anymore.  I longed to play with Evelina and her friends.   

I believe I stayed in Ms. Zosia's group for a few more weeks.  There is not much I can explain about that time.  I do not remember what words, if any, we used to carry and catch each other thoughts.  It stopped bothering me, however, that we had to play on the front side balcony, vulnerable to the curious glances and plain stares of all passing by the gate.  It didn't bother me, that Miss Agnieszka's children ignored us as they were walking through the hallway on the way to the garden or to the television room.  I had impression that I was living in the cloud.  The cloud, however, was much more than the fog obstructing the vision.  The cloud was shielding us from the world.  The curious glances of passersby didn't penetrate it.  It was the nurturing place where our diluted egos wandered safely and affectionately.  It was the field with undefined but predictable forces carrying our thoughts, feelings and something else, I can't really name.  There was no need to produce sounds, although we sometimes uttered single words just to watch them flutter their disoriented wings in a joyful although aimless flight.  The cloud blurred the boundaries between us -children.  We were all in a cloud; we were the cloud.   

In the middle of September I was told that I would be transferred to Miss Agnieszka group.  I didn't say anything.  I felt a lump in my throat.  I was told that Miss Agnieszka children were much more like me, and that the switch would be good for me.  I was asked to pick up my staff and carry it to a new bedroom.  I didn't want to take anything.  I do not know why.  I went to look for Evelina.  I told her that I had to move.  I said: "I want to stay.  I do not want to go.  I do not have any choice."  I said that plainly and simply few times.  She didn't say anything.  She started turning her head in all directions.  I told her we would still be friends.  I promised her I would come often, but she didn't stop moving her head like crazy.  I got scared.  I left.  I knew she was sad.  But then I suspected, that she was turning her head purposefully to unwind all invisible wires connecting me with the cloud.   

Miss Agnieszka's children were not exactly like me.  They were sharp extroverts, they argued a lot and gossiped a lot.  They knew where they were, who they were and where everybody else was.  They knew what belonged to them.  They shared their toys rarely, under certain rules and to the point.  The contours of their personalities were clearly defined and reinforced by armor of strong attitudes.  They talked in full, crisp sentences which cut through the air like lightning.   

I saw Evelina many times.  She tried to pass from grade 1c to 1b.  I helped her with her schoolwork.  I was in a second grade.  They said that I was bright and that I was a good teacher.  Evelina accepted my new role.  I tried to be clear and helpful.  But sometimes I imitated her language -simple and short phrases or singular words loosely fluttering in the mist.  I wanted to convince her that I still was like her.  Whenever I did that she smiled with just the left corner of her lips.  Nonetheless I was never again allowed to enter the cloud. 

Author's Biography

Maria was born long ago in Poland. After contracting polio, she spent a few months of each year in a place called SANATORIUM in the town of Jastrzebie Zdroj. 

She came to the USA in 1986 and lives in Massachusetts with her husband and two children.

E-mail Maria at jmhrab@norwoodlight.com  

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