AUTHOR’S NOTE: The following is my attempt to capture the voice of my late uncle, who suffered from Cerebral Palsy in the 20th century.
I was born in Delaware on January, 1936, a winter of lingering Depression, Hitler’s bullish expansion, and King Edward’s wise abdication for Miss Wallis. Such a beauty! My older parents, who had dated eleven years before marrying, were surprised not only by my conception and arrival but also by the news of my having Cerebral Palsy. My mother with the turquoise eyes never mentioned it to the ladies of the Garden Club or Colonial Dames.
Since I was deemed “normal,” I did the usual things, went to elementary school, swam in our pool, attempted horseback riding. There were no exceptions or special considerations. I believe I had a prom date—was her name Betty? My older brothers, at least one of them, fought for me on playgrounds, in courtyards and quiet hallways, those in-between places where attacks could occur. I think I was happy. The sepia photographs suggest as much.
In August of 1957, our family physician, Dr. Heather of the hospital on Kennett Pike, gave me a supposed miracle drug, Equanil, a tranquilizer also known as Milltown, like that downstate area where most of mother’s cousins were from. That history mother never acknowledged. What Dr. Heather didn’t tell me was that tranquilizers have side effects, cause tremors in normal people; in me, they caused increased spasticity and severe addiction. This is when the dark tunnels began.
In the early sixties, a Dr. Alpers from Philadelphia, who was a social gift to our ascendant neighbors, called me in for observation. A psychiatrist, he swore mine was a mental problem. He lied to me, outright, tricking me into signing the papers. After which, I was locked up on Floor Three. Where, for an hour, five or six days a week, for many months, I sat on his couch—a spastic, trying to keep still, can you imagine—while he stared at me. If only I could get those hours back, and the money from his futile watch. The one brother rescued me and rented me a cabin on a lake in Maine, where I could drink vodka freely, still my tremors, and compose an escape. One that didn’t last.
Later, moved to Philadelphia, I fell and hurt my lower back. I was working at the local newspaper, a desk journalist, hired as a favor to my father. A brief stupor of reporting inconsequential tri-state events. When I woke in Mercy Hospital, a nurse said I was shaking so badly that I had to be strapped down on the bed. The shaking worsened, along with symptoms of tingling and itching in my abdomen and rectum.
To escape my misery, I’ve written five plays, though I also craft novels and short stories, all copyrighted with the Library of Congress. I’m the keeper of my family secrets, as one of the remaining few. I tend to set our family’s stories in science fiction, imagining our troubled lot on new planets. My own utopias. In my plays, I often mention the hospital ceilings, mauve patterns seen through blurry eyes, the changing cast of characters assigned to save me.
A graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts, Mary Warren Foulk has two award-winning chapbooks, If I Could Write You a Happier Ending (dancing girl press) and Erasures of My Coming Out (Letter) (The Poetry Box). Her newest collection, The Show Must Go On, is forthcoming from Fernwood Press.