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Seven-forty in the morning. I leaned against a tree and watched a procession of yellow buses perform complicated six-point turns in the circle by our house, like a pod of ungainly marigold whales. Sleep-muted faces jounced in the windows. I waved at the ones I knew.
Next came the Condon bus, with its retractable steel ramp. The driver would roll a kid upward and use a bolt and clamp to lock the wheelchair to the wall behind the driver’s seat. Each bus held seven wheelchairs and a dozen bench seats.*2
We made the northeast rounds, from Kerrie and Robbie, to the two Donalds, Darlene, Jack, Amy, Simon, and Mark, and lastly to Julie’s house. Laconia was early in the route, which let me save her a seat.
I’d begun to detect certain puzzling exchanges between Simon and Kerrie. I’d watched them for years. They were both older than me (and what creature was more captivating than an upperclassman?) not to mention that Kerrie and Robbie Whitaker ranked as Condon’s very own rock stars, a pair of flaxen, curly-haired Muscular Dystrophy Association Poster Children who looked like twins, though Robbie was a year older. Robbie and Kerrie were nice, as a rule, but Simon had a tongue like a pocketknife.*3
My bench gave me a seat near the action. Simon kicked things off with a little style critique. “Kerrie, what’s wrong with your head? Are you raising mice inside your hair?”
“It’s called teasing, Simon. It makes my hair look fuller. Not that you’d understand fashion.”
“What, now you like being teased? Yesterday you were all mad, just ’cause I said I can’t tell you and your brother apart if you aren’t wearing a dress. Is that why your hair is bigger than a beach ball? So I can tell you’re the girl?”
“You might try being nice once in a while. Or, I dunno, ever.”
“Nice is for weenies.”
Robbie defended his sister’s honor. “You know, Simon, it’d be so easy to run you over. No one would blame me for not seeing you down there.” We rarely made fun of one another’s disabilities, but Simon’s status as a Little Person was fair game according to the time-honored rules of He Started It. Simon tried to snatch one of Kerrie’s hair ribbons. The bus driver snapped, “Sit down, young man.”
I startled when Julie dropped into the open seat. Her eyes were circles of blue fury. “Rats, rats, rats! She did it again.”
“What this time? The guitar or the records?”
“Oh, I hid the records inside the box with my winter sweaters. I mean, why does she get to say how I spend my allowance?” Julie shoved her glasses up her nose with force. “Mom says I should save up for my own guitar, but that’s like two hundred dollars.”
As one who borrowed liberally from her stash of singles, I staunchly supported Julie’s right to blow her pocket change. “Gee, that’s awful. So, like, what did happen?”
“She came in right when I was finishing some lyrics, and says, ‘What about your social studies test?’ And I say, ‘But, Mom, I have Girl Scouts tomorrow, I have to finish this or I won’t get my music badge.’ Anyway, who cares how many pioneers settled in the Ohio Valley?”
“Yeah, right, like you ever failed a test.”
That got a grin. “Well, like, didn’t you think the chapter about Indian Mound was cool, though? Like, romantic? Maybe I can write a song for extra credit.” She searched her pockets for a pen. “Hey, I forgot to tell you but yesterday, this lady at Kroger’s said I look like an Indian. With my hair and all.”
“I didn’t know there was a tribe of blond Indians.”
Julie gave me her “get with it” look and bent over her notebook. The hem of her Girl Scout uniform poked out above her swollen knees. I was wearing mine, too: the belted green dress, dark green beret, and bright yellow tie. Our troop’s badges were tilted toward things you could do sitting down. Indoors. Not for us the Skater, Gypsy, Foot Traveler, or World Games; we were masters of Home Nurse, Personal Health, and (of course) Home Health and Safety.
Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts were among Condon’s few bridges to the mainstream—not that we ever met up with other troops. Still, it was thrilling to see other brown or green uniforms on the street during cookie season and know that no regular troop could outsell a bunch of girls rolling down the street with lapfuls of Thin Mints.
Girl Scout meeting in the “gym” downstairs, circa the mid-1960s. My friend Lonnie (who also appears in the parallel bar photo) is far right.
One summer, it was decided that we could safely leave the confines of Condon for an open-air adventure. A dozen Scouts and just as many mothers (though mine was not among them) got on a Petermann bus early one Saturday morning and were driven to Camp Stepping Stones, one whole hour away from school.
Sue Rumbaugh, our troop leader, pointed out plants and birds and insects, calling Tufted titmouse, Mourning dove, Red admiral, Dogwood, Paper birch. Mary Ann braced her spastic arm against her waist and bent to pick up an orange-and-black caterpillar. Sue called it a “woolly bear,” so of course we all started making up ridiculous names. When Janice picked up a pill bug, Mel asked, “But what kind of pill? Looks like an antibiotic to me.”
When the sun went down, we built a campfire and toasted marshmallows on peeled green sticks. Sue helped us earn our Outdoor Cooking badges by making a recipe that our handbook called Friendship Soup. We’d been instructed to bring one can of Campbell’s soup each; Sue took our offerings of Chicken Noodle, Tomato, Beef Barley, Cream of Mushroom, and Vegetarian Vegetable and dumped their contents into one huge pot. The handbook advised us to stir well in order to “blend the flavors.” The resultant Friendship Soup looked—and tasted—like a cauldron of boiled Girl Scouts. All one can say is, thank God for s’mores.
At bedtime, we spread our blankets and pillows on top of the cots. Our troop sang handbook songs and giggled, until overcome by night wind and cricket song and the incomprehensible distance from home.
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Every child at Condon was a Golem; little medical monsters,*4 constructed by doctors who wrote down our diagnoses on prescription pads and forced those names into our mouths. We breathed around gags made of paper, scrawled with our alphabet: Achondroplasia, Cerebral Palsy, Clubfoot, Cystic Fibrosis, Down Syndrome, Epilepsy, Microcephaly, Muscular Dystrophy, Osteogenesis Imperfecta, Phocomelia, Poliomyelitis, Progeria, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Spina Bifida. Really, though, I can only guess, because we seldom talked about them with one another. Adults spent so much time discussing our bodies, defining us by our diagnoses, that we learned our classmates’ medical names by osmosis.
We were kids being kids, making friends, fighting enemies, forming cliques. Having crushes and breaking up. We liked each other, or didn’t. Friendships weren’t based on shared disabilities. There was no Team Spina Bifida waiting for my membership dues.