Chapter 6.... Behind an over sized metal door were rows upon rows of chipped, painted cribs.......

Chapter 6

Our oldest boy, David, a rising junior in a New York college, was visiting at the home of his fiancee, Kathy, in a small town near Montreal when Paul’s telephone call arrive telling him of Melissa’s condition.  

David was conscious of the strained silence at the dining room table as he answered in stunned monosyllables.  And when he had hung up the receiver and returned to his place, David faced the questioning eyes of Kathy, her older sister, two brothers, and her parents.

“Melissa is a mongoloid.”

David blurted it out, then retreated into a tower of silence.  He wanted to avoid a family discussion because he was not sure exactly what a mongoloid was.  

“Does this mean that Kathy and I might have a mongoloid baby, too?”

Gently and kindly, Kathy’s doctor-father explained the happenstance of this chromosomal abnormality.

“Melissa,” he said quietly, “has received the damning gift of one extra chromosome at the time of conception.   Her blood cells will continue to divide and reproduce in the same imperfect manner, thus establishing as an irrevocable trust her sad inheritance.  Your mother, David, because of her age ran an extra risk of having a child with Down’s Syndrome ( which is the more knowledgeable way to refer to mongolism).  Her chances were one in seven, at least those are the figures now quoted.”

David’s fears were somewhat quieted, but later that evening he broke down and sobbed in Kathy’s arms.

Each of the children in his or her own way bore the double-barreled blast of grief---remembering baby Martha and questioning the “why” of baby Melissa.  We were pathetically grateful that they did not challenge ( at least not openly) the wisdom of our decision to place Melissa in a private home.

Paul took three days off from work the following week and he and I started out early each morning on our mission.  Our goal was to visit as many of the mental health facilities in our geographical area as we could locate. 

I will not soon forget the day that we visited our first state mental institution.  Here, we were told, almost 3,000 retarded of all ages lived, with a waiting list of nearly 7,000 more.  A staggering thought.  Acres of green lawns and wooded areas surrounded the complex of rectangular brick buildings.  A network of macadam roads spun in and out and around the tired-looking structures.

We kept looking for small children, and when I spotted a group of what appeared to be about fifty or more boys in an open field, I asked Paul to pull over to the edge of the road.  We got out of the car and walked closer,

“Looks like they’re going to play baseball or something,” I said.

They were milling about uncertainly, dressed in an odd assortment of cast-off clothing.  Some older men wore women’s dresses that flapped around their ankles.  Even the youngest----who might have been twelve or thirteen-----had old and creased faces.  Over in one corner a gray-haired woman in a white uniform threw back her head to blow puffs of smoke into the air.  She did not seem to see us or anyone else.

I watched with a kind of fascination.  Then Paul put his arm on my shoulder and gently turned me away . We walked to the car in complete silence.

We were not allowed to tour the buildings without a guide.  A young girl was assigned to this responsibility, and we followed in her wake like two mechanized dolls.

“Would you like to see the crib area?”

“Oh, yes,” I said eagerly.

The sand and dirt gritted under our heels on the concrete steps and halls, making a hissing, scraping sound.  Behind an over sized metal door were rows upon rows of chipped, painted cribs.  I expected to find babies or small toddlers, but in each crib was a body with arms and legs and a face with eyes---shipwrecks of humanity huddled in smelly, sodden diapers and tattered gray undershirts.  And some were even as they came into the world -----naked as your nose.

It was like entering another world ----a world where bodies grew and minds stood still---a world where troubled minds could not control twisting bodies,  where eyes would not focus, heads grew too large or forever remained too small, those who banged their heads against their cribs, or beat their bodies with tightly clenched fists.  And my heart screamed out; Were these the creation of a loving God? I fled to the next room where they were spooning out the food for supper.

There is a verse somewhere in Exodus, “Who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind?  Have not I the LORD?

Then our guide unlocked the doors to the dayroom------large, cement-floored room with benches around the sides and long tables here and there for no apparent reason.  This was their playroom, yet I could see no toys or playthings.

“What do they do all day?” I asked.

But nobody heard the question.  The minute we entered the room we were swallowed up by the clamoring children. I could not understand their garbled speech as they reached out to grab  or touch my dress.  I wanted to pull away and unclasp their fingers, but somehow I did not dare; it would be like rejecting my own Melissa.

“Which are the mongoloids?”  I asked.

She pointed them out, calling them “ the best of the lot” and “ if you had to have a retarded child, thank God it’s a mongoloid.”  but her words were small comfort.

After that break through into the “world of perpetual children” we started down the list of private homes.  I did not know what to expect, but we discovered waiting lists here, as well as crowded conditions, high monthly cost, and a seeming lack of honest-to-goodness love and concern. It was a macabre world of dreary routine, bed-making, diaper-changing and meal- feeding, and it left us chilled to the bone.

Then, unexpectedly, we heard of a children’t home located in the Midwest.  Friends of ours in the area spoke of it with highest praise.  On the basis of this, we made application for Melissa’s admission.  Regulations, however dictated that she be admitted directly to this home upon hospital discharge, without a home visit.