Quarantined

Although they grew up in neighboring rural areas in Virginia, my parents met at a diner on New York Avenue. Mama, with a caramel glow, high cheekbones that rounded her face and shoulder-length curls that softened it, found work there serving eggs and bacon after graduating from the Southampton County Training School. With her diploma, she had more education than her husband, but Daddy was a decade older and worked hard. The gregarious son, he out-talked an older brother who met Mama first. Of medium height and build, John R. Young had strong hands that he used to split wood on his family's farm, play the piano by ear and box as an amateur welterweight. People did a double take when they saw him: Depending on the light, his eyes flashed blue or gray against his deep-mocha skin. Mama called him "Johnny," and he poured and finished cement for a living. Daddy called her "Frank," and she took care of the children. Ten years later, when they were raising their family in Northeast Washington, they would still leave the car parked with windows rolled down and go to bed in the summer with the front door open.

Mama had planned to deliver me at Columbia Hospital for Women, but when she went into labor, the ambulance took her from Glenn Dale to D.C. General Hospital. I was born around 11 a.m., quickly and without medication. Mama did not get to see or touch her newborn before they took me away. For one thing, there were complications. When Daddy found her that evening in an isolation room, Mama could see only shadows because of a loss of blood that soaked her gown and bed. Most of that time at D.C. General is a blur to her, but after a week or so, Mama learned she was scheduled to return to Glenn Dale. When the time came, the orderly rolled Mama past the nursery, and she looked through the glass at her new baby for the first time.

Daddy had 13 siblings, Mama had seven, and most of my aunts and uncles were married by then, but no one in the family could take the baby right away. Back at Glenn Dale, Mama struggled down the hallway to the one public phone on the women's ward and called her oldest sister, asking her to please get the baby. Aunt Shirley picked me up the next day. When Mama felt strong enough, she washed the dried blood out of her hair.

BY THE MID-1950S, THE FIRST EFFECTIVE TB-CONTROL DRUGS -- streptomycin, para-amino-salicylic acid (PAS) and isoniazid -- had begun to reduce the national death rate from tuberculosis and helped many regain their health. Those drugs were highly effective when taken in combinations, but the regimen took about two years to control the disease, said Lee B. Reichman, executive director of the New Jersey Medical School's Global Tuberculosis Institute. It is unclear whether all or only some of those drugs were prescribed at Glenn Dale.

Still, 11,000 residents of the city and its close-in suburbs were known to be infected then, a disproportionately high number of them black residents of Washington's crowded downtown quadrant. Patients arrived at Glenn Dale in various stages of the disease. The most able participated in the limited offerings of sanatorium life. Bingo once a month, movies on Wednesdays, card games, typing classes, part-time jobs in the hospital canteen. Radio privileges were extended for broadcasts of championship fights and the World Series. At home, most days Mama had cooked and baked from scratch, mopped the linoleum floors, hung the laundry on a line to dry, plaited three heads of hair, mended clothes and loaded coal into the furnace. But now, except for chapel on Sundays and an occasional movie, she spent her days and evenings leaning back in a chair on a porch of strangers. After a while, a visitor to the porch, a therapist maybe, taught Mama to crochet and embroider. She made baby clothes, doilies and children's caps.

Each patient room on Mama's ward had a back door leading to the porch. The women came out every day. Mama dressed and stepped onto the porch after the morning ritual: collecting used tissues and tying them up in a trash bag. Setting out her personal cup and pitcher to be sterilized. And taking the brackish, nausea-inducing medicine Mama knew only as "PAS." She drank a small cupful every morning. She doesn't remember taking any other medication.

Desperate for news about the girls, Mama received a few letters. Early on, she made her way again to the public phone and called Aunt Shirley. The baby was sleeping a lot, Aunt Shirley said. "It's a cute little thing, but kinda dark." Not long after that, Aunt Lillie, one of my father's sisters, took me to live with her in Baltimore.

Besides Daddy, Mama had only two other visitors. Aunt Vi and Aunt Doll came at least once a week, telling few people where they were going. Mama begged them for news of the children, and my aunts reported that Janet was crying a lot for no apparent reason and that Tanya had regressed in her potty training. Diane was very much the big sister, they said, comforting the younger girls when they cried. To shield their parents from too heavy a burden of worry and fear, they did not tell them Mama had tuberculosis. Instead, Aunt Vi wrote letters home saying Mama was still in the hospital because of a nervous breakdown.

Daddy stomped the dust off of his work boots and visited Mama the few times a week that visitors were allowed. Sometimes he brought the girls and left them under the tree to the right of the building, below the porch. Mama would look down at them and wave.

Daddy gave Mama updates on the arrangements for the girls: After two weeks at Daddy's parents' farm, they spent another two weeks with Mama's parents. An aunt and her new husband moved into the house on Knox Street and cared for the girls for another three weeks. After that, Daddy dropped off the children during the day with various aunts -- whoever was available -- and picked them up after work. The baby was still in Baltimore. When Daddy brought Mama a photo of the girls and affixed it to a wall where Mama could see it while she was in bed, the first nurse who noticed it cited a hospital rule against hanging things on walls. She made Daddy take it down.

Once, he got permission to bring my three sisters for a visit. Before Mama went to the private visitors' room, a nurse gave her instructions: Do not kiss the children. Do not hug them. Don't let them sit on your lap. Mama put a lock on her affection and went downstairs. She spent most of the visit pulling her clingy middle child's arms from around her neck. Janet, now 3, continued to try to crawl onto Mama's lap as Daddy pulled her back. Diane and Tanya stared at their mother.

After the visit, Mama worried more than ever. Are the children getting enough to eat? Are they clean? Who's taking care of them next week? Is the baby taking her formula? Is she warm and dry? How much does she weigh now? Mama knew something about motherless children. Her own mother was raised by relatives and told tales of a harsh childhood.