Angels Read Online Free PDF Page A

her as his little sister. He’s going to take her on bird walks whenever he can.
    I liked seeing her make a friend. She’ll be glad of friends when she goes to school. Some of the big boys are mean as snappin’ turtles, and I reckon Coleman will be the smallest child in school. She might not have an easy time of it. I’ll take care of her the best I can, and the Lord is surely watchin’ over her, but it’s always good to have friends.
Polly
    June is busy for us, because it’s the wedding month. We’ve been able to keep body and soul together all these years because Ida is such a good cook, and wedding cakes are one of her specialties. But she can cook anything, and people come from miles around for her baking, and to pick up party meals to serve company. June is her busiest month, and after June, December. When the New Year’s feasting is over, there’s a long spell when no one is much interested in food—or new clothes, for that matter—and we hunker down and wait it out. But Easter is good, and May is better, and June is best of all.
    Most days in June—except Sundays, of course—Ida gets up at four and cooks all day, and Dinah helps her. The house is full of the sugary aroma of cakes and cookies baking—chocolate, vanilla, ginger, cinnamon, lemon; the saltier smell of frying and roasting chicken and ham; the yeasty aroma of rolls; and the buttery scent of biscuits and corn bread. I stay hungry breathing in the mouthwatering smells that drift through the house.
    Dinah’s helped in the kitchen ever since she could walk, even when she had to stand on a chair to reach the counter or the sink. She can measure and sift and grease pans and wash dishes and beat egg whites—whatever Ida needs her to do. Ida couldn’t get along without her. Coleman offered to help, too. Ida and Dinah have their own ways of doing things, and they don’t need her in the kitchen, but they welcomed her taking over the garden chores—weeding and pulling green onions, picking lettuce and new peas, and shelling beans and such. They make much of everything she does, and she beams. You can tell kind words were in short supply with that Gloria.
    Between April and June I’m busy making Easter dresses, graduation dresses, prom dresses, wedding dresses, bridesmaids’ dresses, and mother-of-the-bride dresses. The rest of the year, I do alterations and hems, and make whatever people want—baby clothes, Christmas party dresses, back-to-school clothes, curtains, and slipcovers. I do need help, and when Coleman had been with us a week, I started teaching her to sew. In a few years, that child will sew as well as I can.
    We settled down as peaceful as peas in a pod, then Coleman took another of her notions. This time, it was about a dog. Dogs are always wandering around the place, but we don’t pay them much heed. They’re yard dogs—yellow or brown, bony and short-haired. They’re not strays or homeless; they live around here, and their owners feed them table scraps. But nobody pens them up, and they come and go as they please. Coleman wanted to make pets of them, but we can’t afford to feed them—our scraps go to the chickens and a pig when we’re lucky enough to have one—and truth to tell, yard dogs aren’t interested in being pets. They’re not exactly unfriendly, but they have their own lives to live, and they make no bones about it.
    Then a scrawny yellow bitch had a litter under the back porch, and we didn’t know a thing about it till three little balls of brownish fluff waddled out. Coleman was entranced. But their mama growled if anybody got too near. (Coleman named her Nana after the Peter Pan dog—I can’t imagine how she knows about Peter Pan. Did that Gloria read to her? Seems unlikely.)
    Three days later, two of the puppies had disappeared, and Nana looked miserable. She didn’t even protest when Coleman picked up the remaining puppy. Coleman cuddled the little dog—she named him Peter—and fretted over the