Connections Read Online Free PDF

the time she was in the hospital.
    One day Martin told her he’d be coming over the weekend and would see her in person. When she heard them arrive—Martin and his wife and their son—she went across the hall. When she realized what they were doing, she frantically yelled from the doorway, “What she gonna do when she com-a home?”
    “I’m afraid my mother-in-law won’t be coming home.” Marliese’s daughter-in-law, with her platinum hair and long fingernails with very white moons, dismissed Rosa. But Martin sat her down and patted her shoulder. “We know how good you’ve been to Mother, especially since she got sick. You were her dearest friend. Still are. I know it hurts you. It hurts us too. To have to do it.” He spoke to her as if she were a child. Or senile. “But she’s worse, much worse, than after the first one, and the doctor says there’s no way she can come home. The rehab center can’t do anything more for her. She’ll be going into a nursing home this week.”
    Rosa stayed and watched them go through the closets, move the knickknacks, examine the silver. She saw a balled-up cardigan on the floor and automatically picked it up. She gently folded the sleeves back, bent it in half, and put it on top of a pile of clothes. “This she’s gonna need in the winter.”
    “That pile is for the Salvation Army.”
    “What? You mean you give all-a this stuff away?” Rosa’s stomach churned.
    Martin and his wife looked knowingly at one another. “Of course, you can go through it and anything you want, anything that fits, you’re welcome to.” The woman’s voice reminded Rosa of diet soda. It seemed sweet. Until the artificial sugar went down and left a bitter aftertaste.
    There was noise; greetings. She knew it was Marliese’s sister from Arizona. That must be her husband and her two sons. Then Martin’s daughter and son-in-law came. She’d be the one who had the baby. Marliese had never seen her great-grandchild, and Rosa knew she kept hoping they would bring the baby to her. “When the weather gets warmer,” they said. Then, when the weather got warmer, they said, “Wait ’til it gets a little cooler out.”
    They were all polite when they said hello to Rosa. “Oh, I remember you from when I was a little kid.” Or “You still have that funny little dog?”
    Dully, Rosa sat down on the couch, a smile frozen on her lips.
    “What the hell is this supposed to be?”
    “Why did Grandma keep this, do you suppose?”
    “Put that on the give-away pile.”
    “Who do you think will give us a bigger tax write-off—the Salvation Army or Goodwill?”
    “This is disgusting. Can you imagine keeping it all these years?”
    “Oh, let’s just throw these out; I’d be too embarrassed to donate them to charity.”
    “Do we have another carton for garbage?”
    “Who wants this table? Barbara, maybe you could stick it somewhere in your basement.”
    Every sentence jabbed at Rosa’s heart as she listened to and watched a lifetime of mementos being discarded, while the descendants of a wonderful lady threw her heritage—and their own—into the garbage. It didn’t matter what country it was; these possessions were from another world, from a childhood and a family long gone. They were part of Marliese Vilmer. Rosa shuddered to see how they were sorted out so impersonally. Oh, they didn’t put the cut crystal from the great-grandmother in the donation pile. They weren’t stupid. But the faded, frayed photograph of a nameless ancestor? That they put into the big black plastic bag.
    Rosa had gone home, shaking. It could just as easily be Italy as Germany , she thought. Then she lovingly touched the few meager reminders of her own childhood, wondering what would happen to them when she died. Who would go through her things and look in her drawers? Hold up her old-fashioned corset and laugh, asking, “Would you believe the old girl still wore something like this?” She didn’t have anything worth