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. two get a good . . . night’s . . . sleep?”
    We assured her we had. I asked, “How long will this operation take, Mama?”
    “Dr. Willingham said about . . . an hour if the lump is . . . just . . . a lump.” Her voice floated up like petals on water.
    The clock on the wall read 7:30. I held her hand.
    A man swooped into the room pushing a gurney. “Morning, Mrs. Quinlin. I’m Nigel and I’m here to take you down to the OR. Ready?”
    “Don’t know . . . if I’ll ever be . . . ready,” Mama sighed.
    He helped her scoot onto the rolling bed, transferred her IV line and headed out the door. We walked beside the bed as he pushed it down the hall. At the elevator, Nigel said, “There’s a family waiting room down the hall. Or you can wait in her room. The surgeon will call you when she’s in recovery.”
    The doors closed and the three of us stood staring in disbelief, like people watching a bus that had left them behind. “Let’s wait in her room,” Papa said.
    Papa had arranged for a television to be put into Mama’s room, and the
Today Show
was playing. Hosts Jim Hartz and Barbara Walters were introducing newscaster Frank Blair. The anchor-man reported the latest world events, and the big story was about how President Ford had offered clemency to Vietnam War draft dodgers. Footage of helicopters and foot soldiers and fiery jungles played, then cut to video of protesters marching with antiwar signs and shouting, “Hell no! We won’t go!” as the reporter talked. Clemency meant that anyone who’d refused to fight in the war could come home again without being arrested or fined. Like my childhood games, the President was calling, “All-y, all-y, in free.”
    Adel stared at the small TV screen and its images of war and I saw tears in her eyes.
    “That doesn’t seem right,” Papa said, for he was watching too. “Our boys died in those jungles and over here they burned our flag and spit on all our government stands for. Now Mr. Ford says it doesn’t matter. That those cowards can skulk back home and join daily life like nothing ever happened. I’ve been to too many funerals of boys who loved their country and did their duty to think this is right.” I knew Papa’s Southern sense of justice was offended. “But what should I expect from a man who pardoned Richard Nixon?” he added with disgust.
    Fascinated, I watched as dark helicopters rose over burning jungles. It was all so far away from Georgia’s red clay and my life in Conners. And from my mother lying on an operating table under a surgeon’s knife. Mama also was fighting a war. Only God could grant her clemency.
    When the phone in the room finally rang, I jumped to my feet. Papa took the receiver, listened, said, “Thank you, Doctor,” and hung up. “Your mother’s in recovery and awake,” he told us. “We can go see her.”
    I quickly looked at the clock and saw that almost three hours had passed since Nigel had taken Mama to the operating room. I got a sick feeling in my stomach. Three hours gone meant that the lump had not been friendly and my mother had lost her breast.

Four

    The recovery room held several patients, all bedded down behind white curtains. I don’t know why I thought Mama would be the only person there and that a troop of nurses would be hovering around her bed, but that was not the case. She lay with IVs in her arm and wires that led to a machine keeping track of her heartbeat. We crowded around her bed like boats around an island searching for safe harbor before a storm. I could see a bandage at the neck of her hospital gown.
    “Hi,” Mama said. “It’s all over.” Her voice sounded hoarse and her lips looked parched.
    “You did fine, Joy,” Papa said.
    “I know the truth,” Mama said. “I have cancer.”
    “You
had
cancer,” I whispered. “They cut it out.”
    “The surgeon said it’ll take some time before the full pathology report comes back from the lab.”
    Papa leaned over and cupped her