Garden of Angels Read Online Free PDF Page B

cheek. “Don’t you go worrying about it, you hear? Right now, you just rest and get your strength back. We’ll be waiting for you in your room.”
    Her eyes filled with tears. “I love you all so much.”
    “We love you too,” Adel said, tears running down her cheeks.
    I longed to throw my arms around my mother and not let go, but the tubes and wires and her frailty overwhelmed me. I wanted to run far away from this place where pain-filled voices calling out to nurses for relief floated around the room like whispering ghosts. I wanted time to absorb the bad news, to think about this plague that had fallen on my mother so undeservedly.
    “Come on, girls,” Papa said. “Let’s let your mother rest.”
    I fled the recovery room ahead of the others.
    On Friday morning Mama was sitting up in bed when we came to visit. Her left arm was wrapped in an Ace bandage and held up by pulleys anchored to a contraption next to her bed. “To keep the swelling down,” she told us. Long tubes were visible under her bedclothes. “Drainage tubes,” she explained. “The nurses empty them a couple times a day. And they change the bandages too.”
    I saw Adel shudder, but I didn’t let on that it affected me one bit.
    “I’ll be taking the girls home today. Then I’ll be coming back to stay awhile,” Papa said.
    “But your job—” Mama started.
    “Will be there waiting for me when this is all over,” Papa finished. “I’m the boss, remember?”
    Both Adel and I protested being taken home, but Papa wouldn’t put up with it. “There is nothing for the two of you to do here. Your mother needs her rest and you both have obligations. I expect you both to stay at home and carry on life as usual. I will bring your mother home when the doctor says I can. In the meantime, I will call home every night and we can talk to one another.”
    I expected Adel to persuade Papa otherwise. She had strategies for getting her way with him, but now, when I was counting on her to use her bag of tricks, she just nodded and agreed to his mandates. “We’ll keep things in order,” she said.
    Out in the hall, Papa looked me in the eye and said, “Adel is in charge.”
    I started to protest. Papa didn’t give me a chance.
    “I don’t want your mother to worry one iota about what’s going on in her house. I expect the house to be clean, meals prepared, clothes washed and squabbling kept to a minimum. Do I make myself clear?”
    “Yes, Papa,” I said, torn between wanting to object and knowing better.
    “Say your goodbyes to your mama, and let’s get going. It’s a long drive.”
    We did and it was all I could do to keep from bawling. Papa told Mama he’d see her Saturday around lunchtime and kissed her goodbye. Finally, we left Emory and headed out of Atlanta toward Conners, leaving Mama behind. It hardly seemed like a week had passed since I’d stood in the school halls talking to Becky Sue about homework and setting plans for the weekend. Just a single week gone out of September 1974, yet somehow I felt years older. And a whole lot sadder.
    After breakfast on Saturday, Papa packed and left. Adel and I stood on the veranda and watched his car disappear around the corner. “Come on,” Adel said. “We’ve got chores.”
    Her bossing me was starting already, and Papa not gone two minutes. “I thought I’d work in the yard,” I said politely. “You know how Mama loves her gardens, and they need tending.”
    To my surprise, Adel said, “That’s a good idea. I’ll start in the house.”
    The weather was cooler and the sun was shining as I walked to the garden shed and dragged out tools. I set to work pruning the butterfly bushes, Latin name
Buddleia,
and clipping the dead and dying clusters off the hydrangeas. I was making a mental list of what I had to do to keep the gardens beautiful until Mama could work them again when Becky Sue came around the corner of the house.
    “Hey,” she said. “I waited as long as I could before