Garden of Angels (3 page)

“It’s all right, Graham.” Mama interrupted our negotiation. “Probably be easier that way. We won’t have to worry about Darcy and Adel pecking at each other.”

Papa glowered at both me and Adel. “Never could understand why the two of you can’t get along. You’re sisters.”

“We get along fine,” Adel said, giving me a look that was more grateful than dismissive because my quick thinking had saved her plans.

Of course, I was doing it out of self-preservation. Everybody knows that a peeved Adel is worse than a roomful of hostile bees.

Two

“What are you going to buy your mom?” I asked Becky Sue. We’d just stepped into Byron’s, where the air felt cool against my skin after our half-mile walk downtown in the muggy morning heat.

“Something on the sale racks,” Becky said. “I’m broke.”

We went to the women’s area of the store and started sorting through the clothes. Most were leftovers from the summer and looked pretty tired. “How about this?” I held up a red-and-white-checked gingham blouse. “It’s not very much.”

“She’ll look like a tablecloth,” Becky said, continuing her search. “What do you think’s wrong with your mama?”

“It’s just tests.”

“But all the way to Emory—”

“I’m worried enough about it, Becky Sue. So stop talking about it, all right?”

Becky shrugged off my sharp tone. “Well, at least Adel’s out of your immediate future.”

It was Becky’s way of reminding me that she had rescued me by letting me spend the day and night with her and so I didn’t need to snap. I said, “I’m sure about Adel seeing a guy at the base. The minute Mama and Papa drove off, she shut her room door and started primping. She’d have been snarling at me all day long.”

That was my way of saying thank you to Becky for rescuing me.

Becky Sue held up another blouse. “This looks like Mom, but it’s too small.”

We resumed our search. By lunchtime we’d bought Mrs. Johnson a purse and were eating lunch at the Woolworth soda counter. “You coming to teen group Sunday night?” Becky Sue asked me.

“I reckon so. Adel’s got choir, but I don’t think Mama and Papa will go to church after the drive home. You be there?” Our families were members of the First Baptist Church on Main Street, which was two blocks from the Second Baptist Church on Main Street. Mama’s kin had been members at the First Baptist Church since the 1860s. It was where Mama and Papa got married. I practically grew up in the pews—Baptists went to church every Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night for potluck supper and all week long during Lent and revival meetings.

“I wouldn’t miss Pastor Jim’s guitar picking for anything,” Becky Sue said.

The church had started a group for teens in 1971 and invited a nice young pastor just out of seminary, Jim Murphy, and his wife, Carole, to come to Conners to assist old Pastor Franklin, who was fixing to retire but hadn’t yet. Pastor Jim was young and full of ideas and we kids liked him. Mama had taken Carole under her wing because Carole grew up in Chicago and didn’t exactly understand all our Southern ways, which Mama said were above anyone’s total understanding.

It was generally assumed that Baptists didn’t drink, dance, swear, play cards or go to the movies, but times were changing, and according to Mama, while drinking and swearing were still off-limits, we’d slowly absorbed the other sins into our daily lives,
and
without incident. That was how Adel got away with going to events at the military base, where everybody knew there was dancing. “Dancing won’t do any harm,” Mama had told the clacking tongues in the garden club. “Why, Jesus himself might have danced at the wedding in Cana. The Bible doesn’t say otherwise.” The old guard didn’t approve, but people liked Mama, so she got away with things others in Conners didn’t.

I took a long sip of my vanilla milk shake. “Carole cornered Mama at the supper Wednesday night and I just happened to overhear something she said.” I paused for dramatic effect. “I think it’s supposed to be a secret.”

“What?” Becky rose to the bait.

“Maybe I shouldn’t say.”

“You better say! Or I’ll have Mom call Adel and say you can’t sleep over.”

I smiled. It was fun getting Becky Sue riled up. “Okay, no need to threaten me.” I glanced around to make sure no one was eavesdropping, then leaned close to Becky’s face. “I heard Carole tell Mama that her and Pastor Jim’s lives were taking a real turn. Seems like they’re getting an addition to their family.”

Becky looked properly surprised. “They’re having a baby?”

“A seventeen-year-old baby,” I said. “I heard Carole say that her kid brother is in all kinds of trouble up in Chicago and that in order to keep him out of
jail
”—I emphasized the word for effect—“she and Pastor Jim were having him come live with them.”

Becky Sue’s eyes grew wide, then narrowed. “Are you making that up? ’Cause if you are . . .”

“Cross my heart,” I said.

“When’s he coming?”

“Didn’t hear that part. I just know he is coming.”

“Wonder if he’s cute,” Becky said.

I rolled my eyes. “I thought your sights were set on Russell.”

“I wouldn’t want to pass up a good opportunity. That is,
if
Carole’s brother is worth looking at.”

“He’s a proven troublemaker and probably homely to boot.”

“Why should he be homely? Carole’s pretty.”

“So’s Adel,” I countered. “But that doesn’t make me pretty.”

Becky Sue measured me with her gaze. “You’re passable. Tall and skinny and flat as a board, but passable.”

I felt my face turning red, knowing I’d stupidly left myself open for Becky’s critique. My build was a sore spot to me. At fourteen, I still lacked the bumps and curves that every other girl in ninth grade had. Mama called me “slow to bloom, just like late summer roses.” But Adel said I’d never bloom because I was too thorny. Truth was, I believed Adel.

Becky must have sensed my discomfort because she quickly added, “Magazine models are tall and slim. Maybe you’ll be one someday.”

“I doubt that,” I said, sliding off the stool. “Come on, let’s go to the movie.”

We paid our bill, then walked outside and across the street, with Becky Sue chattering all the way and me deep into my own thoughts about myself and what was going on with my mother.

I called home Sunday after church because Adel hadn’t shown up for the eleven-o’clock service. “I got home late last night,” she told me.

“Papa won’t like knowing you skipped church,” I said.

“And he won’t know unless someone opens her big mouth.”

“They say when they’ll be home?” I ignored her threat.

“I expect they’ll be here late this afternoon.”

“Then I’m staying over here at Becky’s. We’ll go to teen group together. Will you be at choir practice?”

“I’ll be there. You’re not my conscience, you know,” she added.

“Never wanted to be,” I said. “But the one God gave you seems to be on vacation.” I hung up before she could blast me.

Teen group met in a downstairs room off the kitchen area. The room held two old sofas, some overstuffed chairs and a collection of vinyl bean-bags, plus some folding chairs. Pastor Jim played the guitar and led us in some songs. Carole passed around a platter of cookies and I settled into a beanbag next to Becky’s.

“I have some exciting news,” Carole said. Her face was flushed and she looked more anxious than excited. “My seventeen-year-old brother, Jason Polwalski, is coming for an extended visit next weekend.”

I poked Becky Sue in the ribs and gave her an I-told-you-so glance. All the other kids kept politely silent.

Carole continued. “Jason will be a senior and I would appreciate it if each and every one of you would welcome him and make him feel like a part of the Conners community. I know you all understand how difficult it might be to start in a new school without your friends.” She made eye contact with several of the jocks and more popular kids. “So, I’m asking you as a personal favor to me and Pastor Jim to help Jason find acceptance from this caring Christian community.”

I almost laughed out loud. Some of these kids were about as friendly as vipers. Conners had a pecking order, and because our town was so small, cliques weren’t easy to penetrate. Around these parts, newcomers had to work their way into people’s affections, and the regulars had to warm up to them. I hoped the link with Pastor Jim and Carole would be enough but guessed that Jason was going to have to struggle for a while to belong. Maybe Jason was a jock. That would help. Football players were worshiped as minor gods. If Jason could run, punt or pass, I figured he had a chance.

“She didn’t say a word about
why
Jason’s coming,” Becky Sue whispered to me when the meeting had broken up after our Bible study on the Good Samaritan.

“And don’t you say a word about it either,” I warned. “It’s supposed to be a secret.”

“I never would,” Becky insisted. “Hope Carole’s told the chief of police, though.”

“Unkind,” I said.

“What are you two whispering about? Did I hear the word ‘police’?” J. T. Rucker asked from behind us.

I jumped a foot and that made him laugh. In my frostiest tone, I said, “None of your business.”

He feigned fear. “What are you going to do? Sock me?”

Murder had crossed my mind on more than one occasion when it came to J.T. He might have been the defensive center for the Conners football team and about the size of a tank, but I considered him dumb as a rock and mean as a junkyard dog. I’d always been grateful that he was older than me and that I’d never had to tolerate him in a classroom. “You know, you’re one of the main people Carole was talking to about being nice to her brother,” I told him.

“I’ll be nice.” J.T. had a glint in his eye that said different.

“I’ll just bet you will,” I said.

“Do you know this guy?”

“No.”

“Then why are you so hot on looking out for him?”

“I’m not!”

“I’ll bet you’ve seen his picture and you’d like to jump his bones.”

I felt my face getting red. Why did I always blush in times of pressure? “I know Carole and I like her and she asked real nice for us to be accepting and—”

“Do you know your face gets all red and blotchy when you get angry?”

I balled up my fist, but Becky Sue said, “Church,” and I remembered where we were.

J.T. began to laugh and I stalked off, angrier than I’d been in days. Becky Sue followed me, saying, “Why do you let him get to you like that?”

“I don’t plan on it,” I said, hurrying up the stairs and into the narthex. “It just happens because he’s such a jerk.”

“He’s always been a jerk. But he held Branson back from making a touchdown last week. Won the game for us in a way.”

“And that’s supposed to excuse him from acting like a human being?”

“There you are!” Adel pushed through the wooden inner doors of the sanctuary. Other choir members began to fill the narthex behind her. “Come on. Mrs. Becker is giving us a ride home.”

“I’m going with Becky Sue,” I said. “My stuff ’s still at her house.”

“You can get it later. Papa called just before I came to practice and said he and Mama were on their way home and that when they arrived they wanted to talk to us. Together,” she added before I could say a word.

“What about?”

“They didn’t say. But it sounded important.”

“I’ll leave your things by your front door,” Becky said as Adel all but dragged me out.

I followed Adel to the parking lot and got into Mrs. Becker’s car. “You doing all right, Darcy?” Mrs. Becker asked.

“Just fine,” I lied. I wasn’t doing fine at all.

At the house, I saw our car in the driveway and ran up the walk ahead of Adel. In the kitchen, Mama was sitting at the table and her eyes looked as if she’d been crying. Papa was sitting beside her, but he stood when we came into the room. “Hold up, girls.”

“What’s wrong?” Adel asked.

He and Mama exchanged glances.

I went all cold and clammy. “You all right, Mama?”

She shook her head. “I have to go back to Emory, girls . . . on Wednesday,” she said, her voice a bit hoarse from crying. “I—I have to have an operation.”

Three

“What kind of operation?” Adel got the question out before I could.

Papa put his hand on Mama’s shoulder and she reached up and squeezed his fingers. “It seems I have a lump in my left breast,” she said.

A shockwave went over me. For starters, I had never heard my mother use the word “breast” in a sentence unless it followed the words “Thanksgiving turkey” or “cut-up frying chicken.”

Adel’s sharp intake of breath told me this was bad news that she understood better than I.

“Wh-what’s that mean?” I asked. My voice trembled.

Tears filled Mama’s eyes. “Now, please, girls, let me get through this before we fall apart.” She cleared her throat. “I found the lump myself while I was taking a shower. I went to Dr. Keller last week and he said I needed a mammogram and that the closest facility with such a machine was at Emory. It’s a kind of X-ray machine that takes pictures of the breast. I had the pictures taken yesterday and that’s when the doctor saw the lump clearly.”

Yesterday I had been shopping with Becky, sorting through sale racks, eating lunch and going to the movies without a care in the world while my mother was facing this terrible news.

“Is it big?” Adel asked.

“Big enough,” Mama said. “But now that we know it’s there, the doctors must take it out.”

That made sense to me. “When?” Adel asked.

“The surgery’s on Thursday. That’s why I’m checking in on Wednesday. Afterward, I’ll be in the hospital recovering. That will take a week or more, depending on how I do.”

“A whole week?” I blurted out, dismayed. “But it’s just a lump.”

Adel gave me a hard look. Mama’s expression was kinder. “If it’s a bad lump . . .” Mama’s voice faltered. “If it’s—”

“Cancer.” Papa filled in the word Mama couldn’t bring herself to say.

I recoiled. I’d heard of cancer. People died from cancer.

“What will they do, Mama, if the lump is bad?” I felt cold and numb.

She said nothing.

Adel said, “Please tell us everything, Mama. Don’t hold anything back from us. Please.”

Mama crossed her arms as if to shield herself. “A mastectomy. Surgeons remove the entire breast and some lymph nodes from under the arm.”

I knew a little about lymph nodes from health and hygiene classes. The lymph system made white blood cells, and their job was to fight germs. Why hadn’t her white cells just attacked the cancer and destroyed it?

“Why do they take out lymph nodes?” I asked, determined to hear every detail of this terrible operation.

“To see if the cancer has metastasized.”

I didn’t know what that word meant, but I wasn’t about to ask because it was evident by the expression on Adel’s face that she
did
know and that it wasn’t a good thing. I was still reeling from the information about Mama having her entire breast removed because of one lump.

“But the lump might not be cancer,” I said, sounding hopeful. “It could be just a common, ordinary, everyday garden-variety lump.”

Mama nodded. “That is my hope.”

My head spun with information and words no one should have to hear. I wanted to cry but didn’t dare. It might tell Mama that I didn’t have faith that her lump was nothing at all.

Adel circled the table and crouched in front of Mama. “This can’t be happening to you. It just can’t be.” She laid her head in Mama’s lap, and Mama stroked her hair.

My sister was right. People as wonderful as my mother did not have horrible things like cancer happen to them. Mama was good and kind and loved by everyone who knew her.

“That’s what I’ve been telling myself ever since I saw Dr. Keller, but unfortunately it is happening to me. To all of us, in a way.”

“Which brings me to our next topic,” Papa said. “What’s happening to your mother is family business. I don’t want tongues wagging all over town about this. It isn’t gossip.”

“I’ll be telling people,” Mama said. “But at my own choosing.”

“But people know you went to Emory today for tests. Becky and Mrs. Johnson—”

Mama held up her hand. “You may say that the tests are inconclusive and that I will be returning to Emory midweek for more tests.”

I nodded. “All right, Mama.”

Adel pulled away, found a tissue and wiped her eyes. “I want to be there for your surgery, Mama,” she said.

“You have a job.”

“I’ll quit.”

“Well, if Adel’s going, so am I,” I said.

“Excuse me,” Papa interrupted, his face in a scowl. “Did I just hear you two
sass
?”

“It’s all right, Graham,” Mama said. “This is hard news for all of us. I see no harm in the girls’ coming. It might do me good to wake up and see my family around me if . . .” She paused. “Well, if the news isn’t good.”

“But it will be good news, Mama,” I said with conviction. “I know it will.”

We talked some more, but when Adel and I went upstairs, I grabbed her arm. “Adel, I don’t know what that word ‘metastasize’ means.”

“It means ‘spread.’ It means that cancer has spread into other parts of a person’s body.”

Later in my room, I lay in bed and gazed through the window, staring up at a sliver of the moon peeking from the sky. The night was silent, my room dark, the house quiet and the night air heavy with the scent of a fading summer garden. I folded my hands together and whispered,
Please,
God, let my mama be all right. Don’t let it be cancer.
Don’t let it have already spread
.

We left for Atlanta Wednesday afternoon in the rain, with Papa driving our 1972 Ford Fair-lane, Mama in the front beside him, me and Adel in the backseat. Each of us had packed a small bag because we’d be staying overnight. My teachers had all given me excused absences, and I’d told only Becky Sue about Mama’s tests and that she had to return for more. I knew Becky Sue would tell others, and I knew she suspected I wasn’t telling her everything, but to her credit, she did not pry.

Going to Atlanta was usually a fun event because Mama would take us shopping for back-to-school clothes and sometimes, time permitting, Christmas presents. We hadn’t gone this year before school started because Adel was working and I didn’t care all that much about fashion, so Mama had ordered a few things out of the Sears catalog for me.

The hospital was located on the campus of Emory University, and I stared with fascination at students walking along the sidewalks and going in and out of buildings. It did not seem possible to me that my classroom work back in Conners would prepare me to become a student at any college in only four more years. And yet that was what I had decided to do—leave home and go to college. I began to rethink my commitment and wondered if Papa would mind having two daughters working at his bank should I drop out of the college-prep program.

The entrance lobby of the hospital looked more like the formal room in an old mansion, with fancy carpets and hanging chandeliers. But once we turned the corner, everything changed and we were in sterile-looking hallways with walls painted mint green and smelling of antiseptics and pine cleaners.

We checked my mother into a private room on the fifth floor, and once she was settled in her bed, we were allowed in to see her.

“My surgeon, Dr. Willingham, will be in after supper,” Mama told us. “He’ll operate first thing in the morning.”

I wanted to see this man, the one who had permission to cut off my mother’s breast, but I was fearful that I might kick and scratch him simply because he would dare to touch her.

Mama took Papa’s hand. “You take the girls to supper and check into the hotel. I’ll be fine. Truth is, I’m a bit tired and believe I will sleep a little.”

We kissed her goodbye and Papa drove us to a Howard Johnson motel not too far from the campus, where he had reserved two rooms. Papa was in one room and Adel and I in the other; we would share a double bed. We ate in the motel restaurant, but it was plain to see that none of us had an appetite. Eating out was a rare occurrence for us, and usually enjoyed, but tonight the mashed potatoes and meat loaf stuck in my throat.

Back in the room, I watched Adel going through her nightly rituals while I sat cross-legged on the bed, hugging a pillow to my chest. We hadn’t spoken since we’d said good night to Papa, and I could not stand the sad silence any longer. “It’s not going to be cancer, is it, Adel?”

She was brushing her long black hair and her gaze caught mine in the mirror. “That’s what the operation will tell us,” she said.

“But don’t you have faith that it won’t be cancer?”

“I don’t reckon that my faith will change it one way or the other. It either is, or it isn’t. God’s already decided that.”

“Well, I don’t think it is. I think it’s just a false alarm.” I kept my tone confident because Adel’s lack of confidence scared me. And I sure didn’t want her to rile God with her lack of faith.

She turned to face me. “Grandmother died from this, Darcy. Didn’t you know?”

I stared at her, slack-jawed. “Grandmother had breast cancer?”

“She never recovered from the operation. But she was old,” Adel added hastily. “Mama’s a whole lot younger.”

I tried to remember those days before Grandmother’s funeral. I recalled her being hospitalized, but I hadn’t had a clue as to what was wrong with her. What I remembered most were my mother’s tears and the dark, ominous wreath that had hung on our front door after Grandmother had died. “Poor Grandmother,” I said.

Adel slid into the bed, reached up and flipped the switch on the bedside lamp. Out of the darkness, she said, “Doctors think it runs in families. That it can be passed along.”

If that was true, then Mama might have been cursed from before she was born.

Adel and I lay there in the dark without touching, our backs to one another, each curled up in a ball. I felt tears fill my eyes, and I stuffed a fistful of the wadded sheet into my mouth so that I could cry quietly. It was a long time before I realized that Adel had done the same thing and that she was crying too.

We were at the hospital by seven the next morning. The nurses had already given Mama a sedative, and she was groggy. “You sleep good, Joy?” Papa asked, kissing her forehead.

“They kept . . . waking me up,” Mama said. Her speech sounded slurred. “Hi, girls. You . . . 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.