Garden of Angels

by Lurlene McDaniel

  “That girl’s a born troublemaker,” I said. Donna McGowen was pretty but didn’t have the good sense of a grasshopper. She wasn’t happy unless a boy was mooning over her. She and J.T. had been on and off together for years. “I hope they make each other miserable, because they truly deserve each other,” I said. “Anything else?”

  “I heard Carole and Jim are picking up that brother of hers at the Atlanta airport today,” Becky said. “So I’m figuring he’ll be at teen group tomorrow night. You’ll come, won’t you?”

  I was curious about Jason, and I sort of felt sorry for him, being forced to come live with his sister. Kids never got much say-so about life. Someone was forever telling us what to do or not to do. “I’ll be there,” I said. Silently, I vowed to be nice to him. Mama would say it was the Christian thing to do. I just figured that misery would love some company.

  After church on Sunday, Adel fixed dinner, always a big family meal at our house, and the two of us sat in the dining room mostly staring at our plates, neither of us having an appetite. “Meat’s dry,” I said.

  “Put some gravy on it,” Adel said.

  The gravy was lumpy, but I thought it best to keep that to myself. Just then, the phone rang and Adel groaned. “Will you get that?” she asked. “I just don’t think I can listen to one more well-wishing, good-intentioned friend wanting information about Mama going to the hospital.”

  I jumped up and went to the kitchen, where the downstairs phone hung on the wall. I answered it and a deep male voice asked, “Is Adel there?”

  Now, men calling Adel was nothing new to me, except that this voice didn’t sound like anyone’s I’d heard before. It had an odd, non-Southern accent. “Who may I say is calling?” I asked in my most polite manner.

  He said, “Barry. That is, Specialist Fourth Class Barry Sorenson.”

  A soldier. “This is her sister, Darcy,” I said, again using my best voice. “Just a minute and I’ll get Adel.”

  When I told her who was on the phone, Adel let out a little squeal and ran for the stairs. “I’ll take it upstairs,” she said. I returned to the kitchen and passed the news on to Barry. Seconds later, Adel came on the line. “Hi. How are you?” she said in a breathless, sexy voice. I cringed but didn’t hang up. I’d seen my sister trot out her charm many times before and thought it sugary and nauseating.

  “Hi to you,” Barry said. “I missed you at the club last night. I was wondering if you are all right.”

  “I—wait a minute. Darcy, if you are still on that phone, hang up this instant. This is a personal conversation.” Adel’s instructions sounded sharp and demanding.

  “I’m hanging up,” I told her, taking my sweet time. “Bye, Barry. Nice talking to you.”

  I had something to tell Becky Sue. Something that didn’t involve my mother or any sadness. Adel had a soldier boy hooked on her line. I wondered just how long it would take for her to reel him in.

  That evening Carole stopped me in the hall just outside the teen room. “Darcy, Jim and I went to see your mother after we met Jason’s plane yesterday. She seems in good spirits.”

  Carole was only six years older than Adel, and Mama had taken Carole under her wing. Carole was shy and, I learned later, scared about even coming to the South, what with stories about violence over desegregation standard fare on Northern newscasts when she was growing up. Which weren’t true for the most part. Why, everybody in Conners went to school together, blacks and whites, and nobody ever thought twice about it. And the thing I’d learned was that there were some nice black kids and some mean ones, but not one of them, black or white, was as hateful as J. T. Rucker. Anyway, Mama let Carole start a ladies’ Bible study in our house because Carole needed confidence, and women would come to Mama’s house just because Mama said so. Soon everybody thought the world of Carole and she fit right in with our town.

  Now, looking at Carole, I could see that my mother’s troubles were affecting her deeply. “It must have meant a lot to Mama to see a friendly face from home,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “We all held hands and prayed for her quick and complete recovery. It was a comfort to both of us.” She patted my hand. “Joy’s a wonderful woman, and I know God must have big plans for her.”

  I hoped God had told this to Carole directly, because he wasn’t saying much to me about my mother. “Thank you,” I repeated. “Becky told me Jason was coming tonight.”

  Carole sighed. “Yes, but under protest.”

  From the room, we heard guitar music, which meant that Pastor Jim had started the meeting. We went inside, and I stepped over kids sitting on the floor in order to sink down beside Becky. I saw Jason instantly. He was sitting by himself, his back against the wall, and he didn’t look happy. He wore a worn leather jacket and jeans—and nobody wore jeans to church, so he really looked out of place. His hair was straight and light brown and too long, his skin tanner than I’d have imagined for someone living in Chicago. His gaze flicked over us and I saw that his eyes were bright green and intense, his lips full, his expression defiant. I liked his looks and thought his sharp, angular features attractive, almost dangerous looking. My cheeks began to feel warm and I looked away, afraid someone would see the effect he was having on me.

  Becky leaned toward me. “Cute, isn’t he?” she whispered in my ear.

  “Passable,” I said.

  After several songs, Pastor Jim put down his guitar and introduced Jason. “As most of you know by now, Carole’s brother, Jason Polwalski, will be living with us and attending Conners High School this year. I hope all of you will make him feel welcome.”

  We waved and greeted him politely as a group. Jason surveyed us coolly. Jim cleared his throat and I could tell he wasn’t thrilled with Jason’s less-than-enthusiastic response to us. “We’re going to continue our Bible study in Luke,” Jim said. “If you’ll open your Bibles to Luke Eleven . . .”

  Without a word, Jason stood up and walked out of the room.

  I looked for Jason in the halls at school on Monday but didn’t see him until after lunch. He stood out from the regulars. His clothes were wrong and his expression continually said Back off. Over the next several days, I thought about ways to reach out to him but kept drawing a blank. I was a lowly ninth grader and he was a senior. Besides, every time I saw him, I had strange reactions. My palms perspired, my heart raced, and my face felt warm, like I might be catching something. I’d never experienced such things around a boy before, so I didn’t quite know how to handle it. I could have talked it over with Becky Sue but figured she might take to teasing me about it, and I sure didn’t want that!

  I was in my room doing homework, thinking over Jason and smelling the burnt aroma of supper being prepared by my sister, when she yelled, “Darcy! Come down here quick and see what the news is saying.”

  I bolted down the stairs and into the living room, where Adel stood in front of the television. There on the screen, in living color, sat Walter Cronkite, and he was saying that Betty Ford, wife of our President, Gerald Ford, had been diagnosed with breast cancer and would undergo surgery.

  Adel and I looked at each other in utter amazement. It was September 30, and the wife of our country’s President was going through the same thing our mama was going through. Breast cancer was a scourge and definitely no respecter of persons. It had attacked two fine women, and I was certain that I knew what Betty Ford’s family was feeling at the moment. They were frightened. Same as us.

  Five

  October

  “Jason has a motorcycle,” Becky Sue told me on Wednesday as we were walking home from school. “I saw him riding it into the school parking lot this morning from my homeroom window. He was tardy.”

  “Really?” I said. It made him all the more interesting to me because motorcycle riders were unusual in Conners. We all lusted after our own car, but few families had more than one. Mostly the kids in our school drove beat-up pickup trucks, shared the family car or rode in groups in friends’ cars. Usuall
y only troublemakers rode motorcycles. “So do you think you’d like to take a ride on it?” I wanted to get Becky’s reaction.

  “Are you serious? My daddy would kill me if I ever got on a motorcycle. How about you?”

  “What Papa doesn’t know won’t hurt me,” I said, letting her know that if I ever got the chance, I would take it. “I’m sure it’s a one-in-a-million shot anyway. He keeps to himself.” Nobody at school was friendly to him. Not even me, but that was mostly because my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth whenever I was near him, which was rarely.

  “Russell told me that J.T. and his football buddies stole Jason’s gym clothes yesterday so he couldn’t dress out. Coach chewed him out in front of the whole class. Really embarrassed Jason.”

  I felt offended for Jason’s sake. “J.T. is such a royal pain. And after Pastor Jim made a special request for us to treat Jason nice. Why is J.T. such a jerk?”

  “Does he need an excuse? How’s your mama?” Becky Sue changed the subject.

  “Papa’s bringing her home today.” And was I ever ready to have her home. Adel had done a passable job of keeping the house in order, but I was about starved for Mama’s cooking. During the week gone by, I’d eaten more food singed around its edges than I cared to think about.

  By suppertime, Papa hadn’t shown up, so Adel and I sat down to more of her pitiful cooking. I poked the lump of meat on my plate with my fork. “What is it?”

  “Pork chop,” she said.

  “Do the pigs know how bad you’re treating their kin?”

  “Just eat it.”

  “I can’t cut it,” I said.

  Adel opened her mouth to blast me, but just then the phone rang. She threw down her fork, saying, “I’ll get it.” She hurried to the kitchen.

  “Saved by the bell,” I muttered. She always ran for the phone now and I figured it was because she was hoping for another call from her soldier boy, Barry. When she didn’t return, I made another stab—literally—at eating the pork chop. “Poor fellow,” I said to the slab of overcooked meat, not sure if I was pitying the chop or the soldier.

  Finally Adel came to the table. She looked upset. “That was Papa,” she said. “He’s not coming back tonight, and neither is Mama. Her doctors want her to start radiation and chemotherapy treatments.”

  “What!” I could hardly contain my disappointment. “But why?”

  Adel shook her head and I could see she was pretty upset. “It’s just what they have to do now. To make sure the cancer’s killed.”

  “You telling me everything?”

  “I’m telling you what Papa said. She starts radiation tomorrow. Chemo next week.”

  “How long?”

  “A month to six weeks.”

  I was so shocked, I sputtered, “Six weeks! That’s forever!”

  “Papa said he’ll be home tomorrow after her first treatment and that he’ll take us to visit this weekend.”

  “Why can’t she come home to have radiation and chemo?”

  “Conners doesn’t have the equipment for radiation treatments, and Mama has to get the treatments five days a week. And the chemo is no walk in the park either. She’s better off staying near the hospital at Emory.”

  I knew that what Adel was saying was true, because ours was a small town with one doctor, a dentist who only came through twice a week and one emergency medical care clinic run by Dr. Keller, the lone doctor. If a person wasn’t bleeding or in danger of dying quickly, he had to go to a hospital in either Atlanta to the north or Macon to the south. I began to see that despite my fondness for my hometown, Conners had some shortcomings. “So she’s just going to live in the hospital?” I felt cheated.

  “Papa said she’ll become an outpatient. He said that private homes around the area rent out rooms for short terms. He’s going to rent one for Mama.”

  “I can’t believe Mama has to live with strangers. There should be a special hotel run by the hospital so that families can stay together.”

  “It’s the way things are, for now,” Adel said, picking up her plate of barely eaten food.

  I picked up mine and followed her into the kitchen. I’d completely lost my appetite, and for once I couldn’t blame it on my sister’s cooking.

  On Saturday morning, before we left for Emory, I took an enormous vase out into the yard and cut flowers from the gardens. I filled the vase with sprays of pink and purple crepe myrtle blossoms, autumn roses, hydrangeas, the last of the summer’s black-eyed Susans and the first of the fall mums.

  I climbed into the backseat holding the huge arrangement, and Papa asked, “Did you leave anything in the yard, honey?”

  “I just want Mama to enjoy her gardens,” I said. “Until she can come see them again for herself.”

  “The flowers are fine,” Papa said. “I’m sure she’ll be pleased.”

  She was. When I walked into the room with the vase, her whole face lit up. She hugged us all, begged us for news from home. Adel chattered about household things and I told her about school; the upcoming high school football game against Redford, a rival of Conners for years; and the arrival of Jason and J.T.’s lack of consideration toward him.

  “I’ve met Jason,” Mama said. “Jim and Carole stopped by on their way home from the airport and he was with them. He seemed like an unhappy young man, so I hope you’ll be kind to him, Darcy. I know what it feels like to be far away from home. I’m sure he’s missing all things familiar.”

  “Do you know if he plays football?” I asked out of the blue.

  “No, I don’t know. Why do you ask?”

  “No reason,” I said.

  Mama was dressed in regular clothes, but she looked pale and thinner than when I’d last seen her. I could tell she was having trouble moving her arm, wrapped in an elastic sleeve. She held a small rubber ball that she kept squeezing. “The sleeve keeps the swelling down, and the ball squeezing is an exercise to help me get my strength in my arm back,” she said, seeing me staring. “I still have a drainage tube in place.”

  It had to have been hidden beneath her clothes because I couldn’t see anything. “I sure wish you were coming home, Mama,” I said.

  “Me too. But I can’t.” She forced a quick smile. “They tell me that the radiation makes a person dog-tired, and that the chemo makes a person dog-sick, so it’s better I stay here anyway.”

  “And then it’ll all be over? You’ll be well and won’t have to come back here again?”

  “I’ll have to come in for regular blood tests.”

  In my mind, I’d figured that over meant over, but with cancer it must not mean that at all.

  “All your friends are asking about you,” Adel said. “I don’t know what to tell them.”

  Mama sighed. “I guess I can’t keep this a secret. Carole’s already told the Women’s Prayer Fellowship, so if you don’t want to answer questions, tell people to call Carole.”

  I felt better knowing that the First Baptist prayer warriors were storming heaven on Mama’s behalf. God would have to listen to them!

  “You know what?” Papa interjected. “I’m getting a wheelchair from the nurses’ station and we’re taking your mother out for a walk around the grounds. It’s a beautiful day and getting outside will cheer us all up.”

  So that’s what we did. Papa pushed Mama, and Adel and I walked on either side. Somewhere someone was burning leaves, because the October air smelled faintly of smoke. Trees were taking on the colors of autumn and the sky was a brilliant shade of blue shot through with sunlight.

  Mama tipped back her head and opened her arms wide toward the sky. “Fall is surely my favorite time of year,” she said. “Next to spring. Nothing’s better than the smell of fresh earth, or prettier than flowers and trees beginning to bloom.”

  “By spring this will all be over,” Papa said. “You’ll be digging up the beds and putting in flowers.”

  Mama looked over at me. “Darcy, the hostas will need cutting down and the bulbs should be brought out of
the cellar for planting.”

  “I’ll do it, Mama,” I said.

  “Nothing’s going to stop my gardens from blooming in the spring. Not even cancer.”

  We all agreed. Our mama had a fighting spirit, and nothing brought it out quicker than the fear of her gardens going fallow.

  We started home in the late afternoon, after a tearful goodbye. I was in a funk in the backseat and didn’t notice for a long time that Papa was driving a different route home. A fence ran along the road we were traveling. Signs read Property of the United States Army, and then all at once a booth with a wooden guardrail loomed in front of us. A uniformed man wearing an MP armband stepped out. Papa stopped and gave his name, and the MP checked his name off a list on the clipboard he held, put a card that read Visitor’s Pass under our windshield wiper and waved us through the gate.

  I couldn’t keep silent any longer. “Where are we going?”

  “I’m meeting Barry,” Adel said.

  I couldn’t figure when she’d made those arrangements with Papa. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.

  “I didn’t think I had to clear it with you,” she answered.

  “It would have been nice to know,” I said huffily.

  “Calm down, ladies,” Papa said. “Let’s not start a war right here on Georgia soil.”

  Papa drove along neat, well-ordered streets, and I looked out onto open fields with rows of wooden barracks and low metal buildings.

  “There it is,” Adel said, pointing at a freestanding white building with a sign reading Enlisted Men’s Club.

  Papa slowed, and the car had barely stopped rolling when Adel jumped out and ran to a man dressed in uniform standing on the steps. He took both her hands and pulled her close.

  Papa parked the car and we walked over to the two of them. When Adel turned, I saw that her cheeks were pink and her eyes glowing. “Papa, Darcy, I want you to meet Barry Sorenson.”

  “Barry Sorenson, Specialist Fourth Class, Electronics,” the man said. He saluted, then shook Papa’s hand. He turned to me. “And I see that beauty runs in the family.”