“She needs her medicine tonight. And Doctor Owen won’t be back till the morning,” the doctor said. “He’ll have to sign her out.”
“I want her released now,” Flannery said, dismissing him. She pressed her hand over Mama’s.
“Help me,” Mama whispered.
Flannery cringed. Mama’s plea, her frail voice brought back Patsy’s last plea for help. “Now,” Flannery ordered the doctor, and then again louder over her shoulder, “right now.” Flannery turned and showed him the fury in her eyes.
“Doctor Owen is the only one who can do that, little lady,” the doctor clipped as he walked out the door. The nurse shuffled after him as if she wanted to talk to him without Flannery hearing.
Mama tried to rise, but slumped back whimpering. Flannery pulled her chair up to the iron bed and took Mama’s cold, shaky hand. “Just rest, Mama.”
They both remained silent for a good spell.
Finally Flannery said, “You’ll be okay.”
“I just wanted to hold the newborns,” Mama said weakly. “The nurse said she couldn’t be bothered to rock them.”
“It’s okay.” Flannery tried to smile.
“That one nurse was the worst.” Mama sniffled. “Said I wasn’t even worth the air in the resuscitator can. Pinched my arms down with her knee while the large one put those tight straps on me.” Mama rubbed her smarting arms.
“I’m sorry, Mama. You’re safe now.” Flannery leaned over and hugged, squeezed her gently.
“I was scared.”
“I’m here now.” Flannery shifted. “Mama, listen, the doctors want you to leave home. I want you to come back to the city with me.”
Mama’s tired eyes grew big. “Live in Louisville? Leave home?”
“It’ll be nice. There’s a cute studio down the street from me. A neighbor mentioned it’ll be available at the end of the summer. And there’s a big fabric store around the block. You can sew up a storm, make us some pretty dresses. Wouldn’t that be nice?” Flannery forced a smile and pulled Mama’s hand to her mouth and kissed it lightly. “Sew as much as you want and—”
“Leave Glass Ferry? Leave Patsy and Honey Bee and the babies?”
“We’ll come back and visit the graves. I promise. The doc thinks it would be good for you to get away. We can sell the old house now. It’s too much for you, Mama.” Flannery rocked Mama’s hand in hers. “Too much work.”
“I—I just wanted the pearls. I didn’t mean to cause—”
Flannery saw embarrassment in Mama’s eyes.
“I know.” She hated that Mama needed that old broken strand, those precious pearls, the broken lifeline, precious moments that were lost to both of them.
“I heard the nurses call me crazy. That one mean one called me a ninny and said it would serve me right to go to the old cuckoo asylum.”
Flannery rubbed Mama’s hand. “You’re not going anywhere but with me.”
Mama grew quiet for a few minutes, then said, “Where will I put all my stuff? And Patsy’s and Honey Bee’s? I can’t leave my baby boys’ cradle. All those things from my life, their sweet memories I kept to keep giving me life? I can’t lose any more of them, not another single piece. It’s all I have left now.” Mama balled up the hospital sheet in her other hand, squeezed.
“You have me. And don’t you worry none; I’ll help you pack everything you need. We’ll try to take as much as we can, and we can always store the rest.”
“When? When do I have to say good-bye?”
“I don’t have to be back to teaching until late August. I have to get my classroom ready for September. We’ll leave in August. Okay, Mama?”
A shame and brokenness filled Mama’s eyes as a hopelessness settled into her frail shoulders and rocked them both, and she sobbed, bobbing her head in defeat.
“All is lost.” Mama covered her trembling lips, smothering a cry. “Just like with your brothers. Just like then . . .”
Flannery couldn’t look at her, knew that she could never look at her again if she didn’t do something. She pulled her tired bones up from the chair. Kneeling down beside the bed, she laid her head on Mama’s belly like she had when she was young and needed comforting.
In a few minutes, Mama stroked her hair. “My baby,” she said softly.
I’ll go to the trooper tomorrow. Tell him everything. I must do the right thing for Mama.
“My angel, my good girl,” Mama said in a splintered voice. “You’re all I have now. Oh, Lord, I couldn’t live without you. Couldn’t bear it. Thank you, Heavenly Father, for my sweet Flannery.”
Hearing that, Flannery stiffened, knowing she could never tell. Not ever. And filling with brokenness and drowning misery, she allowed herself a moment, just a small one, and pressed her mouth into the folds of Mama’s gown and found a measure of relief in her Mama’s soft arms. She sobbed quietly for babies, Mama’s and her own, and for what she’d done, and what she’d become.
Flannery vowed to do away with the pearls. Maybe it would help some. Yes. She’d bury it all, and shed herself of the secrets, the lies, and now the deadly sin of omission that had stained her and would surely send her to Hell.
Flannery stayed at Mama’s side till midnight, growling at the nurses with her eyes, keeping them out of Mama’s room with her hovering arms.
When the shift changed, a nurse appeared, saying she knew Mama from their early school days before she’d moved away to another county. Quietly, she told Flannery to go home and rest, promising she’d watch over her dear old chum.
The kind nurse convinced her, and, exhausted, Flannery went home to shower and rest.
CHAPTER 31
Early the next morning in Mama’s sewing room, Flannery found an old, empty cookie tin that Mama had set aside for stray buttons. Minutes later Flannery walked toward Ebenezer Road with the tin in one hand and Mama’s small gardening shovel in the other. On Ebenezer, she saw the big bull gate that blocked cars from going down the dead-end road.
She stopped and called up the voices: hers, Patsy’s, Danny’s, and Hollis’s. They were always louder here, her conscience hay-wiring with her racing worries.
Flannery slipped easily around the gate and hurried past the cemetery and over to the elm. She began digging around the tree at a weak spot where she found soft dirt that didn’t run into shallow roots.
After she dug a hole big enough, Flannery opened the tin and touched the bullet and Mama’s lovely pearls. Patsy had looked so beautiful that evening. And Flannery cringed, remembering her sister standing right here, frantic to find them. “Don’t go . . . Help me . . .”
Flannery wept at that, and again begged God to forgive her, dropping her sins and grief into the dark Kentucky soil, soaking it with regrets and more prayers. She thought maybe if she’d given her sister the pearls Patsy would have made it to the prom. Made it to Chubby’s even. Flannery should have been proud of her beautiful sister, happy to see her, happy to wait on her in front of Violet, Bess, and the others that night.
What Flannery wouldn’t give to change it all. To give Patsy the night she’d dreamed of, instead of the jealousy and harsh words she’d left her with. Give those stolen minutes back to her sister that she had let the devil snatch away.
Flannery covered the hole with the mound of soil, tamping it down with her foot, piling dead leaves on top, hoping to lay to rest her own tormented soul.
CHAPTER 32
2002
When Jean Butler passed away in the summer of 2002, Flannery took her ninety-one-year-old mother back home to Glass Ferry and buried her in the marble orchard on Butler Hill, right beside Flannery’s baby brothers, Patsy, and Honey Bee, and under the arms of the two-hundred-year-old chinquapin oak.