Henry's Sisters by Cathy Lamb

Author:Cathy Lamb
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780749008284
Publisher: Allison & Busby
Published: 2010-03-18T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I did the best I could at the bakery in the upcoming days, but my body still felt like it had swords sticking through it. I was wiped out from the torture chamber my sleep had become, emotionally shredded by how I’d hurt so many people, and upset about Bao.

Belinda had come in, her mouth squirming around in distress when she saw my face, and refused to take her nap.

She started weeping and wailing and trudged out, shaking her head. Janie ran after Belinda, but she took a swing at Janie, cuffing her in the cheek. That she hit Janie upset Belinda even more and she threw her hands up in the air and dropped a black plastic bag she was carrying. A bottle of jasmine-scented lotion thunked to the ground.

Janie tried to hug her, but she struggled away and ran off, pushing her creaking shopping cart ahead of her, her coat flapping, her boots making squishy sounds, her cat’s head with the dirty pink bow bopping above the black trash bags.

It was terrible to watch that scene with poor Belinda, but what I found out inside Bao’s little home – and I mean little – had about killed me.

Bao’s tiny garden, separated from the others by that white picket fence, was the same sort of garden an angel would have, I was sure of it.

There was a white trellis overhanging about half of it with pots of flowers hanging from hooks. A glass table and one white chair sat in the middle of a minute green lawn, with two flowering cherry trees and the tulip tree bordering the grass. Flowers and shrubs of all shades and colours bloomed along the border, not a weed to be seen.

He had constructed several little arbours for various vines, their purple and white blossoms half the size of my face. A collection of old watering cans on one fence and a collection of birdhouses on another seemed so…artful. Wind chimes hung from hooks and birdhouses from the trees. In a sunny corner, down a teeny gravel path, he had a beautiful rose garden.

But where beauty bloomed outside, inside was dreary, although perfectly clean and orderly.

Bao lived in one room. There was a tiny kitchen, a bed, perfectly made with a blue blanket, and a wooden table and two wooden chairs.

That was it. Except for three frames hanging on the wall. This was where we sat together, after he’d tackled me, when his eyes finally focused and he returned from the war in his head.

‘Is this your family?’ I asked Bao, as he drank the tea I poured him, his face drawn. The photo was of Bao and a woman and four children, all smiling, in front of a pretty house with jungle foliage framing the sides.

‘Yes, that my wife. My children. My little children. Sweet children. Sweet smiles.’ His face was bleak, but blank, too, as if agony had sucked out his emotions on this topic.

‘They killed in our village. All of them.

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