He took me upstairs to the wing of death, where three black full-time nurses, who’d been this woman’s guardians for the last few years in her own house, feeding her, taking her to the bathroom, sitting beside her in the night and day, were—Bee, Angie, and Joanna, standing over the dying woman, their hands fluttering darkly over her body—over her torso and face—mumbling, crooning prayer words—brushing against her like little ocean waves, ceaselessly, as though helping her soul to depart; it was as though through their flutter of black hands, her soul could free itself of her body, and it was a
...more
