I, for one, didn’t want to be 150 so I could sit around and watch everybody I cared about die. No way. I’d had enough of death since my mother passed away three years earlier. I was still struggling through holidays and birthdays without her. Couldn’t imagine going through a century and a half worth of the pain of losing my friends and family.
As I struggled with my purse and the laptop bag which I had taken home on Friday but didn’t even get the chance to open over the weekend, out of the blue comes a crew of kids with a microphone, a camera, and a bright light.
“Mrs. Brown! We saw you park in the handicap spot. What do you have to say for yourself?” He thrust the microphone in my face.
I recognized the investigative reporter right away. Michael Higgins. Though a senior, he was barely five feet tall and had tried to add the illusion of an inch to his height with a spiked Mohawk. He was one of those bright kids whose clever ideas sometimes landed him in trouble. In fact, he was on my radar for the senior prank.
For effect, I limped a little deeper as I answered, “Well, Michael, as you can see, my parking spot was taken.” I motioned toward my car. “Also, I’m wearing a sock instead of a shoe, which means I’m hurt. Walking is very painful—”
“But rules are rules, Mrs. Brown. You don’t have a handicap parking sticker, so it’s illegal for you to park there. You wouldn’t encourage us to break or bend the rules due to someone else’s negligence, would you?” he pressed as the camera crew got a little too close to my foot.
“Can you step back, please?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the girl holding the lighting respectfully answered as she yanked her head, signaling for the camera boy to follow my orders—as though her words carried more weight than mine.
I stopped and looked at the camera squarely. Gave my hair a confident flip. “I agree, Michael. It’s wrong for me to break the rules, even under these circumstances. Anyone who breaks rules needs to be prepared to pay the consequences. If I get a ticket, I’ll pay it. At this moment, every step I’ve saved in pain is worth whatever it might cost me financially.”
Then I motioned for the videographer to aim low. “Can you zoom in on my foot? Clearly, it’s swollen. Anyone who has ever stubbed a toe in the middle of the night can empathize with me.”
“Cut!” Michael announced. The camera drooped. All eyes focused on him. “That’s a wrap.”
“Wait a minute! You can’t tell half the story, Michael,” I antagonized him a bit.
He sighed. “We’re chucking this story. It’s too goody two-shoes.”
I joked, “What did you think I was going to do? Deny what I’d done? Make up some kind of a double standard?”
“Ummm…yeah!” he smirked. “The news is supposed to be sensational. Scandalous. Salacious. But you…you’re like being honest about it. Taking responsibility. You’d come off looking like the victim. We’d never win the journalism competition with this story.”
The collective moans let me know I was off the hook.
“Don’t worry. We’ll find something else,” he instructed the team as they walked back to the arts wing. “We’ve got ‘til February.”
“Hey! Any of you private investigators see who parked in my spot?” I asked before they got too far.
“Oh. It’s mine,” camera girl admitted.
“So this was a set-up from the beginning, huh? And who are you, anyway, young lady?” I knew most of the juniors and seniors, but I couldn’t say the same for the underclassmen.
“Janerica Woods.” She batted her fake eyelashes at me timidly.
I liked to see kids with a healthy fear of adults, so I decided to go easy on her. Besides, I had to give them some credit for spending some of the last days of summer break up at the school. They were already working on the yearbook layout and planning for competition. “You guys need to make sure you have your next story approved by Mr. Conway. You baited me into a trap by parking in my spot. It’s called entrapment. Not a good idea,” I warned them.
The girl shot a dangerous glare at Michael, as if to say she’d told him so.
“Move your car, Janerica,” I ordered.
“Okay, Mrs. Brown.”
They scrambled on their way and I hobbled on up to the main entrance of our massive three-story red brick building. I waved the magnetic strip on the back of my ID in front of the school’s security sensor. The door clicked and I entered, giving the front desk staff a quick greeting as I headed down the hall toward my office.
Millicent, my secretary, was the first to notice my limp. “You okay, Mrs. Brown?”
“Yes. Stubbed my toe,” I replied with a yawn.
She trailed me into my office. Since Millicent was twenty years older, I always had a hard time seeing her as my professional subordinate. I couldn’t have asked her to stop following me. Good Southern manners die hard.
“Let me take a look at it,” she said.
Her long brown hair riddled with streaks of gray and the off-centered glasses reminded me so much of Momma. “Okay,” I gave in. “But don’t freak out.”
I dropped my bags at my desk and ambled over to the small, circular meeting table. I sat in one of the cushioned chairs and plopped my injured foot up on another one while Millicent watched with worry written across her lined face.
When I bent over and removed the sock, her expression morphed from worried to repulsed. “Mrs. Brown! You have got to get to a doctor.”
“It’s only a broken toe,” I mumbled, attempting to wriggle my other toes so she’d be satisfied. Unfortunately, the attempt ended with my face contorted in pain.
“Toes are close to vessels. Broken bones can damage veins within your toe. What if it needs a steel rod? I saw on the news one time where this lady lost her leg from the knee down because she didn’t get help after stepping on a sea shell.” Millicent painted the worst-case, most far-fetched scenario, same as Momma would have done.
I can’t count the number of times Momma and I were simply sitting in the back room watching the news and I ended up getting a thirty-minute lecture about something that happened to some child way in North Carolina. “See, Shondra, this is why I don’t let you run wild! If that girl would have been at home, she never would have…” fill in the blank with every calamity imaginable. Let Momma tell it, everyone would be alive today if they’d just stayed at the house.
“That’s like a one in a million chance, Millicent,” I reasoned.
“Well, somebody’s got to be the one, right?” she said, wagging an authoritative finger.
“Well if you think I’m the one, you wanna go buy me some lottery tickets?” I teased.
“No, ma’am,” she declined with a smile. “But I will go get you some ice at least.”
“Thank you, Millicent.”
The bag of ice sat against my foot all morning as I sat across from Jerry Ringhauser, a hulking, jowly man, who was the campus principal. He and I met alongside academic department heads to conduct teacher interviews for the few remaining unstaffed positions. Being so late in the summer, the pickings were slim. The top graduates had jobs lined up before they even walked across the stage. What we had left was a group of people who’d majored in something unmarketable, couldn’t get a job right after graduating and were scrambling for a way to start making their first student loan payments. In other words, candidates for whom teaching was “plan C”.
Nonetheless, we needed teachers as much as the applicants needed jobs. As we questioned each potential employee, I silently asked the Holy Spirit to help us ask the right questions and give discernment about which ones might actually be falling right into their destinies, despite the fact that teaching wasn’t first on their agenda.
But what if I hadn’t been there? What if I had been at home taking care of Zoe and Seth and missed the opportunity to hear from the Lord about something as serious as choosing a remedial reading teacher for my struggling students who would probably end up dropping out of school without the right help? My work at Plainview is
as important as Peaches’ work at home, isn’t it?
“Mrs. Brown, do you have any more questions?” Jerry asked abruptly. That was our pre-arranged cue to end the interview.
“No. I think we’ve heard enough to make a decision,” I said in a phone operator’s tone, standing so that the applicant got the hint. “We’ll be in touch with you in the next few weeks.”
The interviewee, Lyndsie Adams, shook everyone’s hand and promptly left the conference room. Jerry and I talked with Mrs. Sedian about the interview for a short while. None of us wanted Lyndsie on our staff. She was too sarcastic. Borderline obnoxious. We had enough of those on the roster already.
Mrs. Sedian, who had just used up one of her precious summer days to interview for her English department, grabbed her purse. “Call me when you get the next interview scheduled.”
“We’ll keep looking,” I assured her as she left the room. “And thanks for coming in.”
“No worries. If we don’t hire the right person, it’ll mean more work for me in the long run. I’m glad to help now.”
Mrs. Sedian had barely shut the door good when Jerry sighed, “This is going to be one rough school year.” He tilted back in his chair and covered his lips with a fist. I’d been working with Jerry for three years. He was a man of relatively few words. When he spoke, he meant business.
“Why do you say so?” I asked. Not because I didn’t have an idea, but because I valued Jerry’s perspective. He was the only person to whom I didn’t mind losing my bid for the top position at the district’s premier school.
“Six brand spankin’ new teachers. Ranier didn’t retire, which only means he’ll cause more trouble than ever because he doesn’t want to be here. Fielder’s going to be out on maternity leave almost as soon as we start,” he listed. I really had forgotten about Mickey Fielder, the head officer of security. She was a small woman with a giant attitude who kept kids twice her size in check.
On top of personnel issues was the fact that the state had changed the mandatory testing requirements. Again.
“Just be prepared,” he warned, rising from the table. “We need you here. Every day. On time.”
My mouth clamped shut as Jerry exited the room. He had been so gracious about my shoeless foot. But there was no mistaking the tone of his last words. He’d observed me coming in late that particular morning and, perhaps, many more, thanks to my unpredictable life with a baby and a four year old.
The respect I had for Jerry prevented me from snapping back with an excuse. Really, there was none. He wasn’t threatening me or my job. He’d simply reminded me of where the bar stood. If I wanted to stay viable in the workforce, I couldn’t play the Mommy card anymore.
Chapter 4
By Wednesday afternoon, my foot had darkened around the toe. Stelson snuck a peek at me while I was changing from the purple slipper to the pink, which matched my clothes. He almost hit the roof. “We are not going to church tonight. I’m taking you to see a doctor.”
He called my father and asked him to watch Seth while the rest of the family forged onward to an urgent care clinic with my heroic husband at the helm. X-rays showed that my toe was broken. Worse, they had to tape it to my next available toe so that it could heal properly.
“Otherwise, it could cause you to end up needing surgery where they have to re-break the toe in order to set it straight again,” the doctor informed us.
Stelson, who was sitting on the stool next to me, crossed his arms while Zoe slept in her portable car seat. I avoided his glare, though his eyeballs were burning a hole in my cheek.
I held my breath as the fairly young physician gently pushed a piece of cotton between the two toes, then taped them together for stability. The process was quick and relatively painless, though nerve-racking.
Moving forward, I asked the doctor, “How long will it take to heal?”
“Six weeks. Stay off your feet as much as possible. Elevate and ice if it starts to swell again. You should be back to yourself soon.”
Now that’s what I wanted to hear. With the good news, I was finally able to look at my husband. “See, babe? I’m fine.”
But on the way to my father’s house, we got into yet another tiff. “This is silly, Shondra. You were too preoccupied with work to take care of your own health.”
“What? You want me to be a hypochondriac?” I knew I was taking my side to the extreme, but for real, I’m a grown woman. Shouldn’t I be able to make choices about when I want to see a doctor?
“It’s not just your foot. It’s your life. You put your job before everything,” he overgeneralized, “and we’re only in summer school. What’s going to happen when the regular session starts?”
Since giving birth to Zoe in January, I had been afforded some degree of luxury. I returned to work in May. By then, the extremely disruptive students had already been worked through the system and were matriculating at RightWay, or district’s alternative school. Final exams were quiet time. And the last week, seniors were off campus, which took care of a third of the disciplinary battles. Kids were skipping or attending class out of dress code, but most of the teachers were too tired to care enough to go through the referral process. When our test scores came back with higher-than-expected results, the entire campus had gone on cruise control until the last day.
That said, Stelson had a point. I was about to hit the ground full-speed in the next few weeks. Still. “You act as though I’m the only working mother in the world. Wives balance home and work every day, honey. Single moms have it even worse, but they’re doing it, too.”
“True. Many women are doing it. The question is, are they doing it well?”
I refused to incriminate womankind. “I can’t speak for every mom who works outside the home.”
“Just speak for yourself, then.” He parked in my father’s driveway. Looked at me. “Do you believe you’re going to be able to give the kids, our home, me, and even yourself your best while working? If you can honestly answer ‘yes’ I won’t bring it up again.”
Stelson had thrown the kids and our household into the equation, but in my heart, I knew he was pleading for himself more than all of the above.
“You’re asking me to predict the future.”
“No. I’m asking you if the past and the present are an indication of what we can expect in the future.”
Sometimes, I thought it would have been easier if I’d married a man who didn’t have any godly expectations. Then I could be the only “holy” one in the family, like my mother and my grandmother had been. No one would be able to question my motives.
But Stelson was no ordinary husband. He was my Boaz. The godly man I’d asked for. Waited for. The father of my children who worked hard to provide for us and lead us as the Holy Spirit led him. Even if I disagreed with him, I had to respect his position.
The loud exhale I gave him, however, wasn’t quite as respectful as the Lord would have wanted. “Okay. I’ll do better. I promise. I’m gonna get a housekeeper. I’m gonna get in touch with that personal chef lady who catered the women’s conference at church. Her meal preparation service was reasonable, remember?”
I reached across the center console of our Chevy Tahoe and rubbed his shoulders. The rock-hard tension caught me by surprise. “Stelson, honey, this is just a different season in our marriage. We have little kids. We’re busy. We’ll make it through.”
“You know…” He rolled his lips between his teeth. “We can hire someone to help with the house and the cooking. We can even hire someone to help with the kids. But we can’t hire another wife.”
My neck and my hand snapped back. “What is that supposed to mean? Is that a threat?”
Zoe stirred with the sharp tone in my voice. Sitting in the car seat without the vibration of a moving car was prime cause for a hissy fit in her world.
“No. That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Then what are you saying?”
“I’m saying that in this season,” he slun
g my churchy term at me, “I’d like for you to slow down.”
“What about you? Are you going to slow down, too? I don’t like it when you travel and when you work late. Makes me feel like a single parent.”
He nodded. “That’s fair. I can slow down, too. I did most of the traveling when Cooper’s kids were younger. I’m sure he’d be willing to return the favor if I asked.”
Of course he could slow down. He was the “Brown” of Brown-Cooper Engineering. He was one of the bosses, and his partner was a perfectly reasonable man who would do anything to help Stelson through a rough patch.
Zoe’s whimpering permeated the car, causing me to tear away from the conversation with my husband. “It’s okay, Zoe,” I bubbled.
In baby language, she told me that she wanted out of those straps.
Stelson went to retrieve our son while I dug through Zoe’s bag for a toy to keep her occupied. She smiled as I presented her a plastic key ring. “Here you go!”
With my baby temporarily distracted, I whispered to God, “You gave me this man. You gave me this family. You also gave me my degrees and my job. You know I just can’t see myself as a stay-at-home mom. Am I wrong for—”
The screen door of my parents’ house swung open violently as Stelson ordered Seth to get in the car.
Father God, what did my child do now?
Seth skipped to my side of the car and opened the door. “Hi, Mommy.” He hopped in. He rubbed his forehead across Zoe’s forehead, a roughhousing move that she adored. “Hi, Zoe, Zoe, Zoe!”
He didn’t act or sound like a little boy in trouble.
Zoe giggled in complete awe of her big brother. He was the only one who could invade her space with such gruff treatment and get away with it.
Stelson went back into the house, but the main door was still open so I could hear him and my father having a simmering discussion. I pressed the button to lower my window and eavesdrop, but I couldn’t make out their words.
No Weapon Formed (Boaz Brown) Page 3
