No Weapon Formed (Boaz Brown) (14 page)

Our church family celebrated
God’s answer to prayer during service the next day. Pastor Toole asked Stelson
and me to share the testimony for the sake of those who weren’t at the picnic,
though I couldn’t imagine most of the congregation didn’t already know. No
matter what color or doctrine, church folk have cornered the market on how to
spread a word quickly.

My head was pounding after
service. Just tired and emotionally spent. Nothing a good serving of comfort food
wouldn’t fix. Stelson, the kids, and I had lunch at Chili’s. “Might be our last
time doing this for a while,” he said when the bill came.

“I know, right?” I agreed.
“We’re gonna have to find some places where kids eat free.”

Our conversation was interrupted
by two women who’d seen Seth on television the night before. “He is so cute!
Thank God you two found him before I did. I would have taken him home with me!”

“Praise God.” I smiled up at
them.

After obtaining a full belly
and some good rest, I was ready to tackle the week ahead. Starting each day
with a quiet hour kept my mind “stayed on Jesus”, as the older saints used to
sing. Reading the scriptures, journaling the conversations between God and me,
physically kneeling down in His presence…priceless. I wondered how I had ever
managed to think I was fine without His peaceful good morning. I wouldn’t have
been able to have a quiet hour when Zoe was first born, of course. God knows
our schedules. But now that I was back in the groove, I was determined to do
everything possible to
stay
stayed, even after I returned to work.

I was hoping to connect with
the women’s Tuesday morning fellowship meeting at church, but my schedule got
rearranged when the nurse called from Seth’s school to say that he was running
a fever. The worst-case scenario presented itself in my head on my way to pick
him up from school:
He has malaria!

Oh. Wait. We don’t have
malaria in Texas. Do we?

We went straight to the
doctor’s office after I retrieved Seth. I gave Dr. Bullock the run-down on
Seth’s adventurous weekend. After checking his lymph nodes and hearing the
slight congestion in his chest, malaria was ruled out. “Looks like he’s got a
common cold.
Now that school’s started, kids are swapping germs every
minute of the day.”

“Yes, he started pre-k in
public school a few weeks ago,” I concurred.

“A bigger school brings more
kids, more surfaces to touch, more opportunities to catch a virus. Just keep an
eye on him. Keep his fever down. Look out for any rashes, given what happened
this weekend.” She pointed at Zoe, “And keep him away from this one if you
can.”

Keeping Seth out of Zoe’s
face was nearly impossible. With both of them at home with me throughout the
day, it was only a matter of time before she started coughing and sneezing,
too. We had to pass on one of the church kids’ birthday parties that weekend.
Sunday, the fevers were gone, but we stayed home as a precaution.

Stelson led “home church”,
which absolutely fascinated Seth. “We can have church at home?”

“Yes. Jesus said we
are
the church. And if two or three of His people get together for Him, He will be
here with us.”

“Wow! Jesus is
everywhere
!”
Seth exclaimed.

Stelson charged our son with
the duty of leading worship, which was a joy to watch. Seth insisted that we
all participate in his extended remix version of “Father
Abraham”—including wiggling our right and left knees
and
elbows.

I gave the announcements.
“Zoe has a check-up appointment this week. We’re praying for another awesome
report. Seth knows all of his letters and their sounds. And Daddy has a
birthday coming up soon.”

We all clapped for Stelson.
He laughed, “I
like
these announcements.”

Stelson opened His Bible.
“I’m going to share something the Lord has been teaching me lately. It’s in
Ecclesiastes, chapter four.”

I helped Seth find the book
of Ecclesiastes in his children’s illustrated Bible. Though he couldn’t read
yet, I talked him through the navigation. “Ecclesiastes…chapter four…oh, wait.
Go back…yes…chapter four.”

I pointed at the words as
Stelson read from His Bible “Ecclesiastes chapter four, verses nine through ten.
Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If
either of them falls down, one can help the other up.”

Seth had to demonstrate. He
flattened his back against the floor. “You mean like this, Daddy?” he asked
while reaching for Zoe’s hand. Baby girl struggled with all her might to leave
my lap as she responded to his gesture, trying to grasp his hand. Seth raised
up to meet her hand, then hopped to his feet. “Thank you, Zoe! You helped me
get up!”

“Yaaay!” we all clapped. Zoe
was ecstatic.

“That’s exactly right,”
Stelson agreed.

I made chicken noodle soup,
thanks to a recipe I found on the internet. With Seth’s stomach still a bit queasy,
the soup was a perfect, light meal.

After we put the kids down
for a nap, Stelson helped me clear the dishes. His “help” was really a cause for
flirting, I quickly ascertained from his swats to my behind. I pretended to be
annoyed, but we both knew I liked it. Who
wouldn’t
want to flirt with a
man who led “home church” when his family wasn’t able to attend services at the
sanctuary? And one who practiced what he’d just preached—lifting me up
when I had lost track of the promises of God while Seth was missing.

Aside from his toned body, my
husband’s
character
was so juicy-sexy, it didn’t take much to get me in
the mood.

Stelson joked that I must
have worked him too hard the night before because he woke up with a headache. I
sent him off to work with a kiss, a few Tylenol, and the rest of the soup.
Stelson didn’t like taking drugs, but when I called him at lunch to check on him,
he said he had swallowed the pills before a meeting because he couldn’t
concentrate otherwise.

“You think you need to see a
doctor?” I asked.

“No. It’s probably the virus
the kids had last week.”

“Probably so. I’ll assess you
when you get home,” I promised with a hint of teasing.

“Man, I’m going to take a
shower and get right in the bed.”

I heard him sniff and
surmised that he had indeed caught the bug Seth brought home from school.
“Okay, baby. I’ll have everything ready. What time do you think you’ll be
here?”

“Leaving here by five thirty.
So, six at the latest.”

“I gotcha. Bye.”

“Bye.”

I set an alarm on my phone
for 5:40:
Run bath water for Stelson.

I chocked up the fact that I
didn’t get sick to what my mother used to refer to as “Mommy Immunity.” She
said that, while we weren’t invincible, God gave mothers an extra level of
resistance to sickness because He knows families act like they can’t hardly
function without a Momma.

And, speaking of
“functioning”, I was quite proud of myself for getting the hang of running a
household. My biggest help had been creating a family menu, rotating ten meals
I could cook that everyone, except Zoe of course, would actually eat. When I
emailed my spreadsheet to Peaches, she replied:

That’s good, girl, but
what about the snacks? Drinks? Desserts? Consider EVERYTHING before you go to
the grocery store. And sign up for coupons online.

“Coupons?” I questioned my
laptop screen. My time was worth more than the 25 cents a coupon would save me.
If my best friend was combing through newspapers and email messages hunting
down coupons, she was
out there
. Past Suzie Homemaker. Past B. Smith and
Martha Stewart. It was time for Peaches to have her own reality show ‘cause I
had to see it live and in action to believe it.

Nonetheless, I went back to
the drawing board.
Snacks and drinks
. In the past, I would just walk
into the grocery store and pick up some things that looked fun—the
brightest-looking fruit chews, cutest cheese puffs. But now I had the time to
sit there and think through what would be best for us all to eat at snack time.
I added apples on Monday and Thursday, granola bars on Tuesday and Friday.
Popcorn on Wednesday and Saturday. Ice cream had to go somewhere.
Sunday
.

The more I thought about it,
I realized my father could use some meal-planning, too. Not that he would
follow through.

You follow through
bubbled out of my spirit.

My fingers were perched,
still, on the keyboard. Waiting for more direction. And then the idea to include
my father in our meal plans became clearer. I would make enough for him, too,
and take it over to the house.

Yes. No. “How am I going to
do this?” I asked. Since I couldn’t exactly recall any scriptures on how to
preserve food for the week, I went online and discovered a novel idea:
freezing!

I was sold. I could cook on one
day and freeze everything we would need for a whole week! They shouldn’t have
told me that. I was about to make myself the freezing queen.

Matter of fact, I figured if
I got the cooking and freezing thing down, I might be able to go back to work
sooner.

Zoe and I tackled the grocery
store like two old pros. With the menu in hand, we were out of there in no
time. I even got to come home and put the food away before we went to pick up Seth.

I was so excited, he was
barely in the car before I informed him, “Your snack today is an apple.”

He got a funny look on his
face, I supposed wondering why I was so excited about apples.

I had to laugh at myself. “In
case you were wondering, I mean.”

It was a beautiful day. Cool
enough for us to hang outdoors for a half hour or so. Zoe jumped in her
bounce-walker and Seth sparred with an imaginary opponent once I got tired of
getting poked by his plastic sword. I snagged a spot under the patio umbrella
and just sat there watching. Listening. Thanking God for such a wonderful
family to occupy this picturesque, lush green back yard with its 6-foot privacy
fence.

Zoe’s late afternoon nap was
soon in order, so we brought the party inside. Seth wouldn’t fall asleep this
early. I gathered his coloring books, crayons and Legos and sat him at the
table while I prepared our evening meal of chicken tetrazzini with light garlic
bread. I’d save the cooking bonanza for a weekend day, when Stelson could busy
himself with the kids.

The smell of melted cheese
and chicken permeated the house. When I was a little girl, Momma made our house
smell like heaven almost every day. Casseroles, chopped onions, breads,
cookies. Enough to make me want to hop off the school bus and come running
inside to see what she had in store for us.

But that was in the 1970s.
Back when women—let alone
black
women—weren’t considered for
high-powered jobs. Most didn’t have the education anyway, thanks to low
expectations. My degrees hadn’t come easy. I was proud of my accomplishments.
And yet, standing there in the kitchen with my house smelling like Momma’s, I
had to admit to myself:
This is an accomplishment, too.
I wanted Seth
and Zoe to have the best things in life, including feeling that someone who
loved them had been thinking about them, preparing for their arrival while they
were away.

My phone’s alarm beeped,
reminding me to run Stelson’s bath water. My poor husband was pretty manly, but
he could get downright baby-ish when ill. Worse than the kids, which was why I
thanked God Stelson rarely got sick.

I knew I was in for some
serious nurse duty when he walked through the door looking like death warmed
over. He dropped his briefcase and let his jacket slide from his shoulders
straight to the floor. “I’ll pick it up later.” His pale cheeks, red nose,
watery eyes and disheveled hair told the story of a miserable day.

I rushed to him and checked
his forehead with the back of my hand. “You’re burning up. Sweating. Go get in
the tub.” I scooped his jacket off the floor and hung it in the coat closet.

“Hey, Daddy!” Seth lunged at
Stelson’s legs.

“Daddy’s not feeling good,” I
pried him off. “He needs to get some rest.”

“Yeah, buddy. I’ll talk to
you later.”

Seth slinked away,
disappointed.

Between my three babies, I
had my hands full. Stelson missed work the next day. And the next. By the third
day, the fever had gone and the congestion was clearing, but the headache
didn’t go away.

In fact, it got worse.

“Daddy, what is the problem?”
I pushed my chin forward, waiting for some ridiculous response.

“I don’t like to fool with
the microwave every day like you young people. Ya’ll gon’ wake up one day and
figure out all that radiation is the reason for all this cancer y’all got,” he
fussed. One by one, he took my expertly prepared, carefully packaged meals out
of the spectacular brown paper sack I had lovingly arranged them in for his
benefit. He slung them on the counter.

“So what are you going to do
with this food, then?” I asked.

He snapped the top off the
turkey with garlic and parmesan red potatoes. “Well, I’ll eat this one tonight
since it’s still warm.” He sniffed my cooking. “I’ll put the rest in the
refrigerator. Guess I can transfer ‘em to a tin pan and then put it in the
oven, for the most part.”

“If you can put stuff in an
oven, you can make your own meals,” I argued.

“I didn’t ask you to bring
this food over here,” he bucked up.

The front screen door
slammed.
Thank God. Jonathan’s here.

“Hey,” he breezed into the
kitchen, hugging my father and me. “I see you’ve got these nice home-cooked
meals, huh, Dad? We ought to make a service out of it. Shondra’s mobile
kitchen.”

“He doesn’t want them,” I
interrupted Jonathan’s sales pitch.

My brother crossed his arms,
looking down at my father. I was so glad Jonathan was taller than Daddy.
Jonathan Sr. needed someone to put him in check. “What’s the problem now?”

“I don’t want to eat a bunch
of microwave re-heated food,” he stubbornly replied, mimicking Jonathan’s
stance. “I already done told y’all that when you brought all those other
freezer meals.”

Jonathan sighed with enough
contempt to get kicked out of a courtroom.

“But the food I’ve prepared
isn’t drenched in chemicals or preservatives. You know whose kitchen they came
from. What’s the problem now?”

Daddy raised up his nose. “If
it ain’t fresh from the oven or the stove, it don’t taste the same.”

Jonathan blinked. “Wait a
minute. Are you the same Jonathan Smith who claims his family was so poor,
Grandmomma Smith fried pancakes with Vaseline and you all
ate
it,
happily?”

Oooooh!
The Vaseline story.
Good one,
Jonathan.

I took a swing, “And didn’t
you always tell us that if we were picky about what we ate, we weren’t really
hungry?”

Daddy waved both of us off.
He pushed up his glasses. “That was before I had a good job at the post office.
Before I met your Momma and…well…you know how she was about cookin’. She
spoiled me.”

My father’s lower lip began
to tremble, which nearly threw me off the boat.

Jonathan slapped my father on
the back. “We feel you, man. We feel you. We all miss Momma.”

They got no further than a
side-hug before Daddy pulled away. “But if y’all insist on me eating frozen
food—”

“We do,” Jonathan cosigned.

“I guess.” Daddy piled three
of the containers in the freezer.

“It’s better than eating
sandwiches every day,” I assured him. “And you can recycle the containers if
you absolutely don’t feel like washing them.”

He grumbled and walked to the
den, leaving Jonathan and me to make sense of his foolishness.

“What’s my half?” Jonathan
asked.

“Don’t worry about it,” I
said.

“No, I want to contribute. I
mean, seeing as you ain’t got no job and all,” he teased.

I punched my little brother
in the stomach. “I got a full-time job with your niece and nephew.”

Jonathan’s lean body hadn’t
changed much since he was in high school. Always a trainer, he regularly
participated in marathons and triathlons for the so-called “fun” of it. I, for
one, would never put torturing my body in the “fun” category.

“You can put, say,
thirty-five on it every week, assuming that he actually eats the food. If he
doesn’t, I guess we’ll have to see if meals-on-wheels can deliver something. I
don’t know.”

Jonathan nodded in rapid
succession as he pulled money from his pocket. “Oh, he’s gonna eat this food.
If I have to come over here every night, he
will
eat it.”

I thanked him as I stuffed
the cash in my back pocket.

“Oh, please.” Now it was my
turn to harass him. “I saw your little status change on Facebook the other day.
Mister
in a relationship
. How are you
in a relationship
with
someone we’ve never met?”

“I brought her over here.”

“When?”

“Not long ago,” he skirted
around my question.

“Daddy!” I called to the back
room.

“Aaay, aaay,
aaay
,”
Jonathan shushed me. “I said I brought her over here. I didn’t say I brought
her inside.”

“What’s wrong with her?”

He smacked his lips a little
too hard. “Nothing.”

“Why haven’t
I
met
her, at least?”

“Look, we don’t need McGruff
the crime dog here, all right? She’s somebody I met running a marathon. Nice.
Smart. Cool. Has a three-year-old son. What else do you want to know?”

“Is she black?”

He poked out his lips. “How
you gon’ ask me that and my brother-in-law is white?”

“I’m just asking. I mean, the
last time I watched a marathon on television, I didn’t see a whole lot of
us
pounding the pavement.”

“
Y
’all
do
need to be pounding it, trust me,” he remarked. “Sisters are tipping the scales
these days. For some reason, y’all expect us to
embrace
the extra
weight, like there’s something wrong with
us
for wanting a fit woman.”

“Whatever!
We
have a
lot of stress. Single moms, working moms. Shoot, I’m blessed to be able to take
a break until I get a handle on this.”

“All I know is, I’m not
trying to marry somebody I can’t carry over the threshold,” he reiterated.

“Whatever. Now, back to the
original question. Is she black?”

“Yes. She’s black,” he
stated.

“Okay.”

“Why? Is that a relief to
you?”

I should have known I
couldn’t corner my brother without enduring a psychoanalytical session. I sat
down at the table. He eyed me, standing in front of the refrigerator.

“Yeah, for Daddy’s sake. It
is a relief. I think he’d be completely disappointed if both of his kids grew
up and married people who weren’t black.”

“You’ve already put us at the
white quota?” he laughed.

“Yeah,” I joined his joke, “I
don’t think Daddy could take any more.”

Jonathan sat next to me.
“Dang. I gotta stay with the black, huh?”

I popped his arm. “You act
like you’ve got a problem with black women.”

“Not all of y’all. Not the
northern sisters.”

I couldn’t believe these
words were coming from my brother’s mouth. Jonathan Smith, Jr., raised by my
father, the black Archie Bunker.

“Go on.”

“See. It’s like this.”
Jonathan’s hands stiffened like boards as he lined them up on the table for
this grand, animated explanation. “Black girls, from the south especially, got
raised by people like…” he pointed toward the den. “They taught them that it
was black people against the world. And then people like Momma, rest her soul,
taught black women that men were liars. Not to be trusted, only after one
thing, heartbreakers. So then they’ve got this women versus men schema, too. I
ain’t got all my life to be trying to undo that mentality. I just want to be in
love and get married to somebody who wasn’t programmed to be suspicious and
defensive all the time. That’s tiring.”

“And white girls aren’t
defensive?”

“Some of them are. Depends on
how they were brought up. But for the most part, white girls are optimistic.
They see the glass half full. And they don’t have this…
bite
in ‘em.”

“I thought men
liked
bite. I mean, when you have a good, feisty, passionate, strong woman, you’ve
got a good ride or die chick.”

“I have no problems with a
good, strong woman with bite. I just don’t want her to bite
me
,
especially when I haven’t done anything to deserve it,” he clarified.

My handsome brother. Strong.
Black. Intelligent. Gainfully employed. Loved God. Family man before he was
even married. If this kind of man was prone to prejudge black women, where did
my daughter stand? “What about Zoe? She’s going to be a black woman raised in
the south. Would you overlook her?”

Jonathan pushed his lips over
to one side. “Pssssh. Please. Zoe’s gonna be fine ‘cause, first of all, she has
me
for an uncle.”

I rolled my eyes. “Second of
all?”

“Second of all, she’s got you
and Stelson. Working together.” He locked the knuckles from both hands
together. “Y’all are a team. You keep it practical, and Stelson keeps it
optimistic. Faithful.

“By the way, Daddy told me
about the thing at the picnic. About how he didn’t want you to get involved
with the press.”

“What did he say?” I asked.

“Said you got lucky. That
wasn’t luck, though. That was God.”

“Truly,” I agreed.

“So when do I get to meet
this marathon-runnin’ girl?”

“Soon enough.” He smiled.

“What’s her name?”

“See, you’re already going
too far too fast.”

I whipped my cell phone from
my purse. “I’m gonna look on Facebook.”

“Give me that!” he jerked the
phone from my hand.

“Dad-aaaaay!” I hollered.

Jonathan yelled over me,
“Never mind! Everything’s okay.”

Some things never changed
between us.

I came home ready to debrief
Stelson about the progress with Daddy and even discuss or debate Jonathan’s
philosophy. My husband was absolutely brilliant and one of the things I enjoyed
most about our relationship was the fact that he and I could engage in
intellectual conversations through our varied viewpoints.

But when I returned to our
abode, I found the kids unattended—Zoe in her play pen, Seth in his room
with the door shut, watching television and playing with his gazillion happy
meal toys strewn all over the floor.

“Seth, where’s Daddy?”

“In the bed.”

I found my husband just where
my son told me he would be. He was a stiff lump with the comforter draped over
his head. I lifted the hood. “Stelson?”

“Don’t!” he snapped, yanking the
covers back in position.

“What’s…did y’all eat
dinner?”

“Yes. The kids ate.”

“What about you?”

“I can’t,” he said through
gritted teeth. “My head is killing me.”

“Honey, if it’s that bad we
need to go to the doctor. Did you take some Tylenol?”

“It’s all gone.”

“What do you mean it’s all
gone?” I railed. “I just bought it earlier this week.”

“Like I said. It’s all gone.”

One glance in the trash can
confirmed his statement. The empty 24-count bottle stared back at me. I rubbed
my forehead. A sudden knowing happened in me. I can’t explain how I knew. I
simply
knew
this wasn’t right. “Stelson, get up. Let’s go to the
emergency room. They need to do X-rays, an MRI, or something.”

“It’s…I’ll go tomorrow.”

“We really,” I tried to speak
without giving the enemy ammunition, “need to go.”

“Tomorrow. Could you go get
me some more pain reliever, though? Something stronger? For migraines?”

Speaking to him through the
covers, I couldn’t gauge his condition well. “If it hurts this bad—”

“Can’t you simply do what I
ask? Sheez.”

I stood there for a moment,
staring at the damask print black and white fabric as though a foreigner had
addressed me from the other side of the blanket.
Had
to be somebody else
because my husband didn’t speak to me that way.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Just go. And get it.
Please.”

It was my pleasure to leave
the house because the man lying in my bed was about to make me bite him for
real.