No Weapon Formed (Boaz Brown) (24 page)

Stelson

Stelson leaned past Zoe’s
head to read the first paper. He read the headline and a few captions first:
The
Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment
.
Government officials used black men as lab
rats. Wanted to study their corpses.

As a matter of habit, he
noted the fine print at the top, which referenced the URL hosting the
information: TheNewUndergroundRailroad.us. “No disrespect, Mr. Smith, but you
printed from a no-name website. Anyone can post anything on the internet,
whether it’s true or not.”

Stelson sat back in his
chair.

Mr. Smith snatched the stack.
“All righty, Mr. I-gotta-hear-it-from-somebody-I-know.” He shuffled through the
papers. “CNN good enough for you?”

Stelson raised one eyebrow as
he bent and surveyed the article.
The Darkest Chapters of Medical Research
.
He handed Zoe to his father-in-law and read the short report documenting the
government’s 40-year inhumane research on the deadly STD using hundreds of
black, uneducated sharecroppers. The men were informed by the United States
Public Health Service that they were being treated for “bad blood” when, in
fact, they weren’t being treated at all; researchers simply wanted to document
the effects of Syphilis.

“You see the dates?” Mr.
Smith interrupted.

“Yeah,” Stelson said in awe,
“forty years. 1932 to 1972.”

“You were alive in ’72,
weren’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you got to admit, it
wasn’t that long ago that the government was willing to risk people’s lives for
the sake of an experiment, right?”

Stelson nodded. “This
is…terrible.”

“Well, if you feel that way,
then welcome to the club,” Daddy announced with arms open wide.

“What club?”

“The Messed-Over-by-the-Man
club. Just like the government experiments cost these men their lives, the
government experiment got you payin’ a price with this Lyme disease.”

Daddy shoved the papers even
closer to Stelson. “Read all these and tell me you still trust what they were
doing on Plum Island.”

Stelson leafed through the
stack, skimming through the headlines. “If all this is true, we should be
ashamed of ourselves as a country.”

“
We
?” Mr. Smith
pointed back and forth between the two of them. “As in me and you?”

“We as a
people
. As a
country
.”

“This ain’t the black man’s
country. This land don’t belong to
all
the people. White people gonna
always have the upper hand, and they gonna always use that hand to slap black
people back to the bottom, ‘cause y’all can’t stand to see us get ahead.”

“What about President Obama?
Tons of white people voted him in office.”

Mr. Smith crossed his arms.
“You ever seen a man in the office of the President of the United States of
America be so disrespected?”

“Yeah, Bush Junior. People
made a calendar of the ignorant things he said. They’ve written books, posted a
ton of YouTube videos online. The compilations are hilarious, actually.”

“See the difference!” Mr.
Smith jabbed a finger at Stelson. “When they don’t like a white president, they
make jokes. But when they don’t like a black president, they get hateful. Write
all kinds of rhetoric to discredit him, his intelligence, his character. Talk
about his wife like a dog. You ever seen so many people criticize a first
lady’s appearance?”

Stelson frowned, obviously
considering his father-in-law’s viewpoint.

“You don’t see no
light-hearted humor about the black president and he’s a hundred times smarter
than Bush. ‘W’ used to say stuff so stupid, made me squint at the TV,” Mr.
Smith hissed.

The vision of Mr. Smith
staring at the screen in disbelief during one of President George W. Bush’s
impromptu blunders sent a ripple of laughter through Stelson.

“I’m glad you think this is
so funny now. Won’t be funny when Seth gets sent to the office for doing the
same thing the white kids get away with. Or when somebody say Zoe got a bad
attitude ‘cause she ain’t makin’ everybody laugh, which is all they expect us
to do anyway—entertain and play sports. Can’t come across like she’s too
intelligent or they’ll say she’s intimidating.”

Stelson’s smile slipped away,
cognizant of the fact that he was in Mr. Smith’s ‘they’ category. “What exactly
do you recommend I do, Mr. Smith?”

“Tell ‘em the truth. Tell
them that, as far as the world goes, they’re
black
. Let ‘em know they
got natural born enemies.”

“But—” Stelson spotted
a movement in his peripheral vision. He saw Seth standing at the door leading
to the main hallway. He hoped his son hadn’t heard much. “Hey, buddy.”

“Hey, Dad. Hey, Zoe, Zoe,
Zoe!”

She squirmed out of her grandfather’s
lap and tottered toward her brother, who swooped her up into his arms. She hung
awkwardly as Seth leaned back to balance her weight. He kissed her three times,
once on each cheek and then the chin. For as much as he must have been cutting
off her circulation, Zoe didn’t complain.

“Let’s go, sissy.” He
struggled to carry her away.

“Seth, where are you taking
her?” Stelson asked.

“Where I am. By the laundry
room.”

“Be careful with her.”

“Yeah,” Mr. Smith said, “and
teach her how to fold clothes.”

“Okay, PawPaw,” Seth, nearly out
of breath from lugging his baby sister, answered.

With the kids out of earshot,
Stelson asked, “For a moment, let’s forget about the fact that Seth and Zoe are
both black and white, which you’ve never addressed at all.”

He waited for a rebuttal from
Mr. Smith, but there was none.

“Don’t you think teaching
kids—any kids, black, white, whatever—that their enemy can be
spotted with their eyes is a huge disservice? What if the person who may be
willing to help Zoe with something is white, and the person who wants to stab
Seth in the back is black? Then what?”

Mr. Smith pounded a fist into
his palm. “You’re missing my point.”

“You don’t
have
a
point—”

“How you gon’ tell me I don’t
have a point?” Mr. Smith’s voice escalated. “Just ‘cause you don’t agree, don’t
invalidate me.”

Stelson raised his palms to
chest level. “My bad. You
have
a point, but it’s based on
overgeneralizations and stereotype. Both equate to prejudice, which is quite
ironic if you ask me.”

Mr. Smith set an elbow on the
table. Covered his mouth with his fist. “I’m not sure if the problem is that
you
don’t
get it or that you
won’t
get it.”

“Get what? You haven’t told
me anything except…” Stelson laid a hand on the article. “How awful white
people have been to black people and how
my
kids need to embrace their
blackness and be skeptical of all white people. You’re teaching Seth to be
suspicious of what he sees in the mirror.”

“He may not always look
white,” Mr. Smith stated. “Sometimes it take a while.”

“Let’s say it never happens.
What if Seth
always
looks white? What if he grows up and marries a white
woman, then you’ve got bleach-blonde great-grandkids. Then what? You want them
to come and tell you they’re sorry about the Tuskegee Experiment?”

“We don’t want no durn
apology. We want respect!”

“In the ten years before I
got ill, when have I ever disrespected you?”

Mr. Smith bit his middle
knuckle.

“That’s right. Never! I’m a
good son-in-law. I’m good to your daughter, your grandchildren. I’ll raise them
in the fear of God, but never the fear of man.”

“Then you raisin’ ‘em in
ignorance and that shows
your
ignorance,” Mr. Smith accused.

LaShondra stepped into the
kitchen. “This conversation is approaching destructive. I think we’d better
leave now.”

“I think you’re right,” Mr.
Smith followed, “because I don’t think me and Stelson ever gonna be able to see
eye-to-eye.”

Stelson didn’t respond.

“Okay. Let’s leave well
enough alone,” LaShondra wheedled. She stood beside Stelson and held his hand.

“But a grandparent’s got a
right to pass on the history,” he mumbled.

“No, you don’t,” Stelson
spoke up. “Not if it leaves Seth confused.”

“Seth ain’t the one confused.
It’s you two,” he pointed at Stelson and LaShondra.

“Daddy, all we’re asking is
that you respect our rights as
parents
to raise up our children the way
we believe is best. Can you leave the black history lessons to us?”

Mr. Smith threw an arm toward
Stelson. “He don’t even know black history!”

“I know we all need to stop
living in the past and move forward,” Stelson surmised.

To which LaShondra pivoted
toward her father’s side as she dropped Stelson’s hand. “Wait a minute.
Nobody’s saying we need to forget the past. It happened. If we brush it under
the rug, it’ll happen again.”

Stelson threw his hands in
the air. “Then what is the solution? You two tell me the answer!”

“Own up to it!” Mr. Smith
hurled over LaShondra’s shoulder. “Be proactive!”

“How can you command me to do
something
you’re
not doing, and you’re black?” Stelson laughed. “I mean,
are you mentoring young men in this community? Are you going to council
meetings? Voting in all the elections?”

Nostrils flaring, Mr. Smith
stepped in front of LaShondra, which landed him directly in Stelson’s face. “I
ain’t got to do nothin’ but be black, pay taxes, and die.”

Stelson backed up. “You’re
doing nothing to pay it forward, but you expect me to do something?”

“I paid it
backward
!
Got the scar behind my ear to show for it, you hear me!”

LaShondra put a hand on
either man’s chest. “Enough.”

“Whaaaaa!” Zoe’s squeal
reverberated through the house.

The adults froze.

“Whaaaaaa!”

In a millisecond, the
argument died as they rushed to the laundry room.

 “Seth!” I screamed at
the sight of Zoe holding up her reddened arm.

Stelson picked her up before
I could.

“What happened?”

The smell of bleach scratched
my nostrils.

“What did you do, Seth?”
Daddy flared.

Seth looked at my father, my
husband, and then me. His eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry. I was trying to
help Zoe.”

“Help her how?” I noticed
tiny bleached spots on his blue school pants and a green hand rag showing
similar discolorations. “With bleach?”

“Yes. PawPaw said black
people have bad lives. And I don’t want Zoe to have a bad life. I used the
bleach spray on her arm, and I rubbed it with a towel so she can be white.”

In that millisecond, my gut
ripped down the middle as I came to realize how heartbreaking it must have been
for Seth to imagine his baby sister doomed for life because she was brown-skinned.

Stelson and I looked at each
other, his eyes communicating the mutual pain undergirded by anger seeing as
this was my father’s doing. He growled, “I’m gonna go rinse her arm,” and sped
off toward the kitchen.

Seth raised his hands to his
face.

“Don’t!” I clutched his
wrists to prevent him from getting bleach in his eyes.

My swift action must have
scared him even more because Seth wailed in confusion. “I wasn’t trying to hurt
her!”

“We know you would never hurt
Zoe.”

“Are you mad at me?”

I didn’t answer. Honestly,
this was the kind of thing I would have gotten a whipping for when I was five.
And yet, I couldn’t find it in me to spank him. Made perfect five-year-old
sense to use bleach to make things white, including his baby sister whose life
was headed for disaster, according to his beloved grandfather.

Still in emergency-mode, I
took Seth to the restroom and washed all the way up to his elbows with soap and
warm water.

Once I’d dried him and was
satisfied he was out of danger, we joined Stelson, Zoe, and Daddy in the
kitchen. Stelson was at the sink with the bright overhead light turned on,
examining her skin closely. “I don’t see any breaks in the skin.”

I dropped Seth’s hand. He
shot over to Daddy’s chair and climbed to the safety of my father’s lap.

I, too, inspected Zoe’s arm at
the sink as she panted through her last few whimpers. “Just irritation.”

Stelson patted Zoe’s arm with
a paper towel. He twisted the faucet handle.

Absent the rushing water, the
room fell silent.

Daddy looking at me and
Stelson. Me and Stelson looking at him. Seth looking back and forth like he
wasn’t sure who was in trouble.

Stelson leaned against the
counter. Crossed one ankle over the other. I stood beside him. “Mr. Smith, do
you
see
what we’ve been trying to tell you now?”

Daddy rubbed his fingers
across his lips roughly and gave the slightest nod.

My breath bottlenecked in my
chest. I covered my mouth to avoid distracting Seth with my own overflow of
emotions as little huffs of air escaped.
Breathe. Breathe.
I knew Daddy
was wrong for trying to brainwash Seth, but he didn’t mean harm. And I knew
Stelson was right for vigilantly guarding our family from fear, but there was
still the reality of life in the world even though we weren’t
of
it. The
bottom line, though, was my babies. Seth was too young to process the
complexities, obviously. The timing was all off, and it was time for my father
to set the record straight.

I prodded, “Then tell Seth,
Daddy. Tell him about the wonderful life ahead for both your grandchildren.”

My son looked into my
father’s face.

Daddy set his forehead on
Seth’s. Nose-to-nose. Daddy closed his eyes and exhaled as though he’d been
holding his breath for fifty years.

Seth giggled. “PawPaw, your
breath smells like peppermints.”

“Good thing, huh?” Daddy
managed a chuckle despite the hint of crackle in his voice.

Daddy sat back a bit. Cupped
Seth’s chin with his left hand. “Listen. You know your PawPaw is old, right?”

“Mmmm hmmm.” Seth nodded as
best as he could.

“Seth.” Daddy cleared his
throat. “A lot of bad things happened to black people, especially people my age
and those gone on before. But the world is changing. It’s not perfect, but it’s
better. I don’t want you to worry about your sister being black. She’s gonna be
just fine. And so will you.” He threw a glance toward us. “Your Momma and Daddy
will look out for you.”

Seth slapped his clumsy hands
against Daddy’s face. Pulled Daddy closer. “Jesus looks out for me, too, PawPaw.
You want me to ask Him to look out for you so people won’t do bad stuff to old
black people anymore?”

Tears fell onto my shirt as
Stelson massaged the back of my neck.

“Yeah. That would be nice,”
my father accepted the offer.

“Close your eyes,” Seth
commanded. “God, could you please help my PawPaw so no one will hurt him
because he’s black? And if a bad person comes, You kick ‘em away, all right?
Thank You. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”

“Amen,” we repeated.

Seth didn’t forget to pray
for PawPaw again during our family bedtime prayer. After a talk with Seth about
staying away from chemicals, we had family prayer and tucked the kids in bed.
Stelson and I thanked God for intervening with my father. I felt better already
about Seth spending so much time with Daddy.

Stelson gave me a recap of
the conversation he and Daddy had before Seth tried to change Zoe’s skin color.
“Oh, I forgot. Your father inducted me into the M-O-B-T-M club.”

“The
what
?”

“Messed over by the man.”

I tugged the covers up to my
chin. “I don’t even want to know.”

Stelson packed his laptop and
power chord into his work attaché and set it by our bedroom door. “Gonna try to
do a mile tomorrow morning,” he said. “Keep your cell phone on vibrate.”

Seeing him shove the laptop
into place stirred up my desire to speak to him about the website forum. I
hoped he wouldn’t see it as an invasion of privacy. If he did, I’d just have to
apologize. I didn’t want anything else standing between us. “Babe, when you
were at the hospital, I had to come home for a few things. I was looking for
some information on your computer.”

“You remembered the password,
right?” he asked, climbing into bed.

I turned my body to face him.
“Yeah. I did. And the computer opened to your last window. I saw the Hold My Hand
website.”

He turned on his side, facing
me. Lying in bed talking was something we used to do for hours on end when we
first married. Before the kids. Even more than the physical intimacy, I’d
missed our long, drawn-out, heart-to-heart talks. I sensed we were “there”
again, though. After all the issues that had come to test us—my job, the
kids, my father, my attitude, a tick bite—none of them had overtaken us,
by the grace of God.

Yes. We’re “there” again.

“I read some of your posts in
the discussion forum.” Water trickled from my eye.

Stelson wiped my cheek gently
with his thumb. “I know. I should have talked to you before I went to
strangers.”

“No, no, no,” I said. “Well,
yes. I’m sad that you wanted to hold their hands instead of mine. But I get it.
Chronic illness isn’t something that can be understood from the outside looking
in. In some ways, I think you should apply that same philosophy to the black
experience.”

“I’m sure you’re right.” He
continued caressing my face. Twirling my hair as his eyes stayed fixed on mine.
“What else bothers you?”

“The fact that you think I’m
so fragile you had to hide the truth from me,” I confessed.

“What would you have done
differently if I’d told you all my symptoms before I had a definite diagnosis?”

I twisted my lips to the side
as I thought.
What would I have done?
“I don’t know. Maybe gone online
and looked up all the symptoms. Been more demanding with your doctors.”

“Been more worried?” he
suggested.

A few beats passed. “Yes.”

“Worrying doesn’t solve
anything. And, in this case, neither would all those sponsored websites and
doctors we visited have helped. You had just quit your job and started learning
all the stay-at-home-mom routines. You were stressed already. Why would I add
to your problems?”

“Because your problems are my
problems, big daddy. Look, I know you’re a man and all.” I slapped his
shoulder. “If you hadn’t had the seizure, we’d still be back at square one.”

“But I
did
have the
seizure and it happened that Peaches was in town, able to come right over and
help figure it out. His timing is perfect.”

“I know. I don’t like being
left out of the loop, though.”

“All we did was argue after I
got sick. I didn’t think you
wanted
to be in my loop.”

I smiled. “My bad, my bad.”

He tilted toward me and
planted a kiss on my lips. “My bad, too. There’s actually a name for my
irritability. They call it Lyme rage. When I read it on the website, I realized
I was wounding you and the kids because I wasn’t in control of myself. I
withdrew. It was the safest thing for everyone.”

The words seemed sweeter from
his lips than they had been on screen. We lay without words, just playing with
each other’s skin and hair. Gentle kisses here and there.

My phone buzzed. “Ignore it.”

“I fully intend to,” Stelson
agreed.

But then it buzzed twice more
within a minute. “I’d better take a look.”

The message from Terri read:
Umm…I’m pretty sure you can have your job back. Turn on any local news channel
tonight. PHS the top story.

One from Jonathan: Was that
your school?

One from the school district
with a link to a public announcement document which I wasn’t interested in
viewing on my tiny cell phone.

“Honey, turn on the news.
Something happened at my high school.”

He hit the remote control and
we both watched as the reporter narrated. “It all started with some very
ambitious journalism students. After a stealthy, long-term investigation, they
created and posted their YouTube video yesterday titled ‘Grownups These Days’
exposing an affair between the principal, Jerry Ringhauser, and his new
assistant principal, Natalie Lockhart-Gomez. Both administrators are married to
other people. The students shot several videos and pictures depicting these
two, who are supposed to be setting an example for the student body, leaving
hotel rooms, attending events together, kissing and holding hands.”

Snippets of the video
confirmed the students’ allegations. “Oh my gosh. This has Michael Higgins’
name written all over it. He was chomping at the bit to break open a scandal,”
I told Stelson.

The report continued, “When Mr.
Gomez was informed about the video, he came to the campus around five this
afternoon and opened fire in Mr. Ringhauser’s office. Early reports say the
principal was in the office and hid under the desk.

“As he left in handcuffs, Gomez
pointed out that he had only meant to scare the principal.”

Footage of the husband being
escorted from my school building to a police car in handcuffs rolled. “If I’d
wanted to kill them both, I could have.”

The reporter’s face popped
back on the screen. “Now, there were no students present at the time of the
shooting. But as you can see”—he walked toward the back wall and put a
finger through one of the holes—“ Mr. Ringhauser’s office shares an
adjacent wall with another office. One of the
warning
bullets penetrated
the wall. Sources tell us that office used to be occupied by another principal.
Thankfully for her, she’s on a leave of absence.”

The camera zoomed in to peek
on the other side—
my
side!

“This is Ivan Raley
reporting. Lisa, back to you.”

Chills ran all over me.
“Stelson, that empty office is
my
office. I could have been sitting there
when that bullet tore through!”

“Wow,” Stelson remarked.
“Just wow.”

We held on to each other for
a long time, that night. Really, I should say Stelson held me because I was
beside myself. First, that my office got shot up. And second, that my boss,
whom I had such respect for, would do such a thing.

“Focus on the good part,
LaShondra. No one was hurt.”

When I was a member at Gethsemane,
people used to stand up and testify that the Lord had kept them from dangers
seen and unseen. I always envisioned God putting his hand down between a person
and whatever harm was trying to attack them.

But given this incident, I
had to bring God out of my box, ‘cause evidently He could run to the future,
then come back and tell me what to do
today
so I wouldn’t be in the
wrong place at the wrong time three months later.