No Weapon Formed (Boaz Brown) (16 page)

“Mmmmm….mmmmm.”

The low moan woke me from my
sleep. “Stelson?”

“What?”

I raised up to find my
husband clutching his head. Even in the darkness, I could see that he was in
unbelievable pain. “Your head again?”

“Feels like someone wearing
track cleats is stomping on my head,” he groaned.

“Let’s go.”

“Go where?”

“E-R. Now. This has been
going on too long. It’s ridiculous.”

“Stop yelling.”

“I’m not yelling. I’m
telling
you we’re leaving. I’ll get the kids together. You change clothes or put on a
robe. I don’t care.”

Leaving the house at five-thirty
in the morning threw our routine off, which made Zoe extra fussy.

Seth was immune to his
sister’s crying. He was knocked out in his car seat.

Normally, Stelson would have
ignored her, too. Not that morning. “Make her stop. Please.”

I fumbled with the CD
changer, settling on the kids’ favorite Dora song. “If you’re happy and you
know it, clap your hands!”

“Uh, no. That’s too loud.
Turn it off,” Stelson ordered even as Zoe began to quiet down.

“Well, you can’t have it both
ways. Either Zoe cries or Dora sings,” I explained the choices.

“I should have driven
myself,” he muttered under his breath.

Father, Stelson is your
son. Please help me. And please help him with this headache.

We left the E-R with a
clinical diagnosis of migraine headache, which baffled me completely. From what
little I knew about migraines, they were triggered by stress. But what could be
stressing my husband out? I knew he had a great deal of pressure as co-founding
partner, but Brown-Cooper Engineering was a well-established, fairly elite
engineering firm. By God’s grace most of their business came from repeat
customers and referrals with deep pockets who weren’t struggling. People called
my husband’s company when they were looking to expand and had enough money to
afford the best.

Was it the kids? Seth was a
handful. Zoe still woke up in the middle of the night sometimes, but I was the
one who handled her after-hours issues.

Was it me?
No. Couldn’t
be.
Well…maybe. Maybe it was the fact that I’d quit my job and now
everything rested on Stelson’s shoulders. Really, that was the only thing that
had changed in the previous weeks. Perhaps on the surface, Stelson wanted to be
the man. But subconsciously, he was panicked about bearing the load for a
family of four. Anyone would be, right?

Once I got Stelson home and
took Seth to school, I ran back to the pharmacy to fill the migraine relief prescription.
Zoe played with the toys dangling over her carrier while I ran my theory past
Peaches on the phone.

“No. That’s not it. Stelson’s
used to paying bills. He had his own house before you two got married,” she
shot me down. “It’s gotta be something else. Is he getting along with Mr.
Cooper?”

“Yeah. As far as I know.”

“How’s his family in
Louisiana?”

“They’re good. I talked to
his mom after Seth’s lost-in-the-forest incident. Everybody’s fine,” I
discounted that possibility.

“Maybe it’s not
stress-related,” she said. I could hear computer keys tapping away in the
background. “I’m at my natural remedy website. Let me see. Hmmm. Maybe it’s
some kind of hormonal imbalance,” she suggested.

“Men don’t have hormonal
issues.”

“Yes, they do!” she argued.
“They probably have more hormonal problems than doctors actually diagnose.
Okay. So here’s a personal question—just trying to get to the bottom of
this. How are things in the bedroom?”

“Fine,” I said.

“Fine like
okay
or
fine like it could go down at a moment’s notice?” she probed.

“Wait a minute,” I stopped
her. “
What
could go down—
it
or
us
?”

Peaches huffed. “I’m gonna
have to break this down for you. Let me read from the screen.” She cleared her
throat. “Is he able to achieve an erection and does it last throughout the
duration of sexual activity?”

“Yes,” I answered, feeling
like we were sixteen years old reading a magazine we had no business owning.

“How’s his attitude? Mood
swings?”

“No, not until the headaches
started.”

“Aaaa-hah,” she contemplated.
“Has he eaten any seafood lately?”

“No,” I ruled out, exhausted
with this wild goose chase. “You know what, I haven’t even prayed about it.”

Peaches fussed, “Well, what
are you calling me for if you haven’t even talked to Daddy?”

“I haven’t had a minute alone
all morning, all right?”

“Mmm hmmm. You get in the
closet, I’ll do some searching online. Amen?”

“Amen, girl.”

My prayer time did nothing
more than confuse me. I was reading a book on God’s goodness by Bishop Desmond
Tutu and his daughter, Mpho, during my prayer time. They described horrific
torture and injustices people had suffered in South Africa and worldwide. And
yet, somehow, God’s goodness prevails.

I agreed. But I didn’t see
what any of that had to do with Stelson’s headaches.

For days, I journaled my
questions: Is it really migraines?
Are the kids and I stressing him out?
Is he worrying too much? Should I go back to work after Thanksgiving?
Christmas?

I was growing tired of asking
questions without receiving answers. I would have given anything to call my
Momma. Even if all she told me was to keep praying, it would have been better
than feeling like I was in limbo without somebody backing me up in prayer.
Usually, I could count on Stelson to cover me. But since he was the problem, it
was just me and God. And God wasn’t talkin’.

Stelson kept getting up and
going to work every day. He showered, took medicine, and dove into bed when he
got home.

I bathed the kids and took
care of business as usual. Kept telling myself to carry on like he wasn’t even
home, like he was working late. And I probably could have waited out this
episode of migraines were it not for the fact that I had to serve him dinner in
our dark, silent bedroom.

Witnessing the anguish on his
face sent me into lecture mode. “Honey, just last month you made me go to the
doctor over a stubbed toe that turned out to be a broken toe, remember?”

“We already went to the
doctor. It’s a migraine.”

“I don’t think so, Stelson.”

He griped, “Since when did
you earn a medical degree?”

“Since when did you get so
disrespectful?”

“Please. If you’d…stop saying
things that don’t make sense. Arguing makes my head throb harder.”

“I don’t have to say anything
at all to you,” I sassed. “I could bring your little plate in here and set it
on the bed and leave.”

“Maybe you should,” he
agreed.

“Fine. I will,” I said,
standing.

He squeezed his eyes shut.
Pinched the top of his nose with two fingers. “I…it’s…I’m getting pretty close
to a ten on the pain scale.”

“I’ve been past ten. In
labor. But I didn’t go left on you,” I stated. “Stelson, I’ve never seen this
side of you.”

“Neither have I. I’ve never
been this miserable for this long in my whole life. Just leave me alone before
I say something else stupid.”

Well, at least he recognized
he was being stupid.

Didn’t make much difference
to my feelings, though. I staved off the tears long enough to get the kids down
for the night.

I cleaned up the kitchen with
warm tears streaking down my face. Deep down inside, I knew Stelson didn’t mean
to be so rude, but he
did
hurl those mean words at me. And somebody wise
once said: You can’t unspeak words.

In the ten years I had known
him and the nine we’d been married, I had seen him angry or grouchy after a
hard day’s work. He wasn’t perfect. Everyone’s entitled to a bad day here and
there. And, of course, we had argued. But he had never insulted me or my
intelligence. Never told me to basically get out of his face.

I didn’t have the heart to
lie in bed that night. I fumbled around in our room by the light of the
hallway, looking for pajamas. Once I found them, I changed clothes in the guest
bathroom and came back to the living room to watch television on the couch.

I threw a blanket over my
legs and settled into several episodes of
The Golden Girls
, laughing at
the re-runs as though I hadn’t seen them all before.

Blanche, Rose, Dorothy, and
Sophia. Friends for life. I wondered if Peaches and I would both outlive our
husbands and move in together. Be roommates again, like we were in college. I
would probably be Dorothy. Peaches would be Blanche without the sleeping
around. Peaches was a flirtin’ something before she got married, so I’d have to
watch out for her.

We’d be single again. Kids
grown. Grandkids grown, too. We’d take a cruise once a year, visit warm places
for the winter.
Yeah. That would be fun.

During the third episode,
when I should have been quite sleepy, I felt a nudge to head to the prayer
closet. Momma used to say that when you’re all alone and you can’t sleep at
night, God’s calling you to pray.

Only, I didn’t want to pray.
My feelings were hurt and I didn’t want to go into the prayer closet and look
at scriptures telling me not to take offense. I was offended already. Too late.

Plus, I was dirt tired.
Can
we talk tomorrow, Lord?

My phone buzzed from about
ten feet behind me. Darn near made me jump out of my skin. If God had started
texting people, that was gonna be all she wrote for me.

I shuffled to the kitchen
island and read the message. From Stelson.
Where are you?

I responded:
Living room
.

Coming back?

Maybe.

Sorry.

Against my feelings, against
my will, I joined him in bed.

Thank God for the frozen
meals. They saved me from choking my husband and neglecting my children.
Between Stelson’s ongoing bad-attitude headache and running behind Seth and
Zoe, I figured I’d be next for a migraine.

My prayer time, though
productive by comforting me and buffering me in His love, still hadn’t yielded
an answer to my husband’s health challenge. He had run through his prescription
medications in a week and another bottle of Excedrin Migraine while we waited
on the insurance company’s approval of an appointment with a neurologist.

Peaches had decided that
Stelson was suffering from a vitamin deficiency, and WebMD had me thinking he
had a brain tumor. I put the whole thing on the back burner and went into
survival mode because if I thought about it too much, I’d get discouraged on
top of angry.

Keeping up with Seth’s
homework and finalizing plans for his fifth birthday party gave me enough to do
anyway. One would think that, seeing as I was a stay-at-home mom (which I’d
learned was abbreviated SAHM), I would have planned an elaborate shindig with a
clown, a bouncy-house, some Pinterest party ideas, and a whole buncha hot dogs.

No. I didn’t feel like
cleaning up after a slew of kids. Chuck E. Cheese to the rescue. I had
invitations sent home with several of his children’s church buddies, along with
my father and Jonathan’s marathon-girl’s son.

The very last person I told
about the party was the birthday boy himself because he would have bugged me to
death if I’d told him too far in advance.

With the cake and Seth’s
birthday gift in tow, we arrived at the pizza party half an hour early so I
could meet with the hostess and scout out the area.

As the guests arrived,
Stelson remained in one spot with Zoe at the main table while Seth and I ran
around with his friends playing games.

Jonathan and marathon-girl,
whom he introduced as Krista, arrived a few minutes after our starting time of
three o’clock. She was short with an athletic build and a cute teeny-weeny afro.
“Nice to meet you. Where’s your son?”

“He’s spending the weekend
with his father,” she said. Her thin grin said it all. She and the ex were
obviously not friends.

“Awww…I’m sorry I didn’t get
to meet him, too.”

“Maybe next time,” Krista
said.

“Well, come on over. Let me
introduce you.”

In doing the rounds, I
labeled her Jonathan’s “friend”. He didn’t correct me, so I figured it was
accurate despite the Facebook status.

“And this is my husband,
Stelson.”

Krista continued to flash all
thirty-two. “Hello.”

Stelson’s smile was more a
grimace than a greeting. “Hi.” No handshake, no nod. Only a blank ‘Hi.’

He shouldn’t have come to
the party.

Daddy joined Stelson at his
booth, relieving him of Zoe for a while. I tag-teamed with Jonathan, who took
my place in the game of Skee-ball with Seth. Returning to our table, I found
Stelson with his arms folded on the table, his head down. “Babe, do you want to
leave? I can get Jonathan to bring me home.”

“No,” he flared, “I don’t
need you telling me what to do.”

Unfortunately, my father’s
keen ears picked up on the nasty response. “She just asked you a question,
man.” Though Daddy had no business butting into ours, he’d only said what I
wanted to say.

“You’re right,” Stelson
smarted off. “The question was directed toward
me,
with all due respect.
And I answered it.”

“I couldn’t care less if you
respect me or not. But look like you slapped a little
funk
on your
answer to Shondra, if you ask me,” my father continued.

I could tell the two moms
from church at the adjacent booth were trying hard to keep from turning around
to watch my family unravel.

“Well, since nobody asked
you—”

“Really?” I intervened. “This
is Seth’s birthday party, for crying out loud.”

Stelson exhaled heavily.
“It’s too loud in here. I’m going to the car.”

“What?” We weren’t even close
to the stage because I had requested an area far enough away to make the music
bearable for Stelson.

He scooted out of the booth
and walked toward the exit doors.

Daddy muttered to himself,
“He betta watch how he talks to my daughter. She ain’t no negro slave.”

“Would you stop with the
negro slaves, Daddy?”

“I’m gonna speak my mind. I
knew it was just a matter of time before the
real
him came out. White
folks are sneaky like that.”

“I will not let you
disrespect my husband.” I stood up for Stelson’s position even though he wasn’t
exactly on my good side.

“Well, I’m not gonna let him
disrespect my daughter, either. You can put up with it if you want to, though I
know me and your Momma raised you better than that. She’d be ’shamed to hear
how he talked to you today. Downright ashamed.”

Me with my emotional self, I
stomped off to the restroom and holed myself up in a stall to get composed,
keep from crying like a big forty-two-year-old baby.
Who does this?
By
that point in life, I should have been well-versed in strapping on a mask to
get through difficult moments. Save the melt-downs for later.

But this was my baby’s fifth
birthday party. One of the first ones he’d actually be able to remember. And
Stelson wouldn’t be a part of that memory, all because of some stupid headache
and an argument with my father—which everybody knows is futile from the
get-go.

Pull yourself together,
Shondra! Get your game face and your big girl bloomers on.

With this smidgen of
self-therapy, I was able to plaster a smile on my face and graciously answer
the questions about Stelson, including Seth’s. “Where’s Daddy?”

“Oh, he wasn’t feeling well,”
I replied casually.

“Migraine again?” Seth asked,
his face growing long. He’d heard the medical term dozens of times by that
point.

I nodded. “You go ahead and
eat your pizza.”

Zoe became the perfect
distraction. She didn’t want to be passed around—or at least that’s what
I told anyone who asked. “She has her days, you know?” I clung to her
throughout the party, hoping people wouldn’t see which one of us was holding on
more tightly than the other.

Stelson left me the task of
putting the kids to bed that night.
What else is new?

“Did you have a good time at
your party, Seth?” I rubbed his hair.

“Yeah. I wish Daddy could
have stayed.”

“I know.” I tugged gently on my
son’s ear. “But don’t worry about him. He’ll be fine soon.”

“Mommy, is Daddy down?”

“Down like what?”

“Like when it was in
Ecc…leese…mastes?”

“Ecclesiastes?”

“Yes. When we had home
church.”

Seth amazed me with the odd
things he remembered sometimes. “Yeah, I guess he is down.”

“Then somebody’s supposed to
help him up, right?”

Ding!
My heart took the punch. “Yes. Somebody
is.”

Seth pointed at me. “Is it
you?”

“Yeah. I guess it is.”

“Okay. Thanks, Mommy.”

“Mmm hmm.”

Father, God, I don’t know
what’s going on with my husband’s head, and neither does the doctor who was
supposedly a specialist. But You know what’s wrong. Please heal my husband.
Otherwise, I don’t know how we’re going to go on with all this arguing. I’m
trying to remember that he is under duress. In pain. It’s hard, though. Protect
my heart, too, from bitterness.

Initially, I had wanted to go
to the women’s fellowship so that I could meet other women. Now, I was going to
preserve my sanity. The fellowship was from nine until noon, but the “Mommy’s Day
Out” childcare went until three, which meant I had some hours to myself before
Seth’s school released, before Stelson got home.

He had said the headaches
were decreasing in intensity, but I wasn’t sure if he was just telling me that
so I wouldn’t worry or if he really meant it. Honestly, I didn’t know what to
think about the things that came out of my husband’s mouth anymore. I was
beginning to wonder if, maybe, Daddy had been really nice to Momma for a long
time before he turned into a sourpuss. Maybe I had done what so many women do:
married a man just like the one who’d raised me.

God forbid.
Daddy was hardly talking to me after
Seth’s birthday party. Given all the tension in the Brown household, I was
almost glad to be on non-speaking terms with my father. Less drama for me. We
were both content with Jonathan as a go-between, transporting the meals from my
kitchen to Daddy’s.

I know the Lord says to honor
our parents. He also instructed married people to cleave to one another. I
wasn’t sure how to do both when they were pulling me in different directions.

A break with a bunch of other
SAHMs and retired women would do me fine. Followed by a massage would be even
better.

After signing Zoe into
childcare, I registered at the sign-in table. The young woman who was attending
the table asked, “Are you a member here?”

“Yes.”

“Is there any particular
group you’d like to sit with?”

“Umm…no. I mean, what are the
group types?”

She smiled graciously. “Well,
there are moms with small children and older, more seasoned women, women who
have certain things or interests in common,” she listed.

Given the fact that I was
often the oldest one in the bunch of pre-schooler moms, I wasn’t trying to join
a group where I would feel the pressure of inadvertently mentoring somebody ten
years younger than me. No, I wasn’t coming to this fellowship to give. I needed
to be the baby in the group. “I’d like to sit with some older women, please.”

The hostess led me to table
four. And, just as I’d requested, everybody there had at least one swath of
gray hair, which did my heart good.
Thank You, Father.

The room was set up with
roughly twelve round tables. Each table was covered with pastel-colored cloths
and a centerpiece with silk flowers. This space doubled as a fellowship hall,
so it had a homey-feeling, perfect for receptions and small dinners.

 “I need thee, oh, I need
thee,” we sang at our tables. The first chorus activated my water-works. When I
was a little girl, I used to hate when they sang those slow, long, drawn-out
songs with the same ten words repeated over and over again. Songs like
“Yes”—which only has one word, actually—and “I say yes to my Lord.”

This song comforted me now.
“I need you, Lord. I need you, Lord!” If He didn’t help me, there
was
no
help. “I neeeeeed you, Lord!”

Someone tapped my arm and
passed me a tissue. “Have your way. Have your waaa-aay.”

I could have sang that song
for hours. And I did, actually, in my heart. The humility of petition rested on
me all through the morning’s Bible study. One by one, the women introduced
themselves to me: Hattie, Beverly, Janice, Linda, and Doris. Linda had been at
the picnic and remembered praying for Seth’s saga. The rest of the women
recalled the news report or the next day, when our congregation rejoiced
together.

“Your son is a handsome one,”
Janice said, her smooth brown skin looking like it might have belonged to
someone my age. Were it not for the wispy silver hair and the cat glasses, she
might have fooled somebody.

“Thank you. He’s a handful.”

“Well, enjoy him now because he’ll
be a man before you know it,” Hattie laughed.

I wished I had a quarter for
every time somebody told me my children’s childhood would flash by. Perhaps it
would feel “fast” ten or twenty years down the line, but from my vantage point,
there was no end in sight to the grind.

 Miss Hattie, who was
clearly the leader by virtue of her white binder, handled some administrative
business. She collected donations for the fellowship coordinator’s birthday
gift, then sent a sympathy card for a bereaved family around the table for
everyone to sign.

We discussed plans for a potluck.
I took the easy route—drinks and plastic ware. If I couldn’t freeze it, I
wasn’t trying to hear it right about then.

Our speaker, introduced as
Sister Olivia Windham, was a tiny, short woman with long, black wavy hair
braided into a ponytail that landed at her behind. I didn’t recognize her from
our church.

When she took the podium, I
expected to hear a mousey voice. She looked like she was better suited for
teaching nice, sweet topics like gardening and caring for kittens.

But when she opened her
mouth, bay-bee, I knew it was on.

“The hour has come to hear
the Word of God. I command the voice of the enemy to be silent in the name of
Jesus. Cease from distraction. Spirit of the living God, manifest Yourself in
our presence today. Teach us, guide us, lead us and comfort us, as Jesus
promised You would. Your Word is established. You gave the prophecy in Ezekiel
that You would put Your Spirit in us and cause us to walk in Your statutes and
keep Your ways. Abba, Father, we agree with You. We agree. Let all God’s people
say…”