No Weapon Formed (Boaz Brown) (6 page)

Not to mention Seth’s new
weekly read-to-me requirement. His teacher had done a good job of putting the
fear of God in them about getting an adult to sign off on the reading log. If
anyone should have been “on it” about getting a child to read, it should have
been me. An educator. A principal, no less. But I was so busy making sure other
people’s kids got an education, my own son went to pre-k not knowing how to read
which, in Plainview, was not a good start.

Note to self: Get Daddy to
do some time with Seth’s reading log.

After securing Zoe in her car
seat, I rattled my brain for a dinner plan. Didn’t hear one. Besides, cooking
and cleaning up would add another hour to my evening agenda. I was already in
the red, time-wise. McDonald’s to the rescue.

I limped through the house
with sacks in one hand, Zoe on a hip, my purse and laptop bag handles in the
other hand. Evidence of the morning’s mayhem still sat where we’d left it:
bowls in the sink, Seth’s night clothes on the couch, Zoe’s comb and brush on
the coffee table. Conviction all over the place.

Nothing like coming home
to a messy house.

Maybe He had graced some
women to do many things well. Maybe some women
had
to be a jack-of-all-trades
because they didn’t have husbands, for whatever reason. But as for me,
LaShondra Denise Smith Brown, I was clearly not capable nor was I anointed to
run this many races at once.

Something had to give, but I
wasn’t ready to figure out who or what.

I called Peaches first
because she knew all the ins and outs of human resources. “What do I say?”

“You tell them you’re taking
the rest of your family medical leave. Don’t say ‘I’d
like
to’ or ‘I
need
to’. This isn’t a request, it’s a legal right. You can take up to a year off
work to care for your baby.”

“But I went back to work
already,” I said. “Doesn’t that count against me?”

“Technically, yes, but you’re
in Texas, which is an employment-at-will state. No reputable employer wants to
force anyone to work somewhere they don’t actually want to work, especially not
in your field,” she explained.

“I so wish you were here,
Peaches.”

“Well if you get a phone
upgrade, we can FaceTime,” she badgered again.

“I don’t have the mental
capacity to learn another operating system right now,” I pushed her suggestion
aside. “Now, what if they don’t want to let me go?”

“If your H-R person tries to
act funny about it, you might have to wiggle through some of the loopholes in
the law. I can send you some stuff if it comes to that.”

I pushed the gear into park
as I finished the free consultation with my resident expert. A quick survey of
my surroundings put my mind at ease. There were no other co-workers present to
overhear our conversation through the car’s speakers. Stelson had rigged up the
hands-free system to make the car safer for me and the kids.

“Anything else I need to
know?” I probed. “It can’t be this simple. How can I just walk in one day right
before the start of school and say ‘I don’t want to work right now’?”

“What if you won the lottery
and you resigned the next day?” she posed. “You think it would be any different?”

“I don’t play the lottery.”

“How about, God forbid, if
you got hurt and you had to take off to care for yourself?”

“That would be different.”

“No, it wouldn’t,” she
explained. “Right now, your
family
is hurting and you have to go take
care of the family unit.”

Never thought of it that
way.

“Why can’t
dads
take
care of the family?” I argued.

“You can ask Stelson to take
a leave of absence. I mean, nobody’s saying the person handling the house and
kids has to be you,” she replied.

I’d be a fool to ask my
husband to give up his business. Stelson’s income ran circles around mine.
Non-profit sector salaries couldn’t compete with the for-profit arena. “Never
mind. I just can’t believe I’m actually going to do this.”

“What did Stelson say when
you told him you were taking a leave?”

“He did the running man dance.”

“Naaaaw.”

“Yes. Elbows and everything.”

Peaches cracked up. “Girl, he
is going to love having you at home. So will the kids. Are you considering
homeschooling?”

“Absolutely not! This is
temporary
.
I do not plan to be at home long.”

“What’s your timeframe?”

“Long enough to get a handle
on things. Get back in shape, get the housekeeper and chef on a schedule, get
back into my regular prayer time, reconnect with Stelson,” I ran through the
agenda. “Six months ought to do it.”

“And what if it doesn’t? Or
what if you actually
like
being home?”

“I won’t,” I relieved her of
that worry. “Six months. I’m back to work in March. Finish out the school year,
take another breather in the summer. I’ll be good.”

“Okay. Let’s do this.”

All day, I kept an eye out
for an opportune time to speak with Jerry about my plans. Meeting after
meeting, however, prevented us from grabbing a moment until almost three
o’clock. We were both in wind-down mode by that point, but I had to break the
news. The sooner the better, Peaches had said.

“Jerry,” I said, knocking on
his half-open office door. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

He looked up from the stack
of work on his desk.

How can I leave him with
all this work?

“Uuuh…is this a good time?”

“As good a time as any,” he
chuckled.

I shuffled toward the empty
chair across from him.

“This doesn’t feel like good
news,” he growled. “What’s up?”

I took a deep breath.
Am I
crazy? It took me years to get this high up in the district!
“I’ve been
thinking about how to balance my life with this job—”

“I know. Me, too,” he nodded.
“Sarah’s on me all the time about working too much.”

Relief swept through me as I
released the ball of pent-up air in my chest. “It’s a lot to handle.”

“I know,” he agreed. “I’ve
asked the superintendent for another vice principal to divide the work. If
enrollment is as high as projected, we may have the budget for it.”

Okay. Having another VP
would relieve some of the workload. Less work, less stress. I could swing this.

My resolve to leave crumpled.
“I sure hope so, Jerry. I think we could both use some help.”

I didn’t answer Peaches’ call
that night. Wasn’t quite sure how to tell her I’d punked on the plan.

Stelson, however, could not
be avoided. I told him the truth. The hopeful truth. “We’re adding another vice
principal,” I offered as though Jerry’s proposal was already set in stone.

God, please let it be
, I prayed. I didn’t like telling my
husband half-truths.

With only two weeks before
school started, my prayer was answered. Jerry got the green light to hire
another vice principal. We looked in-district first for newly certified
candidates. The only ones available had already been picked over and turned
down by other campuses, which spoke volumes.

Our search led us back to the
district’s open pool of applicants. Jerry and I combed through dozens of
resumes. We narrowed them down to four. We interviewed all four, selected two
contenders. Interviewed again, and finally decided on one: Natalie
Lockhart-Gomez.

Natalie’s background working
with diverse populations clinched the position for her. She was bilingual
(English/Spanish), which was a plus given our campus’s ever-changing
population. Jerry and I both looked forward to sharing best practices with her.

We submitted her name to H-R
for a final review.

Meanwhile, Jerry and I got
busy preparing for back-to-school inservice and countless meetings with
counselors and the dean of education, Marty Williams. Marty was a genius when
it came to matching teachers’ strengths with student weaknesses based on the
data analysis Jerry and I provided. It felt good to be part of such an awesome
team. Double-good as a black female. Right or wrong, my work was
fulfilling—even if it was a never-ending job.

“This year is going to be
wonderful,” I told myself over and over again, even as Stelson made little
comments here and there about how they could have just as easily hired two
last-minute vice principals as one.

I stopped talking to him
about anything involving work because the conversation would morph into a
low-level disagreement. Stelson wasn’t really one to raise his voice.
Sometimes, his ability to make a point and then shut up immediately afterward
left me almost wishing he’d soften his words with a bunch of other irrelevant
gibberish. Other times, I just wondered if it was a “white” thing because every
black couple I knew could go tit-for-tat until the cows came home.

When we argued by not
arguing, I thought about my father’s philosophy; the idea that black men were
fundamentally different due to historical influences. Maybe white men didn’t
argue because they didn’t have to. Why argue when you already have the power?
And maybe black men argued because if they didn’t advocate for themselves,
they’d never be heard.

Where does that leave
Seth?

I couldn’t worry about the
future. Not when two of my strongest math teachers were being heavily recruited
by the district office for coaching positions.

Jerry and I threw ourselves
into last-minute mode, which included registration, staff development, and
meetings with the technology team regarding the digital book adoption for
several core classes. We needed to help develop our policy regarding use and
abuse of the new e-readers we’d be distributing to students. The whole
transition was a booger-bear we’d been putting off for years. But since
technology waits for no one, we had to hammer that whole plan out in a matter
of days.

Stelson pretty much took over
Seth’s enrollment in pre-K. I met his teacher, Miss Osiegbu, and let her know
in so many words that Seth was the son of a long-time district administrator.
If she knew anything about Plainview school district, she would know that we
all looked out for each other’s kids especially. An unspoken perk which,
incidentally, was the very reason I’d “requested” Miss Osiegbu for Seth. She
had a reputation for challenging kids beyond the state curriculum, per the
school’s counselor, who used to be on my staff at the middle school.

The Friday before school
started, I finally stole away from the campus for a lunch break at Wal-Mart so
I could buy Seth’s school uniforms. The trip to the store alone saddened me
because I knew if Momma had been alive, it would have been her joy to take Seth
back-to-school shopping.

Come to think of it, if Momma
had been alive, she would have helped me with the kids a lot more, and Stelson
wouldn’t have been on my back so much about quitting.

Momma. I wish you were
here.
Being a mother
without a mother was extra hard.

We were all set to
go—or so I thought—until the actual morning of the first day, when
we got up and I slid those navy blue uniform pants up Seth’s legs.

Seth leaned over and examined
the inch of empty space between the top of his foot and the hem of those pants.
“Mommy, I’m too big for these.”

“Turn around.”

Seth twirled. I flipped up
the back tag. They were a size four, just like I thought. But the last time I’d
bought him a pair of pants was before the summer. He’d worn nothing but shorts
pants, even to church, for the past few months, which explained the problem.

How can I not know what
size my child wears?

I turned the hem of his pants
inside out to see how much extra material we had to work with. “Take your pants
off. Wait right here.”

Taking out the hem robbed me
of six precious minutes, but I couldn’t send my child to school looking
neglected on the very first day. And I sure as heck didn’t want Stelson to get
wind of the crisis at hand.

After I freed the hem with a
steak knife, I told Seth to get the glue out of his new backpack while I went
into the laundry room to iron his pants.

“Okay.” He seemed glad to be
helping.

So long as Zoe remained
silent in her crib, we would be fine.

Standing at the ironing
board, I eyeballed a straight line. I folded the fabric, then starched and
pressed a new seam into the bottom of his pants. Seth brought me the glue,
which would have to do until I saw him again after school. I tacked the new hem
in place. “We’ll give it a few minutes to dry and you can put them on again.”

“Yes!” He raised his hand for
a hi-five.

“Teamwork, baby!” I
congratulated him, slapping his palm. “But don’t tell Daddy, okay?”

“Don’t tell Daddy what?” my
husband’s voice poured over my shoulder.

Dang it!

Seth slapped both hands over
his mouth.

I played it off like no big
deal. Motioning for my son to come near, I placed myself behind Seth’s body as
I helped him step into the newly-crafted slacks. “Well your son, here, must
have hit a growth spurt. We had to let out the hem in his pants.”

“You’re getting pretty tall
there!” Stelson gave our son his second high-five of the morning. “Why would
this be a secret to keep from Daddy?”

Though his eyes were fixed on
our son, I knew Stelson’s question was aimed at me.

I truly did not want to
mislead my husband again, but I didn’t want to give him another log to throw on
his you-don’t-have-to-work fire. “We had a wardrobe malfunction. No worries. We
fixed it.”

Quickly, I sent Seth back to
the kitchen while I got Zoe up and dressed. Stelson spent a few minutes talking
to Seth in the kitchen reiterating our expectations and God’s expectations of
him in pre-school.

My ears remained on high
alert to see if their conversation diverted to the subject of Seth’s pants.
Thankfully, Stelson let the topic fall.

I’m sorry, Lord. I don’t
like tricking my husband or recruiting my child for deception.
But how else was I supposed to avoid
conflict while getting what I wanted out of life at the same time? After all,
it was
my
God-given life. I wasn’t the first working mother, and I
wouldn’t be the last. There had to be a million moms worse than me, too. At
least my kids were clean, fed, well-dressed (with the exception of Seth’s
slacks) and loved. Seth was smart, Zoe was hitting all her developmental
milestones. So what if they ate fast food a little more than the surgeon
general recommended.
Who died and made him boss of the food pyramid anyway?