All That She Saw

by Alana Terry

  And here she was, just a few years later, already turning into another trope — the jaded, lonely single woman wondering what she was doing chasing scoops and investigating scandals when the very next week the public would forget everything she wrote about in the first place.

  Chelsea had begged her editor for the chance to cover the Brown Elementary controversy. A primary school in Detroit had been built on land that had once been the illegal dumping grounds for a pharmaceutical company. Tiny kindergartners were landing in the ER with respiratory problems and horrific fevers and rashes, but the school district claimed it had nothing to do with the school’s location. Chelsea didn’t understand why the entire country hadn’t already shown up to march on the superintendent’s home. Most people on the East Coast hadn’t even heard of Brown Elementary School.

  It was the kind of story that propelled Chelsea into reporting in the first place. Immigrant parents, many who could barely speak English, weren’t given a voice. The children served by Brown Elementary were among Detroit’s poorest, which is why the superintendent assumed he could get away with poisoning each and every one of them.

  At her most zealous, Chelsea would have considered this the perfect assignment. Brown Elementary was news on a national scale. It was also the entire reason she dove into journalism as a wide-eyed first-year college student in the first place. To give a voice to the voiceless. To speak up for the downtrodden, shine the light on oppression, and just about any other cliché you could come up with.

  But now she knew what to expect. She’d show up in Detroit, interview some of the parents whose kids had fallen ill, talk to the few key players who were trying to stand up for this underrepresented community. Then she’d fly back to Boston, type up her story, maybe even get choked up as she did her best to represent the frustration these parents felt. If she did her job well, she might even get a little nod from her editor, a pat on the back or a “Nice article” from one of her colleagues.

  And then nothing.

  No marches on Detroit. No public outcry. No real justice for the kids of Brown Elementary.

  In short, no change.

  So why did she keep doing it?

  At her most jaded, she’d probably answer because it paid the bills. A journalism degree wasn’t cheap, and at the rate she was going she’d have to keep writing until she was eighty to pay off all her debt.

  But there was still something inside her, something that hadn’t yet been completely hardened. The idealistic, trusting, impossible hope that this time would be different. Her upcoming article would be the one that made that lasting impact. That effected positive change. That united citizens from across the political spectrum, that inspired the general public to rise up and support the children of Detroit.

  She could always hope, right?

  Chelsea opened the lid of her water bottle and took a big drink.

  Working on this story was a dream come true for her, and she didn’t want to reach such a pessimistic state that she refused to see it for the incredible opportunity it was.

  As men, women, and children continued to file past her first-class seat, Chelsea took a deep breath, reminded herself that this trip represented the entire reason she’d gotten into journalism in the first place, and allowed her mind to hope and dream.

  CHAPTER 2

  Flights coming into Boston had been delayed due to weather, and Chelsea’s plane was late to take off. They should be in the air by now, but they hadn’t even shut the doors.

  Chelsea had spent the past twenty minutes watching more and more passengers board, trying to dream up life stories for each and every one of them.

  There was a Middle Eastern man traveling with his aged father. A man in a Hawaiian shirt, followed by a surly looking teen. Moms with babies, parents traveling with toddlers. A woman boarded whom Chelsea recognized as a well-known Bible study teacher. Chelsea’s mom had been reading Meredith Crowley’s books and watching her videos for over a decade. It had been a few years since Chelsea had regularly attended church with her parents, but every so often her mom would send her a link to one of Meredith Crowley’s podcast episodes. Chelsea was surprised when Meredith continued past the first-class seats and headed toward economy.

  An eccentric old woman with shockingly white hair boarded. She was even shorter than Chelsea, but there was something fiery in the old woman’s face. Chelsea tried to think up an appropriate backstory. A doctor? Teacher? Maybe a flight nurse. There was something confident, something piercing in the woman’s expression. It reminded Chelsea of an interview she’d done a few months ago with an old woman who had the distinction of being the very first female detective on Boston’s police force. Whoever this passenger on the airplane was, Chelsea could sense she had the spirit of an adventurer. A pioneer.

  Chelsea liked to think of herself in the same way. At least at one point she had. Female journalists weren’t oddities anymore, but there were still obvious roadblocks she faced on her way to success. Any time one of the men she was sent to interview called her “Sweetie,” any time a colleague or a lead tried to flirt with her, Chelsea was reminded of the inherent setbacks of her position. Unfortunately the environment was hostile enough that women were suspicious and jealous of each other instead of joining forces and standing up for themselves. Chelsea knew for a fact that some of her colleagues talked behind her back, complaining and gossiping that the only reason she’d progressed as far as she had in her career was because she was a pretty face. As hard as Chelsea tried to keep her reputation squeaky clean and her work relationships free from drama, there were still people who thought she was advancing in her career by sleeping with her bosses.

  As if.

  Chelsea’s coach told her that the only way to prove these gossips wrong was to become an even better journalist. The problem with Clark’s advice was that with each new step Chelsea took up the ladder of acclaim, there were over a dozen of her colleagues who hated Chelsea for her advancement and made up horrible lies about her success.

  Chelsea was storing up all these experiences. One day she planned to write a memoir exposing the rampant sexism and harassment female journalists still faced in the twenty-first century. Until then, she had to do exactly what Clark told her to do in those coaching calls she was paying so much for. Focus on advancing her career, silencing the inner voice that told her she wasn’t making any difference.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m Tracy, one of your flight attendants today.” The voice pulled Chelsea out of her pity party. While the flight attendant recited her safety speech, Chelsea sat back in her seat and tried to relax. She’d been working insanely long hours, preparing for her Detroit trip, finishing up work on a story about police brutality in a city as purportedly progressive and forward-thinking as Boston. If anything, Chelsea deserved a few hours of uninterrupted rest. She’d already made herself a promise that on the way to Detroit she wouldn’t pull out any writing. Her cell was prepped with dozens of podcast episodes she’d been meaning to catch up on. Nothing overtly work related. Mostly true crime shows she liked to follow. And if she felt guilty being that frivolous with her time, she had several workbook assignments due to Clark before their coaching call next week.

  “The captain has closed the doors,” Tracy announced to the cabin, “and we’ll be taking off shortly. Welcome aboard Flight 219, offering you nonstop service to Detroit.”

  CHAPTER 3

  While the passenger seated beside her slept, Chelsea pulled out the workbook assignments Clark had emailed her last week. Typically, she wouldn’t want to write anything so personal with strangers looking over her shoulder, but her neighbor was dead to the world, the aisle was twice as wide as the ones in coach, so Chelsea had all the privacy she could want.

  She’d met Clark last year, covering a story about the digital nomad lifestyle. Clark was based in Boston, but he’d set up his online coaching practice so he could travel the world. After their interview, she’d been intrigued by him and
the raving testimonials of his clients, so she signed up for an initial coaching consult. She’d been his student for only about six months, and already Clark had called her for their coaching sessions from too many different exotic locations for Chelsea to remember.

  There were aspects of the nomadic lifestyle Chelsea found alluring. Like never having to live in an area with snow if she didn’t want to. Last month, Clark had set up his laptop in a little coworking space in New Zealand. He said he would have liked to stay there longer, but the time difference made it difficult for him to connect with his clients on the East Coast. Now, if Chelsea remembered correctly, he was temporarily settled in Costa Rica, in a little village where the average temperatures never dipped below 65 or above 72.

  Yes, that was something Chelsea could definitely get used to.

  Still, she wondered if Clark ever got lonely. Chelsea had been born and raised in Worcester. Her parents and grandparents and she all lived within five miles of each other. Her older brother was the odd one out, having settled with his new wife in Delaware, which may as well have been the deep south as far as the rest of the family was concerned.

  Chelsea’s family was close, relationally and not just geographically. She ate dinner with her parents at least once a week, more often than that when her apartment’s hot water heater acted up or the coin-op washing machines downstairs stopped working. She’d specifically planned her trip to Detroit so that she could have her article researched, written, and on her editor’s desk with time to spare before Christmas.

  Chelsea stared at her notebook page, thinking about her schedule for the next few days. The Detroit superintendent was impossible to reach by phone, but that didn’t mean Chelsea wouldn’t try to get a quote from him in person. She had an interview lined up with a medical doctor who’d treated some of the elementary students who’d fallen ill. In two days, a group of parents were meeting at a local YMCA to discuss the situation.

  Chelsea tapped her pen on her tray table, reminding herself she wasn’t supposed to be thinking about work right now. That’s something she and Clark had talked about extensively in their coaching calls. Chelsea needed to develop better boundaries to ensure that her entire life didn’t get overrun by journalism. So far, she hadn’t found too much success in that nebulous quest for work-life balance. She’d joined a gym but stopped going after that creepy janitor kept ogling her during spin class. She went online a week later and read that two years ago another employee had been fired and faced legal charges for hiding in a closet in the women’s locker room. Next time, Chelsea wouldn’t join a gym without reading the reviews first. Except now she was locked into a year-long contract.

  Well, nobody could claim she hadn’t tried.

  Chelsea’s best friend from high school was working as a youth leader at a large church in the Cambridge area. It was the perfect job for Brie, really. Even as teens, Brie had been the most serious about her faith, and Chelsea was happy her friend had found a calling that was not only rewarding but offered her a regular paycheck.

  It seemed as if everyone Chelsea knew when she was younger was now settled into real life. Brie had church. Her brother had his wife and new job out in Delaware, as well as something like a dozen nieces and nephews he saw on an almost daily basis.

  Chelsea knew she should be thankful for her job and the opportunities God had given her. Heaven knew finding steady work as a journalist straight out of college was on the same level as stumbling across a winning lottery ticket while picking up litter in a parking lot. So why did she feel like she was still searching for her life’s meaning?

  Clark told her it was a normal stage of young adulthood. Brie said it was because Chelsea still hadn’t surrendered her life totally over to God, whatever that meant.

  Mom thought this sense of unrest came because Chelsea had such miserable luck in the dating world.

  Whatever the reason, Chelsea couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing from her life, and that unease only made her feel guilty. She had every reason to be thankful. Her sense of dissatisfaction with her personal status quo was the reason she’d hired Clark to be her life coach in the first place. That and the fact that when she interviewed him, he seemed to light up every time he talked about helping people discover their life’s deeper meaning. Well, if he could help Chelsea find even a tenth of the motivation and passion she saw in him, he was well worth his monthly retainer.

  That was why she was so disciplined about completing each and every task he assigned her. That was why she’d printed up these dozen workbook pages and was committed to knocking some of them out before she put in her ear buds and tuned out the world with something light and funny to listen to.

  She took a deep breath, tried to get her mind into a state of gentle awareness like Clark taught her, and began the process of filling out her first worksheet.

  The problem with Clark’s coaching method was that Chelsea still hadn’t learned to turn off her inner editor. She read each and every word of her answer through Clark’s eyes, wondering what he’d think of her, what he’d say to her.

  Sometimes, hearing his gentle encouragement in the back of her head was immensely helpful. Like the time she wrote about how stupid she felt for stumbling over her words at a meeting with mostly male colleagues. I hate it when I make myself sound like a fool, she’d written, and immediately heard Clark’s encouraging words.

  Would you tell a five-year-old that she was stupid and you hated her if she pronounced a word wrong or got a little flustered with public speaking?

  No, of course she wouldn’t.

  This coaching process was taking longer than Chelsea hoped, but at least she was learning how to be gentle with herself.

  Chelsea’s mom didn’t approve. According to her, it wasn’t right for a female to get counseling from a male. It also didn’t help that Mom didn’t understand the difference between a life coach and a licensed therapist to begin with. She assumed that the fact that Chelsea was talking to anybody about her deep personal issues meant she was somehow psychologically scarred.

  “I didn’t think we did that bad of a job raising you,” she’d say, as if all Chelsea and Clark talked about were the lowest points in Chelsea’s childhood.

  Brie was a better listener, but even though she never said so, Chelsea got the sense that her best friend would approve more if Chelsea went to a pastor or Christian counselor.

  Chelsea wasn’t against church or Christianity. She still attended services with her parents if she was home for the weekend, and she couldn’t remember missing an Easter sunrise or Christmas Eve service in her entire life. Sometimes it bothered her the way Christians she loved acted as though she was selfish or somehow less of a believer because she wasn’t working for the church like Brie or attending Bible studies or prayer meetings three or four days a week like her mom. Chelsea loved the Lord but had other interests and hobbies outside of church. What was so wrong with that?

  The worksheet she’d been journaling on had questions about her past achievements. When Chelsea saw all the accomplishments she’d made in the past two years written out on paper, she felt even more guilty for being so dissatisfied. If Chelsea could have seen this list during her first year of college, if she could have known where all that hard work would one day take her, she probably would have started squealing with giddy excitement.

  So where was the joy, the spark?

  Clark’s worksheet — his ta-da list as opposed to a to-do list — was meant to help Chelsea realize all that she did have to be thankful for, but instead it just reinforced her fear that there was something intrinsically wrong with her.

  Imagine you’re receiving an award for all the hard work you’ve done. Your friends, loved ones, and colleagues are all there cheering for you. How do you feel?

  Chelsea stared at the question, wondering if she’d answer it truthfully or the way Clark expected.

  She poised her pen above the lines. Honestly, she wrote, I’
d feel like a total fraud. Like any minute whoever gave me the award would turn on the lights and stop the applause halfway through and tell everyone that it was all some giant mistake.

  She let out her breath. Her answer wasn’t going to make her life coach happy.

  Is that what you’d tell a little five-year-old girl if she was about to accept an award she’d earned by her hard work? Clark’s voice in her mind was gentle but firm.

  Of course she wouldn’t tell that to a proud little kid on the happiest day of her life. So why did she say it to herself? What was wrong with her?

  Maybe Clark gave her these assignments to prove how messed up she was. Maybe it was all some giant ploy so she’d keep on paying him for coaching.

  Chelsea’s negative thoughts were interrupted when a passenger tapped her on the shoulder. It was the same white-haired woman Chelsea had been studying during the boarding process.

  “Excuse me,” the old woman said, her wrinkles breaking out into tiny streams when she smiled.

  Chelsea shut her notebook so the old woman couldn’t read what she’d written.

  “The bathroom in the back of the plane is full,” the traveler explained, “so I came up here to use this one. As soon as I saw you here, I knew I had to stop and say something. I don’t usually do this type of thing, but I just had to introduce myself.”

  She reached out a hand, which Chelsea took automatically.

  “My name is Lucy Jean,” the passenger said, “but I insist on being called Grandma Lucy. And I believe the Lord has a message for you.”

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