by T. D. Jakes
Chapter Twenty-one
The tub of hot water felt good. Delores closed her eyes and pretended she was on a tropical island—an isolated island. There was no one around—no tourists, no servants, not even any family. Especially no family. She stretched all the way out so that she could lie back. The water closed up over her shoulders. She let it cover her ears. It edged up to the corners of her eyes and then finally covered the tip of her nose. There was no other person in the world. Her cocoon of water separated her from anything that might hurt her.
It worked. The tub of water distracted her as long as it was hot enough to burn her, as long as it was hot enough for her nerve endings to keep her mind occupied. When it cooled, everything came flooding back. Not that Delores could make any sense of it. She didn’t want to make any sense of it.
She lifted her head out of the water.
She thought of calling Carl Jr. on the phone so he could put the whole sordid lie to rest. But she didn’t want to call him. She didn’t want to hear the disquieting silence on the other end of the phone while he tried to think of a clever lie. She didn’t want to hear that peculiar sound—that note in his voice that only a mother could hear, would know—that would tell her that he was lying. She didn’t want to think back on other things in the past, things she might have overlooked.
When Delores had come to, after hearing Claudia’s terrible news, Carl was holding her and yelling for Claudia to call for an ambulance.
“No, I’m fine,” she had insisted until Carl calmed and decided she was right, he didn’t need to call. When he was sure that she was fine and had gone to his study, she tiptoed to Claudia’s room.
“We mustn’t tell anyone. Especially not your grandfather, it would kill him.” Delores had scratched at her elbows and rubbed her hands together. “It would kill him. We’ll just keep this to ourselves.” She couldn’t look Claudia in the eye. “Not that I believe you for one minute. Why should I believe you? It’s not as though you haven’t lied about a thousand things. I don’t even know why I’m trying to help you, when you’ve made up such a horrible lie about your uncle. Particularly when he’s been so attentive to you, when he’s been your champion on so many occasions.”
Delores had scratched her scalp and then wrung her hands. “No, we won’t tell anyone this horrible story. You don’t have to tell me who the father is. I won’t ask you anymore. What difference does it make? There won’t be a baby, so there’s no need to even inquire about the father.” She had grabbed Claudia’s arm. “But you will not, under any circumstances, mention this to anyone, especially not your grandfather. We’ll just take care of this little problem and we’ll find you a new school. A private school so we won’t ever have to deal with anything like this, again. You’d like that wouldn’t you, Claudia? A new school—a new start.”
The hot water was her reality now. The pins and needles dimmed the pain of her granddaughter’s revelation. It wasn’t possible was it? It wasn’t possible. Things like this didn’t happen to people like them. Claudia was simply trying to deflect trouble. Delores pushed away the temptation to consider that Claudia might be telling the truth. She pushed away thoughts that tied the time Carl Jr. became so attentive to his niece with the time that Claudia began to act out in school.
It wasn’t true. Delores didn’t want to think about it. It was all a lie.
“And you won’t create a lot of emotional histrionics over this. You won’t cry or throw tantrums. This will all just go away. No one will know. It will be a vague memory—if you remember it at all. I will forgive you for the things you said—accusing your uncle—and we won’t speak of it anymore.”
If it were true, she and Carl would have to call the police, wouldn’t they? The police would have to arrest Carl Jr., wouldn’t they? Her beautiful, brilliant, upstanding son would have to go to jail, wouldn’t he? A jury, because he was rich, would no doubt convict him, wouldn’t they? He would spend his life in prison with murderers, liars, thieves, and perverts, wouldn’t he?
If it were true, Carl Jr. would be the bad one. Claudia would be held up as a poor little victim. The world would turn upside down.
Carl Jr. was innocent. But even if he wasn’t, what was the point of reporting him? Claudia was already on the road to ruin. It made no sense to sacrifice his life for hers.
If Carl Jr. did do it she wouldn’t be able to hug him anymore. She wouldn’t be able to look at him and be proud. Carl might despise his son. There would be a scandal. The people at the club, the people at work—everyone would point and whisper. Did you hear about Mrs. Judson? They would laugh and call her names. There must be something wrong with her, something wrong with her family. They would be happy to see her taken down a peg.
Delores turned on the hot water, again, and sank beneath the liquid veil. She and her granddaughter wouldn’t talk about it ever again. Claudia would keep her mouth shut and everything would be fine.
When she drove to work Monday morning, Delores went right through a stoplight. When she walked into the office, she had difficulty determining what was real. Was what happened Friday real? Had she really gone to the school for Claudia? Did Dr. Green really say her granddaughter was pregnant?
“My uncle is the father.”
It was hard to tell. If all that was reality, then how could people be sitting at desks? How could the clocks still be ticking?
“Good morning, Mrs. Judson.”
Delores walked past without speaking.
She didn’t turn on the lights in her office. She just sat with her coat still on, in her chair behind her large desk, and looked out her window over the city. Her appointment book lay closed.
The buzzer had been sounding for a while before she answered. “Mrs. Judson, are you all right?”
She didn’t respond.
“Mrs. Judson, Tonya is here for your nine o’clock meeting. Should I send her in?”
Delores didn’t want to talk to Tonya. She didn’t want to talk to anyone. She opened her appointment book and flipped through the pages. Why were they meeting? She couldn’t remember. She wanted to curl up on the floor until it was all over. Her training, forty years of practice, took over. “Of course, Matilda. Give me just a few moments and then send her in.”
By the time Tonya entered Delores’s office, all appeared to be right. Delores sat behind her desk, pen in hand, as though she was preparing to take notes. “Good morning, Tonya.”
“Good morning, Mrs. Judson. I hope your time away went well.” Tonya looked at her strangely. “Should I turn on the lights?”
Delores nodded and forced herself to smile. “Yes, of course. Thank you. I was resting my eyes.”
After Tonya turned on the lights, she sat in the chair across from Delores. “Mrs. Judson, I’ve been thinking about Michelle. I know you want me to take care of the matter quickly, but I don’t believe that I can. Two weeks hasn’t given me enough time to judge by.”
Delores nodded. “It’s been a while now with Michelle and there doesn’t really seem to be any improvement.”
Tonya moved her hand up and down forcefully, emphasizing each word. “What I would like is a few more months. As her team leader, I need the autonomy to make that call. I don’t want to throw anyone away—”
“There doesn’t seem to be any improvement.”
“Well, Mrs. Judson, I beg your pardon, but while you’ve been away, Michelle has made some changes. We just need more time. A few months would be—”
“How many months, Tonya?” Delores didn’t have the desire to fight.
“Well, I think that I would be able to make a decision within two or three months.”
Delores forced herself to scribble in her planner. “Which would you prefer, two or three?”
Tonya’s eyes widened. Clearly she was surprised. Her look said something was out of sorts. “Well, I think two months would tell me. If everything goes smoothly we could submit the papers for her promotion.”
“All right, Tonya. We’ll meet then
. Get on my calendar.” Delores willed herself to look pleasant as Tonya rose to leave. Just before Tonya left the doorway, Delores called to her. “Tonya?”
The woman looked bewildered. “Yes, Mrs. Judson?”
“Would you turn out the lights?” Exhausted, she buzzed her receptionist. “Would you hold all my appointments and calls for the next fifteen minutes?” Delores Judson closed her eyes and laid her head on her desk.
Chapter Twenty-two
There is something about having no one to talk to that slowly siphons away life. A burden that one cannot share grays the hair, furrows the brow, and bends the back.
Delores Judson had built a safe life behind the walls of success, wealth, and power. No one came into her life that she did not let in; she carefully orchestrated each encounter. The walls made her secure from any thieves, any pains, and any complications that might try to insinuate their way into her life.
She worked at her success to make it strong and impenetrable. Delores had started small as a struggling secretary. But each promotion brought her in contact with a new businessman, industrialist, or czar and she learned from them. She studied their needs—what was missing, what they needed to make their kingdoms complete. What they didn’t have, she became or learned. It was her mission to acquire what they needed.
She stacked each one of those needs like bricks. When she had gained enough experience and savvy, when she had built enough connections and the right network, she used those elements like mortar to seal the bricks together. Her wall was firm and sure. Others could come and see it. They could touch, even, but she gave nothing away.
Delores learned the value of each of her bricks. She calculated the worth of her knowledge and her skill and bled the price from each one she encountered. She used her wealth to make her inaccessible to things distasteful and contrary. Her riches stalled off the approach of those who could not meet a certain acceptable standard of attractiveness, intelligence, or giftedness. Delores used her wealth to fortify her wall.
Her success, her bricks, and her wealth, conferred upon her a certain amount of power—power to make the rules. Because Delores was intelligent and resourceful, she took the seed of power her successes gave her and cultivated it. She nursed it, watered it, weeded it, and even pruned it when need be. Soon her seed grew into a vine, laden with purple, delicate flowers. A vine that stealthily approached others and, where it detected a suitable place, wrapped itself around the unsuspecting tenant. After the tenant was strangled and died, Delores’s pretty vine took its place. The further her vine spread, the greater her control grew. And her power extended the protection of her wall beyond its physical barriers.
Delores knew all this might seem mean, ruthless, and uncaring. But at the end of the day her motives were simple: she just didn’t want to be hurt. She had promised herself, as a child, that when she grew up she would not be hurt. So, Delores built a wall.
She planned hard and she worked long. Behind her wall, she planned for success, wealth, and power. She planned for a husband and two children. What she didn’t plan for was an addicted daughter. She didn’t plan for a pregnant thirteen-year-old. She didn’t plan for a prodigal son.
Because she had drawn her life’s conclusion as a child, it didn’t contain truths that only come to the most mature adults. If she had been a little older when she formed her determination, Robert Burns and John Steinbeck might have told her about the best laid plans of mice and men. She might not have avoided keeping company with those who had less than she did. A little older, and she might have learned it is often the weak, poor, rejected, and disenfranchised—the silent, most unlikely people—whose stories point the way to hope and healing.
And so it was that Delores sat in her office alone, certain that her life was over. Assured that all she had worked to build was crashing down around her.
Delores had not studied the stories of women like Mother Teresa. There were no men behind her walls like Nelson Mandela and Elie Wiesel. What she needed, in her despair, were people like them. People whose lives and memories would have assured her that she had the strength to survive and endure. Unlikely heroes who could remind her that suffering, even extended suffering, does not have to dehumanize. Delores could have used a friend like Jesus to tell her, “In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”4 It would have helped her to lean on the shoulder of a psalmist like David, to listen as he sang, “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”5
But her plan and her defenses kept her from such comfort.
In her sorrow, Delores could have used the embrace of a mother. If not her own, then the embrace of a surrogate, a handmaid, or a nurse mother. Not someone famous, not some media darling, but Delores could have used a down-home mother. She needed the arms of a woman full of wisdom and hope—a woman aged like herself, but a woman tempered by grace. That woman’s stories of survival could have strengthened Delores. That heavenly minded mother’s example could have shown her that there is solace in music, that there is eternal hope in prayer, that there is divine strengthavailable in faith, and that there is great comfort in family . . . fellowship . . . and love.
Such an old woman’s personal stories of renewal and restoration—of living through the Depression and World War, of her mother and father’s survival during the Jim Crow era—might have been just the thing to give Delores the courage to go forward. She could have used a mother like Sarah to tell her that she might be crying now, and that it might take a long time, but that God was going to make her laugh again. She could have used a woman like Ruth to tell her that no matter how bad it looked, God was not going to leave her alone—that God specializes in restoration.
In all Delores’s confusion, a child might have helped her, too. A child might have been able to whisper deep into Delores’s spirit that the least of us may have the wisdom and compassion to save us all. There are children who walk to school every day in war-torn urban areas—Kosovo, South Central LA, Harlem—children who are not certain that they will live to reach adulthood. Those brave children, unlikely heroes, might have been a comfort to Delores. Those children might have convinced her that she could still dance, write poetry, and sing in a world in which she no longer felt safe. A boy like Solomon could have told Delores that if one asks, God will grant, to even a child, wisdom and understanding.
There are survivors of abuse and disease, wounded warriors who could have told Delores stories of how they have pressed forward to squeeze life and hope from each day during times of uncertainty and tribulation. Maybe if Delores had sat a while with the infirmed woman or with the woman with an issue of blood, the sisters could have told Delores that God has the power to loose, and that there is nothing too hard for Him.
Delores worried that her wall was about to come tumbling down, that her kingdom was about to come down in ruins. Someone could have comforted her. Maybe the homeless could have taught Delores that she was so much more than any wall, business, or building that she might erect or in which she might dwell. Perhaps, if she had leaned in closely, they might have told Delores how to feel safe and keep her dignity when her wealth, her wall, or the other symbols of her safety were lost. The patriarch Joseph might have told her that it is neither the pit nor the palace that determines the depth of a man’s character, but character is determined by virtues like forgiveness and enduring faith.
If Delores had sat with Mary, she might have told her that the Master really would come. Mary might have reassured Delores that no matter how putrid and stinking things might appear to be, God specializes in resurrecting dead things.
When the vines of Delores’s own existence began to choke her, a Canaanite woman might have comforted her and reassured her that God would transform the rules, if He had to, to get her a blessing.
But Delores had formulated her life’s plan as a child—a nugatory plan to build and live life behind a wall. So when life crashed around her, there was no one to help. Delores wa
s alone. There was no Paul to counsel her that the solution to her problems was to renew her mind, to put away childish thinking. He wasn’t behind the wall to tell her intellect and all she knew wouldn’t save her when her back was against the wall, but that she needed to rely instead on eternal hope.
The walls Delores had built were so true, so high, and so wide there was no one she could call. So, she wondered in her heart if there was a God and if He could hear. If He did exist, Delores wondered, could He or would He send someone over the wall.
Chapter Twenty-three
Several weeks had passed since Delores had returned to work. That’s how she referred to it: since she had returned to work. She didn’t mention—even to herself—about her granddaughter or about the nastiness with her son. The key to coping, she had determined after she returned to work, was to create two separate lives. There was a work life and a home life—and never the twain would meet. It kept her afloat. She was still Mrs. Judson. In fact, all might have been settled.
Except for Carl.
Her husband didn’t know everything she knew. So he kept talking about the right thing. “Do you think it’s the right thing for Claudia? Shouldn’t we think it over? We’re not religious people, dear, but do you think abortion is the right thing?”
Delores had been making the decisions all these years. Now Carl wanted to talk about the right thing. He would grow weary of it, though. She would just wait him out. There was still a little time.
She pushed back from her desk, stood, and stretched. They still called her Mrs. Judson here. She still had an office with a view of the city. She still made the rules.
She reached in her cabinet and grabbed her purse, then into her desk drawer for her shades. She left her office and nodded to her receptionist. “I’m going to go get a bite of lunch.” Delores never ate in the restaurants in the building. She usually ordered in or dined with other bigwigs in exclusive restaurants. Familiarity with subordinates breeds contempt—she had learned that at an executive women’s leadership seminar.