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 i
nside 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?
Forget Peaches. Forget Stelson. I was not Martha Stewart or June Cleaver. I was LaShondra Smith Brown. LaShondra was a good wife and good mother, and I wasn’t going to let anybody make me feel bad about wanting it all.
I closed my fist tight around the dream of having it all and refused to let it go.
Chapter 7
“Hey.”
“Yes. Who is this?” I asked.
“This is Taylor Austin. I’m from the Mommy-coo service.”
“You mean Mother’s Chief of Operations service?” I corrected this girl.
She smacked, “Same thing. I’m calling for my…um…’nitial nanny phone interview.”
“This interview is over.” Call me picky, but I would have liked for my children’s nanny to at least sound like she’d graduated from high school.
The previous potential nanny had sounded intelligent enough, but when she’d asked me to hold on, she’d failed to properly mute her phone. I heard her cuss somebody out with expert diction and a fine choice of escalating insults.
Hung up before she knew I was gone.
Obviously, I was using the wrong service. Or perhaps God was allowing me to see people’s true colors ahead of time. I couldn’t decide if it would be better to hire someone with a small, apparent flaw or choose the “perfect” one and find out later that she’d been a rat all along.
If we were talking about a personal trainer or even a teacher, I could live with being fooled for a month or a year. My babies were a different story. Finding out I’d been snowed after-the-fact wasn’t an option.
Back to the drawing board and on to Seth’s school.
After the first few days of pre-k, I was able to drop him off without a blur of tears—my tears. By Thursday, he had the drop-off routine under control. He’d unhook his car seat, hop out of the car, strap on his little backpack, and run inside without even looking back.
Every effort was made to preserve my mascara as I drove to the school on autopilot. It’s almost like he doesn’t need me anymore. I merged into traffic on the farm to market road as my brain shifted from Mommy-mode to VP-mode.
Thankfully, I was needed at Plainview High School. The counselors were busy leveling classes while sifting through a ton of schedule change requests, while the administrators did what we could to keep it all running smoothly. Ask Marty if it would help to put one of the aides in Mayfield’s classroom.
New students were still enrolling, and the troublemakers who had been released back into the general population were already working on their return trips to RightWay. See if the Watson girl has ever been tested for an emotional disorder.
Jerry and I were compassionate to an extent. Kids are kids. Yet, those who disrespected teachers and disrupted the learning atmosphere met with serious consequences. After two or three parent conferences and a few suspensions, we turned them over to the disciplinary experts at RightWay. Some kids actually fared better in a structured environment with very little peer interaction. Whatever. I just knew they couldn’t stay on my campus and keep up all that foolywang. Find out who the new secretary is at RightWay.
Fast forward to thoughts of what we would eat for dinner. I’d forgotten to take out the chicken. Boston Market.
The morning hadn’t even started, and already I was yawning as I took my rightful parking spot. I grabbed the computer bag from the passenger’s floorboard.
“Hhhhh. Hhhhh. Hhhhhwaaa.”
My God!
I quickly turned toward the sound in my back seat. Zoe! In my haste, my rush to leave the house, the new routine, my tiredness, I had failed to take her to daycare. Worse, I was about to leave her locked in my car on a hot August day.
My God! What would have happened if…
Suddenly, visions of news stories where babies had died in hot cars—forgotten in back seats or unaccounted for on field trips—flashed through my mind. This row of cars was already filled. There would have been no one casually walking by to see or hear my baby inside crying, suffocating in the stifling Texas heat. Jesus! Thank you!
Tears streamed down my face as I fumbled out my door and to the back seat of the car to retrieve my baby. I pulled her from the carrier straps and held her in my arms, rocking back and forth in the back seat kissing her pudgy round cheeks relentlessly.
What if Zoe hadn’t made a sound?
I stared into her gray eyes. She stared back at me, puzzled. Another round of tears sprang forth as I imagined what could have happened. Her life cut short. My beautiful baby gone forever. All because I was too distracted, too busy to focus from point A to point B?
Thank you, Lord.
I didn’t even go inside the building. From the car, I called Jerry. Told him—not asked—told him that I was taking a leave of absence.
“LaShondra, I don’t understand,” he puttered.
“The other week, when we talked about how hard it is to balance work and this job. I should have told you then. I’m sorry. But I can’t do it anymore. Not for a while, anyway. Maybe you can still get the candidate we declined.”
Jerry stuttered, “B-b-but, we’ve got Natalie. We’ve got help. Your responsibilities—”
“I almost left my baby in the car,” I blurted out, my voice filled with emotion as my composure crumpled. I was breaking all kinds of professional rules, but I needed Jerry to feel me on this. “If Zoe hadn’t started crying, I would have left her inside. And then…then…I’d be…planning a funeral, losing my mind.”
“You left her in the car?” he asked, ridicule lacing his tone. “I mean…I’m sorry, LaShondra. I didn’t know you were so stressed.”
I sniffed. “Well, I am.”
“Maybe we could work something out. Four-day weeks,” Jerry practically begged.
Zoe flapped my nose with her hand. Her smile, a reward in itself, propelled my response. “No. I’m heading over to H-R. Please ask Millicent to pack up my office.”
“I have to warn you, LaShondra. This will not look good in your file.”
“How would it look if I were in jail and you were accused of failure to recognize that one of your employees was cracking up?” I flipped the table.
Jerry exhaled. “Fine. I’ll let Dr. Hunt know you’re on your way.”
Of course, I knew Dr. Hunt from my previous involuntary leave of absence, when I was investigated for showing disciplinary leniency in favor of African-American students in my Junior High assistant principal days. The whole thing was a setup, really, but in accordance with policy, I’d been placed on administrative leave during the investigation.
This time, we’d be meeting on different grounds.
I dropped Zoe off at preschool. While there, I picked up the center’s brochure to acquaint myself with part-time and drop-in rates. Thankfully, no one asked me why Zoe was late or I would have gone into another crying spell.
Dr. Hunt was expecting me. Her secretary sent me toward a larger office.
“LaShondra. Good to see you again.” She remembered me.
“Same here, Dr. Hunt. How have you been?”
“Counting down the days to retirement,” she gave an I’m-dead-serious laugh.
No Weapon Formed (Boaz Brown) Page 5