Michelle nodded. “I’ve been thinking the same thing. But that’s not what I’m nervous about.”
Tonya lowered her arms, leaned against the counter, and looked directly at Michelle. “So, what is it then?”
“I’ve got a date.”
“Oh no, Michelle. Not Trench again.”
Michelle shook her head. “Oh, no, girl. Trench is history. Thanks to you and the Lord, I have done some major growing up. I’ve stopped thinking like a child, and I’ve gotten rid of childish things.”
Tonya waved her hand in the air like she was shouting at church. “Look at you, girl. You go on with your bad self.”
“Oh, I finally got the email and saw the light.” Michelle held out her arms and extended her two index fingers. She moved them in tandem from right to left. “Trench is out of here!”
“Girl, I can’t believe this is the same woman from a few months ago.”
“You mean the same woman who was giving you the blues and cussing you out?” Michelle stopped smiling. “When I think back on it, Tonya, and how I treated you—I’m embarrassed. I’m sorry.” She touched Tonya on the shoulder. “You’ve been a real friend to me. Probably the first real friend I’ve ever had. I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t all you, Michelle. I could have done better, too. And as for being a friend, I’m grateful for you. You hurt my feelings, but you changed my life. Sometimes it takes people out of our comfort circle to see what’s not working and to help us change our lives.” The two women hugged briefly. “Besides,” Tonya smiled, “since you’re out of bondage, don’t you deserve a song?”
“What song?”
Tonya spent a minute or two trying to create lyrics to celebrate Michelle’s deliverance. Finally, Michelle shook her head.
“You know what, Tonya? I think we need to leave that song alone. But I can tell you the song that got me through it all.” Michelle began to sing.
“Oh, I know that song. It’s Kirk Franklin and that’s my jam.” Tonya danced in a way that Michelle never would have expected.
“That new hair thing has set you free!”
Tonya laughed. “Yeah, I’m feeling like a new woman.” Suddenly she stopped dancing. “So if Trench is out of the picture, then who . . .”
“It’s Todd. We’re going on a date—well, sort of a date. We’re meeting after work to talk things over.”
“Things like?”
“Things like maybe getting back together.”
Tonya began to hum the song and dance again. “Girl, I tell you. The things you can learn from a woman in the bathroom! I am so happy for you, Michelle. I don’t know what could make it any better.” She danced a few more steps and then paused. “But, what about Shadrach? I thought you had plans for him? I thought you were attracted to him.”
Michelle shook her head. “He never really liked me, Tonya. Not that way. I knew it all along. He always talked about you like you were the best thing since sliced bread.” Michelle laughed. “I sound like I spend too much time talking to Miz Ida.” She laughed again. “But anyway, Shad has always been sweet on you. And, to be honest, Tonya, I was just being my old self. I didn’t want Shad, I just had to have every man’s attention, no matter how I had to get it. Shad was being a good friend to both of us. He helped—he coached—both of us. It was very easy to see, at the restaurant, that he just liked you a
tiny
bit more.” They grinned at each other. “And I’m glad about it. I’m happy for both of you.”
Tonya blushed. “Well, I’ve been kind of sidestepping him and trying to avoid him. I would never do something like that to a friend.”
“Well, you stop stepping to the side, my
sistuh,
and you step right on up!” The two women giggled.
Tonya returned to arranging her hair. “So, how did all this happen with you and Todd?”
“I got up the nerve to call him.” Michelle told Tonya about how what she’d said to Shadrach at lunch at the train station had touched her. “I’ve been thinking about what you said every since that day. You helped me to begin to understand love, and you helped me understand why I love my husband.” She shared with her friend how she’d bared her soul to Todd and about the message she had read in the Bible. “When I talked to him, I just let the love chapter tell me what to say. I prayed and left the rest in the Lord’s hands. I told him about you, about Shadrach, and how much you all helped me. I told Todd how I’ve been praying and reading my Bible and the other books you got me.”
She shrugged. “I’m praying for a miracle. It might not come to pass. But I can’t let it go without trying. I love him.”
When they had finished, they walked back through the office. The other employees were gone and the office was empty. At least, they thought so until they saw Mrs. Judson standing by Tonya’s desk.
“I had hoped that the two of you were still here. I know it’s after hours, but this is urgent. We have a little matter that we need to get settled.”
“I tell you, Miz Ida, I thought hard about leaving, about telling Mrs. Judson I couldn’t stay after hours. That I had a pressing engagement. But Mrs. Judson said the meeting would be brief. So I went along with it. I prefer not to go to dinner with an axe hanging over my head.”
As Michelle spoke, Miz Ida prayed. God was faithful.
Lord, I know You’re not going to bring this baby—my baby—this close and then leave her. I know You’re not going to abandon her, Lord. But I have to tell the truth: my heart’s just beating fast and a little sweat’s breaking out on my forehead.
Lord, she’s so close. Don’t let things fall apart now.
Miz Ida gripped the phone, nodding as though Michelle could see her. “Mm-hmm. Then what happened?”
M
iz Ida settled back against the cushions of the couch. God was at work in Michelle’s life. She knew it. And the young woman’s story only confirmed that fact.
You are so good to us, God!
She couldn’t help but praise Him, even as Michelle began to talk again.
“You know, Miz Ida, it had been such a good day; it was hard for me to believe that it wasn’t going to be capped off by something bad. Not to mention, that I was worried about being late or missing Todd. I was frazzled before I ever got into Mrs. Judson’s office. It didn’t help that she was acting agitated and strange. I thought—like Shad had said one day at lunch—the other shoe was about to fall.”
Mrs. Judson paced back and forth across the office, until finally she paused and faced her window. Her silhouette was outlined by the rose of the afternoon sky that was fading into a dusky blue-brown. She jabbed her hands into the pocket of her suit jacket, then jerked them out again as she faced Michelle and Tonya. Though her movements were jerky, her expression was cool and unruffled.
“Tonya, you’ve functioned satisfactorily during your time at the firm. I appreciate your service. Michelle, I’ve noticed, since we last spoke, some improvement in your work performance—not your performance, really, but your professional deportment. And despite the fact, ladies, that I’m still not totally convinced about our
accidental
lunch meeting, I think it’s only fair to give you both the benefit of the doubt.”
Mrs. Judson shifted her weight from foot to foot, though her expression remained calm and almost disinterested. “I may feel it necessary to extend the time before both your promotions for one or more months. But, otherwise, everything is fine.”
Michelle was about to stand up and voice her objection, but Tonya touched her arm. Mrs. Judson turned her back to them, facing her window. Her shoulders began to shake and then they heard her cry.
Still facing the window, she told them the story about her granddaughter’s pregnancy.
“We didn’t think it would be like this. We took Claudia in because she had no place to go. Now, it has backfired on us.” Mrs. Judson slipped her cell phone from her pocket. “It’s because of Claudia that I have this. She was constantly getting suspended or expelled from schools. The last time she was drunk and trying to force liquor on younger children.”
Her husband, she said, just couldn’t see Claudia’s faults. He couldn’t see that their granddaughter was pulling the wool over his eyes.
Mrs. Judson straightened her shoulders, adjusted her jacket, and then just as quickly seemed to surrender to defeat as her shoulders slumped. “My world . . . Everything is falling apart. All the things I counted on seem to be falling away. I don’t know if I have the strength to put it all back together again.” Her voice was choked with emotion. “I keep thinking that everything would be fine now if we’d never taken Claudia in. If we had kept to our own little world everything would be fine.”
Mrs. Judson walked to her desk, sat in her chair, and laid her face in her hands. She looked tired and worn. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. Perhaps because you two women love to pray.”
She lifted her head. “My husband, Carl, and I have had some disagreements on how to handle this. He always wants to baby Claudia as though it were our fault that she got pregnant and that she’s using drugs.” She took a deep breath and straightened in her chair, putting her hands on the desk. “Carl and I never disagreed before Claudia came into our lives. I try to tell him that we’re not responsible for the world. We can’t change everyone. Claudia has to want to change if anything is to be done.”
After some hesitation, Mrs. Judson told them about her son. “Carl Jr. has always been my pride. He was the model son. Not like his sister, who was on drugs, who probably taught Claudia all the bad habits she knows. I just can’t believe . . . Claudia says Carl Jr. is the father of her baby.”
She choked back new tears. “Of course it’s a lie. It’s all a lie. How could Carl Jr. appear to be one thing and then be something else entirely? That would make his whole life a lie, a masquerade. Where would he learn something like that?”
Her husband was taking his granddaughter’s side. He had even called the police, who had picked up Carl Jr. for questioning early that morning.
Mrs. Judson looked from Michelle to Tonya. “If there really is a God, my family needs Him, now.”
“Bless her heart. It makes me just want to hold her in my arms. When people that have been in control lose control, it’s a sad state of affairs.”
“You’re right, Miz Ida. It was sad. When she fell apart, that’s when her story began to crack. That’s when she told us the whole story.”
Miz Ida laid her hand on her heart and continued to pray. Could things get any worse?
M
iz Ida sighed. “She may not ever tell you, but you know it was a blessing that the two of you were there to be some comfort to her.”
“Miz Ida, my heart just broke for Mrs. Judson. I never thought that I would be saying that. I have been in her granddaughter’s place. I know how that feels. I know how it feels to live that way, in that kind of pain, day after day. I’ve been the child that got sacrificed so that people could pretend that everything was normal. I’ve been there.
“But when Mrs. Judson began to tell her story, I knew there were no easy choices for her, either. It made me so sad. And I kept thinking, how could anybody face something like that without God?”
Miz Ida shook her head. “She’s relying on her self. It can be hard to make a change, to trust something other than yourself. I bet that woman is just doing what she’s been doing all her life. It makes us feel better to think it’s as easy as
do or don’t do,
but there are no easy choices for a mother or a grandmother in that situation. There’s no choice she can make that won’t bring pain.”
“That’s exactly what Mrs. Judson said.” She was quiet for a moment. “The room just got quiet, Miz Ida. Nobody knew what to say. What do you say when you hear something like that? I didn’t know if I could or should talk. I didn’t know which part of my heart or mind would talk. I guess that Tonya was thinking the same thing, because she was quiet, too.”
“Michelle, bless your heart, it had to be hard for you.”
“It was, Miz Ida. But when I was listening to Mrs. Judson and watching her, I guess I just didn’t have time to think about me. She needed someone to help her—and as someone once said, you can be pitiful or powerful, but you can’t be both. When she started talking, what I felt in my heart made the choice for me.”
Mrs. Judson smiled harshly. “So there you have it ladies. Sickness comes to suburbia. Or as you said at lunch, pain’s not prejudiced. I would say my family and I are candidates for prayer if ever there were any.”
Tonya’s voice was still and small. “We’ll pray for you and your family, Mrs. Judson. But you can pray for yourself, too.” Her expression was so compassionate. “Why don’t you come to church with me on Sunday?”
Mrs. Judson shook her head. “I would feel uncomfortable. I would feel out of place.”
“Mrs. Judson, God doesn’t care about color or class. He just wants to save you and mend your broken heart.”
The gray-haired woman looked at Tonya. “I’m still not sure that I believe in God. I’ve been taking care of myself all my life. I don’t know if I can trust anyone or anything else.”
Tonya shook her head. “It doesn’t make sense, Mrs. Judson. You want us to pray for you, but you’re not sure that you believe?”
Mrs. Judson smiled as though she were trying to make a joke. “I haven’t called on God before, so why should He hear me now? You pray for me. If there is a God, your prayers for me can’t hurt. If there isn’t a God, then . . . then at least all of us haven’t wasted our time.” She dropped her head. “My life is falling apart. I don’t want to grab hold of something out of desperation.”
Michelle slid forward on her chair and placed her hands on her knees. “Mrs. Judson, my life was falling apart too. It had been falling apart for years. I was in your granddaughter Claudia’s place, only there was no one—no grandfather or grandmother to rescue me. I spent most of my life being hurt and angry. But I’ve found Someone Who is putting my life back together. I’ve found Someone Who loves me even though I felt like I was dirty and no good. I’ve found Someone Who can love the abused as well as the abuser. I have found Someone Who turned my life around. Mrs. Judson, I know that it’s hard and maybe even frightening to believe in Him. But the Lord is only a prayer away.”