My chest tightened. Wasn’t it enough that I’d stopped taking home all the pens and folders? This Christian thing. There was always something else to work on. So far, I’d only mastered pants up, man out and a few other basics.
“You’re right, Renee. I’ll have to try and hold those thoughts until my break or—” As I pulled up my e-mail and scanned the first one, my breath slipped away.
From: SassySistah3
To: thesassysistahood
Subject: Whose turn is it?/Devotional
I know you guys said I could skip because of the honeymoon, but I needed to do it. Here goes. This should tell you where my head is. I’ve been a wreck since we got here. He’s been on the phone or on the computer since the first night. I walked the beach today with a bunch of strangers. Did I marry the wrong guy? (Dana, don’t answer that.) Please pray for me.
Tracey,
The Loveless Laptopper
“And a voice came out of the heavens: “Thou art my beloved Son, in Thee I am well-pleased.” And immediately the Spirit impelled Him to go out into the wilderness.” (Mark 1:11, 12, NASB)
God confirmed Jesus’ identity as the Son of God. What has God promised you? What are you waiting for Him to shout
to the world on your behalf? Who does God say you are? Think over these questions and post to the list. And if you’re really struggling, you know what to do, pick up the phone and call one of your sistahs!
(Rochelle and Dana, be ready for a call from me. Things are NOT going well.)
PS. Hi Renee. Thanks for coming to the wedding.
Renee popped a bubble. “Ooh, yeah. I read that one. Real messed up, huh? She should cut him some slack, though. Everybody’s got to work. It paid for that fancy wedding, didn’t it?”
“I suppose it did.” But was it worth it? Could a price tag be put on love, or as Tad put it, “spiritual intimacy?” I sighed, wishing my bad feelings about Ryan hadn’t proved true, at least not this soon. I stared at the clock, figuring the time until I’d be able to call Rochelle.
Renee fluffed her hair with her fingertips. “You could learn something from that Tracey and her husband. Start your own business. For real, like in the mall or somethin’. Your stuff smells way better than the sorry mess we sell here. Why do you think Naomi stays on you so tough?” She smoothed her hairspray-soaked fingertips down her sweater.
Yuck.
“Shoot girl, your stuff is better than Fingerhut. And Lord knows I loves me some Fingerhut—”
The phone rang and I smiled, praying it was for me. Renee was my girl and all, but I just wasn’t up for a two-hour discourse on the merits of Fingerhut. Contrary to popular opinion, being compared to the illustrious catalog company wasn’t my idea of a compliment.
I held my breath, hoping I’d say the right words to Tracey. “Hello?”
“Hey.” Wrong friend. Rochelle sounded tired, like her after-hours self. “Did you get that e-mail?”
“Just got it.” Tracey’s e-mail made me sad, too, but nothing usually taxed Rochelle’s pep during working hours. She was on until the door swung shut at six. Right now she sounded like roadkill. “Ryan will have a lot of making up to do, but I’m sure they can work it out.”
That or I’d be flying to Hawaii to get her somehow. Was cocoa butter returnable? Why didn’t these things ever happen on a weekend?
I turned to Renee. “I’m going to take this in the break room, okay? Mark me for thirty minutes. If anybody needs me, I’ll be in there.” The “break room” was actually just Tracey’s empty cubicle, but it sounded good.
Filing at her nails as if trying to free herself from a glittery purple prison, Renee nodded.
A few steps and a punch of buttons brought me back to Rochelle. “Hang that up for me, please?”
“Done,” she shouted over the partition, reminding of just how little privacy I had. I’d have to concentrate on being quiet, or not saying anything incriminating. My assistant played dumb, but she was far from it. She had the sense to turn down my job and forgo the pleasure of working closely with my boss, not to mention the ingenuity to hang around until now she knew so much about me I could never get rid of her. She probably had one ear glued to the other side of this partition. This time, I didn’t care.
I clutched the phone to my ear. “So what’s going on with you? You sound as bad as Tracey.” Worse.
“Jordan’s back.”
My head shook in disbelief. This shot the Tracey thing right out of the water. Off the planet, even. Jordan. Back. We’d prayed for it, but what would we do now? Jordan was a lot easier to pray for than deal with. “Since when? Are you sure?”
“He called. Talked to Jericho.” Her voice trembled. I shivered at the fear streaming through her words. Even when Rochelle
went into labor and Jordan went to the water fountain and never returned, she hadn’t sounded like this. With every contraction, a tear had trailed her cheek. Nothing more.
“Out of the
blue?
Where’s he been? Does he think he can just waltz in here and—” I paced the minuscule break room, squeezing my forehead, hoping Adrian was right and the movement had some power after all. “Is he married? Does he want you back?”
Rochelle paused before answering. “He’s not married and…It’s so crazy you’d never believe it. He’s been in Mexico…in a coma.”
I gulped for breath.
How convenient.
“If he didn’t want to say what happened, he didn’t have to. But to make up a story like that? I mean, come on…”
More heavy breathing. “It’s true.”
The cord twisted around my elbow as I turned in circles. “True? You’ve got to be kidding. That’s straight out of
The Guiding Light.
Don’t go back to being stupid just because he’s—” I caught myself but too late.
“So that’s what I was, huh? Stupid? You’re right. I was stupid to help you through school, to help take care of your mother, to raise Jericho alone…I was stupid.” A sob blared through the line. “Still am.”
Man, I’d done it now. “No, you’re smart. And strong. That was a mean thing to say. I’m just…confused. I don’t know what to think. There’s so much going on.”
“Tell me about it.”
“So what does this mean? Everything is just hunky-dory? He still abandoned you. Didn’t call for how many years? I don’t know when this other stuff happened, but he was still playing ball on TV for a long time.”
“Right. There’s still no excuse. He didn’t try and make any.” She laughed a little hysterically. “He didn’t need to. Jericho was ready to jump through the phone into his lap.”
Whoa. This was bad. Really bad. Rochelle didn’t mean to be, but she was a little greedy about her son. I couldn’t blame her. Jericho was all she had.
She has God.
God had me there. I tried to put a positive spin on things. “Isn’t this what you wanted, for Jericho to know his father? For Jordan to want a place in his son’s life?”
Another sob exploded through the phone. “Not like this. Jericho wants to
live
with him. Can you believe it? After everything I’ve done for that boy? Jordan didn’t even sign his birth certificate. He’s never even met him….” The tears strangled her words.
“I know.” I fumbled for something else to say, but nothing seemed right. For once, I let silence suffice.
She paused to catch her breath. I took a breath, too, figuring I’d need it before we were done. “I should have known when I got that letter from the people taking care of him a month ago—”
“A month? What letter? And why didn’t you tell me?”
She sniffed. “Tracey was getting married. You had that project at work. Adrian was coming…it didn’t matter.”
“Didn’t matter? Rochelle, what are you talking about? It’s been years. Long years. I’ve been going through this, too.” I grimaced. No wonder she’d been acting so strange. Why hadn’t I picked up on the signs? I thought she’d just finally cracked and gone man crazy with the rest of the world. Now I wondered if that wouldn’t have been better. That I could fix.
Is my arm too short to save? I can fix this, too.
“Can you talk to Jordan? Get him to understand that this isn’t a good idea?” I said the words and regretted them as the passed my lips. It was like asking if she could take a ride on the sun.
“Talk to him? Dana, come on. You know him. Better than anybody.”
The truth of it hit me like a brick. I knew him all too well. And I wasn’t proud of it. I rubbed my forehead and cradled the phone with my shoulder.
“How is it that I ended up with Jordan as a brother and you as a friend? It doesn’t seem fair.”
A dance of unsteady breaths was Rochelle’s only response.
T
hirty-one minutes. I’d tried to be careful, to watch the clock, to count my time, but the thought of my brother, calling after all this time, taking Rochelle through the pain of losing him all over again…As always, I’d be left to clean up the mess.
Renee appeared in the doorway. “I can’t believe him. Coming back now? And that Mexico thing? That’s rich. Really rich.” She picked her teeth with a miniature plastic sword, no doubt salvaged from her weekend.
Had she actually clicked in on the line this time or what? I didn’t even have the strength to ask. Her ears were like fine-tuned receivers anyway. “I really don’t want to talk about this, okay?”
As usual, she ignored me, this time stabbing at her lip with those ridiculous nails. “Do you think they’ll get back together? Now that would be a wedding. We could call it in for one of those reunion shows on TV. Keep me posted.”
My hands smoothed across my denim skirt. “Uh, I’ll try. I hardly know what’s going on myself. I haven’t even talked to him.” Why suddenly did that seem important, that no one had called or written me when I was Jordan’s sister?
She lingered, her hands on the doorknob. “Yeah, that’s pretty messed up. That he’d call them and not call you. Especially him being your only brother and all.”
I took a deep breath. Renee wasn’t going to get me stirred up today. “He’ll call me when he’s ready. But since we’re discussing family, how is your brother?”
My assistant’s eyes flickered, a bleak hopelessness replacing her haughty gaze. “He’s okay, they’re moving him to federal next week. I can visit him there. It’s closer.”
Why did I say that? Sometimes I could be bone cold. “Right. Well, if you need time, just let me know.” I hadn’t meant to go there, to remind her of her own problems, but I needed to get back to my desk before Naomi emerged with a stun gun or something. She popped up at the most unlikely times.
I paced through the maze of cubicles hoping my boss would be too busy plotting her next scheme to be promoted to know about my phone call. As bad as the call went, I could have hung up and made it back to my desk on time. Bad enough I’d wasted my lunch on it. Another starving trip through the drive-thru tonight…and then straight to Rochelle’s. Maybe I’d do better then. The one thing I could have done to help Rochelle—pray—had totally eluded me on the phone. The shocking news of my brother’s mysterious reappearance and the shaky story behind his absence had blown my mind. Had he really been in another country all this time? And all alone?
Renee’s question about Rochelle and Jordan’s relationship bothered me as well. The two of them getting back together had never occurred to me. Surely she wouldn’t be that stupid. He was my flesh and blood, but he’d left her before. What would make Rochelle think he’d stick around now? Or was that really my heart talking…about Adrian? Both of them had given Rochelle and I something to hang our disappointment on, something to shield us, warn us about giving our hearts away again.
Shuffling back to my cubicle, I prayed for Jordan, wherever he was, asked God to give me grace when I saw him, to keep from exploding like I’d done on Rochelle this weekend. I’d have to drive around to the racetrack tonight and find Daddy and give him the news. That’d sober him up. Quick.
I pushed back my chair and sat down at my desk, grabbing the Cool Cucumber file from my inbox, where I’d shoved it this morning. And then that call…It’d be time for my meeting with Naomi soon. I’d probably have to skip lunch and just—
“So there you are.” Naomi’s voice grated like cat claws on a kitchen sink.
Smile. No matter what she says, smile.
I swallowed hard before turning to face Naomi Titan, a thirty-eight-year-old barracuda in heels, recently overlooked for a promotion she’d worked three years for. She’d been hunting heads ever since, and from her tone, it was my braids she wanted on her platter today.
“Hello, Naomi.” I used my best conflict-management voice.
She puckered her lips and yanked her blazer closed. “It’s nice of you to come back to work. Sorry to break up your little phone call—”
“I was—”
“I know exactly what you were doing. We had a phone monitoring system installed last month. Didn’t you get the memo?”
Monitoring? She had to be kidding. Was that even legal?
Her nostril—yes, nostril, very scary—flared. “Don’t even think about it. All legit. The whole team signed off on it at the quality assurance symposium.”
My eyes bulged. “That was over a year ago. How am I supposed to remember that? And I definitely don’t remember anything about monitoring being mentioned.”
“I believe it was called productivity banking, a consultant-based analysis of how we spend our time.” She grinned wickedly. “And I’ve been assigned as the consultant conducting the analysis.”
I blinked. It was a first, this smile of Naomi’s, and a much more hideous sight than I’d imagined. It looked as though her adult teeth had staged a sit-in and her baby teeth hung around to watch. There had to be fifty-two on the top alone. With shoes like that, you’d think she could afford an orthodontist. People were weird that way.
Naomi lingered on each word to let the implication soak in, twirling one of her frizzy curls. I stared at her hair, trying to figure out, once again, what nationality she was. She had Jennifer Lopez hips, Barbara Streisand hair, Angela Davis rage and a nose that curved like the photo of my Cherokee great-grandmother’s. Today I didn’t ponder the question long. Whatever she was, she wasn’t happy.
Neither was I.
“So I talked on the phone a minute over, Naomi—”
“Ms. Parker.”
Back to the maiden name, were we? This could get ugly. “All right…Ms. Parker, I’m sorry for my infraction. Now if you’ll let me get back to work so I can prepare for our meeting this afternoon—”
Another sinister smile zipped across Naomi’s lips. If her lipstick had been a few shades redder she’d have been a dead ringer for the Joker.
“You won’t be meeting with anyone today, Dana. Not here anyway.”
The stale Cheerios I’d eaten for breakfast knotted in my stomach. I suddenly wished I’d downed a few bear claws, too, so I could offer them up on Naomi’s precious shoes.
We wrestle not with flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers….
I rolled my eyes to the ceiling. God was right, of course. Naomi wasn’t my real problem…but she sure did a good acting job. Very convincing.
“What do you mean?”
Like a super villain in a very cute skirt, she snatched a sheet of paper from her clipboard. A Fingerhut receipt. Naomi turned the paper over to reveal a massive order from Renee, now gone to lunch, scrawled in blue eyeliner.
I grabbed my throat. My hand rose to the healing cut beneath my eye. It burned as though it’d been sliced afresh. “I told her I couldn’t take orders here—”
“And yet she did it anyway. Perhaps because of the allure of your products? Products which, interestingly enough, I’ve never seen or been offered any samples of.”
Huh? Now she sounded like the Abominable Snowman from one of the Rudolph Christmas specials, attacking the world just to get a little love. “I didn’t think you wanted any. I’d be glad to make you a basket—”
She snorted. “I’m kidding. I don’t want any of your kitchen sink cosmetics. It’d probably eat my sensitive skin right through.”
One could only hope.
Lord, forgive me.
Triumphant, Naomi dropped into the seat beside me—Tracey’s old desk. How I missed her right now. I never realized how much of a buffer she had been between me and, well, everyone.
“I’ve talked to Steve and we decided that this whole enterprise of yours is a conflict of interest. You’re probably using our connections with fragrance suppliers for your own personal gain and who knows what else.”
As if I’d want to use that wretched smelling stuff? It was bad enough to have to sample it.
“On top of that, our productivity inventory has shown the decrease in your work product over the past year. A direct result of your outside enterprise in our estimation. So…go home and talk to your little buddies all you want.” She leaned over and clapped her palms like a seal. “You’re fired.”
With that, she strode toward her office, never bothering to look back.
I sat frozen for a few seconds and then mashed three numbers on the phone before I remembered that the line was monitored for “productivity assurance” or whatever she’d called it. I shrugged and punched the remaining digits. What did it matter now?
“Shoes of Peace.” Rochelle still sounded like someone had shot her with a tranquilizer.
“You’ll never believe it.”
“What? Is it Tracey?” I could hear her scrambling around the register. “Don’t tell me. Jordan called you, too—?”
My stupid brother was the least of my worries. Visa was going to come and repossess my teeth if I didn’t figure a way out of this one. And just when I was considering that saving-up-for-a-rainy-day thing. “She fired me, Rochelle. What am I going to do now?”
“Fired you? Naomi?” A cheerleader’s voice replaced her melancholy tone. “Get over here as fast as you can!”
I stared at the receiver. My friend had sprung to life at the news of my financial demise. Was I missing something here?
“Come over there? Now? No, I’m going home. I’ve got a date with some ice cream.”
“No, little sis. You come by here. I’ve got something better than ice cream.”
Better than ice cream? Now we were talking. “Whaddya got? Baklava? I knew you weren’t serious about starting our food program today. Baklava is in the points book, but—”
“No, Dane, no baklava. What I’m going to feed you will keep you full for a long time. We’re going to cook up some dreams.”
The dream was almost done. A little raw in the center, overdone around the edges, but the details for my closet-hobby-turned-business were falling into place. The past few weeks had been a flurry of paperwork and planning—two things I’m not too good with. First, burning the midnight oil with a business plan
had kept me busy. Then came the fun stuff—market research, product line development, price points and displays—all the stuff I’d dreamed about.
Only the reality turned out to be more like a nightmare. The insurance? Forget it. I came home from that meeting sweating like I’d been to spinning class. For extra fun, add in ordering bacteria challenge tests for my products, designing labels, obtaining UPC codes. All sorts of madness. But somehow, I felt more alive than ever. I’d thought Rochelle was nuts to push me into this, but I had to admit being excited. More excited than I’d been about anything in a long time, except maybe when Adrian showed up again. But now he’d disappeared just as quickly.
Mind your business. I’ve got him.
And you.
I smiled, easing my hand over the almost unrecognizable scar under my eye. My cocoa butter soap and lotion had done wonders. Renee, who’d volunteered to help me unload boxes, peeked around the corner of my Thanksgiving display, a burst of orange, gold, copper and green draped the shelves in layers. A cornucopia full of pumpkin pie bath bombs would soon grace the top for effect.
An emerald nail cradled Renee’s cheek. “I know this wasn’t easy, but I’m so glad it worked out. This is so…you. I can’t believe Rochelle gave you the rest of the money though. I knew she did well over there with those shoes, but this well?” She swept a hand around the upscale retail unit.
I snapped on my latex gloves and a pair of goggles before heaving a tub of sodium hydroxide, a necessary and lethal ingredient in all soap, toward the back. Why was it Renee always voiced my thoughts?
“I don’t know the details, Renee. I didn’t ask. I’m thinking she took out a loan. She said it’s a gift, but I’m going to pay her back. Somehow.”
The empty shelves stared back at me mockingly as I tried to imagine them full of jars and bottles sporting the funky fuchsia and tangerine labels Tracey had designed.
“Don’t worry. You’ll do it. Wonderfully Made is going to be a hit.”
“I hope so.” Besides Rochelle’s gift, I’d secured a small loan for women-owned businesses and cashed in my pitiful retirement fund. The cheery flowers on my foaming bath oil caught my attention, the product’s title hugged the curve of the bright petals in a swirling script on the label.
Hope floats.
I sighed. Hoping. Helping. That’s what this was about, helping women relax and rediscover their God-given beauty instead of cutting and peeling themselves into an early grave. It’d work out somehow.
Renee stood back as I passed by, as if the lye could escape the container and harm her somehow. Her posture humored me, but I was glad she took the safety concerns seriously. I’d been reluctant to let her come today, knowing the lye shipment needed to be stored properly. “I’ll be back in a sec.”
Tired of dragging the fifty-pound-double-garbage-bagged lump across the floor, I pushed it with my boot, hoping no stray lye crystals would jump onto my shoe somehow. Toe burns were no fun. Smelling a velvety bar of lavender oatmeal, six weeks old and smooth to the cut, made tasks like this bearable. Though I’d made hundreds of batches, there was still nothing quite like bathing with soap I’d made. It seemed the longer it cured the better it felt.
Getting to the point where I had supplies to shove around hadn’t been easy. To pull it off, my life had become an express business seminar. My days had been laced with acronyms from dawn to dusk—IRS, SBA and SCORE—all which basically illuminated the fact that I was BROKE. But God did it anyway.
In spite of the odds, Wonderfully Made, my soon-to-be-opened bath and body shop, was a reality. I scanned the back
room of this freshly painted strip mall unit. With boxes everywhere, the place didn’t look much different than my dining room at first sight, but the stucco lining the walls and the chandelier in the main area hinted at the possibilities.
I hoped this place would live up to its name. Adrian had certainly lived up to the title of his business, heart kicker in the first degree.
Easy come, easy go.
He’d no doubt returned to Chicago by now. Though it hurt that he hadn’t said goodbye, I was thankful. With him around, my mind had played tricks on me. Dangerous tricks.