When I was younger, I didn’t really think about love. I didn’t think about liking anyone. I was completely ignorant to Valentine’s Day and the barrage of cards and gifts I’d receive. When one is in sixth grade, that’s the farthest thing from your mind. You care about playing sports, reading, or listening to music until either the tape disintegrates, or the batteries die. Either way, one remains oblivious to everything having to do with guys.
Sure, there was that group who made it their business to see how much you knew about the “forbidden fruit” outside of health class. You want to ignore it. You don’t want to know about it. It’s too confusing, too daunting, and involves someone else to really get to into your personal space. I want to say that I wanted to to have what they said go in one ear and out the other, but all of that lewd news took residence in the back of my head and I did my best to keep it locked away, chained-up, and sitting at the bottom of a proverbial well of despair where it belonged.
Then seventh grade kicks in, and that small cluster girls who know more than they should expands like “pi”. You’re sitting at your desk on the first day of class, minding your own business, while diligently trying to work on pre-algebra when the following occurs:
“You gotta boyfriend?”
I ignored her, assuming she was talking to someone else.
“Hey, gingerbread, I’m talking to you.”
I had to admit, that was a first time anyone said that to me. Yes, my hair was red—Pippi Longstocking-ish— but not the length. I didn’t lower my pen, but I turned to her and tried to give her a blank stare: to avoid letting her know that I was uncomfortable with her talking loudly in my ear by leaning so close.
“You got a fella?”
This was a no-win situation question You answer in the affirmative and they badger you. You answer in the negative and the badger you even more. They were the kind of girls that one hoped would grow up and move on with their lives…preferably hundreds of miles away.
I never answered her question as the teacher, Mrs. Jackson, snapped her fingers and the girl turned her head.
“Tawana Dayton? If you’re talking then you must be done with your assignment.”
“Uh, no, Mrs. Jackson, I haven’t even started yet.”
“That’s what I thought. Sit down and…your textbook isn’t even open.”
I went back to doing my work as I found math to be therapeutic early in life. It’s all a part of master plan and one just has to go through the steps until you reach the solution. They say one never uses math later in life but we add the years, subtract the pain, multiply the good and divide the heartache.
“I need more from the altos,” cried our church choir director Mr. Spencer. We were three days until out Easter Cantata, three hours before my parents would arrive from out of town, two minutes before a headache would overtake me and forty-two seconds when I realized I had missed my duet cue. I could only shake my head and then join in mid-word.
I had been involved with music throughout my life: band, choir, cheerleading—you got to be able to keep time with the music—and now, twenty-four years after throwing my last Pom-Pom, here I was, soon to perform in front of a crowd as part of our church’s Easter production. Think of it as a combination of actors, singers, and the chorus. I put myself out to join the performance and volunteered to stand front and center stage, complete with a headset microphone and corresponding robes to the rest of the chorus. Sure, I’d never sing it like Kari Jobe, but I still like to think I added a bit of flair to “Revelation Song” that would never be duplicated.
This was one of the rehearsals we performed with the performance department, which encompassed almost all of our youth, a few older members and some elders of the church who, for the most part, chose to be “extras” and part of the chorus. Physically, I was there, putting out the best I could for the time…but psychology, I was a wreck. Looking at the smile on my face—as it’s hard to sing in tune with a frown—you’d never expect that my life had collapsed two weeks prior.
“It’s not working out, Amelia.”
I had heard that phrase only one other time in my life: working at a restaurant in my home town. I great employee, but I had had issues with getting there on time. I mean late by seconds. I could be on time and stand around waiting for a customer to come in. And I don’t mean filling saltshakers or organizing menus, but I mean. Just. Standing. There. And that you were expected to do—even if there were other things that could be done—you just and and wait for what could be five to minutes.
However, arrive a millisecond late and the manager would dock your tips and continually comment on how “kids these days have no grasp on time.” If I lacked a grasp on time then my former manager lacked humanity. And for all of this emphasis on being on time, he never allowed me to leave at the end of my shift.
It was always for some reason or another, but he almost always went back to the adage of “time management” and how time waits for no man.
“I noticed,” I replied.
We stood in the kitchen on the opposite sides of an island—literally and figuratively.
“It’s me, not you.”
I raised an eyebrow and then glared down to see a packed suitcase. One of my suitcases, actually.
“I made a mistake and now I will pay for that mistake.”
His mistake was twenty-two years old and once worked as his assistant before she resigned so she could move across the country. It was not known until a day or two before that my husband was going with her.
We had been married for fourteen years, both of us recent college graduates and ready to go out and together make our mark in the world. Unfortunately, this was the ultimate black mark for us.
“It didn’t have to happen this way.”
I picked up a teacup filled with steaming green tea and was tempted to throw it at his face, but the cup was part of a set my grandmother gave me as a graduation present. I would have hated to tell her one was missing because I had left a shard in Paul’s head.
“If only you were home more.”
My job had me up early in the morning and his had him working the afternoon to the late evening. We had to plan our sleep schedules to say “hello” to each other sometimes. There were the weekends, on the ones where we had nothing else going on: No shopping, no cleaning or repairs, and no going across the town for “business meetings”—on a Sunday afternoon.
“She paid attention to my needs.”
I made an effort to cook dinner on nights that I was ready to fall sleep in front of a pan of sizzling bacon or cut fresh green beans—again, with maybe four hours of sleep—without slicing off my pinky a few times.
“So, is there anything you’d like to say before I walk out this door?”
“Yes, Paul, there is something I should tell you,” I spoke in the sweetest voice I could at the moment. “I removed my paycheck’s direct deposit from our former joint checking account.”
He left without another word that I could actually hear and understand. I walked to the door, locked it, and then wrote down a note to have all of the locks changed in the morning.
We finished practice with a very loud version of “Hallelujah” from Handel’s “Messiah” complete with a brass section and one of the largest gongs one would ever hear. The reverb lasted for about fifteen seconds, enough for the upcoming audience to probably lose their hearing. I made a mental note to bring earplugs, but nothing could stop the mighty vibration that accompanied it.
“Amelia, are you there?” My dad’s voice boomed through the door. He was probably holding two bags of food while mom would be holding onto a crockpot. They would drive three hours and still brings a few culinary gifts to try.
