No Weapon Formed (Boaz Brown) Read Free

the
kitchen from his bedroom and all I could think was: Save my foot! I
snatched my leg and turned my entire body away from him. “Seth, it’s time to
go.”
    My husband swooped up our son
and pulled him into a tickle-hug. Seth’s brown locks swayed as he attempted to
break free of Stelson’s grasp. When all else failed, Seth struck back by
tickling my husband, who burst out in contrived laughter. “Oh, you wanna tickle
me back! You wanna tickle me back! Well, I’ll tickle harder!”
    Seth’s laughter filled the
room. Even baby girl found their game hilarious. She opened her mouth wide and
let out a wail that Stelson couldn’t ignore. With Seth still in his embrace, my
husband walked toward the deadly high chair and used his other hand to gently
tickle our daughter under her slobbery chin.
    Of course, her full cheeks
pushed her eyes closed as she laughed uncontrollably. Zoe’s tighter curls
didn’t whip around like Seth’s. Her features aligned more with her
African-American heritage than our son’s, who could have easily passed as Caucasian
with his blue eyes and fair skin.
    God knows I wanted to join in
their game, but the clock was ticking. We were already seven minutes past leaving
time. I placed a hand on Stelson’s arm. “Alright, we gotta skedaddle, honey.”
    Stelson set our son on the
floor. “Go get your shoes.”
    For some reason, Seth always
obeyed my husband’s orders the first time given. I wished I could record
Stelson saying every command and just play it for Seth.
    Still in his bathrobe,
Stelson leaned against the stove. He crossed his arms and eyed me as I stuffed
baby carrots into one of the compartments of my lunch container. Sometimes, he
just watched me. Admired me, he’d say. I’d heard that men were visual, but I
think my husband was even more visual than the average man because he could go
from zero to “let’s go to the bedroom” in ten seconds if I walked past him in a
wraparound dress and a pair of heels.
    Well, he used to be able to
turn it on that fast. Lately, though, he wasn’t as excitable. Maybe we were
just getting older. Maybe I was having a hard time shedding the second-baby
weight. Or maybe both.
    I continued my routine,
giving him an eyeful of me doing everything possible to keep myself looking
good for him. But when I realized I’d forgotten to pick up another salad mix at
the grocery store, I huffed, “Aww man!”
    “What?”
    “Forgot to get the salad
mix.” As soon as the words left my mouth, I remembered exactly how I forgot.
I’d caught Seth popping a grape in his mouth and given him a two-minute lecture
on how that was almost like stealing. In response, he started gagging and
hocking, trying to bring the swallowed grape back up, which drove me to the
point where I was almost ready to slap him on the behind and end the whole
scene.
    “No! You don’t need to
vomit.”
    “But Jesus doesn’t want me to
steal,” Seth had whined sincerely.
    “Jesus understands,” I said.
“Just don’t do it again.”
    Yep. That’s how I forgot the
salad mix. “Never mind. I’ll order delivery for lunch.”
    “You don’t have to do this,
you know,” Stelson said in an I-told-you-so tone.
    I shut the refrigerator door
and faced him. “Do what?”
    “Work outside the house.”
    I rolled my eyes and limped
toward our bedroom. “Let’s not go there this morning, okay?”
    He followed, which annoyed me
all the more. “Could you put her in the swing?” I pointed at Zoe to throw him
off.
    A minute later, he was beside
me again, watching me dab on lipstick and brush my light brown skin with
powder. Thankfully, my flawless complexion had returned after giving birth to
Zoe. I unwrapped the scarf on my head and brushed my hair out of its sleeping
position and into the chin-length bob style that required almost no
maintenance. Though this style wasn’t its best without bumping the ends with a
flat iron, I had to give myself credit for wrapping it up the previous night