Phone Wouldn\'t Have Rung Today

¶ … phone wouldn't have rung today"

Summer in Texas is hot, so hot you forget winter even exists. It's the kind of hot that makes you not want to move, and melt into a puddle on the sidewalk. The heat is dangerous: at any moment, bushfires could start. It's not uncommon for people die of heatstroke. Working hard, you feel like you are burning with a fever: sweat squeaks in your armpits, and it is useless to wipe your perspiration away, because it will only return, running down your neck, into your eyes.

But there I was, hammer in hand, whacking nails into the wooden ramp as if someone's life depended on it.

And in a way it did.

It was missionary work took me to Texas: I was far away from the famous oil fields, Niemen Marcus, and cattle ranches of the Lone Star state. I was in a world where people lived in shacks, and air conditioning was unheard of -- even electricity was rare. No computers, no cell phone signal of any kind. It was a different world, not what most people usually think of when they think about Texas.

A different world of kindness.

I remember the husband and wife who owned the home my mission team was assigned to rebuild. The image of Marie in particular is burned onto my brain: white hair in a careful bun, wrinkled skin, a walk that was unsteady because of an old injury that had never had the care a doctor until it was too late. Her clothes were as faded as her home. The paint on the little house was peeling, the front porch was thick with weeds sprouting up from the ground, the bushes were overgrown, and the screens had holes in them. The mission team was given the task of repairing the structure, and most critically, installing a wheelchair ramp to make it easier for Marie's husband to leave and enter from the front door.

Marie had lived in that home almost her entire life. To the eyes of the uninitiated, the structure was a decrepit shack. For Marie, it was all she had.

Every day Marie put on makeup, her best clothes, and her best jewelry because she knew we were coming. At ten in the morning when it was still relatively cool, she would be there in a dress, with ice cold lemonade and hot buttered muffins she had made herself, "to keep our strength up." Although she had very little food for herself, she always had a great deal to give to others. She looked like a grandmother from an old-fashioned movie, although I couldn't give Marie a fairytale ending, only a ramp and a mended, but still-broken shack.

Marie would stay with us as we worked, anxious to be of help in any way that she could: she always offered us a handkerchief for our brows or a cold drink when we needed those things the most. I knew that living without air conditioning was normal for her, and so I tried to will myself not to care. She chatted with us, and she often told me how much I reminded her of her son, now grown, who lived far away.

Every day a few minutes before eleven, she would excuse herself. In the stillness of the heat, I would hear the phone ring -- daily. Except for one day.

That I could hear her, pacing back and forth across her worn living room carpet. I knew she was waiting for her son to call, and I found myself willing the phone to ring. Finally, I heard her dial the phone: "Why didn't you call? You were about to? O.K., I'll hang up, and you can call me back."