by Neta Jackson
I don’t even remember the walk home from Adele’s shop, just that I got home in one piece, totally ex-hausted. The mail had come, but I didn’t even take it out of the box. I just wanted to fall into bed and drown my anxiety in a good, long nap. Instead I found myself on my knees beside the living room couch. Pray Scripture, Jodi, said the voice in my head. “Be anxious for nothing . . .”
Yeah, right. About as effective as “Don’t scratch it” or “Can’t eat just one.” Still, I got my Bible and looked up the verse in its context: Paul’s letter to the Philippian church, chapter four. I read the passage a couple of times, realizing what a difference the surrounding verses made.
“Okay, God,” I said aloud, my voice muffled in a couch cushion, “Paul said I don’t have to be anxious, but instead to tell You everything that’s on my heart. So I gotta admit I’m really nervous about the parent-teacher conferences next week—and it blows my mind that I ran into Hakim’s mother today, at Adele’s shop of all places! I really need some wisdom and courage to meet her again. This scripture also says, ‘with thanksgiving,’ and somewhere else it says, ‘in everything give thanks.’ Does that mean to thank You that we ran into each other today? I don’t know what You have in mind, but I do want to trust You to work it all together for good. And help me fill my mind with everything that’s good and perfect and beautiful, like verse eight says, so I don’t have room for all the anxious thoughts that—”
“Hey!” yelled a familiar voice from the back of the house. “Anybody home?”
“Denny!” I screeched, launching myself off my knees. I’m sure my dash to the kitchen broke somebody’s world record, a startled Willie Wonka hard on my heels.
I HADN’T EXPECTED MY family back so early in the afternoon—hadn’t washed the bedding, hadn’t fixed supper, hadn’t put on any makeup—but nobody complained. Certainly not me. I was so glad they were home, I kept wanting to hug them—which got old pretty quick for Amanda and Josh, who began fighting about who got the phone first. Denny seemed content to sprawl on the couch with one arm around me and an iced tea in his other hand. “Remind me not to divorce you,” he murmured into my hair. “I’m not ready to be a single parent.”
A waft of English Leather tickled my nose as I snuggled closer. Gosh, I was glad he was home.
Eventually I did have to untangle myself, stick the bedding in the washer, and think about supper. I suggested eating out at Siam Pasta, but the kids groaned. “We’re dying for home cooking, Mom!” What mother in her right mind could resist outright flattery?
Oven-roasted chicken with rosemary, baked potatoes with sour cream, and frozen green beans with lemon pep-per—the easy-but-yummy formula—I listened to Josh and Amanda tell how chilling it was to stand on Ground Zero and see all the flowers and notes that people still left every day, honoring the people who had died on 9/11. They had wanted to visit Ellis Island, but the Statue of Liberty was closed for security reasons, and they ended up on Museum Mile along Fifth Avenue.
“Yeah. I wanted to see the Metropolitan Museum of Art,” Josh grumbled, “but Amanda bullied us into visit-ing El Museo del Barrio.”
Amanda snapped him with her cloth napkin. “We voted! You lost! Besides, you know you liked it.” She turned to me, eyes alight. “It was all this Latino art, Mom—mostly Puerto Rican and Caribbean. So cool.”
Denny and I exchanged glances.Yep, things were back to normal.
AMANDA RAN UP THE back stairs the next morning to see if Stu wanted a ride to church, but she came back saying Stu didn’t get home till late last night and would be coming later. Fine by me. After missing the Good Friday service, I was eager not to miss any of the Easter worship.
Last year—our first Easter at Uptown Community Church—the entire congregation had hiked to the lake carrying colorful bunches of balloons with “Resurrection messages” attached, then let them go, up, up, till they disappeared in the direction of Cleveland. I’d loved the simple beauty of the celebration and was hoping we’d do it again—though when we Baxters topped the stairs to the second-floor meeting room, the room was devoid of any balloons, color, or any decorations whatsoever. Not even an Easter lily. In fact, the windows shades had been pulled down and the room was quite dim.What in the world . . .?
The room was packed. Figured. The weather guy had said a possibility of rain, yet temperatures were already a pleasant sixty-two degrees, luring even the reluctant out of their stuffy houses and apartment buildings. I poked Denny. “Look.” Carl Hickman was there; the whole Hickman family, in fact. Florida was beaming like she’d just won an Oscar. She probably deserved one. Avis was back too, but I couldn’t catch her eye. She was too busy whispering back and forth to Peter Douglass as they sat together on the far side of the room.
The lights went out and we scurried to find a seat. A not-so-young guy I’d never seen before with a short, graying beard and hair slicked over a high forehead sat down at the piano, and the room hushed.With a plaintive, Bob Dylan kind of voice he began:
Was it a morning like this
When the sun still hid from Jerusalem?
And Mary rose from her bed
To tend the Lord . . . she thought was
dead . . .
Sheila Fitzhugh, who’d loaned me the slinky black dress last year, came up the middle aisle, doing a sorrowful dance in the role of Mary Magdalene. Then a “Peter” and a “John” joined her as the words of the song beckoned:
Was it a morning like this
When Peter and John ran from
Jerusalem? And as they raced for the tomb
Beneath their feet, was there a tune?
Did the grass sing? Did the earth rejoice
to feel You again?
Goose bumps danced on my arms as the window shades flew up and sunlight spilled into the room. “Peter,” “John,” and “Mary” linked hands and began to dance like the floorboards tickled their feet, the youth group suddenly emerged from the kitchen with the missing balloons, and the bard at the piano raised his voice in triumph:
Over and over like a trumpet underground
Did the earth seem to pound, “He is risen!”
Over and over in a never-ending round
He is risen! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
The atmosphere in the room had gone electric. Everyone was on their feet, the praise team and Uptown musicians took over, and we sang God’s praises in song after song. Everyone had their hands in the air. How could a person just sit when Jesus had conquered sin and death . . . just for us?
I tried to find the guest musician before we all set out for the lake with our balloons, but he must have slipped out. I overheard some folks talking who’d heard the song recorded by Sandi Patty—but this guy, Jim Croegaert, was the original songwriter. “How’d he end up at Uptown Community?” someone laughed. “We’re not exactly on the tour schedule for Christian musicians.”
“He’s local. Lives here in Chicago. A friend of Pastor Clark from his old rock-’n’-roll days.”
Old rock-’n’-roll days? Hmm. So Pastor Clark had a past—ha! I wrote down the guy’s name, hoping he had some CDs.
“Jodi,” Florida said, charging up to me. “Peter Douglass got my Carl over there in a corner—don’t know what about. You be prayin’, you hear? That man needs some resurrection, and my naggin’ ain’t it.” She craned her neck around. “Where’s Avis? You think she’s avoiding us? There she is. Stu! You come on too.” Florida grabbed both of us by the hand and made a beeline for Avis, who ducked behind a gaggle of teenagers with balloons.
“You stop right there, Avis Johnson,” Florida commanded, dragging Stu and me the other way around the herd of balloons and blocking her way. “Let’s see it.”
Avis was trying to repress a grin and feigning innocence all at once. “See what?”
“Whatever you’re hiding. Out with it.”
Avis started to laugh. Impatient, Florida grabbed her left hand and held it up. “I knew it!” she crowed.
My mouth dropped
. Stu whistled. A large diamond engagement ring circled Avis’s long, slim finger—the finger where she’d still been wearing her gold wedding band since Conrad’s death. Heads turned as the three of us shrieked and tackled Avis with a big hug.
“Oh, thanks,” Avis wheezed when we finally let her go. “Remind me not to hang around you girlfriends if I want to keep something quiet or dignified.”
Florida snorted. “You got that right. It’s our duty not to let you get too dignified—uh-oh, my family’s goin’ out the door with them balloons.You guys comin’ to the lake?”
“Uh, can’t.” Stu looked at me apologetically. “Gotta go home and start cleaning my stuff out of the guest room.” We all stared at her as she pulled a business letter out of her shoulder bag. “This came in the mail yesterday. Didn’t get it till this morning.” She took a deep breath. “Becky Wallace is being paroled next weekend—to my house.”
42
Didn’t know which bit of news spun me around more—that Avis and Peter Douglass were actually engaged, or that the Bandana Woman was going to take up residence in this very house. Stu seemed in a slight state of shock—the oh-God-what-have-I-done variety—and I volunteered Amanda and myself to help with necessary preparations. But what would Becky need? Toiletries? Underwear? We probably wouldn’t know till she got here.
When I hit school Monday morning—refreshed from my stay-at-home week, I had to admit—I noticed that Avis was wearing The Ring diamond-side down to stave off questions and squeals from coworkers. But I did wiggle a moment with her behind closed doors in her office, long enough to ask, “When, Avis, when? Don’t keep us all in suspense. These things take preparation.”
“No,” she said mildly, “we want to keep this simple. Get a marriage license and . . . I don’t know,maybe have Pastor Clark marry us on a Sunday morning.”
“Sunday morning?” I tried to keep my screech to a whisper. “Are you guys out of your minds? What about flowers, and bridesmaids, and wedding cake, and dancing for joy?” I let slip a grin. “Hey.All the Yada Yadas could be your bridesmaids.”
“Jodi Baxter! Read my lips. Simple. Sunday morning. Now”—she smiled sweetly—“did you have something school-related you wanted to talk about?”
I sank back in her visitor chair. “Yeah. Parent-teacher conferences on Wednesday. I’m scared spitless.”
I WAS GLAD I talked to Avis. I told her about running into Hakim’s mother at Adele’s shop on Saturday, about my feelings of failure with Hakim, about realizing the accident still didn’t have closure. Not for me, and certainly not for Geraldine—how could I expect that? How did a mother ever get over the death of her child? Much less relate normally to the woman responsible for his death, who just happened to be her only surviving son’s third-grade teacher?
Avis didn’t try to answer all my questions, but she wrote down some scriptures for me to turn into prayers. I tried out the first one—Proverbs 28:13—as I walked home from school on Monday, past the tiny lilies of the valley pushing up along the sidewalk, praying aloud. “Dear God, I don’t want to be the kind of person who covers over my sin.You promised that if I confess and for-sake them, I will receive mercy.” Yes, I knew I’d received mercy. I wasn’t in jail, was I?
On Tuesday, I soaked up the second verse she’d given me from Acts. 3:19: “Lord Jesus, You promised that if I repent and turn to you, that You would send times of refreshing.”What a wonderful word—refreshing. Like a hot shower after camping in the mud all weekend, or ice-cold water on a muggy August day. Even as I was writing that day’s homework assignment on the board, my heart was crying, “Oh, Lord! Please send that time of refreshing!”
We had early dismissal on Wednesday to allow for report-card pickup and parent-teacher conferences. The third verse Avis had given me was Galatians 6:2. I just wasn’t sure I knew how to pray it with Geraldine Wilkins-Porter in mind. “Jesus, Your Word says to carry each other’s burdens, but . . . I really don’t know how to carry this mother’s burden without drowning in my own guilt and her sorrow.” Yet the words stayed with me: “Carry one another’s burdens.”
Praying the Scriptures really calmed my mind and my spirit as parents appeared in my classroom, and I crossed off D’Angelo’s mother . . . Ebony’s father . . . LeTisha’s proud parents . . . a couple of no-shows . . . Ramón’s uncle . . . and then there it was: Geraldine Wilkins-Porter’s signature on the sign-up sheet.
I stood up from my desk chair as the door opened, and Hakim’s mother stepped into the room. She hesitated a moment just inside the door, trim and businesslike in a gray suit with a short skirt, and a silky red blouse. Adele had done a smashing job on her hair—tight corkscrew curls all over with just a touch of rusty color in the hair, softening her rather sculptured face. “Please. Come in,” I said. She crossed the room and we both sat down, eyeing each other anxiously across my desk. I didn’t have a clue what I should say. I hadn’t writ-ten anything out, hadn’t practiced anything. Just prayed.
I pushed Hakim’s report card aside and folded my hands to keep them from shaking. Somehow I found the courage to keep my eyes on her face. “Ms. Porter, Hakim continues to show some improvement in reading and writing—but I believe that is his accomplishment, not mine. I’ve been doing some soul-searching and . . . I had no right to try to keep your son in my class. He’s a very likable boy, and I really did want him to stay, but . . .” The words kept coming, words that had been hidden thoughts, pushing themselves into the space between us. “I realize now I was trying to redeem myself in your eyes for what I did by helping your second son. Maybe redeem myself in God’s eyes too.”
Tears pushed themselves to the brink. I blinked them away, afraid that if I stopped, I’d never find the courage to continue. I couldn’t read Geraldine’s face—it was guarded, but not hostile. Not hostile. That counted for something.
“There are two things I need to say to you. I know I said ‘I’m sorry’ when we met in the courtroom. I am, deeply, so sorry for your loss. But I need to say much more than that. I . . . I was driving angry that day—angry after a dumb fight with my husband. I wasn’t breaking any laws behind the wheel, yet my spirit was wrong, so wrong that day. And the next thing I knew, your son was dead. For that, I not only need to repent before God, but before you.”
The dark eyes across the desk from me were deep and luminous. She didn’t interrupt or yell at me or turn away. She was listening.
I swallowed. My mouth was dry. “Second, I never should have expected you to leave Hakim in my class when you discovered I was his teacher. That you did says far more about you than about me. I overestimated my abilities, though. He is not progressing as he should—and as I believe he can with the right kind of help. Please forgive me for my arrogance. I know you only want the best for your son—as I should. It was wrong of me to ask you to leave him in this awkward situation. If you want to remove him from this class, I—”
Hakim’s mother held up her hand to stop me. Her eyes were dry but bright. “You have had your say. Now let me have mine.” She stood and walked over to Hakim’s desk, her finger slowly tracing the jagged scar he had dug into the wood with a paper clip. Then she turned back to me.
“I don’t know if I can forgive you for killing my son,” she said slowly. (Oh God! To hear her say it like that—“for killing my son”—I can’t bear it!) “I don’t know if I’m strong enough to do that. But I have something to say to you too—something I’ve had to face, even though I haven’t wanted to. That day, the day of the accident, Jamal was running against the light, against traffic, with a jacket over his head in a downpour that kept drivers from see-ing him. His cousins admit it; the other driver—the one that hit your car—said so too. I couldn’t hear it; I wanted to put it all on your head.” She took a deep breath. “But my Jamal was also responsible for what happened that day. Not just you.”
Her words nearly sucked the breath out of me.
She traced the jagged scar again with a carefully manicured nail. “Hakim likes yo
u, Ms. Baxter. Against all odds, against all the hate that has raged inside me, my son likes you. I couldn’t understand it. But then . . .” She looked up. “Then you come waltzing into Adele Skuggs’s beauty shop to take her elderly mother for a walk. You. Jodi Baxter. The woman I love to hate!” An ironic smile tipped one side of her mouth. “And my beautician tells me you’re in her prayer group—her prayer group, for God’s sake!—and it was your idea for the sisters to take MaDear out or come in and read to her.” Geraldine Wilkins-Porter wagged her head. “When I walked out of that beauty shop, it was a lot harder to think of you just as that pig-headed white woman who killed my son.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Pig-headed! Hakim’s mother thought of me as “that pig-headed white woman.” Well, why not? Didn’t I still think of Becky Wallace as “Bandana Woman”? Both of us had hit on a way to deny the humanity of the person who’d wronged us . . . deny her her name.
Geraldine sat down across from me again, and for some reason she started to laugh softly. “Yes, pig-headed. Not very creative, I know. I wanted to call you something worse.”
I couldn’t help it. I started to laugh too, my shoulders shaking. “You should have,” I gasped. “Yes, a lot worse!” I dabbed at my eyes with a tissue, and when I lifted my head, I realized she was looking at me. Our eyes met and the moment hung in the air.
“Oh, Geraldine. Can you forgive me?” I reached my hand across the desk.
To my surprise she touched my fingers briefly, then pulled her hand back and looked down at her lap. “Maybe . . . maybe someday,” she whispered.
I WASN’T SURE EXACTLY what happened in my class-room that afternoon, except that both Hakim’s mother and I had spoken honestly to each other—and we had touched. As I gathered up my books and papers after the last parent-teacher conference, I felt . . . light. Like refreshing spring water was bubbling up inside my soul. There it was—that word. Refreshing. God was true to His Word. He had sent a “time of refreshing.”