by Neta Jackson
Nick began to read, but Edesa was distracted by a glimpse of Philip Fairbanks’s blue Nissan pulling into the parking lot—the secondhand car he’d bought after getting rid of his fancy Lexus, one of many efforts Gabby’s estranged husband had made to help him pay back his gambling debts.
She poked Josh and nodded in that direction. “We definitely need to get a car,” she whispered. “We made them late.”
She saw him cut his eyes at Precious sitting a few seats down the row in her bright-yellow hat. Well, all right, it was Precious wanting a ride at the last minute who’d made the Fairbanks late, but it was the same thing. The House of Hope needed more than one car among the various families who lived there!
“‘. . . Father, protect them by the power of your name,” Nick was reading at the mike, “‘the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one . . .’”
Edesa turned quickly in her Spanish Bible so she could read along. The verse he’d just read was already underlined: “. . . para que sean uno como nosotros somos uno.” She sighed. That they may be one . . . That was one prayer she hoped Jesús was still praying for His church. Christians had done a poor job over the years “being one,” fighting and dividing over everything from modes of baptism to worship styles to racial issues to which Bible translation to use.
After the Scripture reading, the praise team filled the room with lusty singing—even that overused favorite “They’ll Know We Are Christians by Our Love.” Edesa shook her head. So easy to sing, so hard to do. Help us, Senór!
When it was time for the children to go to their Sunday school classes, Edesa took Gracie and Timmy McGill to the nursery. When she returned, Pastor Cobbs was already preaching on Jesus’ prayer for unity, reminding the congregation that even SouledOut Community Church needed to be vigilant and not let the evil one use the current transition after the death of Pastor Clark as an occasion to spark division in the church. “We may have differing opinions about how to move forward,” he said, mopping his glistening forehead with a large handkerchief, “but let’s remember that Scripture says love covers a multitude of sins.” Half the congregation laughed, and Pastor Cobbs chuckled. “At least some of you got my joke. But kidding aside, our differing opinions can become sins if we let them cause quarrels and create divisions among us.”
Edesa shot a questioning look at her husband, wondering if Pastor Cobbs was referring to something specific. Josh seemed to catch her drift, but shrugged as if to say he didn’t know.
The service ended with a prayer of benediction by Avis, followed by announcements facilitated by Nick—at which time Pastor Cobbs again bounded onto the low platform urging the congregation to give a special handclap for the new interim pastoral team. “You’ll be hearing from both our sister and our brother in the pulpit this next month, so cancel all your vacation plans and be here to give them your support.” More laughter and a hearty round of applause greeted his announcement— though Edesa suspected Avis was wishing the floor would open and swallow her about then.
As the congregation began to mingle and head for the coffee table, Edesa caught her husband. “Josh, could you pick up Gracie from the nursery and keep her for ten minutes or so? I need to talk to Kathryn Davies.”
Josh frowned. “I guess, though I need to catch Justin Barnes and talk to him about what’s happening at youth group tonight. But . . . never mind. I’ll figure out something.” He turned to go.
“Ask Precious then!” she called after him. Typical Josh “Don’t want to but I’ll do it anyway” Baxter. She had no doubt he’d “figure out something,” but she felt a little guilty since they both had people they wanted to talk to.
She found Kathryn pouring iced tea at the coffee table. “Hola, Kat. I’ll take one of those.” She smiled her thanks. “Uh, do you need to stay here, or could we find a quiet corner to talk?”
“No, no, I was just keeping busy. I don’t have to stay— Oh! I brought something for you.” Kat disappeared through the swinging doors that led to the church kitchen, offices, and classrooms and reappeared carrying two plastic grocery bags, so full they were starting to split. “I brought you some vegetables from the fruit market down on Clark. For the House of Hope. There’s even some cheese in there, though you might want to freeze it. It’s past its sell date.”
Edesa hesitated. From the market or its Dumpster? But she took the bags. “Uhhh, sure. Gracias . . . or would you like to give them to Miss Estelle for Manna House?”
Kat flinched. “No, I’d rather you take them.” The girl flushed under her slight tan. “To tell you the truth, Edesa, I don’t think Estelle likes me.”
“Oh, Kat! That’s not true. Here . . . come sit down.” Edesa set aside the bags and pulled two chairs together. “In fact, she said something really interesting when I talked to her on Friday.”
Kat twirled a loose strand of dark-brown hair around a finger. “Like what?”
“Well, let me back up. Remember I told you that I teach a Bible study at Manna House on Friday mornings? When I got home from the shopping trip with Estelle’s cooking class on Thursday, I still didn’t know what I was going to teach. And then Josh made a joke, said I should teach on Jesus feeding the five thousand. ‘Talk about making a little food stretch a long way,’ he said, or something like that.”
Kat chuckled.
“Anyway, I did just that! Because it showed how Jesus was concerned about people’s physical needs as well as their spiritual needs. We ended up having a really lively discussion. Made me wish you could’ve been there.”
“Sounds neat. Wish I could’ve too.”
“Anyway, afterward I was talking to Estelle about the Bible study and about our shopping trip the previous day, and she said something really interesting. She said you have a really good heart”—no need to mention that Estelle said it wasn’t connected to her brain—“and what you really want to do is feed people.”
Kathryn seemed to flush again, adding a rosy glow to her striking blue eyes and dark hair. “She said that? Well, yeah, I’m concerned about people eating healthy food, but . . . what did she mean I want to feed people?”
Edesa leaned closer, elbows on her knees. “I think what she meant is, you’ve been Dumpster diving and talking about a nutrition class because you care about people and food. But it’s hit and miss—especially the Dumpster diving. Even the nutrition class idea is talking about food, not providing food itself.”
Kat looked puzzled.
“I think what Estelle meant is . . . she believes you have a heart to feed hungry people—like Jesus fed the five thousand.”
Now Kat rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. I can’t work miracles.”
Edesa smiled. “Don’t you see? Jesus saw the people were hungry—and He did something about it. I think Estelle was saying you would do better to shift your primary focus from food to hungry people. There are hungry people in this city, right here in the Rogers Park neighborhood. How do we feed them?”
Kat just stared at Edesa for a long moment. “I—I think I get what she means. But . . . how?”
Edesa leaned back in her chair. “Good question! But remember what Beverly said last Thursday, that what they need is access to more food pantries? Well, I did a little research and found a few food pantries here in Rogers Park.” She dug out the list she’d made from her purse. “You might check these out, see if they could use another volunteer. It would be an experience of getting food to hungry people on a regular basis.”
The girl took the list and studied it. Finally she nodded. “Thanks. I’ll check these out.” Then she gave Edesa a funny look. “Estelle really said that about me?”
Edesa laughed. “Yes, she did. You need to give that woman another chance. I think you two have more in common than you think. Well . . .” She started to get up. “I better rescue Josh, who’s been riding herd on Gracie—”
“Wait.” Kat held up a hand. “Uh, do you have another minute? I need to ask you a question.”
“Sí, of course.
” Edesa sat.
Kat lowered her voice, as if not wanting anyone else to hear. “Why do you have to be baptized to become a member at SouledOut? I mean, does being baptized as a baby count?”
Edesa felt as if they’d just done a U-turn at high speed. She hadn’t seen this coming. What was the girl really asking?
They talked awhile longer, and only later—after Josh interrupted to say his parents had invited them last-minute to come over for Sunday lunch . . . after catching Gabby in time to give her car keys back and switching Gracie’s car seat to the Baxters’ minivan . . . when she was relaxing in her in-laws’ backyard as chicken sizzled on the grill—only then did Edesa remember that she’d left the two bags of Dumpster food sitting in the church.
She gulped. Hopefully they wouldn’t smell too bad by the time someone found them and threw them out.
Chapter 12
Kat carried her whole wheat sandwich with avocado and alfalfa sprouts out onto the back porch of their apartment and sat cross-legged in a plastic lawn chair to eat her lunch. A warm breeze raked its fingers through her tousled hair. Mmm. Nice.
Brygitta joined her a few minutes later, tossing a bag of potato chips onto the small wrought-iron porch table. “Nice breeze out here,” she said, pulling up another lawn chair. “Wish we had some of those pretty flower boxes, though.” Brygitta pointed at the lush ivy vines in the boxes hanging from the back porch railings of the apartment building across the alley.
Kat took a bite of her sandwich. “Where’d you say Nick went?”
“To some hospital with Pastor Cobbs to visit the father of one of the members, don’t remember who. Guess that’s part of what he has to do for his internship. A little bit of everything.”
“Oh.” Kat wished Nick were here so she could bounce Edesa Baxter’s food pantry idea off both of them. She hardly knew what to think. But for the moment, she was enjoying the peace and quiet. The Douglasses and Rochelle had driven Conny to the South Side so the little boy could spend the afternoon with his daddy—which, come to think of it, brought up another thing they should talk about. What in the world were they going to do if Rochelle didn’t bring up the subject of HIV-related precautions? So far their new housemate hadn’t said anything, even though Bree got home from her shift last night by nine thirty and they were all home.
“Did Nick say anything to you about becoming members at SouledOut?” Bree broke into her thoughts.
“What? Oh. Yeah, he did. Told me he’s going to become a member next Sunday and asked if we—you and me—wanted to become members too.”
“So what do you think?”
Kat shrugged. “Well, he showed me this paper with the membership commitment or covenant or whatever they call it, and it said something about being baptized.”
“Yeah, that’s usually . . . oh.” Bree’s eyes widened. “You’ve never been baptized? Not even as an infant?”
Kat snorted. “Well, if I was, I don’t remember it.” She laughed self-consciously.
“You should ask your folks. Maybe that counts.”
“I wish. But even if I was, I’m not sure it meant anything. My parents didn’t exactly raise me in the Christian faith.” Kat made a face. “They only went to church when it was dictated by what their social circle or business associates did.”
Brygitta’s brown eyes were wide with concern. “But you did become a Christian at the Midwest Music Fest a few years ago. If they baptized you as an infant, maybe it was like a prophecy or a spiritual seal or something, even if your parents didn’t know what they were doing.”
Kat shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Do you want to become a member at SouledOut?”
“Well, yeah. Sure. I think. I mean, it’s the church I’ve chosen to be at, isn’t it? What about you?”
Brygitta frowned. “I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought about it till Nick brought it up. I mean, I’m here for the summer, and I like it well enough. But then I’ll be going back to CCU to finish my last semester and . . .” She bit a fingernail. “Don’t know if I want to commute back and forth to church every weekend. Come to think of it, Nick has another semester too. Is he going to commute?”
Kat stopped in mid-chew. She hadn’t really thought about what was going to happen in the fall. She knew in her head that both Bree and Nick had another semester to finish up their graduate work, but it hadn’t really sunk in that both of them would be going back to CCU while she . . . what? “Uh, I guess he’ll have to. He needs a six-month internship to get his M-Div.” But would he live here and commute to school? Or live on campus and commute back to Rogers Park?
Did it matter?
Well, yeah.
Brygitta eyed Kat curiously. “What are you going to do this fall? We have to give up the apartment when the Candys come back.”
Good question. What was she going to do this fall? Get a teaching job, hopefully. She’d sent in an application to the Chicago Public Schools. But she’d read somewhere that CPS might close some schools because of the economy. Which meant a whole lot of teachers out of work. Who was going to hire her?
Kat shook off the slight panic in her throat with a toss of her head. “Well, if I can’t find a real job, can I take over your shifts at the coffee shop when you go back to school? I’d at least be working full-time then.”
Brygitta laughed and reached for another handful of potato chips. “Be my guest. I can just hear your parents now . . . ‘Our daughter? Oh, you mean Kathryn. Yes, yes, we sent our daughter to graduate school to become—ta-da—a barista!’”
Kat snatched the potato chip bag. “Hey. The world needs baristas too.”
Two thirty. Nick wasn’t back yet. Brygitta had gotten a long-distance call from her parents or grandmother or somebody, or maybe the whole clan. Kat could hear a clamor of voices even though the phone wasn’t on Speaker. Was that Polish they were speaking? Whatever. Bree was going to be awhile. Maybe she’d go for a run along the lake by herself. She had some thinking to do.
Scattered clouds dotted the sky, and the weather report said a twenty-percent chance of rain later that evening. But in mid-afternoon the temperature was a pleasant midseventies and the breeze coming off the lake held steady as Kat ran north on the jogging path. She felt a little silly running with her backpack, but she’d dumped out her usual stuff and stuck in the list of food pantries Edesa had given her, the membership papers Nick had left on the desk in the study, her Bible, her cell phone, and a bottle of water. She’d find a bench or somewhere she could watch the lake and try to sort out the jumbled thoughts in her head.
Half an hour later Kat parked herself under a tree and fished out the list of food pantries. One was at a community center, another at a church . . . Edesa had strongly suggested she volunteer at one of these food pantries. But didn’t Edesa know she was volunteering five mornings a week at Mrs. Douglass’s STEP program? She already had to juggle her shifts at the coffee shop to do that, which differed from day to day. So far, she’d been able to trade shifts with Brygitta when she got assigned to any mornings.
But she was curious about that Bible story Edesa mentioned, about Jesus feeding the five thousand. She kind of knew the story but hadn’t read it recently. In fact, she hadn’t been reading the Bible very much period since moving into the city that summer. Especially when she had to be at the elementary school every weekday morning at nine sharp. Just getting showered, dressed, fed, and out the door on time left no time for “devotions,” as Bree called it. Kat supposed she could read the Bible just before bed but so far hadn’t developed the habit.
So where was this story? She’d written down the reference somewhere . . . Aha. Matthew 14:13. Unscrewing the cap on her water bottle, she sipped half the bottle as she read the chapter once, then read it again. Anytime she’d heard anyone talk about this story, they’d focused on Jesus’ miracle. Which, she had to admit, was something else. Twelve baskets of leftovers? All from five little loaves of bread and two fish? But this time what Jesus said before He di
d the miracle caught her eye. The disciples had wanted to send the people away—go someplace else—to get food, but Jesus said they didn’t need to go away. “You give them something to eat.”
Kat leaned back against the tree, watching the sunlight play on the tips of the gentle waves coming into shore. Was that what Estelle meant by what she’d said? The way Edesa told it, it was almost as if she’d said, “Kat, you give them something to eat.”
Kat, you give them something to eat . . .
A strange feeling bubbled in the pit of her stomach. Snatching up the paper with the list of food pantries again—no, that was the membership thingy, couldn’t deal with that now—oh, there it was. She grabbed her cell phone and punched in the number for the church one, the Rock of Ages Food Pantry somewhere in the area . . .
But all she got was a voice mail with several options. Duh, of course, it was Sunday afternoon. She listened impatiently through the list—Sunday morning service times, weekly Bible study, number for the church office, extensions for the pastor, youth pastor—and then: “If you’re calling about the food pantry, the pantry is open every Wednesday, four to eight p.m., and we’re located at . . .”
Scrambling to her feet, Kat stuffed things into the backpack and started off at a trot, back the way she had come. She would visit the food pantry this Wednesday if she could work things out at the coffee shop. But that Bible story made her curious about something else. Maybe Nick was home by now. If so, she needed to ask him something. He oughta know this Bible stuff.
Nick was in the kitchen making himself a towering sandwich that threatened to topple over before he got the top slice of bread on.
Kat dropped her backpack on a chair. “Good grief, Nick. Didn’t you get any lunch?” Bits of tuna fish, coleslaw, pickle, mayo, mustard, tomato, and cheese littered the kitchen table.
“Nuh-uh,” he grunted, taking a big bite. Chewing and swallowing as if desperate, he tried to answer with his mouth still half full. “Couldn’t believe how many people Pastor Cobbs knows in that hospital. We had to visit them all. I think the man only eats two meals a day. Somehow I missed that on the job description of being a pastor. Think it’s too late to go into construction?”