by Neta Jackson
Precious in His sight . . .
Rochelle was heading for Nick, who was breaking bits from the loaf of bread for each comer. Why did she feel so threatened by Rochelle? Was she afraid Avis’s beautiful daughter was going to steal Nick—even though Nick had openly declared his love for her? Was she afraid Rochelle was going to take over the pantry—her baby, her project? She wanted the credit for it.
Kat moaned. Oh, God, I’m such a jerk sinner. Do I really care about feeding people? Getting hungry people fed? And feeding them real spiritual food too—like Edesa did when she loved on that girl and prayed with her yesterday? Or am I just one self-centered white girl who wants to steal some of Your glory?
The tears were coming hard and fast now. She felt Bree slip an arm around her. “Kat? Kat?” her friend whispered. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
Kat nodded, snuffled, blew her nose, and mopped her face. She got out of her seat and joined the line, Bree hovering behind her. When she got to where Nick was breaking off bits of bread, he looked at her with concern—she was probably a blotchy mess—but all he did was put a piece of bread in her cupped hands and murmur, “The body of Christ, broken for you, Kat.”
Broken for me . . . because I’m a sinner and need His forgiveness.
Kat stepped over to where Pastor Cobbs was holding the cup and dipped her bread into the dark liquid. “The blood of Christ, spilled for you, Kathryn,” the pastor said, smiling at her.
She placed the bread, soaked in wine, into her mouth . . . and felt herself being fed.
Chapter 43
The plan was for Nick to drive the Douglasses to the airport early the next morning, with Rochelle and Conny riding along to see them off. Kat and Bree padded out to the back porch to wave good-bye, but when Kat saw all of them piling into Mrs. D’s Toyota, she felt a flicker of familiar irritation. The girl needed to get her driver’s license renewed! Or Nick would keep getting dragged into these “family moments” with Rochelle and Conny—
No. She couldn’t keep going there. “Pinch me, Bree,” she muttered under her breath while smiling and waving at the party below.
“What?”
“Just pinch me. Whenever I ask you to. I’m trying to exorcise a nasty little gremlin.”
Bree looked at the car pulling away and back to Kat. “Uh-huh. I get it. Okay.” And she pinched Kat’s arm—hard.
“Ow!”
“Next time it’ll be harder!” Bree threatened, banging the screen door on her way back into the kitchen.
Kat followed—but she felt a kind of emptiness, knowing the Douglasses were going to be gone for the next two weeks. Their presence upstairs had been a kind of anchor to this whole crazy idea of spending the summer in the city . . . and now they were gone. She poured herself a cup of coffee and went back out onto the porch. Not only that, but the STEP program was over. No more volunteer mornings over at Bethune Elementary, acting like a teacher.
But if she felt this way, how must Rochelle feel? Her mom and stepdad were flying thousands of miles away to another continent, scouting a program to help women who were victims of the scourge of HIV and AIDS—
HIV and AIDS . . . Rochelle had HIV, though with her antiretroviral meds, she seemed as healthy as the next person right now, and most of the time Kat didn’t think about it at all. But was Rochelle’s condition part of the reason Mrs. D was on this journey to the other side of the world?
She should be praying more. Praying for the Douglasses’ trip, praying for Rochelle’s health . . . Hmm. Maybe praying for Rochelle would be better than a pinch from Bree to nip the green-eyed gremlin in the bud.
More effective, no doubt.
Certainly less painful. Her arm was still sore from Bree’s pinch.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. Uh-oh. An early thunderstorm. But at least she didn’t have to scurry through the rain to Bethune this morning. Okay, Jesus, here’s what I’m thinking. On the mornings I don’t have to work the early shift at the coffee shop, I’m going to spend more time praying this month. Okay with You?
A lightning flash lit up the sky in the distance.
Kat chuckled. “Okay, okay! It’s a deal.” God could take a joke, right?
But seriously, she should get her notebook and start making a prayer list: Rochelle. The Douglasses. A job this fall—hopefully teaching. The food pantry. Not just the food pantry, but the people who came. Lady Lolla and Ike and the girl named Diane for starters. Next week she’d learn more names so she could pray for people by name—
Wait. Bree had written down everybody’s name when they signed in! Even Tattoo Guy. She could pray for everybody by name who came this past weekend, even if she couldn’t put all the names with faces yet. She was going to need some help there.
Her eyes widened. That’s it! That’s what they should do. It would help all the volunteers get to know people by name—and vice versa.
Name tags!
What was it about time that felt like a paradox? The two weeks that the Douglasses were gone seemed to creep by, dragging them all into the dog days of summer. Mid-August was hot and sultry, with frequent thundershowers, leaving the sidewalks and streets steaming in the heat. Sometimes Kat just collapsed in the living room of their apartment, worn out from the heat. One thing she had to say for growing up in Phoenix: at least the heat was dry—not this steam bath.
At the same time, Kat felt like she didn’t have enough time to do all that needed to be done to keep the food pantry up and running for five Saturdays. Between her shifts at the coffee shop and sending out more résumés—to preschools, private schools, special ed programs, activity centers, park programs, English as a second language programs, and responding to ads for tutors—she had to deal with Friday Panic every week, sure that the whole food pantry idea would crash and burn before the end of the month.
At least she remembered to buy four cans of chicken noodle soup for Lady Lolla to take home to Ike.
But she had to admit . . . if Rochelle wasn’t putting in so much time contacting potential food donors, printing out more flyers, and brainstorming ideas to make things more efficient, things wouldn’t be going as smoothly as they were.
Not that everything was going smoothly.
It was still touch-and-go about getting a balance of foods to offer. “We need to sign up with the Chicago Food Depository!” Rochelle kept insisting. “Ask people to donate money instead of food, and we can place an order for what we need from the Depository—for pennies!”
Kat threw up her hands. “But we’re still on trial at SouledOut! We can’t do anything that official until the church agrees that this is a go.”
“Humph. Wouldn’t hurt to apply. Takes awhile anyway.”
And not everyone liked the idea of name tags. She had to cajole the teen volunteers to wear them. It wasn’t cool, they whined. It was babyish. “But it helps the people we serve be able to call you by name. It’s more personal.” But even when they took a name tag, they slapped it somewhere “cool”—and unnoticeable—on their arm or jeans. Arrgh.
And some of the patrons were suspicious. “Who wants to know?” Usually the same ones who didn’t want to sign in either.
But the bumpy ride even carried over to Sunday. “This is a church?” some of the people asked as they came in the doors on Saturday and saw the banners along one wall. “Can anybody come?” And some of them came—a shy young Latino couple with two children, two harmless men with mental disabilities, and even a few of the dedicated homeless, dragging their carts inside. Some of them liked it and came back the next Sunday too—including Lady Lolla in her floozy dresses, sometimes accompanied by Ike, who sat in his chair nodding off with an occasional snore.
Which didn’t sit well with a few of the SouledOut members. Nick came back to the three-flat from a Monday night pastoral meeting with Pastor Cobbs saying some people were complaining, though he wouldn’t say who. “They’re saying some of these marginal people might frighten the children.” Nick made a face. “I doubt t
hat it’s the children who mind.”
Kat was curled up beside Nick on the couch. They were alone, but only because Rochelle was putting Conny to bed and Bree had discreetly disappeared into the bedroom. She frowned. “We’re not going to tell people not to come, are we? I know some of them are a bit strange, but—”
“No, no. Of course they’re welcome—though Pastor Cobbs liked my suggestion. We could assign some of the members to be a ‘Sunday Buddy’ for anyone who might be ‘marginal’ or acting inappropriately. You know, just to sit with them, explain what’s going on, remind them to be quiet if necessary—that kind of thing.”
“Great idea,” Kat murmured, somewhat distracted by Nick’s arm casually lying across her shoulders. “We could ask some of the pantry volunteers to do that—they’re already getting to know our ‘customers.’ Though . . .” Now it was Kat who made a face. “A few of those folks could use a bath. It might be hard to sit next to them for two hours.”
“Yeah, well, I have the opposite problem sitting next to you, Kitty Kat.” Nick chuckled and drew her a bit closer, nuzzling her hair. “Two hours isn’t long enough. Mm . . . what’s that apple stuff you use on your hair?”
Kat couldn’t help worrying about Nick, alone in the Douglasses’ apartment. He’d basically decided they shouldn’t be up there alone together—“It’s not that I don’t trust you, Kat,” he’d said awkwardly, “but I’m not sure I trust myself ”—so they spent most of their time hanging out with the others in the sublet, or on long walks along the lake.
But what if Dexter showed up again while Nick was alone and got into the building somehow? Rochelle had gotten the order of protection and so far he hadn’t shown up, though she’d gotten several phone calls—which violated the order of protection—but Rochelle had just decided to ignore them. But what if he knew Peter and Avis were gone?
Kat added a squad of guardian angels around the three-flat to her daily prayer list.
At least Nick’s black eyes had basically faded by the time he preached again during the Douglasses’ absence. And the painful bruising in his midsection from where he’d been punched had subsided, making it possible for Kat and Nick to pick up some Jamaican jerk chicken after the service and take a long walk to “their” bench along the lakefront for a spontaneous Sunday afternoon picnic, this time without pain.
“That was a good sermon, Nick,” she said as they munched the spicy chicken and licked their fingers, watching the fascinating parade of humanity zipping by on in-line skates or racing bikes, or walking in twos or threes, a babble of voices filling the air. “I was proud of you.”
He’d preached on the last chapter of the gospel of Matthew, after the resurrection, when Jesus told His disciples, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Nick had stressed that Jesus passed that authority to us—“See that word ‘Therefore’?” he’d said—so we could share the love of God with “all nations,” knowing we were doing so with God’s own authority and power.
“All nations. That’s everybody,” he’d said. “Sister Avis and Elder Peter are sharing the love of God with sisters and brothers in South Africa right now. But that doesn’t let us off the hook just because we’re not over there. For us, ‘all nations’ means all the people outside the doors of SouledOut Community Church—the kids hanging out on the corner, the people at your work, the people coming to the food pantry.”
Now, sitting on the bench soaking up the sunshine, Kat started to giggle. “I like how you threw the food pantry in there.”
“Yeah, well. I told you that what concerns you concerns me, one hundred percent.”
Kat was quiet a long time. It was true. It wasn’t just that she felt his support. It felt as if he shared her passion for the food pantry, using whatever influence he had as a pastoral intern to help make it a success.
What about her? Were his concerns her concerns in the same way? Nick was called to be a pastor. It might be at SouledOut. Maybe somewhere else. Was she ready to own his life as her life too?
She’d held back from becoming a member of SouledOut earlier that summer. But his sermon had started her thinking. Going out and making disciples and baptizing people had another side to it—the people who were new to faith and needed to be baptized.
Like her.
Kat wiped her greasy fingers with one of the take-out napkins and turned to face him with solemn eyes. She cleared her throat. “Nick? I want to talk to you about something.”
Taking out her keys, Kat opened the mailbox for Apt. 2. Empty. Rochelle or Bree must’ve already gotten the mail. Seemed like she’d hear something from all those résumés she’d sent out. Or maybe she’d get a call if one of those places were interested. But so far she hadn’t heard a thing. Zero. Zilch.
Okay, God, I’m trying to trust You for a job, but it’s only a couple more weeks before school starts . . .
Kat let herself into the stairwell and climbed the stairs to the second floor. She’d had early shift today—seemed like she got scheduled for early shift a lot now that she wasn’t tutoring at STEP—and it was her turn to cook supper. Nick had left her a voice mail that he might be late—something about the pastors meeting with the elders at five rather than at seven. Well, that gave her plenty of time to try that African Peanut Soup recipe she’d found in the newspaper. Maybe Avis and Peter Douglass had eaten something like this in South Africa. If it was good, she might try to make it for them when they got back—which was supposed to be early this week sometime.
“Kat? Is that you?” Rochelle came flying out of the kitchen when she came in the front door. She sounded breathless, her eyes wide.
“Hey. Is everything okay?”
“I don’t know. Look.” Rochelle snatched up a business envelope lying on the dining room table. “It’s a certified letter addressed to my mom—from Chicago Public Schools. I heard the door buzzer ring upstairs, but I knew nobody was home and Nick was at work—but I was curious, so I went downstairs. Mailman said he had a certified letter for Avis Douglass. So I told him I was her daughter and he let me sign for it.”
Kat stared at the letter. A certified letter. Had to be important. “What are you going to do? Should you call her? What’s the time difference there?”
“Mommy! Can I have more milk?” Conny called from the kitchen. Probably having his lunch, though it was already one thirty.
“Just a minute!” Rochelle yelled back. “Uh, time difference . . . eight hours, I think. That means it’s”—she scrunched her face—“eight thirty in the evening there.”
“That’s not late. You should call her, Rochelle. At least tell her she’s got a certified letter and does she want you to open it.”
“Right. Right . . . you’re right. I don’t think they leave until tomorrow. Would you get Conny some milk? I’m going to call.” Rochelle pulled out her cell phone. “I’m pretty sure they got international calling in case of emergency.”
Kat hurried into the kitchen. “Hey, Superman.” She gave Conny a quick hug. “Your mom has to make a phone call. Here, I’ll get you some more milk.” She wanted to get back into the living room. But even before she’d finished pouring she heard, “Hello, Mom? . . . Yeah, yeah, we’re all fine . . . How are you and Dad?”
A table knife. Rochelle needed something to open the letter. Kat scurried back into the living room. Rochelle seemed to be listening, nodding her head and saying, “Uh-huh . . . Uh-huh . . .” Kat twirled her fingers to say, “Hurry! Tell her!”
“Uh, Mom? Sorry to break in here, but the reason I’m calling is you got this certified letter from CPS . . . Yeah, yeah, seriously. Should I open it? . . . Okay.”
Kat handed her the table knife. Rochelle put the phone on Speaker and slit open the letter. Her eyes scanned the sheet of paper . . . and then she screeched. “Mom! Mom! Listen to this!”
Chapter 44
Nick walked
home from his Monday meeting at SouledOut, turning down streets and waiting for traffic at crosswalks as if on autopilot. Meeting with the elders had been different—they’d had to reschedule to late afternoon to accommodate everybody’s schedule—but definitely interesting. Peter Douglass, of course, was still out of the country, but Nick knew Denny Baxter somewhat, and it was a pleasure getting to know Debra Meeks a bit more. What a wise lady— kind of like Avis Douglass, though a bit more homespun. David Brown . . . ? Hard for Nick to figure out. The man seemed to bring up more questions than everyone else put together about the proposals the pastor wanted to talk about.
The SouledOut Sisters Food Pantry for one.
The food pantry had run for three Saturdays so far, with an increase in people using the pantry each week—from thirty-two the first Saturday, to forty-nine the next week, and sixty-five this last weekend. There were still two more Saturdays before the end of August, but Pastor Cobbs wanted a joint meeting of pastors and elders to begin talking now about how best to continue.
Everyone seemed to be excited about the food pantry. Everyone except David. He had concerns. Pantry food was taking up too much space in the refrigerators and counters in the kitchen. Questionable characters were hanging around the church on Saturdays without adequate supervision, inviting theft or damage. Avis Douglass’s daughter was handling food—and her with HIV!
Nick had been impressed with Pastor Cobbs’s patience. He’d accepted each of David’s questions as a valid concern, but didn’t seem to think any of them was a major roadblock—just a challenge to be worked out.
And it was Debra Meeks who’d come up with the most amazing idea: hiring Kathryn Davies at ten hours a week to manage the food pantry properly. “To do this right will take at least that much time.” Denny Baxter and Pastor Cobbs had both been open to the idea, though it would have to go through the budget committee.