by Neta Jackson
“Earth to Jodi!” Florida Hickman’s hand waved in front of my face, breaking my thoughts. “You gonna hug that quilt all day or help me convince Ruth we should eat that cake? Avis would want us to!” She grabbed my arm. “C’mon . . . hey! Look who’s back!”
Nonyameko Sisulu-Smith and her husband, Mark, appeared at the top of the stairs that opened into the second-floor meeting room, looking comfy and dry in sweats and gym shoes. “Uh-huh,” Florida challenged. “Thought you guys had ducked out on us.”
Mark shrugged. “We wanted to leave you guys with all the dirty work, but we need to talk to Pastor Clark about something.” He grinned, and probably every female heart in the room skipped a beat. Our African “princess” had definitely snagged herself an American “prince,” even if he was a Georgia-boy-makes-good. Dr. Mark Smith was not only a professor of history at Northwestern University and the father of their two polite boys, but—as Florida would say—“that brother is fine.”
Nony rolled her eyes. “That’s not the whole of it. You should’ve heard him complaining because he hadn’t gotten any wedding cake!”
“Cake, nothing!” growled Denny, still struggling to dismantle the huppah with Ben. “Give us a hand with this thing, man, so we can get it out the door.”
“Better get your hands dirty, Mark,” Florida smirked. “I know your grandma taught you: ‘Them that don’t work, don’t eat.’ ”
Laughter rippled through the motley crew—some damp, some dry—who’d assembled back at the church after the lakeside ceremonies. The original plan had been for Avis and Peter’s wedding ceremony to take place during the morning service, followed by a brief reception with cake and punch; then everyone would walk or drive to the lake for Yo-Yo’s baptism. But Chicago weather being what it was—the forecast called for scattered showers throughout the day—when the sun came out shortly after the “I do’s,” Pastor Clark had suggested we all head for the lake for Yo-Yo’s baptism and then come back for the reception.
Humph. “Best-laid plans” and all that. Hadn’t counted on excon Becky Wallace getting zapped by Jesus like Paul on the road to Damascus and wanting to get baptized right then and there too, and everybody ending up in the water in an exuberant celebration of God’s ongoing redemption. Well . . . maybe the teenagers just saw their chance to dunk their parents or give Pastor Clark a good soaking. Whatever. It had been glorious.
Until the lightning drove us out of the water, that is. Then it’d been a toss-up whether we all ought to split for home and get out of wet clothes or if some of us should go back to the church long enough to do some cleanup first. Most of Uptown’s small congregation and about half of the Yada Yada sisters—most of whom attended other churches—decided to go home. (Stu, who lived on the second floor of our two-flat, drove a carload of Yada Yadas so they wouldn’t have to ride the elevated train wringing wet.)
Couldn’t blame them—that’s precisely what I wanted to do too. Walking around in soggy underwear under my damp dress slacks wasn’t my idea of a good time. But Pastor Clark hiked up the heat so we wouldn’t “catch our death,” as Ruth kept muttering, and there wasn’t that much left to do. Still, it was nice of Nony and Mark to come back after changing out of their wet African dress and dashiki; they must’ve left the boys at home with Hoshi, the Japanese university student Mark and Nony had befriended. Nony had told Hoshi about Jesus and then brought her to the Chicago women’s conference last year, where twelve of us ended up in prayer group twenty-six . . . and the rest, as they say, is history.
“Don’t worry, Ruth,” Nony was saying gently. “We can lift off the top two tiers—see?—and refrigerate them till Avis and Peter get back later this week.”
“Yeah.” Florida bopped into the kitchen and reappeared on the other side of the pass-through. “Ain’t much in this here fridge once we take out this stuff.” The small-boned woman with beaded braids all over her head and a scar down one cheek pulled open the door of the industrial refrigerator and pulled out two plastic jugs of red punch and a liter of ginger ale. Then Florida gingerly took the top two layers of the wedding cake from Nony and slid them carefully onto the nearly empty shelf. “There! That thang’ll be safe here till them lovebirds pick it up next Sunday.” As the refrigerator door closed with a soft wheeze, Florida grabbed a large knife from the block. “OK, everybody!” she yelled out into the big room. “Cake cuttin’ time!”
“Oy vey! Don’t be such a nudnik.” Ruth grabbed Florida’s wrist and took the knife as it hovered over the bottom layer of the wedding cake. “The punch you make, Florida Hickman; the cake I will cut—with the dignity it deserves after being heartlessly abandoned by the guests of honor.” She waved the knife at the rest of us. “Nony, set out those paper plates and napkins. Jodi, tell Ben and the other men to get themselves up here. Yo-Yo, wash those hands! You should be so lucky not to end up with a fatal disease after bathing in Lake Michigan—and tell the other shiksa and shegetz they better wash their hands, too, or no cake!”
We obeyed. The men had disappeared with the dismantled huppah, so I assumed they were wrestling it into the trunk of Ben Garfield’s big Buick LeSabre outside. I hobbled down the stairs to the front door as fast as my rodded left leg would let me—that and a missing spleen were the only physical scars left over from my car accident last summer. Sure enough, halfway down the block, Ben was tying down his half-opened trunk, which had slats of white-painted wood sticking out the back like vampire fangs, and Mark and Denny were walking slowly back in my direction, talking intently.
They made an odd couple—and not just because of the black and white. Denny was two inches shorter than the urbane Dr. Mark Smith, attractive in his own way—though “cute” came to mind when Denny grinned, sporting a deep dimple on each cheek. An assistant coach at West Rogers Park High School, Denny didn’t exactly hang with the same crowd as the professorial Dr. Smith . . . and yet God had brought us and the Smiths together through Yada Yada. How cool is that, God?
“Wedding cake!” I called. “Ruth says hurry, and she’s in no mood for laggards!”
Denny gave me a wave and bent his ear toward Mark once more.
Huh. What’s that about? But I hustled back up the stairs, where Ruth was now ceremoniously cutting the cake, and Florida was passing out clear plastic cups of red punch spiked with ginger ale to the cleanup crew. Pastor Clark and the newly baptized Becky, a tinge of pink tipping her usually pale cheekbones, joined us, and we all sat around demolishing our neat squares of chocolate cake with sugary roses in pink and green icing. I noticed our fifteen-year-old, Amanda, had cornered José and his father, Ricardo, and was showing off her not-quite-fluent Spanish, making them laugh at her innocent stumbles.
“Hey,” Yo-Yo said through a mouthful of chocolate cake, “aren’t we supposed to meet at Avis’s apartment next week for Yada Yada?”
“What is she, a hotel? Give the lady a break. She just got married!” Ruth waved her plastic fork. “In the Bible, a whole year they gave to the new couple without any outside responsibilities. Maybe it’s even one of the commandments.”
I laughed. “Don’t think so, Ruth. But we can meet somewhere else.” I was just about to offer my house—though we’d just met there last week—when Yo-Yo cleared her throat.
“Uh, you guys wanna come to my crib? Now that I’m ‘washed in the blood’ and all that, I mean.” She hunched shyly inside her baggy overalls. “I could send Pete and Jerry over to Garfield’s or somethin’—but don’t tell Ben yet, Ruth. Gotta spring it on him last-minute like, or he’ll have time to think of a reason to say no.”
Meet at Yo-Yo’s? We’d never been there. I had no idea what kind of home she’d been able to create for her two half brothers. But . . . why not? Especially since it was her idea. “OK,” I agreed. “I’ll get the word around.”
Denny, Mark, and Ben came tromping up the stairs at last, and Ruth handed them the plates she’d set aside, along with a few grunts of disapproval for being late. “Now eat, eat, so we can send
these damp dishrags home before they all end up with the croup.”
Fine by me! I was anxious to get out of my soggy clothes. Early May temperatures in Chicago weren’t really warm enough to walk around damp—and I was supposed to be careful of getting colds now that I was without my infection-fighting spleen after the accident . . .
I shook off the dark memory. I wasn’t going to let anything spoil this wonderful day.
Nony sat down beside me, cake in hand. “Jodi, I haven’t had a chance to tell you. Mark’s former pastor from Georgia recently relocated to Chicago, and he and his wife are starting a new ministry—New Morning Christian Church. They’ve been meeting in rented facilities for several months, and already the congregation is growing.”
I looked at her with interest. “So that’s where you and Mark are attending now?”
She nodded, eyes alight. “Pastor Cobbs has a heart for getting kids off the street. Mark’s excited about the possibilities. But . . .”
“What?”
“New Morning is trying to lease a more permanent place to meet, but in the meantime, their current lease ran out. So we’re looking for a place to meet for a few months. Do you think . . . ?” She paused, almost as if embarrassed.
“So that’s what you guys want to talk to Pastor Clark about!” I grinned. “Sure, why not? He won’t bite you.” I leaned close to Nony in mock conspiracy. “He’s a Mister Rogers clone, all warm fuzzies.” We laughed. A few minutes later, I saw Nony and Mark standing off to the side talking with Pastor Clark.
Well. This might be interesting—sharing the same church building with a black church. I wondered when they’d meet. Saturday evening? Sunday afternoon?
ONCE WE GOT HOME, I claimed the bathroom for a long, hot, steamy shower. Josh—still basking in the glow of having his own set of car keys to our minivan—had offered to take José and Mr. Enriquez home, along with Josh’s two “pierced” friends from Jesus People USA. “I’m going too,” Amanda had announced, beaming at José. Denny and I and Becky Wallace had hitched a ride with the Sisulu-Smiths for the few blocks to our house. Our house, I thought as I let the hot water run over my head, trying to warm up my bones. I still wasn’t used to the idea that “our house” was now Becky Wallace’s house, too, since she was living over our heads in Stu’s second-floor apartment.
By the time I came out of the bathroom toweling my hair, Denny was in the recliner flicking the TV remote between ball games, with Willie Wonka, our rather deaf chocolate Lab, sprawled happily under his feet. I sat down on the arm of the recliner, which put me half into Denny’s lap, slyly wiggled the remote away from him, and hit Mute.
“Hey!” He grabbed and missed.
“Hey yourself.” I held the remote high over my head. “You can have it back when you tell me what you and Mark were talking about so intensely on the sidewalk back there.”
He smirked. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“My point exactly.” I wiggled the remote temptingly.
“OK, OK.” Denny rolled his eyes. “Remember what I said to Mark at our Guys’ Day Out a month ago?”
I frowned. “Yeah. Something about he should take a sabbatical from the university and go to South Africa with his family for a year or two.” It had been a brave thing for Denny to say, since that issue was a hot button between Mark and Nony. I also remember thinking it wasn’t likely Mark would budge on Denny’s say-so, when he’d stubbornly resisted Nony’s pleas to move to her homeland. My eyebrows lifted. “You don’t mean . . .”
Denny’s grin got wider and his side dimples deepened. “Yep. Said he couldn’t stop thinking about what I said about Nony ‘dying by inches here’—or something to that effect. The thing that really got to him, he said, was my comment that ‘God put that fire in her for a reason.’ Told me he’s actually applied for a sabbatical next year. But”—he wagged a warning finger at me—“you can’t say anything, Jodi Marie Baxter! not to Nony, not to any of your Yada Yadas who tend to yakety-yak a bit too much, not even to Willie Wonka. Now”—he grabbed it—“give me that remote!”
2
Not say anything? Huh. Good thing Avis was on her honeymoon for the next five days, or I’d be sorely tempted to bop into her office at school, spill the beans, and tell her not to say anything. But sure enough, although the door to the principal’s office of Mary McLeod Bethune Elementary stood ajar behind the main desk as I passed the school office the next morning, the lights were off and the office empty.
Ack! How could Bethune Elementary function a whole week without Avis’s magnetic rule? In fact, how did she manage to convince the school board to let her take a whole week off when there were only six weeks of school left? Sheesh! Wish I had that kind of clout.
Still twenty minutes before the first bell. I breezed past the school office heading for my third-grade classroom when I heard my name. “Ms. Baxter! Ms. Baxter, wait.”
I turned. The school secretary came running out the door of the main office—a thirtyish woman with ash-blonde hair and reading glasses perched on her nose. “Ms. Baxter, did Ms. Johnson really get married yesterday?” When I nodded, she smacked herself on the forehead. “I can’t believe it! She didn’t say anything to the office staff; we just found a list of instructions when we came in this morning. Did she elope or something?”
I chuckled. Indeed. Avis wasn’t exactly the blabbermouth type, even when it seemed obvious to the rest of us that she ought to be jumping up and down and shouting for joy. So what if she had passed the big Five-O? Getting married to a man as fine as Peter Douglass was worth crowing about.
Well, it was out now. “No, she didn’t elope, but it wasn’t exactly a wedding either. She got married during the morning service at our church—just the congregation plus her daughters’ families.” And Avis’s Yada Yada sisters, but that was too complicated to explain. “But you know what, Ms. Ivy?” I gave her a conspiratorial grin. “I think we ought to get her good—give her a big shower or something from the school staff when she gets back. Streamers, signs, tell all the kids, make a big fuss, the whole shebang.”
Ms. Ivy’s eyes widened over her reading glasses. “That’s a great idea! And we have a whole week with her out of the way to plan it. Perfect . . . perfect . . .” I could practically see mental wheels whirring as she headed back into the office. “And if she gets huffy about the fuss, I’ll tell her it was your idea.” She laughed and disappeared behind the desk.
Oh, great. Avis would be discombobulated. But who cared? It would be fun shaking her up a little.
I was glad for the few minutes alone before my classroom filled with squirrelly third graders. Dumping my tote bag containing a sack lunch, water bottle, and notebook stuffed with lesson plans on my desk, I began the Monday-morning routine I’d been trying to implement this school year—praying for each child in my room by name. I went up and down the rows, touching each desk, imagining the child who sat there . . .
“Jesus, thank You for Kaya. Thank You for the progress she’s made in her reading this year. Bring her up to grade level, Lord . . . Open Chanté’s ears, Lord, to remember instructions . . . Bless funny, feisty Ramón, our ‘mighty protector,’ who takes the meaning of his name a little too seriously . . . and give Cornell patience!—or maybe I’m the one who needs more patience with Mr. Know-It-All . . .”
Through the long bank of windows along one side of the classroom, I could see backpacks tossed helter-skelter on ground still damp from yesterday’s rain, as the girls ran in and out of the spinning Double Dutch jump ropes, and the boys got out their kinks with the usual pushing and tagging and running. Only five more minutes until the bell; I needed to speed up my prayers. “Thank You for Ebony, Lord, for her sweet spirit . . . help me to channel D’Angelo’s bossy ways into positive leadership skills . . .”
I touched the next desk and paused. “And Hakim . . .” I took a deep breath, trying to override the ache his name still engendered in my spirit. Would this wound never heal? “And Hakim. Lord, help me to love
him enough to let go, to let someone else help him unlock the genius inside . . .” My tumbling emotions rested for a moment on the painful but liberating parent-teacher conference a few weeks ago when Geraldine Wilkins-Porter—Hakim’s mother, and the mother of Jamal, the teenager who’d run in front of my car that awful day last June—had sat across from me in this very room, and for one brief moment our spirits had touched . . .
“Oh, Geraldine. Can you forgive me?” I had reached my hand across the desk.
To my surprise, she had touched my fingers briefly, then pulled her hand back and looked down at her lap. “Maybe . . . maybe someday,” she had whispered.
A loud, brassy ringing jerked me out of my thoughts. The first bell! And I wasn’t out on the playground to bring in my students. I scurried down the hall toward the playground door. Outside, my students looked at me reproachfully for making them be the last line to file inside.
Sheesh. Not the best way to start a Monday morning!
But—I smiled at each childish face as it passed—the time spent in prayer was.
SUNDAY’S STORMS HAD HEADED SOUTH, sending a spate of killer tornadoes through the Central Plains. Becky Wallace, red bandana knotted around her hair, was on her knees in our backyard spreading mulch over the flowerbeds from the pile of leaves that’d been left to rot beside the garage—a skill she’d brought from Lincoln Correctional Center, where she’d worked on the garden-and-grounds crew and discovered she had a green thumb. As I shrugged out of my spring jacket and put the teakettle on, I watched her from the window in the kitchen door. She’d already planted the flat of Johnny-jump-ups, petunias, and zinnias that the kids had bought me for Mother’s Day—a week early. Now she was turning her attention to the unplanted areas, long neglected. Once she’d spread the rotting leaves in a thick mat, she grabbed the long-handled spade and began to dig and turn, mixing the mulch with the rich brown dirt—dirt that was now weed and root free, thanks to the muscle she’d applied all last week.