by Neta Jackson
Becky seemed mesmerized. “That Avis can preach,” she murmured.
It was true. This was Avis’s first Sunday back after her honeymoon, and she was on fire. We hadn’t even had the opening song yet.
“—but God has given us the weapons to block Satan’s offenses. And one of those weapons is praise! The devil can’t operate in an atmosphere of praise to God. So let’s fill this room with praise! Let’s fill our hearts with praise! Let’s not give the devil any room to work!”
Rick Reilly, the praise team leader, hit the first chord on his guitar, and the rest of the musicians plunged into a new gospel song by Kurt Carr we’d been learning: “We lift our hands in the sanc-tu-ary! We lift our hands to give You the glo-ry . . .”
It was impossible to sit and sing such a song. The Uptown congregation of about a hundred and fifty folks joined Florida on our feet, raising our hands, some clapping. Becky was grinning, not singing the words, but clapping right along. “Hallelujah in the Sanctuary” was followed by “I’m taking back what the devil stole from me . . . I’m takin’ it back, takin’ it back . . .”
As we filled the room with praise, Nony and Mark crowded into my mind. I hadn’t had any time to talk with Avis, to catch her up on what had happened since she and Peter left town. But the Scripture . . . the songs . . . what Avis was saying about the weapons of spiritual warfare—all seemed on target for what they were facing.
Or maybe it was for me, to help me remember how to pray in times like these . . .
“CHURCH ALWAYS LIKE THIS?” Becky sat down across from me at the long table, her paper plate full of pasta and chicken and salads from the array of dishes crowded on the pass-through counter. “I mean, lots of get-down singin’ an’ clapping?” She shoveled in a big bite of macaroni and cheese. “Avis, she was up there practically dancin’ outta her shoes.”
I grinned. “Well, that’s Avis. She just gets . . . full, she says. Full of God’s Spirit.”
Becky shrugged. “Well, I like it. Wasn’t so sure about comin’ to church—ain’t never been much. But Pastor Clark tol’ me a new Christian gotta learn how to grow.” She chewed and swallowed. “Guess I shoulda figgered church was part of the deal when I did that baptism thing. But I wasn’t thinkin’ much that day. Just knew I wanted to be, you know, washed clean. Start over. Get God’s help.”
I could hardly stifle my amazement. Becky was being downright talkative. “That’s right. We all need God’s help—oh, hi, Avis! Yeah, sit.” I patted the chair beside me. “No, I’m not saving it for Denny. He’s . . . who knows where.”
Avis sank into the metal folding chair. “Someday,” she murmured, “God’s going to figure we’ve suffered enough with these awful chairs and send padded ones from heaven.”
“Amen to that!” Stu sat down next to Becky, delivering coffee. “Maybe we should start a chair fund. I’d be willing to head up . . . What?” She looked at us, puzzled, as Avis and I burst out laughing.
“Nothing! Nothing, Stu.” Avis was still chuckling. “We do love you, just as you are. Here.” She dug in her purse, pulled out a five-dollar bill, and tossed it on the table. “The beginning of the chair fund.”
I dug in my own purse. “Me too.” Only three ones, but they’d have to do. “Get a basket, Stu; pass it around. Who knows?”
Stu snatched the money and stood up. “OK, I will. You’ll see.”
Becky looked bewildered. “What’s she talkin’ ’bout?” Obviously padded chairs weren’t high on her agenda. She glanced around. “Where’s your new husband?”
Avis shook her head. “Sick. We went out to eat last night. A couple of hours later he had the runs. Probably the fish.”
I felt relieved. At least he wasn’t off at some other church. “Poor guy,” I murmured dutifully. I poked Avis. Stu had reappeared from the kitchen with a basket labeled Chair Fund in big black letters on a scrap of paper and was passing it around to the tables. “See what you started?”
Avis buttered a roll and started in on my seven-layer salad. “Well, Jesus took the little boy’s five loaves and two fish and fed five thousand. What’s a couple hundred chairs?”
Again Becky frowned. “What fish? Is that in the Bible somewhere?”
Avis and I passed a look. Then Avis said, “Becky, do you have a Bible?” Becky shook her head. “Would you like one?”
She shrugged. “Well, yeah. If it’s not too hard to read. I’d kinda like to read that bit about the armor Pastor Clark preached about today—you know, to protect you from the devil. ’Cause . . .” She shifted in her chair and her eyes went down. “’Cause I know the devil’s still after me.”
Avis reached across the table and touched Becky’s hand. “We’ll see that you get one.”
Stu returned with the basket and set it down in front of us triumphantly. “There!” The basket indeed had a lot of bills—mostly ones, a few fives. “Gotta start somewhere.” She picked up her plastic fork. “Josh OK, Jodi? I heard him hit the trash can when he came in last night.”
“You heard him?” I groaned. “I thought I was the only one who lost sleep waiting for my kid to get home.” I eyed Avis sympathetically. “You have three girls, Avis. Did you and Conrad get any sleep when they were teenagers?”
The moment I said it, I wanted to bite my tongue. How thoughtless to mention Avis’s first husband a mere two weeks after she’d remarried.
Avis just shrugged. “Didn’t lose any sleep. We used an alarm clock.”
“What do you mean?”
“Conrad’s idea. We set an alarm clock for their curfew—a loud one. We put it outside our bedroom door and went to sleep. If they got in by curfew, they shut off the alarm, and we slept blissfully until morning. But if that alarm went off and woke us up . . . those girls were in trouble.”
An alarm clock! How simple. How brilliant.
I was so delighted with Avis’s solution to the curfew/sleep dilemma that it was only later, when we drove into the garage and I saw the dented trash can, that I wondered if Stu had been insinuating something else when she asked if Josh was “OK.”
Did she think he’d been drinking?
14
Had Josh been drinking? The thought so unnerved me that I forgot to put a filter in the plastic basket before I scooped in the coffee, and I brewed up a whole pot of gritty mud—what my dad used to call “field coffee” from his stint in the army. I started a new pot and went looking for Denny, but he’d changed into a T-shirt and sweatshorts and was heading out the door for a run by the lake.
Not a good time to say we needed to talk.
Willie Wonka stood in the kitchen doorway, looking up at me, eyebrows wrinkled, tail wagging, as if to say, You can talk to me—if you take me for a walk. Not a bad idea. The afternoon sun had pushed the temperature into the midsixties. What was I doing in the house anyway? I poured some half-brewed coffee into a travel mug, got Wonka’s leash, and headed for Touhy Park—about as far as I thought Wonka’s legs would hold out.
The big, old elms along Lunt Avenue were almost in full dress, and the offspring of last year’s daffodils, tulips, and crocuses sprouted in strange places. Should have sent my spirit leaping. But I felt like kicking myself instead. If I’d been my typical nosy self last night, I would’ve gotten out of bed when Josh came home, and then I’d know if he’d been drinking or not. But what could I do now? Wait until next time? Be at the back door when he comes in? Ask him outright?
“Were you drinking last night?”
“Sure, Mom. Had a few beers with my buds, hit the trash can when I came home.”
Yeah, right.
We finally ambled to the park at old-dog speed, and I flopped on a bench while Wonka diligently sniffed each tree, checking out which neighborhood dogs had last come this way. “Wish your ears worked as good as your sniffer,” I grumbled at the dog’s rear end. Used to be we could count on Wonka barking his head off if anyone came in the door, day or night. Now it was a toss-up who could sleep through the most racket: Willie Wonka
or Denny. Arrgh. Just a few hours ago, I thought I’d finally found a solution to my weekend sleep deprivation. And to think we were actually going to lift Josh’s curfew when he graduated. Ha! No way was I going to—
Jodi Baxter, just listen to yourself. I sat up straight. The Voice in my spirit cut straight through my grumbling. You’re fussing and fuming—about what? You don’t even know if there’s a problem. You haven’t asked Me for wisdom. You’re leaning on yourself, when you could lean on Me.
I shook my head and started to laugh. Old habits die hard. “OK, God,” I said aloud. A boy shooting baskets nearby stopped and looked at me funny. Laughing even harder, I made a grab for Willie Wonka’s leash and started on the slow walk home. “You’re right, God! I don’t even know if there’s a problem. I don’t want to accuse Josh—but if there is a problem, I don’t want to ignore it either. So I need some wisdom. Your wisdom.”
Just ask him, Jodi. Don’t accuse. Just ask.
Well, yeah. Why not? Josh didn’t always tell us everything—like that protest march he went to a few months ago. But if asked outright, he was usually honest.
Was this the wisdom I just asked God for? Maybe that’s what Jesus meant when He said, “Be wise as serpents, harmless as doves.” Be alert, be aware, be watchful, be prayerful; but don’t get all messed up without knowing the facts, and trust God with the outcome.
Wonka finally did his business a block from our house, so I did the pooper-scoop, good-citizen thing and then cut through the alley to dump it in the closest trash can. Hauling the dog and his arthritic behind up onto our back porch, I almost missed Becky Wallace sitting on the stair landing going up to Stu’s apartment, smoking a cigarette.
“Hey.” She nodded at me and took another drag on the cigarette. “Been on a walk?”
I nodded. A note of envy tinged her simple question.
She sighed and ground out the cigarette stub with her shoe. “I’d do it for ya if I could—walk the dog, I mean.”
“Thanks.” What do you say to someone who can’t even leave the yard? I tipped my chin toward the flowerbeds. “The flowers look great. I’ve finally discovered the secret of successful gardening: let Becky do it.” I grinned.
She nodded but didn’t return the smile. “Yeah. Helps pass the time. I’m goin’ bonkers, know what I mean?”
I didn’t really. But I said, “Yeah. I’m sorry about that. But one of these days you’ll get that thing off”—my eyes slid to the EM strapped to her ankle—“and you can start a new life. For real.”
She fished another cigarette out of her pocket and a book of paper matches, the kind you pick up at restaurants. Where in the world was she getting this stuff? A moment later, a long trail of smoke drifted down the stairs. “If I make it till then,” she muttered.
Huh. What did she mean by that? But by this time, the coffee I’d drunk before walking the dog was prompting an urgent call of nature, so I just said, “See ya” and made a beeline for the bathroom.
While still in the bathroom, I heard Amanda hollering. “Josh! Are you done with the phone yet?” When I came out she collared me. “Mo-om! Tell Josh to get off the phone. He’s had it half an hour at least.”
A strange complaint coming from a teenager whose own phone-call record hung around the two-hour mark. I opened my mouth to put things in perspective, when Josh’s bedroom door swung open, and he thrust the cordless at his sister. “Here, shrimp. Now quit bugging me.” And he disappeared once more, slamming the door behind him.
I waited until Amanda flounced into her own lair with the phone, then I knocked on Josh’s door. No answer. I knocked again.
“What!”
I turned the knob and peeked in. Josh was sitting on his bed, earphones encasing the dome of his smooth head like quotation marks, pouring some kind of music into his ears. “You OK?”
He shrugged, moving his hands to the beat in his head, as if playing imaginary drumsticks.
I stood in front of him, working up courage to ask about last night. “Josh?”
He sighed and took off the earphones. “Look. I just called Edesa about prom and she said no. It’s fine. I’m fine. But I don’t feel like talking right now, OK?” He plopped the earphones back on his head.
Oh. Even Jodi Open-Mouth-Stick-in-Foot Baxter knew this wasn’t a good time to talk about dented trash cans. I backed out of the room.
MONDAY . . . TUESDAY . . . WEDNESDAY came and went before I realized something spectacular: the week was blessedly dull. Boring even. At least on the home front. I spent the week teaching story summaries and reviewing measurements—inches and centimeters; ounces and kilograms; gallons and liters. Some of my third graders even got it. The weather cooperated with my field trip to the branch library to replace lost library cards. I’d sent home a note asking each parent to send one dollar to cover the fee, but of course a third of my class showed up empty-handed Thursday morning. I didn’t care. Best ten bucks I’d spent in a long time.
The top news stories that week covered an earthquake in Algeria and the president’s announcement that he was lifting sanctions from Iraq. Definitely big news . . . over there. I almost felt wrapped in a cocoon, the rumblings in the world distant and far away. Nothing in the news about Northwestern; nothing about the so-called Coalition for White Pride, which seemed to have faded into the background like a pimple in a sea of freckles. Maybe this whole hate group thing was just a lot of hot air and would blow over after all.
Even the phone calls and e-mails from Yada Yada that week had mostly to do with where we were going to meet this weekend. Avis’s? (Since we’d skipped her last time.) Or Adele’s, next on the list? Ruth was adamant. “Newlyweds we should leave alone.” So that was that. Adele said fine.
By Thursday afternoon, I was pleasantly tired, looking forward to the long Memorial Day weekend, thinking we should do something special as a family. After all, how many family holidays would we have together once Josh graduated from high school? It was easier when they were younger. “Special” could be a trip to the zoo. The occasional circus tickets. Or, once in a blue moon, maybe an eye-popping evening at Medieval Times to eat dinner with our fingers and watch armored knights on thundering horses knock each other off their steeds with long, buffered lances. But what would be “special” to a fifteen- and an eighteen-year-old—with parents?
I was chewing over the possibilities as I unlocked the front door, dumped my tote bag, and brought in the mail. Besides the usual glut of junk and utility bills, there was a letter from Uptown Community and a package sitting on the front porch addressed to Josh Baxter. Plain brown paper, packing tape. No return address. Postmark said “Chicago.” Heavy, like books.
Huh. Wonder what that is?
I put the package on the dining room table, let Willie Wonka out the back door, and opened the letter from Uptown. Ah. The request from New Morning Christian Church to rent space from Uptown until they found their own facilities. Well, good. Looked like that was moving ahead. I was glad for Nony and Mark.
While I waited for Wonka to finish his doggy business, I put a pound of ground beef into the microwave to thaw. Spaghetti tonight. It just felt like a spaghetti kind of day. The temperature had dropped to the low fifties, a briskness to the air, tempered by a bright sun, a deep blue sky, and the cawing of crows.
Ack. The crows were back. Oh well.
Half an hour later, Amanda waltzed in, let Willie Wonka lick her face, grabbed the phone and a bag of potato chips, and waltzed right back outside again. So much for my fantasy that my daughter would kiss me and say, “Anything I can do to help you, Mom?”
I had dinner ready to whisk to the table by the time Denny and Josh got home. “Awesome,” Josh said. “I’m starving. Hurry up and pray, Dad.”
Hot pasta, Jodi’s secret spaghetti sauce, hot garlic bread with dill, and tossed salad with croutons made it around the table in record time as my family filled their plates. “Oh, Josh.” I twirled spaghetti noodles around my fork. “You got a package.” I tippe
d my chin toward the computer desk, where I’d had to move it. “Over there.”
Josh glanced at it then turned back to his food. “OK.”
My fork stopped in midair. “Aren’t you going to open it?”
“Sure. After dinner. I’m hungry.”
I glanced at Denny, but he was helping himself to more garlic bread.
“Maybe it’s a graduation present,” I suggested.
Josh shook his head. “Don’t think so.” And he filled his plate again.
The package sat on the computer table until dinner was over and we’d all cleared the table. Denny and Amanda loaded the dishwasher while I put away the leftovers. When I peeked into the dining room, the package was gone.
No package. No Josh.
What was going on?
OK, enough politeness. I marched to Josh’s bedroom door and knocked. He came to the door and opened it a few inches. “Yeah?”
“Josh, what’s in the package?”
“Some books I ordered.”
“Oh.” I blinked. “Why all the secrecy? Feels like you don’t want us to see them.”
“Don’t want Amanda to see them. Like you said.”
“What are you talking about? I never said—”
He opened the door wider, pulled me in, and shut it again. “Look for yourself, Mom. You won’t like it . . . but if you insist.”
Several paperback books of various sizes rested on his bed, the brown wrapping paper tossed aside. Stark white covers with bold black-and-red titles. I walked over and read the words. The Pro-White Creed . . . The Final Solution: A History of the Coalition for White Pride and Preservation . . . Why White Will Win . . .