by Neta Jackson
I started the coffee. Huh. Wonka’s probably God’s Secret Service agent in disguise, assigned to me personally, to get me up before everybody else in the household for some one-on-One with my Maker. And I had to admit, these early morning prayer times had become more . . . more indispensable, especially since I’d started feeling the strange burning inside me to pray, and keep praying, for “that girl” —didn’t know her name—I’d seen at the hate group rally at Northwestern. The one I strongly suspected had later turned informer on the thugs who’d beaten up Mark Smith.
Maybe she’d done that as a result of my prayers! I hadn’t said that to anybody, though. I mean, who did I think I was, anyway? Nobody thought of Jodi Baxter as a mighty prayer warrior—myself included. But I still felt excited. God was listening! God was shaking things up, wasn’t He?
I grabbed a cup as the coffeemaker gurgled its last gasps. But why doesn’t that urgency to pray for her go away? The girl still came to my mind first thing every morning, her face—late teens, eyes wary, defenses up yet vulnerable—etched in my memory.
I poured myself that first,wonderful cup when I heard footsteps tripping down the outside stairs from the second-floor apartment. I poked my head out the back door. “Stu!”
Leslie Stuart stopped, startled, a leather saddlebag-purse slung over one shoulder. “Oh.Hi, Jodi.Didn’t think anyone else would be up this early on a holiday.” Her long honey-blonde hair was freshly tinted, one side tucked behind her ear. She wore khaki slacks, a white blouse, and a sporty denim jacket. Smashing, really.
“Becky said you’re going to a family reunion. You didn’t tell me!
What family reunion? ” Not that Stu had to tell me everything. But this was big news!
Stu jiggled impatiently. “Yeah, I know. I . . . Actually, Jodi, I could use your prayers. Yada Yada’s too. Got this invitation from one of my cousins to a family reunion.Wasn’t sure I was going to go. You know, after . . .” Her voice trailed off.
Yes, I knew. After finding herself pregnant, abandoned by the father, embarrassed and afraid to admit it to her ultraconservative family. So Stu had just dropped out. Got an abortion. Got a new life—new job, new suburb, new friends. Until earlier this year, that is, when she’d stopped running from her past, from God, from the forgiveness and unconditional love she needed so badly.
“Hey, it’s OK.” I stepped out onto the porch. “I know, you didn’t make the decision until yesterday.” She grinned sheepishly. Bingo. “Will you see your parents? Where do they live? ”
“Indianapolis. Don’t know for sure if they’ll be at the reunion. I hope so. I think.” She sniffed the steam rising from my mug of coffee. “Got any more of that in a travel mug? Can’t believe I haven’t had any coffee yet. See? I’m a wreck already!”
Had to admit, I enjoyed seeing Stu get flustered. She had a habit of getting me all flummoxed by her keen ability to do everthing right and be one step ahead of me. But I gave her a big hug, took two minutes to pray with her, and sent her off with Denny’s travel mug of fresh coffee.
“Oh God,” I murmured as Stu’s silver Celica zoomed out of the alley. “Open the arms of her family. Make this a real reunion.” Then I added, “Thank You, Jesus!” As Florida Hickman always said at Yada Yada,might as well start the thanksgiving early, since we know God’s gonna come through. Somehow.
Florida . . . I wondered what the Hickman family was doing for the Fourth of July. Fourteen-year-old Chris was at the Cornerstone Music Festival with Josh and Amanda and the Uptown youth group. That in itself was probably a real holiday for Flo. She was so worried about her eldest son hanging out on the streets too much. She and her husband, Carl, wanted to move from their old neighborhood to get Chris away from bad influences, to get Carl closer to his job working for Peter Douglass . . .
Peter and Avis. I knew they were out of town.Drove to Ohio to visit Avis’s oldest daughter and the twins. Delores Enriques had to work. Ditto Yo-Yo. Edesa Reyes, Lord help her, was at Cornerstone—Josh’s idea to invite the attractive college student from Honduras to help him chaperone the younger teens. Chanda . . . she’d said something about winning a free vacation to Hawaii.Huh. What was that all about? After winning the Illinois lottery,why did Chanda George, of all people, need to get a free anything?
My mind sorted through the rest of my Yada Yada sisters as I stripped sheets off beds, started a load of laundry, and unloaded the dishwasher, stalling for time until I could reasonably call Ruth Garfield.Maybe go visit. She and Ben never went out of town. Real homebodies, those two. But maybe they should have. Taken a cruise. Gone to Hawaii or something. If they were gong to have a baby—at their age—they’d both be ready for a retirement home by the time the kid left for college.
Sheesh.
I waited until ten o’clock to dial the Garfields’ number. Ben answered. “Yeah, she’s here. Fanning herself like a geisha doll. I tell ya, Jodi . . .” He didn’t tell me, just yelled, “Ruth! Pick it up!”
An extension picked up. Ben’s line went dead. “Ruth? It’s Jodi. Am I calling too early? ”
“Early, smearly. You’re fine, Jodi. It’s Mr. Grumpy who got up on the wrong side of the bed. I’m pregnant. I’m up and dressed. What more does he expect? ”
I stifled a laugh. “I was wondering . . . what are you doing today? Can I come over to see you? Take you out for coffee or something? ”
“Coffee! Ugh.” Ruth made a retching noise on the other end of the line. “Even the word makes me want to throw up. That’s how I knew I was pregnant in the first place. Coffee I love. But that was then. This is now. Tea I’ll take. And . . .” She hesitated.When she spoke again, she had lowered her voice. “I could use the company, Jodi. Ben took me to the doctor yesterday. Doc gave the usual song and dance about all the risks of a pregnancy ‘at your age.’ Risks, schmisks. I told him this baby is a miracle! What do I care about risks? But Ben—he thinks I’m dead and in the casket already. All that’s left to do is pick the color of the flowers. Nuts he’s driving me!”
From the background I heard Ben yell, “I heard that!”
Ruth never missed a beat. “Sure. Come on over, Jodi.We’ll have a grand time.”
I hung up the phone gingerly.Wasn’t so sure about that.
3
An hour at the Garfields left me as edgy as a Mexican jumping bean. The tension between Ben and Ruth had crackled through the house like a loose livewire. I couldn’t be sure if it was simply fondness disguised as bickering, or if one of them was about to blow a gasket. I wanted to debrief with Denny when I got home but found a note instead saying he’d gone up to Evanston Hospital to visit Mark Smith. Rats. I wished we’d coordinated our “holiday” better. I hadn’t seen Mark (or Nony for that matter) since last Sunday, when a Medicar had showed up at New Morning Christian Church’s new home in the Howard Street shopping center.
New Morning (Mark and Nony’s church) had been renting space from Uptown Community (our church) while they searched for a new place to worship.The vicious attack on Mark by members of a white supremacist group had forced our two churches—one mostly white, the other mostly black, sharing the same space—to ask some hard questions: Were we going to let the actions of this hate group fan the embers of distrust and division between us? Or would we seize the opportunity to show the world—no, show ourselves—that God’s love and unity were more powerful than Satan’s lies?
Heady stuff. Of course, none of us knew where this line of thinking would actually take us. But last Sunday, New Morning had invited Uptown to a joint celebration of God’s provision n the large unfinished storefront they’d found. New shopping center. Great location for outreach. Adding to the jubilation had been the startling headlines that same morning: an unnamed “female member” of the Coalition for White Pride and Preservation had fingered those responsible for the attack on Professor Mark Smith. An arrest was “imminent.” I wanted to keep shouting, “Hallelujah! ”
And then the Medicar had showed up, with a beaming Mark Smith in
a wheelchair, still swaddled in bandages from the beating that nearly cost him his life.Didn’t know how Nony talked the doctors into letting Mark out of the hospital for a few hours. But when Nonyameko Sisulu-Smith had wheeled her husband through the double-glass doors—well, that’s when the celebration of God’s goodness really rattled all those plate-glass windows. Probably rattled all the shopkeepers trying to do business in the shopping center that morning too.
I’d really meant to get up to the hospital this past week to see Mark and Nony, but just getting the teenagers off to Cornerstone fried all my good intentions. Hadn’t even had time to do more than catch the headlines about the arrest of two men identified as White Pride members. But Denny had good news when he got back from the hospital a couple of hours later. “Nony says Mark can come home sometime next week. It’s just . . .” He leaned against the kitchen counter, sweat beading his forehead, sipping the glass of lemonade I handed him. The temperature was hiking up to the high eighties for the weekend. Huh.Wouldn’t want to be camping at Cornerstone in heat like this. Poor kids.
I realized Denny hadn’t finished his sentence. “Just what? That’s good, isn’t it? ”
“Sure. It’s just . . .” He sighed. “They’ve got a long way to go. Mark needs a lot of rehabilitation after that head injury. He gets confused. Can’t remember stuff. Can’t tie his shoes. And he needs surgery on that damaged eye. He might . . . lose it. The sight in that eye, I mean. He’s definitely not going to be able to teach this fall.”
“Oh, Denny.” Sadness welled up for my friends. Hadn’t Nony and Mark been through enough already? Then my sad turned to mad. God had done a mighty thing when Mark came out of that coma.Why did there have to be so many nasty loose ends?
I blew out my frustration. “It’s going to be a long haul for Ruth and Ben too.” I hefted the pitcher of lemonade. “Want some more? ” I refilled our glasses, and we wandered out to the back porch, hoping to catch a breeze. But the elms hovering overhead hung limp and still.
Denny grunted as he settled on the porch steps. “She tell you any more about what the doctor is saying? ”
“Uh-huh. Guess the big scary possibility is a Down syndrome baby. A one-in-thirty chance, something like that. Or another miscarriage—though she’s past the three-month mark now. Ruth considers that the miracle.To her, God is giving her the child she never had. Nothing else seems to matter.”
“And Ben? ”
I snorted. “Oh, he’s a big help. Keeps coming up with all these statistics off the Internet about higher risk of death for pregnant women over forty. Or developing diabetes. Or the baby having low birth weight, stuff like that.”
“He’s scared, Jodi. For all his bluster, Ben loves Ruth.”
“Yeah, well, he sure has a funny way of showing it. He’s making her miserable. Nagging her to death about going to Planned Parenthood or a women’s health center. She won’t hear of it, says they’re just abortion mills. Frankly, I think he just doesn’t want the bother of becoming a daddy at age sixty.”
Denny grunted again but said nothing for several minutes. Then, “Hey.Where’s Andy? Is he still here? I’ve got something for him.”
“I think he’s watching videos. I heard the TV upstairs.”
Denny rummaged in the pockets of his cargo shorts. He pulled out a skinny box. Sparklers.
“Denny! Where’d you get those? Illinois doesn’t sell fireworks!”
The dimples in his cheeks appeared. “Yeah, but the guy with his coat of many pockets hanging around the el station does.”
ANDY AND DENNY HAD A SQUEALING GOOD TIME with the sparklers in our backyard when it got dark. I fired up the charcoal grill and invited Becky and Andy to eat with us on the back porch, just hanging out and working our way through grilled lemon chicken, early corn on the cob, and root beer floats. In the distance, we could hear boom boom boom from nearby suburbs shooting off their own Fourth of July fireworks.
I was glad Denny got the sparklers. This was a boring weekend for Andy to visit his mom, with Josh and Amanda gone, and Stu too—though I heard her Celica pull into the garage late Saturday night. At least she and Becky were able to take Andy to church on Sunday morning. Becky had gotten permission from her parole officer to attend weekly services once Pastor Clark wrote a letter on her behalf on church letterhead. When we got to church, Carla Hickman, age nine, was swooning over Andy like a doting little mama. For a girl with two big brothers, here was a little boy who didn’t boss her around or tell her to get lost. And cute to boot.
Uptown’s worship service that Sunday didn’t quite measure up to last week’s double celebration,what with two of our best worship leaders gone—Avis visiting her grandkids and Rick Reilly chaperoning our youth at Cornerstone. But even with several families away for the holiday, the upstairs room we used for worship as nearly full. And stifling hot, even with fans in the windows.
Florida tracked me down right after the benediction. “You heard from the kids, Jodi? They still gettin’ back tomorrow? Both Carl and I gotta work. You think you could see Chris get home? Don’ want him hangin’ out anywhere till we got us an understandin’what’s goin’ down and what’s not goin’ down till school starts—Carla! You put that baby down ’fore you drop him on his head!” Without waiting for any answers, Florida hustled after Carla,who was trying to carry Andy like a baby doll in spite of the little boy’s indignant protests.
I tried to grab Stu and ask about her family reunion, but she just sidled off. “Can’t talk now. Tell you later. It was . . .” She waggled her hand in a so-so motion before disappearing down the stairs and out the door.
I stared after her flowing blonde hair and red beret. “Don’t you go getting all distant on me again, Leslie Stuart,” I muttered at her back.
Denny and I tried to make the most of our last day sans teenagers.We drove up to the hospital to visit Mark after church, then took a bike ride along the lake front. I was pooped by the time the bike path ended at the north end of Northwestern University’s Evanston campus—and then we had to turn around and go the same distance to get home. By the time we hung the bikes in the garage, I could’ve fallen into bed and slept around the clock, even if it was only. But Denny ordered Chinese, which we ate in the living room with three fans blowing on us while we watched two of our favorite Bogart movies back to back: Casablanca and The African Queen.
And then it was Monday. And the kids came back.
AT FIVE P.M., Uptown Community’s fifteen-passenger van double parked in front of the church—a two-story storefront on Morse Avenue that had been remodeled twenty years ago into office and classroom space on the first floor, and a kitchen and large, all-purpose room that served as a “sanctuary” on the second floor. Rick Reilly’s Suburban pulled up behind the van, and sleepy-eyed teenagers tumbled out of the two vehicles. Amanda climbed out of the van clutching her pillow and her threadbare Snoopy dog.’t believe she took that worn-out stuffed animal! A grin tickled my insides. She might be almost sixteen, but a little girl still lurked in that womanly body.
And then José Enriques climbed out right behind her, carrying Amanda’s backpack.My inside grin faded. The girl-woman—and her first serious boyfriend—was taking over the child faster than I was ready for.
I reached for my daughter and gave her a big hug. “Mm.Missed you, kiddo.”
“Hi,Mom.Hi, Dad. How’s Wonka? ” Amanda’s voice was muffled by her dad’s bear hug.
“He’s been missing you, pumpkin. Slept in your room every night. Tried to get up on your bed, but no way was I going to actually lift him up there.”
“Aw. You should’ve, Dad. José! Did you hear that? Wonka missed me so much he tried to sleep in my bed.”
José, who’d been lurking two steps behind Amanda, grinned widely, as if relieved to be included. “Buenos dios, Señora Baxter. Señor Baxter.”
“Hi yourself, José,” Denny said. “How’d you like Cornerstone? You need a ride home? ”
“Aw, that’s OK, Señor Baxter.
I can take the el.” José’s grin widened. “Cornerstone was magnifico!—except they need more Latino bands.”
“Well, hang on a moment. I think we’re supposed to take Chris Hickman home and that’s halfway there. Might as well take you. Where’s Chris? ”
While Denny was offering taxi service, I looked around for Josh, then saw him unstrapping the large tarp on top of the van covering luggage and camping gear. Pete Spencer was helping him, handing down duffle bags to outstretched hands.Did Pete need a ride home too? Yo-Yo hadn’t said anything. Ben Garfield usually chauffeured Yo-Yo’s brothers when they needed a ride somewhere—Oh.
A large, pearly green Buick pulled up and double-parked across the street. The driver’s window rolled down. “Pete!” bellowed Ben. “Get in the car! I can’t find a parking space within three dang blocks—” The rest of Ben’s bossiness was mercifully cut off by the automatic window rolling back up. I grinned. Ben and Ruth Garfield, bless ’em, had taken Yo-Yo and her half brothers under their wings a few years back, though Ben sometimes acted as if he was being forced to swallow worms.
Pete rolled his eyes and pulled out his own bag. “Sorry I can’t stay to help,” he called to Rick Reilly, Uptown’s youth group leader. “My ride’s here.”
Rick slapped him on the shoulder and waved him off.
Wow. Thank You, Jesus, I thought. Only You know the effect this Christian music festival had on all these kids. And Pete . . . I frowned. He was a nice enough kid, but basically a likeable pagan, giving Yo-Yo, his sister-guardian, a big headache recently. Pete was seventeen. Going to be a junior. Thought he was too old to have to obey the house rules, like curfew and telling her where he was going. Yo-Yo herself had been a Christian less than a year—and only baptized two months ago. It wasn’t as if Pete had a lot of Christian training coming up.