by Neta Jackson
I tried not to laugh. Ruth’s “cargo.” She better tell the big news to the rest of Yada Yada tonight. I, for one, couldn’t keep my mouth shut much longer. And I knew Florida was itching to spill the beans.
Chanda was the last to arrive. “Dat taxi could be taking me to de moon an’ back, as much he charged,” she complained. “Don’ know no babysitter in me new place, had to drop off Thomas and de girls at me sister’s place.” But her face brightened. “Soon as mi get settled, Yada Yada can meet at mi ’ouse, what you tink? ”
“We’d love to meet in your new home, Chanda.” Avis took a seat in an elegant rocker that breathed antique, while the rest of us found places to sit or perch on her modern beige-and-black furniture. “We have a little celebration tonight, but I thought I would read a scripture to encourage all of us.” Avis reached for her modernlanguage Bible. The rustling around the room hushed.
“From Isaiah 44 . . . ‘Listen to me, Jacob my servant, Israel my chosen one. The Lord who made you and helps you says: O Jacob, my servant, do not be afraid. O Israel, my chosen one, do not fear. For I will give you abundant water to quench your thirst and to moisten your parched fields. And I will pour out my Spirit and my blessings on your children. They will thrive like watered grass, like willows on a riverbank. Some will proudly claim, “I belong to the Lord.” Others will say, “I am a descendant of Jacob.” Some will write the Lord’s name on their hands and will take the honored name of Israel as their own.’”
I grinned. I had told Avis what I’d found out about Edesa’s name, and she’d found the perfect scripture. I glanced toward the door into Avis’s dining room where Becky was waiting to bring in the cake—but sudden sobbing from Ruth’s armchair caught me off guard. Becky peeked into the room, looking confused.
We all gaped at Ruth. “Ruth? ” Avis said gently. “Are you all right? ”
Ruth nodded, rummaging in her roomy bag for a wad of tissues. She cried and blew her nose and cried some more. Sitting on the floor by her feet,Yo-Yo looked worried. Delores, sitting next to her, put an arm around Ruth’s shoulder and prayed quietly to herself, her lips moving.
Ruth blew her nose again and dabbed at her blotchy face. “Don’t mind me. I’m not dying. It’s just that scripture . . . where is that, Avis? ”
“Chapter 44 of Isaiah.”
“Read that part again about ‘blessings on the children.’ ”
Avis nodded. “Let’s see . . . verses three and four. ‘I will pour out my Spirit and my blessings on your children. They will thrive like watered grass, like willows on a riverbank.’ ”
“And the next part,” Ruth insisted.
“All right. ‘Some will proudly claim, ‘I belong to the Lord. ’ Others will say, ‘I am a descendant of Jacob.’ Some will write the Lord’s name on their hands and will take the honored name of Israel as their own.’ ”
Ruth beamed through her tears. “That’s my promise! My children will thrive like watered grass, like willows by a riverbank. And they’ll treasure their Jewish heritage too. And write Yahweh’s name on their hearts.”
“Your children? ” Yo-Yo grinned up at Ruth. “You an’ Ben plannin’ to pop more kids in the cooker?
”
I winced. Yo-Yo’s teasing of Ruth needed to stop. I opened my mouth to say something, but Ruth patted her tummy under the dark, shapeless dress she was wearing. “Already did. Doc says it’s twins.”
She said it so matter-of-factly, nobody reacted for a full two seconds. Then—Chanda screeched. “Say again, Sista Ruth? You got an A an’ B selection in dere? ”
That cracked everyone up, and suddenly we were all talking at once. After several minutes of laughing, hugging, and shaking heads,Adele took charge of the conversation. “How’s Ben taking it, Ruth? Seems like this good news could be a major challenge for you two. I oughta know. Taking care of MaDear is like having a toddler around the house, and it ain’t no picnic at my age.” And I’m younger than you are hung unspoken in the air.
The room fell silent. Ruth studied the ceiling and tapped her foot. “Oh. Uh . . .” She cleared her throat. “Ben doesn’t know yet.”
I couldn’t believe it! Apparently, neither could the rest of the Yada Yadas, who opened their collective mouths and gasped, “He doesn’t know? !” But Avis rescued Ruth from a corporate scolding and moved us directly to prayer, thanking God for the new life He had created, praying protection for Ruth’s health, asking God’s grace to cover the challenging situation facing Ben and Ruth. Since we were already in prayer mode, Avis suggested we delay our celebration a few minutes and add other prayer requests.
“Well, I got one,” Becky said, still leaning in the doorway between front room and dining room. “Can anybody get me a job? Parole officer says I can work, but somebody gotta set up an appointment for me first; can’t just go out lookin’.”
Yo-Yo snorted. “Yeah. Never woulda got my job at the Bagel Bakery if Ruth hadn’t—hey!” Yo-Yo jumped to her feet. “The Bagel Bakery needs a counter girl! Why didn’t I . . .” She whirled on Ruth. “Ruth! Ya think ya could, ya know, put in a good word for Becky? ”
Ruth shrugged, seemingly relieved that her pregnancy was out of the spotlight. “Sure, sure.Why not? I’m already dangling on the edge of a limb. Might as well saw it off—ack!” Ruth struggled under Becky’s embrace, as our newest excon threw her arms around Ruth’s neck from behind the couch.
So we prayed for a job for Becky and threw in Florida’s plea that the Hickmans would get approved by Section Eight for the house rental they’d found over near Clark Street. “Just a couple of blocks from Adele’s Hair and Nails. Won’t have any excuse lookin’ like somethin’ the cat drug in,” she snickered. “An’ if we get approved, we movin’ in two weeks. Gotta get the kids registered in they new schools ’fore school starts.”
New schools? Well, of course. Chris was in high school, Cedric in middle school, Carla in—
Whoa! Would that put Carla Hickman in the Bethune Elementary school district? She’d be going into fourth grade, not third, but still, that’d be great if Florida could have one of her kids in Avis’s school.
If the school board didn’t axe the school first. Or my job.
After prayers,Becky finally brought out her cake, complete with flaming candles, and we sang “Happy Birthday” to Edesa. She seemed genuinely surprised. Well, OK, her birthday had been a week and a half ago. She probably thought we’d forgotten. “Sorry we’re late,” I said, giving her a hug.
“Oh, no, it’s wonderful.” Edesa’s dark eyes misted even as her smile widened. “Birthdays in my village in Honduras are not so important. In my family, I have two brothers and three sisters younger than myself. I am the oldest.No money for parties or gifts. Everything goes to send us to school.”
“Blow, Edesa!” Becky butted in. “Candles almost drowning in the frosting!”
She blew, we laughed, Becky cut the cake—which tasted like chocolate-coated sugar—and I brought out the card we’d all been signing surreptitiously under Edesa’s nose. I’d found a picture of Niagara Falls on the Internet and printed it out on heavy paper. “Edesa, if you know a different meaning of your name, you better tell me now! Because the closest I could find was . . . Avis, could you read that verse from Isaiah again? Listen for the clue.”
Avis found the verse again. “For I will give you abundant water to quench your thirst and to moisten your parched fields. And I will pour out my Spirit and my blessings on your children. They will thrive like watered grass, like willows on a riverbank.”
Edesa looked at the picture of Niagara Falls that had our signatures scrawled all over it, little hearts, words of love. “Abundant water? That is my name? ”
“Well, the only Edesa I could find was spelled E-D-E-S-S-A, and is the name of an ancient city in Macedonia, which is now Greece. And the name means ‘abundance of water,’ or ‘life’ because of how water nourishes life.”
“Oh,” breathed Delores. “That is perfect. Edesa has brought so much l
ife to our family, so much happiness to mis niños.”
“To all of us, I’d say.” Adele’s voice was surprisingly husky. “If I had a daughter, I’d want her to be like you, Edesa.”
To my surprise, a tear dribbled toward Edesa’s chin. Her mouth quivered. “I . . . wish it were true. Mi familia, they sacrificed so much to send me here to school. I have so little to send them. I don’t know. Maybe I should be a business major or computer programmer—something to make money instead of public health.”
A chorus of protest bounced around the circle. “You listen to me, sister girl,” Adele commanded, unlocking her arms, which had been resting across her ample bosom. “You made a good decision to switch to public health.Women and children need you—whether here or back home in Honduras. Their health is more important than money.”
“That’s right, that’s right!” Florida clapped and we all joined in until it sounded like welcome rain.
Edesa hugged the photo card to her chest. “Thank you so much, mis hermanas. Yada Yada is my second family here in America. After the Enriques familia, that is.” She dimpled at Delores.
“So.” Becky cleared her throat. “What y’all think of the cake? Made it myself.”
A loud buzzer in Avis’s foyer saved us from having to do more than make a few murmurs of appreciation. Avis frowned. She walked over to the intercom next to the front door and pushed a button. “Yes? Who is it? ”
From where I was sitting, all I could hear was static. Or was it—crying?
“You all go on. I’ll be back in a minute.” Avis disappeared out her front door; we heard her feet scurrying down the three flights of stairs.We all just looked at each other, then busied ourselves with Becky’s cake.
A couple of minutes later, a babble of voices floated up the stair-well—Avis’s low voice trying to soothe . . . the high-pitched questions of a child . . . and the gulping sobs of a young woman. “He hit me, mama. He hit me! I . . . I . . .”
“Oh, baby. Oh, baby. Shh, shh. Here, give me Conny . . .”
The trio wedged through the door. Avis held her grandson, a strapping toddler almost too big to carry. Behind her, her daughter Rochelle stopped, startled, when she saw us, her eyes big, her face a bloated mess. “Oh. I-I’m sorry. I . . . I didn’t know.” She tried to take the child from Avis’s arms. Her chest shuddered with incomplete sobs. “I’ll leave. You’re busy, mama.”
“Girl, you’ll do no such thing!” Adele stood up. “We were just leaving, weren’t we, sisters? We’ll be out of here ’fore that baby can count to three.”
Little Conrad giggled. “One!” he shouted. “Two! Free!”
14
We hustled down the stairs as quietly as a dozen women could manage, with Yo-Yo propping up Ruth and saying, “Take it easy, take it easy.” Nony said she would take Ruth and Yo-Yo home so they wouldn’t have to wait outside for Ben to come. Becky and I caught a ride home with Stu.
Stu was furious. “Rochelle shouldn’t have gone back to that jerk the first time! I could’ve told her that.”
“They were going to get counseling,” I pointed out.
Stu slammed her fist on the steering wheel. “Oh. So we wait until hubby beats her up before we tell her to leave him.”
“I just meant—”
“Jodi, shut up. You’re married to Denny the teddy bear, for heaven’s sake.What do you know? ”
I pressed my lips together and looked out the window. Car windows were up, air-conditioning on. I longed to roll the window down and let the wind blow over my face. I felt like crying. Why? Because Stu jumped on me? No. I knew she was upset. I wanted to cry for Rochelle. For Avis. For little Conrad. For Conrad senior and the grandson he’d never know and wasn’t there to protect. For Peter Douglass, who was going to arrive home and find his stepdaughter and stepgrandson in his home again. This time bruised and desperate.
Oh God, why does this happen even in the best families? Why does Satan keep messing with people I love? Avis was probably the woman I admired most in the whole world. I wanted to be like her. Seemed like she’d done everything right. But I knew her mother heart was breaking for her daughter.How would I feel if Amanda got slapped around by—
I felt like throwing up. Oh God, please don’t let anyone abuse my daughter! Protect her, Lord! Protect all our daughters! Emerald Enriques and her little sisters . . . Chanda’s Cheree and Dia . . . Carla Hickman, who’s already had her life turned upside down twice in her nine short years . . .
And Ruth. Did she have baby girls in her womb? Ruth would be seventy and Ben eighty years old by the time those babies had their twentieth birthday. I’d been thinking, If they’re born safely, all will be well.Would it? What would life hand them by the time they were fifteen? twenty? thirty? Was that what Ben was afraid of?
Fear twisted my gut. Fear for all our children. For Chris Hickman, maybe out on the street tonight, “just hangin’,” getting himself into who-knows-what trouble and worrying Florida to death . . . for Yo-Yo’s half brothers, growing up without parents except a big sister who cared . . . for my Josh, basically a good kid, who was morphing into a stranger, hot-wired to “make a difference” but with no real direction, floundering . . .
The garage door went up. Stu drove the Celica inside. Our Dodge Caravan wasn’t back yet. The three of us got out and walked silently up the walk to the back porch of our shared two-flat, lost in our own thoughts. Lights were on inside the first floor. My kids must be home from youth group.
At the steps I stopped. A breeze off Lake Michigan a half mile away shifted the sultry air. I turned to my housemates. “I . . . can’t go in yet. I feel so torn up. Do you think . . . could we pray? ”
DENNY GOT HOME while Stu, Becky, and I were still on the back steps, holding hands, praying. Not exactly powerhouse prayers like Avis and Florida and Nony might pour out. Or Adele. Just three white chicks, our ages spanning two decades—married, single, single mom . . . me raised in the church, Stu with her master’s degree, Becky just out of prison. But I felt strength as we gripped each other’s hands and just talked to God about our fears, our anger, our helplessness for Avis and her daughter, whose similar feelings must be magnified ten times over.
After the last “amen,” Stu and Becky said goodnight and climbed the ack stairs to their apartment. Denny, who’d been leaning against the handrail the last two minutes, sat down beside me in the dark. “What in the world happened over there tonight? ”
I could see his features outlined by the streetlight in the alley. Frowning. Confused. “Didn’t Peter tell you? ”
Denny shook his head. “I brought him home; he said he’d send you down. But he came back out two minutes later and said all the Yada Yadas had gone already. And that he had a ‘situation’ upstairs.”
I sighed and told him about Rochelle arriving in hysterics, her face swollen. Saying Dexter had hit her. Denny put his head in his hands. “Oh my God.” It was a groan. A prayer. He sat that way for a long time. I sat beside him, not saying anything.What was there to say?
After a while, Denny went inside. I heard him rummaging in a cupboard, then water running in the sink. I thought he was headed for the living room, to numb the pain with the TV, but he came back out with a glass of water and sat down beside me on the steps. He took my hand. “Jodi. I think I should take the AD job.What do you think? ”
“You do? I mean, I think it’s great! But what changed your mind? ”
“Peter Douglass.Well, no. God did.But Peter was a good sounding board. As businesslike as he seems most of the time, he really has a heart for kids. I saw that at our Guys’ Day Out last spring. Mostly he just listened, but he also asked good questions. What would I really like to see happen with the sports program at West Rogers High? Where would I have the most influence? Stuff like that. Kinda surprised me that he didn’t even mention the raise in pay or what would look good on my résumé. He focused on the opportunity to bridge the gap between academics and the sports program, develop good communication betwe
en staff—stuff like that.”
I squeezed his hand. “All the ‘stuff ’ that’s been sending you up the wall the last two years, especially because you’ve always felt helpless to do anything about it.” My voice caught a little. Oh God, I’ve been so self-centered about this whole job thing.Wanting Denny to take the job to give us some financial security, a cushion in case my own job went south. I studied my husband’s face in the shadows. “You’re good at that kind of thing, you know.”
“What kind of thing? ”
“Being a bridge.”
Denny didn’t answer immediately. Then he cleared his throat, as if embarrassed. “That’s what Peter said.”
Suddenly I knew that the AD job was God’s gift, not just to us but to West Rogers High School. In fact, I felt like laughing. They had no idea they’d just unleashed God’s man on their public school!
“Helloo? Parents? ” Amanda’s sing-song voice cut into the darkness from inside the back screen door, tinged with exasperation. “‘Say, kids, do you know where your parents are? ’No,we don’t, because they forgot to tell us when they got home. So here we sit, Wonka and me, imagining all sorts of gruesome headlines in tomorrow’s paper—”
“Oh, quit.” Denny’s laugh cut off her dirge. “You didn’t come into the kitchen to look for us. I bet you were gonna sneak the last of the mint-chocolate-chip ice cream.Right? Right? But I’m gonna get it first!”
Amanda screeched as her dad launched himself toward the screen door, both of them yelling, “My ice cream! Mine! Mine! ”
DENNY CALLED THE HIGH SCHOOL Monday morning, accepted the job, and said he’d be in the office first thing the following Monday.When he hung up, he looked at me apologetically. “Just realized we usually have a couple of weeks in August before preseason practice starts. But with this new job . . . it doesn’t look like the Baxters are going to get any vacation this summer.”
That thought had occurred to me too. Not that we’d actually bought tickets to Alaska or Paris or anything—yeah, right—but we had talked about going camping at Starved Rock or maybe Kickapoo State Park. But I shrugged. “Well, my accident put the kibosh on our vacation plans last summer. So now we’re even, buddy.” I kissed the dimple in his cheek. I was so grateful for Denny’s new job, no way was I going to complain about not camping in the middle of bee season.