2-in-1 Yada Yada

by Neta Jackson

  I let out a long sigh, paying out the head of steam I’d been building. “Thanks, Avis. Really. Don’t know if this is good news or bad news. It’ll be hard to see him in the school and not say anything.”

  “I know. Smile and wave—from a distance.”

  My thoughts scrambled. “Did you figure out why she had no clue that I was Hakim’s teacher? I mean, my name should’ve rung a bell. And”—this question had been bugging me for days—“the two boys with her in the courtroom . . . does Hakim have more brothers?” I’d guessed their ages at the time as about ten and maybe sixteen. If so, why wasn’t the ten-year-old a fifth grader at Bethune Elementary?

  “Mmm, not sure. She didn’t mention any other sons. Might’ve been cousins. From what I gathered, Geraldine had been living with her sister looking for a place to live in this area when the, uh, accident happened last June. Finally found a place in September— probably explains why she didn’t pay too much attention to school notices. Also, she works as a night-duty LPN, so Hakim spends a lot of time at his aunt’s house.”

  “Okay. It’s just . . . so weird.” “A diabolical joke,” the woman had said. I quickly shook off the thought. Couldn’t go there. If I chose to believe that, I might as well give it all up right now. After I got off the phone, I dug out my journal and reread the prayer I’d written that morning. Then read it aloud to drown out the accusing laughter in my head.

  I DECIDED NOT TO HIDE THIS MESS from Yada Yada—not like the incident with MaDear, where I kept waiting for someone else who’d been at the beauty shop to bring it up. I didn’t even check with Avis, just wrote a long e-mail spelling out what had happened at the parent-teacher conferences, the scriptures I was hanging on to, and the focus I was trying to keep—that God would work this out not only for my good, but for Hakim and his mother too. “. . . even though,” I admitted, “nothing can bring Jamal back. I know that. It’s a reality I live with every day. So please, help me pray.”

  The responses I got from different Yada Yada sisters reinforced the impression I had when “Prayer Group 26” first met at the women’s conference last spring—that drawer full of crazy-colored, mismatched socks. It didn’t matter; just knowing my sisters cared kept me going that whole awkward week, catching glimpses of Hakim, trying to send him a smile and wave from a distance but only getting a head down in return. For solace, I kept the Scripture reading and prayers going and checked my e-mails each evening.

  “Si! Of course I will pray!” Delores wrote. “I consider it a privilege to pray for you, my sister—a small payment on the debt I owe for all the prayers Yada Yada has spent on the Enriques family.”

  Ruth’s note made me laugh out loud: “Go shopping. Forget about your troubles for two hours and buy a new hat.” Hadn’t she noticed yet that I never wore hats? Still, it was actually tempting. A wild, crazy hat. What would Denny think of that?

  Hoshi’s note was brief: “Praying for you as you requested. Did you get an answer yet from the woman who cut my mother?” Sheesh. Hoshi had her own demons to fight. I hit Reply and typed, “Not yet. Will let you know.” Then I hit Send.

  Even Stu responded. “I am so sorry, Jodi. I wonder if Hakim’s mother has gotten any counseling to help her deal with the loss of Jamal. It sounds like she’s a ticking time bomb.” Okay, Stu, I’ll let you suggest it.

  Florida didn’t bother with e-mail but called me up. “Girl! You attract sticky situations like that nasty ol’ flypaper! But don’t you worry none. God’s got your back. Say, that man of yours around? Wanna thank him for taking Carl to that guy breakfast last Saturday. He say much to you about it?”

  “Who? Denny? Not really. Mark Smith came too.” Had to admit I’d been kind of distracted and hadn’t really pressed Denny for details. “What did Carl say?”

  “Not much—Carl ain’t a big talker. But he did say Pastor Clark got the guys shootin’ off their mouths about what they think a ‘real man’ is. Guess it was some list.” She laughed. “I think Pastor gave each man a Bible verse to look up,maybe to compare God’s design with their own bright ideas, ’cause my Bible went missin’ for a day or two then showed up again.”

  “That’s great, Florida. Are things any better—at home, I mean?”

  She snorted. “Ain’t seen any miracles yet, but maybe it’s a chink in the wall. Say . . .Yada Yada is meetin’ at your house next Sunday, right?”

  Which was true. And Chanda—who didn’t have e-mail, so she didn’t get my long version of what happened when Hakim’s mother showed up—fussed at me up and down when Sunday evening rolled around and she discovered she was the only one at Yada Yada who didn’t know what happened.

  “I’m sorry, Chanda. I should have called,” I said, even though I knew I couldn’t have gone over the whole thing again on the phone. Now that Adele—who used to share e-mails with Chanda—was off the loop, Chanda did seem to get left out a lot from the online “chatter” between Yada Yada meetings.

  We spent a long time that night praying for “the Hakim situation” and also for Nony and her boys. As far as we knew, there was still no word about when she planned to bring the boys home. I felt surrounded by the prayers of my sisters, like a wall of protection, and I wondered . . . did Nony sense our prayers halfway around the world? Feel that protection?

  I did have one “answer” to prayer: a second letter from Lincoln Correctional Center. “Just arrived yesterday,” I said, waving it in the air.

  That got everyone’s attention, especially Hoshi’s. “Read it please, Jodi,” she said, sitting straight, hands folded in her lap. Her eyes flickered, like Christmas lights ambivalent about whether they were going to burn bright or go out.

  I unfolded the single sheet of paper. “Dear Mrs. Baxter,” I read. “Don’t know why Miss Takahashi want to be on my visitors’ list, but can’t feel any worse about what happened than I already do. Guess any visitors are better than no visitors. Sincerely, Becky Wallace. P. S. Last time you all was here you asked if I need anything. Could sure use some hand cream or the like. I’m working in the kitchen and my hands red all the time. But you can’t bring it. Has to come straight from the store.”

  No one spoke for several moments while I refolded the letter. Hoshi looked down at her own hands, long and smooth. “Yes, I will go.”

  Guess that means Denny and I are driving to Lincoln one of these Saturdays.

  “What dat she need?” Chanda piped up. “Maybe we chip in and buy her two or t’ree t’ings—hand cream or fancy bath stuff. You know, be a Christmas present.”

  Edesa nodded. “Si. I will contribute, but it would be easiest to send it with Hoshi and whoever goes to visit her, wouldn’t it?”

  Yo-Yo leaned back in her chair and stuck a leg out. “Can’t. Security reasons. Any gifts gotta come straight from the store or get ordered on the Internet or something. An’ forget the fancy bath stuff. Gang showers ain’t conducive to beauty baths.”

  Ruth groaned. “Now that’s a reason not to get yourself arrested.”

  “Well, I’ll be glad to order something and get it sent,” Stu jumped in, “but I’ll need her address. Just give me that envelope, Jodi.” She held out her hand for the letter but shook her head when several people reached for their purses. “Later, okay? I’ll buy something then figure out how much everybody owes. If we all chip in, should only be a few dollars each.”

  I handed over the envelope and remembered: I was going to ask Stu if she’d like to come for Thanksgiving. Humph! Maybe she’d like to organize the whole meal?

  38

  Stu arrived at one o’clock sharp on Thanksgiving Day, her silver Celica loaded with a veggie tray, a big bag of chips, two kinds of dip, homemade cranberry bread, small paper plates with a Thanksgiving motif, and a tin of mixed nuts. “Hey. Real food,” Josh salivated, helping her carry the goodies into the living room. He had the bag of chips opened and a handful into his mouth before I even got the front door closed.

  “You didn’t have to do that, Stu,” I said, watching her
dump the chips into a basket she’d brought along and arrange the snacks artfully on our beat-up coffee table. “Didn’t I tell you to just bring yourself?”

  “I know, but you can always use munchies on Thanksgiving Day—right, Josh?” She beamed at my eighteen-year-old Hollow Leg, who was now sampling the tin of mixed nuts.

  Not if you want your kids to actually eat dinner at two, I grumbled to myself. Yet I had to admit the cranberry bread looked tempting. I got a cutting board and bread knife from the kitchen and cut a thin slice. Oh my, to die for. “Thanks, Stu. Yummy. I’ve got mulled cider. Want some?”

  By the time Amanda and I got back with mugs of steaming cider—Amanda had insisted on garnishing each mug with a cinnamon stick, which of course didn’t want to be found—Stu had curled up in the recliner by the front windows with a paper plate of veggies and dip. “Mark and Hoshi not here yet?” she asked, taking a mug from Amanda.

  “Not yet. I told them one o’clock, so they should be here any minute.”

  As it turned out, Denny had finished grilling the turkey outside, stuck it into the oven to keep warm, and the hands on the clock were nudging up toward two o’clock before the doorbell finally rang.

  “Sorry we’re late, Jodi,” Mark Smith said, ushering Hoshi inside then thrusting a large bouquet of mixed mums into my arms—eye-popping yellows and oranges and rust against a bed of leather leaf and delicate baby’s breath. “Hope we didn’t hold anything up.” He helped Hoshi take off her long coat, adding it to the pile on the coat tree in our entryway.

  “Mark! They’re beautiful!” I said, taking the flowers. “You aren’t that late . . . though we were starting to worry that maybe something had happened.” I headed for the kitchen to hunt up a vase, passing Amanda in the hall carrying a tray with two mugs of cider on it. I gave her a thumbs-up. “Help yourselves to some snacks in the living room,” I called back over my shoulder. “Denny! Mark’s here!”

  It took me a good five minutes to cut all the stems and get the mums arranged into a vase, but it certainly dressed up our dining-room table. I needed to remember that little nicety: bring a hostess gift when invited to dinner. At Uptown Community, we tended to pooh-pooh that mentality, opting for just-come-on-over-and-bring-yourselves simplicity. But the flowers were nice.Thoughtful. Gallant.

  When I got back to the living room, Hoshi was saying, “ . . . stopped by a policeman and made to get out of the car. I was worried for Dr. Smith.”

  “What’s this?” Denny sat forward on the couch.

  Mark quickly shook his head. “Nothing. Just one of those things.” He smiled at me—a little forced, I thought. “Are you calling us to dinner, Jodi?”

  “Well, yes. Everything’s ready. Might as well eat.” But I definitely wanted to hear more about what happened. Sheesh. That’s all Hoshi needed was another scare.

  Stu, Denny, and Amanda helped me put the food on the table: grilled turkey (Denny’s big idea, of course), candied yams, stuffing that hadn’t been “stuffed” in the turkey, fresh green beans with almonds, store-bought dinner rolls, mashed potatoes, and gravy. I had to cheat on the gravy, though, because I didn’t have any turkey drippings this year. After everyone had found a seat, I lit the candles, and we joined hands around the table to sing the Doxology: “Praise God from whom all blessings flow . . .” I grinned to myself as Hoshi’s sweet soprano, Stu’s alto, and Mark Smith’s deep baritone added to the Baxter bash of voices. We actually sounded decent.

  After the “Amen,” I opened my mouth to give passing instructions, when Mark said, “Would you all like to sing the African-American version of the Doxology? Same words.”

  “Cool.” Amanda grinned.

  And so we sang it again, but this time Mark started low and slow: “Praise . . . God . . . from . . . whom . . . a-all . . . bleessings . . . flow . . .” The rest of us chimed in as we caught on until the last phrase swelled to a stately crescendo. We all sat there after the “Amen,” still holding hands, awed at the fresh power of the old words. The same way I felt when I heard Mahalia Jackson slow down “Amazing Grace,” savoring each word, each truth.

  “Sweet,” Josh said. “Let’s eat.” Everybody laughed and started passing platters and bowls.

  “What? No macaroni and cheese?” Mark said, filling his plate and winking at Amanda.

  “Macaroni and cheese? At Thanksgiving?” Amanda asked.

  “Hey. Thanksgiving wasn’t Thanksgiving without mac ’n’ cheese as I was coming up.” He grinned, spreading his thin moustache, which dipped down on either side of his mouth and outlined his chin in a faint goatee. “Turkey and ham and mac ’n’ cheese and two kinds of sweet potatoes, and greens—not to mention sweet-potato pie at the end of the food chain. Add two dozen relatives dropping in all day long to graze at my grandma’s table, bringing all kinds of baked things and mysterious things dripping in sauce.”

  My mouth was probably hanging open. I had imagined Mark Smith growing up in a wealthy upper-class home, sort of like The Cosby Show.

  “Sounds scrumptious,” Stu said. “Did you grow up in the South?”

  Mark turned out to be a wonderful storyteller about growing up in small-town Georgia. Amanda and Josh hung on every word as he described the “go-carts” he and his friends built out of baby carriage wheels and orange boxes, racing them down red-dirt hills and smashing them—and themselves—into trees that got in the way. “Shouldn’t even be alive today,” he laughed.

  From what I gathered, he and a younger brother were mostly raised by his grandmother and a great aunt. He didn’t offer what happened to his mother, and we didn’t ask.

  “You’ve come a long way, Mark—small-town Georgia to a major university,” Stu said.

  Mark grinned wryly. “You could say that. First person in my family to go to college, much less get a Ph.D. Grandma and Auntie Bell told me once a day, if not twice, that God put a gift in me, and it’d be a sin not to be the ‘somebody’ I was created to be. I’ll probably never know what they sacrificed to get me there, but you should’ve seen those two when I got my doctorate. Jumping up and down, weeping and carrying on—though Grandma made it very clear I still had to wipe my feet at the front door and say ‘Yes, ma’am’ at her house.”

  That got a chuckle from the rest of us. But even as we laughed, I noticed a small frown gather on Mark’s face, and he pushed his potatoes around absently. “Then there are days I realize we haven’t come very far, after all,” he said softly.

  The table got very quiet. What did he mean? Civil rights? Progress for blacks? Of course we’d come a long way . . . hadn’t we?

  “I think,” Hoshi said in her quiet voice, “Dr. Smith refers to what happened today with the police.”

  “Tell us what happened, Mark,” Denny said. “It’s important for us to know.”

  Nony’s husband laid down his fork and sighed. “Just one of those things, really.” He half-laughed and shook his head. “Shouldn’t be surprised, but I was. Since our dinner date wasn’t until one o’clock, I decided to run up to Highland Park Hospital to see a colleague of mine who is recovering from surgery. Hoshi asked if she could ride along instead of picking her up later, since this man is one of her professors too. I was glad for the company and decided to drive up Sheridan Road—you know, to gawk at all the big mansions along the North Shore, show Hoshi how the upper crust really lives. I actually forgot about ‘driving black’ in an all-white area—stupid me. Next thing I knew lights were pulling me over. Cops made me get out, patted me down, ran my license plate . . . and got very vague when I asked why I’d been stopped.”

  Tiny beads of sweat gathered on Mark Smith’s face, and his jaw muscles tensed. “They even asked Hoshi if she was ‘all right.’ Bless her—she got indignant and said, ‘Of course I am all right. We are going to the hospital to visit a sick friend!’ ” He quoted her in that “correct English” way of hers with a brief smile. “But I admit to a moment of panic. If they’d kept asking questions and discovered she was a student and I was h
er teacher . . .” He threw his hands open. “Well, there you have it. They let us go with a warning to ‘drive careful, now.’ ”

  Denny was incredulous. “What did they think—that you’d stolen the car or something?”

  “Dr. Smith,” Amanda said, her brow creased with confusion, “why didn’t you just tell them you’re a professor at Northwestern? They probably got you confused with somebody else.”

  He grimaced. “Unfortunately, you’re right about that, Amanda. Once I step away from Northwestern’s campus, I’m just another black man. Whatever those particular cops think about blacks in general, well, that’s what they see.” He clapped his hands. “Enough about that! I think I need some more of those sweet potatoes. Almost as good as my grandma’s, Jodi. Not quite, but almost.” His teasing grin was back.

  I swallowed my mouthful of candied yams with difficulty. Just another black man . . . That was what the man who’d heard me lock my car doors had probably been thinking: “All she sees is just another black man.”

  AFTER DINNER, Amanda snared Stu, Hoshi, and Josh into a game of King’s Cribbage that she’d gotten from the grandparents last Christmas. To my surprise, Mark joined Denny and me in the kitchen, rolling up his sleeves and scrubbing pots while I put away food and Denny loaded the dishwasher. I don’t know why, but suddenly I blurted out my whole awkward encounter with the man getting into his parked car.

  “To be honest, Mark,” I said, standing in the middle of our not-too-big kitchen with a box of plastic wrap in one hand and the remains of the green beans in the other, “I waver between feeling badly about how I made him feel . . . and feeling like he was judging me too. I go over it again and again in my mind, imagining that the man is white or Asian or Italian or from Mars, and I still think I would have locked my car doors.”