Who Do I Lean On?

by Neta Jackson

  “Okay, God,” I sighed, “maybe I didn’t exactly acknowledge You last night, but You did show me the right path. It’s just . . . hard, You know? I really like Lee, and I get so lonely sometimes. I need You to walk with me and show me the way, because it’s not always easy to recognize the right path.”

  Hide My Word in your heart, Gabby. Then you’ll know the way. The words seemed so clear, I felt startled, and for a nanosecond wondered if someone else was in the room. But then I realized it was the same quiet Voice that had whispered in my spirit, Come to Me.

  Hide My Word . . . well, I had to read it first. Fortified with my Bible and two more cups of coffee and cream, I was still curled up on the window seat in my silk lounging pants and chemise when the Baxter minivan pulled up in front of the six-flat and the whole Baxter tribe piled out, along with Estelle and her housemate, Stu. “Good morning!” I yelled out the open window. “Looks like a painting party! Give me five minutes and I’ll join you!”

  By the time I pulled on some old sweats and a paint-spattered T-shirt and joined the crew, more help had arrived, bringing additional brushes, rollers, and paint pans. I recognized several of the “sisters” from Jodi’s Yada Yada Prayer Group . . . the spiky-haired girl they called Yo-Yo, the couple Josh and Edesa were currently renting their tiny studio from—Florida and Carl Hickman—and the single mom who’d won all that money in the Illinois Lottery. Candy or Chancy or Chanda, something like that.

  Josh took off in his folks’ minivan. “Where’s he going?” I asked Jodi, staggering up the stairs with a couple of buckets of paint in each hand.

  “Going to pick up some of the youth group from SouledOut who said they’d be willing to help out.”

  Shoot. I wished P.J. and Paul were here, but even if they weren’t with their dad, P.J. had another meet out west somewhere— Peoria? As soon as we got the paint distributed to the right rooms, I was going to go pick up Tanya and Precious from Manna House. I was sure they didn’t want to miss this party.

  Most of the painting crew left by suppertime, but Josh and Edesa and the senior Baxters were back Sunday afternoon after church, in spite of some threatening thunderstorms. “We can only stay a couple of hours,” Jodi said, “because SouledOut is doing the Sunday Evening Praise at Manna House this evening— every third Sunday, you know.”

  I nodded. But to tell the truth, I hadn’t been back to Sunday Evening Praise since I’d moved out of the shelter and gotten my sons back. Getting them to church on Sunday morning was a major accomplishment as it was.

  Josh sweet-talked P.J. and Paul into helping him paint the long hallway in 1A, and a few curious questions got P.J. chatting almost nonstop about the cross-country meet in Peoria the day before. I grabbed a roller and worked with them, too, just to be with the boys and eavesdrop on their conversation.

  “So what do you do at a meet on a day like today—you know, rain and thunderstorms?” Josh asked.

  P.J. dipped his roller in the pan of ivory paint and rolled every which way. “If it’s just rain, we run anyway. But I think they call it off if it’s a lightning storm. Which would have been a bummer yesterday, since it took three hours to get there!”

  With four of us painting the hallway, we got it done in record time and the boys moseyed back to our apartment while Josh and I cleaned brushes in the bathtub of the empty apartment. Suddenly he stopped, listened, and turned off the spigot. “What’s that?”

  I chuckled. “Just Paul playing around on his keyboard.”

  I started to turn on the gushing water once more, but Josh held up his hand. “Wait.” He listened some more and then grinned. “He’s good.”

  “Yeah. I guess. He and Jermaine started practicing after school at Manna House.”

  “Really?” Josh got a funny look on his face.

  As soon as we finished cleaning the rollers, brushes, and paint pans, he made a beeline for our apartment and I followed. “Hey, Paul, you’re pretty good,” Josh said. “You want a gig, like tonight?”

  Paul just stared at him, confused.

  Josh laughed. “SouledOut is doing Sunday Evening Praise at Manna House tonight and our keyboardist got sick. You want the job?”

  Paul shook his head. “Aw, I don’t know church music. I just fool around.”

  “Do you play by ear? I mean, pick up tunes you hear?”

  “Well, sure. I do that all the time.”

  “Well, you’re my man, then! We have a guitarist who can play the chords, and singers who carry the tune. You can just pick it up.”

  Paul was staring at Josh wide-eyed. “Uh, could I call Jermaine Turner? I mean, he’s real good. Maybe between the two of us . . .”

  “Sure.” Josh grinned at me. “Can you get Paul there by quarter to six?”

  I’d been listening to this conversation trying to keep my jaw from dropping. But it looked like we’d be going to church again tonight.

  chapter 35

  I couldn’t believe Paul and Jermaine. With each new song sung by SouledOut’s praise team, the young teens developed more confidence, catching the right key and playing along with the melody at least half the time. The residents loved it, clapping to the music and giving shouts of encouragement! Most of them knew the boys or had seen them around Manna House often enough.

  A heavy thunderstorm let loose right in the middle of the service, drowning out the music. But I did hear the front door buzzer and ran to let in whoever it was before they got caught in the deluge—and nearly got bowled over by a wet, yellow furball jumping all over me, whining and licking my face, followed by Lucy Tucker pulling her dripping wire cart into the foyer.

  Oof ! Get down, Dandy! Hey there, Lucy,” I gasped, trying “to keep my voice hushed in the foyer. “Ohh, you’re all muddy, Dandy. Get down!”

  “Whaddya ’spect when it’s rainin’ buckets out there?” Lucy dug around in her wire cart. “Got a towel in here someplace . . .” She rummaged in a black trash bag and pulled out a large towel that had definitely seen better days. “Here, why don’tcha dry him off while I get somethin’ dry on.”

  “Lucy, wait! They’re doing Sunday Evening Pra—”

  Too late. She’d already pushed through the double doors pulling the cart behind her. A male voice was speaking—maybe one of the praise team, giving a testimony or something—but I still heard Lucy mumbling and her cart squeaking as they crossed the big room. I wasn’t surprised when Paul came dashing through the double doors into the foyer to see Dandy—and the jumping and whining and licking started all over again.

  “Paul! Shhh. Here . . .” I handed him the ragged towel. “Dry him off, okay?”

  Somehow we got Dandy dried off and most of the wet mud on the tile floor mopped up. As the three of us slipped back into Shepherd’s Fold, Dandy seemed content to just lie on Paul’s feet at the back of the room as the testimonies and short teaching followed. When the praise team got up to do one last song, Jermaine beckoned wildly for Paul to come back and join him at the keyboards.

  When Sunday Evening Praise was over, the shelter residents and guests from SouledOut gathered around the coffee cart helping themselves to store-bought cookies and lemonade. Denny Baxter and one of the SouledOut couples—Carl and Florida Hickman, who’d been at the six-flat yesterday helping to paint—were pushing chairs and couches back into place when Lucy came back in, dressed in a different layering of ill-fitting clothing, but at least these were dry. Coming to a halt in the middle of the room, the gray-haired bag lady squinted her eyes and swiveled her head as if looking for something. “Where is it?” she demanded.

  “Where’s what?” Precious helped herself to another Oreo cookie and popped it into her mouth.

  “Martha’s plaque! A big mural on the wall! The name in lights . . . somethin’!” Lucy planted her fists on her hips. “This room got a new name, ain’t it? But I don’t see nothin’ yet sayin’ ya named it after Martha Shepherd.”

  “Oh, Lucy,” I broke in. “It’s only been a few weeks since we chose the name. We
haven’t had time—”

  “Somebody say somethin’ about needin’ a mural on the wall?” Florida, Jodi’s Yada Yada friend, poked her head into the group. The African-American woman was maybe ten years older than Precious, who was thirty, but she had the same in-your-face way of talking, as well as a scar running down the side of her face. The woman had been around.

  “Well, Lucy was just wanting something in this room to let people know why we named it Shepherd’s Fold,” I said.

  “Which was . . . ?” Florida pressed, simultaneously calling out, “Hey, Jodi, any more of that lemonade left?”

  So I found myself explaining why Manna House had renamed the multipurpose room after my mother, as Precious and Lucy and several of the other residents chimed in bits and pieces of the story.

  “Hm. Plaque would be nice with the lady’s name an’ all, but . . .” Florida Hickman surveyed the room, much as Lucy had done. “That wall there.” She waved a hand at the wall opposite the double doors leading into the foyer. “As people come in, it’d be real nice to have a mural of the Good Shepherd, don’tcha think?”

  “Uh-huh” . . . “That’s it” . . . “You talkin’ now, girl,” murmured several of the residents.

  Florida turned to Jodi and smirked. “You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?”

  “That’s the trouble ’round here,” Lucy grumbled, jerking her cart out of the circle that had formed around her. “People do too much thinkin’ an’ not enough doin’ . . . Where’s Dandy?” She stalked over to where Paul was brushing the dog’s matted coat with a plastic brush from the Lost and Found. “Hey, now, that looks real good.”

  I followed, realizing leaving Dandy behind when we went home wasn’t going to be easy for Paul. It never was.

  He looked up at Lucy, his eyes challenging. “I saw you, you know.”

  “Did ya now!” Lucy said.

  “Yeah. Saw you last week, saw you again yesterday in the park outside Richmond Towers where my dad lives. Like you’re spying on us or something.”

  “Paul!” I gasped.

  Lucy held up a hand before I could say anything else. “You got a real smart kid there, Miss Gabby. Real smart . . . C’mon, Dandy. Time fer us ta be goin’.”

  To my surprise, Dandy obediently got up, gave Paul a lick on the face, and followed Lucy out into the front foyer. When we left the shelter five minutes later, the rain had stopped and Lucy and Dandy were nowhere to be seen.

  Paul was triumphant. “Did you hear that, Mom? Lucy didn’t deny it! She even called me a smart boy, maybe ’cause I figured it out.”

  “Nonsense.” I assured Paul that Lucy wasn’t “spying” on them. Why would she? It was actually a rude thing to say, did he think of that? She probably thought his accusation was so farfetched it wasn’t worth responding to . . . but Paul had his mind made up, so I finally dropped it.

  Boys!

  That third week of September started to feel like fall, as the temperature dipped into the forties at night and the rain continued off and on for a couple of days. Both boys were settling into their school and homework routines—not to mention Paul and Jermaine seemed determined to practice music on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons in the shelter’s rec room. It tickled me to hear snatches of the praise songs from Sunday night in their growing repertoire.

  The bed list at Manna House also began to fill up because of the change in weather, meaning a new crop of residents to introduce to the various activities we were already offering— and now that fall was here, definitely time to initiate some new ones. I told the staff I wanted to schedule another brainstorming session to hear needs and ideas from the residents, and started making calls to get some field trips on the calendar. The Shedd Aquarium . . . Adler Planetarium . . . Field Museum of Natural History . . .

  “Don’t forget all those requests to open up the afterschool program to the neighborhood kids,” Carolyn reminded me.

  Expand Afterschool Program, I wrote on my to-do list. This Saturday was the monthly Manna House board meeting. I’d try to get it on their agenda. And good grief ! Had they gotten the go-ahead yet from the city for HUD’s Supportive Housing partnership between Manna House and “Gabby the Landlady” to create this fledgling House of Hope? My closing was next week and people wanted to move in!

  Definitely needed to meet with the board this weekend.

  Estelle was back on deck for all her activities this week, including her knitting club during the nurse’s visit on Wednesday morning. “Harry doing okay?” I asked, bringing her a fresh cup of sweetened coffee while she juggled the task of picking up somebody’s dropped stitches while handling the clipboard with sign-ups of residents waiting to see Delores Enriquez behind the portable partition. “And how’s your son?”

  “Both of ’em comin’ along, comin’ along—if they’d both just do what they’re supposed to do. Humph. What I got are two immature boys trying to be tough guys . . . Here ya go, honey.” She handed a wad of knitting back to one of the new residents, and then picked up her own crocheting from the bulging yarn bag.

  “What are you making?”

  “Another hat for Lucy. I figure the first one is definitely gone and buried.” She grinned at me and I grinned back. Lucy had tucked her original Estelle-creation into my mother’s casket as a final farewell gift to her friend.

  “So what’s this?” I picked up a finished crocheted hat sticking out of her bag made of multicolored yarn with a cute wavy brim and crocheted flower on the side.

  “Made that for Jodi Baxter. Her birthday was yesterday, but Yada Yada isn’t goin’ to celebrate it till we meet next Sunday—Oh, hey there, Delores. You ready for the next sign-up?” Estelle looked at the clipboard. “Sunny Davis! You’re up!”

  I moved back toward my office to let Estelle do her job. Jodi’s birthday was yesterday? How did I not know that? Some friend I was.

  I called Jodi that night. “Happy belated birthday, you sneaky thing you. Why didn’t you tell me it was your birthday?”

  She groaned in my ear. “When you’re closer to fifty than to forty, you’re not exactly announcing it to the world. Can’t believe I’m forty-seven. Sheesh.”

  “That’s not so old. I’m going to be forty next month . . . oh, you’re right. That does sound really old! Still, look at it this way— you’ve earned a celebration!”

  “Well, Josh and Edesa and Gracie came over last night with Chinese takeout and Denny picked up a pie at Baker’s Square. At least I didn’t have to cook.”

  “Sounds like nobody cooked.”

  She laughed. “Hey, been meaning to ask, what’s going on with Philip? Last I heard you were pretty worried he was mixed up with a loan shark or something.”

  “Don’t know. Haven’t heard from him since we talked a week ago at P.J.’s cross-country meet. Maybe I overreacted. It’s probably okay. He hasn’t said anything more about changing the visitation schedule either, so I’m presuming he’s dropped it.”

  “Okay. But don’t stop praying for him, Gabby. God knows what’s happening, even if we don’t.”

  I sighed. “Yeah. Thanks. Guess I need that reminder. Doesn’t come natural to me to pray for Philip . . . but you’re right. God knows.”

  “Oh. Meant to tell you I have to cancel my typing class at the shelter this Saturday. I’ve got a parent open house at school I’ve got to get ready for. But I’ll see you on Sunday—you are still becoming a member at SouledOut this Sunday, right?”

  “Yes—if I don’t chicken out. Every time I think about getting up in front of everybody, I get jelly knees. Hey . . . will you stand up with me?”

  Jodi laughed. “You’re not getting married!”

  “Feels like it. Please?”

  “Sure. Of course I will. See you then!”

  Josh Baxter showed up at the six-flat Thursday evening to do some trim work and said they were cooking up another painting party on Saturday to finish up the two apartments. “But I was wondering . . . is Paul home? I want to ask him something.”
>
  “Sure. Come on in. The boys are doing homework in the dining room. Paul! Josh Baxter wants to talk to you!”

  “Thanks. This won’t take long.”

  I hovered in the kitchen, making a snack while Josh grabbed a chair and straddled it backward, chatting with P.J. and Paul for a few minutes. Then I heard . . . “You guys coming to the Youth Jam this Saturday night at SouledOut?”

  “Yeah, guess so,” P.J. said. “Mom? Okay with you?”

  I stuck my head around the door. “Sure. They announced it last Sunday, right? Kind of an outreach party to neighborhood kids?”

  Josh nodded. “Yep. And I’ve got a favor to ask, Paul. You and Jermaine did a great job last Sunday at the Sunday Evening Praise at Manna House. So I wondered if you wanted to play for the Youth Jam.”

  Paul seemed speechless. P.J. snorted. “You’ve got to be kidding. The electronic twins here? Oh brother.”

  Josh grinned. “I’m not kidding. We want as many kids involved as possible running the show. Whaddya think, Paul?”

  “Well . . . sure,” Paul sputtered. “But only if Jermaine can do it too. He and his Aunt Mabel don’t come to SouledOut, you know.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Lots of kids will be there whose folks don’t attend SouledOut.” Josh unstraddled the chair with his long legs. “Okay! I’ll call Jermaine and let you know if it’s a go. Bye, Mrs. Fairbanks . . . um, Gabby. See you guys Saturday night.”

  P.J. rolled his eyes. “I forgot. I think I’m busy Saturday.”

  The phone rang as I started after Josh to let him out. “Get that, would you, P.J.?” At the front door I said, “Ignore P.J. He’s got a burr under his saddle.”

  Josh just grinned. “No problem. Maybe I’ll keep him busy on the soundboard. He’s a smart kid—he’ll pick it up real fast.”

  When I got back to the dining room, both boys looked glum. “What’s the matter? Who was on the phone?”

  “Dad.” P.J. shrugged, playing with his pen. “Says he can’t pick us up this weekend, something ‘important’ came up.”