by Neta Jackson
To learn more about Kim Cash Tate and her novels,
visit her website at KimCashTate.com.
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Yada Yada Prayer Group!
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An excerpt from
The Yada Yada Prayer Group
The lobby of the embassy suites hotel in Chicago’s northwest suburbs was packed with women. An intense hum ros and fell, like a tree full of cicadas. “Girl! I didn’t know you werecoming!” . . . “Where’s Shirlese? I’m supposed to be roomin’ with her.” . . . “Look at you! That outfit is fine!” . . . “Pool? Not after spending forty-five dollars at the salon this morning, honey.Who you kiddin’?”
Avis and I wiggled our Mutt and Jeff selves through the throng of perfumed bodies and presented our reservations at the desk.
“Jodi Baxter? And . . . Avis Johnson. You’re in Suite 206.” The clerk handed over two plastic key cards. “If you’re here for the Chicago Women’s Conference”—she added with a knowing smile—“you can pick up your registration packet at that table right over there.”
Avis let me forge a path back through the cicada convention to a long table with boxes of packets marked A–D, E–H, all the way to W–Z. As we were handed our packets emblazoned with CWC in curlicue calligraphy, I noticed a bright gold sticker in the righthand corner of mine with the number 26 written in black marker. I glanced at the packet being given to the woman standing next to me at the A-D box who gave her name as “Adams, Paulette”—but her gold sticker had the number 12.
“What’s this?” I asked the plump girl behind the registration table, pointing to the number.
“Oh, that.” Miss Helpful smiled sweetly. “They’ll explain the numbers at the first session. Don’t worry about it . . . Can I help you?” She turned to the next person in line.
Humph. I didn’t want to wait till the first session. I was nervous enough surrounded by women who seemed as comfortable in a crowd of strangers as if it were Thanksgiving at Grandma’s. I didn’t want any “surprises.” Avis waved her packet at me over the heads of five women crowding up to the table between us and nodded toward the elevators. We met just as the door to Elevator Two pinged open, and we wheeled our suitcases inside.
“What number did you get?”
“Number?”
“On your packet, right-hand corner, gold sticker.”
“Oh.” Avis turned over the packet she was clutching in one hand, along with her plastic key card, purse strap, and travel-pack of tissues. “Twenty-six.What’s it for?”
I smiled big and relaxed. “I don’t know. They’ll tell us the first session.”Whatever it was, I was with Avis.
As it turned out, we didn’t need our key cards. The door to Suite 206 stood ajar. Avis and I looked at each other and stole inside like the Three Bears coming home after their walk in the woods. The sitting room part of the suite was empty. However, through the French doors leading into the bedroom, we could see “Goldilocks” sitting on the king-size bed painting her toenails while WGCI gospel music blared from the bedside radio.
The stranger looked up. “Oh, hi!” She waved the tiny polish brush in our direction. “Don’t mind me. Make yourselves at home.”
We stood and stared. The woman was average height, dark-skinned, and lean, with a crown of little black braids sporting a rainbow of beads falling down all around her head. Thirties, maybe forties; it was hard to tell. Her smile revealed a row of perfect teeth, but a scar down the side of her face belied an easy life.
Avis was braver than I was and said what I was thinking. “Uh, are we in the right room? We didn’t know we had another roommate.”
The woman cocked her head. “Oh! They didn’t tell you at registration? Suite 206, right?” She capped the nail polish and bounced off the bed. “Florida Hickman—call me Flo.” She stuck out her hand. “Avis and Jodi, right? That’s what they tol’ me downstairs. Anyway, I was going to room with this sister, see, but she had to cancel, and I didn’t want to pay for a whole suite all by myself. Had to sell the kids just to get here as it is.” She laughed heartily. Then her smile faded and she cocked her head. “You don’t mind, do you? I mean . . . I don’t need this whole king-size football field to myself. Unless . . .” Her forehead wrinkled. “You want me to sleep on the fold-out couch?”
My good-girl training rushed to my mouth before I knew what I was saying. “Oh, no, no, that’s okay.We don’t mind.” Do we, Avis? I was afraid to look in Avis’s direction.We had pretty much agreed driving out that since it was a suite, we could each have a “room” to ourselves. Avis was definitely not the stay-up-late, sleepover type.
“Oh. Well, sure,” Avis said. “It’s just that no one told us.” I didn’t know Avis all that well, but that wasn’t enthusiasm in her voice. “I’ll sleep on the fold-out,” she added, wheeling her suitcase over to the luggage stand.
I noticed that she didn’t say “we.” I stood uncertainly. But our new friend had generously offered the other side of the mammoth bed, so I dragged my suitcase into the bedroom and plopped it on the floor on the other side of Florida’s nail salon.
Well, this was going to be interesting. I had thought it would be quite an adventure to get to know Avis as my roommate for the weekend. As members of the same church, this was a chance to get beyond the niceties of Sunday morning and brush our teeth in the same sink. But I hadn’t counted on a third party. God knows I wanted to broaden my horizons, but this was moving a little faster than I felt ready for.
As I hung up the dress I hoped would pass for “after five” in the narrow closet, I suddenly had a thought. “Florida, what number is on your registration packet?”
Florida finished her big toe and looked at it critically. “Number? . . . Oh, you mean that gold sticker thing on the front?” She looked over the side of the bed where she’d dumped her things. “Um . . . twenty-six.Why?”
about the author
Neta Jackson’s award-winning Yada books have sold roughly 700,000 copies and are spawning prayer groups across the country. She and her husband, Dave, are also an award-winning writing team, best known for the Trailblazer Books—a 40-volume series of historical fiction about great Christian heroes with 1.5 million in sales—and Hero Tales: A Family Treasury of True Stories from the Lives of Christian Heroes (vols. 1–4). They live in the Chicago metropolitan area, where the Yada stories are set.