The Yada Yada Prayer Group Gets Rolling

by Neta Jackson

  Chanda squirmed. “Aw, irie, mon! It’s all good. For we too!”

  Edesa, her nutmeg skin glowing in the warm evening, leaned forward with a wide smile. “I, too, want to say gracias to Chanda for her encouragement. She made a generous donation to the new Manna House Foundation, and promised matching funds to anything else we can raise in the next two years. We can start building this summer!”

  “Awright, Chanda!” Yo-Yo punched the air, spurring a general round of clapping and hooting and praise to God.

  Chanda was genuinely embarrassed. “Mi tink dat was supposed to be anonymous, Edesa girl. But since you got such a big mout’, mi say dat dis group help mi see dat lottery money belong to God anyway.” She folded her arms across her bosom as if to say, An dat’s dat.

  I watched Chanda, realizing what a wonderful, funky sense of humor God had. He could use anyone and anything, no matter how ordinary or unlikely—in fact, He seemed to like “ordinary” and “unlikely” the best!—to work out His grace in this world.

  Nony spoke. “That word is for me tonight, Avis. To press toward the goal. To set aside every weight. To run with endurance.” She pulled a long envelope from her bag. “Mark got a reply from the University of KwaZulu-Natal—”

  Eyes widened. “Did he . . .?” several started to say but did not finish.

  Nony smiled and shook her head. “No, he has not yet been accepted. But they are interested, and would like to interview him in person, so we—”

  We? I had expected her to say, “So he is flying to South Africa for an interview.”

  “—are leaving for South Africa as soon as the boys are out of school in June, as we had planned before.”

  A collective gasp seemed to suck the air out of the room for several moments. But Nony’s heart was in her smile. “Mark says it does not matter if he is offered a job at the university or not. If God is calling us to South Africa as a family, we will better know what our options are if we are there in person. All of us. Northwestern has extended his sabbatical for two more years. Praise You, Jesus.” Her eyes closed and her hand lifted in silent praise. Just as suddenly, her eyes opened, and she turned to Hoshi. “We have asked Hoshi to consider going with us when she graduates in June. She has become a much-loved member of our family, and there is quite an international community in KwaZulu-Natal, many Asians as well. But . . . it is up to her, of course.”

  Now my heart really started to flutter. Nony and Mark leaving? Hoshi maybe leaving too? What was going to happen to Yada Yada? I knew God wanted us to reach out beyond our little group. But did that have to mean losing each other?

  Someone said, “Hoshi? What are you thinking?”

  Hoshi seemed surprisingly calm at such a momentous crossroad. “That is why I wanted to come to Yada Yada tonight, to ask all of you to pray with me about my future. I had always planned to return to Japan, but”—her almond eyes saddened—“as you know, my family has turned against me. I am grateful for Nonyameko and Dr. Smith’s invitation to accompany them. It is true; they are my family now. But . . .” She grew thoughtful. “Befriending Sara and getting acquainted with what ReJOYce is doing on campus has touched me deeply. There are so many lonely, empty souls on the Northwestern campus. I feel drawn to work with them, but . . .” She took a deep breath. “I don’t know what God wants me to do. So I ask you, dear sisters, to pray.”

  “Exactly what we should do.” Avis reached for the hands on either side of her. “What other prayer requests do we have tonight?”

  “Oh, help me, Jesus!” Florida’s cry made me jump. She’d been strangely silent all evening, but suddenly pent-up words burst out. “Pray with me, sisters. Chris’s final hearing is a week from Wednesday, last week of the month. I can hardly sleep nights, worried about my baby.” Her head wagged from side to side; she thumped her chest. “He didn’t do nothin’, I know it. I believe that with all my heart. Pray, sisters. Pray that the judge will see the truth.” Her head wagged harder. “Don’t know what I’ll do if he—”

  The tears started to flow.

  I felt torn. I’d almost forgotten that Chris’s hearing was coming up! He hadn’t said anything to me during play practices; maybe he wasn’t supposed to talk about it. I wanted Florida to be excited about coming to see the play, but Chris hadn’t wanted me to tell her what he was doing. With Florida all torn up about the upcoming hearing, how could I share my excitement at what God was doing with this “homegrown” play—in my life, in the lives of the boys taking part? And I needed prayer. Oh boy, did I still need prayer! God would have to pull it together or it would fall flat.

  But several sisters had surrounded Florida; others were laying hands on Hoshi and Nonyameko and starting to pray. I blinked back hot tears, joined others on their knees beside Florida, and laid a hand on her shaking shoulder as Yada Yada pelted heaven.

  Lord, hear my prayer too. Please, don’t forget this play . . .

  AS WE BROKE UP OUR CIRCLE, Ruth asked, “So. We meet where next time?”

  “I’m next on the list,” Avis admitted. “But that’s the weekend of Peter’s and my first anniversary, and we might—”

  “Your anniversary?!” Yo-Yo screeched. “Hey, guys, know what that means? It’s Yada Yada’s anniversary too! Two years—and we haven’t killed each other yet.” People started to laugh. Had it really been a year since Avis “jumped the broom” with Peter Douglass? Two years since God had thrown us together at the Chicago Women’s Conference as Prayer Group 26?

  “Our anniversary, too, Yo-Yo.” Becky grinned. “We got baptized in Lake Michigan right after Avis’s wedding last year—remember?”

  “Yowza.” Yo-Yo high-fived everyone within reach. “We gotta do somethin’ special. Really party—hey! Delores. Your man doin’ a gig at La Fiesta that weekend?”

  Delores shrugged. “Not sure. I’ll find out.”

  Florida shook her head. “I dunno . . . might not feel like partyin’ if Chris’s hearing don’t go right.”

  I grabbed her and whispered in her ear. “Have faith, sister. Have faith!”

  42

  I knew putting in a full day at Bethune Elementary, and then driving downtown to the juvenile detention center would stretch me thin as razor wire. Before I collapsed into bed Monday night, I e-mailed a frantic SOS to Yada Yada for prayer support, then buried myself beneath the covers.

  On Wednesday, I grabbed a few Israel and New Breed CDs to keep my praise going on the commute. But when I bumbled into the all-purpose room at the JDC with my bag of scripts and a box of props, nine sour faces waited for me—and the principal.

  “What? Where’s Jeremy?”

  “That’s what I came to tell you. He had his disposition yesterday. The judge gave him two years for dealing; second offense. They took him to the Illinois youth prison in Joliet this morning.”

  “But . . . he was doing the Dr. King speech!” My heart felt like it was flopping down around my ankles. “Couldn’t they have waited till next week?” I sank into the nearest chair. “Sheesh. Way to take the guts right out of our play.”

  The principal gave a sympathetic shrug. “I’m really sorry, Mrs. Baxter. Do the best you can. I’m sure the parents will understand.” She slipped out of the room.

  I closed my eyes and pressed my fingertips against my temples. Yeah, right. What were we going to do now? Me get up there and read Jeremy’s part? That’d be a comedy, for sure.

  Wait a minute, Jodi. Jeremy was sent to prison for two years—and he’s only sixteen. And you’re worried about your play?

  I sighed. You’re right, Lord. I’m sorry. But I really don’t know what to—

  I felt someone tapping on my shoulder. I opened my eyes. “What is it, T.J.?”

  The boy gave me a lopsided grin. “I’ll do Dr. King.”

  “You?” I managed an appreciative smile. “I thought you just wanted to do the ‘action’ parts. Besides, the play’s only three days away. How would you memorize—”

  “I already done it.”

&nbs
p; I blinked. “You’ve already memorized the Dr. King speech?”

  T.J. nodded, still grinning. “Yeah. Jeremy was in my unit, so he used ta make me listen to him say his part over and over, an’—” He shrugged. “I dunno. I jus’ learned it.”

  I couldn’t help it. I started to laugh. Then I stood up and clapped my hands once. “All right. Thank you, T.J. Let’s do a run-through of the whole thing . . .”

  ALL THE WAY HOME, I confessed my lack of faith and praised God for preparing T.J. ahead of time—our “ram in the bush,” just like He did for Abraham and Isaac. T.J. had done a passable job with the Dr. King speech. Ramón, James, and Rashad had their parts memorized too. The action parts . . . well, I just hoped the audience wouldn’t laugh. My actors got a little carried away sometimes. But Chris’s backdrop was finished and helped pull the whole mishmash together. “Thank You, Jesus!” I yelled at the top of my lungs right in the middle of homegoing traffic on Lake Shore Drive.

  I thought my next hurdle would be convincing Florida and Carl that showing up Saturday night for the “spring play” at the JDC was important to Chris—without actually telling them what it was about or what Chris was doing.

  But that was before I arrived at the JDC Friday afternoon. This time the principal met me outside the all-purpose room. Our eyes locked. Uh-oh. I tried to steel myself. “Who’s gone now?”

  She shook her head. “No one’s gone. They’re all inside, but . . . we’ve had an incident. I just wanted to prepare you.” She opened the door and I walked in, my heart flopping around my ankles again.

  The two guards parted as I walked between them. The boys sat slumped in the chairs, shoulders hunched. Except Chris. Florida’s son paced back and forth in front of the backdrop, fists clenched, muttering every cuss word he’d ever heard. When he saw me, he hurtled toward me in three angry strides. “See?” He flung a hand toward the backdrop. “See? It don’t matter what I do, Mrs. B. I ain’t gonna go nowhere.”

  I stared at the backdrop. Four long gashes snaked across the four beautiful figures he’d drawn on the cardboard “wall.” Slashes with something sharp. Knife? Box cutter? Fingernail file? I whirled to face the principal. “How could this happen?!” I was one pitch short of shouting. “Isn’t this door kept locked?!”

  Get a grip, Jodi. Satan would really like you to lose it right now. Is God faithful, or not? I took a deep breath and lowered my voice. “I’m sorry. Never mind. I . . . just need some time with the boys. Yes, all of them. We need to decide what to do together.”

  I heard the door close as the principal left. The guards respectfully withdrew to the back of the room. But I walked slowly along the backdrop, tracing the slashes with my finger, like Thomas touching the wounds in Jesus’ hands and feet and side. Wounds . . . that’s what these are . . . wounds . . .

  I turned to face the boys who were watching me. “Chris? I’m truly sorry this happened. I don’t know why someone would do this. Maybe something ugly happened to them and they took out their anger on your artwork because it’s beautiful. I don’t know. But I do know this: what the devil intended for evil, God can turn into something good.”

  Chris snorted in disgust. The other boys rolled their eyes.

  “Wait—hear me out.” I sat down and motioned the boys to draw their chairs close. “Whoever did this thought he was going to ruin our play. But without knowing it, this backdrop perfectly fits what we’ve been trying to say all along. We’re not going to fix it. We’re going to use it just the way it is. And this is why . . .”

  THE NEXT DAY Denny and I arrived at the JDC two hours early. The performance was scheduled for seven o’clock, but I wanted to be sure the room was set up, give the boys a pep talk, make sure we had no last minute “surprises” . . . and to pray.

  “Go early and pray over the room,” Avis had urged me on the phone. “Touch each chair, pray for each parent or staff who comes tonight. Pray for the boys. Pray with the boys if you can. Peter and I will be praying for you here at the house.” I grinned as we pulled into the parking structure next to the JDC. Avis had done more than pray. She’d loaned her car to the Hickmans, who didn’t want to ride with us and have to sit around for two hours.

  I wished Amanda and Josh could’ve come, but Denny barely squeaked in, because he was the husband of the “play director” and a JDC volunteer. By now the security schtik was routine, and we hurried to the all-purpose room with the few props I’d managed to scrounge up from Bethune Elementary’s costume box.

  To my surprise, the room was already unlocked. I heard voices inside. Oh no. What now? With a sense of dread, I opened the door . . . and stopped dead in my tracks.

  The two guards who had accompanied the boys for each play practice were mounting spotlights on tripods, adjusting them to fall on Chris’s damaged backdrop and various spots in front of it. The one the boys called Mr. Wheeler turned his head. “Oh, hey, Mrs. Baxter. This your husband?” He came over and shook Denny’s hand.

  “What’s this?” I raised my hands toward the lights on left and right.

  “Oh, Gonzalez over there . . . he swiped ’em from his church. Thought you could use ’em tonight.” Wheeler scratched his jaw. “We’ve been watching what you’re doin’ with the boys for this performance. We’d like to help. We’ll be your light techies tonight, if it’s all right with you.”

  “All right with—! It’s wonderful! That’s what we really needed to highlight the different parts! But, uh, we don’t have time to practice with the lights, to work out—”

  “Aw, don’t worry about that, Mrs. B. We got it down. Don’t forget, we’ve been watching you practice for days. Gonzalez over there—he does this all the time for big performances at his church.”

  Denny chuckled in my ear as we left them to their work. “Any other surprises, ‘Mrs. B’?” I just shook my head, and got down to the praying business before my actors arrived at five-thirty. It was a little awkward with the guards-turned-light-techies there, but no way was I going to skip over this part. If it wasn’t prayer holding this play together, I didn’t know what was!

  THE ROOM WAS PACKED by seven o’clock. I saved a couple of seats for Florida and Carl in the second row; good thing, because they slipped in at six-fifty-five. The principal welcomed the parents, administrators, staff, and visitors, including someone from the mayor’s office. She introduced me briefly, but all I did was introduce each one of that night’s cast by name. “The stage set for tonight’s performance was designed by Chris Hickman, age fourteen,” I added, and sat down.

  The lights went out. Well, not completely, for security reasons, I guessed. But dim enough so that David slipped onto the “stage,” and seemed to suddenly appear, illumined by one spotlight. David was articulate, and the boys had unanimously elected him to be narrator. “Welcome,” he said. “Tonight we bring you ‘Voices from the Past—Voices for Our Future.’ Sit back, enjoy—but most of all, listen.”

  The spotlight died. When the lights came up again, two “gangs” came at each other from opposite sides of the room, three purple uniforms against three green uniforms, yelling insults, making dares, calling names. I could see parents squirming, glancing at each other. As they met in the middle, Kevin (purple) pushed T.J. (green). Suddenly T.J. drew a fluorescent green water gun (I’d been firmly told not to use anything that looked realistic), pointed it at Kevin and yelled, “Bam! Bam!”

  Kevin fell in a heap to the floor. The other boys ran in two directions. Left lights died. Right lights followed the “shooter” and his homies. “Why’d you pop him, man?” Mike yelled at T.J. “You didn’t hafta kill him!”

  “He was dissin’ me, man. Didn’t ya hear? Nobody disses me, man.”

  The spotlight came up again on Kevin, still sprawled on the floor. David, who hadn’t been one of the gangbangers, knelt down beside him, shaking his head, moaning. “He was goin’ ta go to college. He wanted ta build bridges and skyscrapers. Why do we kill our brightest and best? Won’t we ever learn?”

 
The audience was clearly uncomfortable. I heard murmurs and chairs squeaking as the spotlights dimmed. When the spot came up again, James—even paler under the bright light—stood in the middle of the stage with a “stovepipe hat” on his head and an Abe Lincoln beard anchored to his chin. I heard a few titters, but they quickly died when James spoke. “I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me . . . do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within these States and henceforward shall be free!” The room grew even quieter as he paraphrased the Emancipation Proclamation. “. . . And I hereby charge the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defense . . .” James drew himself up, needing no mic as he boomed the last words. “Upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution . . . I invoke the considered judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God!”

  People in the audience began to clap—but just then Terrance came out of the shadows and pointed the fluorescent green water gun at “Abe Lincoln.” “Bam! Bam!” James dropped to the floor. I heard several gasps around me. The spot moved to Chris’s chalk drawing of President Lincoln with the ugly slash across it, lingered . . . then died.

  When the spotlight came up again, David stood with his head hanging. “Why do we kill our brightest and our best? Won’t we ever learn?”

  Lights out . . . lights on. Rashad was “on stage” wearing a shirt and tie. “My name is Medgar Evers. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak by radio. I speak as a native Mississippian, educated in Mississippi schools, serving overseas in our nation’s armed forces against Hitlerism and fascism. I mention this because I believe I am typical of many loyal Mississippians of color, who are equally devoted to their State and want only to see it assume its rightful place in the democratic scheme of our country.”

  The room was completely silent as Rashad, quoting Medgar Evers’s speech, painted a tough picture of the Jim Crow years. Finally “Medgar Evers” said, “What does the Negro want?” Rashad ticked off the end of segregation . . . to register and vote without handicap . . . more jobs at all levels . . . desegregated schools. “The Negro has been in America since 1619, a total of three hundred and forty-four years. He is not going anywhere else; this country is his home. He wants to do his part to help make his city, state, and nation a better place for everyone regardless of color and race.”