9

I tried to tell Denny about the pamphlet Nony had found stuck in her ivy, but since I’d only read the first few phrases accusing Jews of a “worldwide conspiracy” and calling minorities “mud races,” I couldn’t tell him a whole lot. “I’m pretty sure it was written by the same group that was mentioned on the TV—Coalition for White Pride or something.”

Denny shook his head. “Extremist jerks. Too bad the press got hold of it. Kooks like these should be ignored, not given media attention. Getting on the evening news only encourages those types.”

“That’s what I tried to tell Nony—she should just ignore it, not take it seriously.”

“Not take it seriously?” Josh glared at us, a flush creeping up his face. “You don’t think painting a swastika in one of NU’s dorms is serious? Think about it!”

“Josh,” Denny’s tone was sharp, “there’s always going to be some creep trying to make waves by spraying graffiti. I didn’t mean the university shouldn’t deal with it; I just meant these extremists thrive on media attention. Blows it up bigger than it is.”

“No, you said ‘ignore.’ Both of you.” Josh started for the hallway in a huff.

“Just a minute, Joshua James Baxter.” If my bigheaded son wanted an argument, he was going to get one. “Your dad and I don’t condone this kind of bigotry! I just don’t want Nony to take it too seriously, to let it upset her. Like your dad said, ignoring this garbage may be the best—”

“Yeah,” Josh tossed over his shoulder. “That’s probably what a lot of Europeans said when swastikas first started appearing on the walls of their universities.” He disappeared, punctuating the air with the loud slam of his bedroom door.

I gaped at Denny. “What was that all about?”

Denny seemed about to go after his firstborn, then he hesitated, rubbing the back of his head as if calming his thoughts. “Let him cool down. We can talk later.” He leaned back against the couch cushions and hit the TV volume.

“Sheesh,” I muttered, collecting the plates with leftover pizza crusts and heading back to the kitchen. Enough drama. I had lesson plans to do—namely, rustling up household items so my third graders could measure rectangles. Should I let them bring items from home to measure? That might be risking irate parents, like the time my first class at Bethune Elementary brought in such no-nos as a treasured jewelry box and a box of tampons. “A list,” I told myself on the way to the kitchen. “I’ll send home a list of appropriate items to—”

I nearly tripped over Amanda and Willie Wonka, who were sprawled in the doorway between the dining room and kitchen, the phone still attached to Amanda’s ear. “Oh, here’s my mom. I’ll ask her.” She beamed up at me. “Can I go to the sophomore dance at José’s school? It’s not for a couple of weeks—and I already have a dress! From my quinceañera.” She flitted her eyelashes, as if that settled the matter.

“With José, I presume.” I stepped over my daughter’s body and began loading the dishwasher. Hey, didn’t I cook supper? Someone else oughta be doing this. On second thought, no, I didn’t cook supper. Better to save dish duty for my family when there were lots of pots and pans.

“Mo-om!”

OK, I was stalling. A dance at José’s school? What school was that? What kind of kids would be there? What kind of dancing did they do? Was I ready to let Amanda actually date? Were Amanda and José getting too—

“Mom!”

I blew out a breath and whirled on my daughter, hand on one hip. “I heard you. I’m thinking. I don’t know yet. I’ll talk it over with your dad. Go do your homework.”

“Oh.” She put the phone back to her ear. “Yeah, probably. I’ll let you know for sure.”

Daughter and dog disappeared in the direction of her bedroom. I turned on the dishwasher, plopped down at the dining room table with my lesson plan book, and started to make a list of appropriate household items to teach measurements . . . but I found my mind drifting. Back to Nony finding that pamphlet. The pain in her eyes. The news report on the TV. Josh’s fierce reaction.

I sat thinking for a long time.

Finally, I got up and padded back toward the living room in my sock feet. The TV was off, and Denny had team rosters and scoring sheets spread out on the coffee table. I stood there a moment and then announced, “I know why Josh was upset.”

Denny looked up. “What?”

“I know why Josh was upset.”

“Oh.” He patted the couch cushion beside him. “Tell me.”

I sat down, leaning my elbows on the knees of my jeans. “Because hearing about stuff like this on TV is one thing. But when I told you that Nony had found one of those pamphlets, that those people had actually come to her house, Josh realized it wasn’t just a news story anymore. It was about Nony and Mark now. Somebody we know. Somebody we care about.”

Denny sighed. “Yeah. I’ve been thinking about that too. Easy for us to say ‘ignore it’—we’re not Jewish or getting called a ‘mud race.’ But for Nony and Mark, it probably feels personal.”

I looked at Denny. “Not just them. What about Avis and Florida? Or Delores and Edesa?”

“Yeah. Ruth and Ben too.”

Oh God. What about Ruth? Has she heard about this Nazi graffiti showing up at Northwestern? Did any of her family die during the Holocaust? She must be somewhere around fifty, born after World War II like the rest of us in Yada Yada. What stories had been passed down to her about fellow Jews and family being rounded up by soldiers with that swastika on their armbands?

I need to pray!

I CALLED NONY THE NEXT EVENING but got the answering machine. Wednesday evening, Denny and I got off our duffs and made it to the midweek Bible study at Uptown. Have to admit I wasn’t very keen on making it a regular thing on a school night. But the current series was called “Lord, Teach Us to Pray.” Funny. Before Yada Yada came into my life, I probably would’ve thought, Yeah, yeah, prayer. Just talk to God; that’s prayer. What else do we need to know? But the more I prayed with Yada Yada, the less I seemed to know about prayer—or maybe, the more I wanted to know. Like a pregnant woman who has a craving for pickles or ice cream or Fannie May chocolates.

To my surprise, Avis and Peter were both there. Peter was attentive but quiet during the discussion time, but Avis had a lot of good input about the different parts of the Lord’s Prayer—especially the first part: “Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” She said we so quickly skip over that part and get to the “Give us this day our daily bread” list of requests, but there’s a reason we need to focus our prayer with praise and worship first, to get our priorities straight.

Good stuff.

Stu came, too, and afterward I saw her talking to Pastor Clark. Probably asking him about writing a letter on Becky’s behalf to send to the parole board. Hoo boy. Becky Wallace at Uptown Community. How many more places in my life was my own personal thief going to show up? Sheesh. Give You an inch, God, and You take a mile.

I overheard Denny inviting Peter Douglass to the men’s breakfast on Saturday—a gig that happened every third weekend of the month. Not sure he got a commitment. In fact, I got the feeling that Peter wasn’t all that excited about attending a mostly white church. Before he and Avis got married, he’d been visiting other churches like Salem Baptist, where Rev. James Meeks, one of our state senators, was pastor. I knew this was something Avis and Peter were going to have to work out now that they were married. But I felt a pang. What if . . .

OK, God, I’m not going to go there. But can I put in a request? I really want Avis and Peter to stay at Uptown Community. We need them! It’s too easy for us to be a church of “people like us,” but the Bible says the different parts of Your body need each other.

And then there was Amanda, still badgering me about going with José to the sophomore dance at Benito Juarez High School. I finally told her to quit bugging me about it, and that she’d get an answer by the weekend.

So it was Thursday night by the time I got hold of Nony. She’d barely said hello before I plunged right in, apologizing for saying she should “just ignore it” when she’d found the pamphlet. “That was insensitive of me, Nony. Easy for me to ignore it, to brush it off as the extremist views of a few ignorant white people. Guess I wanted you to ignore it because I don’t want you to think that white people in general, or . . . or me in particular, think like that. I was wrong to brush it under the rug, and I’m sorry.”

I finally paused for breath, but there was only silence on the other end . . . and then what sounded like stifled crying. “Nony?” Oh God. I should have called her right away, not let so much time go by. Now she was really upset. “Nony? I’m so sorry.”

On the other end of the line, I heard Nony blow her nose then come back on. Her voice was shaky. “I know you are, Jodi. Thank you. But just today, Mark came home very angry. Some of those young men from that White Pride group were on campus, passing out fliers inviting students to a ‘free speech’ rally on—wait a minute. He brought home one of the fliers.” She was back in a moment. “On ‘White Purity and the Mud Races.’ They’re not students and don’t have access to any of the university meeting rooms, but they want to meet at the Rock—it’s kind of like a public square at Northwestern.”

“Oh, Nony.” I was stunned. “Can they do that? I mean . . .”

Denny looked at me funny as he passed me on his way to the kitchen to get a snack. “What’s going on?” he mouthed at me.

I held up a finger, trying to listen to Nony. But he hung around until I finally got off the phone. I told him what Nony had said. “Mark’s really angry. He’s trying to get the university administration to call a meeting of staff and faculty to deal with this stuff.”

Denny leaned against the kitchen counter for several minutes, staring at the floor, his forehead knotted, rubbing the back of his head. Then he held out a hand. “Give me the phone.”

He was so abrupt and impolite, I almost refused. Give it up, Jodi. This isn’t the time for niceties. I handed him the phone.

Now I was the one who hung around eavesdropping. “Hi, Nony. It’s Denny. Can I speak to Mark? . . . Mark. Denny Baxter. Jodi just told me what’s happening at Northwestern. I know you’ve probably got your hands full dealing with this on campus, but I’m wondering . . . If you can spare the time, would you be willing to come to our men’s breakfast at Uptown Saturday morning and fill us in? You’ve been there before; the guys know you. I might even be able to pull in some of the guys we had at our Guys’ Day Out. The rest of us in the community need to know what’s going on and talk about what we can do in our churches. And personally, I’d like to know how I can support you, my brother. At the very least, how I can pray for you.” He listened for a moment and then gave a laugh. “Yeah, if we’d listen to our wives now and then, these Yada Yadas, we’d finally get it that we should pray first, then knock the blocks off these kooks.”