10

Denny was all over the phone that night and the next, checking with Pastor Clark about inviting Dr. Smith to speak to the Uptown men on Saturday, then calling some of the guys who didn’t attend regularly, like Carl Hickman and Peter Douglass.

“Jodi? Do you have the Garfields’ number?” he yelled through the bathroom door as I was trying to have my Friday night soak-the-school-week-away bubble bath. I sat up with a jerk, sending water cascading over the side of the tub and soaking the rug.

“Denny, wait! Why are you calling Ben Garfield?” I yelled back.

There was a momentary pause. “To invite him to come to the breakfast tomorrow.” Denny’s tone said, Put two and two together, Jodi. What have I been doing all evening?

I climbed out of the tub and grabbed a towel. “I mean, why Ben?” I opened the door a crack. Denny stood in the hallway, phone in hand. “Why upset Ben and Ruth by all this anti-Semitism stuff? Maybe they haven’t even heard about it.”

To his credit, Denny actually seemed to be considering what I said. Then he shook his head. “I don’t want to upset them, but it’s on the news. Three incidents in one week at Northwestern. This White Pride group is obviously stepping up its activities. Ben and Ruth will have heard about it.” He snorted. “Huh. Didn’t even know they existed a week ago! Frankly, I’d like to get Ben’s perspective.”

Arrgh. I was back to hoping the whole thing would just go away. But I told Denny where to find the Garfields’ number and locked the door again. I sank back into my bubble bath, studying the scars on my body—the almost invisible short scars at the top and bottom of my left thigh, where a rod had been inserted to repair my broken femur, and the vertical scar on my abdomen to remove my mangled spleen. Scarred but not broken. Most days I felt pretty good, though damp weather and too many hours on my feet sometimes left me with an aching leg. For months, I felt awkward about my scarred body in front of Denny, not wanting him to look at me like damaged goods—not that he ever made me feel that way. I hated those scars, hated those reminders of that awful day, reminders of my anger and my sin.

I pushed aside the bubbles and traced the scar on my abdomen. That was before I heard God’s still, small Voice in my spirit, telling me that those scars were my reminder to pray—for Jamal’s mother, Geraldine, and for his brother, Hakim. What a revelation! Even scars can have a redemptive purpose.

So pray, Jodi. Soaking in the tub is as good as anyplace else. So I prayed for Hakim, whose seat in my classroom had been empty all week. And I prayed for his mother while my fingers got wrinkled and pink. Prayed that God would continue the healing that had begun when our fingers had touched that brief moment across my desk at the last parent-teacher conference.

Keep praying, Jodi, said the Voice in my spirit. Others have scars too—scars invisible to you, but scars nonetheless. Wounds that seem healed but still bleed, cut open once again by a careless remark or the lies of the enemy or even by events in the news.

I slid under the bubbles to wet my hair, squirted some shampoo in my hand, and lathered up my head—and prayed for Stu and the wounds she carried in her heart for her aborted baby . . . for Nony and the pain of race hatred stirred up in her memory . . . for Ben and Ruth, whose ethnic history included genocide—and almost felt like I was drowning under the heaviness. Oh God! How can You carry the weight of these wounds? They’re too big! Too big . . .

I stayed in the tub so long, I could’ve qualified for pickling.

JOSH GOT HIMSELF OUT OF BED and went to the men’s breakfast with his dad Saturday morning. Well, not exactly “with.” Denny left early for a run along the lakefront, ending up back at Uptown Community. I dropped off Josh at the church by eight o’clock, taking advantage of being out and about to get my grocery shopping done early in the day. I knew Denny was pleased. He’d invited Josh a couple of times before, but Josh had never been interested . . . till now.

“Hi, Nick!” I called out to the Greek owner of the Rogers Park Fruit Market, who was helping to unload boxes of Mexican mangoes from a truck. “Got a price on those yet? They look yummy.”

Nick grinned. “For you, one dollar each. Tell the girl I said so.” Nick held out a box. I picked out two golden-green mangoes then headed into the market with my list: fresh ginger, romaine lettuce, green onions, a bunch of cilantro, fresh parsley, bananas, two beef shanks for soup, chicken quarters . . .

Next stop: the new Dominick’s megastore on Howard Street. For some reason, the immensity of the grocery store still intimidated me. Why couldn’t I figure out where to find stuff? I finally made it home with my bags of groceries, hoping Amanda was up so she could help carry stuff in. No such luck. Her door was still closed, with no sign of emergent life oozing from her bedroom.

When I went back out to the garage, Becky Wallace was leaning into the back of the minivan. “Thought you could use some help,” she grunted, hauling out two or three bulging plastic bags in each hand. Only then did I realize she must have been in the back yard weeding the flowerbeds or something, and I’d totally zoned out that she was there.

“Uh . . . sure. Thanks!”

With Becky’s help, we got all the groceries into our house in one trip. “Thanks again,” I said as she dumped her load on the counter and headed back outside. I watched as she pulled on some tattered garden gloves and resumed weeding along the fence—the outer borders of her narrow world. For a nanosecond I felt sorry for her. Sheesh. It’s like grounding a full-grown adult. On the other hand, I told myself as I started stashing canned goods, it’s gotta be better than prison. And actions did have consequences.

By the time I put away groceries, stripped beds, and started laundry, it was eleven o’clock and still no sign of Denny and Josh. Or Amanda. Impatient, I entered the inner sanctum of teendom and turned on the light. “Up! You’ve got chores. I’ve got more errands, and I want to know you’re on track.”

“Mo-om!” came the muffled complaint from the bedclothes, but I heard the bathroom door slam a few minutes later.

I left a note on the kitchen counter for Denny, another for Amanda with a list of her Saturday chores to be done before she got on the phone or left the house, and backed the minivan out of the garage again. The weekend weather report was for mixed sunshine and showers, and I hoped the sunshine would hold long enough for me to take MaDear for a walk this morning. But by the time I parked on Clark Street near Adele’s Hair and Nails, it was starting to sprinkle.

Rats, I thought as I pulled open the door, setting off the familiar bell. The beauty shop was full of customers. All three chairs were occupied by women in various stages of “relaxing” or “curling.” Two more sat under hair dryers, with Adele and Takeisha, the other hairstylist, running back and forth between all of them. Three more customers flipped pages of O and Essence magazines in the waiting area.

Adele looked up from her customer, a jar of white goo in one hand, a brush in the other. “Jodi Baxter! Don’t have room for walk-ins today, but you could use an appointment.”

Adele was anything but subtle.

“Yeah, yeah, I know.” I made a face. “I’m still not used to the beauty-shop routine. Maybe for Josh’s graduation. Came by to see if MaDear wants to play”—that got a smile from Adele—“but it’s starting to rain.”

The jar of goo and brush paused again in midair. “Well, if you’re up for it, I’ve got something you could do with MaDear here in the shop. Come on.” I followed Adele past the hair dryers, past the nail station where the not-much-more-than-a-teenager Corey was doing exquisite designs on the toes of another teenager. I curled my bald fingernails into the palms of my hands and followed Adele into the back room, where her elderly mother sat strapped in a wheelchair, dozing.

Adele picked up a shoebox and handed it to me. “Pictures. I’ve been meaning to get them into a photo album, but mm-hm. Another good intention gone straight to hell.” I blinked at her language then remembered the old cliché, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” “Thought MaDear might enjoy looking at some of the pictures, might waken some of her memories.”

I took the shoebox. “Well . . . sure. But if she doesn’t remember who’s who, I won’t be able to tell her.”

Adele shrugged. “Still, maybe it’ll be a start.” She shook the old woman, shrunken inside a faded, flowered dress. “MaDear. MaDear! Someone to visit you.” Then she was gone.

MaDear blinked, her eyes bleary, as she came awake. The brown leathery face, sprinkled freely with freckles and age spots, crinkled in a smile. “I know you. Sissy’s little friend, ain’t ya?”

Sissy was Adele’s younger sister, a grown woman with a family of her own. But I let it pass. There was no use arguing with MaDear; you were who she thought you were.

I opened the shoebox. There on the top lay a sepia-toned photo of a smooth-skinned young woman with large, dark eyes and a full head of hair curled up on the sides forties-style, the rest gathered into a bun at the nape of her neck. But there was no doubt who it was: MaDear. Sixty years younger. “Oh, MaDear!” I showed her the picture. “You were beautiful!”

MaDear took the picture and studied it for a long minute. Then she stabbed at it with a bony finger. “Sally.” She nodded. “Sally Skuggs.”

“That’s right!” Adele had said her mother’s name was Sally, though even the customers called her MaDear. I pulled out another picture. No recognition. I decided to fish through the pictures . . . there. A man, a woman, and two little girls. The woman was obviously Sally; could that be Adele and her sister, Sissy? Oh! This was too much fun!

We looked through all sorts of pictures—snapshots and portraits, all of African-Americans with varied skin tones, some darker, some lighter. Most of the older pictures were brown tint, gradually shifting to black-and-white prints, then color snapshots, all mixed together. If Adele wanted to do a photo album, she sure had her work cut out for her.

Suddenly MaDear’s hand snatched a small picture from the box. A family group, obviously from the rural thirties—father, mother holding a toddler, a barefooted youngster about six or seven, a middle girl about ten or eleven, a teenage boy. MaDear held it close to her face. Then her finger traced the outline of the teenage boy in trousers, shirt, and suspenders. “Larry.” That’s all she said.

I thought my heart would stop beating. Larry? MaDear’s brother who’d been lynched by white neighbors because they decided he’d gotten too “uppity.” I felt torn between wanting to memorize the face of the brother who’d only been a name until this minute . . . and wanting to flee. What was Adele thinking, letting me look at photos with MaDear? Did she want to stir up all that pain again? MaDear’s painful memories, hidden beneath her dementia and forgetfulness. And Denny’s pain, when MaDear mistook him for one of the men who’d killed her brother two-thirds of a century ago.

I tried to gently take the picture from MaDear, wanting to bury it back in the box, but she held on tight. “Larry,” she said again. Then she smiled a sweet, sad smile. “Young man who killed ’im tol’ me he was sorry—”

Now I could hardly breathe. That was Denny! She remembered Denny coming to ask forgiveness for what happened to Larry. “Because she needed to hear someone say ‘I’m sorry,’ ” he’d told me.

“—an’ I forgave him. Yes, I did.” Her head bobbed up and down. “Sure do miss Larry, though.” With a shaky hand, she brought the faded photograph to her lips, kissed it, and let it flutter to the floor. I put it in the box and replaced the lid.

“Bye, MaDear,” I whispered, softly kissing her leathery cheek. The lump in my throat was so big, I made sure Adele was busy with a customer before I walked out, giving her a wave from the door before it tinkled shut behind me.