29

I half-expected Josh to mumble “Hi” and head for his room. But he stood in the archway of the living room, hands loose at his side. Just stood there. Like the time he was five and we got separated in the grocery store. He’d just stood still, lost, waiting for me to find him, trying not to cry.

“Josh? Are you OK?”

“Yeah.” Josh slumped onto the couch. “No.” His head sank into his hands. “I don’t know.”

The recliner unreclined with a thump. I sat down on the hassock. “I was worried when Dad went to pick you up at youth group and you weren’t there. What happened?”

Josh glanced up, wary. “You guys mad?”

“No.” Denny leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Rick Reilly told me that New Morning was still having a prayer meeting or something when the teens showed up at Uptown, and you wanted to stay. We figured you had your reasons.”

Josh heaved a sigh. “Yeah. Thanks.” Then he snorted. “To tell you the truth, I was mad. Some of the kids in the youth group got real upset that somebody else was using our space, that we had to find another place to meet. Mr. Reilly could hardly make them shut up! You should have heard ’em! They were grumblin’ and dissin’ downstairs, and upstairs New Morning was praying for Mark Smith, lying up there in ICU, unconscious. Begging God to spare his life! Man!” Josh wagged his head. “Good thing Mr. Reilly got the rest of the kids out of there, ’cause I was afraid I was going to haul off and punch somebody.”

“Mo-om!” Amanda’s voice floated loudly from the back of the house. “Wonka’s got really bad gas and needs to go out! Pee-eew.”

“Then put him out yourself!” Denny and I yelled in perfect unison.

Josh barely seemed to notice the interruption. “So, yeah, I stayed for a while. Sat in the back. Nobody paid me much attention, ’cept Mr. Douglass. He saw me come in, nodded at me.” He was silent for several moments, lost in his thoughts. Denny and I just waited. “New Morning is mostly black. Guess I knew that, but I started having a lot of funny feelings. Remembered us praying for Dr. Smith this morning. Then here’s his own church, in the very same building, praying for him this evening. It felt . . . felt like the cafeteria at school. Latino kids at one table, blacks at another. Whites all hanging together. Just a few strays here and there crossing the color line. Made me feel weird. I mean, we were all praying for Dr. Smith. It seemed like we should be praying together.”

I stared at my son. I’d sensed it, too, when we took communion that morning. Something skewed. Something not right.

Denny pursed his lips. “I can understand your feelings, son. But don’t make too much out of it. I’m sure they’re grateful to have a place to meet until they can move into a new space. It might be a nice thing to do something together; but given the size of Uptown’s space, it isn’t really practical.”

Denny’s words hung in the air like unabsorbed air freshener. Didn’t really touch the heart of what Josh was trying to say, just made it smell nice.

Josh blew out a breath of pure frustration. “Yeah, but . . . I dunno. I started feeling confused. I got all geeked up when I heard what the White Pride group was doing at Northwestern. Told my debate adviser I wanted to do something on hate groups, ordered those books—oh yeah, Josh Baxter was really going to take it on. Now?” He threw up his hands. “I don’t have the books anymore. Couldn’t make my case even if I wanted to. But you know what? I don’t even want to anymore. I’m glad the books are gone. Good excuse to chuck the whole thing.”

Denny and I just gaped at Josh, who found his legs and started pacing back and forth in front of the couch, running one hand over his nonexistent hair.

He stopped and pointed a finger at us. “And you wanna know why I don’t want to get up there and make some big argument for racial harmony? To stand there and say people like us can make a difference? Because . . .” Josh’s voice broke. “Because when push came to shove at that rally, it didn’t matter what I believed! It didn’t matter that I was there to support Dr. Smith and not the White Pride guys! It didn’t matter that Dr. Smith had asked us to come. It didn’t matter that our families are friends. No! To that big linebacker with his loud dreadlocks, I was just a white boy. It was ‘us’ versus ‘them’! He thought he had a right to get in my face and push me around. He pushed my mother down, for God’s sake! And it’s never going to be any different! And then . . .” Josh’s shoulders heaved. “Then some white thug beats up one of the coolest men I’ve ever met—just because he’s black! And we don’t know if Dr. Smith’s going to live or die or be a vegetable!”

Josh fell back onto the couch, his eyes tortured. “And here we are, the Christians. It isn’t any different for us either. Black and white. Us and them.” He put his head in his hands and began to weep. Loud, gasping sobs. “It’s . . . never . . . going . . . to be . . . different!”

DON’T KNOW HOW I MADE IT THROUGH SCHOOL the next day. The kids were always squirrelly on Mondays anyway. On top of that, it was the first week of June and felt like summer already. Eighty-six degrees and humidity to match. Too many energetic third graders confined in a too-small space. Add one teacher with nerves like frayed electric wires after the events of the past weekend, and I spent most of the day shouting down squabbles, repeating classwork instructions two or three times, and marching miscreants to the principal’s office. Let Avis deal with the little criminals, I thought, parking Ramón, Cornell, and Terrell in the chairs just inside the main office, glad to have them off my hands for even ten minutes.

When the last bell rang and my classroom emptied like runners at the starting gun of the Chicago Marathon, I collapsed at my desk, head in my hands, trying to find a solid place on which to get some emotional footing. I’d felt so helpless last night, watching my nearly grown son cry. It had unnerved me to no end. Josh had a good heart, even if he didn’t know the difference between the laundry hamper and the floor. But his idealistic expectations, his hopes that good intentions could make a difference, had been body slammed into a brick wall of reality.

I couldn’t help him. Denny couldn’t help him. We didn’t have any answers either.

“God,” I moaned. “Help Josh. Help Denny and me. Help Mark. And Nony . . .” My prayer sounded hollow in my ears. Help Josh. Help Denny and me. Help Mark and Nony. Good grief. What kind of prayer was that? “I don’t even know how to pray, Jesus. Not when it really counts.”

Yes, you do, Jodi. The Voice in my spirit was so strong, I looked up, half expecting to see that Avis had walked into my classroom and overheard me. But I was alone in a sea of desks. You know a lot about prayer. First things first. You need to praise Me.

Well, yes. Why was that so easy to remember when I was praying with Yada Yada but so easy to forget when I was praying on my own? I squeezed my eyes shut. Lord, You are worthy of all my—

No. Silent praise—any silent prayer longer than thirty seconds—usually ended up getting bombarded by random Jodi thoughts and mental lists of stuff I had to do. I stood up and began to walk up and down the rows of desks—straightening a few along the way—speaking aloud my praise to God. I prayed the names of God that we’d lifted up at the hospital last night: God our Provider, God our Healer, the All-Sufficient One. “Thank You, Lord, for who You are!”

Now pray the Word, Jodi. Claim the promises God has given you for your son, for your family, for Mark teetering between life and death, for Nony in her suffering.

What promises? My mind went blank. The only verse I could pull out of the air was John 3:16. Making a beeline for my desk, I grabbed the Bible I kept in the second drawer, glad for the underlining I’d done. Neon yellow words leapt off the pages at me. “I will never leave you nor forsake you” . . . “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all” . . . “If two of you agree on anything you ask for, it will be done for you by My Father in heaven.”

Oh wow. I took the Bible with me as I resumed walking my classroom and prayed the verses aloud. “Thank You, Jesus, that You promised You would never leave us nor forsake us. We need You now. Mark and Nony need You! Josh needs You! And I confess my lack of wisdom. I don’t know how to help Josh with the questions he’s struggling with. He feels caught in the middle. But You said we can ask You for wisdom! So I’m asking, God—asking for Josh, asking for myself, asking for Denny. Asking for all of us who are confused and bewildered by what happened this weekend.”

I stopped by the fingerprint-smudged window and looked out at the deserted playground, then glanced down at the verse I’d underlined in Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 19: “If two of you on earth agree on anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.” Did I dare . . . ?

“Jesus,” I breathed, “I’m here alone, praying by myself, but I stand in agreement with all my sisters in Yada Yada, with the prayers of Uptown Community, with the prayers of New Morning Church yesterday afternoon. We’re asking, God, for Your healing touch on Mark Smith’s body. Please, God. Please. In the name of Jesus . . .”

I stopped myself before saying amen. The name of Jesus wasn’t just some way to sign off on my prayer, a spiritual “Over and out.” If I’d learned anything from Yada Yada, it was that the name of Jesus was the authority I had stamped on my life, enabling me to come boldly to God, even though He was holy and I wasn’t. The authority I had to rebuke Satan and all his evil plans and—

The door to my classroom swung open. Clara Hutchens, a first-grade teacher, poked her head in. “Coming to staff meeting? Mrs. Douglass sent me to get you.” She peered disapprovingly over the top of her reading glasses.

“Uh, be right there.” But I smiled to myself as I gathered up my books and papers and stuffed them into my tote bag. Avis would understand.

STAFF MEETING WAS MERCIFULLY SHORT. I realized why when Avis pulled me aside afterward. “I’m going up to the hospital now to avoid the evening crowd of visitors. Do you want to come with me?”

I did a mental check of supper possibilities—no leftovers, unfortunately, since I hadn’t cooked on Sunday—and phoned, leaving a message on the machine for Amanda to pull out some bacon to thaw. Scrambled eggs and bacon for supper. Why not?

We rode up to Evanston Hospital in Avis’s black Toyota Camry, threading through late afternoon traffic, neither one of us saying much. I almost told her about the struggle Josh was having, then decided it wasn’t mine to tell. Not yet. Unless that was an excuse to avoid the awkwardness of discussing racial barriers and his feeling that “it’s never going to be any different.”

I turned my face to the window. Oh God, it has to be different! We’re Your body—the body of Christ here on earth! All of us!

To my delight, Hoshi Takahashi and Nony’s boys were in the ICU waiting room, drawing pictures and making signs. Michael popped up, showing off the picture he’d drawn with bright-colored markers. “We’re making pictures to hang in Daddy’s room,” he bragged. “Ms. Enriquez said we should make lots!”

I cocked an eyebrow at Hoshi. “Delores is here?”

Hoshi smiled, her silky, black hair falling over one shoulder. “Delores is with Nonyameko in Dr. Smith’s room.” Hoshi simply couldn’t call her college professor by his first name. She peeked out the waiting room door. “I do not see any nurses at the desk. Why don’t you go on in? I know Nony would want to see you.”

Before following Avis down the hall, I pulled Hoshi aside. “How are you doing, Hoshi? I mean, you still have school, you’re taking care of the boys . . .”

She smiled from the inside out. “Today, I go to my classes while they are at school. It is no problem. It is . . . how do you say it? It is joy.” Her gaze fell fondly on the tops of the boys’ heads as they busily worked on their pictures and signs. “Like little brothers.”

I hustled to catch up with Avis, and together we peered into Mark’s room. Even though I’d seen it all before, I still felt overwhelmed seeing Mark lying so still on the bed, his head and eyes bandaged, wires and tubes still connected to various body parts. The dark mahogany of his bare arms lay in stark contrast outside the pale hospital blankets. Delores and Nony, standing on the far side of Mark’s bed, both looked up.

Delores smiled big and leaned close to Mark’s head. “Señor Mark! You have visitors! Avis and Jodi are here.” She made a sucking sound with her teeth. “So popular you are.” And she laughed.

I stared. “Is he . . . can he . . . ?”

Nony shook her head, trying her best to smile. “Still no response. The doctor said he is in a coma. They do not know for how long. But Delores—and the nurses too—say we should talk to Mark as though he can hear.” Her voice wobbled. “Maybe he can. Maybe he can’t. They don’t know.”