23

The day of MaDear’s funeral dawned bright, clear, and cold—not a hard-edged, bitter cold, but softened by the sun, hinting at spring.

Still, I shivered inside my robe as I half-pushed, half-carried Willie Wonka up the back porch stairs after his morning pee. But the shiver seemed to come from deep inside, not just the snap in the air on my skin. “Come on, old boy,” I murmured, shutting the door behind us and attaching a can of dog food to the electric can opener. “Eat some breakfast, will you? Gotta keep your strength up.” For some reason, my eyes misted as I spooned half the can into Wonka’s dog dish. “Eat . . . please eat,” I whispered.

Willie Wonka looked up at me with his liquid brown eyes, then lowered his muzzle to the dish and nibbled.

“Good boy.” I filled a mug with fresh coffee and settled into the recliner in the front room for some prayer time. But my Bible remained closed on my lap. Why did I feel so . . . low? As if Wonka’s obvious decline and MaDear’s death were pressing my spirit down into the mud. After all, I tried to reassure myself, Willie Wonka was still his loveable, sweet self, in spite of slowing down. Waaay down. But he didn’t seem to be in pain, thanks to the meds the vet had given him. And MaDear had lived a long, full life. The last few years had been distorted by mental confusion, which had to have been stressful for MaDear herself, as well as Adele. Shouldn’t we feel glad that the end was quick, without a long, painful illness?

With a twinge of guilt, I remembered how relieved I’d felt when my grandmother died. I was barely a teenager when she came to live with us in Des Moines. Gram had dominated our life with her complaints. The whole family had to tiptoe around her needs. My older brothers dealt with the Gram Invasion by staying out of the house as much as possible, hanging out with their friends. But as the only girl, I had to share my room with that impossible woman, who felt free to poke around in my dresser drawers when I was at school. I didn’t shed a tear when she died. In fact, I would have shouted “Hallelujah!” if I’d been a hallelujah-shouting person then.

Was Adele feeling relieved that MaDear was gone? And guilty that she felt relieved?

At least Adele had treated her mother with compassion, bringing her mother as best she could into her life at Adele’s Hair and Nails, giving her comforting things to do to keep her busy, like sorting the buttons from the old button jar and looking through old photos . . . old photos that brought up memories, both painful and sweet, even in MaDear’s confused mind.

A tear slid down my face. “Oh God,” I groaned, “forgive me for being such a selfish pig when I was a teenager, never once thinking about life from Gram’s point of view. All I thought about was how she disrupted my life.” For the first time ever, I wished I could hug my grandmother once more, ask her to tell me stories from her life as a girl, ask her to forgive me for not understanding what it meant to get old.

I blubbered for a few minutes, my feelings all mixed up because I’d loved MaDear more than my own grandmother. Finally, I mopped my face, blew my nose, and headed back to the kitchen, still feeling depressed. But I needed to get some laundry done so we’d have clean clothes for MaDear’s funeral.

AS IT TURNED OUT, Denny got a ride with Peter Douglass to the Captives Free Jail and Prison Ministry training that morning, so we were able to take our minivan after all. Josh drove, looking like a Gap ad in a rumpled shirt and tie, his increasingly shaggy hair caught back in a small, sandy ponytail at the nape of his neck.

From shaved head to ponytail . . . didn’t this boy-turning-man know about that lovely concept called moderation? I sighed and kept my mouth shut.

We picked up the Hickman family and Becky Wallace. That put eight in the car and we only had seven seatbelts. Carla and Cedric clamored to ride in the “way back,” but I insisted on them having seatbelts. I finally allowed Amanda to ride back there and prayed all the way to Paul and Silas that no one would slam us in the rear.

Even when we found the church on Kedzie, we had to drive around a couple of blocks before we found a parking space. I had visited Paul and Silas Apostolic Baptist a year earlier with Yada Yada, but this was a first for the rest of my family. I’d warned Amanda about the head coverings, but even though there was a basket available with the little “doilies,” as Flo called them, for those without a hat, no one was offering them to the many guests coming that day. We waved at Avis and Peter Douglass across the foyer and caught a glimpse of Chanda George arriving with her children, but the foyer was too crowded to actually meet up.

After hanging up our coats in the coatroom, a female usher with white gloves handed us an order of service with a picture of a young Sally Rutherford Skuggs on the front, and directed us to join the long line moving along the far right aisle. I spotted Delores Enriquez and Edesa Reyes in the line ahead of us. As the line approached the front of the church, people were greeting the family sitting in the front rows and paying their respects at the open casket, which was flanked by a lush garden of roses and white carnations. Most of the crowd was black—though after generations in America, “black” was hardly the word for the rich, rippling shades of brown and tan filling the church, from dark coffee bean to malted milk.

The line moved slowly. I had plenty of time to gape at the stylish women’s suits and big hats—most of them silky black on black, or black with white or silver trim. I suddenly felt terribly under-dressed in my ordinary blue-and-black print dress. I had a gorgeous black dress at home—the slinky black number Denny had bought for me two birthdays ago—but it was definitely not funeral-appropriate.

As the line inched along, I wondered how many of the women present that day had sat in one of the chairs at Adele’s Hair and Nails getting cut, processed, permed, straightened, weaved, braided, or curled . . . laughing, chatting, tsk-tsking over somebody’s child, or complaining loudly about the latest runaround with “the system.” Knowing Adele, she had probably functioned as Mother Confessor to hundreds of women who knew she would listen, give a word or two of sympathy or encouragement, even pray for them, and keep her mouth shut.

“Excuse me . . . thank you . . . excuse me . . .” A familiar male voice interrupted my wandering thoughts as Denny squeezed into the line next to me. “Made it,” he breathed into my ear. “Tie on straight?” I looked him up and down, grinned, and nodded.

We had almost reached the front. Watching what others did, I shook hands with the people in the front row, murmuring, “Hello. My name is Jodi Baxter. I’m a member of Adele’s prayer group . . . you’re Adele’s aunt? I’m so sorry for your loss.” This went on for five or six people and then I was toe to toe with Adele’s overly made-up, bleached-blonde sister dabbing at her eyes. “Sissy? I’m Jodi Baxter, Adele’s friend. We met briefly at the hospital.” Sissy shook my hand limply, a hankie pressed to her nose.

Adele sat next to the aisle. A stylish black hat with a modest brim and a wide black ribbon around the crown hid her short, black-and-silver natural ’fro. She looked up at me, eyes sad but calm, and smiled, showing the tiny gap between her front teeth. “Jodi and Denny Baxter . . .” When Adele used both my first and last name, I never knew what to expect. To my surprise, she stood up and hugged us both before turning to Amanda and Josh, who were crowding on our heels. They got hugs too.

Then it was our turn at the casket. Two male ushers stood impassively on either side, each with one white-gloved hand behind his back. A shimmering white brocade covered the casket, as if the material had been sprayed on. A spray of pink and white roses with a pink ribbon that read “Dearest Mother” in gold script lay on the closed lower half. The upper half was open, lined with tinted pink crepe, shirred and thick and soft. I willed myself to step close and look at the body lying stiffly on the pillow . . .

MaDear? It didn’t look like her. The spark of life that had lit up her glittering eyes, whether happy, sad, or angry, was gone. But the freckles dusting the yellowish cheeks were the same. I reached into the casket and brushed the back of my hand against her cold, waxy skin. “Good-bye, MaDear,” I murmured, pushing the words past the lump in my throat. “See you in heaven. I loved you, you know.”

I started to turn away but felt Denny’s arm go around my waist and hold me there. His other hand gripped the casket. We stayed another long minute until the ushers sternly waved us on.

It took a long time for everyone to greet the family and pass by the casket, but the service finally started with the small organ belting out Tommy Dorsey’s “Precious Lord, take my hand . . .” A procession of officials in black robes—pastors, ministers, and visiting pastors—walked slowly and solemnly down the two middle aisles. The choir, in dark green robes and bold, gold-brown-and-red Afro-centric stoles, slow-stepped in their wake. The pastors and ministers stood in a row across the platform while Paul and Silas’s senior pastor, listed in the program as “Rev. Arthur B. Miles III,” gave the invocation.

As the ministers took their seats, the choir launched into a spirited rendition of “Some glad morning, when this life is o’er, I’ll fly away . . .” The choir swayed; people clapped. “Just a few more weary days and then, I’ll fly away . . .”

The church quieted as a lanky man from the family row—probably that Mississippi cousin—stood up and read the obituary printed on the back side of the program. “Born Sally Rutherford, August 2, 1923 in Tupelo, Mississippi, to a hardworking family that endured many hardships in the Jim Crow South . . . Married Emil Skuggs in 1942 . . . Moved to Chicago with two young daughters after the death of her husband, often working two jobs to give them an education . . . She is survived by a younger sister and brother and two loving daughters . . . and leaves a host of family and friends to celebrate her life and miss her physical presence.”

My mind stuck on the words, “endured many hardships.” How many in this congregation knew those hardships included the horrific lynching of her fifteen-year-old brother for being “too uppity” around white folks? Hardships, indeed.

The obituary was followed by a congregational hymn: “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine! Oh what a foretaste of glory divine . . .” Halfway through the hymn, I glanced at my program and realized that the Scripture reading was next. Did Denny remember? Had he brought his Bible? I poked him and pointed it out in the program: Psalm 27 on the left side, Mr. Dennis Baxter on the right. He nodded.

He seemed calm enough. I’d be a wreck about now if I had to get up in front of all these people, a white face in a sea of black, with half the women probably thinking, “Who’s that white chick, and why is she wearing that pathetic rag?” Kinda funny that Adele had asked Denny to read the Scripture, though. Why not Avis or Nony or one of her other Yada Yada sisters?

“. . . will be read by Mr. Dennis Baxter,” Rev. Miles was saying. “Come on up here, brother.” Well. At least it wasn’t me, thank goodness. I gave Denny’s back an encouraging smile as he made his way up the aisle, up the two carpeted platform steps, and made his way to the podium. He took a small Bible out of his inside suit coat pocket, glanced in Adele’s direction with a brief smile, then began to read.

“Psalm 27 . . . The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” As my husband read the words of the psalm, I suddenly realized it was talking to me. My depression that morning had actually been fear. Fear of loss. Fear that I’d lost my chance to make it right with my grandmother. Fear that all the ongoing prayers we’d been praying in Yada Yada—for Florida’s boy and Nony’s husband and Avis’s daughter and Becky fighting to get her parental rights back—would go unanswered, just like our prayer for MaDear’s healing. Even my stupid fear a few minutes ago of what people here were thinking of me.

But what in heaven’s name did I have to be afraid of? The Lord was the strength of my life—and Adele’s, and MaDear’s, and my family’s, and of all my Yada Yada sisters and their families. Hadn’t we seen God’s hand in our lives again and again? Just like the psalmist had written: “Though an army may encamp against me, my heart shall not fear . . . For in the time of trouble He shall hide me in His pavilion; in the secret place of His tabernacle He shall hide me; He shall set me high upon a rock.”

As he neared the end of the psalm, Denny’s voice grew stronger. “—I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living!” Denny closed his Bible and started to return to his seat. But Adele stood up, stepped in his way, and folded him in a long embrace.

Suddenly I realized why Adele had asked Denny to read that psalm at MaDear’s funeral! It was her way of laying to rest that painful episode when MaDear’s confused mind thought Denny was the white man who had lynched her brother decades ago in Mississippi. Two Christmases ago, Denny had bravely asked MaDear to forgive him for something he hadn’t done, because the old lady needed closure. “And because somebody needs to,” he had said. And MaDear had laid her hand on his head and forgiven him.

But I knew Adele still struggled with the tragedy that had torn her mother’s family apart, and the not-always-subtle bigotry she still had to deal with, like being ignored by the cops when she went to the police station to get her jewelry back that Becky Wallace had stolen. Adele had many reasons to “lose heart”—and yet, in spite of everything, she still believed in “the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.”

That was the strength Adele brought to Yada Yada. That was the strength she gave to me: “Whatever comes your way, Jodi, deal with it and go on . . . because God is our light and our salvation, and God is good.”

I saw Denny’s lips form the words, “Thank you,” when Adele released him from her embrace. I touched his arm when he sat down, but he was busy fishing for his handkerchief and blowing his nose.

That’s when I understood Adele had offered Denny closure too.