27

Chanda was serious. When our prayer meeting broke up, I saw her buttonhole Avis again. “It’s very generous of you, Chanda,” I heard Avis say. But she seemed flummoxed. “I—I’ll have to talk to Rochelle. And Peter too.”

“You do dat. You pray ’bout dat too.”

Everyone else was bundling up in the foyer, talking all at once. “Adios, mis hermanas!” . . . “See you in two weeks!” . . . “Where are we meeting?” . . . “Chanda’s house!” . . . “Anyone talk to Yo-Yo?” . . . “Yeah. Said she had to help her kid brother with homework tonight.” . . . “Huh. I bet.”

I hung back, wanting to double-check with Ruth about coming to my classroom this week to talk about Queen Esther and Purim. Estelle was willing to take care of the twins—but how to get Estelle here and Ruth to the school if Ben was working?

Florida grabbed my arm and pulled me aside as the others tromped out the front door. “Jodi. Whatchu doin’ Saturday? Yo-Yo’s day off, right? I think a couple of us sistahs oughta kidnap that girl, find out what’s goin’ on. She ’bout ready to slide right on outta Yada Yada.”

“Good idea. Gotta check my calendar. It should be okay, though.”

“Jodi!” Stu yelled from the sidewalk. “Are you coming? It’s snowing!”

“Just a minute!” I yelled, waving out the door. A flurry of the white stuff sparkled in the light falling from the Garfields’ front window. “Sheesh. She’s right.”

“Oh no!” Florida peeked over my shoulder and groaned. “It’s March. It’s not supposed to snow. I’ll never get to sit outside on my white wicker porch furniture.”

“It’s snowing?” Chanda bustled up, pulling on her snazzy red coat and hat. “What crazy sista tinking ’bout sitting in she porch furniture?”

Becky, waiting for Florida, snorted. “Hickman, here. Except she don’t have any wicker porch furniture.”

“Humph. I can dream, can’t I? . . . Oh, hey, Avis. We’re riding with you, right?” Florida and Becky ducked out into the snow flurry with Avis. “Call me ’bout Saturday, Jodi!” Florida called back.

Chanda frowned at the snow. “Uh-uh-uh. Mi don’ like to drive dat new car in snow. Dis might be a good time to soak up some Jamaica sunshine!”

“Don’t worry, Chanda. It’s not sticking. This won’t last half an hour.” Suddenly an idea tickled my brain. Chanda. Chanda had a car . . . and a license. And she wasn’t working anymore, not since she’d won the lottery . . .

I WAS RIGHT. The snow was gone by the next morning. And Ruth was coming to my classroom! I was so excited on my way to school the next morning, I felt like a little kid humming along with Jiminy Cricket: “Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay!”

Spring was coming! A sure thing—in spite of today’s temperature, which hovered in the low forties. Hm, I thought. I ought to have that same kind of confidence in God’s promises in the Bible. A sure thing—even if the circumstances don’t look like it at the moment. Same God, isn’t it? Spring Creator and Promise Giver?

“Zip-a-dee-do-dah!” Yikes! Did I sing that out loud? Giggling, I gave up and warbled, “. . . wonderful feeling, wonderful day!” Not a typical “praise” song, but to me it was.

When I got to school, I told my class that in honor of Women’s History Month, we were going to have a special visitor this week—Queen Esther of Persia. I saw Caleb Levy’s eyes widen and his hand shot up. “I know that story! We just celebrated Purim this weekend!” He nodded knowingly at his classmates. “It’s a Jewish holiday.”

“That’s right, Caleb. Queen Esther lived many centuries ago, but her story is told and retold every year right up to the present day.”

By the time Ruth arrived on Wednesday, excitement was practically at fever pitch. She had told me she was going to tell the story of Queen Esther in first person, to make it come alive, but I had to grin when she came into the classroom dressed in a long gauzy gown, a “cloak” with a gold brocade trim down the front, and a thin silver crown on her head. My class gasped in unison as she came in.

Chanda—who’d picked up Estelle, dropped her off at the Garfields to take care of the twins, and brought Ruth to Bethune Elementary—slipped into the room behind Ruth and sat down on a chair in the back of the room. She grinned at me and put a finger to her lips, as if promising she’d be quiet.

“An old woman I am now,” Ruth began—a smart beginning, since she didn’t exactly look young and beautiful as one always imagined Queen Esther—“but I will tell you how I came to be Queen of Persia, and why Almighty God put me in the palace.”

Not one child cried, “Foul! Separation of church and state!” They were hanging on every word.

As I listened to her tell the familiar story—well, familiar to me—Ruth indeed seemed to transform into a majestic queen, keeping her story alive for future generations. “Well! When Queen Vashti ignored her husband, the king decided he needed a new queen. All the beautiful girls”—Ruth batted her eyelashes, setting off giggles all over the room— “were called to the palace, and one by one we were taken to see the king.”

She didn’t mention that each one spent the night and ended up in the king’s harem. Smooth move, Ruth.

“But I—a Jewish girl who had been taken captive from my own country—found favor with the king and I became the new queen of Persia. But that didn’t mean I was safe.”

My students’ mouths hung open as they listened to the story of Queen Esther’s “Uncle Mordecai,” actually Esther’s older cousin, who wouldn’t bow down to anyone but God, which made the king’s chief adviser very angry. “This man’s name was Haman. Can you say that?”

All the kids yelled, “Haman!”

“That name you must remember, because Haman was a very bad man. In Jewish homes, when the story of Queen Esther is told and Haman’s name is mentioned, everyone boos and makes noise with a gragger—like this.” Ruth reached into a bag she’d brought with her, and pulled out one of the noisemakers the twins had been waving the other night. She gave it to me with a smirk. “Here. We’ll let your teacher rattle the gragger, and all the rest of you, boo whenever you hear Haman’s name. Ready?”

“Boooo!” everyone yelled. I swung the gragger and grimaced. We’d be lucky to make it through Queen Esther without some teacher poking her head in and telling us to be quiet. But at least she’d brought only one of the noisemakers—not thirty!

Ruth took a deep breath. “Well. Haman”—“Boooo!”—“hated the Jews, and he especially hated Mordecai. He decided he would ask the king’s permission to kill them all! But neither Haman”—“Booooo!”—“nor the king knew that I, Queen Esther, was also a Jew.” She put her finger to her lips, as if telling the children to keep her secret. “Uncle Mordecai told me I must go to the king and beg for the lives of my people. ‘Maybe this is the reason God let you become queen—for such a time as this,’ he said. But I was afraid! Very afraid. No one was supposed to go into the king’s court unless the king asked him to come—not even the queen. I could be killed! But it was either my life—or the lives of all my people.”

Meanwhile, Ruth said, the king remembered that Mordecai had once saved the king’s life but had never been rewarded. The king asked Haman (“Boooo!”) what he should do for a man he wished to honor. Stuck-up Haman (“Boooo!”) thought the king wanted to honor him. So he slyly suggested putting the king’s own robe on this man, let him ride the king’s own horse, and tell a nobleman to lead the horse all over the city, crying, “This is how the king honors this man!”

“Good idea!” said the king. “Go and honor Mordecai in this way.”

The kids laughed and laughed as Ruth nodded solemnly. “Now Haman”—“Boooo!”—“was really mad.”

As Ruth continued her story of brave Queen Esther, I suddenly remembered that telling Old Testament stories at the Cook County Jail was how Ruth had first met Yo-Yo. Yo-Yo, hardly more than a kid herself and trying to bring up two younger half brothers, had forged a check to put food on the table and clothes on their backs . . . and ended up serving an eighteen-month prison sentence.

All of us Yada Yadas knew the story. How Ruth and Ben had helped Yo-Yo get on her feet after her release, got her a job at the Bagel Bakery (where nobody seemed to mind the denim overalls she always wore), and became substitute “grandparents” to Pete and Jerry, her teenage brothers. Ruth had brought her protégé to the Chicago Women’s Conference almost two years ago, even though Yo-Yo had been dubious about the “Jesus thing” back then. We all thought our smother-mother Ruth and Yo-Yo the ex-con had forged a bond tighter than family. Yet lately that bond seemed to be unraveling —

Sheesh. I hadn’t called Florida yet about Saturday. But she was right. We needed to get to the bottom of this mess . . .

My class clapped and clapped when Ruth finished her story. They really whooped when she passed out the traditional Purim cookie called Hamantaschen, shaped like the three-cornered hat Haman supposedly wore as chief adviser to the king.

I gave her a hug as she gathered up her props. “Thank you so much for coming, Ruth. My students will never forget Queen Esther.”

Chanda gave me a hug before she followed Ruth out the door. “Dat story hit me right ’ere.” She tapped her fist over her heart. “God took dat girl out of de poor ’ouse an’ put her in de palace. Irie, mon!”

“Just like you, Chanda,” I whispered. “Maybe you won that lottery for a reason.”

“Humph.” She rolled her eyes. “’Cept it didna come wit no king.”

I PICKED UP FLO Saturday morning at ten, and we drove into the parking lot of Yo-Yo’s apartment building twenty minutes later. She must have been watching for us, because her door popped open, and she leaned over the railing of the walkway that ran the length of the second-story, like a two-story motel. “Be right there!” she hollered.

Two minutes later, she hopped into the minivan. “Where we goin’? Starbucks?”

“Thought we’d hit Kaffe Klatch on Lincoln Avenue. It’s close. Okay with you?”

Yo-Yo shrugged. “Don’ matter ta me. I don’t really like coffee.”

Florida guffawed. “Well, we do. They got other stuff. How’s Pete and Jerry?”

We did catch-up on our kids as we headed for the coffee shop and parked along the street. Comfy couches and overstuffed chairs clustered around coffee tables invited customers to sink down and stay a while. “Cool,” Yo-Yo said, flopping down on a couch by the front window. Flo and I ordered a white chocolate mocha and a cappuccino. Yo-Yo settled for soup and a sandwich.

“Thanks for invitin’ me out,” Yo-Yo said, blowing on her soup. “Haven’t seen you guys for a while.”

“Uh-huh. Whose fault is that?” Florida got right down to business. “Fact is, that’s what me and Jodi wanna talk to you about. Whassup with you ditching Yada Yada lately?”

Yo-Yo shrugged. “Oh, you know. Stuff. Chasin’ after Pete an’ Jerry. My mom’s in rehab, thinks she can get the boys back. Drivin’ me nuts.”

I took the bait. “All the more reason to come to Yada Yada, Yo-Yo. We’ve all got ‘stuff.’ That’s why we pray for each other.”

“Now hold on here,” Florida said. “Let’s not dance in the mud and cloudy up the water. What I wanna know is . . . whassup with you an’ Ruth? You’ve been ducking out ever since the twins was born.”

Yo-Yo squirmed and looked away. Finally she muttered, “Nothin’. Things change, is all.”

“Got that right. Things changed big-time for Ruth an’ Ben when the twins was born.” Florida’s voice softened. “But that don’t mean they don’t care about you any more.”

“Oh, yeah?” Yo-Yo spit her words out like rotten teeth. “Do they ever call the boys any more? Take ’em places? How ’bout forgettin’ ta pick me up for Yada Yada, huh?” She cussed right out loud. “They don’ know I exist any more!”

I wanted to protest. Of course Ruth and Ben still cared about Yo-Yo and her brothers! But . . . it might be hard to prove. Had to admit the twins consumed their time and energy. But why couldn’t Yo-Yo understand that? Having babies at their age was a big deal. I was sure it wasn’t personal.

Half a minute—it felt longer—had gone by and we’d all been silent after her outburst. Then Yo-Yo pushed away her mug of soup, leaned back against the sofa cushions, and folded her arms across the bib of her overalls. “But it don’ matter. The boys an’ me, we all right. We don’ need them two anymore.”

Ouch. Yo-Yo had leaned hard on Ruth and Ben the past few years as she patched her life together again after getting out of prison. And, now, suddenly, her props weren’t there and she was hurting, big-time.

“But maybe they need you.” The words were out of my mouth before I had time to think about what I wanted to say.

Yo-Yo’s eyes narrowed. “Whaddya mean?”

Florida leaned forward. “What she means is, Ruth and Ben have been there for you and your brothers a long time now, an’ now they ain’t. We’ll grant you that. They off in the ozone somewhere.” She flittered her hand and rolled her eyes, then got serious again. “But maybe that’s good.”

Yo-Yo snorted. “What’s good about it?”

“Hear us out, girl. I said good, ’cause sometimes God knocks the props out from under us when we get too used to leaning up on people for ever’thang. People-help is good, far as it goes. But people gonna let you down. They just human; we all are. Maybe it’s time you start leanin’ on God for a change.”

Yo-Yo slouched even further down on the couch, hands jammed in her overall pockets, brow furrowed, as if mentally chewing on what Florida was saying. “Maybe.”

“No maybe about it,” Florida said. “You been spoon-fed on the Word up till now. An’ that’s okay, ’cause you just a baby Christian. But seems to me God is sayin’ it’s time for Yo-Yo Spencer ta grow up. Walk yo’ own walk. Talk yo’ own talk. Give back some o’ what you been given.”

Yo-Yo picked up her soup mug, stared into it for several long moments. Finally she muttered, “Guess I see what you sayin’ ’bout needin’ to lean on God more. Just”—her face suddenly got blotchy, and she wiped the back of her hand across her eyes—“kinda hurts, ya know? Ruth gettin’ pregnant, Ma gettin’ high . . . it’s always somethin’. Somethin’ more important than me and my brothers. Mom dumped me and my kid brothers ever’ time she shot up, which was most of the time. Then Ruth and Ben showed up—now, poof! They gone too. What was I expectin’? That things would be different?”

Florida’s eyes and mouth twitched, as Yo-Yo’s words touched a wound not quite healed. “Yeah. Know what you mean, baby,” she said softly. “But I’m here to tell you the truth. God don’t abandon nobody. Ever.”

We all sat in silence a long time. Finally Yo-Yo looked up, a frown etched between her eyes. “Flo said somethin’ ’bout givin’ back. But don’ seem like Ruth an’ Ben need nobody these days. It’s all ‘Havah this’ and ‘Isaac that,’ actin’ like them babies the only people in the world. What do they need me for?”

I grinned. “Well, I’ve got one idea. Ben’s still driving Ruth everywhere ’cause she let her license expire, who knows when. But if Ben takes her to the driver’s license facility, they have to take the twins with them, and you know that’s not going to happen. What if we”—I pointed to Yo-Yo and myself—“offer to babysit the twins next weekend so she can get her license? Could be fun! Whaddya say?”

I PULLED UP IN FRONT of Florida’s house after taking Yo-Yo home. “Thanks, Flo. Glad you asked me to go with you to talk to Yo-Yo. She’s really lonely, poor kid. But I think she . . . what?”

Florida hadn’t heard a word I said. She was staring at the front of her house. “What are all them big boxes doin’ on the front porch? Somebody just dump they trash on us?” She was out of the car, up the walk, and onto the porch in two seconds.

I followed. “What is it?”

The name Wickes Furniture was stamped all over the boxes. We looked closer. “Contents: One wicker loveseat, four cushions” . . . “Contents: One wicker chair, two cushions” . . . “Contents: one side table with shelf ” . . .

Florida stared at me, mouth dropping. And then we both said it together:

“Chanda!”