38

The bell over Adele’s shop door tinkled as I pushed the door open. Was I doing the right thing? Or was this another one of my “brilliant” ideas that could blow up in my face? I’d felt a little sneaky, calling the shop first thing this morning to find out what time Sara’s appointment was, hoping Takeisha or Corey would answer the phone. But wouldn’t you know it—Adele picked up.

“Jodi Baxter,” she’d said suspiciously. “You want to know Sara’s appointment time . . . why?”

I blew out a breath. With Adele, honesty was always the best policy. “Because I made something for her—a small gift. I want to give it to her.”

Silence. Then, “Suit yourself. Ten o’clock.” And she hung up.

I waited until ten-thirty to give plenty of time for Sara to get in the chair. I’d had too many trauma-dramas at Adele’s Hair and Nails to want to precipitate another one. But the last time I’d seen Sara—when Hoshi had tried to bring her new friend to Yada Yada when we’d met at the Sisulu-Smith home near the NU campus—Sara had taken one look at the house, at Nony and Mark, and run the other way.

The bell tinkled again as the door wheezed shut. Adele glanced up and acknowledged me with a nod—a nod that seemed to say, Just sit a while. So I did. I sank onto the couch by the front window, picked up a copy of Essence magazine, and flipped through it, my eyes not on its pages but on the young woman in the chair.

Adele snipped and shaped. Sara watched the process in the mirror with sober eyes. When should I talk to her? I wondered. But I felt a check. Not yet. The not-quite-wedgie cut—shorter in the back, a little longer in the front, sweeping forward, bangs brushed to the side—already freshened her plain features. But she was so . . . colorless. A touch of lip gloss, some plum blush on her cheeks, and mascara to darken her pale lashes would—

Ha! Listen to yourself, Jodi. A lot you know about makeup.

Adele handed Sara a hair-color chart, which Sara studied while Adele swept up the dishwater-blonde hair on the floor. Finally, she pointed, and Adele mixed the color chemicals, shaking the rubber bulb while running her fingers thoughtfully through the girl’s hair. Adele chatted with other customers and staff—though she ignored me—while she saturated the girl’s hair with the color mixture, as though allowing Sara a reprieve from being the center of her attention.

Finally, Adele piled Sara’s wet hair on her head, covered it with a breathable cap, and pointed to a plastic chair in the hair dryer section. “Sit there,” she said. “No, not under the dryer. We need to leave that on for twenty minutes.” As the young woman moved to a chair behind the partition, Adele gave me the eye and tipped her head.

I picked up the plastic bag I’d brought with me and peeked around the partition. “Sara?”

Her head jerked up at her name. “Do I know you?”

I pulled over an empty chair. “My name is Jodi Baxter. We have a mutual friend, Hoshi Takahashi.”

She reddened. “Oh. Yes, I’ve seen you before. Your p-prayer group . . .” She touched the cap on her head. “You all g-gave me this gift certificate, Hoshi said.”

I smiled and nodded. “Yes. It’s our way of saying thanks.”

Her color deepened. “Don’t know what for.” Her eyes found her lap.

I tried to keep my voice easy. “All of us are deeply grateful for your courage, for going to the police, and—”

“Don’t want to t-talk about that.” Her hands clenched, and her mouth pinched into a thin, straight line.

“No problem. Actually, that’s not why I spoke to you. I wanted to give you this.” I laid the plastic bag in her lap.

She stared at the bag. “What is it?”

“Before you open it, I want to tell you something. It’s not my intention to drag up painful memories, but—”

“Then don’t.”

“All right. But after the, um, first time I saw you”—I didn’t mention it was at the so-called freedom of speech rally on the NU campus where the leader of the White Pride group she’d been part of proceeded to insult “mud races” and everyone else who wasn’t white—“God told me to pray for you. But I didn’t know your name. So for a long time, I just prayed for ‘that girl in the sundress.’ Not very polite, I know, but I kept praying for you anyway.”

She said nothing, but seemed to be listening.

“And then Hoshi told us about meeting a new friend named Sara. Of course, I didn’t know it was you, not until, uh . . . later.” Again, I deliberately didn’t mention the day she came with Hoshi to the Sisulu-Smith home, which had ended in such disaster. “But God kept telling me to pray for you, so now I could pray for you by name. Sara.”

I pointed to the package. “Now you can open it.”

At first, I thought she wasn’t going to. But after a moment’s hesitation, she pulled the bag off and held the eight-by-ten-inch frame in her hands. I had used the computer to write her name, “Sara,” in a beautiful script on some fancy vellum paper, and right beside it the meaning of her name. “Princess.”

She snorted. “What is this, some k-kind of joke?”

“No, no. That’s what the name Sara means—‘Princess’! In our prayer group, we like to find the meaning of each person’s name. Hoshi’s name means ‘Star.’ Mine means ‘God is gracious.’ ”

She frowned. “Well, somebody g-got it wrong somewhere, because I’m certainly no p-princess. Cinderella, maybe.”

I almost laughed. Maybe she meant Cinderella sitting in the ashes while her nasty stepsisters went to the royal ball. But Cinderella became a real princess. Well, as real as it gets in a fairy tale. “No, I don’t think the meaning of your name is wrong. Because that’s how God sees you. His princess. His royal daughter.”

To my surprise, tears suddenly dripped down her cheeks, and she fished in her pockets for a tissue. She blew her nose. Then, she peered closely at the smaller words within the frame. “What’s this?”

Thought she’d never ask! “It’s from the Bible.” I reached out and turned the frame slightly so I could see the words. “I paraphrased it just a little, but you can read it yourself in the book of Isaiah, chapter forty-nine: The Lord called me before my birth; from within the womb He called me by name. . . . [I said], ‘The Lord has deserted me; the Lord has forgotten me!’ [But God said,] ‘Never! Can a mother forget her nursing child? Can she feel no love for a child she has borne? But even if that were possible, I would not forget you! See, I have engraved your name on the palm of my hand.’ ”

As I read the words aloud, I momentarily forgot about Sara. That last phrase! When I chose those verses, I just wanted to let Sara know that God knew her personally, by name. But suddenly it seemed like another prophecy in the Old Testament about Jesus! God told Isaiah He’d written his name—and mine, and Sara’s, and everybody’s—on the palms of His hands. And just yesterday, Good Friday, we’d all been reminded that His Son, Jesus, stretched out those hands, the ones with our names on them, on the cross, taking the punishment for our sins—

“How d-did you know?” Sara’s tight whisper broke into my thoughts.

“What? Know what?”

“About my mother. I never t-told Hoshi.” She looked at me accusingly. “Have you been d-digging up stuff about me?”

I was stunned. “No! I don’t know anything about you. Except . . . I know that God loves you. And I’ve been praying for you almost a whole year.”

Adele’s large form loomed above us. “Time’s up. Need to rinse that color out ’fore it takes you someplace you don’t wanna go.”

Sara stood up and put the frame back in the plastic bag. I gave Adele a look, which, properly interpreted, told her to go jump in the lake. Didn’t she realize something important was happening here?! Adele gave me a look right back that said not even the end of the world was going to stop her from rinsing out her customer.

But Sara held the bag close to her chest as she followed Adele to the sinks. Halfway there, she turned back and mouthed silently: “Thank you.”

I SAT IN THE CAR a full five minutes before I turned on the ignition. Half of me wanted to whoop and holler, “Praise Jesus!” that Sara whatever-her-last-name had received my gift. I was glad, so glad, that I’d obeyed the prompting of my heart to research the meaning of her name for her and to frame it, glad that God had given me those verses in Isaiah to include.

The other half of me was dying of curiosity. What in the world did she mean, did I know about her mother? What about her mother? Something in those verses, the part that said, even if a mother did forget her child, God never would . . . Had Sara been abandoned by her mother? Didn’t she live up on the North Shore somewhere, in the hoity-toity suburbs north of Chicago?

And, I had to admit, I wanted to see the final transformation of Sara’s makeover. All I’d seen so far was the haircut and color application—and even then, her hair had been wet. Hadn’t been set, dried, or combed out. No makeup, no manicure or pedicure. Should I go back in? Offer her a ride home? I had no clue how she got here. Maybe she had her own car.

Just go home, Jodi. The Spirit Voice within seemed to put a quiet hand on my shoulder. You gave your gift. Now give Me room to work.

A knock on my window made me jump. A Chicago police parking enforcement uniform made a circular motion with her finger. I rolled down the window. “You plan to sit here all day, lady? Because your parking meter has run out, and if you don’t move or feed the meter in the next thirty seconds, I’ve got to give you a parking ticket.”

I nodded and rolled the window back up. “Okay, okay, Lord. I heard you the first time,” I muttered as I stuck my key in the ignition. “You didn’t have to send a cop too.”

Five minutes later, I pulled the Caravan into a parking spot in front of our house and headed inside, picking up yesterday’s mail, which was still in the box—what’s this? A business envelope addressed to me from the Super Skatium. Hoo boy. Still standing on the porch, I ripped open the envelope. It’d been over four weeks since I’d written. Had our petition done any good?

I pulled out the single sheet of paper. “Dear Ms. Baxter,” I read aloud. “Thank you for informing us of your concern. We are proud of our ten years in the Chicago community, serving a widely diverse clientele and providing quality entertainment for young and old alike.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. I skimmed on. “. . . sorry for any inconvenience or disappointment you experienced. We hope you will come again and—” . . . blah blah blah.

I sighed and sank down on the top step of the front porch. Huh. So much for that. The Skatium manager had probably had a good snicker-fest with the DJ before shooting off his thinly veiled reply: “Change our music? You gotta be kidding, lady!”

Made me want to gag.

Now what? Organize a boycott? Yeah, right. It wasn’t as if I knew a hundred people who went skating every week. The Skatium wouldn’t even notice. Go out to the Skatium with a protest sign? “The Skatium plays X-rated music!” Not really my style. Maybe a letter-writing campaign. If they wouldn’t pay attention to one letter, what about ten letters, or twenty, or thirty, or—

Whoa. Slow down, Jodi.

What? Oh, right. I was doing it again, Old Jodi response, jumping on my high horse and riding off in ten directions. But, God, it makes me mad, thinking about the raunchy music they’re feeding to all those young kids! Is it too much to ask for one, measly, family-friendly skate night? Do I just give up at the first resistance?

The Voice in my spirit cut into my thoughts. Not too much to ask. It’s a good idea. But . . . is this your battle right now? Didn’t you just agree to spend your spring break at the juvenile detention center, starting Monday?”

Well, yeah. Good point. I felt pretty clear that saying yes to the JDC was something God wanted me to do. When would I do any of that other stuff?

I squeezed my eyes shut and crumpled the letter. Okay, God. I think I get it. But God? This business of hearing the Holy Spirit—knowing what’s from You and what is just distracting me from doing what You want me to do . . . it’s hard, You know?

I stood up and unlocked the front door. I had Easter dinner to plan and a couple of scripts I needed to read.