40

I was genuinely glad to see all ten boys saunter into the JDC school all-purpose room the next morning. Even Chris. I motioned them to sit in the same circle of chairs. “Thanks. I know you didn’t have to come. But I have an idea for a play—actually, the idea came from you.” I grinned. “God helped a lot too. Here’s the deal . . .”

I leaned forward. Curious, the boys all leaned in. I shared my idea, sneaking a peek now and then at the two guards who sat cross-armed at the back of the room. One glared at me, frowning, as I passed out the stuff I’d found online to provide background; the other chewed absently on his nails.

So far, so good.

“Okay,” I said. “We need four volunteers to make these speeches. You can’t read them; you have to memorize them. We can make them shorter, though—I’ve marked the main thoughts.”

“Huh!” T.J. snorted. “James is the only one who can play a white dude.”

“Hey! Don’ matter to me,” Ramón smirked. “Might be my only chance to be prez-i-dent.” The others laughed.

“Exactly,” I said. “These heroes belong to all of us—white, black, Latino. Don’t think of it as giving a speech. Become your character. Speak as though these thoughts, these feelings, these ideas came from inside you.” I looked around the circle at the ten boys, clothed in their purple, green, and blue uniforms. “But we need some action scenes too.”

T.J. raised a fist. “Aiiiight!”

Once again, we huddled. Their laughter punctuated the process. By the end of the three hours, we’d selected our four main characters, selected the villains, and brainstormed the final act. When the guards looked at their watches impatiently, I released the boys, but asked for another minute with Chris.

“Yeah, I can do that gangbangin’ stuff, Mrs. B., long as I don’t hafta give one o’ them long speeches.”

“Sure. You’ll do fine in the action scenes. But that’s not the main part I have for you.” I pulled out some drawings and photographs and gave them to him. “Think you could paint these characters?” My arm swept from one end of the wall behind me to the other. “Big as a wall?” I grinned. “I’ve actually seen your work on a wall before.”

His eyes nearly popped. “They’d never let me do that here! Man! I’d be in so much troub—”

“Whoa, whoa!” I laughed. “I don’t mean actually on the wall. I mean a backdrop for our play. You’ve heard the idea. Work with it. Include these characters somehow.”

He looked at me sideways, frowning dubiously. “You could do that? Get me stuff to paint with, I mean? Stuff to paint on?”

Good question. I was going out on a limb here . . . way out. “To be honest, Chris, I don’t know. But I’m going to try. But there’s something you can do.”

“Me! What?”

“Pray about it. Let’s leave it to God to move the mountains.”

A slow smile leaked over his features. He balled up his fist and held it out. I balled up mine and we touched, fist to fist. “I’ll do that, Mrs. B.”

I SPENT ALL AFTERNOON trying to get permission from the “powers that be” at the JDC to allow Chris Hickman to use spray paint and airbrushes under strict supervision. No dice. Chalk. That was their compromise. Colored chalk. Did they have a budget for this play? No budget. Okay . . . I wasn’t going to let a little thing like money stop this production, even if my husband and kids had to eat rice for the next few weeks.

Once I arrived home, I got on the phone with Josh in the mail-room at Peter Douglass’s business. Could he rustle up some very large cardboard boxes that could be flattened and taped together with duct tape to make a wall?

“Sure, Mom. Whatcha doin’? Putting me out in the doghouse?”

“Hm. Good idea. But, sorry. This doghouse isn’t for you.”

To my delight, a trip to Goods, the huge art store in Evanston, yielded big, fat colored chalk, and a whole palette of smaller poster chalks in intense colors. Who needed spray paint? Almost giddy, I drove our minivan on Wednesday to lug everything down to the JDC. Even got those two bored guards involved in flattening and taping.

Chris’s eyes popped again when I handed the various chalk sets to him. “Really? Really? I can use these? I mean, legal-like?”

I couldn’t help it. I gave him a hug. They could lock me up, for all I cared.

“WHAT? You’re going to spend Saturday at the JDC too?” Denny asked me Friday evening. We were in the backyard grilling steaks to celebrate the last day of spring vacation, which had finally shaken off the doldrums and hit the eighties. “You fly out of here every morning like you’re meeting a secret lover.” He stuck out his lip. “I’m jealous. Spent all week by myself working on tax forms.”

“Denny Baxter!” I swatted his backside with the barbecue tongs I held in my hand. “You’re the one who took the kids to New York last year and left me home during spring break.” Well, I’d had doctor’s orders not to travel, but hey, I could use guilt too.

Denny stuck a fork in the sizzling steaks and turned them over. “So it’s going good? You seem excited about the whole project.”

I was bursting to tell Denny what we were doing. But on the off-chance he might be able to attend the performance along with other “staff,” I wanted him to be surprised.

“I am! It’s going great—I think. Not sure I know what I’m doing, but I’m having fun.” I turned a big grin on Denny. “Best part, I think the boys are having fun too.”

Denny sat down beside me on the steps. “So what now? School starts next week.”

He wasn’t going to like this part. “Uh, I’d like to go down to the JDC after school a few days, maybe Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, to make sure the performance holds together. The boys are putting it on for family and staff next Saturday. If I could, um, take the car, maybe I wouldn’t get home too late.”

He frowned. The silence was filled by a dozen sparrows happily flitting about the back yard. Finally, he said, “Guess so. You taking the car tomorrow? Can you wait till I pick up Ricardo for the men’s breakfast? And what time are you getting back? I have some errands I need to do.”

Irritation nibbled at the edges of my peace. Don’t feel guilty, Jodi. He’s had all week to do his stupid errands! But I bit back the smart remark. “Sure. I can wait. And I’ll be back by two or three. Earlier if it’s really important.”

He shrugged. “No, that’s okay. Just so I know—oh, heck!” He leaped for the grill. “The steaks!”

I WOULD’VE LET Denny drop me off at the JDC when he drove to Little Village to pick up Ricardo Enriquez the next morning, and taken the train home, but I was sure the JDC didn’t want me coming in at six-thirty. But I got there at ten, and we did a run-through of the whole performance. It was rough, but we still had a week to smooth it up.

What pleased me most, though, was Chris’s backdrop. One hardly noticed that it was done on cardboard boxes that had been flattened and taped together. “It’s beautiful, Chris,” I said, watching him work on the four scenes that blended into each other.

Chris grinned. “Thanks, Mrs. B. But don’t tell my folks about it, okay? They’re comin’, ain’t they?”

“You bet.” They’d better.

As I drove home via Lake Shore Drive and Sheridan Road, windows open, enjoying the balmy weather in spite of the thunderstorm building up over the lake, I tried not to think about all the stuff I didn’t do during spring vacation—like putting away winter clothes, doing spring housecleaning, filing all the bills and tax forms. But for some reason I didn’t care. I doubted I would say fondly in my old age, “Oh yes, that was the spring I cleaned out the closets.” But I didn’t think I’d ever forget the spring break I spent putting together a drama at the JDC.

Pulling into the garage, I felt half-giddy with the warm weather, imagining how surprised the Hickmans would be next week, and—finally—realizing I did need to spend the rest of the weekend working on lesson plans for the next two months and grading papers. I was halfway up the walk to the house before I noticed my family clustered on the back porch watching me. Denny had a silly grin on his face.

“Oh! Hi guys. Uh, what’s up?”

“Mo-om!” Amanda rolled her eyes. “Look!”

I looked. And then I saw. A row of solid wooden flower boxes, painted a deep forest green, ran the length of the back porch railings. Sprays of cheerful white daisies decorated each one. My mouth fell open. “What . . .? When . . .?”

“That’s not all, Mom.” Amanda ran down the back steps and pulled me around the side of the house to the front. More flower boxes ran the length of the front porch.

My men followed. “Dad figured if we were going to get any flowers this year, we better get you some flower boxes,” Josh said. “After all, we don’t have anybody on house arrest this year to tackle the flower beds.”

“But . . . but . . .” I ran up onto the porch and examined the boxes closely. “These are handmade!”

Denny’s grin widened. “You were kind enough to abandon us completely this week. We had plenty of time to make them. Amanda stenciled the daisies.”

Amanda blushed. “The boxes needed something to look pretty till you can plant some flowers. Would’ve bought you some, but the greenhouses say it’s still too early.”

“We got potting soil, though.” Josh jerked a thumb back toward the garage. “Bags and bags of it.”

I was speechless. I’d barely thought of my family all week—and all week they’d been plotting and making something special for me. I threw my arms around Denny, then hugged my kids. “Thank you so much,” I finally managed. “All of you. Really. It’s the best gift you could’ve given me—and it’s not even my birthday, or Mother’s Day, or anything!”

“Sure, Mom.” Amanda and Josh each gave me a quick peck and disappeared inside. But Denny walked me hand in hand around to the back again and sat us down in the porch swing.

“Not quite the best gift,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

His side dimples deepened. “Well, thought you might like to know. This morning, Ben Garfield came to the prayer time we’ve been having before the men’s breakfast, and asked about coming to church at SouledOut. I think his exact words were, ‘Would they accept a crusty old Jew like me?’ ”

Now my mouth really did drop open.

“According to Ben, he was pretty upset by all of the ‘Jesus questions’ at the Seder last week. But he started to read the New Testament to see if all that stuff was true—something he’d never done. Then he started in on the Old Testament. And a lot of things started to make sense, just like Yo-Yo and others were pointing out.”

Oh, that was funny. Yo-Yo, of all people, teaching Ben Garfield a thing or two. “But doesn’t he go with Ruth to Beth Yehudah sometimes? That’s a Messianic congregation. Hasn’t he heard that stuff before?”

Denny shrugged, still grinning. “All I know is, the brothers prayed with Ben Garfield this morning, who said he wanted to stop messing around the edges of faith and really believe that the Messiah has come.”