42

I knew putting in a full day at Bethune Elementary, and then driving downtown to the juvenile detention center would stretch me thin as razor wire. Before I collapsed into bed Monday night, I e-mailed a frantic SOS to Yada Yada for prayer support, then buried myself beneath the covers.

On Wednesday, I grabbed a few Israel and New Breed CDs to keep my praise going on the commute. But when I bumbled into the all-purpose room at the JDC with my bag of scripts and a box of props, nine sour faces waited for me—and the principal.

“What? Where’s Jeremy?”

“That’s what I came to tell you. He had his disposition yesterday. The judge gave him two years for dealing; second offense. They took him to the Illinois youth prison in Joliet this morning.”

“But . . . he was doing the Dr. King speech!” My heart felt like it was flopping down around my ankles. “Couldn’t they have waited till next week?” I sank into the nearest chair. “Sheesh. Way to take the guts right out of our play.”

The principal gave a sympathetic shrug. “I’m really sorry, Mrs. Baxter. Do the best you can. I’m sure the parents will understand.” She slipped out of the room.

I closed my eyes and pressed my fingertips against my temples. Yeah, right. What were we going to do now? Me get up there and read Jeremy’s part? That’d be a comedy, for sure.

Wait a minute, Jodi. Jeremy was sent to prison for two years—and he’s only sixteen. And you’re worried about your play?

I sighed. You’re right, Lord. I’m sorry. But I really don’t know what to—

I felt someone tapping on my shoulder. I opened my eyes. “What is it, T.J.?”

The boy gave me a lopsided grin. “I’ll do Dr. King.”

“You?” I managed an appreciative smile. “I thought you just wanted to do the ‘action’ parts. Besides, the play’s only three days away. How would you memorize—”

“I already done it.”

I blinked. “You’ve already memorized the Dr. King speech?”

T.J. nodded, still grinning. “Yeah. Jeremy was in my unit, so he used ta make me listen to him say his part over and over, an’—” He shrugged. “I dunno. I jus’ learned it.”

I couldn’t help it. I started to laugh. Then I stood up and clapped my hands once. “All right. Thank you, T.J. Let’s do a run-through of the whole thing . . .”

ALL THE WAY HOME, I confessed my lack of faith and praised God for preparing T.J. ahead of time—our “ram in the bush,” just like He did for Abraham and Isaac. T.J. had done a passable job with the Dr. King speech. Ramón, James, and Rashad had their parts memorized too. The action parts . . . well, I just hoped the audience wouldn’t laugh. My actors got a little carried away sometimes. But Chris’s backdrop was finished and helped pull the whole mishmash together. “Thank You, Jesus!” I yelled at the top of my lungs right in the middle of homegoing traffic on Lake Shore Drive.

I thought my next hurdle would be convincing Florida and Carl that showing up Saturday night for the “spring play” at the JDC was important to Chris—without actually telling them what it was about or what Chris was doing.

But that was before I arrived at the JDC Friday afternoon. This time the principal met me outside the all-purpose room. Our eyes locked. Uh-oh. I tried to steel myself. “Who’s gone now?”

She shook her head. “No one’s gone. They’re all inside, but . . . we’ve had an incident. I just wanted to prepare you.” She opened the door and I walked in, my heart flopping around my ankles again.

The two guards parted as I walked between them. The boys sat slumped in the chairs, shoulders hunched. Except Chris. Florida’s son paced back and forth in front of the backdrop, fists clenched, muttering every cuss word he’d ever heard. When he saw me, he hurtled toward me in three angry strides. “See?” He flung a hand toward the backdrop. “See? It don’t matter what I do, Mrs. B. I ain’t gonna go nowhere.”

I stared at the backdrop. Four long gashes snaked across the four beautiful figures he’d drawn on the cardboard “wall.” Slashes with something sharp. Knife? Box cutter? Fingernail file? I whirled to face the principal. “How could this happen?!” I was one pitch short of shouting. “Isn’t this door kept locked?!”

Get a grip, Jodi. Satan would really like you to lose it right now. Is God faithful, or not? I took a deep breath and lowered my voice. “I’m sorry. Never mind. I . . . just need some time with the boys. Yes, all of them. We need to decide what to do together.”

I heard the door close as the principal left. The guards respectfully withdrew to the back of the room. But I walked slowly along the backdrop, tracing the slashes with my finger, like Thomas touching the wounds in Jesus’ hands and feet and side. Wounds . . . that’s what these are . . . wounds . . .

I turned to face the boys who were watching me. “Chris? I’m truly sorry this happened. I don’t know why someone would do this. Maybe something ugly happened to them and they took out their anger on your artwork because it’s beautiful. I don’t know. But I do know this: what the devil intended for evil, God can turn into something good.”

Chris snorted in disgust. The other boys rolled their eyes.

“Wait—hear me out.” I sat down and motioned the boys to draw their chairs close. “Whoever did this thought he was going to ruin our play. But without knowing it, this backdrop perfectly fits what we’ve been trying to say all along. We’re not going to fix it. We’re going to use it just the way it is. And this is why . . .”

THE NEXT DAY Denny and I arrived at the JDC two hours early. The performance was scheduled for seven o’clock, but I wanted to be sure the room was set up, give the boys a pep talk, make sure we had no last minute “surprises” . . . and to pray.

“Go early and pray over the room,” Avis had urged me on the phone. “Touch each chair, pray for each parent or staff who comes tonight. Pray for the boys. Pray with the boys if you can. Peter and I will be praying for you here at the house.” I grinned as we pulled into the parking structure next to the JDC. Avis had done more than pray. She’d loaned her car to the Hickmans, who didn’t want to ride with us and have to sit around for two hours.

I wished Amanda and Josh could’ve come, but Denny barely squeaked in, because he was the husband of the “play director” and a JDC volunteer. By now the security schtik was routine, and we hurried to the all-purpose room with the few props I’d managed to scrounge up from Bethune Elementary’s costume box.

To my surprise, the room was already unlocked. I heard voices inside. Oh no. What now? With a sense of dread, I opened the door . . . and stopped dead in my tracks.

The two guards who had accompanied the boys for each play practice were mounting spotlights on tripods, adjusting them to fall on Chris’s damaged backdrop and various spots in front of it. The one the boys called Mr. Wheeler turned his head. “Oh, hey, Mrs. Baxter. This your husband?” He came over and shook Denny’s hand.

“What’s this?” I raised my hands toward the lights on left and right.

“Oh, Gonzalez over there . . . he swiped ’em from his church. Thought you could use ’em tonight.” Wheeler scratched his jaw. “We’ve been watching what you’re doin’ with the boys for this performance. We’d like to help. We’ll be your light techies tonight, if it’s all right with you.”

“All right with—! It’s wonderful! That’s what we really needed to highlight the different parts! But, uh, we don’t have time to practice with the lights, to work out—”

“Aw, don’t worry about that, Mrs. B. We got it down. Don’t forget, we’ve been watching you practice for days. Gonzalez over there—he does this all the time for big performances at his church.”

Denny chuckled in my ear as we left them to their work. “Any other surprises, ‘Mrs. B’?” I just shook my head, and got down to the praying business before my actors arrived at five-thirty. It was a little awkward with the guards-turned-light-techies there, but no way was I going to skip over this part. If it wasn’t prayer holding this play together, I didn’t know what was!

THE ROOM WAS PACKED by seven o’clock. I saved a couple of seats for Florida and Carl in the second row; good thing, because they slipped in at six-fifty-five. The principal welcomed the parents, administrators, staff, and visitors, including someone from the mayor’s office. She introduced me briefly, but all I did was introduce each one of that night’s cast by name. “The stage set for tonight’s performance was designed by Chris Hickman, age fourteen,” I added, and sat down.

The lights went out. Well, not completely, for security reasons, I guessed. But dim enough so that David slipped onto the “stage,” and seemed to suddenly appear, illumined by one spotlight. David was articulate, and the boys had unanimously elected him to be narrator. “Welcome,” he said. “Tonight we bring you ‘Voices from the Past—Voices for Our Future.’ Sit back, enjoy—but most of all, listen.”

The spotlight died. When the lights came up again, two “gangs” came at each other from opposite sides of the room, three purple uniforms against three green uniforms, yelling insults, making dares, calling names. I could see parents squirming, glancing at each other. As they met in the middle, Kevin (purple) pushed T.J. (green). Suddenly T.J. drew a fluorescent green water gun (I’d been firmly told not to use anything that looked realistic), pointed it at Kevin and yelled, “Bam! Bam!”

Kevin fell in a heap to the floor. The other boys ran in two directions. Left lights died. Right lights followed the “shooter” and his homies. “Why’d you pop him, man?” Mike yelled at T.J. “You didn’t hafta kill him!”

“He was dissin’ me, man. Didn’t ya hear? Nobody disses me, man.”

The spotlight came up again on Kevin, still sprawled on the floor. David, who hadn’t been one of the gangbangers, knelt down beside him, shaking his head, moaning. “He was goin’ ta go to college. He wanted ta build bridges and skyscrapers. Why do we kill our brightest and best? Won’t we ever learn?”

The audience was clearly uncomfortable. I heard murmurs and chairs squeaking as the spotlights dimmed. When the spot came up again, James—even paler under the bright light—stood in the middle of the stage with a “stovepipe hat” on his head and an Abe Lincoln beard anchored to his chin. I heard a few titters, but they quickly died when James spoke. “I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me . . . do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within these States and henceforward shall be free!” The room grew even quieter as he paraphrased the Emancipation Proclamation. “. . . And I hereby charge the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defense . . .” James drew himself up, needing no mic as he boomed the last words. “Upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution . . . I invoke the considered judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God!”

People in the audience began to clap—but just then Terrance came out of the shadows and pointed the fluorescent green water gun at “Abe Lincoln.” “Bam! Bam!” James dropped to the floor. I heard several gasps around me. The spot moved to Chris’s chalk drawing of President Lincoln with the ugly slash across it, lingered . . . then died.

When the spotlight came up again, David stood with his head hanging. “Why do we kill our brightest and our best? Won’t we ever learn?”

Lights out . . . lights on. Rashad was “on stage” wearing a shirt and tie. “My name is Medgar Evers. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to speak by radio. I speak as a native Mississippian, educated in Mississippi schools, serving overseas in our nation’s armed forces against Hitlerism and fascism. I mention this because I believe I am typical of many loyal Mississippians of color, who are equally devoted to their State and want only to see it assume its rightful place in the democratic scheme of our country.”

The room was completely silent as Rashad, quoting Medgar Evers’s speech, painted a tough picture of the Jim Crow years. Finally “Medgar Evers” said, “What does the Negro want?” Rashad ticked off the end of segregation . . . to register and vote without handicap . . . more jobs at all levels . . . desegregated schools. “The Negro has been in America since 1619, a total of three hundred and forty-four years. He is not going anywhere else; this country is his home. He wants to do his part to help make his city, state, and nation a better place for everyone regardless of color and race.”

Denny took my hand and squeezed as Rashad said, “Thank you,” and started to walk off. I heard an “Oh no!” behind me as the shadowy figure appeared, pulled out the fluorescent green water gun and—“Bam! Bam!”—“shot” him in the back. “Medgar Evers” fell to the floor. The spotlight moved to Chris’s drawing of the civil rights leader on the backdrop. In the strong light, the ugly gash across the drawing stood out even more glaringly.

David moved into the spotlight. This time he threw his hands up. “Why do we kill our brightest and our best? Won’t we ever learn?”

The third scene featured Ramón wearing a white shirt and tie. No one would have guessed who he was supposed to be, except that he stood next to Chris’s drawing of President John Kennedy for a moment before he moved to center stage. “My fellow Americans.” He didn’t quite make the stretch from Latino accent to Bostonian inflections, but he tried. “The oath I swore before you and Almighty God—as the thirty-fifth president of the United States—is the same solemn oath our forefathers prescribed nearly a century and three-quarters ago.” People were leaning forward. “The world is very different now . . . yet we hold the same revolutionary belief—that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.”

I was so proud of Ramón. Amazed that he had dropped all his S-words and F-words for the stirring words of this inaugural address. “. . . And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”

But noone clapped. The audience tensed. Sure enough. Out came the shadowy figure and the water gun. “Bam! Bam!” Ramón dropped to the floor. And David repeated his sorrowful line: “Why do we kill our brightest and our best? Won’t we ever learn?”

By the time T.J. took the stage, even Denny’s grip on my hand was tight. T.J., too, had on a shirt and tie. The spotlight followed him as he paused by the drawing of Abraham Lincoln, looked up into that craggy face, then moved to center stage. When he spoke, I was amazed how he deepened his voice, rolling his words, sounding very like Dr. Martin Luther King. “Five score years ago,” he started, “a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. . . . But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free.”

I held my breath. But T.J. had spoken the truth; he knew this speech backward and forward. “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’ I have a dream . . .” At the end of Dr. King’s “I have a dream” litany, T. J. finally raised his arms proudly. “When this happens, when we allow freedom to ring from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’ ”

The audience couldn’t help it. They burst into applause. But once more, the shadowy figure appeared with that evil water gun. “Bam! Bam!” T.J. crumpled to the floor. The spotlight moved to Chris’s drawing of the great man, with its ugly gash.

But this time the original “gangbangers” of the cast (minus T.J.) came slowly out of the shadows from both sides, once more in their purple and green uniforms, and stood sorrowfully on either side of the “body” of Dr. King. They looked at one another across T.J.’s crumpled form. The Purples said, “Why do we kill our brightest and our best? Won’t we ever learn?”

The Greens replied, “Maybe it could start with us.” Hands reached out. Purples and Greens touched fist on fist, up, down, then slapped open hands in the familiar street greeting, friend to friend.

The lights dimmed. The actors slipped to the back of the room. Now I expected the lights to come on, and the audience would clap for the wonderful job the boys had done. But the lights stayed dim; no one clapped. The audience sat silently, as if stunned. And then I heard a sound coming from the second row where Florida was sitting.

The sound of someone crying.