José made no comment when he got back to the third floor, but I noticed he seemed withdrawn the rest of the move. He even avoided Amanda, which put a kink in her ponytail. I didn’t think Florida had seen the body language that went on between José and Chris; she was just fussing that he disappeared. “That boy done cut out for the last time! He gone be lucky if I let him back in the house.”
“But Mama!” Carla’s face puckered. “What if he don’t come back ’fore we move? Does he know where our new house is? ”
Florida was unmoved. “Humph. That his problem, now, ain’t it? —Carl! You ready for boxes now? ”
Edesa tried to say something to José, but he just shrugged her off and started lugging boxes down the stairs. “What went on out there? ” I murmured to her a few minutes later as we tackled the boxes stacked in the hallway, when I was sure Florida or Carl wouldn’t overhear. “Chris acted like he didn’t even know José—no, worse than that. As if he didn’t exist.”
She hesitated. “I’m not sure. But the way those boys looked at José, I was frightened. That’s why I called him to come back. Black and Latino gangs are at each other’s throats on the West Side. Maybe here too.”
“But José isn’t in a gang! Remember, he stood up to some gangbangers, maybe it was even Latin Kings, when they were selling drugs in the park where his kid brother and sisters played! Then that rival gang showed up . . .” I swallowed. That was the phone call that glued us together as a prayer group at the women’s conference where we first met—Delores’s son in the hospital! Caught in gang crossfire, trying to get his siblings out of harm’s way. “And he and Chris were both laughing and talking not thirty minutes ago.”
“Sí. But Chris’s friends don’t know that. I suspect Chris acted that way to save face.”
Now I was mad at Chris. “What kind of friend is that? Couldn’t he have just said, ‘Hey guys, this is my friend, José, he’s helping us move’—or something? ”
Ben Garfield’s voice sailed down the hall. “Jodi Baxter! You and Edesa gonna jabber all day? We need some more boxes!”
Edesa grabbed a box labeled Carla’s Stuff. “All I know is, the Enriques family is likemi familia.” Her eyes teared up. “I don’t want José to get hurt again.”
THE TRUCK GOT LOADED BY NOON, and Carl asked Denny to drive the rental truck to the Hickmans’ new address on North Ashland in Rogers Park. That was the first time I realized that Carl Hickman didn’t have a driver’s license.Duh, of course.No car, no driver’s license. Peter Douglass, who somehow ended up with a carload of teenagers, showed up at the new house with a couple of buckets of Buffalo Joe’s hot wings and five liters of soda. José seemed to have snapped out of his funk. He and Amanda were sitting together on the front steps, sucking the life out of those hot wings.
The frame house was old, badly in need of paint, and looked tiny squeezed between three-story apartment buildings. But it had two small bedrooms downstairs and two upstairs, plus a separate second-floor “apartment” in the back. “An’ a front porch!” Florida crowed. “I’m gonna get me a wicker rocking chair, jus’ like my grandmama used to have back in Memphis. Mm-hm.” Her eyes got dreamy, her upset at Chris momentarily forgotten.
Fed and sassy, the teenagers came up with a brilliant idea, lining everybody up from the truck to the front door, passing boxes hand to hand. “Huh,” Yo-Yo snorted. “Takes me longer than that to get Pete outta bed in the mornin’.” Even unloading the furniture seemed to go faster on this end of the move.
“Yada Yada still meetin’ at my crib tomorrow? ” Yo-Yo asked hopefully as we finally dragged our weary bodies to our cars.
“What about Ruth? ” I asked. “You know, stairs.” Yo-Yo’s motellike apartment building had one flight of outside stairs to the balcony walkway in front of the second-level apartment doors.
Ben, waiting on Yo-Yo to get in the monster Buick, snapped, “Ruth’s not coming. Even if you lived in a basement. Doctor’s got her back on bed rest.”
Yo-Yo, Edesa, Florida, and I looked at each other. How did we miss this new development?
BUT BEN WAS RIGHT. I called Ruth the next day when we got home from Second Sunday Potluck, and she said, yes, she’d been ordered back on bed rest at her last prenatal appointment if she didn’t want to miscarry. “A few sick days I’ve still got. So I call the office;my boss has a snit. Can the man find anything when I’m not there? Make his own phone calls? Oy. Helpless as a goyim in a Yiddish restaurant.” She sighed. “I was hoping to use all my sick days when the baby—uh, babies arrived.But I don’t know, Jodi.My job might be kaput when all this is over. One more thing to upset Ben.”
For the first time since she’d announced she was pregnant, Ruth sounded discouraged. And frankly, I didn’t know how to encourage her without stomping all over Ben’s concerns. The tension between Ruth and Ben made my head ache.
What are friends supposed to do in a situation like this, anyway? I thought, riding with Stu and Becky toward Yo-Yo’s apartment a couple of hours later, half-listening to their chatter in the front seats.
“Kinda cool to see more people from New Morning at the potluck,” Becky said. “What? Roll up the window? But it’s hot! —Oh.” She fiddled with the power window as Stu turned the AC on full blast. “Preacher Cobbs’s wife even asked me my name, called me ‘Sister Becky,’ like I was a regular saint.What’s that people call her? First Rose somethin’? ”
“First Lady Rose.” Stu pulled her Celica into the parking lot of Yo-Yo’s apartment building. “I think it’s a black church thing. Sign of respect for the pastor and his wife, I guess.Would take getting used to, though.” Stu came from the school of first-name egalitarianism. No titles.
“Huh.” Becky chewed on that a while. “Guess it’s good Pastor Clark ain’t married if Uptown and New Morning do that joining thing. Can’t see two ‘first ladies’ in the White House, the doghouse, or any house.”
We were still laughing about that as we punched Yo-Yo’s door bell, then trooped into her barely furnished apartment. “Hey, Becky.” Yo-Yo gave Becky a high five. “Glad your PO gave you the OK to pray with Yada Yada.Guess the penal system finally figgerin’ out that religion helps.”
As I hugged Chanda, Delores, Edesa, and Nony, who had already arrived, my mind strayed to Yo-Yo’s comment. Funny. Didn’t think of my faith as “religion.” Other people had religions: Muslims,Buddhists, Hare Krishnas. Christians and Jews were supposed to have a relationship with God. Big difference in my mind. But Yo-Yo had a point. Excons who went to prayer meetings—Yada Yada or otherwise—probably lowered the recidivism rate.
Yo-Yo’s furniture consisted of one ancient couch and several mismatched dining room chairs, which meant more of us had to join Yo-Yo on old bed pillows on the floor. Besides Ruth, several others were missing. Florida, who never skipped, was too over-whelmed with unpacking. ( “Mi still not unpacked,” Chanda sniffed. “What de big deal? ” ) Florida hadn’t been to church either. “We still callin’ Chris’s friends, tryin’ to find him,” she’d told me on the phone, her tone rippling between worry and fury. “That boy! Lord, give me patience!”
Adele wasn’t coming; she’d had an upset with MaDear.
“And Hoshi stayed home with Mark and the boys so I could come,” Nony said. “I wish . . .” But she didn’t finish. Just picked at her nail polish.
Avis arrived last—with her daughter Rochelle. “I’m sorry I didn’t call ahead. Rochelle is staying with us for a few weeks. I told her she’d be more than welcome.” A smile tickled Avis’s face. “Peter’s babysit-ting Conny. It’ll be good for him.”
Rochelle cast her eyes down as if embarrassed.Didn’t blame her. After all, her abrupt arrival two weeks ago had disrupted our last Yada Yada meeting.To our credit, though, everyone said “sure” and kept the greetings low-key, not making Rochelle’s presence a big deal. She settled on a floor pillow near her mother, a vision even in slim faded jeans, sleeveless top, and toe sandals. Her hair was a long, thick fall of kinky curls with rusty highlights. Her nutmeg skin showed little sign of the bruises she’d had two weeks ago. But her sad eyes were a window into the bruises in her heart.
Delores, who’d come straight from work at the county hospital, leaned over, gave Rochelle a hug, and whispered, “Dios le bendiga. God bless you, my daughter.”
Avis cut through the usual chatter. “Sisters, let’s spend a few minutes in worship before we share requests. Try to lay aside all the pulls and tugs for our attention, and consider who it is who hears our prayers. Immanuel, God with us. Jehovah-Jireh, our provider. Jehovah-Rapha, our healer. Jehovah-Shalom, our peace.We have so much to be thankful for, in spite of the concerns we have.” She began to pray aloud, just worshiping; others joined in. But without Florida and Adele, and with a subdued Nony, our worship seemed more restrained than usual. Or maybe it was just me. Funny how I let how others worshiped influence my own expression to God.
Well, I wasn’t going to let it. I grabbed my Bible and opened it to Psalm 139, paraphrasing as I read along, adding my voice to the other prayers. “Lord, You know all about me. You know when I’m resting and when I’m working. You even know what I’m thinking—”
“Ouch,” Yo-Yo muttered. Chanda giggled. The other prayers dropped to a murmur. I seemed to have the floor.
“Everything I do is familiar to You. You know what I’m going to say even before I say it, and You protect me from every side. How can I even begin to understand how wonderful You are? —”
To my surprise, another voice cut in. Nony, her Bible closed, took up the familiar psalm straight from her heart. “Where can I go from Your Spirit, O Lord? Where can I flee from Your presence? If I go up to the heavens, You are there; if I make my bed in the depths, You are there too.”
For some reason, Psalm 139 broke open our worship.We sang “thank You” hymns and songs, read Scripture, added prayers . . . until Avis herself brought worship to an end. “Nony? How can we pray for you? ” she asked gently.
Nony’s face was wet. “Oh, sisters. I am tired of bringing my sorrows to you. I feel so selfish. Mark is improving little by little—for that, I do thank God. But it will be a long time before our family is back to normal, before we can think of other things. And . . . I feel so useless. Like God has put me on a shelf. I wanted to help my suffering people in South Africa, and now I’m just . . . a nursemaid.” She smiled ruefully. “See? I told you my thoughts are selfish. Pray for me, my sisters, that I would grow in patience. That I would learn to wait on God.”
I reached out and held Nony’s hand. Good grief, Lord, I’m the one who’s selfish. How easy I get caught up keeping my own household running and forget to call Nony and Hoshi. I still had a couple of weeks before school started. Maybe there was something else I could do.
“Yeah, you can pray that waitin’ thing for me too,” Becky chimed in. “Y’all know I been goin’ nuts just hangin’ around Stu’s house. Drivin’ Stu nuts too—”
“Amen to that.” But Stu’s smile took away any sting.
“—but the good news is, Yo-Yo and Ruth put in a good word for me at the Bagel Bakery, an’ I got an interview tomorrow. Y’all can pray about that. Kinda nervous.” Becky seemed embarrassed at the “Yea, Becky!” and “You go, girl!” comebacks.
“Uh, speaking of Ruth . . .” Yo-Yo stuffed her hands into the bib of her overall shorts. “Tell ya the truth, I don’t know how to pray ’bout her. Sometimes . . . I dunno. Almost agree with Ben.Not sure she should push this pregnancy. Heck, the lady’s almost fifty!” She made a face. “Sorry. Tryin’ to clean up my language . . . but she’s already been in the hospital twice. I thnk Ben’s scared. Grouchy ol’ goat is still the closest thing to a father I ever had. He’s been real good to me an’ the boys. He’s got his reasons for thinkin’ like he does.”
I tensed. Yo-Yo was practically saying Ruth should end the pregnancy! I expected a flurry of protests, with Bible verses flying through the air. But there was only silence. I was shocked. Was everyone in Yada Yada thinking the same thing?