28

Wonka!” Amanda draped herself all over the chocolate Lab, just like she’d been doing ever since she was a three-year-old.

“Hey, Mom.” Josh paused at the doorway between kitchen and dining room. “Doing laundry? On Sunday?”

I waved the flyer at him. “What’s this?” I pasted on a smile.

“Oh. That.” Josh shrugged and started to pick his way through the piles of clothes on the floor. “Just something Pete gave me.”

“Pete?”

He sighed patiently. “Pete Spencer—Yo-Yo’s brother.”

“Yeah,” Amanda butted in, holding one end of Willie Wonka’s old knotted play sock and pulling him into the dining room, his teeth clamped on the other end. “Pete asked Josh and me to go to this teen dance club thing next weekend. He said it’s really fun . . . no alcohol allowed . . . a place high school kids can go to have fun.”

My anxiety level pushed up into the orange zone. Amanda had been invited, too? She was only fourteen!

“Josh, hold it.” My son was about to disappear down the hall toward his bedroom. “It says ‘No one over seventeen allowed.’ That means there’s no adult supervision.”

Josh actually rolled his eyes at me. “No, Mother. The club owners are adults—gotta be, right? They say that so the place won’t be crashed by college kids and party types.” He looked down on me from his five feet eleven. “I thought you’d want us to go.”

“Want you to! Why?”

“Because it’s Pete asking us to go.”

“But you hardly know Pete! And he’s had a very rough life—his mom’s an addict, his sister was in jail. I mean, kids like that easily get caught up in smoking or drinking or doing drugs, and I don’t want—”

“Mom.” Josh’s voice took on a weary tone, as though explaining something to a child. “This Yada Yada thing today? They were your friends. You acted like you wanted us to be friends with their kids, right? So . . . we’re just trying to be friends.” He threw up his hands, turned, and disappeared into his room. At that moment he looked just like his father.

“Yeah, Mom,” Amanda echoed. “Besides, Florida smokes and she’s your friend. She was smoking right here.”

“What do you mean?” Of course I knew Florida smoked, but I hadn’t noticed her “dipping out for a cig” today.

“Out front—you know, when we were all eating in the back. Yo-Yo too.”

Oh, great. Just great. I wanted to be friends with these women in Yada Yada. I really did. But I hadn’t counted on what kinds of things my kids might pick up from the lifestyles of such a diverse group.

“Well, you’re right,” I said. “But those are habits they picked up before—” But Amanda and Willie Wonka were already tussling their way down the hall toward the living room.

Grrr. Why did I keep ending up on the losing end of arguments in this house? But I still felt uneasy about that flyer. I needed to talk with Denny . . . when we were talking again, that is.

I tossed the flyer on the dining room table and took the first load down to the basement. At least the washing machine was free. In fact, I hadn’t seen our upstairs neighbors all weekend. Maybe they’d gone out of town for the holiday. I kinda wished they’d seen our multicultural backyard party today . . . maybe they wouldn’t be so standoffish.

Upstairs I heard the phone ringing, then Amanda’s voice a moment later. “Mo-om! It’s for you!” I hustled up the basement stairs and picked up the kitchen extension.

“This is Jodi.”

“Sista Jodee?” The Jamaican accent on the other end could be only one person.

“Oh!” I tried not to sound surprised. “Hi, Chanda.”

“Sista Jodee?” The voice on the other end hesitated.

What did she want? Did she leave something at my house this afternoon? “I’m here, Chanda. What is it?” I heard a snuffling noise, like she might be crying.

“Sista Jodee, I got somethin’ for Yada Yada to pray about, but . . . I don’t have a computer. Could you send it to other people by e-mail? I can’t wait till our next meeting.”

Couldn’t help feeling good that Chanda had called me. “Sure, Chanda. I’ll get a pencil . . . okay, go ahead.”

Again I waited through some snuffling. When she did speak her voice was so quiet I missed what she said. “Try again, Chanda. I can barely hear you,” I said, plugging my other ear.

“I . . . found a lump in my breast,” she whispered from the other end. “I’m so scared, Sista Jodee. My mother, she died from breast cancer. What if . . . what if I got it too?”

I FELT OVERWHELMED by Chanda’s phone call. No wonder she’d acted like a scared rabbit when she first got here today . . . and no wonder she’d been so eager to have Yada Yada meet again. Without being able to get in on the e-mail loop, she was pretty isolated from the prayer group except for one-on-one phone calls. And who did she know well enough in the group to just call and talk? Adele? Maybe, maybe not.

The TV was still going in the living room. Sounded like the whole family was in there now, laughing at some show. I was tempted to join them, to just let everything be okay. I even took a few steps in that direction, and then stopped. I did promise Chanda I’d send her prayer request on the e-loop. And—I groaned—I still had all this laundry to do.

I was still sitting at the computer when I heard the TV go off and a noisy threesome tromping down the hall. “’Night, Amanda! ’Night, Josh!” I called.

“’Night, Mom,” they called back, disappearing into their caves—though I knew good and well they’d stay up late listening to music or reading or talking on the phone, because they could sleep in tomorrow. The teenage version of Memorial Day.

I sensed Denny standing in the hallway behind me, watching my back. Half-turning my head I said, “Denny?”

“Yeah?”

I turned and faced him. He looked so boyish standing there in his jeans, hands in his pockets. I knew he hated the distance that came between us when we quarreled, hated it as much as I did. “I . . . wanted to say thanks for everything you did today to help pull off Florida’s party. Grilling, cleaning up . . . but mostly just liking my friends and showing it.”

Denny hunched his shoulders and propped himself against the open archway between dining room and hallway. “Don’t know if Nony said anything when you guys were meeting today, but sounds like she’s putting a lot of pressure on Mark to emigrate to South Africa. But from what Mark says, it just ain’t gonna happen. No way does he want to raise his sons in Africa.”

“No . . . she didn’t say anything today. But I’m not surprised.” This wasn’t what I wanted to talk about.

“I’d still like to hear more about how Stu ‘found’ Carla. What in the heck does that mean?”

“Sure.” I drew a breath. “Wanna talk now?”

He peered at me for a long moment. He knew good and well what I really wanted to talk about. “Tell you what . . . we both got a day off tomorrow. We’ll talk then, okay?”

I tried not to let my disappointment show. But he was probably right—tomorrow would be better. We were both tired now. “I’ve got to spend some time at school getting ready for Parents Day this week,” I reminded him. “And we’re meeting the Whittakers and the Browns at Lighthouse Beach around four for a picnic.”

“We’ll make time,” he promised. “Coming to bed?”

“Yeah. Give me a minute.”

I turned back to the computer and stared at the e-mail message on the screen I’d been writing . . .

To: Yada Yada

From: BaxterBears@wahoo.com

Subject: Prayer Request from Chanda

It was GREAT to see everybody this afternoon. (We missed you, Hoshi!) What a fantastic way to celebrate Florida’s five years of sobriety!

Chanda called this evening with a prayer request: She discovered a lump in her breast (last week?) and is really scared. Her mother died of breast cancer. She really wants our prayers. Don’t think she’s seen a doctor yet. She could use lots of encouragement.

Florida and Stu, please keep us up to date on what happens next, now that Carla is found. (Like Avis said, what an answer to prayer! I’m still praising the Lord!) We still need to pray, right?

Just a reminder to mark your calendars for two weeks from today. Adele said we could meet at her house that Sunday, five o’clock.

I’d been kinda surprised when Adele volunteered to host the next get-together of Yada Yada. ’Course we weren’t going to do a party—just prayer. Still, I hadn’t expected Adele to be the first volunteer.

I moved my cursor to “send,” then hesitated. “. . . still praising the Lord”? Hardly. I mean, yeah, theoretically I was still praising the Lord that Carla had been found. But I hadn’t been doing any actual praising since Avis had said the last “Amen.” And “We still need to pray, right?” Right. I seemed to recall promising God that morning that I’d “make it up to Him” when I hit the floor running with everything I had to do to get ready for church and Florida’s party. But somehow it was easier to talk about praying for all these requests than actually praying.

I deleted the “still praising the Lord” phrase, hit “send,” and shut down the computer.

I’d pray tomorrow. I really would.