31

Whew. Finding out that Avis had had breast cancer and that her husband had died of cancer was huge. Who would have known, as serene as she always seemed and so ready to “give glory to God” in every situation? Her hilarious story about visualizing “the little man with no teeth” on her “deformed breast” seemed so out of character for Avis . . . and yet, maybe not.

“Laughing together was so healing for Conrad and me!” she told us. “In fact, it helped prepare us for what lay ahead when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. They couldn’t operate—the cancer was too far advanced by the time he was diagnosed. But God showed us that even in the midst of a crisis, we can look for His gifts of joy and peace.” She shook her head, half-smiling at the memory. “He wouldn’t let our daughters be all sad and gloomy around him, even at the end, when he was bedridden and in a lot of pain. He’d crack jokes and tease them . . . and I’m so grateful. Their memories of their dad are happy ones right up to the end, even though they miss him terribly. I’m only sorry he never met his namesake . . . Conrad Johnson the third.” She threw up a hand. “Don’t get me started on the grandbabies! I think maybe it’s time to pray for Chanda.”

And pray we did, gathering around our sister who cleaned houses on the North Shore, praying with many voices for healing. As part of the prayer, both Avis and Nony read a whole litany of “healing scriptures,” claiming God’s promises for health and wholeness for Chanda. I certainly believed God could heal, but I wasn’t always comfortable thanking God in advance, like we knew for sure that’s what He was going to do. In fact, I felt a little confused; Avis’s husband had died, hadn’t he? It was a little easier for me to pray that Chanda would experience God’s peace in the middle of the uncertainty and that she could trust that God loved her and was working out His purposes in her life.

While we were still praying, the door buzzer sounded. “Ain’t time yet,” I heard Adele mutter, but she padded silently in her slippers for the front door. Shrill voices from the stairway took shape as Adele opened the door.

“Don’t know this place! Take me home!”

“MaDear, you are home. Here’s Adele—see?”

“Adele who?”

We heard Adele’s sharp voice. “Sassy, you wasn’t s’posed to come till eight. I got company.”

“I know, I know. But . . . had to bring her home. She . . . never mind. Talk later. But I gotta go now. ’Bye, MaDear. Don’t be mad, Adele. I’ll call you.” And footsteps retreated down the short flight leading out the front door of the apartment building.

The apartment door closed and Adele appeared back in her front room carrying a walker folded flat in one hand and dragging MaDear by the hand with her other. “Sit here,” she commanded, lowering the elderly woman into the dining room chair she’d been sitting in earlier. “Shh, now. We’re praying.”

“Oh. Praying.” Out of the corner of my eye I saw MaDear press her hands flat together in front of her sunken bosom and squeeze her eyes shut. “Yessuh, Jesus . . . thanks ya, Jesus . . . ’Alle-lu-jah . . . Yessuh, yessuh . . .”

Adele started to rejoin the group praying around Chanda, but Avis moved over to the little woman in the dining room chair and began to pray. The rest of the group followed her, several kneeling down in front of the chair, others taking MaDear’s hands and holding them, and began to pray for Adele’s mother as if she’d been there the whole time. MaDear’s eyes opened and she looked from face to face, a smile beginning to soften the birdlike face.

“Adele? Adele? We having a party?” she said in her throaty voice.

“Sure we are, MaDear.” Adele’s own voice sounded husky.

Yada Yada prayed for MaDear for several minutes, then we drifted back to our places with the last few “Bless the Lords.” Edesa opted for sitting on the floor with Yo-Yo so Adele could have her chair.

As the room quieted, Avis raised her eyebrows. “Anything else before we close out today?”

“What about you, Jodi?” Florida spoke up. “You always so busy keepin’ everybody connected. What can we pray ’bout for you?”

Her question took me off guard. “Oh, well, I don’t know . . . nothing really.” That sounded lame, and I knew it.

“Maybe Jodi doesn’t need our prayers.” Adele’s statement sounded more like a challenge.

“Of course I do,” I tossed back. Where did she get off saying something like that? Every time I thought Adele and I were breaking ground, it felt like she broke the shovel over my head. “I would appreciate prayer for my kids . . . Josh and Amanda are going to Mexico on a mission trip the end of this month—a youth group thing. But I have to admit I’m anxious. All the terrorist threats . . . the turmoil in the Middle East . . . heightened security. It’s not easy letting them go out of the country right now.” There, I thought.

Avis nodded. “Of course. Anyone else?”

“Well, uh . . .” Yo-Yo scratched the back of her short, stand-up hair. “You all good at prayin’, I know that. So maybe you can pray for me about this Jesus thing. You know, deciding to be a Jesus follower or however you said it, Florida.”

Nony literally leaped out of her chair. “Hallelujah!” she shouted. Adele’s living room erupted with “Glory to God!” and “Praise Jesus!” Yo-Yo wanted to be a Christian! Now that was worth shouting about.

Yo-Yo stuck her hands in her pockets and hunched her shoulders till she could get a word in edgewise. “You guys finished? ’Cause it ain’t like there’s anything to shout about yet. I done some stuff . . . stuff I ain’t proud of. What’s God gonna say about that?”

I NEVER DID GET TO TALK TO YO-YO that evening about the teen rave flyer, but it seemed like a downer after the way we ended Yada Yada at Adele’s apartment. I mentally made a note to call her sometime before we met again in two weeks, which Nony offered to host at her house in Evanston, just north of the city. “You’re all invited to visit our church that Sunday, too, if you’d like,” Nony had said. “Easy to find . . . the Worship Center on Dempster, just west of Dodge. Doesn’t look like a church, though. We meet in a warehouse.”

“Well, Jodi and Avis’s church meets in a storefront,” Edesa had joked. “Maybe you’ll have to wait till Yada Yada comes to Iglesia del Espíritu Santo to visit a real church.”

Avis was ecstatic on the way home. “You know, it was really Yo-Yo who encouraged us to hang in there with each other after the conference—to keep praying for Delores and José, remember? And, thanks to you, you got us all connected by e-mail. Maybe she didn’t know it, but it was God’s plan all along for us to hang in there for Yo-Yo, too, don’t you think?”

“Absolutely.” I laughed. “Avis, I am so high, I don’t even think the car tires are touching the ground.”

“Here.” She fished around in her big purse and pulled out a CD. “Stick that in your CD player.” In a few moments the car was filled with a mixture of gospel and praise and worship music.

I pulled up in front of Avis’s apartment building and spied a parking space not far away. It gave me an idea. “Avis, could I come up for a few minutes? I’d like to see a picture of your husband . . . if you don’t mind. After the story you told tonight, I’d like to meet him because . . . that’s part of you I didn’t know about.”

She hesitated just a millisecond. “Sure. Come on up.”

I parked the car—thanking God for the mini-miracle of a parking space on the street at that time of evening—and followed Avis up to her second-floor apartment. It was . . . just like Avis. Elegant art prints on the walls, shiny wood floors—shoes off at the door, please—with bright-colored area rugs, beige-and-black furniture, bookcases filled with hardcover books, and silk flowers in curved opaque vases. Colorful translucent drapes were caught back from windows that boasted Venetian blinds, turned just so to let the light in and keep prying eyes from below out.

“It’s beautiful, Avis,” I breathed.

She walked over to a low bookcase, the top of which was covered with framed photographs, and picked up a five-by-seven silver frame. “This is Conrad.”

The picture was actually Avis and Conrad, standing by the railing of a ship, his arm clutching her close. They were both wearing white slacks and marine blue shirts, setting off the rich deep color of their skin. Avis was laughing, holding on to a long headscarf that was blowing in the wind. Conrad was grinning at her, obviously thinking he was the luckiest man in the world.

“That was our twentieth anniversary,” she said. “We took a cruise to the Caribbean. Our first and last.” She pointed out the rest of the photographs. “Those are the three girls—Charette, Rochelle, and Natasha. Charette and Rochelle are married. This one is Charette’s twins, Tabitha and Toby, last Christmas. And this . . .” She picked up a portrait of a toddler with loose black curls all over his head, grinning happily. “. . . is Conrad Johnson the third. Rochelle’s baby. She gave the baby ‘Johnson’ as his middle name so he could carry his granddaddy’s name.”

“And Natasha?”

“She’s in grad school at the University of Michigan. Comes home once in a blue moon.”

I looked at the photo of Avis and Conrad on the cruise ship a long time, then finally set it down. “I wish I’d known him.” I turned to her. “Why haven’t you ever mentioned him before? He seems like a wonderful man.”

Avis sat down on the love seat along the front windows, her gaze on the big elms lining the street. “Because . . . I miss him. It’s not easy to talk about him. It’s easier . . .” She hesitated. “. . . easier to just praise God for the good years we had, for giving him to me long enough to raise our girls.” She turned away from the window. “But if you want to know the truth, Jodi, it’s not easy to be around married couples. That’s one reason I turned down your invitation to dinner, because I knew when I got home, I’d probably tear my hair out, I’d feel so lonely. I didn’t mean to be rude, but . . .” She shrugged.

Avis . . . lonely? Tearing her hair out? I was trying to absorb this new picture of the calm, self-assured Avis Johnson, principal of Mary McLeod Bethune Elementary School, the praise and worship leader at Uptown Community Church, whose joy spilled over to the rest of us, helping us white folks worship, helping us be thankful.

“I’m so sorry, Avis. I didn’t know.” It was getting darker outside, and I really needed to get going. “How do you do it—keep going, I mean. You always seem so happy.”

“I am happy. Really. As long as I keep my focus in the right place—right on Jesus and all the good things God has done for me. Or Satan rushes right in and makes me start feeling sorry for myself.” She gave me a hug. “Thanks, Jodi . . . thanks for wanting to ‘meet’ Conrad. I think he’d like you, too.”

THE DIGITAL CLOCK ON THE DASH glowed 8:13 as I turned on the ignition. Ohmigosh, I was supposed to pick up Josh and Amanda from youth group on my way home, and I totally forgot! I was sure they’d be home by now anyway, but just in case I drove down Morse Avenue past Uptown’s storefront exterior . . . no lights.

Okay, so I blew it. We’d have to work out the Sunday night car thing on the nights Yada Yada wanted to meet. But I couldn’t feel bad; the whole evening had been incredible. I reached over and turned up the volume on the CD player—and smiled. Avis had forgotten her CD.

I was halfway to the house from the garage before I noticed Denny sitting by himself on the back steps. “Hi! I’m home.”

“Uh-huh. Heard you before I saw you.”

“Heard me?—no, you didn’t! The music wasn’t that loud . . . was it?”

“Uh-huh. That loud.” But he reached up and pulled me down on the step beside him. Twilight had settled over the neighborhood, smudging the row of garages along the alley into a gray base that sprouted a silhouette of treetops and power lines against the cobalt blue of the sky. Only then did I notice that he was balancing a bottle with one hand on his knee.

Well, what of it. We’d talked about it and called a truce. He’d asked me to trust him, and so I would.

“Um, sorry I’m late. Did the kids get home okay?”

“Yeah, they got a ride. But your name is mud.”

“Oh dear.” I sighed. “I better go apologize.” I started to get up, but he pulled me back.

“Don’t go. Not yet.”

I waited, but he said nothing more. We sat in a circle of silence, hearing only the hum of traffic over on Sheridan Road and the muted squeal of an el train. I began to feel anxious; how long had Denny been sitting out here like this? I’d expected to find him in front of the TV watching baseball.

“Denny? Is something wrong?”

He took a big breath and let it out slowly. “The school board hasn’t renewed my contract yet for next year.”

“Hasn’t . . . what does that mean?”

“Nothing yet. But they’re talking budget cuts. And you know how it is: Last to come, first to go.”

“Oh, Denny.” I put my arm around his broad back and laid my head on his shoulder. “Oh, Denny . . . I’m so sorry.” But for one brief second it tickled my fancy like good news. Maybe we’d move back to Downers Grove, pick up our life where’d we’d left off a year ago. Our old neighborhood, our old jobs, our old church . . .

But I knew that’s not what Denny wanted. He’d had tenure at his job in Downers Grove, and he had taken the risk of moving into the city because he felt that’s what God wanted him to do.

And Yada Yada . . . I suddenly realized I didn’t want my old life. Not if it didn’t include Yada Yada. Whatever my “destiny” was—as Evangelist Olivia Mitchell had put it—it had something to do with Yada Yada. We’d only been a prayer group for barely two months, and already it had been a roller coaster ride that left me breathless. Shaken up. Energized.

Wanting more.