33

Only two weeks till the Uptown Community youth group left on their trip to Mexico, building houses with Habitat for Humanity. But now that school was out, we all slowed down in the Baxter household. Denny had been hired to coach some of the summer park leagues—not much money, but it helped, and he liked coaching the younger kids. Amanda had gotten hired as a “mother’s helper” half-days for an Uptown mom who worked at home, so she was raking in the money big time. Josh wasn’t so lucky. The ten-day mission trip made it difficult to pick up a summer job, so Denny put him to work painting the garage.

As for me, I had a list of “projects” as long as my arm that I wanted to do this summer. And for another thing, I’d promised God I’d be more faithful having a “quiet time” in the morning, to read my Bible and pray. But during my first “quiet time” of the summer, it occurred to me that that was an odd phrase. “Quiet time.” That’s what they called it at church camp when I was a kid, what every pastor or teen group leader or Bible study I’d ever been part of had called it—that, or “personal devotions.”

No wonder I had never included out-loud praises to God in my devotions, or turned up the music and danced.

Denny and I had decided not to say anything to the kids about his job contract—not until we knew something for certain. So I hesitated to put that prayer request out on the e-loop, where Josh or Amanda might see it if any of the Yada Yada sisters commented on it by reply mail. We were meeting in less than a week anyway; I’d wait till then.

I checked e-mail from time to time but guessed the others in Yada Yada were like me. Now that we knew we were going to meet on a semiregular basis, fewer requests showed up on the e-list. But Chanda called me late in the week. She had an appointment for a mammogram the following Tuesday, and would I go with her? “Avis promised somebody would go with me,” she pouted, “but everybody I’ve called so far got to work, and Avis doesn’t return my calls. You done with school, though, right?”

I knew for a fact that Avis had gone to visit her grandkids this week, but she said she’d be back in time for Yada Yada on Sunday. But . . . this shouldn’t have to fall on Avis’s shoulders. “Sure, I could do that. Do you want me to pick you up?”

“That’d be great, Sista Jodee. That way I could take the babies. Didn’t know where I was goin’ to find a babysitter for them, anyway.”

I smacked my forehead as I hung up. Taking care of Chanda’s “babies” was the last thing I wanted to do after so recently shedding myself of my thirty third-graders. Calm down, Jodi. It’s only a couple of hours. Just pack a bag of goodies, and you’ll be fine.

But Chanda’s call reminded me that I hadn’t heard anything from either Stu or Florida about what was happening in Carla’s case, so finally I just picked up the phone.

“Girl, them people got so much red tape, I could plaster my walls with it,” Florida steamed. “I gotta fill out half a zillion forms, take a drop, get a home visit . . . don’t seem like no end to it.”

I murmured something sympathetic, but frankly, I felt at a loss.

“Jodi . . . I am gonna get my girl back, ain’t I?”

She was looking for reassurance from me? I wished Avis wasn’t out of town, or that I could get Nony in on a conference call. But it was just me—me and whatever faith I could muster. Reaching deep, past my gutless human skepticism, I reached for the promises I said I believed.

“We gotta believe it, Florida. What’s that thing you’re always saying? God didn’t bring you this far to leave you, right? Jesus said it only takes two to agree on something and ‘it will be done for them by My Father in heaven.’ And we’re all standing together with you on this one.”

“Where’s it say that, Jodi?”

Oh, Lord. I knew lots of Scripture verses, just couldn’t remember where to find them on demand. “I’ll look it up and e-mail you the reference, okay?”

“Thanks, Jodi. See ya Sunday at Nony’s. You goin’ to her church in the mornin’?”

DENNY AND THE KIDS decided not to go with me to the Worship Center because Nony warned us that it sometimes ran “late-ish,” and they all had stuff they wanted to do in the afternoon. We argued about who was going to get the car, but three to one beat me out (even though they could have walked to Morse Avenue—barely a mile). “Okay,” I said, “but I need to be at Yada Yada by five o’clock. Get the car back in time—promise?”

Denny shrugged. “No problem.” So I gave in and called Avis. No answer. Maybe she wasn’t coming back till this afternoon. Who else lived close to me . . . Adele?

Rats. I’d rather not have to call her. But it didn’t look like I had any choice. I dialed.

Adele picked me up in her Ford Escort at nine-thirty Sunday morning. We found the Worship Center in Evanston easily enough, but like Nony had said, it didn’t look like a church. A plain building hunkered down in a small industrial strip on Dempster Street.

Inside, a young African-American woman with a pretty smile gave us both a big hug and handed us bulletins. Adele wasn’t the “huggy” type, but she allowed it and we both made our way into the main room, which was two or three times bigger than Uptown’s worship space, though rather cavernous and “ware-housy.” The chairs were nice, though. Padded. Uptown should take a clue. Banners hung up and down the two aisles, and the platform was decorated with big green plants and flowers and a nice backdrop that looked like it might once have been a theater prop in a Victorian play.

I thought the service had already begun, even though we got there before ten, which is when Nony said the service started, because several men and women were walking back and forth at the front, praying rather loudly. Adele and I sat about halfway back in the middle section, and I twisted around to see if I could spot Nony but didn’t see anyone I recognized. But as the praise team filed up onto the platform and the musicians took their places, Ruth plopped down on the padded chair next to me.

“Where’s Yo-Yo?” I whispered.

Ruth shook her head. “She asks; her boss says, ‘What do you think this is, the Pope John deli? We work on Sunday.” She patted my hand. “But she’s coming to Yada Yada later on.”

“Huh,” I grunted. Now that Yo-Yo had become a Christian, working at a Jewish deli might be problematic as far as going to Sunday services.

Over the next half-hour, the Worship Center praise team launched into several vigorous praise songs, which were shown by overhead projector on the wall. We had to jockey a few seats down the row in order to see around one of the steel pillars that held up the roof. As we were singing something about “My miracle is coming . . . my breakthrough is on the way,” I saw Nony and Mark come in with their two boys—along with Hoshi and a whole string of young adults who looked like university students. The Smiths all gave us big smiles but sat closer to the front. Mark, in a dark suit, looked even more handsome than I’d remembered. Nony was wearing a black slinky dress with a gauzy black-and-gold shawl over it and big gold earrings. Gosh, that woman knew how to dress, I thought enviously—though I knew the same outfit would look like a Halloween costume on me.

We’d been on our feet worshiping about half an hour when Florida pushed Chris and Cedric into the row in front of us, followed by Stu, who must have picked them up. Not a bad representation from Yada Yada, I thought.

Nony had said the vision of her nondenominational church was to be “a church of all nations,” but except for half a dozen white folks and a few Hispanic and Asian folks, everyone else was black. Guess it wasn’t any easier for an African-American church to attract people of other races than for a well-intentioned white church. It crossed my mind that if we merged Uptown Community and the Worship Center, nobody would have to feel like a minority.

We finally got to sit down as the worship leader called up Pastor Lyle Foster, who’d been sitting on the front row—and everybody stood up again and clapped and cheered. That blew my mind! I couldn’t imagine Uptown cheering when Pastor Clark got up to preach, even though most people liked his teaching.

This ought to be good.

But if I thought it was time for the message, I had another think coming. “Pastor Lyle,” though not a tall man, seemed to fill the stage with his energy. The next thing I knew he had begun to sing a song that he seemed to be making up on the spot; the instruments—a full set of drums, bongos, two saxophones, keyboard, and a tall, lovely woman on electric bass—picked it up quickly, and the praise team was backing him up like they’d known it all along. Several times in the next half-hour he said, “You all can sit down now,” so of course I sat down. But it was like he was teasing, because thirty seconds later he and the musicians were off and running on another song.

We finally did sit down, but the pastor came off the platform and began walking around, followed by his elders or ministers—both men and women—laying his hands on people and praying for them. He called one woman out of her chair and prayed for her in the aisle, and bam! She fell backward and was caught by two strong men who laid her down gently as a woman covered her legs modestly with a burgundy-colored cloth.

All this seemed to be right up Adele’s alley, because she was thanking God and praying in tongues all along.

They finally took an offering, dismissed the kids to “Youth Ministry,” and I thought it was finally time for the sermon. But the pastor came off the platform again and asked a woman who’d been part of the praise team to come to the front. She looked to be thirty-five or so, maybe a single mom because the pastor started talking about how she was struggling to keep her head above water and make a home for her kids. Then he said, “The Spirit of God is telling me that we need to encourage this mother. I want ten people who have a twenty-dollar bill in their pocket to come up and bless our sister.”

For a split second I thought, Oh, how embarrassing! What if ten people don’t go up? But within thirty seconds, not only ten people went up, but fifteen . . . maybe twenty, or twenty-five! One of the ushers stood by and held a bucket, and when everyone had gone back to their seats, the pastor took the bucket and turned it upside down, raining money down over this woman’s head, who by now was weeping and jumping and praising God.