2-in-1 Yada Yada (75 page)

I handed over the envelope and remembered: I was going to ask Stu if she'd like to come for Thanksgiving.
Humph!
Maybe she'd like to organize the whole meal?

38

S
tu arrived at one o'clock sharp on Thanksgiving Day, her silver Celica loaded with a veggie tray, a big bag of chips, two kinds of dip, homemade cranberry bread, small paper plates with a Thanksgiving motif, and a tin of mixed nuts. “Hey. Real food,” Josh salivated, helping her carry the goodies into the living room. He had the bag of chips opened and a handful into his mouth before I even got the front door closed.

“You didn't have to do that, Stu,” I said, watching her dump the chips into a basket she'd brought along and arrange the snacks artfully on our beat-up coffee table. “Didn't I tell you to just bring yourself?”

“I know, but you can always use munchies on Thanksgiving Day—right, Josh?” She beamed at my eighteen-year-old Hollow Leg, who was now sampling the tin of mixed nuts.

Not if you want your kids to actually eat dinner at two,
I grumbled to myself. Yet I had to admit the cranberry bread looked tempting. I got a cutting board and bread knife from the kitchen and cut a thin slice.
Oh my, to die for.
“Thanks, Stu. Yummy. I've got mulled cider. Want some?”

By the time Amanda and I got back with mugs of steaming cider—Amanda had insisted on garnishing each mug with a cinnamon stick, which of course didn't want to be found—Stu had curled up in the recliner by the front windows with a paper plate of veggies and dip. “Mark and Hoshi not here yet?” she asked, taking a mug from Amanda.

“Not yet. I told them one o'clock, so they should be here any minute.”

As it turned out, Denny had finished grilling the turkey outside, stuck it into the oven to keep warm, and the hands on the clock were nudging up toward two o'clock before the doorbell finally rang.

“Sorry we're late, Jodi,” Mark Smith said, ushering Hoshi inside then thrusting a large bouquet of mixed mums into my arms—eye-popping yellows and oranges and rust against a bed of leather leaf and delicate baby's breath. “Hope we didn't hold anything up.” He helped Hoshi take off her long coat, adding it to the pile on the coat tree in our entryway.

“Mark! They're beautiful!” I said, taking the flowers. “You aren't that late . . . though we were starting to worry that maybe something had happened.” I headed for the kitchen to hunt up a vase, passing Amanda in the hall carrying a tray with two mugs of cider on it. I gave her a thumbs-up. “Help yourselves to some snacks in the living room,” I called back over my shoulder. “Denny! Mark's here!”

It took me a good five minutes to cut all the stems and get the mums arranged into a vase, but it certainly dressed up our dining-room table. I needed to remember that little nicety: bring a hostess gift when invited to dinner. At Uptown Community, we tended to pooh-pooh that mentality, opting for just-come-on-over-and-bring-yourselves simplicity. But the flowers were nice.Thoughtful. Gallant.

When I got back to the living room, Hoshi was saying, “ . . . stopped by a policeman and made to get out of the car. I was worried for Dr. Smith.”

“What's this?” Denny sat forward on the couch.

Mark quickly shook his head. “Nothing. Just one of those things.” He smiled at me—a little forced, I thought. “Are you calling us to dinner, Jodi?”

“Well, yes. Everything's ready. Might as well eat.” But I definitely wanted to hear more about what happened.
Sheesh.
That's all Hoshi needed was another scare.

Stu, Denny, and Amanda helped me put the food on the table: grilled turkey (Denny's big idea, of course), candied yams, stuffing that hadn't been “stuffed” in the turkey, fresh green beans with almonds, store-bought dinner rolls, mashed potatoes, and gravy. I had to cheat on the gravy, though, because I didn't have any turkey drippings this year. After everyone had found a seat, I lit the candles, and we joined hands around the table to sing the Doxology: “Praise God from whom all blessings flow . . .” I grinned to myself as Hoshi's sweet soprano, Stu's alto, and Mark Smith's deep baritone added to the Baxter bash of voices. We actually sounded decent.

After the “Amen,” I opened my mouth to give passing instructions, when Mark said, “Would you all like to sing the African-American version of the Doxology? Same words.”

“Cool.” Amanda grinned.

And so we sang it again, but this time Mark started low and slow: “Praise . . . God . . . from . . . whom . . . a-all . . . bleessings . . . flow . . .” The rest of us chimed in as we caught on until the last phrase swelled to a stately crescendo. We all sat there after the “Amen,” still holding hands, awed at the fresh power of the old words. The same way I felt when I heard Mahalia Jackson slow down “Amazing Grace,” savoring each word, each truth.

“Sweet,” Josh said. “Let's eat.” Everybody laughed and started passing platters and bowls.

“What? No macaroni and cheese?” Mark said, filling his plate and winking at Amanda.

“Macaroni and cheese? At Thanksgiving?” Amanda asked.

“Hey. Thanksgiving wasn't Thanksgiving without mac 'n' cheese as I was coming up.” He grinned, spreading his thin moustache, which dipped down on either side of his mouth and outlined his chin in a faint goatee. “Turkey and ham and mac 'n' cheese and two kinds of sweet potatoes, and greens—not to mention sweet-potato pie at the end of the food chain. Add two dozen relatives dropping in all day long to graze at my grandma's table, bringing all kinds of baked things and mysterious things dripping in sauce.”

My mouth was probably hanging open. I had imagined Mark Smith growing up in a wealthy upper-class home, sort of like
The
Cosby Show.

“Sounds scrumptious,” Stu said. “Did you grow up in the South?”

Mark turned out to be a wonderful storyteller about growing up in small-town Georgia. Amanda and Josh hung on every word as he described the “go-carts” he and his friends built out of baby carriage wheels and orange boxes, racing them down red-dirt hills and smashing them—and themselves—into trees that got in the way. “Shouldn't even be alive today,” he laughed.

From what I gathered, he and a younger brother were mostly raised by his grandmother and a great aunt. He didn't offer what happened to his mother, and we didn't ask.

“You've come a long way, Mark—small-town Georgia to a major university,” Stu said.

Mark grinned wryly. “You could say that. First person in my family to go to college, much less get a Ph.D. Grandma and Auntie Bell told me once a day, if not twice, that God put a gift in me, and it'd be a sin not to be the ‘somebody' I was created to be. I'll probably never know what they sacrificed to get me there, but you should've seen those two when I got my doctorate. Jumping up and down, weeping and carrying on—though Grandma made it very clear I still had to wipe my feet at the front door and say ‘Yes, ma'am' at
her
house.”

That got a chuckle from the rest of us. But even as we laughed, I noticed a small frown gather on Mark's face, and he pushed his potatoes around absently. “Then there are days I realize we haven't come very far, after all,” he said softly.

The table got very quiet. What did he mean? Civil rights? Progress for blacks? Of course we'd come a long way . . . hadn't we?

“I think,” Hoshi said in her quiet voice, “Dr. Smith refers to what happened today with the police.”

“Tell us what happened, Mark,” Denny said. “It's important for us to know.”

Nony's husband laid down his fork and sighed. “Just one of those things, really.” He half-laughed and shook his head. “Shouldn't be surprised, but I was. Since our dinner date wasn't until one o'clock, I decided to run up to Highland Park Hospital to see a colleague of mine who is recovering from surgery. Hoshi asked if she could ride along instead of picking her up later, since this man is one of her professors too. I was glad for the company and decided to drive up Sheridan Road—you know, to gawk at all the big mansions along the North Shore, show Hoshi how the upper crust
really
lives. I actually forgot about ‘driving black' in an all-white area—stupid me. Next thing I knew lights were pulling me over. Cops made me get out, patted me down, ran my license plate . . . and got very vague when I asked why I'd been stopped.”

Tiny beads of sweat gathered on Mark Smith's face, and his jaw muscles tensed. “They even asked Hoshi if she was ‘all right.' Bless her—she got indignant and said, ‘Of course I am all right. We are going to the hospital to visit a sick friend!' ” He quoted her in that “correct English” way of hers with a brief smile. “But I admit to a moment of panic. If they'd kept asking questions and discovered she was a student and I was her teacher . . .” He threw his hands open. “Well, there you have it. They let us go with a warning to ‘drive careful, now.' ”

Denny was incredulous. “What did they think—that you'd stolen the car or something?”

“Dr. Smith,” Amanda said, her brow creased with confusion, “why didn't you just tell them you're a professor at Northwestern? They probably got you confused with somebody else.”

He grimaced. “Unfortunately, you're right about that, Amanda. Once I step away from Northwestern's campus, I'm just another black man. Whatever those particular cops think about blacks in general, well, that's what they see.” He clapped his hands. “Enough about that! I think I need some more of those sweet potatoes. Almost as good as my grandma's, Jodi. Not quite, but almost.” His teasing grin was back.

I swallowed my mouthful of candied yams with difficulty.
Just
another black man . . .
That was what the man who'd heard me lock my car doors had probably been thinking:
“All she sees is just another
black man.”

AFTER DINNER, Amanda snared Stu, Hoshi, and Josh into a game of King's Cribbage that she'd gotten from the grandparents last Christmas. To my surprise, Mark joined Denny and me in the kitchen, rolling up his sleeves and scrubbing pots while I put away food and Denny loaded the dishwasher. I don't know why, but suddenly I blurted out my whole awkward encounter with the man getting into his parked car.

“To be honest, Mark,” I said, standing in the middle of our not-too-big kitchen with a box of plastic wrap in one hand and the remains of the green beans in the other, “I waver between feeling badly about how I made him feel . . . and feeling like he was judging me too. I go over it again and again in my mind, imagining that the man is white or Asian or Italian or from Mars, and I
still
think I would have locked my car doors.”

I don't know what I expected Mark to say, but he was quiet for a minute—a
long
minute—while he gave particular attention to a sticky baking dish in the sudsy water. He seemed about to say something when the phone rang. “Josh? Amanda?” I yelled into the living room. “Get that, will you? . . . Sorry, Mark.”

He finally turned around, leaning back against the sink. “Unfortunately, Jodi, both blacks and whites in this country, no matter how well-meaning—and I do believe you didn't mean to humiliate him—end up living with the sins of the past. That means some racist cop will assume I'm up to no good if I show up in the wrong community until I prove otherwise, and it means that brother will assume you're just like all the bigoted white folks he's had to deal with in one way or another all his life until you prove different. We're all involved in an anxious dance, like the Jets and the Sharks in
West Side Story,
trying to survive on the same streets, in the same society, but not sure what's going to happen if we step over the line.”

“Dad? Mom?” Amanda stuck her head in the doorway. “Um . . . José wants to know if he can come up to see us. You know, hang out. Play games or something.”

“See us” my foot.
I glanced at Denny. He gave a brief nod. “Okay,” I said impatiently. “Next time excuse yourself. We were talking.” But Amanda had already disappeared.

I turned back to Mark, frowning, mulling over his “anxious dance” comment. “So, how do we tango instead of . . . you know, tap-dancing on eggs like boxers waiting for the knockout?”

Denny laughed out loud; even Mark grinned. I hadn't meant to be funny, but even I had to laugh when I realized I was still standing in the middle of the room waving around the plastic wrap and leftover green beans.

39

J
osé Enriques showed up about five o'clock, handing me a tin with some kind of sugary cookies.
“Pan de polvo,”
he said, nodding politely. “Mama made it for you,
Senora
Baxter.” He flashed a grin in the direction of my shoulder, and I wondered briefly if the boy had trouble looking adults in the eye— then realized the dazzling smile was directed at Amanda, who stood slightly behind me. I tried not to roll my eyes.
Oh Lord, give
me strength.

King's Cribbage gave way to a two-pack card game of Slap Jack that José taught us that soon had my head spinning. Mark Smith seemed to hit it off with José and caught on fast to the game. The rest of us lost all our cards one by one, and a fierce competition developed between Stu, Mark, and José. Amanda parked herself close to José, murmuring encouragement. In the spirit of fairness, Josh—his hair grown out to an astonishing half-inch—blatantly cheered every time Mark Smith won a hand.

Finally out of cards, Stu threw up her hands. “Can't keep up with those two. Just as well. Time to get home. I've got three real-estate showings tomorrow. I'm in the wrong business when it comes to holidays—but
that's
going to change.” Hoshi and I walked her to the front door after she said her good-byes to the crew in the living room. Stu gave me a buss on the cheek. “Thanks for the invite, Jodi. Best Thanksgiving I've had in years.”