The Yada Yada Prayer Group Gets Caught (32 page)

You didn't tell your husband. That's what's wrong with it.

Stubbornness thickened like pulled taffy in my gut. So? Nothing bad happened. Maybe we even made a difference.Didn't those kids milling around the alley leave it and drink up half the lemonade? But if I'd told Denny ahead of time, too bad.We wouldn't even have had a chance to find out.

Besides,
I told myself as I hefted my school tote bag to the other shoulder, turned off Clark, and hiked down Lunt Avenue.
I really didn't have time to tell Denny.We didn't decide to do the lemonade stand until last night, then Yada Yada ran late, and this morning was the usual hurry-scurry out of the house.

I squashed the uneasy feeling that if things
had
gotten out of hand again between the Latino and black kids, Edesa and I would have been sitting ducks. I'd hoped for at least five or six of us Yada Yadas “being a presence.” Still . . . nothing happened. Maybe more of us would show up tomorrow. It was going to be just fine.

ON TUESDAY, Carla Hickman decided her name ( “one who is strong” ) gave her permission to punch Miguel ( “who is like God” ) in the nose during morning recess when he grabbed the rope during a game of double Dutch and tripped her down on the play-ground pavement. “Teach him not to mess with
me
,” she muttered as I marched both of them to the principal's office, where we also kept the first-aid kit. “'Sides. Ain't
nobody
like God. That's a dumb name, anyhow.”

Hmph
. May be it was time to take down my Welcome Bulletin Board, which proclaimed all the names of my students and their meanings.

I had to make calls to both parents after school to explain Carla's skinned elbow and Miguel's bloody nose. Florida sounded breathless on the phone. “What? Carla fightin'? Look, Jodi, I just got home from work, now I gotta get over to the high school to pick up Chris. Call me tonight; we can talk about it.” Then, like an afterthought, “She punched him a good one, huh? ”

Was that a chuckle I heard as she hung up?

So I was late getting over to Adele's Hair and Nails. Kids of all ages were already cruising the sidewalks, supposedly on their way home. But the card table was set up, Yo-Yo and Ben Garfield were pouring plastic cups of lemonade, and Edesa, bless her, was taping up the garish green sign. The day, which had started out at a comfortable sixty-five degrees, had inched up to a muggy eighty—typical for mid-September. Perfect for lemonade.

The after-school crowd seemed surprised to see us back. More girls stopped by. Less suspicious. I realized Yo-Yo and Edesa talked easily to the teenagers.Why not? Yo-Yo looked like a teenager herself in her signature overalls and tinted, spiky hair. Edesa bubbled easily to the Latino kids. “
Hola! . . . Un poco de limonada?
. .
.
How was school today?
El agujerear?
” She laughed and poked Yo-Yo. “
Sí,
school is sometimes boring.”

Ben and I faded into the background while the two younger women chatted up the girls (and a few boys) who accepted cups of lemonade. “Hey, thanks for bringing Yo-Yo today,” I told Ben. Why was it I could be so mad at the old goat one day and want to hug him the next? “And thanks for hanging with us. Really helps.”

“Nah. You gals got it covered. Good excuse to get out of the house, though.”

Better tiptoe there. “Um, how is Ruth doing? She OK? ”

He shrugged, his features sagging. “I don't know. I guess. The pregnancy is hard on her. Should've never happened . . .” He faded into his own thoughts, and I decided to leave it alone.

We handed out the remaining four half gallons of lemonade easy—and we hadn't even seen the large group of Latino guys who'd drunk our stash yesterday. “Uh-oh,” I said, shaking the last carton. “Ben, do you think you could drive up to Howard Street and get us some more? ”

Ben had no sooner left than a familiar trio appeared—from nowhere it seemed. The three oversize boys in baggy pants who had swaggered past yesterday with barely a glance. One of them picked up the last empty carton. “Whassup wid dis? You ain't got no more lemonade? ”

I bit my tongue.What grade was he in—junior? senior? Didn't the school have some minimum standards for speaking English?

Edesa just kept smiling. “
No problemo.
More is coming.”

A hand shot out and gripped her upper arm. My alarm bells didn't even have time to go off. “Why a sweet-lookin' Afro chick like you speakin' Spanish? Huh? Tell me dat, woman!”

The other two boys chimed in. “Yeah. You wit de Kings? ” “You dissin' us? ”

Yo-Yo's eyes had gone wide. She seemed frozen in time. Me, too, for that matter. All we had to do was tell them she's from Honduras, right? Everybody—blacks, brown, white—speaks Spanish there. I opened my mouth but couldn't breathe.
Oh God!
Help us!

A bell tinkled. The door to Adele's Hair and Nails whooshed opened and Adele marched out, a curling iron in her hand trailing its cord. “You boys get outta here—
now
! Before I hit you upside your heads. And this baby's still
hot
!” She thrust the curling iron six inches from the bully's face.

The boy flinched; his eyes narrowed.His buddies shouldered in. But just then three of Adele's customers spilled out into the street, hair in curlers, one wrapped in foil, the third with half her hair sticking straight up in sections, held by white goo. The yelling and arm waving probably lasted for only thirty seconds, but the boy let go of Edesa's arm and the three slouched off, muttering.

Adele stood in the middle of the sidewalk, fists on her wide hips, still gripping the curling iron. Her eyes glared at their backs from beneath her short, silver-black Afro. The customers disap peared back inside, muttering. Adele slowly turned to us. To me, actually.

“Pack it up, Jodi. This business is over.” And she stalked back inside.

HURRICANE ISABEL hit the East Coast that week, but we had our own category five at the Baxter house. I was trying to figure out a way to tell Denny what happened when Josh got off the phone Tuesday night and poked his head into the kitchen, where Denny and Amanda were doing dishes and I was putting leftovers away. “Yo,Mom. Edesa just told me about the lemonade stand you Yadas had on Clark Street today. Did I miss something? Got a bit tense, she said.”

A silence dropped into the kitchen, like the warning calm just before a tsunami. All movement stopped. All eyes turned on me.

“Um, not really. Just a last-minute thing.” I nervously spooned leftover tossed salad into a plastic container and snapped the lid. “We came up with the idea Sunday night, and . . . it was, uh, such a rush to put together, I guess I forgot to let you guys know.”

Denny's eyebrows lowered until they practically met in the middle.

“Lemonade stand, Mom? ” Amanda snickered. “How dorky is
that
. I mean, sure, did that when I was
five
. But a bunch of old ladies? ”

“Shut up, squirt.” Josh came to my defense. “Edesa said you guys were trying to diffuse the after-school tension along Clark Street, where that alley got tagged last week. Personally, I think it's a cool idea, except . . .” His face clouded. I noticed a golden shadow along his jawline. Facial hair. Was Josh shaving? Or not shaving, more like it.When did that happen? “I dunno,” he went on. “Don't take this the wrong way, Mom, but seems kinda risky to do something like that, just a bunch of women.”

“Why? It was just a lemonade stand, for heaven's sake! Besides, Ben Garfield was there.” Well sort of there. Today. I kept my eyes on Josh, ignoring Denny.

“Oh right. A sixty-year-old white guy with an attitude. Sorry, Mom, don't mean to put you down. But it could've gotten nasty. Edesa said a black kid—big dude—got on her case because she's black and speaks Spanish. I mean, that's what the clash was about last week, right? Rivalry between blacks and Latinos? ”

Got on her case?
Edesa must have left out the part about his grabbing her arm.

Denny slowly turned his back and resumed loading the dish-washer. He still hadn't said a word. Josh snitched the last cookie before the platter disappeared into the dishwasher. “Anyway, mind if I steal your idea? Rick Riley and Pastor Cobbs are trying to think of ways to meet kids along the Howard Street strip. If we had something like a free lemonade stand, then we could invite them to teen activities at New Morning Church, right there in the shopping center, or heavy metal concert, stuff like that . . .” Josh was still rattling off ideas as he headed back toward his bedroom and his earphones.

Amanda snatched the phone. “Dad, can you finish up? I gotta make a quick phone call.”

“Homework first!” I yelled after her.

The kids disappeared. Silence settled over the kitchen again like putrid air. Denny poured powdered dishwasher soap into the little cups in the door, banged the door shut, and turned the knob. The old dishwasher chugged away. Then he turned and leaned back against the counter, arms folded. I stood in the middle of our small kitchen, still holding the plastic container with leftover salad, like a caught rabbit.

“I want to know just one thing, Jodi. Why didn't you tell me what you were up to the past couple of days? ”

I avoided his eyes. How did this get to be such a big deal? What could I say to lighten this up? It just happened.My intentions were good. Nothing bad happened. End of story.

I must have taken too long to reply. Denny pushed himself off from the counter and stalked out of the kitchen, his body language dripping aggravation. I stood staring at the leftover salad I still held in my hand. With sudden fury I hurled it into the trash basket, container and all.

30

I
told
Denny I was sorry I didn't tell him about the lemonade stand. He said, “OK.” But the rest of the week felt as if we were acting in silent movies on two different screens. A peck on the cheek as he went out the door in the morning. “Pass the salt, please.” . . . “Any clean laundry? ” . . . “Staff meeting tonight.” . . . A lot of TV.

Sheesh,
I muttered to myself as I walked to school Friday morning.
It's my birthday today, for heaven's sake, and Denny's treating me like . . . like I maxed out our credit cards or posed in
Penthouse
magazine or something. Good grief.

In fact, it was easy to work up a good mad about the whole business. For one thing, Edesa and Yo-Yo were the only Yada Yadas who actually showed up to support the enterprise.Well, OK, Stu did the shopping with Chanda's contribution. But what happened to Florida? And Avis? They both lived nearby. Actually, I never expected Avis to show up—but Florida?
Her
son was the one caught up in the middle of the mess.
She
was the one who kept saying,
“We gotta do somethin'.”
And Adele—even though she grudgingly let us set up outside her shop, I never felt like she was behind it 100 percent. Not even 50.

So much for unity.

And yeah, yeah, I should've told Denny. But I said I was sorry, didn't I?

A gift bag was sitting on my desk when I got to school that morning. Cheerful orange and yellow tissue paper hid a birthday card and some yummy melon lotion from Avis. I screwed off the cap and squirted the silky cream into my hand, smoothing it over my skin. It had been a long time since I'd taken care of my hands. Rough skin. A broken nail. A tear dribbled down my cheek and dripped off my chin.

Some birthday. A present from Avis. That might be it.

BUT I WAS WRONG. Amanda chased me out of the kitchen when she got home from school and actually made my lemon-and-thyme chicken recipe—one of my favorites. It easily passed the Baxter five-star test: super easy, super yummy. Stu and Becky came downstairs for dinner, bearing Becky's second-ever birthday cake.Didn't matter that it came from a box. It was chocolate.

I took a swipe of the frosting with my finger and gave her a big hug.

Stu and Becky actually helped thaw the deep freeze, and we all laughed and joked at the dinner table—me the butt of most jokes, of course. I didn't care. It felt good to laugh.While Becky cut cake and Stu dipped up vanilla ice cream, I opened presents. A crocheted winter scarf from my mom. (I already had three.) A CD from my dad:
Best-Loved Hymns by Top Country-Western Artists.
( “Yep. That's Grandpa,” Josh snickered.) A pair of silver dangle earrings from Amanda and Josh. One from each, wrapped separately, the nuts. A fat candle with fall leaves embedded in the wax from Stu and Becky.

And a silky burgundy scarf from Denny in a Ten Thousand Villages gift bag.

I held the filmy scarf against my cheek and looked up at my husband, sitting at the other end of the table.Our eyes locked for a second—the first time in days. “Thanks, honey,” I whispered.

He smiled. “Happy birthday, babe.” But his smile seemed . . . sad.