The Yada Yada Prayer Group Gets Caught (4 page)

I giggled. “Yeah, but I guarantee they wouldn't be cute three-year-olds at this point. They'd all be
teenagers
. And we've already got two of those.”

But Denny's musings left me unsettled. Ruth Garfield. Forty-nine going on fifty and
pregnant
. Hoo boy. After several miscarriages and a foster daughter who'd been reclaimed by the natural mother, Ruth had seemed resigned to childlessness. Which was fine by her husband, Ben, who was at least ten years her senior and looking forward to retirement. Then Ruth had missed several Yada Yada meetings the past couple of months.
“Not to worry,”
she'd said, waving off our concern.
“What's a little stomach upset? ”

Some stomach upset.

The doctor told her she was almost three months. Due around Christmas.

Ben had blown a cork. Acted as if Ruth had gone behind his back or something. Pushing her to get an abortion before something went terribly wrong . . .

The finale burst into the sky over Lake Michigan, booms and whistles and
wheees
raining stars down on the hundreds of boats out on the water, their running lights aglow. “Hey, Little Guy. Look.” Denny shook Andy awake. The little boy sat up, blinked, then clapped his hands in wonder.

I watched Becky's child, wondering about the child growing in Ruth's body. Boy? Girl? Healthy? What
were
the risks for a pregnancy at fifty?

The sky hushed. Sulfur smoke drifted lazily downwind.Boats set a course toward their harbors. Denny hefted Andy onto his hip, and we headed back toward the el station, carried along by the crowd.

I
really
needed to call Ruth and find out what was happening.

Like tomorrow.

HOLIDAY OR NO HOLIDAY, Willie Wonka nosed me out of bed the next morning with his usual urgency. “Why don't you pick on Denny? ” I grumbled as I let the dog out the back door. But the dog and I both knew no amount of cold-nosing would wake up the Slumbering Sack. Wonka scrambled down the porch steps and headed for the far back corner of our postage-stamp yard to do his business.

I started the coffee.
Huh. Wonka's probably God's Secret Service agent in disguise, assigned to me personally, to get me up before everybody else in the household for some one-on-One with my Maker.
And I had to admit, these early morning prayer times had become more . . . more
indispensable,
especially since I'd started feeling the strange burning inside me to pray, and keep praying, for “that girl” —didn't know her name—I'd seen at the hate group rally at Northwestern. The one I strongly suspected had later turned informer on the thugs who'd beaten up Mark Smith.

Maybe she'd done that as a result of my prayers! I hadn't said that to anybody, though. I mean, who did I think I was, anyway? Nobody thought of Jodi Baxter as a mighty prayer warrior—myself included. But I still felt excited. God was listening! God was shaking things up, wasn't He?

I grabbed a cup as the coffeemaker gurgled its last gasps.
But why doesn't that urgency to pray for her go away?
The girl still came to my mind first thing every morning, her face—late teens, eyes wary, defenses up yet vulnerable—etched in my memory.

I poured myself that first,wonderful cup when I heard footsteps tripping down the outside stairs from the second-floor apartment. I poked my head out the back door. “Stu!”

Leslie Stuart stopped, startled, a leather saddlebag-purse slung over one shoulder. “Oh.Hi, Jodi.Didn't think anyone else would be up this early on a holiday.” Her long honey-blonde hair was freshly tinted, one side tucked behind her ear. She wore khaki slacks, a white blouse, and a sporty denim jacket. Smashing, really.

“Becky said you're going to a family reunion. You didn't tell me!

What
family reunion? ” Not that Stu had to tell me everything. But this was big news!

Stu jiggled impatiently. “Yeah, I know. I . . . Actually, Jodi, I could use your prayers. Yada Yada's too. Got this invitation from one of my cousins to a family reunion.Wasn't sure I was going to go. You know, after . . .” Her voice trailed off.

Yes, I knew. After finding herself pregnant, abandoned by the father, embarrassed and afraid to admit it to her ultraconservative family. So Stu had just dropped out. Got an abortion. Got a new life—new job, new suburb, new friends. Until earlier this year, that is, when she'd stopped running from her past, from God, from the forgiveness and unconditional love she needed so badly.

“Hey, it's OK.” I stepped out onto the porch. “I know, you didn't make the decision until yesterday.” She grinned sheepishly.
Bingo
. “Will you see your parents? Where do they live? ”

“Indianapolis. Don't know for sure if they'll be at the reunion. I hope so. I think.” She sniffed the steam rising from my mug of coffee. “Got any more of that in a travel mug? Can't believe I haven't had any coffee yet. See? I'm a wreck already!”

Had to admit, I enjoyed seeing Stu get flustered. She had a habit of getting
me
all flummoxed by her keen ability to do everthing right and be one step ahead of me. But I gave her a big hug, took two minutes to pray with her, and sent her off with Denny's travel mug of fresh coffee.

“Oh God,” I murmured as Stu's silver Celica zoomed out of the alley. “Open the arms of her family. Make this a
real
reunion.” Then I added, “Thank You, Jesus!” As Florida Hickman always said at Yada Yada,might as well start the thanksgiving early, since we
know
God's gonna come through. Somehow.

Florida . . . I wondered what the Hickman family was doing for the Fourth of July. Fourteen-year-old Chris was at the Cornerstone Music Festival with Josh and Amanda and the Uptown youth group.
That
in itself was probably a real holiday for Flo. She was so worried about her eldest son hanging out on the streets too much. She and her husband, Carl, wanted to move from their old neighborhood to get Chris away from bad influences, to get Carl closer to his job working for Peter Douglass . . .

Peter and Avis. I knew
they
were out of town.Drove to Ohio to visit Avis's oldest daughter and the twins. Delores Enriques had to work. Ditto Yo-Yo. Edesa Reyes, Lord help her, was at Cornerstone—Josh's idea to invite the attractive college student from Honduras to help him chaperone the younger teens. Chanda . . . she'd said something about winning a free vacation to Hawaii.
Huh.
What was
that
all about? After winning the Illinois lottery,why did Chanda George, of all people, need to get a free anything?

My mind sorted through the rest of my Yada Yada sisters as I stripped sheets off beds, started a load of laundry, and unloaded the dishwasher, stalling for time until I could reasonably call Ruth Garfield.Maybe go visit. She and Ben never went out of town. Real homebodies, those two. But maybe they should have. Taken a cruise. Gone to Hawaii or something. If they were gong to have a
baby—
at their age—they'd both be ready for a retirement home by the time the kid left for college.

Sheesh.

I waited until ten o'clock to dial the Garfields' number. Ben answered. “Yeah, she's here. Fanning herself like a geisha doll. I tell ya, Jodi . . .” He didn't tell me, just yelled, “Ruth! Pick it up!”

An extension picked up. Ben's line went dead. “Ruth? It's Jodi. Am I calling too early? ”

“Early, smearly. You're fine, Jodi. It's Mr. Grumpy who got up on the wrong side of the bed. I'm pregnant. I'm up and dressed. What more does he expect? ”

I stifled a laugh. “I was wondering . . . what are you doing today? Can I come over to see you? Take you out for coffee or something? ”

“Coffee! Ugh.” Ruth made a retching noise on the other end of the line. “Even the word makes me want to throw up. That's how I knew I was pregnant in the first place. Coffee I love. But that was then. This is now. Tea I'll take. And . . .” She hesitated.When she spoke again, she had lowered her voice. “I could use the company, Jodi. Ben took me to the doctor yesterday. Doc gave the usual song and dance about all the risks of a pregnancy ‘at your age.' Risks, schmisks. I told him this baby is a miracle! What do I care about risks? But Ben—he thinks I'm dead and in the casket already. All that's left to do is pick the color of the flowers. Nuts he's driving me!”

From the background I heard Ben yell, “I heard that!”

Ruth never missed a beat. “Sure. Come on over, Jodi.We'll have a grand time.”

I hung up the phone gingerly.Wasn't so sure about that.

3

A
n hour at the Garfields left me as edgy as a Mexican jumping bean. The tension between Ben and Ruth had crackled through the house like a loose livewire. I couldn't be sure if it was simply fondness disguised as bickering, or if one of them was about to blow a gasket. I wanted to debrief with Denny when I got home but found a note instead saying he'd gone up to Evanston Hospital to visit Mark Smith.
Rats.
I wished we'd coordinated our “holiday” better. I hadn't seen Mark (or Nony for that matter) since last Sunday, when a Medicar had showed up at New Morning Christian Church's new home in the Howard Street shopping center.

New Morning (Mark and Nony's church) had been renting space from Uptown Community (our church) while they searched for a new place to worship.The vicious attack on Mark by members of a white supremacist group had forced our two churches—one mostly white, the other mostly black, sharing the same space—to ask some hard questions: Were we going to let the actions of this hate group fan the embers of distrust and division between us? Or would we seize the opportunity to show the world—no, show
ourselves
—that God's love and unity were more powerful than Satan's lies?

Heady stuff. Of course, none of us knew where this line of thinking would actually take us. But last Sunday, New Morning had invited Uptown to a joint celebration of God's provision n the large unfinished storefront they'd found. New shopping center. Great location for outreach. Adding to the jubilation had been the startling headlines that same morning: an unnamed “female member” of the Coalition for White Pride and Preservation had fingered those responsible for the attack on Professor Mark Smith. An arrest was “imminent.” I wanted to keep shouting, “Hallelujah! ”

And then the Medicar had showed up, with a beaming Mark Smith in a wheelchair, still swaddled in bandages from the beating that nearly cost him his life.Didn't know how Nony talked the doctors into letting Mark out of the hospital for a few hours. But when Nonyameko Sisulu-Smith had wheeled her husband through the double-glass doors—well, that's when the celebration of God's goodness really rattled all those plate-glass windows. Probably rattled all the shopkeepers trying to do business in the shopping center that morning too.

I'd really meant to get up to the hospital this past week to see Mark and Nony, but just getting the teenagers off to Cornerstone fried all my good intentions. Hadn't even had time to do more than catch the headlines about the arrest of two men identified as White Pride members. But Denny had good news when he got back from the hospital a couple of hours later. “Nony says Mark can come home sometime next week. It's just . . .” He leaned against the kitchen counter, sweat beading his forehead, sipping the glass of lemonade I handed him. The temperature was hiking up to the high eighties for the weekend.
Huh.Wouldn't want to be camping at Cornerstone in heat like this. Poor kids.

I realized Denny hadn't finished his sentence. “Just what? That's good, isn't it? ”

“Sure. It's just . . .” He sighed. “They've got a long way to go. Mark needs a lot of rehabilitation after that head injury. He gets confused. Can't remember stuff. Can't tie his shoes. And he needs surgery on that damaged eye. He might . . . lose it. The sight in that eye, I mean. He's definitely not going to be able to teach this fall.”

“Oh, Denny.” Sadness welled up for my friends. Hadn't Nony and Mark been through enough already? Then my sad turned to mad. God had done a mighty thing when Mark came out of that coma.Why did there have to be so many nasty loose ends?

I blew out my frustration. “It's going to be a long haul for Ruth and Ben too.” I hefted the pitcher of lemonade. “Want some more? ” I refilled our glasses, and we wandered out to the back porch, hoping to catch a breeze. But the elms hovering overhead hung limp and still.

Denny grunted as he settled on the porch steps. “She tell you any more about what the doctor is saying? ”

“Uh-huh. Guess the big scary possibility is a Down syndrome baby. A one-in-thirty chance, something like that. Or another miscarriage—though she's past the three-month mark now. Ruth considers
that
the miracle.To her, God is giving her the child she never had. Nothing else seems to matter.”

“And Ben? ”