by Neta Jackson
© 2005 by Neta Jackson
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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Scripture quotations are taken from the following: The Holy Bible, New International Version. © 1973, 1978, 1984, International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers. The King James Version of the Bible. Public domain. The Holy Bible, New Living Translation®, © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60819. All rights reserved.
This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to real events, businesses, organizations, and locales are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. However, some of the events in this novel were inspired by a rash of “hate incidents” on the campus of Northwestern University from 2000 to 2003.
ISBN 978-1-40168-986-5 (2014 repackage)
ISBN 978-1-41853-661-9 (eBook)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jackson, Neta.
The yada yada prayer group gets tough / by Neta Jackson.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-59145-358-1 (trade paper)
ISBN 978-1-59554-442-1 (repack)
1. Women—Illinois—Fiction. 2. Christian women—Fiction. 3. Female friendship—Fiction. 4. Prayer groups—Fiction. 5. Chicago (Ill.)—Fiction.
5. Prayer groups—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3560.A2415Y334 2005
813’.54—dc22
2005022353
Printed in the United States of America
14 15 16 17 RRD 5 4 3 2 1
In memory of
Ricky Byrdsong,
Former head basketball coach at Northwestern University,
Our friend and brother—
Murdered by a white supremacist
While walking with his children near his home,
July Fourth weekend, 1999
Contents
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
A Note from the Author
Reading Group Guide
The YADA YADA Prayer Group® GETS TOUGH: Celebrations & Recipes
About the Author
Prologue
The four-door sedan swung into a Permit Only parking spot, coughed, and died as if it knew it was trespassing. “What’s wrong?” The young woman in the front passenger seat turned to her companion. “Will it start again?” When they finished what they had come to do, she wanted to be able to leave.
The dark-haired youth—twenty or twenty-one—rolled up the windows and reached into the back for his backpack. “Don’t worry, Sara. It just got overheated. It’ll cool off by the time we get back. Come on.”
Reluctantly, the girl opened the car door and stepped out onto the concrete of the bi-level parking lot at Northwestern University. A breeze off Lake Michigan a hundred yards away made her shiver in spite of the mid-May sunshine. That’s the way it always was in Chicago—cooler by the lake.
She grabbed her sweater and pulled it around her shoulders before locking the car door. She shivered again, wishing she could’ve worn jeans and a sweatshirt. Would’ve been perfect for a cool, sunny day. But no, Kent said if he was going to wear a suit and tie, she needed to wear a dress. After all, they were representing their Cause and wanted to be taken seriously.
Huh. When it came to supporting the Cause, she’d rather be back at the office stuffing envelopes. She wasn’t good at this activist stuff.
“Here.” Kent pulled a bundle of pamphlets out of his backpack and handed them to her. “You start with this row; I’ll go down the other side.” He moved off, sticking pamphlets under one windshield wiper, then another. She thought he looked a little silly in his black suit and tie with a ratty backpack slung over his shoulder, but she had to admit he was good-looking in a thin-faced, gangly sort of way. His straight, dark-brown hair, so carefully combed back, had a cute way of falling over his forehead, giving him a boyish look. Not that she would ever tell him. He was quite determined to be a serious grownup.
“Sara! Get busy!” His shout from several cars away made her jump, and she hustled to catch up. She worked fast, sticking pamphlets under windshield wipers, eager to show she was committed to the Cause . . . or maybe eager to get the pamphlets on the cars and get out of there before they got caught. At least the top level of the parking lot was only half full. Sunday afternoon wasn’t a high-traffic day at the university; they’d be done in ten minutes and could get out of here.
A middle-aged man carrying a briefcase topped the short flight of stairs to the open second level and headed for his car, keys jangling. She pretended not to notice and kept moving from car to car. But a quick side-glance told her he’d stopped, reached for the pamphlet on his car window, and scanned its front page.
“Hey!” he yelled. “You can’t leave your garbage here! This is private property!”
Sara glanced anxiously at Kent, one row over. “Keep moving,” he hissed. “For all that guy knows, we’re students here and have every right.”
The man waved the pamphlet angrily over his head. “At least have the guts to present your wacko ideas personally,” he shouted, “instead of blitzing cars anonymously!”
The invitation was too much for the young man. “Good idea! We’ll do that!” He waved back, a smile plastered on his face.
Muttering, the man started to drop the pamphlet on the ground, hesitated, and then tossed it into his car.
“He took it!” Kent said gleefully.
Sara frowned. “Did not. He just didn’t want to drop it. Those professor types never litter.”
“Doesn’t matter. He took it.” The young man fished a campus map out of his backpack. “C’mon. Let’s go to the student center.” He looked up, scanning the buildings. “I think it’s right over there.”
“No, Kent. Let’s just do the cars.” But he was already heading in long strides for the exit stairs.
She sighed and followed. Under other circumstances, she’d enjoy a stroll around the Big Ten university campus, which had been practically in her backyard all her life. The grounds wer
e beautiful this time of year. Soaring spires mixed with modern architecture. Graceful willow trees coming into bud, swaying in the breeze. Lake Michigan lapping along the boulder-studded shoreline. Flowering bushes and winding walks everywhere. Why hadn’t she applied here? Her grades and SAT scores had been topnotch. She’d graduated from a prestigious high school here on the North Shore two years ago. But what was it Kent had said? “You gotta decide what’s most important—dedication to the Cause or getting a so-called education watered down by all this politically correct mumbo-jumbo.”
Right. She admired Kent’s dedication to the Cause. He’d taken her under his wing when the “popular” girls at New Trier acted as if she didn’t exist. He explained things to her. Told her people had a right to stick up for what they believed.
She just didn’t like conflict and confrontation, that’s all.
They found the Norris University Center along the narrow campus drive and pulled open the big glass doors. “It’s Sunday,” she murmured. “Won’t be many students.”
“That’s OK,” he said. “More opportunity to leave the truth unhindered.” He headed for the nearest bulletin board—crowded with fliers announcing everything from roommates needed to frat parties to the next theater production. “Heathens,” Kent muttered, punching a pushpin into the bulletin board, leaving their pamphlet front and center.
They scurried down the wide stairs to the ground level, where Willie’s Food Court, a cafeteria-style eatery, and Willie’s Too—dispensing gourmet coffee, sub sandwiches, smoothies, and pizza—opened out into a large room with square wooden tables and booths along the far windows looking out over the Northwestern Lagoon. Several students sat at the scattered tables with drinks or sandwiches, talking or studying.
Kent straightened his tie and approached the first populated table. “I think you’ll be interested in these facts.” He thrust a pamphlet at a young woman bent over a large textbook.
The student glanced at the paper he held out to her. Her eyes narrowed. “Get that out of my face, or I’ll call the campus cops!”
He barely flinched. “Not open to the free exchange of ideas? I thought—”
“I mean it! Get away from me!” The student grabbed her book and flounced to a table on the far side of the room.
Sara tugged on her companion’s sleeve. “We should’ve worn casual clothes,” she murmured anxiously. “They know we’re not students, dressed up like this.”
Kent ignored her and headed for two male students in T-shirts slouched in one of the booths, watching the hanging TV. One ignored them, eyes glued to the ball game; the other took the pamphlet, shrugged, and tossed it on the table.
Sara was relieved when they finally left the student center. At least it was Sunday. No classes. The campus proper was practically deserted. But as they pushed open the double-glass doors, Kent studied a bright flier taped to the glass. “See that? There’s a Jazz Fest going on. It’s gotta be over soon.” He studied his map. “Come on!” Grabbing her hand, they followed the sidewalk signs pointing toward the Pick-Steiger Concert Hall.
The wait wasn’t long. Soon a rowdy, laughing mix of students in shorts and bare midriffs, dreads, and buzz cuts pushed through the glass doors of the concert hall, rubbing shoulders with jazz fans from the local community. Once again, Kent dug into his backpack, pushed a stack of pamphlets into Sara’s hands, and hustled to catch up with any moving target.
Sucking up some courage, the girl held out her pamphlets—mostly to females—steeling herself for the typical reactions: “Keep your stupid trash.” . . . “You believe this stuff?” . . . “Guess it’s a free country, even for weirdos.” . . . “Stuff it up your—!”
The words she’d practiced rose to her defense. “Thought we had free speech in this country! So much for tolerance.”
Her defenses soon crumbled, and she finally fled to a grassy knoll with the rest of her pamphlets, sinking onto a bench beneath a graceful weeping willow, its long tendrils bursting with the bright green buds of May. Kent found her there ten minutes later, her wedgies off, rubbing her arches. “My feet hurt,” she moaned. “Let’s go.”
“Your feet hurt!” He snorted but sank down onto the bench beside her. “Passed out all my pamphlets?” He made a face when he saw the remainders. “Want me to pass those out?”
She shook her head. “No! Let’s just go.”
AFTER A FEW TURNOVERS, the old sedan started, and they headed up Sheridan Road, back toward the posh bedroom communities along Lake Michigan’s North Shore. But a few blocks north of the university, Kent took a left at the traffic light at Sheridan and Lincoln Avenue.
Sara frowned. “What are you doing?”
Kent shrugged, pulling over to the curb along the tree-shaded street of large brick homes, with ivy climbing up the wraparound verandas and neatly manicured lawns. “Might as well finish the job. We can stuff a few mailboxes, and we’re done.”
It was useless to argue. He was already out of the car. Reluctantly, she took several of the remaining pamphlets and scurried up the sidewalk, leaving a pamphlet tucked in the iron railing on one set of steps, in the mailbox at the next house. When her supply was gone, she hung back as her companion, still holding a few pamphlets, walked up the steps to a neat brick two-story with ivy hugging the walls. Boldly lifting the mail slot in the door, he started to push the pamphlet through . . . when the door suddenly opened.
It was hard to tell who was more taken aback—the pale young man on the stoop, hand outstretched, frozen in time . . . or the tall, goateed African-American in the gray velour sweatsuit coming out of the house, car keys in his hand.
The man spoke. “What do you want?” The tone was mildly hostile.
“Uh, don’t think you’d be interested.” Kent started to back away.
“What’s this?” The man snatched the pamphlet out of the young man’s hand, scanning the first page. He flipped to the second. Even from where Sara stood, she could see the muscles in the man’s face tighten like the face of a clock being overwound. Her heart clutched. She saw the man stab his finger into Kent’s chest, right in the middle of his tie, forcing Kent to back down a step. “If I ever catch you . . . in this neighborhood . . . ever again . . . with this . . . this—”
“Mark?” A woman’s voice floated out from inside the house. “Is someone at the door?” The accent was foreign—British or African or something.
“Git!” the man hissed. Kent nearly tripped backing down the steps, but he recovered his dignity and sauntered back to where Sara waited anxiously on the sidewalk. His withering look still focused on Sara and Kent, the man called into the house, “Uh, nobody. Just some environmental types wanting signatures for Greenpeace or something.” Then, glancing at the pamphlet he still held in his hand, the man shoved it into the ivy flanking the doorway till it was hidden, stepped back into the house, and shut the door with an angry thud.
When he and Sara were about two houses away, with the tension released, Kent dissolved into laughter.
1
The wedding cake—a modest three-tiered creation from the Bagel Bakery—sat resplendent and untouched on the pass-through counter of Uptown Community Church’s kitchen. Ruth Garfield, a navy “church hat” parked on her frowzy brown hair, stood in front of it, hands on hips, muttering something about “. . . marriage can’t be consummated if the newlyweds don’t cut the cake.”
Yo-Yo Spencer, back in a pair of dry overalls after her baptism in Lake Michigan less than an hour ago, jerked her blonde, spiky hair in Ruth’s direction as we folded the friendship quilt the Yada Yada Prayer Group had made for Avis’s wedding. “What’s got her tail in a knot, Jodi? We can still eat the cake. Heck, my brothers could demolish the whole thing in a couple of hours—oh.” The spiky-haired twenty-something looked at me, stricken. “Guess I ain’t supposed to say ‘heck’ now that I been dunked, huh?”
I stifled a laugh just as a crack of thunder outside covered for me. The threatening storm that had cut short Yo-Yo’s bap
tism—and Bandana Woman’s, which had shocked the socks off everybody—finally unloaded over the north end of Chicago, washing the high, narrow windows of Uptown Community’s second-floor meeting room. Ben Garfield and my husband, Denny, were taking down the Jewish huppah Ben had built for Avis and Peter Douglass’s wedding. My son, Josh—Mr. Clean himself with that shaved head of his—was bossing around the cleanup crew of teenagers, all of them still half wet from the “hallelujah water fight” the double baptisms had inspired down at the lake. José Enriquez and his father were packing up their guitars. And Pastor Clark sat knee to knee with a shivering Becky Wallace swathed in several layers of damp towels, his Bible open as he showed her the verses about “all have sinned” and “God so loved the world” and “by grace we are saved.”
A huge bubble of happiness rose up in my spirit and oozed out all my pores as I hugged the folded quilt with its individual squares embroidered by each of the Yada Yada sisters. What an incredible day! I wished I could capture it in freeze-frame photography and replay it again, moment by moment:
All the Yada Yadas blowing our noses and smudging our mascara as dignified Avis Johnson “jumped the broom” with Peter Douglass right in Uptown’s Sunday morning worship service . . .
Yo-Yo in her brand-new lavender overalls “gettin’ off the fence and gettin’ dunked,” as she called it, in Lake Michigan . . .
The spontaneous plunge into the waters of salvation by Becky Wallace—a.k.a. “Bandana Woman,” the heroin junkie who’d robbed Yada Yada at knifepoint last fall and ended up as Leslie “Stu” Stewart’s housemate last week on house arrest, complete with electronic ankle monitor . . .
Could any of us have imagined such a day a year ago when we’d all met at that Chicago women’s conference? A perfect “anniversary” for the Yada Yada Prayer Group!
Except for the cake, that is. I wasn’t sure our resident yenta, Ruth Garfield, would ever forgive Peter and Avis—soaking wet from the silly dunking he’d given her after the baptisms—for deciding to forgo their wedding cake in lieu of getting into dry clothes and setting off on their honeymoon.
