The Yada Yada Prayer Group Gets Tough

by Neta Jackson

“Hey! Hey!” Josh hushed.

  “—a swastika painted in the stairwell of one of the residence halls. This follows on the heels of complaints from patrons attending the Jazz Fest on campus yesterday that members of the Coalition for White Pride and Protection were passing out hate literature after the concert, attacking Jews and other minorities. University officials were quick to—”

  My mouth hung open. “Ohmigosh, Denny. Those are the same people who were passing out hate literature in Mark and Nony’s neighborhood yesterday.”

  Denny and Josh both turned to stare at me. “What?”

  9

  I tried to tell Denny about the pamphlet Nony had found stuck in her ivy, but since I’d only read the first few phrases accusing Jews of a “worldwide conspiracy” and calling minorities “mud races,” I couldn’t tell him a whole lot. “I’m pretty sure it was written by the same group that was mentioned on the TV—Coalition for White Pride or something.”

  Denny shook his head. “Extremist jerks. Too bad the press got hold of it. Kooks like these should be ignored, not given media attention. Getting on the evening news only encourages those types.”

  “That’s what I tried to tell Nony—she should just ignore it, not take it seriously.”

  “Not take it seriously?” Josh glared at us, a flush creeping up his face. “You don’t think painting a swastika in one of NU’s dorms is serious? Think about it!”

  “Josh,” Denny’s tone was sharp, “there’s always going to be some creep trying to make waves by spraying graffiti. I didn’t mean the university shouldn’t deal with it; I just meant these extremists thrive on media attention. Blows it up bigger than it is.”

  “No, you said ‘ignore.’ Both of you.” Josh started for the hallway in a huff.

  “Just a minute, Joshua James Baxter.” If my bigheaded son wanted an argument, he was going to get one. “Your dad and I don’t condone this kind of bigotry! I just don’t want Nony to take it too seriously, to let it upset her. Like your dad said, ignoring this garbage may be the best—”

  “Yeah,” Josh tossed over his shoulder. “That’s probably what a lot of Europeans said when swastikas first started appearing on the walls of their universities.” He disappeared, punctuating the air with the loud slam of his bedroom door.

  I gaped at Denny. “What was that all about?”

  Denny seemed about to go after his firstborn, then he hesitated, rubbing the back of his head as if calming his thoughts. “Let him cool down. We can talk later.” He leaned back against the couch cushions and hit the TV volume.

  “Sheesh,” I muttered, collecting the plates with leftover pizza crusts and heading back to the kitchen. Enough drama. I had lesson plans to do—namely, rustling up household items so my third graders could measure rectangles. Should I let them bring items from home to measure? That might be risking irate parents, like the time my first class at Bethune Elementary brought in such no-nos as a treasured jewelry box and a box of tampons. “A list,” I told myself on the way to the kitchen. “I’ll send home a list of appropriate items to—”

  I nearly tripped over Amanda and Willie Wonka, who were sprawled in the doorway between the dining room and kitchen, the phone still attached to Amanda’s ear. “Oh, here’s my mom. I’ll ask her.” She beamed up at me. “Can I go to the sophomore dance at José’s school? It’s not for a couple of weeks—and I already have a dress! From my quinceañera.” She flitted her eyelashes, as if that settled the matter.

  “With José, I presume.” I stepped over my daughter’s body and began loading the dishwasher. Hey, didn’t I cook supper? Someone else oughta be doing this. On second thought, no, I didn’t cook supper. Better to save dish duty for my family when there were lots of pots and pans.

  “Mo-om!”

  OK, I was stalling. A dance at José’s school? What school was that? What kind of kids would be there? What kind of dancing did they do? Was I ready to let Amanda actually date? Were Amanda and José getting too—

  “Mom!”

  I blew out a breath and whirled on my daughter, hand on one hip. “I heard you. I’m thinking. I don’t know yet. I’ll talk it over with your dad. Go do your homework.”

  “Oh.” She put the phone back to her ear. “Yeah, probably. I’ll let you know for sure.”

  Daughter and dog disappeared in the direction of her bedroom. I turned on the dishwasher, plopped down at the dining room table with my lesson plan book, and started to make a list of appropriate household items to teach measurements . . . but I found my mind drifting. Back to Nony finding that pamphlet. The pain in her eyes. The news report on the TV. Josh’s fierce reaction.

  I sat thinking for a long time.

  Finally, I got up and padded back toward the living room in my sock feet. The TV was off, and Denny had team rosters and scoring sheets spread out on the coffee table. I stood there a moment and then announced, “I know why Josh was upset.”

  Denny looked up. “What?”

  “I know why Josh was upset.”

  “Oh.” He patted the couch cushion beside him. “Tell me.”

  I sat down, leaning my elbows on the knees of my jeans. “Because hearing about stuff like this on TV is one thing. But when I told you that Nony had found one of those pamphlets, that those people had actually come to her house, Josh realized it wasn’t just a news story anymore. It was about Nony and Mark now. Somebody we know. Somebody we care about.”

  Denny sighed. “Yeah. I’ve been thinking about that too. Easy for us to say ‘ignore it’—we’re not Jewish or getting called a ‘mud race.’ But for Nony and Mark, it probably feels personal.”

  I looked at Denny. “Not just them. What about Avis and Florida? Or Delores and Edesa?”

  “Yeah. Ruth and Ben too.”

  Oh God. What about Ruth? Has she heard about this Nazi graffiti showing up at Northwestern? Did any of her family die during the Holocaust? She must be somewhere around fifty, born after World War II like the rest of us in Yada Yada. What stories had been passed down to her about fellow Jews and family being rounded up by soldiers with that swastika on their armbands?

  I need to pray!

  I CALLED NONY THE NEXT EVENING but got the answering machine. Wednesday evening, Denny and I got off our duffs and made it to the midweek Bible study at Uptown. Have to admit I wasn’t very keen on making it a regular thing on a school night. But the current series was called “Lord, Teach Us to Pray.” Funny. Before Yada Yada came into my life, I probably would’ve thought, Yeah, yeah, prayer. Just talk to God; that’s prayer. What else do we need to know? But the more I prayed with Yada Yada, the less I seemed to know about prayer—or maybe, the more I wanted to know. Like a pregnant woman who has a craving for pickles or ice cream or Fannie May chocolates.

  To my surprise, Avis and Peter were both there. Peter was attentive but quiet during the discussion time, but Avis had a lot of good input about the different parts of the Lord’s Prayer—especially the first part: “Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” She said we so quickly skip over that part and get to the “Give us this day our daily bread” list of requests, but there’s a reason we need to focus our prayer with praise and worship first, to get our priorities straight.

  Good stuff.

  Stu came, too, and afterward I saw her talking to Pastor Clark. Probably asking him about writing a letter on Becky’s behalf to send to the parole board. Hoo boy. Becky Wallace at Uptown Community. How many more places in my life was my own personal thief going to show up? Sheesh. Give You an inch, God, and You take a mile.

  I overheard Denny inviting Peter Douglass to the men’s breakfast on Saturday—a gig that happened every third weekend of the month. Not sure he got a commitment. In fact, I got the feeling that Peter wasn’t all that excited about attending a mostly white church. Before he and Avis got married, he’d been visiting other churches like Salem Baptist, where Rev. James Meeks, one of our state senators, was pastor. I knew this was something Avis and Peter were going to have
to work out now that they were married. But I felt a pang. What if . . .

  OK, God, I’m not going to go there. But can I put in a request? I really want Avis and Peter to stay at Uptown Community. We need them! It’s too easy for us to be a church of “people like us,” but the Bible says the different parts of Your body need each other.

  And then there was Amanda, still badgering me about going with José to the sophomore dance at Benito Juarez High School. I finally told her to quit bugging me about it, and that she’d get an answer by the weekend.

  So it was Thursday night by the time I got hold of Nony. She’d barely said hello before I plunged right in, apologizing for saying she should “just ignore it” when she’d found the pamphlet. “That was insensitive of me, Nony. Easy for me to ignore it, to brush it off as the extremist views of a few ignorant white people. Guess I wanted you to ignore it because I don’t want you to think that white people in general, or . . . or me in particular, think like that. I was wrong to brush it under the rug, and I’m sorry.”

  I finally paused for breath, but there was only silence on the other end . . . and then what sounded like stifled crying. “Nony?” Oh God. I should have called her right away, not let so much time go by. Now she was really upset. “Nony? I’m so sorry.”

  On the other end of the line, I heard Nony blow her nose then come back on. Her voice was shaky. “I know you are, Jodi. Thank you. But just today, Mark came home very angry. Some of those young men from that White Pride group were on campus, passing out fliers inviting students to a ‘free speech’ rally on—wait a minute. He brought home one of the fliers.” She was back in a moment. “On ‘White Purity and the Mud Races.’ They’re not students and don’t have access to any of the university meeting rooms, but they want to meet at the Rock—it’s kind of like a public square at Northwestern.”

  “Oh, Nony.” I was stunned. “Can they do that? I mean . . .”

  Denny looked at me funny as he passed me on his way to the kitchen to get a snack. “What’s going on?” he mouthed at me.

  I held up a finger, trying to listen to Nony. But he hung around until I finally got off the phone. I told him what Nony had said. “Mark’s really angry. He’s trying to get the university administration to call a meeting of staff and faculty to deal with this stuff.”

  Denny leaned against the kitchen counter for several minutes, staring at the floor, his forehead knotted, rubbing the back of his head. Then he held out a hand. “Give me the phone.”

  He was so abrupt and impolite, I almost refused. Give it up, Jodi. This isn’t the time for niceties. I handed him the phone.

  Now I was the one who hung around eavesdropping. “Hi, Nony. It’s Denny. Can I speak to Mark? . . . Mark. Denny Baxter. Jodi just told me what’s happening at Northwestern. I know you’ve probably got your hands full dealing with this on campus, but I’m wondering . . . If you can spare the time, would you be willing to come to our men’s breakfast at Uptown Saturday morning and fill us in? You’ve been there before; the guys know you. I might even be able to pull in some of the guys we had at our Guys’ Day Out. The rest of us in the community need to know what’s going on and talk about what we can do in our churches. And personally, I’d like to know how I can support you, my brother. At the very least, how I can pray for you.” He listened for a moment and then gave a laugh. “Yeah, if we’d listen to our wives now and then, these Yada Yadas, we’d finally get it that we should pray first, then knock the blocks off these kooks.”

  10

  Denny was all over the phone that night and the next, checking with Pastor Clark about inviting Dr. Smith to speak to the Uptown men on Saturday, then calling some of the guys who didn’t attend regularly, like Carl Hickman and Peter Douglass.

  “Jodi? Do you have the Garfields’ number?” he yelled through the bathroom door as I was trying to have my Friday night soak-the-school-week-away bubble bath. I sat up with a jerk, sending water cascading over the side of the tub and soaking the rug.

  “Denny, wait! Why are you calling Ben Garfield?” I yelled back.

  There was a momentary pause. “To invite him to come to the breakfast tomorrow.” Denny’s tone said, Put two and two together, Jodi. What have I been doing all evening?

  I climbed out of the tub and grabbed a towel. “I mean, why Ben?” I opened the door a crack. Denny stood in the hallway, phone in hand. “Why upset Ben and Ruth by all this anti-Semitism stuff? Maybe they haven’t even heard about it.”

  To his credit, Denny actually seemed to be considering what I said. Then he shook his head. “I don’t want to upset them, but it’s on the news. Three incidents in one week at Northwestern. This White Pride group is obviously stepping up its activities. Ben and Ruth will have heard about it.” He snorted. “Huh. Didn’t even know they existed a week ago! Frankly, I’d like to get Ben’s perspective.”

  Arrgh. I was back to hoping the whole thing would just go away. But I told Denny where to find the Garfields’ number and locked the door again. I sank back into my bubble bath, studying the scars on my body—the almost invisible short scars at the top and bottom of my left thigh, where a rod had been inserted to repair my broken femur, and the vertical scar on my abdomen to remove my mangled spleen. Scarred but not broken. Most days I felt pretty good, though damp weather and too many hours on my feet sometimes left me with an aching leg. For months, I felt awkward about my scarred body in front of Denny, not wanting him to look at me like damaged goods—not that he ever made me feel that way. I hated those scars, hated those reminders of that awful day, reminders of my anger and my sin.

  I pushed aside the bubbles and traced the scar on my abdomen. That was before I heard God’s still, small Voice in my spirit, telling me that those scars were my reminder to pray—for Jamal’s mother, Geraldine, and for his brother, Hakim. What a revelation! Even scars can have a redemptive purpose.

  So pray, Jodi. Soaking in the tub is as good as anyplace else. So I prayed for Hakim, whose seat in my classroom had been empty all week. And I prayed for his mother while my fingers got wrinkled and pink. Prayed that God would continue the healing that had begun when our fingers had touched that brief moment across my desk at the last parent-teacher conference.

  Keep praying, Jodi, said the Voice in my spirit. Others have scars too—scars invisible to you, but scars nonetheless. Wounds that seem healed but still bleed, cut open once again by a careless remark or the lies of the enemy or even by events in the news.

  I slid under the bubbles to wet my hair, squirted some shampoo in my hand, and lathered up my head—and prayed for Stu and the wounds she carried in her heart for her aborted baby . . . for Nony and the pain of race hatred stirred up in her memory . . . for Ben and Ruth, whose ethnic history included genocide—and almost felt like I was drowning under the heaviness. Oh God! How can You carry the weight of these wounds? They’re too big! Too big . . .

  I stayed in the tub so long, I could’ve qualified for pickling.

  JOSH GOT HIMSELF OUT OF BED and went to the men’s breakfast with his dad Saturday morning. Well, not exactly “with.” Denny left early for a run along the lakefront, ending up back at Uptown Community. I dropped off Josh at the church by eight o’clock, taking advantage of being out and about to get my grocery shopping done early in the day. I knew Denny was pleased. He’d invited Josh a couple of times before, but Josh had never been interested . . . till now.

  “Hi, Nick!” I called out to the Greek owner of the Rogers Park Fruit Market, who was helping to unload boxes of Mexican mangoes from a truck. “Got a price on those yet? They look yummy.”

  Nick grinned. “For you, one dollar each. Tell the girl I said so.” Nick held out a box. I picked out two golden-green mangoes then headed into the market with my list: fresh ginger, romaine lettuce, green onions, a bunch of cilantro, fresh parsley, bananas, two beef shanks for soup, chicken quarters . . .

  Next stop: the new Dominick’s megastore on Howard Street. For some reason, the immensity of the grocery store
still intimidated me. Why couldn’t I figure out where to find stuff? I finally made it home with my bags of groceries, hoping Amanda was up so she could help carry stuff in. No such luck. Her door was still closed, with no sign of emergent life oozing from her bedroom.

  When I went back out to the garage, Becky Wallace was leaning into the back of the minivan. “Thought you could use some help,” she grunted, hauling out two or three bulging plastic bags in each hand. Only then did I realize she must have been in the back yard weeding the flowerbeds or something, and I’d totally zoned out that she was there.

  “Uh . . . sure. Thanks!”

  With Becky’s help, we got all the groceries into our house in one trip. “Thanks again,” I said as she dumped her load on the counter and headed back outside. I watched as she pulled on some tattered garden gloves and resumed weeding along the fence—the outer borders of her narrow world. For a nanosecond I felt sorry for her. Sheesh. It’s like grounding a full-grown adult. On the other hand, I told myself as I started stashing canned goods, it’s gotta be better than prison. And actions did have consequences.

  By the time I put away groceries, stripped beds, and started laundry, it was eleven o’clock and still no sign of Denny and Josh. Or Amanda. Impatient, I entered the inner sanctum of teendom and turned on the light. “Up! You’ve got chores. I’ve got more errands, and I want to know you’re on track.”

  “Mo-om!” came the muffled complaint from the bedclothes, but I heard the bathroom door slam a few minutes later.

  I left a note on the kitchen counter for Denny, another for Amanda with a list of her Saturday chores to be done before she got on the phone or left the house, and backed the minivan out of the garage again. The weekend weather report was for mixed sunshine and showers, and I hoped the sunshine would hold long enough for me to take MaDear for a walk this morning. But by the time I parked on Clark Street near Adele’s Hair and Nails, it was starting to sprinkle.

  Rats, I thought as I pulled open the door, setting off the familiar bell. The beauty shop was full of customers. All three chairs were occupied by women in various stages of “relaxing” or “curling.” Two more sat under hair dryers, with Adele and Takeisha, the other hairstylist, running back and forth between all of them. Three more customers flipped pages of O and Essence magazines in the waiting area.