by Neta Jackson
That was just the last straw. I talked myself into coming to Yada Yada that night. Big mistake. I know, it was traumatic for everybody. Wasn’t your fault—wasn’t nobody’s fault. But with MaDear half off her rocker ’cause of what white folks did when she was a kid—not to mention everything my family has put up with from ignorant bigots all the years I was comin’ up—the last thing I needed was some doped-up white floozy messin’ with me. Tie me up? Steal my grandmother’s ring? If I think on it too long, I’ll get crazy myself, probably do something I regret.” She blew out a breath. “So. You asked. That’s my answer. I’m takin’ a break from Yada Yada, and from white folks in general if I can help it. And don’t come crying to me about how bad you feel. What you feel ain’t nothin’ compared to what I’m dealing with right now, and I don’t have time to worry about your hurt feelings. Get over it, Jodi—that’s all I can say.”
A dozen backlashes sprang to my tongue, but I knew I wouldn’t say them. I wanted to yell, I wanted to cry—but mostly I wanted to get off the phone before I did either. “All right, Adele.” My voice came out in a croak. “You made yourself plain. I’m sorry. That’s all I know to say.” And I hung up.
I was so mad and so hurt, I wanted to throw pots and pans or break a window or something—anything. Instead I just clenched my fists and sputtered, “Arrrrrggghhhh!” at the top of my lungs. I paced back and forth between the kitchen and dining room, holding a hundred angry dialogues with Adele in my head, telling her she’s the one who needs to “get over it” instead of taking it out on friends who never did anything to her—not just me and Denny, but all the Yada Yada sisters.
I got out a pot, dumped it into the sink, and filled it with water for chicken noodle soup. I banged it onto the stove, slopping some of the water and putting out the gas flame. By the time Denny and Josh walked in the door, the soup was almost done, the kitchen was a mess, Amanda was holed up in her room, and I was in no mood to be social. “Dish up some soup when you get hungry,” I grumbled. “I’m taking Willie Wonka for a walk.”
WILLIE WONKA lasted about twenty minutes—long enough for us to make it to Touhy Park, which normally took five minutes— but I hadn’t figured on Willie stopping to sniff every tree, leaving his “mark” to let the next dog know who’d passed by. By the time we got to the park, he was huffing. I found a bench and sat down so Willie could rest up for the walk home.
The conversation with Adele kept replaying in my mind. “Don’t come crying to me about how bad you feel . . . ain’t nothin’ compared to what I’m dealing with . . . get over it, Jodi . . . don’t have time to worry about your hurt feelings . . . I’m taking a break from Yada Yada and white folks in general . . .”
But rehashing it only fed my festering anger. I sighed. Okay, God. What am I supposed to do now? You tell me—’cause I don’t have a clue.
It was starting to get dark by the time I dragged Willie into the front door forty-five minutes later. Denny and Josh were in the living room flipping channels and watching sports news, empty soup bowls cluttering up the coffee table. Amanda, no doubt, was still sulking in her room.
Denny glanced up. “Good. You’re back.” His tone was reproachful, like, “Okay, you’re mad, but don’t make me worry about you.” I stood in the doorway a minute, wishing he’d jump up and say, “You upset about something, honey? Wanna talk?” But I knew it wouldn’t happen. When Denny’s feelers pick up that I’m working on a mad, he usually backs off and leaves me alone till I cool off.
Grow up, Jodi. He probably thinks you’re mad at him for who-knows-what. I unsnapped Willie Wonka’s leash and straightened. “Yeah. Sorry I went off like that. I had an upsetting phone call with Adele. Had to blow off steam before I was ready to talk about it.”
That got Denny’s attention. He even got up off the couch and followed me to the kitchen, leaning against the doorway while I dished up a bowl of chicken noodle soup. “Wanna tell me about it?”
I nodded, and we sat at the dining-room table while I recounted the conversation as best I could between spoonfuls of soup.The hot, salty liquid felt good going down, like a hot water bottle soothing my ruffled feelings. Denny was hearing the conversation for the first time, and by the end he was pacing around the room, rubbing the back of his head.
Finally he threw up his hands. “Well, that’s it. I don’t know what else to do. Maybe Adele’s right. Just get over it.” He practically threw himself down on a chair.
“Yeah. Except . . . it’s hard to ‘just get over it’ when she’s dropping out of Yada Yada too. All the sisters are gonna feel hurt.”
I pushed away my empty soup bowl, and we both sat silently at the table, hugging our own thoughts. It suddenly occurred to me I was still thinking mostly about me. In the quiet of the dining room, with only the TV providing distant background noise, I rehearsed our conversation once more, but this time paying more attention to what Adele was feeling . . .
“It is a big deal for me . . . my uncle was murdered, Jodi—by a bunch of white racists . . . my mother wakes up at night terrified, and it’s two, sometimes three hours before I can get her back to sleep again . . . my sister and me got chased out of stores just for lookin’ . . . Daddy got stopped by the cops for ‘drivin’ black’ . . . everything my family has put up with from ignorant bigots . . .”
I looked up at Denny, who was still slumped in one of the dining-room chairs. “I know what we can do.”
“What?”
“Pray for Adele and MaDear.”
He cocked an eyebrow at me. “O-kaaay. Sounds, uh, virtuous.”
I giggled. “I know. But I’m serious. How many times do I actually pray for my so-called enemies—or even someone who makes me upset? I stew . . . I fret . . . I try to work it out. But Adele’s right about one thing—I wanted to talk to her to make me feel better.”
Denny sighed. “Yeah. Me too. Okay, let’s pray for Adele and MaDear. But there’s something else I gotta do.”
“What?”
He got up and grabbed the checkbook we kept in the computer desk. “Pay Adele something for your anniversary makeover. Don’t want that to come back to bite me.”
24
I called Avis the next evening to get her best “guesstimate” at what my hair and nails would cost at Adele’s Hair and Nails, and I ended up telling her about the phone call. I felt slightly guilty blurting it all out—was I gossiping about Adele? But I decided that at least Avis should know what was going on. We’d asked her to be the leader of our prayer group, and Adele’s decision to drop out definitely affected everybody. I needed to be careful, though. It would be tempting to “let others know” in subtle ways that made Adele the Bad Guy and us the Poor Innocent Bystanders.
“Uh . . . Avis. Maybe I’ll let you figure out what to say to Yada Yada about Adele’s absence. Florida and Stu may figure out it has something to do with what happened at the shop, but nobody else knows what happened that day. Are you okay with handling this?” There. That made me accountable to Avis. As well as let me off the hook.
“All right. Guess that’s best. The Lord is going to have to give me the right things to say . . . but I don’t think we should say too much. Nothing is written in stone—not since the Ten Commandments anyway. Let’s give the Holy Spirit some room to work.”
Room to work? Please! Take all the room You need, God! Then—I swear—a voice in the back of my head said, Then you need to get out of the way, Jodi.
I was so startled that I almost missed Avis’s next words. “. . . any thoughts since Sunday about writing a letter to Becky Wallace?”
It took me a moment to reorient my brain. “Letter?”
“Right. Yo-Yo’s suggestion that some of us go visit her at the prison.”
“Uh . . .” My thoughts scrambled. I had put the whole idea out of my head the moment I walked out of Ruth’s front door. “I thought you said we weren’t going to make a decision about that yet—that we were going to pray about it.”
“True. I was just w
ondering if you’d been praying about it and what God had been saying to you.”
Whoa. Why was this all coming back on me? I decided to be honest. “Sorry, Avis. Haven’t thought about it. Haven’t prayed about it. What has God been saying to you?”
“Mmm. Not sure I have any wisdom about what’s best, but in my prayer time, I was impressed that a couple of the sisters— Florida and Yo-Yo, at least—are willing to visit her. So the Holy Spirit seemed to say, ‘If Becky Wallace is willing to have visitors, then God has opened a door.’We won’t know unless we write, will we?”
“Um . . . okay, I’ll think about it.”
“Pray about it, Jodi.”
“Right.”
Denny poked his head around the door as I hung up. “Did she say how much?”
I must have looked at him blankly, because he waved the checkbook. “Oh. She suggested sixty for hair and nails.”
He considered. “I’m gonna add ten more. I’d rather err on the plus side at this point. Okay with you?”
I waved him away. Whatever. I didn’t want to think about Adele . . . or Becky Wallace . . . or any of that mess right now. Didn’t want to pray about it either. I just wanted to go to bed.
I WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING before the alarm, fighting off a familiar anxiety dream: I was back in college, facing my final biology exam—but I hadn’t been to class all semester! Humph. Wasn’t hard to put my finger on the causes of my anxiety . . .
Adele.
Letter to Bandana Woman—or not.
And my parents were arriving tomorrow. For my birthday.
At least it wasn’t the nightmare again. I pushed that thought up to “thankful” category and padded to the back door to let Willie Wonka out. I glanced at the kitchen clock—fifteen minutes before I normally got up on a school day. Good. I could—
You could pray, Jodi.
I sighed. Right. Said I was going to pray for Adele and MaDear. And I practically promised Avis I’d pray about writing that letter to Bandana Woman. Guess I can pray about my parents’ visit while I’m at it.
I left Willie Wonka out in the backyard, realizing the sun hadn’t even come up yet. Did I dare put on some music? Something quiet . . . meditative. I picked up the new Clint Brown CD Denny had picked up for me while I was laid up after surgery and scanned the back. There. The song, “You Are” was quiet and meditative.
I turned on the light long enough to stick the CD into the player, punched in the number of the selection, then flopped on the couch and soaked in the words.
You are . . . the hope that I cling to . . . You are my everything . . .
Willie Wonka barked at the back door, and the alarm was going off in our bedroom, but the words to the song kept me rooted to the couch.
. . . couldn’t take one step without You . . . don’t have the strength to make it on my own . . .
Didn’t exactly get much praying done, but maybe this was like “pre-op”—necessary preparation for the kind of “surgical prayers” I needed to do. Surgery on my attitude, frankly.
I DON’T REMEMBER PRAYING ACTUAL PRAYERS that morning, but by the time I got home from school on Wednesday, I felt like God and I had been “doing business” on the side all day, and we’d struck a deal: why not write that letter to Bandana Woman? She wasn’t likely to want any of us to visit her—how weird was that?—but if she did, wasn’t God big enough to handle it?
Yet how in the world would I get a letter to her? Didn’t I need her prison ID number or something?
Amanda came in the door in what passed for “straight home” from school, and for some strange reason, I told her what Yada Yada was thinking about doing and my problem about how to get a letter to a prisoner. To my surprise, her face perked up.
“Google it, Mom. They’ve got everything on the Web.”
“What do you mean?”
Dumping her backpack on the floor, Amanda booted up the computer and then called up the Internet. She typed “Lincoln Correctional Center” into the Google search engine and began following the various prompts: “Visitation Rules” . . . “Inmate Search” . . .
“What’s her last name, Mom?”
“Um . . . Wallace. Becky Wallace.”
A list of Wallaces in the Illinois Department of Corrections came up, and there she was: name, prison ID, everything. Sheesh. Hanging out on the Web for all the world to see. So much for privacy. Amanda clicked on the name in the list, and a new page appeared.
Somebody named Becky Wallace stared back at us from the screen, a front and side view. All her vitals were listed—weight, height, race . . . I squinted at the tiny print: “Race:White.” Huh. Guess I was wrong about that. Under sentencing information, it read: “Armed robbery. Sentence: ten years. Projected parole date: 2006.”
Amanda let out a breath. “Wow. That’s her? She looks different.”
She did look different without the wraparound sunglasses and bandana. An actual face looked back at me—short dark hair, dark eyes—but it was the same woman, all right. Her mouth was hard, and I could almost hear the obscenities she’d spewed around our house that night, like a sewer that had backed up and overflowed.
I grabbed a notepad and wrote down her ID number and the address to send inmate mail. “Thanks, Amanda.” I glanced at the clock. Denny and Josh would be home soon—better get supper going. It was Bible study night at Uptown, but I was going to make a case for staying home, since we had to get the house ready for my parents’ arrival the next day. I’d write the letter later.
DENNY DISAPPEARED AFTER SUPPER, saying he had to run an errand. I washed towels and sheets so I’d be sure to have clean linens for my parents, hid the two bottles of wine—one half-empty— that we had sitting on top of the refrigerator, and gave Amanda and Josh a choice: run the vacuum, sweep the hallway and dining room, or clean the bathroom.
They chose vacuuming and sweeping, so I ended up scrubbing the tub. Rats.
Lathering hand cream on my water-wrinkled fingers after finishing the bathroom, I sat down at the computer and started drafting a letter to the woman who had robbed us—and immediately ran into problems. How did I address her? “Dear Ms. Wallace? Dear Becky?” One sounded too respectful for the likes of B. W., and the other sounded too friendly. So I finally settled on “Dear Becky Wallace.”
No sooner had I stated the purpose of my letter and wrote the names of the two women who wanted to visit her than I realized we had another big problem. Neither Florida nor Yo-Yo had a car. How in the world were they supposed to get to Lincoln, which was at least two to three hours away by car?
The back screen door banged, and in a second or two I smelled Denny’s aftershave and felt his lips on the back of my neck. “Whatcha doing?” He leaned over my shoulder. “What’s this? A letter to Becky Wallace?” He pulled over a dining-room chair.
I told him what Yada Yada had talked about at Ruth’s house— a little detail that had gotten lost in the revelation that Amanda had lied to us and gone to the Mexican parade with José—and how Avis suggested testing the waters to see if she would respond. “But if—big if—she says okay, how in the world would they get down there?”
Denny was quiet a long time. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, chin resting on his clasped hands—like he did after the Rosh Hashanah service. Finally he leaned back. “I’ll drive them.”
“Really?” His offer surprised me. I had to be careful about Yada Yada making decisions that implicated him. He was already borderline resentful of our twice-monthly meetings, the extra phone calls, the church visits. “You don’t have to make this your problem, Denny.”
He snorted. “Becky Wallace robbed my house, frightened my family, terrorized our guests, and pointed her butcher knife at me. I’d say it’s already my problem.”
I swatted him on the shoulder. “You know what I mean.”
The smile vanished. “If anybody’s going to go, maybe it should be you and me, Jodi. After all, she did barge into our house, and I was the one who wrestled her t
o the floor. We’ve got a lot of feelings too. Maybe it would be good to face her. Maybe it would be good for her to face us.”
I rolled my eyes. “She’s not going to put us on her visitors’ list.”
But in the end, I typed all four names into the letter: Florida Hickman . . . Yolanda Spencer . . . Denny and Jodi Baxter.
25
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE ! I bolted upright in the bed. What was that? . . . The fire alarm! Throwing off the quilt, I vaulted out of bed as quickly as my morning-stiff leg would allow and grabbed for my robe in the dark. Just as I stuck my arm in the sleeve, the obnoxious racket stopped as abruptly as it had started, and two seconds later Denny poked his head into the bedroom door.
“Sorry. It backfired on me.”
By this time I was totally awake and robed. “What backfired on you?” I followed him out into the hall, where a bleary-eyed, bald-headed Josh was standing in the doorway of his bedroom, looking totally confused. A plaintive wail rose from Amanda’s bedroom: “Da-ad! Is there a fire? Or can I go back to sleep?”
“Sleep!” Denny called. “For fifteen more minutes!”
Josh sighed and disappeared behind his own door.
I stopped at the archway to the dining room where shadows and glowing lights danced all over the walls. Whichever way I looked, candles in all shapes and sizes flickered warmly in the dining room . . . kitchen . . . living room . . . even the bathroom.
Denny stood in the middle of the dining room in his T-shirt and sweat shorts, holding the dismantled fire alarm. A sheep couldn’t have looked more sheepish. “Uh, sorry, babe. I wanted to start off your birthday special—didn’t know all these candles would set off the alarm.”
I started to laugh. “Oh, this is special, all right. I’ll never forget it—and I’m never going to let you forget it either!” I headed for the candlelit living room. “You can make it up to me by bringing me a big mug of coffee, because I am going to sit in the recliner and reign like a queen for at least fifteen minutes.”
