2-in-1 Yada Yada (19 page)

“Yes! I did too! On Wednesday. That poor boy—broke my heart, it did. But Delores . . . that's a strong woman! If my child had gotten shot . . .”

I leaned forward slightly. Denny and Ben were talking about the latest Cubs and White Sox scores. “Do you have children, Ruth?”

Ruth looked down at the Formica tabletop. But only for a second. She came up smiling. “No, no, never did.” Lowering her voice to a stage whisper, she jerked her head slightly in Ben's direction.
“He's
number three.You'd think one of those times . . .” She brushed a lock of hair off her forehead, as though brushing off the subject. “Eat, you two! Don't wait on us. Ours is coming.”

As though playing the prophet, Yo-Yo appeared with a large bialy—sliced and filled with something that looked like sautéed vegetables, pizza sauce, and melted mozzarella cheese—that she set down in front of Ben, and a bowl of matzo ball soup and an onion bagel that she set down in front of Ruth. “And these are for you,” she said, whipping out two bottles of cold beer from the pockets of her tunic and setting them down in front of Ben and Denny. Last out of her pocket was a bottle opener. “Enjoy, folks. Gotta get back to work.”

My mad came back. I couldn't believe it. Denny really was going to drink that beer, right here and now.

“How did you guys meet Yo-Yo and her brothers?” Denny asked, polishing off the last bite of his lox-and-cream-cheese bagel and washing it down with a swig from the bottle.

I wanted to snatch it out of his hand . . . but Ben said, “Ho ho, now that's a story.” That got my attention; I'd been wondering the same thing all week.

“Story, schmory. Not such a big deal,” Ruth protested, but I could tell she was warming up. “I work as a secretary, right? I type, I take dictation, I answer the phone, I smile, I make the coffee, I cheer everybody up. Always making the boss guys look good—but for what? So they can make money.
Pffffft.”
Ruth thumbed her nose and rolled her eyes. I didn't dare look at Denny for fear we'd both burst out laughing. “So I tell God, I says, ‘God? If I'm gonna smile myself to death, I want a better return on my efforts.' I'm thinking money, see? But I forgot to factor in God's sense of humor. God's got a cosmic sense of humor, you know. Remember Queen Esther? And Haman? Ho, ho, I nearly fall down laughing every time we celebrate Purim. To think—”

“Oh, no,” Ben groaned. “Noodle, don't get started on Esther. Back to Yo-Yo.”

Noodle? He called her Noodle! Oh, that's a stitch!

“What's the hurry? The place on fire?” Ruth gave an exaggerated sigh. “Okay, okay. You want a
short
story, you get a short story. A woman in my office—nice black lady—visits women down at the county jail. So I'm thinking,
That's nice.
Then I think,
If I have to
make nice, I'd rather make nice on someone who can use it more than the
fat cats I work for.
So I go with this lady to the jail one night. Turns out she does a Bible study—you know, a Christian thing—with whoever wants to come. But it didn't matter who—Christian, Muslim, Jew, whatever. These gals wanted to talk; I like to talk—”

“Got that right,” muttered Ben, giving Denny the eye.

Ruth swatted him with her paper napkin. “You
said
tell the story!”

“Nah. I said, ‘Now
that's
a story.' ”

“Oh, please don't stop now,” I interrupted. “I really do want to hear how you met Yo-Yo.”

“See?” Ruth said, flicking her fingers at Ben like an annoying fly. “All right, where was I? . . .”

Ben hoisted his beer bottle with an indulgent smile of resignation.

IT WAS ALMOST MIDNIGHT by the time we got home. “Ben and Ruth . . . they're something else.” Denny was grinning when we got back in the car.

I laughed. That was the truth. All the way home I thought about Ruth's story, how Yo-Yo had drifted into the Bible study at the county jail, always sitting in the back. When the “nice black lady” found out Ruth was Jewish, she asked her to tell some Old Testament stories to the women. That knocked my socks off! . . . Finding a common denominator even though Ruth wasn't a Christian. Apparently Ruth was a great storyteller. Yo-Yo kept asking,
“Why did God do this?” “How come God did that?”
Ruth said she didn't have a clue, but the Bible study lady started to explain how the Old Testament fit together with the New Testament.

“It got me thinking
—” Ruth had said.

“Thinking, not talking, eh?”
Ben winked at me.

Ruth had swatted him with the napkin again.
“So one day I
went to this Jews for Jesus–type church—”

“Yeah. Can you beat that? An oxymoron, if you ask me.”

Ruth ignored him.
“So now on Saturday I go to synagogue with
Ben—when he goes, that is—and on Sunday I go to church. With other
Messianic Jews.”

“What's a guy to do?”
Ben had shrugged.
“She's got a foot in both
pots.”

In spite of all the banter, I suspected he adored her. “For that matter,” I told Denny on the way home, “Ben seems more attached to Saturday night at the Bagel Bakery than Saturday morning at the synagogue. He wasn't wearing a yarmulke, for one thing.”

Denny grunted. “Huh. You could be right.”

Ruth had liked Yo-Yo from the start.
“A plain talker—when she
talked,”
she had said with an eye on Yo-Yo, busy behind the bakery counter. Then one week Yo-Yo wasn't there. Or the next. Ruth found out she'd been given two years at Lincoln Correctional Center downstate. Eighteen months with good behavior. Ruth wrote a couple letters to Yo-Yo and got one back.

“That did it,”
Ben had butted in.
“She dragged me down to
Lincoln to visit the girl. Not my idea of how to spend my day off—at
a women's prison.”
But a hint of a smile had softened his words.

That's when they discovered that Yo-Yo had two younger stepbrothers she worried about plenty. Their mother had a “drug problem,” and the boys were dropping through the cracks.
“Whatever
she did to get arrested, I think she did it for those boys,”
Ruth had said.

“That's really something,” I murmured as Denny turned the minivan into our alley and clicked the garage opener. “How Ruth and Ben hunted up Jerry and Pete and took 'em places and did things with them while Yo-Yo was in prison.” Ben had said they'd only met the mother once, and she'd been so strung out when they came to the door that she hadn't asked any questions about who they were or where they were taking the boys. Just,
“Fine, go.”

All the lights were on, and both of our kids were still up when we got home—cat's away, the mice will play—but we chased them into their bedrooms and settled down on the living room couch with some chamomile tea, my stocking feet in Denny's lap. Willie Wonka flopped on the floor with a huge sigh.

“Whatsa matter,Willie?” Denny said, scratching the dog's silky ears. “Mad at us?” He put on a growly voice. “ 'Bout time you two got home. Don'tcha know I can't go to sleep till everybody's in?' ”

I was only half-listening, still thinking about our evening at the Bagel Bakery. I had hoped to talk about Ruth's e-mail about “what's best for the child.” In Ruth's shoes, I would probably be scared off from saying anything more to Yada Yada after Florida's hot reaction and Adele's sarcastic comment about “friendly fire.” At one point, I thought I'd found the perfect opening to bring it up . . .

“It was Ruth's idea, really,”
Ben had acknowledged,
“to take those
boys under our wing . . . kinda like foster parents, even though they didn't
live with us. And she helped Yo-Yo get custody when she got out. She's got
a knack for that.”

“Oh!”
I'd said, little lights going on in my head.
“Have you
worked with the foster care system, Ruth?”

“Now that's another story,”
Ben had said.
“I'll need another beer if
we go there. You, Denny?”

I mentally glared at Denny, but to my relief he shook his head. Ruth, however, dodged the ball.
“Talk, talk, talk—that's all I've been
doing. What am I, a monopoly? Jodi, how did you meet Denny? A good
catch he is, I'd say! He could give my Ben a few pointers.”

And so we'd chatted and got acquainted right up till Yo-Yo kicked us out at closing time. My “good catch” had been thoroughly charmed by Ben and Ruth, and Yo-Yo, too—which was fine, but I was left still wondering if Yada Yada was going to hang together or not. At least Ruth had seemed eager to hear about the other women in the prayer group, even though we'd verbally danced around the “elephant” in the middle of the room as though it wasn't there. Maybe she was okay . . .

“Denny,” I mused, nursing the last of the tea in my mug, “what do you think about throwing a five-year sobriety party for Florida, like Yo-Yo suggested? . . . Denny?”

Romeo was snoring softly at the other end of the couch. Well, let him. He was still going to get it for drinking that beer tonight.

20

I
didn't feel like praising the Lord when I woke up. I overslept, the laundry was only half-done, I'd totally forgotten to plan something for the Mother's Day potluck—who came up with that dumb idea, anyway?—Denny seemed oblivious that I was mad about the beer, and Stu was coming to Uptown Community that morning.

Hallelujah.

For the next hour and a half we did the “Baxter Hurry Scurry,” and at two minutes to ten we hustled up the stairs of the double storefront Uptown occupied to the large upstairs room that served as the sanctuary. Well, at least Josh and Amanda and I did. Denny was still driving around trying to find a parking space. I snuck into the kitchen with my Easy Chicken-and-Rice Casserole and hoped I'd remember to stick it in the oven at eleven o'clock.

I sniffed. Fresh paint. The work crew yesterday must have painted something.

The Reilly twins were passing out carnations to everybody as they came in—red if your mother was still alive, white if she had “passed on.” In one corner of the large room the music group— two guitars and a keyboard—was warming up. Josh settled in at the soundboard—his new passion. Avis was talking with Pastor Clark at the front; she must be leading worship this morning.

And Stu had already arrived. She was wearing a smart lavender suit—overdressed for this crowd—her ash blonde hair coiled into a professional bun at the nape of her neck. She waved at us with the red carnation she was holding and pointed at the empty folding chairs next to her.

“Oh, Lord,” I muttered, “she saved seats for us.”

Stu was sitting in the third row near the front beside a young couple in jeans and T-shirts. Two street people dressed straight from the Salvation Army sat just behind her, a situation that was sometimes challenging to the nose. We often had more street people on potluck Sundays, I'd noticed. Otherwise our congregation was pretty much a casual mix of “wuppies”—white urban professionals— both married and single, who wanted something a bit different than traditional church, with a hopeful sprinkling of color here and there and a whole mess of kids. Kids . . . somewhere along the way I'd lost mine but spied Amanda sitting with some of the other young teens.

Get a grip, Jodi.
I smiled back at Stu and headed—slowly—for the third row.
Just because Stu is a go-getter doesn't make her your
rival or anything. Go on; she looks glad to see you.

“Hey, Stu.” I plopped down into a chair beside her. “You made it.” The smell factor from the row behind us didn't seem too bad today.

“Yes! Found it with no problem.” She grinned at me. “Guess you have to live a long way away to arrive early.”

I opened my mouth and shut it again. Great. She just couldn't help commenting about me squeaking in at the last minute, could she?

Stu waggled her carnation. “This is nice. Everybody gets to celebrate Mother's Day.”

Avis's voice filled the room from the microphone. “Praise the Lord, church! If you have your Bibles, please turn with me to Isaiah Fifty-Two.” Hiding the flush that had crept into my face, I dug into my tote bag and got out my Bible. Avis's voice rang free and joyous, so different from her contained demeanor at school, like she'd just kicked off shoes that pinched after a long day at the office. “How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!' ” she read. “Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices; together they shout for joy. . . .”

Denny's familiar bulk sat down in the chair beside me. Parking place at last. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Stu turn slightly our way, waiting. “Oh,” I whispered, trying not to interrupt Avis's Scripture reading. “Denny, this is Stu . . . Stu, my husband, Denny.”

Denny reached a hand across my lap and shook Stu's warmly. “Yada Yada, right?” he whispered.

“Right,” she murmured, giving him a bright smile. Too bright, if you asked me.

“. . . The ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God,”Avis finished, closing her Bible. “Let's stand and worship God this morning as men and women who have received good news!
Salvation
is ours because of Jesus Christ.
Peace
is ours because of Jesus. Like the watchmen on the walls, we can shout and sing a joyful song!”

The guitarists strummed an introduction as the words to a song based on Isaiah 52 appeared on the portable screen behind them. I found it hard to concentrate with Stu standing beside me but dutifully sang the words: “ . . .How lovely on the mountains are the feet of him . . . who brings good news . . . good news . . .”We came to the end of the song, and immediately the music group launched into another. Uptown prided itself on providing “contemporary worship,” but the quick way we hustled from song to song was certainly different from the worship at the women's conference last week, when one song seemed to last anywhere from ten to fifteen minutes. We had lingered over the words, singing them again and again till they worked themselves deep into the soul.