2-in-1 Yada Yada (66 page)

Nony nodded slowly, and Yada Yada prayed once more, clustering around our sister, so far from her family, her country. We prayed for Nony's “mother heart” that yearned for her sons to know their heritage; her “daughter heart” that yearned for her mother to know her grandsons. We prayed that God would knit the hearts of this family together and that Nony and Mark would trust God in each other.

But I missed Nony's own prayers, the way she “prayed Scripture” into whatever we were praying about. Tonight she was quiet, her eyes closed and lashes wet, letting the prayers rain down on her head.

We finally resumed our seats and Avis raised an eyebrow in my direction. Finally! I pulled out the letter and read the return address.

“You've
got
to be kidding!” Stu's mouth dropped and her eyes bugged, making her look like one of those thin, pale fish that stare at you through the glass at the Shedd Aquarium. “That woman had the nerve to write back?”

“Apparently.” Ruth tapped her knee. “Jodi. Read.”

I unfolded the single sheet of notebook paper. “She doesn't say much. No salutation . . .”

Chanda snickered. “You mean, she don't say, ‘Dear sistahs' . . . ?”

Ruth glared at Chanda. “Just read the letter, Jodi.”

“She just says, ‘I put your names on the list. Sincerely, Becky Wallace.' ”

Silence reigned in the room for at least five seconds. I noticed that Hoshi was staring at the floor.

“That's it? ‘I put your names on the list'?” Stu was still incredulous. “Rather a miracle, don't you think?” Avis said.

“Si!”
Delores shook her head. “I can hardly believe it.”

“So now what?” Yo-Yo hunched her shoulders inside her overalls. “Florida said she'd go, and me. And Jodi and Denny's names are on that list too. So . . . when we gonna go?”

29

W
e agreed to go the following Saturday, the first weekend in October, depending on whether we could get Yo-Yo back in time to work Saturday evening and if Denny's coaching schedule was clear. Personally, I wasn't sure why it had to be so soon. Sometime in January would've been soon enough for me. Good grief, let Bandana Woman get oriented to prison life first, clean up her mouth, have some time to think about her sins, finish detox. Whatever.

Nony and Hoshi dropped me off after Yada Yada, and Denny met me at the front door. “Was that Nony?” Something in his voice . . .

“Uh-huh. Anything wrong?”

He shrugged and followed me back toward the kitchen, where I put on the teakettle. “Mark called while you were at Yada Yada.”

“Nony's husband?” Now
I
was curious.

“Yeah.” Denny leaned against the refrigerator. “He was pretty sure Nony would ask Yada Yada to pray about taking the boys to visit her mother in South Africa.” Denny lifted an eyebrow at me, waiting for confirmation.

“Well, yeah, she did.”

Denny sighed. “He's scared, Jodi. Scared she won't bring them back.”

“What?” I nearly dropped the mug I was getting out of the cupboard. “Why wouldn't she bring the boys back?”

Another shrug from Denny. “He thinks . . . to pressure him.To move the family to South Africa. She knows he's not going to lose his family.”

Well, of course not! True, Nony often talked about her desire to move back to South Africa—her heart's longing, for sure—but from everything I could tell, she and Mark had a stable, loving marriage. No way would they split over this.

The teakettle whistled frantically. I turned off the burner. “Whew.” This was huge. Hard to believe, though. “What did you say to Mark?”

“Mostly listened. He . . . asked me to pray for him.” Denny's mouth twisted in a half-grin. “Not sure I've ever prayed with another guy on the phone before—though I know you Yada Yada sisters do it all the time.Uh, could I have a mug of whatever you're making there?”

“Oh. Sure.” I'd totally forgotten about the tea water. I grabbed some herbal tea bags and another mug.

“And,” Denny added, “I told him to trust his wife—and the Spirit of God within her.”

I smiled as I poured the hot water. Now that was a good answer.

THE FOLLOWING SATURDAY found all four of us—Denny, me, Florida, and Yo-Yo—sailing south on route I-55 toward Lincoln, Illinois, but it took a lot of juggling. Yo-Yo had spent the night at our house, along with Pete and Jerry—Yo-Yo on the foldout; the boys camping out in Josh's room—so we could get an early start. It wasn't easy dragging Amanda out of bed at 6:00 a.m. so we could drop her off at Edesa's for the day, leaving Willie Wonka in charge of the three boys. On the way to Edesa's, we picked up Florida in the Edgewater neighborhood, dropped off Amanda on the Near West Side—never mind my uneasy realization she would be spending the day only a mile or two from José Enriques—and finally made it out onto the interstate.

I'd brought two thermoses of hot coffee, four travel mugs, some sticky pecan buns I picked up at Dominick's in-store bakery, and a bunch of bananas to pass around for breakfast on the road. “Now this is nice,” Florida said, pouring a refill into her travel mug. “No kids all day, fancy breakfast food. Almost like a vacation.”

I twisted around in the front passenger seat. “I can think of a
lot
of places I'd rather spend a vacation day than going to a prison, Florida.”

“Yeah. Me too,” Yo-Yo said glumly. “Didn't think I'd be going back voluntarily.”

Denny chuckled from behind the wheel. “Better voluntarily than
not.”

Yo-Yo guffawed. “Ha! Ya got that right.”

“What are Carla and the boys doing today, Flo?” I asked.

Florida sighed. “Carla goin' to her foster family again today— s'posed to be the first and third Saturdays every month for a while. I know they care about her, but don't see how these visits help
us
none.” She was silent a moment. “Still, it'd be harder to make this trip if she was home. So maybe just as well . . . say! I usually have a cig with my morning coffee—mind if I light up? Just
kidding,
Jodi! But we'll be stoppin' along the way, right?”

Denny glanced in his rearview mirror. “Just say the word, Flo.”

“Hey, those trees are real pretty,” Yo-Yo said. A cold snap the preceding week had turned the usually boring countryside along the interstate into a kaleidoscope of color. Golden elms and maples, rusty brown oaks, crimson sumac bushes, and the occasional brilliant red maple flashed by, resembling a colorful afghan tossed on a large, flat bed. “Wish Pete and Jerry coulda come. Don't think they ever been out in the country.”

“My babies neither,” said Florida.

I twisted in my seat again. “You mean . . . they've never been outside Chicago?”

Florida and Yo-Yo answered like a chorus. “Nope.”

I was flabbergasted into silence. We'd always taken
some
kind of vacation when I was a kid, even if it was just visiting my grandparents on the farm. And then there was that memorable car trip West one summer, to see the Grand Canyon splitting the earth like a gigantic gash to the bone, then heading north to gawk at Old Faithful and the bears at Yellowstone National Park. I could still remember the rotten-egg smell of the sulfur hot springs and the amazing mud pots going
blop, blop, blop—
marred only by my brothers' incessant teasing that they were going to push me in.

I couldn't imagine never setting foot outside Chicago in my whole life.
Oh Jesus. If you ever plop a million dollars into my lap, I'm
gonna buy a huge bus, hire a driver, and take Florida and Yo-Yo and
Chanda and all their kids and whoever else wants to come and see the
whole country . . .

The other half of my brain put on the brakes.
Oh, right, Jodi. All
those kids? Sounds like a recipe for disaster.
Well, it wasn't like I was going to actually
get
a million dollars—though for half a second I felt tempted for the first time in my life to play the lottery.

We stopped twice at roadside rest stops to stretch our legs and get some cold drinks. It took a little longer than usual, because Florida and Yo-Yo sat out on a picnic table for a cigarette break both times. So it was almost eleven o'clock by the time we drove up to the gate of the Lincoln Correctional Center. We had to state our business, open the back of the minivan, and get out while a security guard did a cursory check of the car. Then we were permitted to drive into the parking lot.

Chain-link fences and rolls of razor wire stretched out on all sides of us as far as I could see. Beyond the wire, off in the distance, lay a typical Midwest town nestled among the colorful trees, church steeples sticking into the blue October sky. So close, yet so far. I swallowed. Is this where I'd be if the charge against me of vehicular manslaughter had stuck? My knees felt rubbery as the four of us walked toward the main entrance.

A lot of visitors were checking in at the main desk, but finally it was our turn. We immediately ran into trouble. Each of us was asked, among other things, if we had ever been convicted of a crime or incarcerated. Now it was Yo-Yo's turn to gulp as the truth came out.

“We can't let you visit an inmate without special permission of the chief administrative officer,” the freckle-faced security officer at the desk said flatly.

We all looked at each other.

“Sir, we've driven all the way from Chicago.” Denny was exceedingly polite. “Would it be possible to get that permission, uh, today?” He turned to Yo-Yo. “Ms. Spencer was a former inmate here at Lincoln—her records must be available. Given the nonviolent charges against her and her clean prison history, I'm sure you will see that she does not present a risk.”

Florida kept her mouth shut, but
“You tell him, Denny!”
was plastered all over her face. I wasn't so sure Denny's charm was going to work with this buster, though. The man gave us an impassive stare, excused himself, and left us waiting.

It took another hour to get clearance for Yo-Yo, but somehow it happened. “Thank ya, Jesus!” Florida crowed, which earned her a funny look from the freckle-faced guy. We were then ushered into security areas—this way for women, that way for men—to be searched. Florida, Yo-Yo, and I had to take off our shoes, which were shaken and examined before we were allowed to put them back on. We were each assigned a locker for our purses, jackets, and personal items. Then we were patted down by a female guard and made to walk through a metal detector.
Sure glad I wore a pair
of jeans,
I thought. I could hardly bear to think about being patted down under a skirt.

We met Denny outside the visitors' room and walked in together. The room was devoid of any color or decoration—just gray walls, beige floor tile, gray plastic tables, and gray plastic chairs. At most of the tables, a female inmate wearing street clothes—mostly jeans, sweatpants, and T-shirts—was surrounded by mothers or sisters and kids of all ages. At two of the tables, a man—boyfriend or husband—held hands with a woman across the gray plastic tabletop. Not a DOC uniform in sight.

The four of us sat at an empty table, pulling over another chair so we'd have five. And waited.

I hardly recognized Becky Wallace when a guard let her in the room. In fact, I didn't realize who she was until I saw the guard point toward us. A wiry woman wearing a shapeless T-shirt and baggy sweats walked slowly in our direction. Instinctively, all four of us stood up.

Florida thrust out her hand. “You Becky Wallace?”

The woman nodded, her dark eyes darting from one person to the next. Her dull brown hair was cut short; her skin was sallow, devoid of makeup or natural color. She looked tired, like an old woman who wasn't getting enough sleep.

Except she was young—not more than twenty-five. Her birth date must've been on that file I'd pulled up on the computer, but somehow her age hadn't registered.

“Well, I'm Flo Hickman. This here's Yo-Yo Spencer. And them two is Jodi and Denny Baxter.”

We each shook her hand, which she extended reluctantly, and we all sat down. For a moment no one spoke.
Oh God,
I moaned inwardly,
this is so awkward.

Finally Becky spoke. “You all at that house the night I got busted?”

Denny nodded. “Except Yo-Yo. She had to work that night.”

The woman's eyes narrowed in Yo-Yo's direction. “Why you here then?”

Yo-Yo stuck her hands behind the bib of her overalls and slid down the chair into her customary pose—feet straight out, fanny and back resting at two points on the chair. “Wasn't there that night,” she said, “but I been
here
and came out better'n I went in. I'm thinkin' the same about you.”

The woman's lip curled. “Why should you care?”

Yo-Yo didn't blink. “ 'Cause somebody cared about me. Made a difference.”

I was still tongue-tied. My emotions bounced around like little pinballs. Why
did
we come anyway? Wasn't she going to apologize for terrorizing us that evening?

Becky looked Denny up and down. “You the guy that pinned me down?”

Denny nodded. I could see a little twitch at the corner of his eye. Ha! Denny was nervous too. “I . . . hope I didn't hurt you.”

“Nah. Ya did whatcha had to do.”

The silence stretched out long again. It didn't seem the right time for small talk. Finally Florida spoke. “You finish detox?”

Becky's eyes dropped. “Huh! Got out of Cook County 'fore my three weeks' detox was up. Hit withdrawal big-time when I got here.” She cussed under her breath. “Worse pain ever had in my life.” She eyed Florida. “You?”

“Uh-huh. Writhin' all over the floor, screamin' for somethin', anything. Sure been there.”

“You clean now?”

Florida grinned. “Yes, thank ya,
Jesus!
Five years saved and five years sober!”