Who Do I Talk To? (47 page)

Until then . . . be blessed!

Sometimes you find hope
in the last place you look.

BOOK 1
in the
HOUSE
of
HOPE SERIES

An Excerpt from
The Yada Yada Prayer Group

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS—2002

I didn't really want to go to the “women's conference” the first weekend of May. Spending two hundred bucks to stay in a
hotel
for two nights only forty-five minutes from home? Totally out of our budget, even if it did include “two continental breakfasts, Saturday night banquet, and all conference materials.”

Now if it had been just Denny and me, that'd be different. A romantic getaway, a second honeymoon . . . no teenagers tying up the phone, no dog poop to clean up in the yard, no third grade lesson plans, no driving around and around the block trying to find a parking place. Just Denny and me sleeping late, ordering croissants, fruit plates, and hot coffee for breakfast, letting someone else make the bed (hallelujah!), swimming in the pool . . . now
that
would be worth two hundred bucks, no question.

I'm not generally a conference-type person. I don't like big crowds. We've lived in the Chicago area for almost twenty years now, and I still haven't seen Venetian Nights at the lakefront, even though Denny takes Josh and Amanda almost every year. Wall-to-wall people . . . and standing in line for those pukey Port-a-Potties? Ugh.

Give me a small moms group or a women's Bible study any day—like Moms in Touch, which met at our church in Downers Grove all those years the kids were growing up. We had some retreats, too, but I knew most of the folks from church, and they were held at a camp and retreat center out in the country where you could wear jeans to all the sessions and walk in the woods during free time.

But listening to the cars on I-90 roaring past the hotel's manicured lawn? Laughing like a sound track at jokes told by high-powered speakers in tailored suits and matching heels? Having to take “after five attire” for a banquet on Saturday night? (Why would a bunch of women
do
that with no men around to admire how gorgeous we look?)

Uh-uh. Was not looking forward to it.

Still, Avis Johnson, my boss—she's the principal at the Chicago public school where I teach third grade this year—asked if I'd like to go with her, and that counts for something. Maybe everything. I've admired Avis ever since I first met her at Uptown Community Church but never thought we'd be pals or anything. Not just because she's African American and I'm white, either. She's so calm and poised—a classy lady. Her skin is a smooth, rich, milk-chocolate color, and she gets her hair done every week at a salon. Couldn't believe it when I found out she was fifty and a
grandmother.
(I should be so lucky to look like that when Josh and Amanda have kids.) I feel like a country bumpkin when I'm around her. My nondescript dark brown hair never could hold a “style,” so I just wear it at shoulder level with bangs and hope for the best.

Not only that, but when we moved from suburban Downers Grove into the city last summer, I applied to teach in one of the public schools in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago, where we live now, and ended up at Mary McLeod Bethune Elementary, where Avis Johnson just happened to be the
principal.
Weird calling her “Avis” on Sunday and “Ms. Johnson” on Monday.

Avis is one of Uptown Community's worship leaders and has tried to wean its motley congregation of former Presbyterians, Baptists, “Evee-Frees,” Methodists, Brethren, and No-Churchers from the hymnbook and “order of service” to actually participating in
worship.
I love the way she quotes Scripture, too, not only from the New Testament, but also from those mysterious Minor Prophets, and Job, and the Pentateuch. I mean, I know a lot of Scripture, but for some reason I have a hard time remembering those pesky references, even though I've been in Sunday school since singing “Climb, Climb Up Sunshine Mountain” in the toddler class.

People at Uptown want to be “relevant” in an urban setting, which means cultivating a diverse congregation, but most of us, including yours truly, aren't too comfortable shouting in church and start to fidget when the service goes past twelve o'clock—both of which seem par for Sunday morning in black churches. Don't know why Avis stays at Uptown sometimes. Pastor Clark, bless him, has a vision, but for most of us transplants, our good intentions come with all the presumptions we brought from suburbia. But she says God called her to Uptown, and Pastor Clark preaches the Word. She'll stay until God tells her to go.

Denny and me—we've only been at the church since last summer. That's when Honorable Husband decided it was time white folks—meaning us, as it turned out—moved back into the city rather than doing good deeds from our safe little enclaves in the suburbs. Denny had been volunteering with Uptown's “outreach” program for over ten years, ever since the kids were little, driving into the city about once a month from Downers Grove. It was so hard for me to leave the church and people we've known most of our married life. But Denny said we couldn't hide forever in our comfort zone. So . . . we packed up the dog, the teenagers, and the Plymouth Voyager, exchanged our big yard for a postage stamp, and shoehorned ourselves into a two-flat—Chicago's version of a duplex—on Chicago's north side.

But frankly? I don't really know what we're doing here. Uptown Community Church has a few black members and one old Chinese lady who comes from time to time . . . but we're still mostly white in one of the most diverse neighborhoods in the U.S.—Rogers Park, Chicago. Josh says at his high school cafeteria, the black kids sit with the black kids, Latino kids sit with Latinos, nerds sit with nerds, whites with whites, Asians with Asians.

Not exactly a melting pot. And the churches aren't much better. Maybe worse.

In Des Moines, Iowa, where my family lives, I grew up on missionary stories from around the world—the drumbeats of Africa . . . the rickshaws of China . . . the forests of Ecuador. Somehow it was so easy to imagine myself one day sitting on a stool in the African veld, surrounded by eager black faces, telling Bible stories with flannel-graph figures. Once, when I told Denny about my fantasy, he snorted and said we better learn how to relate across cultures in our own city before winging across the ocean to “save the natives.”

He's right, of course. But it's not so easy. Most of the people I've met in the neighborhood are friendly—friendly, but not friends. Not the kick-back, laugh-with-your-girlfriends, be-crazy, cry-when-you're-sad, talk-on-the-phone-five-times-a-week kind of friends I had in Downers Grove. And the black couple who lived upstairs? (DINKS, Josh called them: Double-Income-No Kids.) They barely give us the time of day unless something goes wrong with the furnace.

So when Avis asked if I'd like to go to this women's conference sponsored by a coalition of Chicago area churches, I said yes. I felt flattered that she thought I'd fit in, since I generally felt like sport socks with high heels. I determined to go. At worst I'd waste a weekend (and two hundred bucks). At best, I might make a friend—or at least get to know Avis better.