The Yada Yada Prayer Group Gets Decked Out Read Free Page B

half at Yada Yada tomorrow night. Come on.”
    We finally slipped out the front door and started toward our car, parked around the corner by the twenty-four-hour Laundromat. The afternoon sun had dipped behind the city buildings, and the wind ripping off Lake Michigan felt more like thirty-five degrees than the actual midforties. We passed a young woman standing in the alcove of the Laundromat doorway, clutching a squalling infant wrapped in a blanket.
    â€œDenny, wait.” I turned back. The young woman in the alcove wore a sweater, but no coat. Dark hair fell over her face and down around her shoulders as she jiggled the child, who couldn’t be more than three or four months old. “Um, are you okay?”
    The young woman looked up. Tears streaked her face. I couldn’t guess her age. She seemed maybe eighteen or twenty. On the other hand, her eyes seemed old and haggard.
    The dark eyes darted to Denny, then back to me. She rattled off a string of Spanish. I didn’t understand any of it, but Denny nodded. “Again. Slower.”
    She tried again. I heard the words casa and mujeres . “Are you looking for the women’s shelter? The house for women?” Denny asked.
    The girl nodded, teeth chattering. We smiled and pointed at the new building. I ran ahead, calling for Edesa as soon as I got in the door of Manna House. By the time I found her, Denny and the young mother were standing in the foyer.
    â€œHola. Welcome.” Edesa’s warm smile would put anyone at ease. She asked a few quick questions in Spanish, then held out her hands to the wailing baby. As Edesa cooed and rocked, the infant quieted. A moment later, Edesa ushered the girl into the private office across the hall and closed the door.
    Florida had been watching from the doorway to the multipurpose room. “Huh. Them Katrina evac-u-ees ”—she dragged out the word—“better get here fast, or it ain’t gonna take long for word on the street to fill up this place.”

2

    I was still thinking about the girl with the baby when Denny unlocked the back door and let us into the house. I put the kettle on the stove for some hot tea, I traded my shoes for slippers, and eyed the recliner in the front room.
    Comfort. So easily within my reach. But that young mother . . . why was she standing out on the sidewalk in November with only a sweater? How long had she been homeless? How had she heard about Manna House? The baby was so young . The girl had no diaper bag, no purse, nothing. How could that be?
    The teakettle whistled. Well, she was safe now. Edesa and Liz Handley and Mabel would see that both of them were well fed and tucked in tonight. After all, that’s what Manna House is all about, right, Lord?
    I heard the TV in the living room and decided to forego the recliner. Instead, I parked my mug of tea beside the computer in the dining room and booted up. I needed to e-mail Amanda and ask when she was coming home from college—and also ask if she minded doing Thanksgiving at Manna
House. And maybe I’d e-mail Nonyameko and ask for details about the Sisulu-Smiths coming back to Chicago next month.
    That would be so exciting! Yada Yada just hadn’t been the same without our South African sister who “prayed Scripture” as if it were her native tongue. Had her husband, Mark, decided to return to Northwestern University after being a guest professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal? Their school year went from January to December. Maybe Nony had realized that she could help those suffering from HIV and AIDS right here in Chicago as well as in South Africa. Like Avis’s daughter Rochelle. Nony had been such a help to the Douglass family when they found out Rochelle’s philandering husband had infected her with HIV. Maybe—
    My in-box flooded with the standard clutter. I deleted the usual annoying spam and forwards from well-meaning friends . . . saved e-mails needing