The Yada Yada Prayer Group Gets Real Read Free

over the sand. Even more so because a mild December had delayed the usual buildup of ice and frozen spray sculptures that usually marked Lake Michigan’s winter shoreline. The lapping water looked deceptively harmless.
    â€œGoing in, Jodi?”
    I squinted up into the face of Uptown’s lanky pas-tor, who could easily have played Ichabod Crane in community theater. Widowed and childless, Pastor Clark was Uptown Community—a mission church that stubbornly hung out its shingle in Rogers Park, Chicago’s most diverse neighborhood. Today he was bundled in an outdated navy parka with a snorkel hood, a long hand-knit scarf wound around his neck, hands shoved in his jacket pockets.
    â€œMe? Not for love or money!” I held up the armload of beach towels and blankets I was carrying. “I’m here on life support.”
    He chuckled and trudged on to greet others gathering to witness the Polar Bear Plunge. The crowd was growing, and I saw Leslie Stuart’s silver Celica pull into the beach parking lot. “Stu” had been attending Uptown Community for several months, ever since we’d met at the Chicago Women’s Conference last May, even though she lived in Oak Park, on the west side of the city.
    â€œHey, Jodi. You going to take the plunge?” Stu’s long blonde hair and multiple earrings were hidden by a felt cap with earflaps. She was grinning, flap to flap.
    â€œDon’t think so. Calendar says January.”
    â€œAh, c’mon. You know what Oliver Wendell Holmes said: ‘You don’t quit playing because you get old; you get old because you quit playing.’ Hey—there’s Delores and Edesa!” She waved both arms in their direction.
    I bit my tongue. Stu was probably in her midthirties—not that much younger than I was. But she didn’t have to make me feel like an “old fogy” just because I was smart enough not to jump in the lake.
    â€œAck! I left something in the car.” Stu ran for the parking lot, passing Delores Enriquez and Edesa Reyes as they headed my way, bundled against the stiff wind adding whitecaps to the choppy gray water. I dumped my load of blankets and towels so I could give them each a hug.
    Delores and Edesa were members of a Spanish-speaking Pentecostal church and had attended the same conference that had brought women together from various churches around the city. None of us imagined that the prayer group we’d been assigned to for the weekend would take on a life of its own. But when Delores got an emergency phone call that weekend saying her son José had been caught in gang crossfire in a local park—well, no way we could stop praying after that, just because the conference was over.
    â€œWhere are Emerald and José?” I asked.
    Delores jutted her chin in the direction of the knot of excited teenagers gathering at the water’s edge, still bundled in their winter coats. “Such antics!” The forty-something mother wagged her head. “Mi familia en México? They will think we have all gone loco.” She rolled her eyes. “But whatever Amanda and Josh do, Emerald and José want to do it too.”
    â€œDon’t mind Delores, Jodi,” Edesa said cheerfully. “Underneath all that fussing, she’s happy José is alive and can do something fun and crazy!” Edesa’s dark eyes danced in her warm mahogany face. Edesa—college student, babysitter, and “big sister” to the Enriquez children—wore her African-Honduran heritage as brightly as the neon-orange wrap that held back her mop of loose, nappy curls. And she’d rescued Amanda’s grades last spring, tutoring her in freshman Spanish.
    â€œHey, Ben! Over here!” I heard Denny’s voice hail Ruth and Ben Garfield, trudging over the hard-packed sand like two refugees trekking out of Siberia, following Yo-Yo Spencer and her half brothers, Pete and Jerry. The boys