Who Is My Shelter? (23 page)

“I met a guy,” Angela murmured to me out of the blue as the boring miles passed.

“What?” My eyes swung off the road to glance at the beautiful young woman, her silky black hair falling coyly over one eye. “Who? Where?”

“At church.” She giggled. “He's a doctoral student from Korea. His name is Jin.”

“Jin? That's a nice name. So he's a Christian?”

“Yes. Well, I think so. I met him at church.”

“Yeah, well, I met my first husband at church and he dumped me after two years,” I muttered, then realized Angela was looking at me, wide-eyed. “Sorry. Just—be sure. You're so special, Angela.” I gave her a smile and then turned my attention back to the road. “You deserve the best.”

“Are we almost there yet? I'm hungry,” Shawanda whined from the middle seat.

“Nope! Just halfway,” Angela said cheerfully. “But we've got snacks. Coming up!” She dug into one of the coolers wedged between the front seats and passed around soft drinks, chips, and raw veggies. The soft drinks and chips went fast, but the bag of veggies came back nearly full.

“Give me those,” I said, grabbing some raw carrots. “I need help staying awake.” Wasn't sure why I was so tired. Maybe it was all the emotional stress of the past week. Feeling anxious about Shawanda moving into the House of Hope . . . Philip getting that threatening note, then saying he couldn't keep the boys this weekend . . . the Baxters coming to the rescue at the last minute. And Estelle! That woman nearly tied my nerves in a knot, talking about giving Harry's ring back.

We were deep in the countryside now, and the turning leaves lay like a colorful afghan over the hillsides. Angela gave me directions as we got close to Devil's Lake State Park, and I turned onto a narrow, two-lane paved road. The retreat house we'd rented was on a tiny private lake just outside the park.

I glanced at my watch as the sun disappeared behind the wooded hills and twilight began to settle.
Almost six. Josh and the boys should be picking up Philip about now. What were they going to do this evening? Would Philip drive the Subaru to P.J.'s cross country meet in the morning or would Josh? Maybe I should call, see how it's going—

“That was it, Gabby!” Angela pointed at a narrow dirt driveway we'd just passed, leading into the trees. With my Subaru I would have just made a U-turn, but with the fifteen-passenger van I had to wait for another driveway and turn around.

There
. A painted sign beside the driveway said, “Pine Tree Retreat.” We bumped along the winding driveway and pulled up in front of a rustic, two-story log house, nearly hidden under the towering pine trees. Well, we'd unload and then I'd call home, just to check that everyone got connected.

But a quick glance at my cell phone killed that idea. No signal.

I stifled a laugh.
Okay, God, I get it. Trust You—and keep out of it
.

Angela and Edesa set out a quick supper of cold fried chicken and potato salad while the women chose beds—two to a room— and I carried in wood from the shed next to the house and tried to get a fire started in the big stone fireplace. The wood was damp and smoked a lot at first, but I finally got it going. I smiled smugly. Hadn't lost my North Dakota genes after all.

“Now tha's nice.” Lucy sank into a padded chair, kicking off her worn shoes.

“Why's it so dark outside?” Hannah wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and huddled close to the fireplace.

“Because it's night?” I teased.

Hannah frowned. “But it ain't this dark at night back in Chicago.”

“That's just because of all the city lights. Actually, let me show you something I bet you've never seen in Chicago. Anyone else want to come?” I shrugged into my jacket and stood by the glass sliding doors that faced the nearly invisible lake.

“Whatchu gonna show us?”

“Can't see nothin' in the dark!”

“I ain't goin' out there! There's bugs and wild animals and stuff out there.”

Even Edesa and Angela seemed a little dubious about going outside at night.

“Come on, people! It will be spectacular, I promise! That's what this weekend's all about, to experience some of God's beautiful natural world. So who's coming?”

Half the group wouldn't budge, including Lucy, who muttered she knew good and well what “outside” looked like at night. But Edesa said she'd come, along with Tina, Monique, Aida, Tawny, and even Naomi, who held on to my hand in a death grip. At the last minute Kikki yelled, “Hey, wait for me!” and hustled after us, but seeing her stop to light a cigarette, I figured it was mostly an excuse to get a smoke than anything else.

Monique clucked at Kikki in disapproval. “God ain't gonna bless no mess,” she muttered to the rest of us. I decided to ignore her.

As our eyes adjusted to the sliver of moonlight, I led the way down the solid wood stairs built into the sloping hill leading to the lake. The quarter moon in the clear sky shone bright enough to guide us out onto the modest pier at the edge of the lake, though Aida and Naomi squealed and clung to each other as if they were walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls.

But once at the end of the short pier, which broadened into a square float, I swept my hand at the sky. “Look.”

Heads gradually took eyes off their feet and turned upward. Then I heard first one gasp, then another as we drank in the thick carpet of stars above.

“Are all them
stars
? How come there's so many more up here than back home?”

I had fun explaining that these same stars hung over Chicago, too, but the light pollution from all the city lights hid them from us.

“Oh,
El Señor
,” Edesa breathed. “What an amazing world You have created!” Then a moment later, “We used to see stars like this in my village in Honduras . . . but I'd almost forgotten.”

The hoot of an owl floated out of the woods. Naomi screamed. “What's that?!”

“Oh! Oh! Let's go back!” Aida had heard it too.

I tried to explain it was just an owl that slept during the day and came out to hunt mice at night, but the frightened girls practically stampeded back to the log house and its glowing windows. The rest followed, shuffling through the pine needles, picking their way around fallen branches and up the wooden stairs.

I brought up the rear reluctantly and turned back for a last look before going inside. Seeing the sky crowded with ancient stars, so majestic, always there, even if hidden behind clouds or city lights, filled my spirit with a deep peace I hadn't felt for a long time.
God
had flung those stars into space. God was a
big God
! Made my problems seem puny. Or at least not insurmountable.

I finally rejoined the Manna House ladies in the cozy log house with its crackling fire. We stayed up late playing Whist and Rummy and a loud game of Trivial Pursuit—all except Lucy, who managed to get a room to herself where she could snore to her heart's content. The house finally quieted around midnight. Only when I crawled into bed in the room I was sharing with Edesa did I allow my mind to drift back to the realities I'd left behind.

If only I could hold on to that sense of
God's-in-control
and let God worry about getting Philip out of the mess he was in—a mess that bothered me more than I liked to admit. His gambling debts and the very real threats from Matty Fagan's cronies—and from his business partner, too, for that matter—complicated our already stressed relationship. Could I forgive him? He seemed to be trying. God had forgiven me and taken me back, after running from Him for so long. But even if I did forgive Philip, what did it mean? Could we ever be a family again?

A family
.

Philip and our boys were together at
my
apartment. And he was probably asleep—in my bed. Was he bare-chested, wearing only a pair of silk shorts, his usual sleepwear? Smelling faintly of the last remnants of his Armani aftershave?

No, no
. Couldn't go there!

But as I drifted off to sleep, I had one last thought. Where did Lee Boyer fit into this fuzzy picture . . . ?

“Miss Gabby! Miss Gabby! Wake up!”

I felt someone shaking me. “
Uhhh
. . . what?” I mumbled.

“That noise? Did you hear it—there it is again! Oh, Miss Gabby, what is it? I'm scared!” Fingernails dug into my arm.

Now fully awake, I pried the fingernails off my arm and sat up. The shadowy figure trembling on her knees beside my cot took the shape of Naomi Jackson.
Figured
.

“
Shh
. Don't wake Miss Edesa. I don't hear anything . . . oh.” Something metal was rattling and scraping near the house. “Oh, that. Don't worry, Naomi. Probably just a raccoon getting into the garbage can.”
Drat
. I knew better than to put those chicken bones out there.

“A raccoon!? But, but . . . what if it's a
bear
! Oh, Miss Gabby, can I sleep with you? I don't want to go back to my room by myself.” Without waiting for an answer, Naomi dove under my covers, nearly pushing me out the other side of the narrow cot.

I groaned and mumbled, “
Oof
. . . okay, okay, just for a few minutes.”

It was going to be a long weekend.

chapter 22

Sometime during the night I managed to get Naomi back into her own bed and get a few hours of uninterrupted sleep. We'd decided to let the ladies sleep in until eight as a small luxury, since the schedule at Manna House got them up at six o'clock every morning in order to get showers, breakfast, and chores out of the way before their appointments for the day.

So the log house was fairly quiet as Edesa and I crept down the rustic stairs at seven to make coffee and plan the day. The small lake below us sparkled in the new-day sun and birds chirped merrily, promising a good day weather-wise, even though the air was a bit nippy. As we prayed together, I was impressed that my Honduran friend wanted to pray for each woman by name, which took some time, but it did help me focus on God's purpose for bringing each woman there that weekend.

After our “Amen,” Edesa said Jodi Baxter had given her an idea: to pray a blessing for each woman based on the meaning of her name. “Sister Jodi does that for her students at school, and she's done it for the Yada Yada
amigas
too.” Beaming her generous smile, the vivacious black woman waved a thick paperback. “She loaned me her baby name book. I'm just getting started. Do you want to help? Maybe we can find them all by tomorrow morning,
sí
?”

An hour later, yawning women started to wander downstairs looking for breakfast, which we'd set out on the counter for do-it-yourself: cold cereal, bananas, bagels, and OJ. And by ten o'clock everyone had gotten showered and dressed—even Lucy, after I offered to help wash her hair in the sink—and we gathered in the main room overlooking the lake for a short Bible-and-prayer time before heading out to see the sights.

Edesa read the story of Hagar from Genesis, chapter sixteen— which was also the story of the childless Sarai, who gave her servant to Abraham as a second wife so he could have an heir. But when Hagar got pregnant, the servant girl couldn't help feeling superior to her barren mistress, which made Sarai so furious she threw Hagar out of the household. “Now she was homeless,” Edesa said. “Nowhere to go. Pregnant and abandoned.”

I noticed all the women were listening intently. “Know 'xactly how she feel!” Shawanda spouted. “This dude got me pregnant—
bam-bam, thank you ma'am
—then threw me out for a slut who had more booty than me. How you think I ended up at the shelter anyway?”

Oh dear. I'd wondered where the name Bam-Bam had come from.

“But notice what God did,” Edesa urged, rereading several of the verses. “God sent an angel to her, who called her
by her name
. Isn't that amazing? God knew the name of this unappreciated servant girl! And the angel asked her, ‘Hagar, where have you come from? And where are you going?' The angel of the Lord was asking her to tell her story! Hagar was so amazed by this encounter that she gave God a name:
El Roi
, the God Who Sees Me.”

Edesa let that sink in for a moment. Then she said softly, “Did you ever think of that,
mi amigas
? That God is interested in
your story
? That God sees
you
?” The room was so quiet, all we heard were the whistles and chirps of the sparrows, wrens, and juncos flitting in the trees outside. Then suddenly several women wanted to talk at once and tell their stories.

“I'm from Cleveland, see,” Kikki said, twisting a strand of dark blond hair around a finger. “Got two kids back there living with my folks 'cause I was all strung out on drugs. My parents wanted to get me away from my old crew, so they brought me to Chicago six months ago, stuck me in a residential rehab center—but I got kicked out of the program. I just couldn't stay clean.” The blue eyes teared up. “I been clean again almost four weeks . . . but sometimes I'm scared I won't ever get to be with my kids again.”