The Yada Yada Prayer Group Gets Real

© 2005 Neta Jackson

All rights reserved.No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.

The Yada Yada Prayer Group is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc. Published in association with the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard Street, Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920.

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Scripture quotations are taken from the following:

      The Holy Bible, New International Version. © 1973, 1978, 1984,
International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Bible
Publishers.

      The New King James Version, © 1979, 1980, 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc.,
Publishers.

      The King James Version of the Bible.

This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to real events, businesses, organizations, and locales are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover design: The Office of Bill Chiaravalle | www.officeofbc.com
Interior design: Inside Out Design & Typesetting

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jackson, Neta.
         The yada yada prayer group gets down / by Neta Jackson.
              p.   cm.
         ISBN 978-1-59145-152-5 (trade paper)
         ISBN 978-1-59554-424-7 (mass market)
         1.Women—Illinois—Fiction. 2. Female friendship—Fiction. 3. Christian women—Fiction. 4. Chicago (Ill.)—Fiction. 5. Prayer groups—Fiction. I. Title.
         PS3560.A2415Y335   2004
         813'.54-dc22

2004005456

Printed in the United States of America

08 09 10 11 12 QW 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

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31

32

33

34

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40

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42

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45

Reading Group Guide

To all the

“Yada Yada Prayer Groups”

and praying sisters

springing up around the country—

Remember:

Pray like Jesus

Serve like Jesus

Love like Jesus

Prologue

CHRISTMAS DAY 2002

T
he lean, wiry woman let the door of the central dining room bang behind her, taking in big gulps of clean, cold air. Not a moment too soon. If she had to listen to the kitchen “super” gripe about one more thing, she might do something that would land her in solitary.
Nag, nag, nag—that's all she ever does. I cain't do
nothin' right.
It'd be easy to take down that cow, big as she was—but she couldn't go there. Had to stay cool.

Four months down . . . 116 to go.

The woman hunched her shoulders against the sharp bite of the wind, wishing she'd put on a couple more layers—but it was sweltering working the big steam dishwasher in the CDR kitchen. Digging in a pocket of her jean jacket for a cigarette, she turned her back until she got the thing lit, then she leaned against the building, blowing smoke into the wind, watching it get snatched away.

Beyond the squat, two-story “cottages” sprawled in an awkward line from the CDR to the visitors' center, she could see the ten-foot wire fence rimming the perimeter of the prison yard, topped by rolls of razor wire like a great, wicked Slinky toy.
Humph.
That fence might keep them
in,
but it sure didn't keep the bone-chilling prairie wind
out.

She switched the cigarette to her left hand so she could warm up her right one under her armpit inside the jean jacket.
Christmas Day . . . so what
? Not enough to do. Any other Wednesday she'd be in the prison school. She was going to get her GED if it killed her—not that it would. Maybe college too. If she could survive an addiction to the lethal Big Four—heroin, methadone, vodka, and Valium—surely algebra and Illinois history weren't going to waste her.

And “Christmas dinner”—what a joke. Yeah, they'd been served slices of pressed turkey, blobs of mashed potatoes covered in greasy gravy, sweet potatoes smothered with melted marshmallows in big metal pans on the steam table, along with “the trimmings”—jellied cranberry sauce, Jell-O salad, rolls, butter pats, and canned cherry cobbler. Okay, it was one step up from the usual “mystery mess” and seasick-gray canned vegetables. Still, the long tables of sad women hunched over their trays, spearing food with plastic forks, served as a painful reminder that they weren't home for Christmas.

Only two food fights had broken out, though—chalk that up to the holiday spirit.

“Wallace!” A sharp bark from inside the CDR caught her like a watchdog on the prowl. “What makes ya think we done with these dishes? Get yo' butt in here, or I'm gonna cut yo' pay hours.”

The woman named Wallace deliberately took a slow drag on her cigarette before dropping it on the ground and grinding it out with her Nike.
Cut my pay hours—
big deal.
At fifty cents an hour, it wasn't a big loss. Still, the job added to her credit in the commissary and helped fill the hours. But she was going to quit this lousy kitchen gig—tomorrow, if possible. Already her hands looked like pale pink prunes. Even piecework in the factory would be better than this. Maybe they needed somebody to shelve books in the library . . . or do garden-and-grounds. Yeah, that was it! Garden-and-grounds. Physical work. Outdoors—

“Wallace!”

Well, come spring, anyway.

FINALLY RID OF HER SOAKED APRON and the sour-hot breath of the kitchen supervisor, Becky Wallace made her way back to C-5, one of the minimum-security cottages at Lincoln Correctional Center, a cement-and-wire fortress sitting on the Illinois prairie. The rec room on the lower level of the CDR was open seven to nine tonight, like most evenings. But maybe the pileup at the pay phone in the cottage had dwindled. She fingered the scrap of paper in the pocket of her jean jacket, making sure it was still there. A phone number . . . some woman up in Chicago had sent her a number last week. She'd been afraid to call, afraid to hear the voice on the other end. Afraid not to.

Today, though, she was going to suck up the courage. Surely her baby's foster parents wouldn't refuse to accept her collect call on
Christmas Day.

A Department of Corrections truck sat in front of the door of C-5, piled with parts of the standard-issue metal bunk beds and a stack of narrow mattresses. She peppered the truck with a string of cuss words. Were they sticking
more
new arrivals in her cottage? The dorm on the first floor was already packed to the max. Maybe they were going to double-up the single rooms upstairs. Her name had moved up on the list for the second floor. Man! She'd give anything for a single. Yet if she had to have a roommate, that'd still be better than sleeping like cordwood in a woodpile.

Even walking to the bathroom was like playing Russian roulette, never knowing who was going to hit you up for your last cigarette or bust you one for “dissin' ” her in the food line. And just when she got everybody figured out—who to watch out for, who to stand up to, who to give a wide berth—they stuck in some newbie who upset the whole social order.

The TV was babbling in the day room, and a game of Bid Whist was going on at one of the card tables. But the phone in the hallway was free, screwed to the wall facing the front door of the cottage like a one-eyed mole planted there to spy on their comings and goings. Behind that wall—squeezed between the day room on the left and the dorm on the right—was a small kitchen with a hot plate and a fridge, and an even smaller room with a washer, dryer, and ironing board.

Becky stood looking at the scratched-up black phone a moment. Finally she picked up the receiver and punched zero, then the numbers on her scrap of paper.
One ring . . . two . . .

“Operator. How may I assist you?”

“Wanna make a call. Uh—collect.”

“State your name, please.”

“Becky Wallace.”
Andy's mommy,
she wanted to say. But didn't.

The line seemed to go dead. A long stretch of silence. Had she been cut off? Two men in service uniforms came clattering down the stairs, followed by a female guard, arguing about the double bunk that had just been delivered as they went out the door, leaving it standing open. Becky slammed it shut with a well-aimed kick, then she turned back to the phone as a tinny voice spoke in her ear.
“I'm sorry. That number does not
answer. Please try again later.”

Becky swore, fighting the urge to rip the phone right out of the wall.
Not home?
Where
were
they? Didn't they know how much she needed to talk to her baby? On
Christmas,
for—