2-in-1 Yada Yada (50 page)

I would've run, if it'd been me. But the bandana-headed woman eyed the big ruby ring on Adele's right hand, and her eyes seemed to glitter. With a sudden movement she grabbed Mrs. Takahashi out of her chair and held the frightened lady, still clutching her handbag, in front of her in a one-arm grip.

“I tol' you. I don't wanna hurt nobody—but I
will
if ya don't siddown
now,
Big Mama.”

Adele didn't move. “She needs medical help!” The handkerchief around Mrs. Takahashi's hand was staining bright red.

The knife moved slowly to Mrs. Takahashi's neck.
“Siddown!”

Adele slowly sat.

The intruder kept a grip on Hoshi's mother, who was too terrified to scream or cry, and caught my eye. “You! Tie up Big Mama there.”

Tie up Adele? I couldn't have been more shocked if she'd asked me to walk on the ceiling. “With what?”
Think, Jodi! Say you've got
rope in the basement then call the police . . .

The woman gestured with the knife toward the box fan in the front window. “Use th' estenshion cord. An' hurry up, you—” She peppered me with all the cuss words in her gutter vocabulary.

I took a deep breath, hoping my rubbery legs would hold me up, and stumbled toward the fan. The rest of the room was deathly silent, except for Hoshi's stifled sobs and the intruder's raspy breathing. I unplugged the cord and turned to face our adversary. Surely she wouldn't make me—

“You! Big Mama. Put yo' hands behind yo' chair.” Then she pointed at me. “Now tie her to the chair.”

This was a nightmare! I couldn't tie up
Adele
—of all people! But the crazy woman was glaring at me from behind Mrs. Takahashi's terrified face, so I walked in a daze behind Adele's chair, knelt down, and began to wrap the extension cord around her hands. “I'm sorry, Adele—so sorry,” I whispered behind her back, but Adele gave no sign that she heard me.

“She tied up?” the intruder's voice demanded. “Now take 'at ruby ring off her han', an' be quick 'bout it.”

With dread practically dripping from my pores, I wiggled the ring from Adele's thick finger.
Oh God, Oh God . . . send somebody
. . . do something!
Finally the ring popped off into my hand and I stood up—and nearly stopped breathing. The stranger's back was to the hallway, but over her shoulder I saw Amanda standing behind her in the doorway.

I wanted to yell at my daughter to run. Instead I said loudly, “Here's the rotten ring” and stepped forward—but not all the way, making our captor push Mrs. Takahashi back into her chair before reaching out to snatch it. When I looked again, Amanda had disappeared.
Thank You, Jesus, thank You, thank You
— “An' tie that one too!” The knife pointed toward Stu. “I don't like Cinderella's attitude.”

Before I could obey—did we even have another extension cord in the living room?—I suddenly heard the click of Willie Wonka's nails in the hallway. “Woof! Woof!” The chocolate Lab skidded to a stop in the hallway just outside the living room. Willie hardly ever barked; he wasn't much of a watchdog. Yet he knew something wasn't right.

The dog's bark freaked the bandana woman. She whirled on the dog, slashing her knife through the air.

“He won't hurt you!” I yelled.

“Then git him to shut up, or I'll hurt
him,”
she snarled.

I knew Willie wouldn't leave voluntarily, so I grabbed his collar and dragged him over to the front window and made him lie down against the wall. Before I could straighten up, I heard a demanding male voice: “What's going on here?”

Denny! I looked up just in time to see the intruder whirl around to face my husband, pointing the knife at his throat. Where had he come from? Like actors in a tableau, Denny and the woman faced each other, motionless. My heart raced. But time seemed to stand still—half a second? half a minute? Then she lunged with the knife.

I screamed.
“Nooooooo!”

12

I
t happened so fast, it was over in a blink. As the crazy woman lunged at Denny with the knife, he grabbed her wrist. The next moment she was on her back on the floor with Denny spread-eagle on top of her.

“Jodi!” he yelled. “Take the knife!”

My body parts suddenly came alive, and I scrambled toward the pair on the floor.

“Git off me, you—” The woman struggled beneath Denny's weight, letting loose a string of cuss words that made all the words she'd been throwing around for the last fifteen minutes sound like kindergarten babble.

“Take the knife!” he commanded again, trying to keep from getting kicked from behind by her flailing legs. The woman still held the handle of the butcher knife in her right hand—how in the world was I going to get it away from her? As Denny dug his nails into her wrist, she finally let go. I snatched it.

“Call the police!” he bellowed.

“I already did, Daddy.” Amanda reappeared in the living-room doorway, barefoot, wearing only an oversized T-shirt, her brown eyes wide and her face chalk-white.

“An ambulance we need too.” Ruth appeared at my side. “And take that horrid knife away, Jodi.”

I stared at the ten-inch knife in my hand as though seeing it for the first time. A streak of Mrs. Takahashi's blood was smeared along the sharp edge. I had an overwhelming urge to throw it away from me, but instead I ran to the kitchen and dumped it into the sink. “Don't touch that!” I hissed at Amanda, who'd followed me. “And call 911 again for an ambulance.” I ran back to the living room, just as I heard sirens screaming . . . coming closer . . . and screeching to a stop outside our house.

Stu was busy untying Adele. Nony, Ruth, and Avis huddled around Hoshi and Mrs. Takahashi, and Florida flung open the screen door for the police. The crazy woman was still cussing a blue streak on the floor.

Four big police officers—two black, two white—pounded into our living room. “Police! Don't anybody move!” One had his gun out of its holster. Taking in the scene at a glance, he pointed it straight at Denny's head. “Okay, buster, let 'er go. Put your hands behind your head.”

“No!” I yelled. “Not him—
her!”

Immediately the other women in the room started talking all at once, arguing with the police, pointing at the intruder on the floor, holding up Mrs. Takahashi's wounded hand.

“Quiet!” yelled the cop with the gun. He looked at me. “You. What's going on here?”

I couldn't believe this! “That . . . that woman on the floor came in here with a knife . . . and . . . and she robbed us . . . and cut Mrs. Takahashi's hand. And that's my husband—stop pointing that gun at him!”

“She's tellin' it,” Florida declared. A murmur of assent rose from several others.

The intruder must have known it was all over, because she quit struggling.

“All right.” A pause. The police officer holstered his gun. “We'll take her, sir. Get off easy, now. Fellas . . .”

The four police officers each took a wrist or ankle. Denny released his hold on the woman's wrists and scrambled to his feet. No sooner did the four men start to lift the bandana woman to her feet than she seemed to explode—kicking, scratching, cussing, and calling down all sorts of calamity upon their heads. The rest of us backed off, watching in disbelief. It took all four of them to finally get a pair of handcuffs on her, and still she kicked and screamed all the way to the paddy wagon, which was blinking its hazard lights in front of our house.

“Denny!” I ran to my husband, who was leaning over, hands on his knees. “Are you okay?”

He nodded mutely.

A few moments later, two of the officers came back in the house, brushing off their uniforms as if trying to regain their dignity. “Everybody sit down, please,” said the one who seemed to be in charge. His cheeks were ruddy, giving him a boyish look even though his paunch suggested he was older—forty, maybe fifty. “I'm Sergeant Curry. We're going to need a statement from each one of you.”

“But my mother!” Hoshi cried. “She's hurt! She needs a doctor!”

Denny jerked his head toward the sound of another siren that suddenly choked off in midwail directly in front of our house. “We called an ambulance.”

“And that thief just walked out of here with our jewelry in her pocket!” Stu stormed.

“Yes!” Nony wailed. “My wedding ring—please get it back.” Even as she spoke, we heard the paddy wagon pull out to make room for the ambulance. Nony began to weep quietly.

The sergeant punched his walkie-talkie. “We need some ETs here. Lunt Avenue. On the double.” He sighed. “I'm sorry, ladies. We're going to have to keep everything she had on her person as evidence. We'll”—he cleared his throat nervously—“be sure to return everything to you.”

For the next few minutes, the house was full of medics who tended to Mrs. Takahashi's hand then trundled her out to the waiting ambulance. Nony insisted on accompanying Hoshi, so the second police officer also went along to get their statements at the hospital. No sooner had they left than two more police officers arrived. The evidence technicians, I presumed.

Sergeant Curry turned to me. “Ma'am, you mentioned a knife. Where is it?”

“I . . .” For a moment I couldn't think. “Uh, I put it in the kitchen sink.” I led one of the ETs to the kitchen, where he pulled on a pair of rubber gloves, retrieved the knife, and put it in an evidence bag. Good grief.
My
fingerprints were all over that knife too!

When we returned to the front of the house, everyone else was sitting down again except Denny and Amanda, who was sobbing quietly under her daddy's arm as he leaned against the arched doorway. The officer in charge pulled out a small notebook. “Who encountered the woman first?”

I lifted my hand.

“Okay, let's start with you. Tell me what happened.”

Tell him what happened? I just wanted them to leave! I wanted to hold Denny and Amanda. I wanted to hug my Yada Yada sisters. I wanted to go to the hospital to see if Hoshi's mother was going to be all right. I wanted to ask Adele if I hurt her when I tied her hands. I wanted to . . . to have a good bawl!

No.
I was not going to cry in front of these police officers. I drew a breath. “Okay. We”—I indicated the other women—“were having, uh, a prayer meeting. My husband was out; my daughter was in her bedroom. The doorbell rang, but we weren't expecting anybody else. A strange woman stood at the door, said she had my Avon order . . .”

Sergeant Curry was busily taking notes. “Describe her, for the record.”

“Well, she was black, wearing a red bandana and wraparound shades—”

Florida snorted. “That wasn't no black woman.”

Stu frowned. “Sure she was. Light-skinned, maybe.”

“That girl was
white,”
muttered Adele.

I stared at Florida and Adele. From the moment I laid eyes on the “Avon lady,” I thought she was black. The way she talked black or hip-hop or something. I looked at Avis for help.

Avis shrugged. “Hard to tell behind those shades, light-skinned as she was.”

“Why'd you think she was
black?”
Adele was downright scornful. “Because she was whacked out on drugs? talked street jive?

cussed you out?”

I looked helplessly at Denny. Could this get any worse?

The sergeant cleared his throat. “Ladies, it doesn't really matter. We've got the suspect in custody. Let's go on. What happened after she rang your doorbell?”

THE POLICE OFFICERS FINALLY LEFT after taking everybody's statements and making a list of the stolen jewelry. Adele started to follow the officers out the door, but Avis said, “Wait a minute, sisters. If ever we needed to spend time praying together, this is it. Ten minutes, tops. We've got some praising to do. Nobody got killed; everybody's going to be all right, even Hoshi's mother. We've also got some serious spiritual battle to do. That woman's drowning in darkness.”

Reluctantly, Adele rejoined the group. Florida pulled Amanda and Denny into the circle, and we all held hands. I held on for dear life to Denny's hand on one side and Ruth's on the other.
Thank
you, Avis! Yes, yes, let's pray. Otherwise I might just fall apart, right
here and now.

THE PRAYER WAS GOOD. It helped me calm down, let me focus on what we could thank God for in the midst of the trauma we'd just experienced. Nony called in the middle of the prayer, saying that Mrs. Takahashi had to have seventeen stitches in her hand but was going to be all right. Both Hoshi and her mother had been given a sedative by the emergency-room staff, and a police officer took them back to the Orrington Hotel. Now could someone come to St. Francis Hospital and pick her up? Nony's car was still at our house.

That's when I learned that Josh still had
our
car and was driving Pete and Jerry home. Which meant he'd dropped Denny off.

It had to be God.

So Stu went to pick up Nony at the hospital and brought her back to get her car. We hugged out on the sidewalk, and Nony shook her head, deeply concerned. “Pray without ceasing for Hoshi. Her parents are terribly upset.”

Understandably. Stu's “great idea” for Hoshi to bring her mother to Yada Yada had turned out to be an utter disaster.

Can't go there, Jodi. It's not Stu's fault.

Finally everyone was gone. Josh came home and seemed rather disappointed that he'd missed all the excitement. Amanda gave him a blow-by-blow account, puffing up her role a bit, I noticed, describing how she sneaked the cordless out of the house and dialed 911 from the backyard. Well, why not? She had behaved admirably under the circumstances.

At last Denny and I were alone in the living room—after I made sure our front and back doors were locked. “I'm starving,” he announced. “Be back with a four-course dinner in two minutes.” He turned at the doorway. “Turn on that fan, will you? It's hotter'n blazes in here.”