A Special Relationship (20 page)

It was the sound of screaming.
 
And it jarred Carrie awake with such a jolt that she jumped straight up from the mattress she slept on and ran out of her room.
 
It was Mona’s voice, Mona’s horrified, screeching voice, and the terror in that voice caused Carrie to run lightning fast through the living room, to Mona’s bedroom, where she flung open the door.
 
She saw a man, a tall, burly man she’d never seen before, standing over Mona beating on her mercilessly.
 
Mona was trying to fight back, she was just that bold, but she didn’t stand a chance.
 
Carrie, little Carrie, didn’t cower in a corner either.
 
She ran up to the man and jumped on his back as if she was jumping on a horse to ride.
 
She kicked him and punched him and tried to claw his eyes out, but he was too powerfully built.
 
He slung her off of him as if she was a feather and she landed hard, rump first, onto the cold, wood floor.
 
When she looked up, she was staring into hard, cold eyes.
 

 
“I want my money and I want it now!” he demanded of her.

 
“What money?” Carrie yelled.
 
“What are you talking about?”

 
“I want the money y’all stole from me, don’t play
no
games with me!
 
Y’all got me all drunk and drowsy and as soon as I fell asleep y’all robbed my wallet blind!
 
I ain’t
no
fool, I know how much money I brung up in here!”

 
Carrie looked at her sister.
 
This man had to be mistaken.
 
Popena was a lot of things, Carrie would be the first to admit it, but a thief wasn’t one of them.
 
Yet Popena wouldn’t even look at her.
 

 
“Just go, Grady,” Mona said to the angry man as she tried to smooth back down her wild hair and
straighten
back up her disheveled clothing.
 
But she may as well had been talking to the floor because Grady wasn’t about to
just go.

 
“Give me my cash, Mo, and I ain’t playing with you now.
 
I ain’t leaving without my money!”

 
Mona sucked her lips and then angrily reached under her mattress.
 
When she pulled out a wad of cash and tossed them at her visitor, Carrie couldn’t believe her eyes.
 
“Here!” Mona yelled.
 
“Now get out of my house and get out now!”

 
Carrie stared at her sister.
 
Was it true?
 
Did she try to steal that man’s money?
 
Carrie knew her sister hadn’t had many breaks in life either.
 
She knew how desperately she lived on the edge.
 
But to result to thievery now?
 
It didn’t seem possible that she would stoop that low.
 
But then again, Carrie thought, anything was possible in this world.

 
Grady, however, was too busy picking up his cash to worry about Mona or anybody else.
 
It wasn’t until he had gathered up every bill that he even bothered to look at Mona.
 
And he smiled when he did.
 
“Here trick,” he said, tossing a bill her way.
 
“Five is about what you were worth anyway!”
 
Then he dropped the smile.
 
“You better be glad I got to get to work or I would have messed you up bad.”

 
“Just get out my house.”

 
He smiled again, and then he laughed.
 
But he left.

 
Carrie, stunned, just sat there on the floor unable to stop staring at her sister.
 
Mona, seeing it, frowned angrily.
 
“Don’t be staring at me like that,” she said.
 

 
“You okay?” Carrie asked her.

 
“Do I look like I’m okay?”

 
“Why don’t you come to church with me sometime?”

 
Mona looked at her sister as if she’d just missed a part of the conversation.
 
“What?”

 
“Why don’t you come to church with me and Millie Rawlings sometime?
 
God can change your heart.”

 
“What are you talking about, Carrie?
 
What God got to do with this?”

 
“He can change your heart.
 
He can stop you from stealing and sleeping around and relying on men so much.”

 
Mona looked at her sister as if she was some self-righteous irritant, and her temper flared. “Now you look here, you little brat,” she said.
 
“You in my house now, you understand me?
 
My house! Where do you come off telling me what I need?
 
You don’t know nothing about what went on between me and Grady so don’t even go there!
 
All you gots to do
is
stay out of my way, stay out of my business, and pay me my rent!
 
Got it?”

 
“I was just trying to help, Popena.”

 
“Stop calling me that!
 
My name is not Popena.
 
My name is Mona whether you like it or not.
 
And I don’t need your help.
 
All I need you to do is give me my money, that’s all I need from you.”

 
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about last night, but you weren’t here.”

 
“Don’t even try that, Carrie.
 
Your butt got paid yesterday, I know that for a fact, so don’t even go there.”

 
“I’m not saying I didn’t get paid.
 
I got your money.
 
It’s just
that.
. . well, I don’t seem to have a job anymore.”

 
“What?
 
No job?
 
You mean to tell me you got fired
again
?”

 
“It wasn’t my fault.”

 
Mona shook her head in disgust.
 
“
This the
second time you’ve been fired in two weeks, Carrie!
 
What’s wrong with you?”

 
Carrie exhaled.
 
Trying to explain it to somebody like Popena was a waste of time and she knew it.
 
“Does Dooney still need a waitress at Simms?” she asked her instead.

 
Mona looked at her.
 
“Why?”

 
“He said I could wait tables there and I need a job right now, that’s why.”

 
“So you really got fired again?”

 
“Is the job still available, Po . . . I mean Mona?”

 
“Yeah, it’s available.
 
It’s always available, dang.
 
I’m sure he’ll love to have you on board.
 
Everybody loves Carrie, right?
 
You can come with me tonight.”

 
“Tonight?”

 
“You wanna work or don’t you?”

 
“Yes.
 
And I’m grateful but, I just
..
.
didn’t
expect to be able to get started so soon.”

 
“Whatever.
 
My money please.”

 
“I haven’t had a chance to cash my check yet.”

 
“I’ll cash it.
 
Just give it to me.”

 
Carrie got up from the hard floor and headed for her bedroom.
 
She was still feeling the effects of rising too quickly and too dramatically, as if she still wasn’t fully awake.
 
And she was also still feeling the effects of last night’s drama.
 
Two jobs lost in two weeks.
 
Even Carrie had to shake her head on that one.
 
What kind of Christian example was she displaying to a sinner like Popena?
 
She prayed for work, God answered her prayers, and then she proceeded to mess up and lose the very blessings God had given her.
 
Popena had a right to be weary of her.
 
She was a disaster, not an example.

 
She was nearly panic stricken, however, when she went into her bedroom and was unable, after much searching, to find her purse.
 
She searched frantically, turning over everything that could be turned over in the small space, from her pallet on the floor to her suitcase in the corner, but all to no avail.
 
She’d be beyond disenchanted if she lost her purse too.
 
And her rent money.
 
Popena’s rent money.
 
Oh, God!

 
Then she stopped.
 
She stood in the middle of her bedroom and just stopped all movement.
 
And instead of becoming hysterical with worry, she prayed.
 
She asked God for guidance with a prayer for help.
 
She immediately felt led of the Spirit to clear her mind of what the consequences of losing her purse could mean, and focus, instead, on the purse itself.
 
She began to visualize every step she took last night with that purse.
 
She knew she had it with her when she left Jetson’s because she reached in and got her paycheck out of it when Robert’s friend sped out of the parking lot without giving her a chance to apologize again. She had it when Robert drove her home too, she remembered that.
 
They talked, she got out of his SUV, he walked her inside, they talked some more, he held her, which, she still remembered, was glorious, and then she came inside her apartment.
 
And she didn’t have the purse with her!
 
That was it. She had left her purse in Robert’s truck.
 
Of all places she could have left it, she left it in that man’s truck!
 
She shook her head.
 
She wasn’t getting any breaks.
 
Now she had to track him down to get it and she just knew he was going to think she left it behind on purpose, as if she was capable of playing the same games some of those silly women played when they wanted to see a man again.
 
They’d leave a scarf, a necklace, an earring just to get back in that door.
 
And he was the kind of man, Carrie could tell, who wasn’t going to like being played.

 
“Carrie!”
 
Mona’s voice boomed out over the apartment.
 
Then she came into the bedroom.
 
“What’s taking you so long, girl?
 
Where’s my money?”

 
Carrie exhaled.
 
“You ain’t gonna believe this, Popena.”

 
“Don’t even try it.”

 
“But—”

 
“But nothing, Carrie!
 
Where’s my money?”

 
“What I’m trying to tell you is that I missed my bus last night and Mr. Kincaid---”

 
“Mister who?”

 
“Robert Kincaid.
 
He’s the CEO of the Dyson Corporation and
he
—”

 
“The Dyson Corporation?
 
What the Dyson Corporation got to do with this?”

 
“Robert’s the CEO there and he gave me a ride home last night.”

 
“You need to quit.”

 
“No, it’s true.
 
He gave me a ride home.”

 
“Girl, please, you must take me for the biggest fool in Jacksonville.”

 
“I’m telling you the truth, Po, Mona.
 
I left my purse behind in his SUV.”

 
“Uh-hun.
 
Well I tell you what.
 
You better come up with my money by noontime today or you gonna be left behind, left right out in those streets with that suddenly missing purse of yours.
 
But of course you’re friends with the CEO of Dyson, so I know locating that cheap-behind thrift store purse is not gonna be a problem for you at all!
 
Now is it?”

 
Carrie was in a way stunned by her sister’s harshness, but in another way she wasn’t even surprised.
 
Life had a way of stinging
people,
even when you do all you can to avoid the bee.
 
Jacksonville not only had sucked the life out of Popena to where she just didn’t seem to care anymore, it was trying to suck the life out of Carrie too.
 
But Carrie was a praying woman, she kept reminding herself, and with the help of the Lord she just knew it was going to get better for her soon enough.
 
It certainly couldn’t get much worse.