A Special Relationship Read Online Free

he’ll change his mind.”
      “But I won’t, mama.   I’m saved and I’m not about to compromise my salvation for nobody, don’t you understand that?   You act like I’m enjoying this.   You act like I don’t care for Dale.   Well I do.   I thought he was gonna be my husband.   I thought . . .   .”   Carrie hesitated.   That same pain she felt when Dale broke off their engagement was beginning to reemerge.   “I thought he loved me enough to wait,” she said.
      “He’s a man, crazy woman!” Honey said.   “A man!   And men don’t wait.   Yo’ daddy a good for nothing, he’s the example.   All you got to do is remember his runnin’ around and you’ll know exactly how men are.”
      “Every man ain’t like that.”
      “Uh-hun,” Honey said and folded her big, burly arms.   “Name one.”
      Carrie stood on the porch and stared at the children playing in the wooded field across the street.   There was one out there.   She just knew it.   A good, strong, Christian man God was going to bless her with in a mighty way.   And unlike Dale Mosley, her dream man wouldn’t let the need for some fleshly pleasure, for a sample , to break them up.   It was just a matter of time.   It was just a matter of putting all her trust in God’s plan for her life, regardless of what her mother or anybody else had to say about it.
      She left and went to the diner.
     
    By the time she got back home, however, things had changed for the worse.   Carrie’s heart dropped as she walked onto the dirt road of row houses and saw what was going on at hers.   Her mother, along with her mother’s latest boyfriend of the week ,   had undoubtedly drank themselves into a drunken stupor and was now putting on a show for the neighbors.   A show, Carrie was dismayed to realize, that included her mother leaning against her cane and tossing all of Carrie’s clothes out onto the porch, screaming obscenities as she did.   Her mother’s boyfriend was seated out on that porch, his bottle of liquor still in his hands, laughing at the display.   Laughing as if this horror show was actually entertainment.
      Carrie slowed as she approached the wooden-framed house that looked almost dilapidated, and then, when her mother nearly tripped over in her drunkenness and rage, she hurried up the steps.   She tried to calm her, she tried to get her to understand that it was her life and she couldn’t live it on anybody else’s terms.  
      But Honey didn’t want to hear it.   She pushed Carrie aside, even slapped her, and called her every harsh name she could recite.   Carrie endured her mother’s wrath, as she’d always endured it, convinced that her mother was just disappointed with her own life and didn’t mean half the hateful things she was saying.
      But then, as if Carrie didn’t have enough to deal with, another ultimatum was dropped on her.   Honey staggered and then pointed at her daughter.   “Either you marry Dale Mosley,” she said in no uncertain terms, “or you get out my house.   You so good, maybe you too good to be livin’ with a big-time sinner like me.   You a grown woman, anyhow.   You twenty-four years old.   I ain’t taking care of your sanctified butt another second!”
      Less than an hour later, when the afternoon sun was at its brilliance and the sense in trying to find a reason for staying was no longer worth the time it took to think one up, Carrie Banks got away.   Without saying another word to her mother, who was still staggering around the house lamenting her terrible life and sorry-behind daughters, and without calling Dale Mosley and telling him anything about her plans, she placed her discarded clothes into the only suitcase she owned, cashed her check at the local Pigly Wigly, and caught the first Greyhound bus out of Georgia.  
      She was headed for Florida, the sunshine state.   Her big sister Popena had written countless times about the new life she