Free Dear Carolina by Kristy W Harvey

guy,” Marlene said, “and he’s gonna give us the first couple months’ rent for free while we get on our feet.”
    Marlene’s new man would be running around on her or smacking her up before I had time to even get to thinking on the idea of a store.
    So like she ain’t said nothing at all, I said, “Marlene, you think any man’s ever gonna love me now that I’m gonna have a kid and everything?”
    Crazy as she is, Marlene comes through every now and again with a little bit of wisdom. “Oh, honey,” she said. “If he’s as good a man as you deserve, he’ll see that little baby as a bonus.”

Khaki

    EVERYONE ELSE’S BUSINESS
    When I went off to college, practically every person in Kinston told me that I should rethink my interior design major. “If she wants to learn how to move furniture around, you just send Khaki on down to the shop,” I remember one of my daddy’s friends chuckling.
    If you aren’t from a small town, you might not know how everyone is all up in everyone else’s business every minute of the day. So you have to have a thick skin. I loved design and persevered through the insults and snarky comments. But that small-town cynicism must have gotten in anyhow because I am one of the world’s most skeptical people. I believe in Jesus, but that’s about it. Ghosts: fake. Bigfoot: no way. The Loch Ness Monster: biggest crock of all. So going to see an herbalist whose “office” was a garage with a few braided throw rugs lying around, old floral bedsheets draped along the walls, and a ratty tan corduroy sofa that would have seemed more at home in your daddy’s old dorm room didn’t seem like an ace in the hole to me.
    We drove way out into the country—I mean, Graham and I live in the country, but this was the
country
—to a 1900s farmhouse that needed painting a decade ago with a condemned house with fourteen rusted-out cars as a neighbor. I looked at Graham and said, “Thanks, but no thanks. I think I’ll take the knife.”
    He took my hand calmly and said, “Let’s just try it. If you get freaked out, we’ll leave. We have nothing to lose.”
    â€œExcept our lives,” I muttered under my breath. He rolled his eyes. But, I mean, really, he set himself up for that response, didn’t he?
    So, the garage wasn’t Duke University’s Integrative Medicine Center, but it was at least clean. And Esther reminded me of Pauline—if Pauline wore floral-print tribal garb and talked with a thick Trinidadian accent. Esther’s warm smile, comforting Dove chocolate hands, and acknowledgment that “I know this isn’t what you’re used to, but give it time” softened me a touch.
    She helped me up onto a massage table that was soft, warm, and comfortable. I figured that, worst case, I’d at least get to rest for an hour or so.
    The soft, tinkling music, candlelight, and Esther’s waves-crashing-to-the-shore accent did make me feel a bit like I’d been to the islands. She wanted to “read my feet” first thing. As soon as she raised the sheet to check them out, the strangest thing happened.
    I rose up on my elbows, looked at Graham, then at Esther, and said, “Is it weird that I taste pickles? Am I having a stroke or something?”
    Esther laughed, the beads in her hair tinkling and said, “I put dill oil on the point on your feet that leads to your mouth.” She winked at me. “I wanted to show you that the points in the feet correspond to the organs of the body.”
    Graham smiled at me supportively, and I lowered back down asEsther continued the “foot treatment” that was definitely more deep tissue and less Swedish. “Less time at the computer,” she instructed as she kneaded away at my big toe, my body writhing in pain.
    So, yeah, I spent a lot of time at the computer, like every other