Free Tears Fall at Night - smashwords by Vanessa Miller

all.”
    When Yolanda Adams’s I Got the Victory came on, Carmella lifted her hands and praised the Lord like she hadn’t in a long, long time. Each one of the performers that night had spoken to Carmella’s heart in a special way, but Yolanda’s words emboldened her. She had the victory alright, and she wasn’t ever going to give it back.
    “You can’t have my mind and you sure can’t have my soul.” She was shouting at the devil that tried to destroy her life and with each step as she danced around her room, she was stomping on that serpent’s head.
    Her door swung open and Joy and Dontae ran in. “What’s wrong?” Joy asked, breathlessly.
    “What happened?” Dontae asked as he came in behind his sister.
    Carmella’s turned toward the door as her children rushed in. They had these worried looks on their faces, like they thought it was time for another seventy-two hour hold. “Relax, you two. I haven’t cracked up again. I’m just praising God.”
    “What for?” Dontae asked as if that was the most ludicrous thing he’d ever heard.
    “You’ve seen me praise God before.”
    “Yeah, but that was when you had something to praise Him for,” Dontae said.
    Her children didn’t understand her. But Carmella couldn’t blame them. She had been walking around like a woman with no faith for over a month. She’d allowed Nelson to strip her bare—but no more. “For the rest of my life, I will praise God whether things are right or wrong… whether I’m happy or sad.”
    “If you say so,” Joy said with a raised eyebrow.
    “What do you mean, if I say so? God is good, Joy Lynn and it’s time we started appreciating Him for His goodness.”
    Both Joy and Dontae looked at her as if she’d just stepped off a space ship and asked them to take her to their leader.
    She didn’t have time for unbelief. Carmella was on an uphill climb, finding her way back to her Savior and she wasn’t about to let her kids get her off track. She put her hands on her hips and told them, “Either praise God with me, or get out of my room so I can finish my praise dance.”
    “I’m not going to dance around this room looking crazy,” Joy said as she turned and walked out of her mother’s bedroom.
    “Count me out, too,” Dontae told her as he also left the room.
    Carmella smiled, turned up her television and kept dancing. Because she’d realized something… not only did she still have her children, but as Joy promised, they would never leave her. Carmella also knew that God was still on her side and that he would never leave her.

     
    8
    Things weren’t all good in her life, but Carmella was in a praise-Him-anyhow kind of mood and she prayed she would stay in that frame of mind for the rest of her life. Her children were having a hard time adjusting to their new normal and Carmella blamed herself for a lot of their struggles. If she had handled the separation better, then maybe Joy wouldn’t have quit working for her dad or lost so much enthusiasm for law school. Dontae had started cutting classes and being disrespectful to his teachers. Carmella was still praying about the best way to handle that. With Dontae, if she pushed too hard, he would just shut down and she wouldn’t be able to reach him at all.
    She’d tried getting Nelson to spend more time with Dontae, but the man seemed completely ignorant to the fact that his own son was hurting. Well today was pay up day, as far as Carmella was concerned. Nelson wanted a divorce and after three months of waiting for him to come to his senses, she had come to hers.
    Carmella hired a lawyer to represent her interests. Her neighbor, Cynthia had given her Deidre Green’s information, stating that the woman was a pit bull. Carmella was on her way to meet with Deidre, Nelson and Clark Johnson, Nelson’s attorney. Carmella was prepared to sign the divorce papers, but she wasn’t about to go away empty handed. Not after working to put Nelson through law school and then