Free Fool and Her Honey (9781622860791) by Kimberly T. Matthews Page B

before she finally eased up off my head by grabbing my hands instead. “I’m going to be praying for you, sista. You gotta let it go! You gotta let it go!”
    Let what go? What was she talking about? I didn’t have anything to hold on to except my sanity. What exactly did she feel I was hoarding? I was silent and tried to look however you were supposed to look when you were being pushed around the church sanctuary in front of a bunch of people. I guess that expression would be respectful, open, and in agreement. Honestly, I felt none of that.
    â€œAhhhhh!” she uttered, letting out a revealing moan. “You’re looking for that man to come a certain way! You got your little checklist ready! Yes, you do. I see it,” she said, loud enough for the people down the street and around the corner to hear. “You done told God, ‘Send me a man, Lord, but he gotta be this tall and he gotta have this much money and he gotta be this color!’ Honey! He ain’t coming the way you think he should come. Trust me, you don’t want what you think you want! Oh yes! Yeah, yeah, yeah! It was the stone that the builders rejected that became the chief cornerstone. Don’t reject your blessing! Don’t push it away. He might not look like much on the outside, but there’s a blessing in there for you if you dig beneath the surface.”
    How was that for putting all my business on Front Street? That was what I hated about people doing what church folks called “giving you a word.” All your business was just as good as told. I would have tried to leave right then, but my purse was still in the pew where I’d been sitting, not to mention everyone was still staring at me.
    As soon as the benediction was over, I grabbed my purse and tried to hightail it to the car, but of course, there were people who felt the need to reach out and pat me on the arm or back with a look of pity on their faces.
    â€œBe encouraged, my sister.”
    Lord, have mercy. I should have known God would have a trick up His sleeve for me trying to wheel and deal with Him for a man.

Chapter 11
    Celeste
    I scanned the menu for the cheapest thing listed while Candis and I waited for Dina to arrive. I didn’t know why we just couldn’t have eaten at Candis’s house. She loved to cook and was always throwing some type of social get-together. My wallet sure would have appreciated it. I had only thirty dollars to get me through the next week, and that was before I put gas in the car to get the kids back and forth to school and to job hunt. Being broke was the pits, and being broke but pretending you had enough money to at least have lunch with your girlfriends was even worse.
    I’d been out of work for three months now. I couldn’t figure out for the life of me why I couldn’t nail down another job. I was intelligent, ethical, professional, and I could blow any interview out of the water. I’d chalked it up to the economy, because that was what I heard everyone else blaming their troubles on.
    It was only because I had had the sense and discipline to have a little bit of a savings—which Equanto didn’t know about—and was able to draw unemployment that we’d not been evicted. I’d also applied for SNAP, or food stamps, as they were called back in the day, to make sure I could feed my babies. I was ashamed to do it, but with three mouths depending on me for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I had to put pride aside and do what I needed to do.
    E had picked up a job at a fast-food joint to fill in the gap, but things weren’t that great between us. I was still bitter that he’d gotten me fired from my job. As for the something he needed to take care of that day, it amounted to him going to damn Las Vegas with a couple of his boys, wasting money, and getting drunk. He didn’t get back until the next afternoon.
    When I told him I’d been fired for being late