Miracles, Inc. by T.J. Forrester

Author:T.J. Forrester
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks
Published: 2011-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

GOD HATH FORSAKEN ME,” I say to Carleen Kathleen Stuttgart. “He’s locked me into a box and thrown away the key.”

Carly’s arm extends through the slot into my cell, her hand on mine, something she has begun doing every time she serves me food. I study the crook on the inside of her elbow, where the uniform bunches into a blue fold, and wonder if she knows how easily I can break her arm. I suspect she has weighed this possibility, but the cancer rotting her ovaries makes the chance worth taking. Her hair has fallen out, thanks to the latest chemotherapy treatments, and a strawberry blond wig sits on her scalp. Wispy ends dangle to her shoulders. Her face has thinned, and her once pretty cheeks are now so hollow they sink into her jawline. During my services, I’d seen thousands who were withering away, but their anonymity created enough distance so their afflictions hadn’t seemed real. This is different. I know this woman. I have a hard time looking at her, I truly do.

“I brought you something,” she says, and offers a chunk of hard candy. “Watermelon flavor. I thought you might like it.”

I toss the candy in my mouth, and my knees weaken as the flavor wraps around my tongue.

“I think I love you,” I say, and we both know I’m kidding.

“Tomorrow, I’ll bring you an orange flavor or maybe a strawberry.” She withdraws and pats down her uniform, self-conscious of the weight she has lost. Carly has told me about herself, five-minute snippets that create a picture of someone who has had bad luck in life. Raised in New Orleans, she wound up in Florida because she fell in love with a traveling computer salesman who got her pregnant and didn’t love her back. The birth was the highlight of her life, even after the baby became sick and doctor bills got so large she had to go on public assistance, something she hated, having come from a family that never took anything for free. She applied for the prison job after her daughter died, asked to be transferred to my block when she learned she was ill and not getting better. She was Pentecostal—washed in the blood of the lamb—and read her Bible daily. She believed she was on a nonstop ride to heaven.

“What do the doctors tell you?” I ask. “Any good news?”

Silvery wetness forms around her eyes. “I wish we could hold a revival, with the music and the dancing and the motorcycle, and you could call down the Holy Spirit and cast out this cancer demon, cast him right out and back to hell.”

“Amen.”

“Amen,” she says.

I suck on the candy and study her face. “God spoke to me in a dream last night.”

She can’t hide the excitement in her voice. “About me?”

I get out my pad and scrawl seven words, afraid to say them out loud. I bring my finger to my lips, turn the pad so she can see it.

God wants you to help me escape.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.