Nikki Looks for Work

Sitting at home on her couch drinking a Miller light, Nikki made two decisions. She was gonna get her waist back. Couldn’t be like the guy drinking a slimfast for a beverage with his dinner and thinking he was eating healthy. The beer had to go, especially for breakfast. Also, Nikki was going to get a job. No, Nikki was going to get a job today. She had bought a Sunday paper yesterday for the classifieds. Even though the job section was all of two pages she was determined to find something she could do. No longer would she sit at home in a world of despair. But with the way the Want Ads were looking, maybe she was only fooling herself. Very bleak looking indeed. Administrative assistants just weren’t much in demand these days. Her current skills made her future look disheartening. It wasn’t always this way. She had moved out west to live with an Uncle stationed here will in the service. She had entered the local college and started on a business degree. All that changed with the arrival of a baby. It had been a struggle ever since. Most days she would have given up by now, but not today. She was gonna give this faith thing a try.

“Couriers Wanted, Must have own Car” is what the ad read. She didn’t have a car. That wasn’t true; she did have a car, the one she had taken over the payments for, from her daughter. The car Lisa had bought for her boyfriend. That you can’t buy happiness was a lesson some had learn the hard way. It was a lesson Nikki sometimes had a hard time remembering also. Her daughter had moved back home to Carolina, but she hadn’t followed. Home would be too painful of a reminder of her life’s failures.  She wasn’t sure what couriers did for a living, but she was gonna give it a try. She could picture herself being on the move up in no time. Time to get dressed and apply for a job.

Chapter 16 (Grace Over Pressure)

As she sat in the small hallway waiting for Rita, Grace had to laugh. This was the kind of shit she had been trying to avoid all of her life. Now that she had tried to get things together all of this had gone down. She haven’t asked for much, not even to be happy. All she wanted was to not have any drama. Now she was caught up in the legal system and all she did was to try to improve myself. She never wanted to hear that “keep hope alive” BS again.
“Grace lets cut through the galleria since its raining outside.” Rita said. “It will only add a few minutes to our walk.”

“Whatever” mumbled Grace. “I’m screwed”

“If you have that attitude, you will be.” responded Rita “Keep your head up.”

“Doesn’t matter where my head is at, its where the laws head is at. I’m guilty when I walk in the door.”

“Was there anything that Skip said about anything that indicated he was in trouble?” asked Rita.

“I know he was drinking lot because he was getting hassled at work,” replied Grace.

“Hassled at work?”

“Yeah you know, feeling guilty about pulling some white collar scam, then getting in conflict with his partners. The kinda stuff Mommy T looks at on her old tv downloads.”

“He say anything else?”

“Just rambling on about how my life was gonna get interesting.”

Rita just wanted to get this one out the way. It seemed like Grace was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It would be easy to say this was just a bit of bad luck. Unfortunately bad luck could have a lasting impact. Some people never recovered from a bit of bad luck.

Nikki in Church

“You looking good Sister Wheeler!”
“Thanks Brother Williams.’

How many times had she heard that line she thought. I should be happy for the attention I guess. Even if that attention was at the St. Luke Baptist Church. The Church was located in the older part of town. Just like most of her hangouts, she knew many faces but fewer names. Today’s service would be interesting because it was the fourth Sunday and that usually meant a guess speaker. The service started on time with the singing of a couple of hymns and the reading of scripture. This was followed by collection and a few announcements. Then Sister Williams had the place fired up with her best Yolanda Adams impression. After the performance of the choir the crowd was began to get restless because Guest pastor Rev. Greenup was about to take the podium. He wasn’t that popular of a preacher, maybe because he didn’t put try to entertain when getting his message across. He also seemed to know something that the congregation didn’t. Some joke that they were missing. For some reason Nikki liked Rev. Greenup. Today’s sermon was about patience. Rev Greenup was describing in great detail how small a mustard seed was. Nikki wasn’t sure why this was important, but she though it has something to do with a small change going go a long way. With Rev. Greenup you never knew, but she was going to go with that. Now the good Reverend was explaining how this mustard seed had the bad luck of being planted in the wrong place.

Nikki was an expert on bad luck. She could give a sermon herself on that topic. Amen to that. Within the last year she had lost her job and her best friend who was also her daughter had moved back home. She was lonely. Also he had left, but she didn’t really consider that bad luck. Now the pastor was explaining how the mustard seed overcame the bad luck and how the mustard seed actually deserved the bad luck because of destiny. She wasn’t getting everything the Pastor was saying but anyway that made Nikki think. Maybe her “bad luck” was deserved, and maybe she could still do something about it. Maybe she was destined to do something about it. Nikki liked that word, destiny. Nikki decided she was going to make like a mustard seed.