The people I worked with were mostly young people and were pretty immature, so it never really suprised me that they were talking about everyone behind their backs. I just stayed away from it all and did my job.

They started to talk about how Charity once gave someone $100 on a city bus. Just some random person who was having a hard time. She started talking with them and decided she'd help them out. She knew she'd never see them again even though the girl promised to pay her back. But they weren't saying it as a good thing, they were saying it as if she was retarded for doing that. Apparently that too had something to do with this "God thing" she was always talking about. I wasn't really sure whether or not the story was embellished or even if it was true. I didn't really say anything about it one way or another.

It meant a lot to me to know there were still some good wholesome people out there. People who do kind things for others just to be kind. I didn't have a problem with her faith, I kind of enjoyed it. I mean at least she wasn't sitting on the fence, she was standing up for what she believed in.

One day we were working together and it was a pretty busy Friday night and all of a sudden Charity looked a little suprised. She looked over at this girl who was standing at the counter, smiled and said "you don't remember me do you?" and the girl's jaw dropped for a second. She stammered about how she did remember and things were getting better for her and all that and Charity just smiled and said she was glad. The girl muttered about how she was going to pay her back and Charity just told her to "forget it, it was a gift". So I guess the stories were true.

Well I ended up leaving that job a few months later. And didn't really think too much about anyone there because most of them were in a little "clique" that I never got involved with anyway.

In any case, I was back in that area about... 8 months later and I happened to run into Charity at the mall. She looked good, still smiling and happy... and pregnant! She stopped and talked with me for a few minutes and ended up telling me, nonchalantly, that she left the video store because of the gossip she was hearing about other people and it made her wonder what was being said about her.

She told me she was six months pregnant and that the father didn't want anything to do with it and she was giving it up for adoption to a really nice family. I was completely baffled but kind and sincere in wishing her well, then she left.

This couldn't be the same girl who was a nice christian girl. Things like that didn't happen to "jesus freaks". Evangelicals don't make mistakes, do they? That stayed with me for days. Then today she came to my mind again. I wonder how she's doing? Is she single, married? Does she have any regrets? Is she still happy? Did that experience shake her faith or increase it? Sometimes I wish I had asked her all of this before, but I knew I couldn't.

Where ever she is I hope she's well. I wish her nothing but the best in life and I hope she's smiling and still has faith.