Prison and now the Entertainment Field

 

All I can say in the beginning of this book is that I was born to be an entertainer, realistically.  When I was 7 months old, my step-grand father, Jim Moody, used “lye” to clean the home my grandmother lived in as a sharecropper.  One day while he wasn’t watching, I ate some of the lye. It left a huge scar on my tongue, a scar that dentists always ask me about to this day.  

Sharecropping was the norm, back in the day, especially after Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves.  Some of the slaves owners would rather share their crop to hard working field hands.  This is what happened with my grand mother.  She was brought up on a plantation in rural Mississippi.  I remember her telling me once, that Ms. Lucy, a white plantation owner didn’t want her oldest son to attend school, saying if he went to school, he wouldn’t obey her.  My grand mother said that when harvesting time came, around September, November and December, when hogs, and cows were killed for the winter, Ms. Lucy would tell her that she and her children had eaten all of the meat and that there would be no more meat until next year.  Yet, during January and February and most of March, my grandmother and her children had no meat to eat and they’d worked the cotton fields, corn fields, cane field, potato and pea patches.  

Much hadn’t changed when I came along.  The only thing different was, I was not born on a plantation.  I was born in a sharecropper’s house, with the assistance of a midwife.  People believed in midwifery back then.  

 

 

What is so ironic about this midwife is that, she held delivered my mom, me and my daughter.  That’s three generations of midwifery.  But this was the ugliest midwife I’d ever seen.  Her name was Mrytle Adams.  

As I young child, I grooved to music as if I knew, I would become a great singer one day.  At this point in my life, I could only dance.  Visitors, who loved to drink would come to my grand mother’s house on weekends to visit my aunties.  My grand mother had four daughters in the house, who also worked the cotton fields along side her.  Maplecilla, and Nancy Carolyn now deceased, Doris, Umble and Sadie.  

I come in this world to have fun and with a very “keen” mind.  I was far to inquisitive for my grandmother as I grew older.  I’d always loved to dance and show my talent.  On weekend when the neighborhood guys would come for their “corn liquor” I would dance and earn me a nickel, a dime and some times more to show off my dancing skills.  Would be so eager and I looked forward to every Saturday.  I didn’t know too much about church then.  

ALGONONIA  SCHOOL:

Across the road, I say road, because it was just that, a road, was a school.   The school was called Algononia.  When I was little, around the age of 4, I use to sneak up to this school, and the teacher would give me candy and pies.  When I turned five years, I would have to bring cold cold water to the cotton fields for my grandmother, and all of my aunts.  My family would be up in those cotton fields from 6AM to 6PM, and they were well known as the best cotton picking hands in the nearby territories of 

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Canton, Mississippi. One day I over heard my grand mother say, “Algononia School was closed.”  I thought to myself, “if the school is closed, they will not be needing the window panes and all the other school items.  So, I took all the window panes out of the windows.  I am not sure what,

My grandmother didn’t have an education, and like most of parents back in those days, they wanted the best for their children, and getting a good education was a must.  So she enrolled two of my aunts in Holy Child Jesus School, a private and Catholic School, located in Canton, Mississippi, for $3 per month, but since it was two of them, it was $6 per month.  Yet, when I and my first cousins and I grew up, she enrolled us in Holy Child Jesus, a  (Holy Child Jesus photo of Joe Ann on this page). I, two aunts and one of my cousins would walk almost a mile to get a ride to school.  It would be so cold.  Until our hands and feet would feel num.  

Burning wood to heat our the old white was the norm back hen.  There was no gas in no sharecroppers’ home, back when I was born.  I remember my grand mother having to buy loads and loads of wood, from farmers.  Who  sawed down trees for a living.  Significantly, not only was the wood for the big white house in the curve, but it was also for cooking.  The stoves were made of iron cast steel.  It held the heat for a long time too.   Although we were at school all day, we still had time to pick a few pounds of cotton before night came in the evening time before supper.  

After long hard hot days in the cotton fields, weekends were always the happiest times for me.  Because we would go to town to get groceries, and I would have a chance to dance and earn me a few nickels, dimes and sometimes even quarters, if there were anybody in town who knew I could 

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dance.  We would pass by “old holes in the wall jook joints.”  Where people would be dancing and drinking and having a good ole laughing good time.   Some of those people would be dressed in “rock & roll” shoes, long flannel skirts and bobby socks, with white oxfords shoes.  Petticoats were the norm too.  “I Pitted A Fool, sung by the late and great multi-talented Bobby Blue Bland.  Jimmy Hughes, “Put on Your Red Dress Baby.“  Not to mention Howling Wolf’s “Back Door Man,” and Chuck Berry sounds could be heard from corner to corner in Canton, Mississippi.  Sometimes, I wonder who found the town to film “A Time to Kill.”  My aunt was an extra in this move.  She is the fat Black lady, sitting near the doors of the little country white church, fanning herself.   Potentially, this script/story could be filmed there as well.  Then I would have become someone of “greatness” a legend in my own hometown.  God is GOOD!    

As long as I was living in the house with my grandmother.  I was cool.  Because she treated me with dignity and respect.  I never knew this was what it was called back then, but she had a way of letting me know that I was somebody, even if I was, mischievous at times.  Varie Davis is her name.  I can‘t say was, because if Jesus lives, then she lives.  I believe this.  As crafty as she was, she loved to watch me dance.  She would not only sharecrop, but would also have a huge garden, with different greens, beets, carrots, okra, crowder peas, butter beans,  string beans, potatoes, peanut patch, corn fields, watermelons, chickens, hogs and cows for milk.  We ate a lot of milk and bread coming up, sweetened and unsweetened.  Churning was the norm.  My grand mother was a true hustler.  In the evening time, we would go get the cows, put them up in the barn for milking the next

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 morning.  Varie is a “go getter.“ I’d say.  I am much like her.   

My friends, teachers all called me “doubled jointed” because physically, I could do things with my body, they’d never seen before.  I don’t remember when my grand mother divorced old Jim Moody, and married my great uncle, my fathers mother‘s brother.  His name is Willie Robinson.  Family members in come case were sleeping with family members. Back in the 30’s and 40 family members married family members and didn’t know this was a brother and/or a sister.  As time went on, I became a little too much for my grandmother to handle.

MY BIOLOGICAL MOTHER:

My biological mother, Umble Verie Davis, left me with my grandmother until I was six.  Like most teenage mothers do, and still do today.  Teen age pregnancy got her caught up.  As she was only 15, when she gave birth to me.  Teen age mothers, now days, will rather neglect the child, get a government check, fight than to leave or give guardianship of the child, over to someone,  who would truly take care of the child.  Instead, their minds are set on getting some type of assistance from the government first.  Man!  How things have changed!   Or should I say, time brings about a change!  

Vaguely, I remember, being enrolled at Holy Child Jesus, and she brought me some “Raisin Bran” cereal to the school.   Once me and my cousin was dropped off from the rail road tracks, and a tall Black man came out from no where and raped me, while my young cousin looked on.  I was so ashamed until I told her not to tell anybody.  I never even told my grandmother.  I was six years old and in the 2nd grade.  

 

It is my assumption that my mom and grand mother had had a talk, about me coming to live with my mother.  So one day, when I got home from school.  My mother and my step-father was waiting for me.  They’d come to get me to bring me to live with them.  What a dreaded mistake on my part.  I was so content living with my mom’s mom.  She was a strong Black woman.

As I developed as a young lady, my stepfather was licking his lips.  The same thing went on over to my step father’s mother’s house.  He had many sisters and brothers.  I soon grew to dislike all of my step-cousins.  Because now, I am living with my mother, who is not giving me the respect my grandmother gave me.  

When I went to live with my mother and step-father, I had to change schools.  I was no longer enrolled in Holy Child Jesus.  My mother enrolled me in Cameron Street Elementary School.  By now I am in the 3rd grade.  This is where I remember all of the dance talent shows.  I became so familiar with the performing art, because it was my way of escaping the physical abuse, my mother was doing to me, because now she is pregnant with my brother, Terry Lee Hawkins.  

After my mother became pregnant with Terry, the physical and verbal abuse started.  She would call me ulgy names, and say (your mouth looks like somebody pussy) (or you make my but hole work button holes.).  She was so very mean and introverted.  While I didn’t know what was triggering off her emotions, I soon found out that it was not me.  It was my step-father cheating on her, with different women.  They were both very young and I had to be the one to grow up quickly.  Because every child my mother gave birth to, as soon as they were a month old, they soon became my responsibilities.  As far as, washing “(dookie diapers). Pampers didn’t come 

 

out until the 1960’s.  This was during the late 50’s.  Even after pampers were on the market, Blacks in rural Mississippi were too poor to buy them.  So white cloth diapers were the norm for many years for must of us.  I washed so many diapers and clothing on scrub boards until my fingers would blister.  When my mother brought me to stay with her, it was in a shack, with a tin top, that sat on huge bricks as a foundation.  When it rained, you could dance from the melodies from the rain drops,  Once a Tornado came through and almost blew the shack off it’s foundation with us in it.  The back door flew opened, it was only by the grace of the Almighty God that, that wooden shack, wasn’t blown over, because the tornado shook it up pretty bad.  It is scary to be in a situation like that, not knowing if you are going to live or die.  That shack would also get so cold, with all of those holes in the walls, until my mother would heat up a flannel blanket for me to fall asleep in.  It was comfortable!  When I caught the measles. I itched so bad,  and my head felt like it was growing every second.  My mother left me in the shack and went to her in law, knowing I was not feel well, even after she‘d given me some “chamomile” tea.  She told me to stay in the house, and that she would be rite back.  Yet, when she left the house and left me all alone, I followed her.  Even after she told me to stay in the house. It was scary being in that shack all alone.  Especially after just coming from a big white house with lots of room and all of my cousins and aunts.  I’d never been left all alone until I went to live with my mother.  My grand mother could sew, and she would make me little gathered and pleated skirts, with little puff sleeves blouses to match, with something they called rick rack.  A lace like fabric,  that accented the outfits with distinct charisma.

 

Colors, I wear very well.  

CAMERON STREET ELEMENTARY SCHOOL:

(Place Photo here)  When my mother picked me up from my grand mother house, I remember the back seat of my step-father’s car was filled with all of my beautiful outfit, that my grand mother made for me.  Believe it or not.  She would cut out patterns from newspaper.  At any rate, when I arrived to what was suppose to be my new home, (the shack).  Yet, I had to got to school.  So my mother enrolled me in Cameron Street Elementary School.  Although, I didn’t like my new family, I soon learned about Commodities. A brick of cheese my step-grandmother would go for in Canton.  Food pantries are what they called today.  Free food, where people wait in line, waiting for their number to be called to get food.  The cheese back then, was made from all natural ingredients.  So we ate a lot of cheese and home made biscuits.  Speaking of homemade biscuits, I think I will make some when I am done. 

Cameron Street Elementary is also where I learned about the performing arts.  Leading the dance groups, under the supervision of one my 3rd grade teachers, Mrs. Pauline Williams.  She was the art teacher, who implemented plays, and dance groups to the community and for parents to come to see their children do their thang in the performing arts.  I remember, I needed to be a dance groups, not sure of what we called ourselves then, but we were the bomb!  However, my mother didn’t want me to be a part of nothing in the arts.  She would always say, “I don’t have money to buy material for your outfit.”  Until a big dance contest was coming up, with Velma Jackson, another school, in a neighboring town.  My classmates, my teacher, who was at that time Mrs. Williams, wanted and needed me to be in it because they knew, if I led the dance, we Cameron Street had a good chance of winning, or we had a good chance of winning.  The song we dance to is” “tossing and turning,” by Don Corvey.  It had a nice grove to it and I floated on my feet, as I was on a cloud across that floor.  Transformation is the key to my aesthetics in the performing arts. When I transform, I am at my greatest.  Mrs. Williams, would have all of us in the third grade to write a poem, and when she would read mines, she would always say, one day you are going to be a songwriter.   She use to whisper this to me, as if she didn’t want the class to hear.  Yet, every time there was a talent show of any sort at Cameron Street Elementary School, Mrs. Pauline Williams wanted me to do my part and I did.  I use to bring home a saxophone as I was also into learning how to read music, but the abuse was so bad, until I had to try and save myself, from the problems I was having as a little girl, being abused.  I felt tragically stigmatized and was to very afraid to tell.  The things child predators do for control of a minor. It is so evil.

Alberta Hawkins, is my step-grandmother’s name.  It was a lot different living with my step-father, his mother and father had a farm.  They had horses, mules, goats, turkeys, Guinness, chickens, cows, a gardens with crowder peas, string beans, butter and lima beans, okra. And when Christmas holidays, came around, she would pick out a turkey, a chicken,  goose, duck, put them in separate cages, to clean them out, with yellow corn and/or white corn that was dried up by the sun.  So she could bake them with all the trimmings during the holidays.   This lady would make the best homemade jelly and chocolate cakes on the planet.   A wild rabbit, a possum along with a cured ham, from the wooden smoke house would top the holiday feast with some traditional ancient class.  That was built for smoking pork during the winter for families to eat.  Basically, this was the only meat eaten besides beef, which didn’t have as much controversy on the types of bacteria as it has today.  Being raised on a farm, where the foods were virtually, chemically free, is interesting, and it make me wish that those farming days was still around.  My grandmother would take dried ears of corn to the corn meal for grinding, so she could have flour and corn meal to bake with.  The family was growing.  Even the sugar cane was cut and taken to a mill.  Where this mule would go round and round, squeezing stalks of sugar cane for molasses and/or syrup for people who wanted their cane to eat as a syrup.  Some good old baked  butter milk biscuits,  with churned home made butter from the clabbered milk, from my grandmother’s pastured cows,  is a delicatessen in rural Mississippi to this date.  If only we all could eat like this NOW!   I would name it “the country breakfast delight.”  

Umble, my mother,  married into a family that was so illiterate, but with the “good looks.”  If you know what I mean?  They had long hair, with  light colored, complexion.   I was told they were mixed with Cherokee Indians.  Robert and Alberta Hawkins, were my step-grandma and step grand pa’s names.  At some point I adapted to living by these people.  After all, I wasn’t going anywhere.  Feeling that my biological grandmother didn’t love me, by giving me to my mother and “a” step father.  Hardly ever saw my biological father.  We’d connected with him bringing me a dog.  I named the dog “popeye.“  One day while at Holy Child Jesus, Mrs. Truth, the meanest old lady, who lived across the fence from my mom’s mom.  This mean spirited lady, poured hot grease on my dog.  His flesh fell off to the redness.  He lived about two weeks and later died from pneumonia.  This was the most hurting pain a small child, such as myself shouldn’t have had to go through.  Thank God I survived.

While I was only 6,  when my mother and step father transferred me to their residence of living.  Oh, how I longed to be with my own grandmother, whom I made laugh every time I danced.  My new found step family became my worst nightmare. They didn’t like me and I grew up hating them.  No lie!

COTTON FIELDS AND THE ABUSE BEGAN:

My brother Terry L. Hawkins, whom I am six years older than, was born June 7, 1958.  When he was about six months old, I was rocking him in an old rocking chair on the front porch of this old “shack” with the tin top, that created a melody every time the raindrops fell on it.  Dramatically, one of the slacks on that old front porch was loose and it broke from the foundation of the  porch.  When it broke, I accidently dropped my six month old brother on to the ground.  My mother was in the house cooking dinner, but when my brother began to cry from the fall, she ran out and asked me what was wrong. When I told her you’d thought  I’d stole something from the neighbor’s house and the police was there to arrest me.  Instead, seeing it as a accident and that I was not trying to kill her new arrival, she went out side to her tall Rose bush.  Broke off a long thicket from it, with sharp pointed thorns, and every time she whipped me, those thorns would stick into my flesh.  I even have the scars to show it to this date.  This was the very beginning of abusive stages for real.  I was six at this time and this continued on until I was 16. 

Cotton fields were the main crop that was prosperous enough for us to have a little bit of extra food on the table.  And my step grand parents had cotton fields every where.  And for every cotton field, they would randomly throw and/or plant watermelon seeds, so if by chance a cotton found a watermelon, while picking cotton, he or she could sit down on their packed cotton sack, and eat it.  The boss would allow this because it would be so hot in those cotton fields until when a watermelon was found, it made everyone’s mouth watery.  It cooled down the body too.  We would have on long skirts with pants, to keep the stinging worms off us.  In the evening after school, if we could earn fifty cent or a dollar, it was good enough to buy lunch at school the following day.  We would sometime have a gospel singing good time in those cotton fields.  Since the town was so small, Blacks and Whites used the same cotton hands.  Then when Saturday came to go get groceries, some the cotton hand would meet up at “white poodle”  a local “hold in the wall,” “jook joint,“ in the hollow of Canton, Mississippi. In the hollow, there use to be an old hamburger joint.  People from miles around use to come to buy these burgers, made from pure pork sausages, fresh chopped onions and mustard for a condiment.  These burgers was prepared on a  small hamburger buns, similar to those White Castles buns.   There was also a theater in the hollow of Canton. I went there once and watched some movie, but I can‘t remember the name of it.  

Ben Franklin Stores, similar to Targets, I‘d say, was the nickel and dime store back in the late 50‘s and 60‘s.  This is where most of the cotton hands shopped.  A little money went far when shopping at old Ben.  Sears and Roebuck was our major appliance center in Canton.  And if you so happened to be wealthy enough to shop at Asabbs, you‘d graduated from being the field hand at-large.  Sometimes you‘d could hear people around this country town, commending people for how much cotton they‘d picked the week before.  My maternal grandmother, my mother‘s mom and all of my mother‘s sisters were in demand.  They were well known for “good cotton hands.“ You would hear people saying, “Varie and all of daughters can really pick some cotton.”  I believe it is still standing.  Since I was too small to be a “cotton hand,”  my mother didn’t stop there.  She taught me how to cook a full course meal from scratch.  By the time I was eight, I was baking home made biscuits, pies from scratch, washing “dookie diapers,” and taking care of my younger sisters and brother.  I am six years older than my brother, eight years older than the sister next to me in age, another sister I am twelve years older, and sixteen years older than my youngest sister.”  Everytime my mother had a child she put it off on me for everything that includes feeding it. Had I had milk in my breasts, she would have had me nursing them too.  Life for me living with those step folks grew harsh.  They couldn’t read, but I could.  Yet, my younger step cousins  went to school every day as I did. But could not retain what they’d learned the day before. I remember one of my aunts on my step-father’s side of the family saying, “I would forget what I learned the year before,” meaning she could not retain it.  Then she went on to say, I had to learn the same thing all over again that I was taught the year before, when school time came in the fall.  She could not retain, because her father, Robert Hawkins was illiterate, it was passed down.  “Papa” we called him, used to sign his name by making an “X.”  He didn’t have an education, but he had common sense to use the land his folks left him to make a living for him and his 17 children.  Which brought him a long ways. 

After my brother was born, my step-father and mother fought every weekend.  When reminiscing back, I remember the very first time I was awakened by my mother screams, calling out to me saying, “Joe Ann, go bring me a knife.  Or bring me the can opener.  Another time, a long sawed off shot gun was used.  I saw my step father when he pointed this long rifle like object at my mom, and her saying, “Go ahead and shoot me!  Crying out to my step-father, and asking him to stop hitting my mom, only to see he was coming between a mother and a daughter relationship, with his whoring around, even with some of my mom’s so called acquaintances.  Once we were in town from a long hot week in the cotton fields, this one lady, named Tossie Diamond, had eyes for my step father.  My mother had heard talk around town that they were sleeping together, but she was only waiting to catch them.  My mother had and still have this friend named Lois Cain.  Her husband was named Joe Cain, they had a daughter who was so very beautiful, I use to baby sit.  They had an altercation late one Friday night, fell on the baby, and the baby died.  She was the prettiest baby I’d ever laid eyes on.  

As time went on and I’d learn how to cook and bring cold water the cotton fields for the cotton hands, my step-father and his brother-in-law, who lived in the same shack we lived in.  There was only one room and a kitchen.  On the other side where “auntie” lived, were three rooms.  We used what was called a pot, to relieve ourselves that was emptied the following morning for the next night. Before the outside laboratories  was built and/or made out of wood with a tin top, we used what we called“slop jars.”  It was a tall what jar looking with a white top trimmed in red.  If you saw a white jar container around any shack in Mississippi, it was used for toilet in case someone wanted to use the bath room during the night.  This of course, was with all the amenities (no sink, running water, faucet etc).  

It would be so hot picking cotton, until we fill our tin tub up to the top with water in the morning, so the sun heat it, for us to bathe in when we returned home from the cotton fields.   Most of these bathes were done on the outside in the back yard.  When  you thought no one would be watching your naked butt. But low and behold, my step father was watching for me bathe myself for the longest time, and I didn’t know it.  I was maturing with breasts, nice butt, legs etc.  But what did I know.  I was kid doing what a kid was to suppose to do, and that was bathe myself.  

One Saturday, when my mom didn’t take me to town to get groceries with her, because I had to baby sit, my step father double back to the old shack, along with one of his friends, Jonathan Johnson, and his nasty stinking mouth brother-in-law, Peter Sockett.  He had pink lips and red eyes.  His eyes was red every time you saw him.  Later,  I learned that this came from him drinking all the time.  He was a real alcoholic.  Jonathan Johnson, had great big testicles, that rolled around whenever he walked.  When those three men got through with me, I began taking Ajax and Comet Cleanser bathes, to rid myself of the nasty sticky feelings, they left on my mind and my body.  After my step-father saw how my mother beat me to blisters and heard those ulgy names she called me, he along with his counter parts was having a threesome!  Involuntarily, I made a foursome.  These men had me too afraid to tell my mother even at the beginning of their sexual assaults on me.  I became reclusive, not wanting to talk to anybody.  I just wanted to be alone.  I felt rejected and very much unloved.  All I could wish and think about, was being back with my maternal grandmother, Varie, who would have never let anything of this nature happen to me. 

Cotton hands are forever needing water to drink, and before became old enough to pick cotton, I would bring cold water to the field for the hands to drink.  The water would be in a tin bucket with a dipper, and back then, everybody used the same dipper to drink out of.  Sometimes my step grand father, would get a block of ice from the ice house in Canton, use something, called an “ice pick” to chip off some of the ice to make the water cold. However, when I became older enough to pick cotton.  I did.  And if I didn’t pick the going rate, which was 200 pounds per day to get 4 bits, which was and still is $4. It took my mother and I,  after we moved from that shack, one whole month, picking cotton,  to have enough money to get a “party line” telephone in the house she had built by my step-father’s uncle.  A party line was back in the 60’s a telephone line shared by several parties in the community.  When you pick the phone in your house, you could hear the next door neighbor’s conversation and visa versa.  It was fun listening to people’s conversation.  You had no privacy back then with those telephone “party line.”  You have no privacy to day with the “internet lines.”  How about that!  

Late one after noon, my mother called me, and said, “Joe Ann, if you don’t’ pick two hundred pounds of cotton tomorrow, you will get a whipping/beating.  Because I know you can pick more cotton than you have been.”  Well, I didn’t pick the two hundred pounds, although I tried.  After that ass beating my mother laid on me, the following day, I picked over two hundred pounds and over from that day on.   We would have to pack our sack by, sitting down on the ground and stuffing our feet in it.  Until, the loose cotton became packed cotton on our backs.  We had tremendous clientele, because if you came from a good cotton hand, that meant to the whites and blacks who had cotton fields and needed help picking cotton, you were automatically hired and was picked up daily to pick cotton.   Cotton field owners, had no problems pick you up for a day in the their cotton field.  Some times the would get three to four bails of cotton, depending on how many picker came that day.  Bologna sandwiches with sandwich spread, a cinnamon roll, with some cold Kool-Aid, was the lunch given us, when we picked cotton away from home.” Back in those days, cinnamon rolls had less chemicals and preservatives.  Soft drinks were six and/or seven cents.  We could get two cookies for a penny, ten for a nickel.  Food was very very reasonable back then, because most everyone who had a cotton field had a farm with a big barn on it.  Ponds were all around the community too.  People could fish and swim.  There was one lake our church used to baptize people every first Sunday in September.   Spiritually speaking, these baptisms were like a real entertainment show.  Where people were getting paid a salary.  Every Sunday, was Sunday school and then Church.  

Saturday nights after being in town, seeing people on the streets.  Sundays was always church.  My step-cousins and I use to play “kick ball” before we were old enough to go Boosie.

Boosie, was a small café`where everyone who wanted to, could go and dance to the blues, R&B/soul,  and be with the one you love.  Stevie Wonder’s “Signed, Sealed and Delivered, Rufus and Carla Thomas, Don Corvey, Willie Mitchell, Marvin Gaye, Tammie Terrell, the Temptations, just to name a few, music was playing on “jook boxes.”  Man, this music eased so much stress and it is still doing this to this day.   Twenty five miles from home was another big hit.  We danced, danced and danced some more to Don Convey’s piece, “Your Love is Like a See Saw.”  

All though high school, I wore wigs, because my hair was so very short.  I was a tom boy.  I climbed trees, rolled tires, played baseball, kick ball, jumped rope and jack rocks.  Jack rock is a game you play with five rocks and you try to catch at least one of them before it fall to the surface.   It is a fun game that takes a lot of concentration. 

When my mother had more children,  my responsibilities grew.  I had more food to cook. More clothes to wash and more dishes to clean.  It was horrific.  I grew up in fear.  Wondering from day to day, what will piss of my mother for her to beat me.  If my step-father did anything, I would surfer the consequences.

In 1969-1970, when the public schools in Mississippi, had to integrate, white teachers came to Rogers High to teach and Black teachers went to Canton High, and all White school.  I had one White instructor, who was very personable.  He taught Direct Occupation, a class derived on how to obtain a job.  I was pregnant during this time.  Even though, I was pregnant, the most important thing for me was to finish high school.  Otherwise, I would have been surely labeled the “ain’t fit for nothing child.”  I got pregnant in September of 1969.  My daughter was born June 2, 1970.  Six months after her birth, I left Mississippi for Chicago.  I had, had enough of the abuse and was older enough to leave and fin for myself.  I’d packed all of my clothes and my daughter’s clothes.  Until one afternoon, my mother said to me, “Why are you going to Chicago?  You will go up there and get on something you are not able to get off of.”  Later, I realized what she meant.

CHICAGO!

I left Chicago, January 7, 1971.  I’d planned for sometime, even before my child was born to leave the household I was living in, even if I had to sleep in a ditch.  Frustration and anger became my friend everyday. I had no peace and joy was unheard of.  However, one of my step cousins was visiting Canton for Christmas 1970.  I’d made up my mind to leave with him for Chicago.  So I asked him if I could leave with them and he said yes.  He and Felth, a friend of his, whom I soon became fond of, came to pick me up.  It was me, Felt, Kelly, Fred and another person, can’t remember who, but the car we was in almost flipped over, as one of the tires went flat while Felth was driving.  I was so afraid.  Gladys Knight’s songs were all over the radio and on 8 tracks.  

Once in Chicago, my cousin took me to my mother’s uncle’s house, at 3939 S. Lake Park, Apartment 601. This was an apartment complex located on the near south side of Chicago, near the Oakenwald, near the El Rukins Headquarters off of Ellis Avenue.  When I arrived, my uncle was over to his girlfriend’s house.  They never really knew me.  All they knew is that I was “daddy george’s niece” from Mississippi.  A place where he and some of his older children were born.  After some acquaintance, I began making home made biscuits and cooking country meals for my uncle and his three girls, Terry, Earlene and Theresa.”  Soon thereafter, I learned that one of “daddy George’s” sons “buddy boy” was in jail for killing a woman.  Mind you, I”d never met “buddy boy.”  Because I was raised in Mississippi, but the day he came home, he took, a liking to me.  The way he’d look at me.  I knew I was in big trouble.  I didn’t need any reminder of the sexual abuse, I sustained while living in Mississippi.  His looks made me feel so very uncomfortable, until I wished he was still in jail.  I later learned he killed this lady in self-defense. It was either her or him. 

Being away from rural Mississippi and not having all of those adults responsibilities, I didn’t know what to do with myself.  So I got a job at McDonalds in Chicago, off 35th Street and State.  I moved out of my uncles house and into an apartment with one of my boyfriend’s, brother’s girl friend named “Bertha Mitchell.“  She lived in the next building over from “daddy george’s building, closer to “One Stop,” a popular grocery store east 43rd Street. Living with Bertha, I soon learned the latest night club.  Which was called _Payton Place.  Man I would dance the night away in there.  It was the most popular night club off of 39th and Pershing Road.  It was also in a gang infested territory.  One night, I was standing near the door, and the “Spirit” said to stay there, there is going to be some trouble in this place, so you need to get close to the door.  I did just that.  When I got closer to the door, the shooting started.  All I had to do was run out.  By the time my friends got out, I’d been at the car for almost 15 minutes.  People was stumped on, walked on and even some was hospitalized.  It was a gang altercation.  Gangs were only heard of for me.  I never knew a gang member, until later on…. miser 

In May, 2013, shortly after my Jamaica trip, my daughter resurfaced.  Yelling, screaming, as if only time has changed everybody else, except her.  My mother and my daughter are two of a kind.  Moma, tells on her, and she tells on moma.  They work closely together, but yet apart.  It’s ridiculous.  The only true and real thing about this situation, is that my mother don’t want to mind her own business.  She has grand children, more than me, but yet, she takes a liking more to my grand children, than she does her own.  I am wondering if she feels that my grand children are her grandchildren, but they are mines first.  

         You may as well have called me Cindrella in this household.  .   in In other words, nobody could every create from another person’s imagination.  We are all different.  Big Moma, we called “Varie” was crafty in many ways.  what had been made from 

some one else’s imagination.       

 that are to ulgy to specify in this book.  

Some of them didn’t even know they were brothers and sisters.  I was born in the 50’s so, my age was right on time with all of the earliest Motown sounds.  Mainly, I grew up on the Blues and Gospel,  and the old “Negro hymns” in the cotton fields like most of the people in the south.  

      On January, 21, 2014, my grand son and I appeared as guests on the "Susan Show" in Portomore St. Catherine, Kingston, Jamaica.  They videoed, me while I was visiting there in March 11 to April 10, 2013.  I only went to see try and get some closure on what happened to my friend Margret.  It is a fact, she was killed in a car accident, after a bob tailed truck swerved off the pavement on to the curve, hitting her, I am told, she was knocked into a tree and her eyes came of her head.  What a blow to my mind. Yet, she and I was friend.  However, after appearing on the Susan Show....below is a facebook message, from a fan, all the way from Cherry Garden, Saint Andrew, Jamaica...I have never been there, but it looks like I am going there, maybe even to live...Thank you Almighty Jehovah, God through Jesus Christ precious name... Where ther is much more POWER!

      Hello Ms Davis. Thanks for accepting my request. I saw your interview on the Susan show on tvj. I learned so much for u. I would really like to talk to u. If it's possible, could u send me ur contact number. I am from a broken home. Mine is. 1-876-817-2971. Looking forward to hear from you.

 What did I know