Sisters from the Start and My Pen Lay Still Not

Sisters from the Start

and

My Pen Lay Still Not

Sylvia Johnson-Cooper, PhD

AuthorHouse™

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.authorhouse.com

Phone: 1-800-839-8640

© 2009 Sylvia Johnson-Cooper, PhD. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 11/21/2009

ISBN: 978-1-4490-4909-6 (ebk)

ISBN: 978-1-4490-4907-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4490-4908-9 (hc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2009912145

Printed in the United States of America

Bloomington, Indiana

Contents

Sisters From The Start

Acknowledgments

Pearl

Topaz

Junior Toy

Four Crumb Snatchers

Topaz Toy Store

Sapphire

Opal

Emerald

Ruby

Ruby’s Fashion

Peridot

Joe Blow

Meeting Of The Minds

Sisters From The Start

Jermy Star

The Project

The PSComplex

The Good Fight Of Faith

My Pen Lay Still Not

Acknowledgement

My Pen Lay Still Not

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Epilogue

Sisters From The Start

Sylvia Johnson-Cooper, PhD

This story is for my six sisters: Alvie, Opal, Marilyn, Shirley, Lourene, and Laurene, for their laughter, friendship and inspiration. We are truly Sisters from the Start and from the Heart.

Simply for

Dawn Cassie McGowen and her father Keith

Acknowledgments

Special thanks goes to my former CIS colleague, Sarah Stratton, whom is studying to be a veterinarian, took time out to edit and give me feedback. I could not have done it without her. Thanks Doc, You are too tough to be a Yankee, but tender enough to be an excellent Veterinarian. All mistakes are mine.

I am also grateful to my sons, Horace and Kerry, for their encouragement and love.

Pearl

You can only hold your breath until God says, Breathe

A. Porter Drenon

THE SUN IS COMING UP OVER the horizon on Colorado Spring Lake. It is the most beautiful sunrise that Pearl Duello has ever seen, and she has seen many beautiful sunrises. In fact, she has been all over the world in different time zones to take photographs of sunrises and sunsets, and other natural and mysterious phenomenon such as the photos of the aurora borealis. The Alaska’s northern lights were awesome. She made a little fortune off the ‘rivers of light in the sky’ that seem to be dancing off buildings.

Pearl has her camera posed, ready again for the shots of her life. She snaps photos of the sunrise. This sunrise captures the sapphire sky, striped with purple, orange, and yellow tints as the sun meets the lake and sky halfway.

She is wearing a yellow lightweight pullover sweater and jeans with hiking boots. Her dark auburn, long, straight hair is in a ponytail tied with a yellow ribbon. It is almost five in the morning and chilly, but Pearl is determined to get the sunrise shots, so she shakes off the chill.

Pearl loads her camera repeatedly, and by six, she has over a hundred shots. Everything around her is beautiful: trees, grass, even the bushes, so green and so lush.

The evening before, she was on the east side of the lake taking shots of the sunset at different stages, as Mars came into view with the setting of twilight. Last night was the last night that you could view Mars with the naked eye. She had taken photos every single day that Mars was present. The photographs are spectacular and priceless.

Moreover, as always to her, the next natural event is more beautiful than the last one.

She smiles to herself because she has a dozen rolls of film of a perfect sunrise at different stages. She barely slept the night before thinking about the sunrise after shooting the sunset that striped with bright hues of gold with Mars in the backdrop. What a wonderful over night trip, she thinks.

Excitedly, she jumps into the rented Land Rover and heads to the airport to catch the 8:05 a.m. to return to Houston.

As she drives along the back roads, she gets really excited about developing her rolls of film and spreading them out with the other sunsets and sunrises that she has taken all over the world in the last month for a special edition. Although she hasn’t contracted them to anyone specifically, she is sure this layout will sell and net her a bundle. She thinks nothing can stop me now.

PEARL, a slim woman about five foot eight and about 110 pounds, has a dark complexion with flawless skin, and extraordinary, beautiful, gray eyes that look like shining pearls. Her eyes are so fitting to her name. Although she is 48, she still looks like a college girl in blue jeans.

Some people told her she was so beautiful that she could be an actress, but that was never her desire. She just wanted to love and have someone to love her. She has had no such luck so far.

It was a long time before Pearl realized that she had the power to create and work magic with her camera. She didn’t have to do anything extraordinary to get the best photographs. She didn’t even have to adjust the telescoped lens, use a special lens, or have special lighting. Everything was automatic. All she had to do is aim and shoot. There it was all lined up nice and neat. Big time.

All her photographs sell like hot cakes for thousands of dollars. Now she is looking at ten times that amount for this lay out. That can feed many people. She wonders where that notion came from.

As she drives to the airport, she reflects about her rocky childhood and failed marriage.

PEARL’S great aunt and uncle in Los Angeles raised her.

It was June 9th, Pearl’s sixth birthday, when she found out that the people she called Mom and Dad were her great aunt and uncle and not her real parents.

Seldom did the Burrows have relatives over, which made Pearl wonder. Pearl wouldn’t open up and talk with people because her parents encouraged her to keep to herself. Instilled in her at an early age was the conviction that she should be seen and not heard. Don’t go talking about yourself and asking questions, her parents told her often. This made Pearl a quiet and shy person. She had lot of questions about many things especially about her parents and other relatives but she held them inside.

Pearl’s biological mother Cindy Burrow showed up at her sixth birthday party, causing a big scene in front of the Burrows’ few friends. Cindy said she had been looking for her daughter Pearl for six years, and the Burrows had had no right to take her from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, away from her.

Cindy told everyone at the party that the Burrows stole Pearl from her three days after she was born in Las Vegas. Vera Burrow said she went to court for custody of Pearl because Cindy was a whore and couldn’t care for a baby.

Cindy denied it, explaining that she was very sick throughout her pregnancy, due to asthma and her aunt and uncle wouldn’t care for her or help. She said they kicked her out because she refused to tell them who and where the biological father was. She had no place to go but to a total stranger, Sean Washburn. He took her to his house and cared for her until Pearl was born although he was a poor man also suffering with asthma problems.

The Burrows called the police to the party, and had their niece put in jail for disturbing the peace. The police let Cindy hug Pearl before they handcuffed and put her in the rear seat of their squad car. As she hugged Pearl tightly, she whispered in her ear, Your dad named you Pearl because of your beautiful gray eyes. You are special. You have his dimples. You are his special child. I will return for you. I love you, Pearl. Cindy didn’t return.

Seeing her mother hauled away by the police put a damper on the birthday party for Pearl and everyone there.

Pearl didn’t have anymore birthday parties after that. Pearl never saw her mother again.

The Burrows told her that Cindy died due to pneumonia complication as soon as she got out of jail. That was all the explanation that Pearl received. However, from that day forward, Pearl questioned everything, in her mind, the Burrows said and did. She didn’t trust them to be honest.   

Cindy’s mother Joan was Josh’s twin sister. Joan died in childbirth giving birth to Cindy. Because Joan was pregnant and single, without other relatives, Josh and Vera took Cindy and raised her as their own daughter. The Burrows were convinced Cindy was ungrateful and deserved everything she got from life. Pearl begged to differ; no one deserved to be treated badly, no matter the circumstances.

PEARL went to UCLA on a full scholarship, although she wanted to go to Spellman. The Burrows wanted her to live at home while she was in college, so she did. The Burrows believed Pearl would try to locate her parents if she went away to college, but Pearl had no idea how to go about that. She graduated with honors in Communications three years later. She was barely nineteen.

DESPITE much friction with the Burrows, Pearl married the first man that took her seriously in order to get away from them and their lies.

Dale Duello was an Italian. He was a career military man, a Korean War veteran. They met at a ‘Get Involved’ campus rally. Dale came by to see his son Hale by his first wife Gale, his high school sweetheart, whom he divorced after one year of marriage. Hale, a student at UCLA was smitten with Pearl. He had no idea that his father would take her from him. Hale and his father’s relationship were almost beyond repair because of the way Dale had treated his mother and had never been there for him when he was growing up. This severed their relationship completely. Although this bothered Pearl, it made no difference to Dale. He said, Who gives a rat’s ass? and that was that.

Dale told Pearl that he had never seen a girl with dimples in her cheeks and chin too. He deemed that amazing. However, to Pearl no opinions had ever materialized to her about her dimples. She barely recalled her mother telling her that she inherited them from her father.

From the union, at twenty-five, Pearl had a light brown skin, red curly-haired baby girl. They named her Lesley.   

For twenty or so years, the Duellos moved all over the world, wherever the Army sent them. The Duellos were station in Japan when they got the news that her great uncle and aunt died in a car accident. Pearl didn’t go home to the funeral because she got the news a month too late.

THE DUELLOS retired to Houston to run a printing company after roaming the world and twenty years of marriage.

FOR MORE than twenty-five miserable years, Pearl stayed with Dale and took his verbal and emotional abuse, and his cheating on her. She just looked the other way. He never stayed with one woman long, because he would tire of the woman quickly and move on to the next one. So Pearl put up with him because she didn’t know what else to do or any place to go.

She had a child to care for so she couldn’t leave Dale when Lesley was young. Then Lesley went off to Johns Hopkins to study medicine so Pearl needed the income from the printing business to pay for Lesley’s college expenses in medical school. Although Lesley got a scholarship for tuition, books and room and board, the school didn’t pay for other expenses.

The last woman that Pearl caught Dale in bed with was a tall, beautiful, twenty-two year old blond woman, younger than his own daughter Lesley. Pearl wondered how a 65-year-old man could seduce a young beautiful woman. Then she remembered his smile and charm. She wondered how he could do this to her but then she remembered how she had done it to his son Hale although they weren’t serious with each other, just friends. What goes around comes around, she thought.

Dale said he had been seeing the girl since his retirement in Houston, and he wanted a divorce to marry her. Pearl was willing to look the other way even with this affair but Dale wanted out. Then Pearl tried to warn the naïve girl that she was getting an abuser but the girl concluded Pearl was only jealous.

Pearl had no choice but to give him the divorce.

Because Dale handled all the money, and doled out to Pearl what he wanted her to have, she didn’t have any money saved. Therefore, she couldn’t afford a lawyer, and no one would take the case on contingency.

Early in their marriage, Dale had bought stocks and bonds in companies such as AT&T and Wal-Mart, sold them twenty years later at thousand percent increase, then squirreled the majority of the money away in overseas accounts that no one but him could touch.

Although Pearl worked side by side with him at the printing company, she got very little from the divorce because they owed everybody because Dale bought everything on credit as if he knew that day would come. Dale bought out Pearl’s share of the printing company, which was less than a penny on the dollar.

In the end, to keep down confusion and not to destroy her daughter’s love of her father, Pearl agreed to leave only with her personal things and the few thousand dollars to set up housekeeping somewhere else. She moved into a dinky, dingy place with her daughter Lesley who was about to start her internship at Houston Hospital. Pearl had to support the two of them. She started looking for work but to no avail.

In Pearl’s personal things was a 35 mm Nikon camera that she bought in Japan years before when they were station there for a year. The same year her uncle and aunt died in the car accident.

She started freelancing because she had several courses in photography in college. Just before she spent the last dime she got from the divorce settlement, Pearl sold her first roll of film to a small local magazine for two hundred dollars, and from then on there was no stopping her.   

AS SHE pulled into the car rental at the airport to drop off the Land Rover, she thinks how the camera works magic for her. She talks to the camera as if it is her best friend and makes love to it like a lover. The camera responds like a million dollars and fulfills all her dreams.

When the money started pouring in, she moved to the Main Street High-Rise complex.

Now she is sitting on top of the world in her own place without money worries.

Life can’t get any better, she thinks.

She wants to invest her money in something worthwhile, instead of putting it in stocks and bonds. She doesn’t know what at this time, so it draws interest at Bank of Houston on Main Street, not too far from where she lives in beautiful surroundings.

Pearl uses her camera to take photos mostly of natural environments, such as rain forests, mountaintops capped with snow, volcanoes, canyons, lakes, comet showers, and eclipses. Moreover, she photographs unusual people, such as the homeless, a child at play, and the old forgotten people. Even National Geographic wants a piece of her.   

She thinks she is on top of the world as she boards the plane to Houston.

THE WOMAN sitting next to Pearl is Topaz Toy, a hot publisher from Houston. As they converse, sipping Irish coffee, they discover that both of them are living in the same complex but have never met.

Pearl is delighted to meet Topaz because she is intending to give the Mars, sunrise and sunset collection to Topaz to strike a deal with her for a special edition layout. Now here Pearl sits next to Topaz Toy, the fastest rising publisher of the decade. After Topaz hears about the photos, she tells Pearl to bring her portfolio in when she has them ready for layout.

The two women chat about their lives without men and they laugh a lot as they sit in first class, on cloud seven, flying to Houston.

Topaz

Harboring ill-will steals precious time, energy, and fun."

S. Johnson-Cooper

TOPAZ JONES TOY IS A NEW and promising publisher, in Houston, Texas, of the hottest monthly magazine on the market called LIFE W/OUT MEN, an urban magazine for women. She employs over a hundred people and is still hiring daily because the subscriptions are growing steadily. She expects the rate to reach ten million before the year ends.

Topaz Toy, a lively thirty-nine years old, is overweight. She weighs almost 200 pounds and reaches only five feet in her stockings. She sports a very short, dark reddish brown curly Afro, even though Afro hairstyles are passé. She is dressed professionally and smartly in a brown hounds tooth tailored suit with a gold silk blouse showing in the V of the suit. The outfit accentuates her extraordinary golden brown eyes. Her beautiful baby face with dimples in the cheeks and chin makes her attractive in spite of her size.

Topaz is returning from a business trip with another publishing company in Colorado Springs. The Now Tribute, 100-year-old company, needing a face-life wants a merger with Toy’s company. The merger will make Topaz a multimillionaire. They will let Topaz continue to run the business in Houston for five years, with ten percent stocks in the company, and a seven-figure salary.

Topaz thinks that will give her enough time to accomplish what she wants before retirement. She will then act as a consultant to the company. It is about time, she thinks.

She also thinks quietly about her past.

TOPAZ’S mother Nora Jones died in an automobile accident when she was only two. The accident happened when Nora was returning from an ice cream birthday party for Topaz at the community park.

It was November 7th, minutes after leaving the park on a nice sunny afternoon. It started raining down cats and dogs unexpectedly. Nora didn’t see the animal in the road until she was right on it. She swerved to miss it, lost control of the car, flipped several times. The wreck killed Nora instantly but Topaz was buckle in the rear seat, and she didn’t get a scratch.

Topaz had to live with her grandparents Sydney and Lynsey Jones, who were her mother’s parents, although they had been estranged from their only daughter because they had wanted Nora to have an abortion when they found out she was pregnant. They never forgave their daughter for getting pregnant and having a baby without a husband. Nora wouldn’t even tell them who and where the father was.

They didn’t want Topaz, their only grandchild. They were not mean people, but they didn’t love either. Topaz couldn’t get close to them. They were strict grandparents and made her work hard. Occasionally they screamed at her but never praised her.

Topaz learned at an early age to be smart, quiet, and stay out of their way. The Jones never celebrated her birthday with parties or even a cake because of excuses such as it was the day your mother died, it was Election Day, and finally you are too old to celebrate your birthday with a party.

Topaz was glad to finish high school at sixteen and marry Armando Toy, a 30-year-old Hispanic. She only wanted to get away from her grandparents who gladly signed the papers for her to get married so they wouldn’t have to send her to college and support her anymore. She was barely sixteen.

Less than six months after the marriage, both grandparents died together in an automobile accident. Sydney was driving home in the rain when an animal darted out in front of their car. He swerved to miss it and the car flipped several times killing them instantly. Go figure.

Topaz had to bury them. A few neighbors came to the funeral, but no relatives came because Topaz didn’t know any. It was a sad occasion because Topaz had to sell everything including the house to raise the money for funeral expenses, but Armando was there for her. She was also showing with baby, although she wasn’t even seventeen yet.

AFTER twenty years of marriage to ‘Mando’ as Topaz called him from the day they were married, filed for divorce claiming verbal abuse. Mando left her penniless, in debt, and with no place to live.

A year earlier, Mando talked Topaz into buying a new, huge house with new furniture, two expensive cars, a sailboat, and other things in both their names. He filed for divorce, giving everything to Topaz, knowing she couldn’t pay the bills. Topaz had no marketable skills for employment. She had only a high school education. Topaz didn’t even protest the divorce or the debts that came with it. She just signed the papers and said, Good riddance.

Mando had waited until their son Armando Junior was married and out of the house to pull this dirty trick on Topaz. Mando hated Topaz, and this was pay back. He wanted her to fall flat on her fat face.

Topaz didn’t lose the weight that she had gained during pregnancy after Armando Junior was born. In addition, she steadily gained five to ten pounds a year. She went from a petite six to woman’s sixteen. Secretly Mando hoped she would commit suicide under the pressure.

Topaz used and verbal abused her husband without mercy the entire marriage. She was very unhappy, although Mando was good to her. She made him help her clean, cook, and take care of the baby.

Topaz had always relied on Mando for everything, although she treated him like shit. Mando was a computer analyst and his son followed his example.

When Junior was younger, Mando couldn’t make him obey because Topaz would get upset and scream nasty names at him. Therefore, he let Junior do whatever he pleased to keep Topaz’s mouth shut.

Even letting them have their ways and spending money as if it grew on trees still didn’t please Topaz. She was just a miserable woman, and misery loves company. Topaz treated him as her grandparents treated her: without love or feelings, just indifferent. Mando was like a lap dog, constantly coming for more maltreatment. Finally, he had enough.

Topaz knew she was cruel, but she couldn’t control her actions. The only time she was pleasant was when they made love. They truly enjoyed each other in that way, with multiple orgasms. However, a marriage is not in the bed only. When the dust cleared, Mando was gone, and Topaz was alone in debt with nowhere to turn and no way out, but all she could think about was how she would miss making love to him.

AS THEY fly toward Houston, Topaz’s mind drifts to her son and wonders how he is faring.

Junior Toy

But as for me, I will walk in mine integrity…

Psalm 26:11

JUNIOR, GROWING UP, WAS AS ROTTEN AS he was good-looking. Moreover, he was as good-looking as he was charming and too smart for his own good.

Now he is a six-two tall ‘movie star’ man with Errol Flynn’s dark curls. He has slim hips and wide shoulders, and golden brown intelligent eyes like Topaz. He has high cheekbones in a masculine face. Sometimes when he grins a certain way, his cheeks’ dimples show just likes his mother’s.

He grew up spoiled and undisciplined because Topaz was always there to defend him and let him have his way. He managed to get through school on a wing and a prayer because he is gifted. He finished high school at age sixteen like his mother. He went to a technical college to complete his education with a Computer Science degree in two years like his father. Eighteen, married with a baby on the way, more or less like his mother.

Junior is just as crazy about his mother as she is of him. When he got married because he got his girlfriend Faye, a woman ten years his senior, pregnant, Topaz had a fit. It broke Topaz’s heart because Junior wanted to marry her and give the baby a name.

Topaz had prayed often that he would have done better in the marrying department than she