Monkee

By T Party Publishing

Monkee is about the journey of a little girl nicknamed Monkee. She is being cared for by her grandparents in Louisiana and learns about her family history through "bedtime stories" told by them. Monkee learns about why she's not with her real parents along with growing up and the secrets about who she really is. Join Monkee as she discovers herself through good old down south stories and recipes. Written by Librias Savonnah, Co-writer/Editor by Shay Goudia, Art by Leljamon Tibbs, Published by Marcus Clark/T Party Publishing

• Language: English
• Publisher: T Party Publishing
• Release date: Jun 12, 2011
• ISBN: 9780983731429

T Party Publishing

I started this company in 2010 with the desire to showcase real artist, poets, writers, designers, songtresses expressing real life and real love of art. We are not a mainstream company. We hold opportunity for anyone with courage enough to be themselves and express themselves.

Book preview

Monkee

By

Librias Savonnah

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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Published by

T Party Publishing at Smashwords

Monkee

Copyright © 2007 by M.S Glenn

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

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Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1- BIG DADDY, BIG MAMA, & MONKEE

CHAPTER 2- BIG MAMA’S CHEESECAKES

CHAPTER 3- NO PLACE LIKE HOME

CHAPTER 4- BEDTIME STORIES II

CHAPTER 5- FRUITS OF OUR LABORS

CHAPTER 6- WHO’S YO DADDY

CHAPTER 7- BED TIME STORIES III

CHAPTER 8- BED TIME STORIES IV

CHAPTER 9- BIG MAMA’S DREAM, BIG DADDY’S SKILLS

CHAPTER 10- UNCLE DOC

CHAPTER 11- LIVING WITH COUSIN JEWEL AND COUSIN MATTIE

CHAPTER 12- BIG DADDY’S SURPRISE

CHAPTER 13- SHOPPING

CHAPTER 14- THE BAR-B-QUE

CHAPTER 15- G’IT YO GRUBB ON

CHAPTER 16- WHO’S YO MAMA

CHAPTER 17- OSTRACIZED

CHAPTER 18- GOING HOME

CHAPTER 19- BEDTIME STORIES V

CHAPTER 20- BIG DADDY STANDS UP FOR MONKEE

CHAPTER 21- LITTLE GIRL BIG GIRL CONFUSION

CHAPTER 22- MAMA NOREEN STANDS UP FOR MONKEE

CHAPTER 23- PRECIOUS’S SECRET

CHAPTER 24- DADDY REDD

CHAPTER 25- NO BEDTIME STORY

CHAPTER 26- CASANOVA

CHAPTER 27- THE MOVE

CHAPTER 28- CAMPING

CHAPTER 29- BIG DADDY AND BIG MAMA TO THE RESCUE

CHAPTER 30- VANGUARD AND GRANDMOTHERS

CHAPTER 31- GUMBO

CHAPTER 32- NICKY MOVES OUT

CHAPTER 33- MONKEE’S FIRST TRUE LOVE

CHAPTER 34- WORLD OF CONFUSION

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BIG DADDY, BIG MAMA, & MONKEE

Monkee’s life with David and Martha Giles, Big Daddy and Big Mama, started three days after her birth when they took her home from the hospital to live with them. At the time Monkee’s mother was too ill to tend to Monkee, so she allowed Monkee’s grandparents the honor of being her parents. According to Monkee’s grandparents, this arrangement lasted for quite some time. She spent her first birthday (and many others) in the home of her grandparents.

Shortly thereafter, Monkee’s father, Redd, wanted her back. He had gone only two doors down to his parent’s house to get her. This didn’t sit very well with Monkee’s grandparents because they didn’t want her to go with him to live, but they had to comply with her father’s wishes and let him have her. She stayed one night in the home of her father and mother along with her older sister, Janice and older brother Derrick.

The next morning, Monkee’s grandfather came to her parents’ house and got her while everyone was asleep. He says I took one look at cha, and ya was wet, cold, ya nose was running, and you had messed your pants, and everyone in the house was sleep’n septs’ you so I picked you up and wrapped you in my overcoat and took you back home where ya belonged, with me and Big Mama, that’s what I did, and when they was looking for ya they finally thought ah’bout coming to da house and see if ya was there with me and Big Mama, which you was.

Monkee’s father, Henry Giles, was referred to by friends as Redd, but his family members called him Brother and sometimes Baby Brother, as he was the baby in the family. Monkee’s father was upset to find her there, but before he arrived, Big Daddy and Big Mama had a very long conversation about Monkee’s situation and what was to be done about it. Big Daddy insisted on keeping her for themselves and raising her as their own child because she was his first and only grandchild. Big Mama had several grandchildren of her own that came from the lineage of her sons by her first husband Sam Boudreaux. Big Daddy loved those children dearly and would do anything for them, but this child was special to him. Monkee was of his lineage and he wanted nothing less than the very best for her, now and always.

Big Mama wanted to return her to her parents but Big Daddy flatly refused. He actually begged Big Mama for them to keep her, and said if ya let hah stay ya’ll neva hav’ta works no mo, I promises ya Martha, I just want’s hah here wit us, please let hah stay here with us, please, ya won’t ne’va hav’ta works no mo. Big Mama now being sixty-two years old found these words of promises to never have to work again like music to her ears. She was getting on in years and she thought of nothing more than getting a rest from going to the two restaurants she owned plus working every weekend baking for another restaurant that sold her Classic Cheesecakes in their restaurant, she welcomed the idea of being home with just a child to raise as her own. So, Big Mama agreed and when their son arrived to take Monkee away, it didn’t happen. Monkee’s father was upset when his parents prevailed and insisted upon her being raised by them. Big Mama said that the argument lasted ev’ah bit of an hour. Then David told Redd, go home and take care of ya wife and the other two chil’rn that she had and leave you for us to tend to. That was the end of that. You be with us til now, always sleeping in the middle of the bed with us. Got ya own room, got ya own bed, but come and here jus the same most every night climb and the middle t’ween me and Big Daddy and we tells you about how it t’was long years ago."

Long Years Ago, that’s how all of Big Daddy’s bedtime stories began. Like the one about how he met, and schemed to get, and married Big Mama.

"Long years ago, bout’ 1923, I rode into the town of Village, Texas. I was need’n to find me some work there cus’ I’d got down to my last twenty dall’ah gold piece. I had a few loose dollars in my pocket to get by on til I’d get me some work b’cus I knew I didn’t want to break dat twenty on foolishness and so I kept it in my pocket where I’d know it’d be safe. Anyways I rode into town and got off my horse, hitched him to the post and went inta the little grocery s’toe they had there, and the man there was a black man but he looked to be white, kinda like you Mama, Precious, but he wan’t quite as white as she’s but he got by. He owned the s’toe there for black folks convenience.

So I commenced to ask’n him if he knowed where there was any work going on, and that I was lookin to finds me some work. He wants to know what kinda work I do and I told him any and all kinds of work, and he say there’s a lodging camp about fifteen miles up the road there that’s hiring. If you want ta work steady and get paid every week you take yo self on by there and they’ll hire you fa sho.

So I gets back on my horse and out of town I rode and the direction of where the s’toe owner, Mr. Claro pointed, I was bound and determined to find me some work.

As I contin’down the road, da dirt road I’s on begins to be filled with tall wild grass rather than dust and dirt and the scenery got to be more like wilderness than road traveled on. I knowed I was on the right path cus thats how the grocery man say it’d be, and I’d been ride’n long ah’nough now far about ten miles by then at least.

I finally finds the camp site and I goes in to the office there and I asks if they needing any mo hands to work, and that I got me a good back and a strong will to work, I got hired right there on the spot. Then they got to show me where’s I’m to sleep and where’s I’m to bath myself, and where I’m’s suppose to eat.

Eat, das when I seen, my Georgia June Peach. She had da color of a fresh brewed cup a coffee with just a tech a cream, and she wore hah hair tie up and a upsweep and I knowed it was long cus of it being so much up on top a hah head and it was jet black to match that coffee and cream skin a hah’z. She was a tall drink of water with a lil bitty waist, her face had two walnut sized cheek bones with deep set marble eyes, and two of the thinnest lips I ever see’d and she didn’t have on a drop of makeup on, didn’t need it, she had what’ch call natchal beauty.

I knowed it the minute I sets my eyes on her and she looks me square in my face, and she runs back into da kitchen, scared of what she sees, but she knows, and I know she knows. This is the first time I sees yo Big Mama, ask ha she right there, ask ha when it was that I first sees her and they introduce me with Mrs. Martha Louise Boudreaux. She be married at the time to the head boss for the colored workers at the logging camp in Texas, the camp site was own by whites that also had a white logging crew but they worked at another part of the timber lands."

Before Monkee let him speak another word, she turned to her grandmother and said, Mama, you ran from Daddy when you met him? Why you do that? Why you scared of him? What did he do to make you scared of him? Was he ugly Mama? What happened, why you run?

Chil’…. I was married to the meanest man in the country, Sam Boudreaux, If he saw the way David was look’n at me he’da killed them for look’n, and me for stand’n there be’n looked at. That man was crazy fa sho. I had to get out’a there and I did, but like David says, I knowed that look and it was nothin but trouble, and I was not gon have no part in it, so I ran.

"And noooo baby yo Big Daddy was not ugly, he was a fine look’n man, he was taller than me and he had a head full of black wavy hair with his green, grey, brown, eyes and his Carmel colored skin lookin like one of my pecan pie cent’ahs’s when you cuts into it. And just as smooth his face was, yo Big Daddy was somethin to look at, mighty fine to the eyes and still is. I warn’t scared of him ah’tall, but I was afraid of what Sam could and would do if he even s’pected dat someone had eyes for me, even though he was having his way with the school teacher, Miss Emma, the teacher for the colored chil’n there in the logging camp. All the colored chil’n went to school there, and we wanted our chil’n to be educated too and so Miss Lilly, she be the wife of the owner of the logging camp, and no one knowed it but me, that she was a white skinned-black woman, and she spoke up fo us to ha husband to get us a teacher for our chil’n if we was to stay at the camp year round and tend to the other necessary duties around the camp site. The older chil’n could do things like tending to the herb ga’den that I had grow’n in the back of the board’n house by the kitchen, sweepin up the walk way, and fetching water f’ah to wash the linens f’ah the table and dar-by save’n Mist’ah John and Miss Lilly the money they would use to pay someone to come in out of the woods to come and do it and then takes that savings and use it to pay da teacher to educate the colored chil’ns, an so dat’s how we came to have a teacher, Miss Emma.

She’s ah fine teach’ah, Miss Emma was. She wasn’t as tall as me, but ha skin was with da color of ah chess-nut, and ha hair was da color of ah rusted black skillet, it was. From a distance it had the pearence of be’n black but da closer a person got to ha d’hey could see ha hair was a deep dark, dark rusted red n brown. Now when she stand in the sun, then ya could really see she be hav’n dark red hair and that was hah nat’rul color of hah hair. And lawd, when she stood in the sun, it was just beautiful, it sho nuff was.

Miss Emma’s stature was that of a little short woman n she wasn’t as small in the waist as I was, but she be a nice size but not as tall as me n I think das what it was dat caught Sam’s eyes, ha hair n ha height, ha education n ha fear of Sam Boudreaux, das what moved Sam ta want ta have her for himself, even with him know’n she be see’n Mist’ah Claro.

Miss Emma used to teach in town but because most of da chil’n lived with d’hey parents whose houses was closer ta da loggin camp den the town.