The Promise of Friendship: Friendship Is Forever. Isn’T It…

By Jo Evans Lynn

They were children who had seen too much

Youll be dead before youre five, those were the first words Joyce Ann could remember her grandmother saying to her and the fact that she was almost nine did not make living any easier

Joyce Ann, Josephine, Kenny, and Janie-all the children had seen too much, been through too much, dealt with too many grown-up things to be considered children in more than age.

Josephine spent her days fighting to protect herself and her siblings from bigger kids who saw the undersized children of a woman barely more than four feet tall as fair game

Janies days were spent cooking and caring for nine younger siblings and sleepless nights were spent wondering when rather than if one of her mothers numerous male visitors would decide to do the unimaginable

Kennys secrets were kept from even his closest friends. How could a child explain life with a mother who managed every detail of every day of his life from what he would wear to lessons that were not always about music

It was only the promise of friendship that brought these four young people together in a story about the power of love and acceptance among friends.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jul 20, 2011
• ISBN: 9781449719500

Jo Evans Lynn

JO EVANS LYNN, a native of Greensboro, N.C., taught nearly every grade level and every form of English/language arts during her 37 years in education. She graduated from James B. Dudley High School in 1967 and from Shaw University in 1970. She also received a Masters Degree in Reading Education from North Carolina A&T State University. She began her teaching career teaching middle school in Charlotte Courthouse, Virginia in 1972, but spent most of the early years of her teaching career in the Alamance County Schools teaching Title I Reading at Clover Garden Elementary School (9 years) and Reading Competency/College Prep English at Eastern Alamance High School (5 years). In 1987, she transferred and continued teaching Title I Reading, English, Journalism, Drama, and Speech & Debate at various high schools in the Greensboro City & Guilford County Schools in Greensboro, North Carolina (Grimsley Senior High School-10 years, James B. Dudley Senior High School-8 years, & GTCC Early/Middle College at Jamestown –2 years). Her diverse experiences as a language arts teacher reinforced her belief that even fiction should be based on real life experiences. In all of her books, the reader shares her experiences during the 1950s & 1960s as an African-American child growing up on the “Colored” side of town in the segregated South and as a teen searching for a place in the world around her in which the rules of life and social order are changing almost daily. Although her subjects are sometimes both serious and controversial, her sense of humor and spiritual faith always shine through as she “speaks” to her readers about the realities of growing up poor and as the second eldest of seven children. She is the divorced mother of three adult children- Janel L. Johnson, Clyde Lynn, III, and Gloria A. Lynn.

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The Promise of Friendship

FRIENDSHIP IS FOREVER. ISN’T IT…

JO EVANS LYNN

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Copyright © 2011 Jo Evans Lynn

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Cover: Self Portrait Jo Ann Evans Lynn © 1994

ISBN: 978-1-4497-1950-0 (e)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-1951-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-1952-4 (hc)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011912014

Printed in the United States of America

WestBow Press rev. date: 7/15/2011

Contents

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

Prologue

Josephine was going to hit him. Hard. She had to be the heaviest-handed five-year-old in ten different directions. As he considered the possibility or absolute certainty of being bopped upside his head, Kenny reached for the battered doll farthest away from Josephine. This doll looked like all the dolls that belonged to Josephine —uncared for and unkempt.

Josephine only brought them to nursery school so her mama wouldn’t worry her about playing with them. The dolls needed care and Kenny, even at age five, was a caregiver and champion of the helpless.

Don’t make me come over there and hurt up on you, Kenny, Josephine hissed at him without looking up from her coloring book. The radar sense of possessiveness for the few things that she could truly call her own instantly kicked in whenever someone touched something she owned.

Won’t anything make you come over here but your old, mean self, Kenny said challenging her as he eased the doll from under his shirt and put it back on the floor next to her. You don’t ever play with it anyway.

You say that to say what? Don’t make any difference what I do with it. It’s mine and when I say put it down, put it down, she tossed the challenge back, giving him one of her patented mean looks.

Since part of being a caregiver is taking care of self, it didn’t take Kenny long to decide to find something else to do. He gave Josephine one of his nowhere-near-as-mean looks to convince her — and perhaps to convince himself—that he was not really backing down.

He could probably beat Josephine, but she’d get his clothes all dirty and Kenny didn’t figure it was worth it.

I was just getting ready to use the red, Josephine said as Kenny picked up a crayon. He put it down and selected another.

And the green too.

Well which one can I use without having to look at you with your lips all pushed out?

Use the yellow or the orange. I never use yellow or orange.

Don’t I know it? I got fussed at for taking yellow and orange bears home yesterday. Mama kept me up past my bedtime teaching me my colors –again. You don’t care. Do you? Kenny asked, when she nonchalantly continued to color as though he had been swallowed up into the gray-white ceiling of Bennett College’s daycare center.

Can’t say that I do, Josephine replied, biting down on her more than generous lower lip as she fought to keep the primary-sized crayon inside the lines of what looked to be a daisy, but which Josephine had decided to transform into a violet.

Kenny scowled at her as he sat down and tried to make his picture of Cinderella look good in shades of the few colors he was ever allowed to touch.

Josephine smiled to herself as she continued with her coloring. She knew that Kenny always let her win their little confrontations and she appreciated it. They were the best of friends— this tuff-as-army brogans little girl and this gentle man-child —though it wasn’t noticeable to the untrained observer.

Both of them looked a lot older than five and a half. Josephine not only because she was so tall for her age, but because those eyes of hers were deep pools of wisdom about the kinds of things adults whisper among themselves long after the children have been put to bed.

And Kenny? Kenny had the face of a forty-year-old Baptist preacher. Dimples so deep a dime could get lost in them were the only softening features on a deep brown face with cheeks that were high, firm, and prominent, framing a square chin and oddly thin, dark pink lips.

Their unusual relationship was forged both by Josephine’s inability to make or keep friends, because she didn’t like children her own age and by Kenny’s state of perpetual outsiderhood because he was that mythical perfect child held up by elders for other children to emulate.

Here, Kenny, take any color you want, Josephine relented after she looked up long enough to see his picture.

What’s wrong with ‘em? Kenny said as he suspiciously felt the paper wrapping of each piece of crayon for hidden breaks. Josephine didn’t play nice or make any effort to be nice to him or anyone else unless it suited her. It was not like her to give up anything.

"You better take ‘em boy, before I change my mind, She was not about to tell him that she was feeling a little sentimental about her last day in nursery school.

Kenny knew anyway, as there was an almost twin-like connection between them. Still think you’re going to school this fall don’t you?

Josephine didn’t feel that his question was worthy of a reply, so she flipped the page of her coloring book and savored looking at the colorless page while she imagined how beautiful it would look when she finished coloring it.

Kenny didn’t allow the fact that he was being ignored to stop him, I told you my mama said since we’re November babies. We were born too late to start school this year.

Like I care what your mama says. My mama says I will be going to school this year, Josephine sassed, back stressing each word.

Who your mama think she is?

She knows she is- Mary H. Evans, and if she says I’m going to school, I reckon I’ll be sitting right up there at Washington Street School with Gloria this fall. I am way too smart to stay here another year with children like y’all, her voice crackled with the frustration she had suffered since her older sister started school a year ago and left her home with a bunch of mewling, whining babies.

Kenny didn’t contradict her. Contradicting Josephine was a lot like spitting into the wind — nasty and stupid.

There was enough truth in what she said to make her position unassailable. She was smart and she did act grown up. He’d known her since she came to Metropolitan Day Care Center with her sister, Gloria, three years ago. She had acted grown up even then. Their mothers lived on different ends of colored community— his mother a college-educated librarian and hers a domestic worker with a sixth-grade education. Both mothers had moved their children up to the new day care program at Bennett College a year ago.

Josephine, your mama can’t do anything about the state’s cut-off date for going to school. If it could be done, don’t you think my mama would have gotten me in school too?

Boy! Are you calling me a liar? She leaped at him and it was only Miss Markle calling her name that saved him.

Josephine! Your mother’s here to get you, Miss Markle — a remarkable monument to what could happen if two very ugly people produced a child — had more than the normal under-current of joy in her nails-on-chalkboard voice that the arrival of Josephine’s mother never failed to produce.

I hate for you to be disappointed ma’am, but she’s gonna be back in the fall, Kenny called down the hall as Miss Markle came as close to throwing Josephine out as she could without her mama taking offense.

If prayer is the answer, I’ll spend the whole summer on my knees, Miss Markle shouted back before Josephine and her mother walked out of hearing distance.

What have you done now? Josephine’s mother braced herself for a litany of wrongful behavior that would have put ten children to shame. She knew the child would tell the truth. Each afternoon, she seemed to take perverse pleasure in topping yesterday’s list of evil doings.

Didn’t get into but two fights today, and I may have suggested that we could use Miss Markle for the Maypole this Saturday, she beamed up at her mother. Josephine’s mother had been right. She told the truth and she did sound more proud than remorseful.

Well, that is a good day for you. What’s she got her back up about?

Oh, Kenny told her that I’m not going to school this fall ‘cause I was born late. He’s lying, ain’t he Mama?

Don’t sound surprised. This ain’t the first time you heard about being a late baby. So, you know he was part right. You won’t be going to Washington Street School this fall, but you will be going to school.

If I can’t go to Washington Street School with Gloria, I’m not going to school at all.

Are you sassing me, girl? She stopped and bent a couple of inches to put her petite frame on eye level with this strange child God had given her Josephine as a gift, but had not blessed her with anywhere near enough knowledge to know how to make it through the days of trials and tribulations her daughter caused. Many days, she had been tempted to ride the bus right pass the nursery school, and leave Josephine there for a few extra hours. She was more than willing to pay the fifty-cent late fee. The only thing that stopped her was the fear that Josephine would leave the nursery school by herself, get home ahead of her and throw the house into an uproar.

No, ma’am, I’m not sassing, just stating fact, Josephine tacked on her mother’s favorite saying.

Her mother caught herself trying to smile and quickly replaced the half smile with a grim line. It was funny the way the child always seemed to throw her own words right back at her, but laughing was not the way to get Josephine to mind.

Two of us talking and one of us got to be lying, she gave the child her "I’m-the-mama-here look as they got on the bus. That look would have been enough for most children. Josephine was not like most children…

Chapter 1

Her mother was wrong. She just had to be. Josephine repeated this dogma to herself for the umpteenth time. She had spent the last three days convincing herself that she was not the one who was lying about her not going to any school other than Washington Street School in the fall. By now, she’d done a pretty good job of it, quite a good job, in spite of the fact that she had never known her mother to tell a lie. While on the other hand, Josephine was famous on this end of Cruz Street and beyond for telling stories— she called them stories instead of lies because Jesus had told stories so she reckoned storytelling couldn’t be a sin.

Once she made up her mind that she was going to public school in the fall, she was ready to enjoy her summer.

On Cruz Street, summer played itself out like a pair of new Sunday shoes taking weeks to get used to, then too quickly the newness wore off. Josephine didn’t know it, but her little dust road with mostly three room, shot gun houses that wore their faded, cracking paint with a hard won air of indifference, was typical of inner-city Colored neighborhoods during the fifties.

Each house had a rickety front porch that was barely - big enough for a couple of pine straight-back chairs after dark. A few still had screen doors; having a screen door meant the renter was one notch above being dirt poor. Most of the screens from the doors and windows had been junked long before Josephine was born when there wasn’t enough screen to justify leaving the frame up. An opened door or window was a wide mouth welcome to every fly, moth or mosquito that happened by. All the front plots, there wasn’t enough land to call them lawns, were swept clean with stick brooms twice a day by the children. Although, several of the men worked as gardeners at mansions near the Greensboro Country Club, there were no gardens or potted plants, just morning glory and honeysuckle vines hugging the houses and climbing up the porch rails. Every backyard had a small garden with two short rows of corn, another one of tomato vines and green beans strung up on stakes that looked remarkably like parts of old screen doors. A few of the more ambitious gardens sported cabbage, peppers, and okra.

Summer was hard on the children here, because most of their mothers were maids or day workers, as they called themselves, who went to the beach to clean and cook for rich white families. The summer of 1954 followed the usual pattern, except for the fact that Josephine’s mother’s latest child, a boy this time, had been born January 27, which made him too small to leave. This was going to be the first summer Josephine could remember that her mother was going to be home. It should have been the best summer ever, but it turned out to be the worst.

***

The children who were old enough to take care of the younger ones would get together in the middle of the dirt road by seven-thirty each morning. There they would decide whose turn it was to do what. This year, Josephine’s sister, Gloria would get the biggest share of the jobs everyone hated, since she was the newest member of the seven and up gang of older children. Colored families considered it a waste of money paying someone to take care of their children during the summer once their eldest child reached the age of seven. It was an arbitrary number. No one knew who had decided that seven was old enough for that kind of responsibility. It just was and everyone went along with it.

Gloria, it’s your turn to change diapers today, Gary, the twelve year old elder member of the gang announced as he went over the list on the back of a sheet of used note book paper.

It was her turn to do that yesterday. Josephine piped in from her position outside the inner circle.

I don’t mind doing it again today. Gloria volunteered.

Well. I do. Half of those children got the runs. I don’t want our house smelling like an outhouse today too.

Who asked you? Gary straightened his customary round shouldered stoop to his full five foot height. Gloria, take your sister in the house so we can do our business in peace.

I can’t do anything with Josephine except tell Mama on her this evening. Gloria wasn’t ashamed to admit that her sister, who was almost two years younger, could beat her up because she knew Josephine could beat up most of the rest of them too.

The last time she’d been bigger than Josephine was when Josephine had been a year old and even then it would have taken more nerve than Gloria had to beat her up. Gloria was going to be short like their mother and Great-Grandma Hester who were both well under five feet tall. Everything about her was small except her big brown eyes that were as dark and clear a shade of brown as her face. She turned those big helpless eyes on Gary, silently daring him to tell Josephine where to go.

Josephine go on in the house and leave us big children alone, Vaughn ordered like he was somebody’s daddy, when his older brother failed to accept the unspoken challenge. He tried to deepen his voice to give it some authority, although he was only ten days older than Gloria and two inches shorter than Josephine.

Naturally, she did not budge.

I’ll do it. Debra Jean said when it was clear none of the boys would do it.

No you won’t, the children shouted in unison. Debra Jean had a habit of pinching children to make them mind which worked pretty well unless the child was as fair skinned as Josephine’s sister, Mary Louise or any of the Addisons.

Mama said she’d beat every last one of us till our necks roped like okra if she found another mark on Mary Louise. And I ain’t taking a whipping for you, Girl, Josephine set her straight as the rest nodded in agreement forgetting that only moments ago they told her not to interfere.

Everybody change their own babies. Gary announced with Solomonlike wisdom. He was more than willing to do this now that his youngest sibling was out of diapers.

Josephine almost relented when she thought of the fate of the younger Addison children under this plan. All the older Addisons were boys who would rather play than do what they considered women’s work. They would allow the three younger ones to wear soiled diapers until they qualified as human cesspools and the rashes under the diapers turned to huge blisters.

Bobby if you don’t change those babies’ diapers, I’m going to tell my Mama on you, Gloria said in a rare show of strength before Josephine could make her equally rare magnanimous gesture.

Your Mama can’t do nothing to us. Doddie licked out his tongue at Gloria, then turned and asked his brother, Can she Bobby?

You think anybody’s gonna stop that bitch if she decides to whip us like we’re her own children? Okay. Gloria. We’ll keep em changed if you promise not to sic your mama on us.

Just don’t kill him Josephine. Gloria nodded giving her sister indirect permission to tear Bobby out of the frame for using terms which were only suited for dogs on their mother.

Not that Josephine needed permission. The fight was on.

***

Bobby came out to the meeting the next morning with a dent in his forehead that looked a lot like the rim of the tin cup Josephine had been holding when the fight started. Everyone pretended not to notice it in hope that the others would do the same for them when they too had fallen victim to Josephine’s capricious temper.

Gary supplied an exciting diversion anyway. The Oohs and Aahs were easing off, but the delight was still bright in the eyes of the children. Gary was so proud that his chest was pumped out like a full-grown man’s chest. He had received that rare and special thing - a gift from a father. And it wasn’t even Christmas -just his birthday. In large families where ends never met and there was a birthday almost every month, having an extra serving of food was usually as special as birthdays got. So,