Seven More

By Marilyn Jones

When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation (St. Matthew 12:4345).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 28, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524510909

Marilyn Jones

author will not provide bio

Book preview

Copyright © 2016 by Marilyn Jones.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-5245-1091-6

                eBook           978-1-5245-1090-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Bible verse used is from KJV: Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

Rev. date: 07/20/2016

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Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

I praise and thank my Almighty Creator for all He has done for me.

When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation.

St. Matthew 12:43-45

Chapter 1

Sherry didn’t want to scream anymore. Without wanting to, she had screamed for so long, for so long! What would the hospital staff and the other people on the floor say? Sherry was sure that they all heard her above all of the other women. Between her screams, she thought she heard a couple of the other women in labor. She could imagine the old fat white mean-looking nurse she saw right outside of the room shaking her head, grunting to herself saying I bet she wasn’t screaming that loudly when she was getting that baby! But the labor pains of this delivery of this baby really hurt—much more this time than before. I mean, it hurt really badly when Sherry was giving birth to Donny too; but not this badly! This was a different kind of bad. This was like there was a razor-sharp sword cutting Sherry’s body in half!

After the next blinding pain subsided and Sherry held a scream inside, Sherry decided to try to take her mind off of the immediate pains and began to think back about both of her pregnancies start to finish—not only the trouble with this pregnancy—but also when she had her three-year-old son Donny. Her first pregnancy was easy, even pleasant. This whole thing, whole pregnancy, had been different, had been, well, too different and too difficult to understand. From the beginning, the morning sickness had been horrible. Then there was the hypertension. She was always tired and sluggish this time; and to add to that, her husband Donnell had been suddenly laid off around her third month and was grouchy and grumpy always. Sherry tried to stay positive-thinking anyway in spite of it all. To busy herself, after she stopped working at Chunkie Charles Chicken Shack (waiting on tables), she still went out to the park frequently (to just get out of the house from Donnell); and she often visited her friends and family in Greenspring County and the neighboring counties. She thought about Donnell more. And before the next labor pain arrived, she thought about her family.

Sherry thought about her mom and dad and felt almost comfortable for a moment. (She thought about them frequently every day.) Then Sherry began to think about her best friends, Carolyn and Saundra, and then the rest of her family. Her family seemed almost whacky at times—her loud Uncle Henry, gossiping Aunt Mildred, her cousin Eugene who always had a crush on Sherry. Then Sherry thought about her Aunt Ernestine. Sherry then began to think about and fully remember that scary day at Aunt Ernestine’s house (as she often thought about), that strange day after her cousin Walter killed himself. That whole week had been an awful week. But on that day (ironically, that beautiful sunny day) after that horrible tragedy, and family and neighbors and friends gathered at Aunt Ernestine’s house, after sitting for an hour on Aunt Ernestine’s old lumpy sofa, Sherry had asked Cousin Peanut if she could go upstairs and lie down on Peanut’s old bed. Sherry was more than seven months pregnant at the time; and her back was hurting something awful. Sherry’s friend Saundra had dropped Sherry off at Aunt Ernestine’s house early that afternoon. Sherry wished that Saundra would hurry back to pick her up.

Sure, girl! But instead, go on up in the front bedroom, in Momma’s room, and rest a little on her bed, Peanut smiled a little and said. Peanut leaned forward on the lounge chair she was sitting on. Momma’s bed is a lot more comfortable than that thing I used to sleep on.

Aunt Ernestine won’t mind me resting in her room? Sherry asked.

No, girl, Peanut whispered loudly. She waved her hand. Go on, girl.

Sherry thanked Peanut, slowly got up, adjusted her ugly pink maternity dress, and slowly walked to and climbed the stairs leading up to the house’s second floor.

When Sherry got to the top and walked down the short second-floor hall and reached Aunt Ernestine’s room, she stood at the bedroom door for just a few seconds and looked around inside of the room. Aunt Ernestine’s house was always neat and pretty; but Ernestine’s big bedroom seemed always to be the prettiest room in the house, always clean and fresh-smelling, with its old polished dresser and night tables and its older laced curtains. Sherry smiled a little at the two vases in the two bedroom windows full of artificial multi-colored flowers. Just when Sherry was about to take in more of the bedroom’s beauty, the baby inside of her kicked hard and reminded Sherry that her back was hurting. Sherry frowned and grabbed the sore side of her back and shuffled inside the bedroom and toward the pretty double bed. When she reached the bed, she carefully sat down on its flowered spread and took a deep breath. She wanted to lie down but she also wanted to be modest and lady-like-looking as she rested in case someone would come upstairs to use the bathroom or something and would walk past the bedroom and see her resting on the bed. Sherry decided to slip her flat black shoes off. She did; and then she reached for the two pillows at the top of the bed to place one on the other. After doing so and placing the pillows at the center of the bed’s headboard, Sherry got ready to slide herself on up to the pillows to position herself to rest.

But before she could move, she felt the big hands on her back! They felt like two very big hands—and they made it obvious that they wanted her off of the bed! They pushed her hard! Before Sherry fell onto the floor, she had a chance to look behind her to see who was pushing her. When she quickly did and right before she fell on her rear on the floor mat, she saw that there appeared to be no one else in Aunt Ernestine’s bedroom with her.

Sherry sat on the floor for a moment and hoped that she had not hurt the baby with the fall. She was shocked and began to rub her stomach with her right hand. Were those hands she felt on her back? She made herself believe that she did feel those hands, that those big hands were there and had pushed her off of the bed! She became angry, but she didn’t know with whom. Through her quiet panic, she started to reason with herself and then gradually began to doubt if she had really felt the hands. She decided to pull herself up from the floor. She became very afraid and then decided that she wouldn’t rest in Aunt Ernestine’s bedroom anymore. She wouldn’t rest until she got home to her own bed.

Sherry pulled herself up and put her shoes on as quickly as she could and cautiously looked around herself. When she went back downstairs and returned to the livingroom and continued to wonder about the hands in the bedroom that pushed her, she saw three elderly neighbors who were surrounding the seated Aunt Ernestine in the house’s diningroom. Sherry went to the old multi-colored-print sofa in the livingroom and sat.

Hey Sherry! How are you feelin’? How far gone are you now, child? Mrs. Wortham asked after she stared at Sherry. (Mrs. Wortham was the shortest and roundest of the three visiting elderly neighbors. She was a pretty dark-brown and wore a short mixed-gray natural hairdo, an old pink-and-red flowered dress, and ragged brown sandals.)

Seven-and-a-half months, Sherry answered as she sighed and put her hand on her belly.

And big! Mrs. Anderson added as this tall and thin lady with a mixed-gray wig on looked over her glasses at Sherry.

Yeah, she’s big, Aunt Ernestine shook her head slowly and agreed in a soft voice. I don’t know if that baby’s gonna stay put in there for another month and a half.

Sherry looked at the grieving seated Aunt Ernestine and felt so sorry for her. Peanut and Walter had been Aunt Ernestine’s only children. And everybody knew how much Aunt Ernestine loved her Walter.

Peanut was thirty-four-years-old and the younger of the two of Ernestine’s children. Her real name was Clarese, but she preferred to be called Peanut. Peanut was a pretty woman. She was short and golden-brown and round like Aunt Ernestine and Sherry’s late Uncle Charles. Peanut was gay and in love with a woman named Wanda. Most of the time, Peanut and Wanda stayed together at Wanda’s place. However, Peanut was at Aunt Ernestine’s house that terrible day because the night before that, Walter had killed himself.

Walter was Aunt Ernestine’s oldest child. She had him when she was only sixteen-years-old. The family said that she had had him by a West Indian man named Peter who was just passing through Pastel, Florida. He had stayed in town just long enough to settle and work at the stables with old white Mr. Olsen, stayed just long enough to meet and woo Ernestine Purdue and to get her pregnant, stayed long enough to steal the money from Mr. Olsen’s safe, and then he was gone. He simply went away and never came back. He was a tall, very dark, very crazy, very good-looking, and very no-good West Indian. And Walter was just as tall and good-looking and no-good and crazy as his daddy had been. Ernestine often thought about Peter and believed that she was in love with him way back then in a very hot and forbidden way. Peter had just gone away after he planted Walter in her womb, and Ernestine never saw her West Indian lover ever again. No one knew where Peter went to. No one knew how to find him.

When Walter was almost eight-years-old, Ernestine met and married Charles Lewis, who later gave Walter his last name. Charles’ family owned the empty big pretty white and blue house on Broening Way that they moved into. The following year, Ernestine gave birth to Clarese. Ernestine hoped that Walter would welcome his new sister. But he didn’t. He rarely ever played with or paid much attention to little Clarese at all.

Walter had been a trouble to the family all of his life. As a boy, he stayed in trouble in school, being always stubborn and disrespectful to teachers, always happy to break rules. And he was a thief from the very day he was born. Walter was known to most folks to be wicked beyond control. He was often accused of vandalizing property for seemingly no reason throughout the county. He also enjoyed doing mean things such as torturing animals and scaring and harassing small children. (He once killed a cat and then put a firecracker in its rear end and lit it and always laughed and bragged about that weird adventure.) When he became an adult, he enjoyed gambling and stealing and fooling with women of any age for gain. He was a seducer and a con-man to naïve lonely women. He was an embarrassment to his family. He became an alcoholic and a heroin addict in his early twenties.

Rumor had it earlier in the year before Walter jumped to his death that he had killed and hid the body of a girl named Jennifer Plates somewhere in Jenkins County (which was about six miles away from Ernestine’s house). The police had no clue about where Jennifer was or any idea of her terrible end. But by September, Walter was finally under strong investigation by law enforcement for the girl’s disappearance. Then one day, he got high and went to the third floor of Ernestine’s big old house and jumped to his death. Many believed that Walter’s suicide may have had something to do with Jennifer’s case.

People remembered that Jennifer Plates was no angel either. She had been far less than righteous. However, her father, Felix, ignored the dirty rumors he heard about his daughter; and he considered Jennifer to be just quite an innocent beauty. She was a very light-skinned black girl with long wavy hair—exactly what Jennifer’s father, Felix, considered lovely. (Felix Plates was glad that he had married very-light-skinned Lora Burke, who helped him to produce beige-skinned babies Jennifer and Denise instead of charcoal-black children that ran in his family. His very dark mother Laverne insisted that her sons seek lightness—and said that girls should pass the brown-paper-bag test—to help them and their offspring get along well in life.) When Jennifer got in and out of trouble, Felix always convinced himself that accusations about his baby girl were false and were based on the envy of other people.

Jennifer Plates was a secret whore by the time she was sixteen-years old. She often flirted and secretly met up with and messed with rich and well-to-do boys and men in the county (no matter what race) to receive gifts and whatever they would give her in exchange for her time and her presence. Then one day, she met the handsome Walter Lewis at a cookout given by her cousin Rory. She and Walter immediately became very attracted to each other and very soon became lovers. Felix Plates heard bad things about Walter Lewis and forbade Jennifer from seeing Walter, but it didn’t do any good. For months, Jennifer and Walter were hot for each other and were soon meeting up in quiet secluded areas of the Jenkins Park on a regular basis—until Jennifer missed her period and told Walter she was pregnant. She wanted Walter to commit himself to her. She told him that she loved him and wanted him to marry her.

On a rainy Thursday evening, Jennifer secretly left her house to meet Walter in Jenkins Park to run away. They had discussed it over and over again and made plans earlier in the week; and Walter told Jennifer to tell no one about what they would do. He seemed sure about their plans. He told her that he loved her. He promised her that he could get some money from his mother and get his cousin’s beat-up car and get them to Tallahassee. They would stay there for a while and make more plans for their future.

After Jennifer happily met Walter in Jenkins Park, he did not drive to Tallahassee. Instead, he drove her nearly sixty miles away from town in the rain to a deserted field near some hills she had never seen. He hit her hard on the side of her head with his strong fist, then dragged her from the beat-up car, knocked her down on the mud with a fist to her jaw, and beat her until she was nearly dead. After that and he wrapped his hands tightly around her neck to strangle her and she pulled at his hands, she managed to say a few words before she died.

Jennifer whispered, I will not have or give you peace. I’ll follow you if I can, you bastard. I’ll stay with you. I’ll follow you. When Walter left that field with the car he had actually stolen that day, he left that field alone. Jennifer Plates was dead and buried in a deep muddy grave Walter had dug earlier that day.

Now, months later, after Walter’s terrible leap to death, neighbors poured into Ernestine’s house with large amounts of food and loads of sympathy and support for the grieving Ernestine. To be honest, most of the people of the county really didn’t like Walter and were secretly glad that finally Ernestine could live in her house and in her life in peace. No one in the county was shocked at the news of Walter’s death. Everyone knew that someday, Walter Lewis would come to a bad end.

As she sat on the sofa, Sherry suddenly became very sleepy and closed her eyes intending to just rest them. Instead, she slipped into a short nap.

When Mrs. Anderson, Mrs. Wortham, and Mrs. Brown decided to leave Ernestine’s house, Peanut was glad. She really didn’t care for the nosey three women.

I hope you’ll like the coconut cake, Ernestine, Mrs. Brown said. "I was trying to make it perfect like you like it, but Zelda brought her kids over for me to keep just as I was finishing up your