Kellyville Secrets

By Doris Walker-Bratton

“Secrets aren't secret. They're just hidden treasures, waiting to be exploited” (Stephen White).

Even in the 1960s, secrets were the hardest things to keep especially for the three well-known families in the small town of Kellyville where everyone knows everyone. Kellyville may be small, but the secrets are big. The influential families within the small town consisted of the Bentops, the Shays, and the Seeds. When you are busy protecting your image and the family secrets, you risk being pulled deeper into a web of lies, deceit, and anything far from the truth.

The Shays: Being born with a disability in the 1960s didn’t make life any better for Betty Shay. Despite having Down syndrome, her mother wouldn’t allow her to feel defeated even if that meant teaching her herself. However, everyone has their breaking point. After a horrific ordeal, Betty and her mother moved away with all of their secrets.

The Bentops: As the daughter of Pearl and Todd Bentops, Sealee Bentops is able to experience the luxurious life of a black entrepreneur in the 1960s. After an unexpected death in the family, do the hidden secrets die with them or resurface with unanswered questions? Who knew that Sealee’s twenty-first birthday would be the most changing moment of her life?

The Seeds: A forbidden love and old family secrets forced Skyrra Seed to cut all ties with the one individual she loved and move away. When hiding someone else’s secrets jeopardizes your happiness, it will only lead to resentment even if it’s toward your own parents. Being a single parent was by force and not a choice for Skyrra. But now that Skyrra’s daughter, Jackie, has grown up. What havoc will the remnants of her mother’s past secrets that are slowly being revealed create?

What happens when the lives of three families become so intertwined that they appear as one web of the untold? Will Betty, Sealee, and Skyrra solve the mystery within the Kellyville families? Will Kellyville ever be the same when all of the cards are out on the table?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524567330

Doris Walker-Bratton

Doris Walker-Bratton is a Mississippi native that now resides in Brooklyn, New York. Writing for Doris started as a hobby, along with baking cakes, after she retired from her job due to injury. She is a licensed foster parent of children with disabilities since 2005. Doris enjoys baking, writing, and spending time with her family.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Betty Shay

Every second and fourth Saturdays, my mother, Sandy Shay, and I would go into town to buy groceries and other necessities. After we made the first Saturday trip, she’d give me the opportunity to go into town alone on Wednesdays to teach me independence and do things on my own. The people in town hated seeing me alone as they judged me to be the worst person who ever lived. I never paid any attention to them and stayed focused on what my mother really sent me into town to do.

I was born with Down syndrome and suffered from some developmental delays. All the town bullies would take full advantage of me every chance they get. The children would throw sticks and rocks at me, sometimes hitting me with small rocks or calling me a different name, Betty the Beast. I didn’t care what anyone would say.

Sandy hoped that by teaching me how to care for myself, I would learn independence. The town hated that she would even think about allowing me to come into town alone. Sandy didn’t care and felt that it was necessary for me to experience some things on my own. I always followed the path Sandy taught me. It became a routine that I learned so well. I was walking fast, straight down Buffalo Street with a big smile on my face, minding my own business. My arms were swinging with every step I made while the people in town would stop in their tracks or whatever they were doing just to stare at me. I was 260 pounds. I was five feet and seven inches tall, with short thin black hair. My eyes were slanted and tiny, and my head was rather big, with pink lips and dark-brown skin. When I got into town, I went to the market first. The clerk was an older lady with white hair.

She smiled politely and tried not to stare. Good morning, Betty. Her warm smile made me smile too.

I come here to get the groceries for Momma. I pulled a list from my pocket.

Go on. She pointed toward the aisle.

The first thing on Momma’s list was peanut butter. I gazed over all the items on the shelves. I stopped in front of the jars of jelly and peanut butter. I perched my tongue between my lips and looked for the one Momma always get. I bent down to get it.

Oh my god! I heard a man screech behind me.

That’s a big one.

It sure is, another man chimed. I bet you she fine.

They admired from afar. I grabbed the peanut butter and stood up. Suddenly the men were laughing and grunting behind me.

Eww, one of them said.

I can’t believe God let all that go to waste.

They disappeared down the aisle. I took a deep breath and remembered why I had come to town in the first place—I had to get all the things on Momma’s list. When I was finished, I paid at the register and left the store. I fixed my cap straight on my head. I loved wearing my black baseball cap, but hated that it made me look like a man sometimes. I was a strong big-boned girl.

I carried my grocery bags all the way home without stopping. I could do a man’s job sometimes and think nothing of it. Sandy told me I could cut wood like a man—that I handled the ax well when I’m splitting small pieces for the fireplace. I don’t know why the women here in Kellyville are afraid of me. I’m a very nice person, and I’m always speaking to everyone I see when I go into town. Only one or two might speak back. I also attend Second Baptist Church every Sunday. The church’s members always make me clean the church. They would instruct me to polish the seats, dust the furniture, mop the floors, wash the windows, and clean the bathroom. After I’m finished cleaning on the inside, I have to go outside to pick up all the trash around the church while the members supposed to be cleaning up the church are inside the church’s kitchen, sitting down eating, laughing and talking bad about other people or about some of the church members who already left the church after they finished eating. When I finished with all the work, those mean church members wouldn’t pay me any money after saying they would. If I could count, I would say they owed me about a thousand dollars. God bless you child is what they’ll say to me every time. Then they sent me away. They had no right treating me like that because I’m different. I don’t look like the others; I don’t talk like the others, but I feel. I have feelings.

Momma told me a lot of stuff. She told me that I was pretty, even if no one else thought so. I knew Sandy’s heart broke when she saw how the public viewed me—her only child. I didn’t tell her how I was treated over at the church. I was sure she’d stop me from going. I loved going to church to hear Pastor John preach. He got down with the Word of the Lord. I wished Sandy would start coming to church. Just maybe the members would be a little nicer to me. Sandy taught me every day how to take care of myself. She told me that one day she’d not be here to help me and I needed to know these things. Of all the things Sandy taught me, it seemed she felt that talking about boys and sex was something she wouldn’t have to worry about, because of my developmental issues. She never got around to talk to me about the birds and the bees.

One day, when I was seventeen years old, I was playing outside my home in the front yard. My mother, Sandy, was on the side of the house towards the back, very busy. Although she was coughing a lot, somehow she still managed to wash the clothes and hang them out on the clothesline to dry.

The other side of our house was closer to the woods. I had already washed three sheets and some socks when Momma told me to go play. As I played around the front of my house, a red ball rolled up in the front yard where I was playing. I looked up all around when I noticed a man was hiding out behind one of the trees. I reached down, with my eyesight still on him, and picked up the red ball. At that moment, I heard him saying in a low, whispered voice, Bring it to me while he waved his hand for me to come. I peeked around the corner of the house again to see what Momma was doing, her back was turned and she still was very busy. I walked toward the woods where the man was hiding. He appeared on the other side of the tree. He was tall like a giant, and he was light-skinned, almost white. I backed up as he walked toward me. I stretched out my arm, giving him back the red ball. He suddenly grabbed me by my arm, pulling me into the deep woods. He took back the red ball and put it in his pocket. I didn’t cry out ’cause I didn’t know any better. I thought this man wanted to play ball. Instead, he had a little camp already set up, as if he knew it was meant for me to be there. He told me not to be afraid.

I’m not going to hurt you, he told me.

But I was scared.

The tall giant said to me, "I’ll