Bastard Child

By Joh'Vonnie Jackson

“Yeah, I’m Joh’Vonnie Jackson, bastard child of the infamously irascible Joseph Walter Jackson, half-sibling to Rebbie, Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, LaToya, Marlon, Brandon, Randy, Michael and of course Janet. And these are the chronicles of the 11th Jackson, half-damned and half-blessed.” -excerpt from Bastard Child<

• Language: English
• Publisher: Metalmen Media LLC
• Release date: Feb 14, 2018
• ISBN: 9780998347035

Book preview

Chapter 1

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THE 11TH JACKSON

I’m Joh’Vonnie Jackson, bastard child of the infamously irascible Joseph Walter Jackson, half-sibling to Rebbie, Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, La Toya, Marlon, Brandon, Randy, Michael and of course Janet.

It was firmly established in the Jackson family household that Joe was the boss, and calling him Joseph reinforced his authority. For reasons I do not completely understand, I was the only one of Joseph’s children whom he allowed to call Daddy. This obvious disparity has at times created further awkwardness and distance between my siblings and myself. On my part I do not believe I was allowed to call him Daddy because I was favored, or that he somehow had a different role in our little family. I just think he had gotten older and had brought up nine other children.

And I suspect he had put so much energy and time into managing his kids in a professional capacity over the years that maybe there was some relief on his part that I was not included in any aspect of the all-encompassing life of show business. Understanding about the circumstances of his life growing up in the 1930s and ’40s you might just come to some different conclusions about him. He’s not nearly so unusual in the context of his upbringing. His hard ass authoritarianism really is how he was brought up by the people including teachers and family that he respected deeply.

Today I found this pseudo-antique snow globe, a nice one. It is a trinket Daddy purchased for me when I was a little girl. He brought it back from one of his many exciting travels overseas. I think about all the adventures he has lived as the world opened to him and his children. I think about what a renegade Buffalo Soldier he has always been, living large with a thoroughly genuine sense of himself. He has earned the right to indulge in some much-deserved self-satisfaction in all that he has accomplished despite all the odds against him given the situations he raised two families in while forging an unparalleled career for himself and his children.

These days I see Daddy ever so reluctantly settling into old age. His wide river-green eyes burn brighter like he’s still trying to figure out what to do next. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of him and recognize something of a retired prizefighter bored with the sidelines, just itching to get back in the ring and reclaim his title. There was once a time when he was considered one the greatest managers in the music business … He stares for a very long moment at his luxury wristwatch and down to his impossibly shiny shoes and belt buckle before focusing again on whatever it was that was dissatisfying him to begin with. He exhales.

The man is almost a mystery to himself. I’ve known that, his girlfriends have known that and his grandkids, too. When I watch Daddy standing in his condo-sized closet carefully inspecting all those custom made suits, I know he’s thinking about where he’s been and where he’s headed off to but never his ending. He’s revisiting the foundations of his legacy as only Joseph Jackson is capable and he does so by honoring this ritual where he examines favorite coats and shoes and belts and ties and hats, taking mental and emotional stock of each potential outfit. So there’s my daddy trying on the world one arm and one leg at a time just like he’s done for decades and the mirror drinks him in as it always has. African princes and barons of international industry, leaders of the business world from throughout Asia and Europe have him on speed dial, as do half of the sketchiest gophers in all of the shadiest corners of Vegas and Southern California.

I move on from watching Daddy’s daily rituals and move to my own room and continue unpacking my things. I’m here to look after Joseph because nobody else volunteered. He’s just that unpleasant to deal with. Daddy isn’t just grumpy. His meanness is damn near evil when he puts his whole heart into it, which is increasingly often when he’s not getting his way. And there on my bed in my very own room in Daddy’s house a whole bunch of barely opened boxes and luggage wait for me. There’s no room for half this stuff. It’s got to go, along with all this baggage from the past.

You know how unpacking and reorganizing after a big move has a way of making room for new perspectives on what’s already happened as well as on the future? Of course, some of the uncovering and revisiting is sad, terribly so, but without pain you couldn’t experience heartbreak and you’d stay in a toxic relationship until you too become poisonous. Without pain you wouldn’t know how bad you need a hole drilled in that molar. And you wouldn’t know your pumps are too damned tight. Without acknowledging pain, you might just put up with inhumane cruelty for your entire life with an empty smile on your face.

Truth is, it does no good sitting around moaning about what you have no power to change. It is what it is should be tattooed on my wrist because now I must dwell in the present and I cannot help but to wear my heart on my sleeve. I take stock of the history that’s brought me here. I claim a niche that I alone can fill, just by being myself. That’s taken me a lifetime to realize. This is a brand new Joh’Vonnie and yet she’s always been here, just hiding beneath layers of insecurity and self-loathing. Yes. I can admit that now. Of course, life has been anything but uninteresting.

Everybody knows how Joseph is the father of iconic legends. That in itself is difficult to wrap your head around sometimes. Our brother Michael truly was and is the most famous person to have EVER walked the earth. That’s no exaggeration. Strange as it is from my window seat, being that he is my brother and he didn’t think too much of me, Michael Joseph Jackson was, and still is, better known to more people across every continent simultaneously, than Gilgamesh, Tutankhamen, Alexander the Great, Confucius, Socrates, the Buddha, Abraham Lincoln, Queen Elizabeth, Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe and even Elvis. Yeah, I know some skeptic hater just spit out their SKINNY mocha latte. But it is true. People in different nations aren’t necessarily even remotely aware of the existence, much less comprehend the popularity of luminaries from other lands, especially ones that are very different from their own.

But Michael Jackson is the most instantly recognizable person that’s ever lived. Whole generations from every continent know his likeness and identify with him. They not only know his sound, they adore the contrived persona he presented the world. Of course, this is because he strived to connect with everyone and obsessed on every detail to enable himself to perfect the execution of every vision. His unparalleled iconography has somehow managed to eclipse its own shadow, especially in death. Even if his detractors argue against these assertions of the obvious, no one can debate that my brother was by far the most famous black man that’s ever existed and there can be no argument that his contributions to popular culture are legendary.

The faults and sins of Michael Jackson will be long forgotten in future decades but his music and likeness are immortal. Let it be known to all and never forgotten that without our father, Joseph Walter Jackson (and Kate), Michael would never have been born and neither would the rest of our father’s globally celebrated children. Without Joseph, in all his imperfections and regrettable actions, none of us would have even conceptualized that a carnival much less a merry-go-round with a brass ring ever existed. It was Joseph that pushed them all onto the fabulous spectacle and showed by example how to do a whole lot more than just hustle and get over. He taught his children to really glow in their own presence, produce their best work, study their contracts, to manage their own money and always present themselves with humility and an authentic display of only the best manners. These are the hallmarks of a Jackson. Joseph instructed his kids to work diligently and tirelessly toward taking possession of the whole carnival as part of their self-made destinies. That’s how we Jacksons thrive against the odds. We truly are a whole lot like our father. We personify how circumstances factor greatly in the development of character and that masterful execution makes the final determination as to who will ultimately succeed in experiencing his or her full potential.

After I spend an entire day helping Daddy prepare for the airport as he gets ready for another trip and departs onto the first leg, I often find myself wondering what he is thinking about. What’s on his mind while he’s so far up in the sky reclining in his window seat above the clouds? He truly has been just about everywhere in the world. If you were to count all the hours he’s spent sitting up there in his first-class throne, propelled across oceans, continents and nations - all totaled, there would be years spent in transit, jetting across the planet. Does he stare out the window lost in thoughts, his memories or his schemes? Is he up there fretting about the things he’s done wrong by people? Is he up there gloating about what he has done right or practicing apologies? Is he worried about his family? Or is he just trying to figure out how to repair another business deal that went badly after yet another lowlife loser conned him out of his investment?

I can’t help but ponder what his wife Kate must be thinking as Joseph jets above the earth, a VIP passenger on yet another mysterious mission. When she finds herself thinking about the only husband she has ever known, does her stomach knot up? Does her heart beat against its own walls like mine does? Will Joe be coming home this time? Is she conflicted with woeful fury and pain that bangs and roars like the blaze in his big, pretty eyes? Or is she just happy he’s not present in the same house that she is?

That might depend on which Joseph he was last she saw him. There is the Joseph who is always going somewhere and dressed to the nines in his sharpest, custom silk suits. Painting on his eyebrows and fussing like a prom king. And then there is the wordless, and almost lonely Joseph, molded into the couch, zoned out on CNN. This is when he’s still and silent, except for one hand at a time swirling his Baoding balls, fast as lightning. Another Joseph is a man that belittles women to the point of tears and terrifies men.

Whatever answers the future holds regarding the sum total of his moving parts, he remains, as always, our irascible, unreadable and undeniable patriarch. Does Joseph possess any degree of empathy? That’s the elephant-sized question on everyone’s mind in his proximity. Does our humanity figure into his conscious at all, and if so, which of us matter to him? Only the rich and famous ones? Does he wonder how he might figure in ours? Will he ever admit all that he’s done wrong by some of us, or continue to pretend that none of it ever happened? That the injuries he’s inflicted are just mistakes that we ought to get over, just like he has.

All the same old questions remain as the years pass by. It would be a comfort to me to know that Joseph possesses any capacity to feel other people’s suffering, especially what he has caused and/or contributed disproportionally to. Or maybe, I hope to myself, perhaps Daddy is gaining some new perspective on his life and on all his children’s lives in his senior years. He might even be thinking about the future of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren and how far his personal legacy stretches beyond his own horizon far into the future.

My attention returns to the snow globe and I give it a twirl. I think about my daddy carrying it back as a gift for a past version of me that was carefree and innocent. How much it meant to me that I was thought of when he was away, being honored for being himself by some very important person in a faraway land. And since there was never any knowing when he’d be coming home, it was always a momentous experience receiving some token of Daddy’s affection with a personal touch to it. I don’t remember where he got that precious gift or even when he gave it to me exactly. But the snow globe remains in my possession, tying him to me, and the world of our distant past. He brought back this delicate, entirely breakable thing from the far-flung reaches without even a scratch or crack.

I remember thinking to myself as a child that the little house in its shiny globe was like the tiniest dollhouse in the world. A miniature, perfect Swiss chalet, on its own little hill. It reminds me of the Hayvenhurst house, too. That over the top splendid mansion in Encino that Michael remodeled, in his own vision, complete with all its aloof mystery. Hayvenhurst was the epicenter of Daddy’s other family and eventually that did not include Joseph.

I was not always a welcome guest in that omnipresent mansion. No one is going to let me forget that either. But that’s not even one quarter of one half of the story. Everyone has been so eager to learn about my kin from where they’re coming from. No one has even heard of mine. I’m done with self-censorship and being omitted from any mention in the annals of history, and since I’m not carved out for commercial consumption by a publicist, like Joseph’s other kids, my perspective actually matters. I don’t hold back and I’m nobody’s favorite celebrity. What follows are chronicles of the 11th Jackson. Half-damned and half-blessed.

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Chapter 2

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BASTARD CHILD

They tell a story in Liberia, one about a man Jeboo, and a woman also named Jeboo who lived in the same poor village. Both the man and woman Jeboo each had but one eye, one ear, one leg and one foot. No one would marry them on account of their flaws so they married each other, and moved away from the village to start their own farm in another valley. There they grew an abundance of food and were very happy together. They wanted for nothing else in the world. After a

Reviews for Bastard Child

[Brittany · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Great read! I enjoyed the book and the vulnerability she conveyed.

[Annette Arellano · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I only read a few pages but it's like she celebrates a fame her half siblings had not her. They wanted nothing to do with her but she acts like she was always there