Standing Strong

By Violet Simpson

Starting out in life, I never enjoyed my teenage years because I was suffering from a mental sickness, got married, and had three children. We were very poor but happy. I came to America, looking for a better life for the children, and all hell broke loose. My ex-husband started living a life I never thought of. I came to America illegally and had to run from immigration. It was heartrending what I went through after getting my legal papers, receiving my permanent resident card, and finally getting the children into the United States. I was homeless with three children. I was abused physically, mentally, and emotionally. I had to run away. It was the most terrifying time of my life on the road, and I had nowhere to go. As a parent, you try to stir your child in the right direction. Unfortunately, one of my son turned to the wrong path, and there was endless troubles. I couldn't be there for them because I had to work two jobs. I started to save what I could to buy a house in the United States, and way after, I built my house in Jamaica so I could migrate when it was cold in America. I later got married with another man, but that went downhill. I got sick with my right foot, and it was difficult to walk. My huge mansion in Jamaica was finally finished, and I started to enjoy the warm visits from my lovely family. Then misery hit. All of a sudden, a neighbor I used to be more than a mother to became envious of me and decided to block the road that I had dug out ten years prior with his building. That was the only way to my house. I decided to take the case to court and ended up with a lawyer that was a crook and didn't do anything for the case. The lawyer was presented with all the information needed to win the case. Six years later, I was still dealing with skeptical lawyers. Other lawyers were dumbfounded as to why the judge ruled in his favor to own the road. I have a new lawyer working on the case now, and I've received my registered title to say I own the road. Today, the trial has not ended, but trials are there to make us strong. There is nothing that I've been in where my Lord and Savior have never gotten me out of. Just trust in God. He will make a way. May God bless you all!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jun 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781646284368

Book preview

Chapter 1

At Age Ten

When I was about ten years old, I had a very bad experience. At my mother’s house, there were a lot of us. My mother had eleven children, and our house was very small. At age ten, I used to go sleep at my neighbor’s house because there weren’t enough rooms. Plus, my brother would sleep at other people’s house because there wasn’t enough room. Anyhow, I started sleeping at our neighbor’s house. I was sleeping with one of their older daughters. In the middle of the night, one of her older brothers would come into the room and get on top of me and rape me. I would cry and ask the sister to talk to him, for her to stop it. She didn’t. I would be so scared and afraid that I’d get pregnant. I wasn’t even seeing my period yet. I was not educated on these things of life. In those days, parents didn’t really tell their children about what to expect in life. I didn’t start having a period until I was sixteen years old.

I went to my mother and told her that I didn’t want to sleep at that house anymore. I was crying. I didn’t want to go back to that house. I didn’t tell her why. So I went and slept at another house. At this house, the only space for me to sleep was in a very small bed with the brother of the lady of the house. That man, I respect him until I die. I would sleep in this little iron bed with the mattress sinking down in the middle, and he didn’t touch me, ever. He never tried to have sex with me like the other man did. He didn’t even touch me. One regret I have is, I didn’t tell him how much I respect him. He went away to England, and sadly, he is gone now. He passed away.

I didn’t have a boyfriend when I was growing up. I was scared because of the experience I had when I was a child. Then my father made an addition to our house. He added more bedrooms to the house so we all could stay together.

Chapter 2

My First Job

I went and got a job at the Tomato Factory in Bull Savannah. They used to put the tomatoes in cans as well as tomato juice and pineapple. They decided to upgrade and start to put more things in cans, like lots of vegetables and fruits. When I got my first paycheck, I bought myself a little grip (suitcase). People used to call these Dulsie Mena. There was a story that they used to play on the radio every day; the title of the story was called Dulsie Mena Life in Town . A lot of people used to listen to her story. In those days, we only used to have radios, no TVs. After a while, I stopped working at the factory.

Chapter 3

My Second Job

A man asked my father if he would let me run his little grocery shop. He was stocked with groceries. My father said yes. I started managing the shop. We had lots of customers, but I was too soft and kind for business. So many people asked me to credit them groceries. They would tell me all kinds of stories, like how their children were hungry, and I couldn’t say no to them. I would give them groceries.

My father and some of his friends used to play cards at night. He locked the door with one of my cousins in the shop, sleeping on the other side. He didn’t know he was in there. Some other guys were passing by and heard him screaming and calling my father, so they stopped and helped get him out. I didn’t know what happened that night, if they took any groceries or anything else from the shop.

The stock was taken. It became bankrupt. No money, no anything; almost everything was credited out. All I had was their name and how much they owed in a book, and I didn’t get back anything. I was back at home with nothing to do. After all, it hit me so hard, and my father was so angry with me. I couldn’t sleep.

Around the same time, this other man in Bull Savannah asked my father if he would let me come and work in his bar. My mother put her foot down and said, No, you don’t see what it is doing to me?

Chapter 4

Trip to Kingston

I wrote to my half sister in Kingston, asking her if she could get me a job. While I was working, I would go back to school. She answered me and said, Yes, you should come. I packed my little Dulsie Mena. I didn’t have much to put in it. She got me a live-in job with this family called the Grams. This was right behind the Jamaican radio station named Radio Jamaica. It was very exciting for me. In those days, it was in the early sixties, and we only had two radio stations—RJR and Jamaica Broadcasting. There was no television.

I remember a lot of my friends migrating to their parents in England. Their parents went to England, and then they took their children over. One of my friends sent a letter to me, telling me all about England. She said she watched dog race on television. I couldn’t imagine what television looked like. At the time, I had never seen one.

Anyhow, this job my sister got me was to do housekeeping. It was a very big house. Ms. G used to have boarders plus her two sons. After a while, I got a job on Orange Street in Kingston. It was a shirt factory, but I would still do housekeeping at the Grams’ house. I would press the shirts, then fold and put them into the boxes that were ready for marketing. One night, I was in the little back room, where I used to sleep, when I heard a knock on the door. It was her youngest son. I got so nervous. I opened the door, and he said he was coming in to get something. His mother used to sew in that room. I was so inexperienced coming up from the country. In those days, we didn’t have a electricity, so I was very backward.

I got up and opened the door; I thought he was coming in to get something from his mother’s sewing. Just as he came in, he got into the little bed on top of me and raped me. That was when I lost my virginity. I didn’t even know what it was. It hurt at first. In those days, parents didn’t tell their children about facts of life. I was about nineteen years old. After that night, I felt so uncomfortable. I walked down to my sister’s house, told her I didn’t want to stay at Ms. G’s house anymore. I didn’t tell her why I didn’t want to stay at the Grams’ anymore.

She got me to stay with a little old lady at the bottom of her street for a while. Then she got me another job with a very nice lady named Ms. V, up in Halfway Tree, to take care of her children. She was a Christian. She used to sing at this church in crossroad. The name of the church was Union Square Crossroad. This was so exciting for me; I was living with someone who sang on the radio. In the country, every Sunday morning, the church would go live on the radio, and you would hear her singing. The neighbors next to my mother’s house had radios, so we would go and listen with them.

I became a Christian. At the church, they used to have young men sing and read the Bible, and they were blind. It was so touching and exciting for me to see what those blind young men could do. I was felt so touched. I felt the Holy Spirit within me. One morning, I was washing the baby’s nappies. I poured ink on the white nappies and told the other lady that was working there that if you believe in God and have faith, faith could do anything; so faith would take the ink out of the nappies. This was the beginning of my sickness.

One night, I walked from Little Que Road, where my sister lived, to Halfway Tree. It was very, very far from my sister’s house. When I got to Ms. V’s house, there was a very huge iron gate. It was closed. I climbed to the top and got inside the gate. That morning, Ms. V, as we called her, called my sister and told her what was going on. She came and took me to the doctor’s. The doctor asked if I was a Christian. Then he admitted me to the mental hospital. The name of the hospital was Belleview in Kingston. After spending some time in the hospital, I had to go back to the country, to Saint Elizabeth.

Chapter 5

Back to Saint Elizabeth

I had to go back home to the country, in Saint Elizabeth. It was an ongoing sickness. I used to be very sick with my period. It was awful. It was life-and-death. I would vomit so much, and I had severe pain in my belly. My mother tried everything to see if she could help me. She even boiled a huge pot of water and let me sit on a pail over the boiling water. It used to help me pass out the clots. The clot was what gave me severe pain.

It was ongoing sickness mentally. My poor father used to take me to so many doctors, but no one could help me. They told us that I had too much blood, and when it was not my period, the blood would go to my head and cause me to be mentally sick. The doctors also said that the only thing that could help me get over that was to have a baby. They said, You will pass out all that excess blood, and then you will be all right. He also took me to an herbal doctor, and everyone told us the same thing. It got so bad that people could stand miles away and hear me crying. The pain was so severe.

So I ended up being the cook at home. When I put this huge pot on the wood fire, I had to call for help to take it off the fire. There were eleven of us living at this one house, including my parents. We also used to feed so many people in the district, especially children. This lady named Vee used to live close by our house. She had nine children but had no male figure to help out with the kids. Every day she and her children would come for their coffee.

Our kitchen used to be far away from the house, with a huge fireplace. We would use wood to cook in it, and there was a very long bench. When all those children came, no one else could get any seats. My father was a big farmer. He used to plant lots of food and vegetables. We could afford to feed all those people. Plus, we had nine breadfruit trees in the yard. That was another kind of food. So they and others would come about in the morning, noon, and evening; plus, my mother used to plant her coffee trees, so she would make her own coffee. We didn’t have to buy coffee beans. Lots of very poor, sick, and helpless people would come to our house, and my mother and I would feed them.

We used to live in a very small house—not much money but lots of food. Most of the time, the breadfruits would just be ripe and drop from the tree to the yard, looking like butter. We used to give clothes, shoes, and anything else to the poor and people who needed help. My house was like Goodwill, even though I didn’t know what Goodwill was in those days. I would ask people, and whatever I could get, I would give it to the poor people.

On Sunday morning, whenever the boys needed a haircut, I used to be the one that cut their hair under the breadfruit tree. Our yard used to be full of people that I used to feed; some of them would come for the uncooked foods so they could cook that at their house. I used to give Vee and her children uncooked food also. My father would dig the root vegetables, and most of the time, he would leave it in the garden. I would go get it, and on my way to get it, I would have a signal for Vee and me so she could come and get the uncooked food. Sometimes I would tell her where I would hide it. That’s how God works. He provides for Vee and her children through us and other people in the area.

I was at home and didn’t have much to do. I used to do laundry for my cousins and their family. All of them had a lot of children. It was a very hard job. I had to carry the water and look for wood to boil the clothes before I started washing. Sometimes I felt like falling down on my face. I had to scrub them on a scrubbing board. Some of the house had, like, ten people in them. Most of them were boys. In those days, we used to boil the clothes because scrubbing alone could not clean them. I would be scrubbing the clothes from morning till night. Afterward, I would have to iron everything, mostly uniforms.

In the same area I was doing all this work in Shadow Kill, I started dating this man. He and I were dating for a very long time, but I could not get pregnant. I wanted that to happen more than anything in order to see if I would stop getting sick, mentally. I was in and out of the mental hospital. My poor father used to cry and say, I would rather be working, taking care of six children for me, than seeing you being so sick and no doctor able to help.

When I got the sickness, my favorite place to hang out was in a little town name Junction. It wasn’t far from my house. In the early sixties, it was only three stores and a gas station and also a dance hall. In the dance hall and other clubs, they would have a the jukebox. Most of all, the shops would have them. People would put money in and play music. I love music very much. I used to love dancing. I’d be at one place, and the next moment, I’d be dancing.

One day, this rich man was going to have a big dance at his club. There was going to be a live band. That was the first time in my life I’d seen a live band. I was so excited. I was dancing away so happily. I went to a standpipe, stripped, and started washing my