Seven Shades of Sha-g

By Sharon Grann Mingus

Sharon was born on April 15, 1946, at the end of World War II. Her father worked for the Veterans Administration, until he retired, and mother worked as a cosmetologist. Sharon was raised in Santa Monica, CA where she integrated her elementary school and, along with her mother, was faced with racism on a daily basis. Sharon was a child prodigy, blessed with an operatic voice, singing at school events and church socials. Her family worked hard to provide her with piano lessons from the age of five years old. Sharon grew into a blossoming teenager whose parents instilled a strong sense of self-worth and a spiritual foundation. Her parents encouraged her to work in church, experiencing her first job as the organist of her Sunday School choir and director from the age of thirteen. At the age of 15, she experienced her home being taken by eminent domain to make way for the Santa Monica freeway. Moving to inner-city Los Angeles, Sharon experienced the culture shock of a sheltered small town girl in a big city, and everything, as she knew it, changed forever. 7 Shades of Sha-G chronicles Sharon's life from the age of eighteen and the events that shaped her into the woman she has become.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9781684563296

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Seven Shades of Sha-g

Sharon Grann Mingus

Copyright © 2019 Sharon Grann Mingus

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

Conneaut Lake, PA

First originally published by Page Publishing 2019

ISBN 978-1-68456-328-9 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-6624-1298-1 (hc)

ISBN 978-1-68456-329-6 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Everyone is born with at least one God-given talent. I was born with several.

No one probably cares that once upon a time I used to sing like Marian Anderson, play the piano like Liberace or play the organ, direct my Sunday school youth choir, and sing all at the same time from the age of thirteen. But I did. I bet my parents are turning over in their graves knowing after all the floor-mopping, window-washing, and ass-kissing they did to pay for my piano lessons that I’m not doing any of these things now.

These are a few shades of my life beginning in 1964, when a few of my high school friends got together and decided to give me a surprise birthday party.

My eighteenth birthday fell on a Friday. As the day began, it was just like any other school day, not expecting anything in particular. If I had stayed out of trouble that week and my mother didn’t have to come to my school, I could get the car, and I and a few friends could ride around LA and show off like teenagers like to do.

My mother surprised me with a large present when I got home from school, and she stood there while I unwrapped it. I was so excited because at first I thought no one remembered my birthday. Especially April fifteenth, the day everyone’s taxes are due. I opened the box to find the prettiest canary-yellow pants and sweater wool set. It was the best outfit I had ever seen, and I couldn’t wait to put it on. After getting dressed in my new outfit, I asked my mother if I could drive the car to pick up Ellie and Sandy, my two closest friends at the time. She said yes and handed me the car keys.

Ellie and Sandy told me to drive over to one of their friend’s house. When we walked in, everyone yelled Surprise! It was my eighteenth-birthday surprise party! I screamed and laughed, and I was so happy, and there were about forty of my closest school friends there. The music started, and we all started dancing, and someone spiked the punch, and my boyfriend, if you could call him that, asked me to dance, and we slow-danced to three records without stopping.

I thought I really loved Ernest. He was tall, had bright skin, and was handsome. But I didn’t really know if he liked me or just wanted to get in my pants. But he was there for me.

I was so tired and hot from all the dancing. I went out on the front steps for some fresh air and walked down to the bottom and sat down. I heard a faint voice coming from across the street. When I first looked, I couldn’t make out who it was. I got up and walked across the street and bent down to see who this was in the car calling my name. I didn’t recognize him, and at that moment he grabbed me and pulled me into the car through the driver’s window by my head and immediately threw me into the back seat. All of a sudden, he was on top of me, and he said, Don’t scream or I’ll kill you, and he put his hands around my throat and squeezed until I saw stars. Then he let go and started to tear off my pants, ripping the zipper, and tore my sweater from the arm. He raped me. When he was finished, he put me out of the car and drove off. I stood there in the middle of the street wondering what just happened to me. I was a virgin!

All I could think of was I had to go back into the party. When I opened the door, I must have been a sight for sore eyes. Ellie grabbed me and rushed me into the bedroom. Several girls were working feverishly to get me into some kind of shape to get me home. I must have been in shock because I don’t remember telling anyone what had happened to me. I don’t remember going home that night. I don’t remember what happened to my birthday clothes. I never talked about that night again, and no one ever mentioned it either. But my mind didn’t forget what happened to me. All I could do was wait for my next period. In a few weeks, it came, and that calmed me for a while. But I still wondered if I had a venereal disease. Later I found out that the boy that raped me had just gotten out of prison.

I found a doctor, and being eighteen, I was embarrassed to find out, but I knew this was something I would have to find out in order to give me peace of mind. I was blessed to know that the test was negative.

To add insult to injury, I was to graduate in the next two months. But one of my teachers kicked me out of his class two weeks before I was to graduate. And that particular class I had to have in order to graduate. It was all over me moving my seat without permission so that I could see a film that was being shown in the class and a pole was blocking my view of the screen. When I told him that I couldn’t see, he told me to go to the dean’s office. My mother was called to the school, and the teacher said that he wouldn’t accept me back into his classroom under no circumstances. Even though I had thirty-five credits over and above what I needed to graduate, that particular class was what I needed to graduate. So that meant that I was going to have to go to summer school and I couldn’t walk across the stage at my graduation. I went to summer school and changed my major because that class wasn’t offered in summer school, but I completed summer school and received my diploma in spite of that prejudiced teacher.

Over the summer, I spent it looking for my first job—unsuccessfully. School was very difficult for me and all that I had been through. I didn’t feel that I could concentrate for another two years in college, so I told my parents, Don’t bother sending me to college because I don’t want to go. What I didn’t know then was how hard it was going to be for me without a college education, no trade and being a young black woman in Los Angeles.

Wasn’t it enough that I was raped and humiliated in front of my friends? But no, I had to find another boyfriend right after the most horrific time in my life.

I was invited to a party, and I got the car and went. When I arrived, it was in full swing. There were several guys there I wanted to talk to. I slowly moved around the room accepting a dance now and then.

There was a young man standing across the room from me, and he was staring straight at me. He made it obvious. I saw that he started making his way toward me. I moved to my left like I didn’t notice and started mingling with the crowd I invaded, but it didn’t work. When I finally stopped and looked back, he was there right behind me. He was a little taller than I was and dressed in all black leather that I had never seen before. He looked like he could be French and Indian. His eyes were slightly slanted. He was the finest man I had ever seen in my life. He was too pretty to be a man. His skin looked as though he never shaved. It was as smooth as a baby’s behind. Now he had me cornered. He’s standing in front of me smiling. It was as though the rest of the room disappeared. He took my hand and led me to the dance floor. The way he grabbed my body, so gently, and pulled me to him, I could smell him, and I just melted in his arms. When the dance was over, he escorted me to the side and told me his name was Lloyd. I introduced myself, and after that we were inseparable. I wanted to leave the party because it was getting late. He didn’t drive. He never mentioned how he got there, so I felt obligated to seeing that he got home. I wasn’t used to driving a man around, but at least I wasn’t dumb enough to put a stranger under the wheel of my parent’s car. I drove him to his sister’s house, where he had a room. I just dropped him off after we exchanged phone numbers.

I wasn’t ready for another relationship. But I wanted someone to hold me. I was only human. I was still wanting a man at least, and the incident hadn’t turned me completely off men. A day hadn’t passed before my mother called me to the telephone. It was Lloyd! He asked what was I doing. I told him that I had picked a few jobs out of the classifieds and was planning on calling them to schedule a few interviews. I remember telling him that I was eighteen and I hadn’t ever worked before. Also, I wanted to get my first apartment, and I knew that my parents weren’t going to pay for it, and I was willing to do whatever I could to fulfill my goal.

I thought by confiding in him about my personal thoughts and goals, it would make me seem mature and not just a naive eighteen-year-old. I didn’t know at the time Lloyd was twenty-six years old. He was a man and way too old for me. I knew that I couldn’t tell my mother how old this man was. I was sidetracked from my plans of looking for a job. Instead I was on my way to pick up Lloyd. My parents’ ’64 Malibu was my car. Ever since I drove that car off the showroom floor, I felt it was really mine.

My mother stayed home doing hair on our back porch, which was turned into a salon. My dad took the bus to work every day. So I wasn’t bothered about the car.

Finally I reached Lloyd’s sister’s house. He was sitting on the porch waiting for me. When he spotted me, he headed toward the car. We left and went to several of his friends’ houses. I felt that he really wanted to show me off to his guy friends. He left me for hours while he played congas in a band that formed during the time we were there. I sat there listening to the music, which was jazz. It sounded pretty good. But Lloyd really wasn’t a part of it, just sitting in. While I was sitting there, he would disappear for a while. It didn’t appear that he had gone to a store, and he didn’t say where he had been.

He wanted to leave. The first thing he wanted to do was go to a liquor store. He would ask me for a few dollars, and I would give it to him. He would come out with a small bottle of gin. Since I wasn’t a drinker, he had it all for himself. I knew nothing about this man. He didn’t work. He lived with his sister and never seemed to want to exert himself. We never had a conversation about him wanting to aspire to be anything in life. I didn’t know if he knew how to read or write. Every time I looked at him, all I could see was his face. I kept thinking to myself, He’s too pretty to be a man.

He looked over at me and said, Would you like to go to a motel? The first thing I thought was we were going to have sex. This would be the first time I would be with a man since I was raped. I didn’t know what to say, so I said yes. I don’t know why I said yes. I was scared to death. Lloyd told me where to drive, and when we arrived, he got out of the car and told me to wait. When he returned, he took me inside this seedy hotel room. Not knowing what to do or expect, I just sat down on the bed. The way it looked, I knew I wasn’t going to climb between those sheets.

I excused myself and went into the bathroom. All the fixtures were old, but it appeared to be clean. When I opened the door, Lloyd was laying on the bed with his clothes off.

I had never seen a man naked before. It was a shock, but I tried not to show it. I slowly took off my shoes and then my pants. He took off my blouse and bra. There I was down to my panties. I just lay there looking up at this man. He bent down and kissed me on the lips. He was smooth and didn’t rush into having sex. When he removed my panties, I watched his face. He studied my body down to my toes. And that’s right where he started, at my feet. I’d never made love before, if you count being raped making love. When he grabbed my foot in his hands, he started kissing each toe and putting my toes in his mouth. He did both feet. I received a tongue massage. He started working his way up my legs with his tongue. When he reached my vagina, he opened my legs and started kissing me inside my thighs. He sucked and licked areas of my body I had never paid attention to in my eighteen years. Before that evening was over, I was completely bathed with his tongue. Not once did he penetrate my body with his penis. I believe he got off making me feel good. I lay there thinking, Was I just fucked?

In between looking for my first