Close Relatives and Others - Sir Leonard (read novels website .txt) 📗

date within 5 days. You see, if she had been with anybody else before Oct. 22, 1979, you would’ve been born earlier and with another man after Oct, 22, 1979, you would’ve been born later. She, intentionally, had Cindy believing a lie! The following are other lies she told:
1. Lied about Pamela having had an abortion.

2. Told Cindy that Albert was her daddy, when the truth was that your aunt Dorothy Jean was Cindy’s mother and no one has a clue as to who her daddy really is.

3. Most of all, the most evil and cruelest thing that your mother did to you and me, so Cindy’s feeling wouldn’t be hurt, was to keep you from graduating from High school by waiting until you had missed a year of school before she told me, so that I wouldn’t have the time to get you back in school so you could graduate. Not only was this cruel and abusive to you, as your mother, but it was criminal; and she should’ve been thrown in jail for 20 years!

4. Her main reason for filing for divorce was to get me out of the house so Cindy could start seeing little boys at age 13 years old. Later, after Cindy had a baby by that jail-bird boyfriend of hers; one day, while taking her to the store, I asked her why did she mess around with that no-good boy. She said, “I didn’t know he was like that!” .I said to her, “Yes, I know. That was your mamma’s fault because she should not have let you receive company at the age of 13. You was just a child, she should not have let it happened!”

5. I’m quite sure, it was Josephine idea to throw out there that Reid wasn’t really Antonio’s father. Heard this before? Another way she’s trying to make Cindy feel good even though Cindy full well knows that Reid is the father. Josephine doesn't want people to know that Reid jilted Cindy because he didn’t want to be with her. I, personally, know that Reid is his father because Reid and I were once good friends and observed how crazy Cindy was about him. Besides, Cindy didn't know how to cheat. I recall when Cindy was nine months pregnant with Antonio how Reid beat her and kicked her down the stairs. Antonio’s lucky to be alive. Cindy stayed down here with us for two weeks while going to court against Reid. After going to court a few times, I overheard Cindy tell your momma, “But I still love him!” She didn’t go to court anymore!

This thing about putting babies on other men, Josephine inherited it from her momma. I heard that Josephine’s momma use to be an alcoholic and staid in bars and taverns as men took advantage of her when she was drunk. She was sleeping with lots of strange men. She was very easily to get pregnant, and that’s the reason she came up having nine kids and didn’t know who their daddies were. What did she do? She put the babies on the man she was with. For instance, she put Josephine, Jason, and Herman on Wilma on the man she was staying with. Now you know that black as Jason was, he looked nothing like Wilma; neither do Josephine no Herman. Please don’t teach Antonio that Reid is not his daddy; best thing for you to do is just leave it alone!

Other Important Things you should know About

God’s Intervention

That day I went to Zayres on Cascade Road looking for a baby crib for you. It so happened that I wounded up talking to the manager. She told me that she was getting ready to move back up North and I could get her baby crib for little of nothing. We agreed to meet at a restaurant and have dinner afterward we go to her house. She, her friend, Josephine, you and I went over to her house. After we all relaxed, this lady said to Josephine, “Child God has given you a blessing and you’re trying to throw it away! Your Mamma! You may get mad, but your Mamma! Something wants me to tell you—this isn’t slanted at your husband it’s slanted at you! Keep your Momma out of your business! Stop telling your Mamma all of your and your business. All she want is that dollar bill. God has given you a good husband and a miracle baby. Tell your mother to stay out of your business. Tell her you want her and your husband in your life; but if she’s not willing to go along with that, then, you’re going on with your husband without you.,” At this time, I interrupted her and said, “Listen, my wife thinks that I’ve told you all this about her mother.” Josephine interrupted, and remarked, “No! I can feel it. I know you didn’t!” After Josephine got home, she picked up the phone and called her mother. I heard her tell her mother verbatim what that lady told her to tell her.

The next time Mildred came over to the house, she told your mother that from then on for to not call her and talk about her business any more. She started coming over to the house playing cards with us pretty regular. But what I didn’t know was, that she was scheming behind my back searching for this jail bird guy called, ”Dunke.” Your evil grandmother got In touch with this man mother and told her to tell this man that Josephine said for him to meet her at Mildred’s house. This lowdown grandmother's of yours knew how strong Josephine felt about this and if she could get them together, this and how badly Cindy wanted me out of the house so she could have boys coming by the house to see her, would surely break us up. Afterward, Josephine would leave me at home all by myself every weekend. She would take Cindy with her. After filing for divorce, later she told me that she really didn’t want a divorce. I talked her into dropping it. The day we were to go down town to my lawyer’s office to drop the divorce, that’s when Cindy frown and gave Josephine an unhappy look, Josephine asked her, “What’s wrong with you, girl?” Seeing that Cindy was unhappy, Josephine changed her mind and didn’t go—again, stupidly caving in to Cindy’s wish!

Court, Temporarily, Places Pamela with Us

At the time Pamela was 6 years old and Cindy was 12 years old. We enrolled Pamela as Pamela Pettway in M. Agnes Jones Elementary school on Fair Street where Cindy attended. I just knew that everything was going to work out just fine, since Josephine and I were serving the need of both of our kids, Josephine as a mother for Cindy and Pamela and I as a father for Cindy and Pamela. At that time, it seemed like such a fabulous, mutual ideal situation, one would think. Pamela and Cindy occupied the twin-bed bedroom, called “Cindy’s room.” At that time, I taught Pamela how to make her bed and how to neatly keep her shoes placed under the side of her bed and when taking off her jacket she was to hang it up instead of throwing it on the floor (something that Josephine had been allowing Cindy to do). Coming home from school, she and Cindy were to do their homework before going outside to play.

Oh, by the way, before Pamela came to live with us, Ethel Lou had spoiled her rotten! She wouldn’t do or listen to anything I said; and when I attempted to punish her she would run to Josephine. Josephine and I saw how out of control Pamela was and something had to be done immediately. We decided that all punishment would be dished out by me and as punishment I was to use a ruler to strike the palm of their hand “X” number of times. The next time Pamela became disobedient, and I tried to punish her, she again ran to Josephine for comfort. Josephine said to her, “Don’t come to me! Be brave and go take your punishment for what you did!” I grab Pamela’s and began to strike it 5 times with the ruler. A I struck her hand, Pamela would scream, “I’m going to listen, daddy, I’m going to listen…” Guess what? I never had to punish Pamela ever again. From then on, everything I asked Pamela to do she did it willingly.

One evening, on a lovely, nice fall day, Pamela and Cindy had come in from school, we had just finished eating dinner and just sitting around the dinner table relaxing, and the subject of homework came up. Cindy took her homework out of her book bag and showed it to us, while Pamela sit there writing something on a sheet of paper. I ask Pamela to show us her homework; she gave us the sheet of paper that she was writing on. I said, “No; the homework that you copied of the black board that the teacher put on it”. She said, “That is it!” She had written on the sheet of paper, “It is a bright pretty sunny day and the plants and tree leaves are all changing colors.” And she had only misspelled one word and the word was, “pretty,” with one “t” instead of two “it's.” I asked her, “How do you know that this is it?” She said, “I listen to her when the teacher was putting it on the board. I listen, daddy, and I remembered! Josephine said, “No. Let me look in that book bag.” Josephine took Pamela’s book bag and dumped everything out of it and searched the contents and said, “It’s not in here,” and went on to say, “If this is true, this girl is genius!” Cindy dropped her head, and when Josephine looked up at her she saw the sad look on Cindy’s face; for she knew what she had just said had deeply hurt Cindy’s feeling.

Thereafter, knowing how she had hurt Cindy’s feeling by calling Pamela a “genius,” Josephine turned against Pamela, and knew that somehow she had to figure out a way to get Pamela out of the house from around Cindy.

One day I was helping Cindy get her homework and Josephine didn’t like the tactic that I was using. We got into an argument and I told her that from then on I would see to it that Pamela gets her homework and that she deal with Cindy. And, when Pamela finishes her homework she could go on out to play without Cindy. One day Pamela had finished her homework and was outside playing. Josephine called Cindy in her room and said for her to bring in her homework. During that year, a bog hit song had come out call, “The Skate.” (Everybody was doing the “Skate” dance.) While Josephine was lying in bed doing Cindy’s homework, Cindy was standing at the foot of the bed doing the “Skate.” Lester, this was so funny until I ended up laughing out loud, “Ha! Ha! Ha!” Josephine