by Luke Brown
“Okay, we’ll do that real soon, Sister Tia,” Mrs. Essie Brown concluded.
By this time, they were standing at the mouth of the subway. They continued trading stories with each other. When they heard the loud rumbling of an approaching underground train, they realized that they had been in the same spot for a long time, so they decided to bid each other good-bye until next time.
“Okay, Sister Tia. Travel safely and take care of yourself until we meet next week.”
“Okay, Sister Brown, here is my number. Jew can call me anytime if jew want to talk. I’ll be here.”
“Yes, that’s a good idea. Take mine also.” Mrs. Essie Brown and Ms. Julia Gomez, friends and church buddies, continued a rich, frequent communication from that day on.
Chapter 28
In addition to enjoying her induction into New York City, Mrs. Essie Brown also enjoyed traveling to different areas in the United States and Jamaica. She traveled frequently to Washington, DC, particularly on special occasions, to see her daughter Lela. Lela, now married and the mother of another child, Shana, had her own nursing-home business.
Mrs. Essie Brown didn’t play a major motherly role in Lela’s life, but Lela grew up in a wonderful family. She stayed with Miriam, Mrs. Essie Brown’s cousin, who lived in Mount Salem. Miriam and Mrs. Essie Brown were like sisters and kept an open communication with each other over the years.
Mrs. Essie Brown had promised herself that as soon as she could, she would request that Lela be returned to her. Or, if for any reason Miriam could no longer care for Lela, Essie wouldn’t hesitate to take her back home where she belonged. Mrs. Essie Brown always spoke of her eight children, as if Lela was living with her. She did that so she would keep her foremost in her mind and so that her kids would realize that they did have another sister. Lela might not have been living with them, but she was in every way a part of them.
The undeniable fact was that Miriam was able to provide, at almost all stages of Lela’s growth, a much better life than Mrs. Essie Brown had to offer. Therefore, there was no need to worry much about Lela’s wellbeing. She was clearly in good hands.
Lela had a great childhood growing up with Miriam’s two children, Donna and Mavis. They grew up close, like biological siblings or best friends. Nevertheless, whenever Lela felt like reaching out to her biological family unit, she knew she would always be welcome. From time to time, she dropped by her biological mother’s house to pay her a brief visit. Lela knew that she had the best of both worlds. More than that, she knew that she was fortunate to be living with the family that could better care for her.
Miriam lived in a more affluent neighborhood than Essie’s family, so Lela’s friends were of a higher social class than would be expected if she had been living with Essie. She went to Harrison Memorial High School, an affluent private high school. It was the same SDA school that her brother Leonard had attended.
Lela wanted to become a registered nurse for a private medical center or a local doctor’s office. She was steadfastly pursuing such a goal until she met a wealthy businessman who was a butcher and who owned a large, lucrative butcher shop in the center of downtown Montego Bay. She fell madly in love with him and eventually got pregnant and bore her first of two girls by him. Luckily, she was still able to graduate from high school, but she halted her nursing career plans to help run the butcher’s shop.
Lela was not completely satisfied with her life. The relationship was rocky because of this man’s constant infidelities. Moreover, he refused to commit solely to her in the form of marriage so that they could build a solid future together. Feeling insecure and doubtful about the direction of her life, she welcomed Gena’s offer to travel to the United States to have a brighter future.
Once she got to the United States, Lela tried many different jobs and different career moves, but nothing worked out well for her. She also tried a few short-term relationships, but none were substantial until she met Damian, a black American ex-Army officer. They dated for a while and eventually moved in with each other.
They later got married and had a lovely baby girl named Shana. They started a home-based nursing home business that could accommodate up to eight patients. Funny how life is. Lela, who always wanted to be a nurse, was now working like one for her own business. She and Damian bought a lovely house in Washington as soon as their business began turning over profits.
Her two oldest daughters, who were left behind in Jamaica, grew up to be successful young ladies. Their father emigrated to Pennsylvania and filed for them to come and join him. One became a registered nurse, and the other became a hotel manager.
Lela’s youngest daughter was also doing well. She was at the top of her high school class and proving herself to be a true scholar.
Lela’s life was wonderful and, some would say, successful. However, not everything was well.
At the time Essie became a US citizen and began filing for all of her kids, Lela was already married to Damian and had one child with him. It was naturally assumed that Damian, an American citizen, would do the right thing and file for his wife and baby’s mother to become a permanent legal resident. Therefore, Essie didn’t file for her.
But Damian had a unique philosophy. He felt that he had been used and badly hurt by a former lover, and he vowed to himself that he would not let that happen to him again. This time, he would stay in control of his relationship instead of letting the relationship control him. He genuinely loved Lela, but he believed that if he supplied her with everything she needed, except for permanent United States resident status, then he would be in full control of his relationship this time around.
If only Essie had known Demon’s philosophy—so sorry, the name is Damian, just a slip of the pen— she would have advised Lela to allow her to play this one vital motherly role in her life by filing for her along with the rest of her family.
As it stood, it seemed as if due to Demon’s philosophy—whoops! My Gosh! Another slip of the pen. Make that, Damian’s philosophy—Lela was stuck in paradise.
Mrs. Essie Brown also enjoyed traveling to Florida to visit her son Leonard, who was married to a pharmacist, Dolcina, and who was a pharmacist himself. Soon after they both successfully graduated from the pharmacy school at St. John’s University in Queens, New York, they got married and relocated to Florida to practice their profession and to start a life together.
Leonard had always wanted to have a significant impact on the world. He bragged that he was one of the most ingenious inventors the world had never met. About three or four years after he had graduated from St. John’s, he stumbled upon a simple but rather visionary idea at the time. One morning after brushing his teeth, he lazily thought of skipping the next step, which was to floss. It was such a cumbersome activity—forcing one or both hands into one’s mouth with a floss string. But as a pharmacist and a promoter of good, healthy living, he knew that it was a necessary means to a healthy, cavity-free mouth. Why is it so unpleasant to floss one’s teeth? he asked himself.
He knew that if he found it unpleasant, then half the world at least must be experiencing the same problem. Shouldn’t it be a more streamlined process? Shouldn’t there be a convenient tool for flossing, just like the toothbrush is a convenient tool for brushing?
Why, in 1993, were people still using their bare hands in their mouths for the purpose of flossing their teeth? No wonder there were so many kids and adults alike who were refusing to floss on a daily basis.
Leonard thought about a motivational book he had once read in New York about ten years before. The book made mention of the popular saying, “Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.” It dawned on him that he had stumbled upon one of the most overlooked frontiers: finding a way to floss without the caveman-style method of using one’s bare hands with a flossing string.
He was excited about his newly awakened idea. He knew that it would only be a matter of time before this oversight was realized by the rapidly growing health
-care product industries, and he knew he had to jump on it fast. He sat down to create a tool that he believed could make better use of the flossing string than was then currently on the market.
He quickly mapped out a disposable dental floss holder and made a call to Inventors of Florida, a company that advertised its services heavily on TV. He set up an appointment to see the consultant of new inventions, and then he told Dolcina. “Duls, I have an invention idea. Check it out.” Leonard showed his wife his first-grade-level drawing of a disposable dental floss holder. “What do you think?” he asked with pure excitement in his voice.
“Lord, Leonard, get rich quick so we can travel the world.”
“Yes, that will come afterward, but I want to know what you think about my idea.”
“Well, I’d use it, so I’d guess many other people would want to use it, also.”
“Are you saying you like it?”
“Sure, why not? It’s an excellent idea.”
“Well, is it good enough to pay more than three thousand dollars to get it started? I’ve already called the Inventors of Florida, and they explained to me about their fees and the general procedures. I have an appointment already set with them. I’m very serious about getting it done.”
“Lord, more spending again,” she said. “I hope you can make some good money out of it.” Then she thought of a dim possibility. “What if someone has already done it, and it’s already on the market?”
“Good question. We can ask the consultant when we get there on Monday.”
“What time is the appointment?”
“It’s at ten a.m.”
On Monday morning, both Leonard and Dolcina attended the appointed meeting with the Inventors of Florida. The consultant was excited. He thought it was a wonderful, ingenious idea.
Leonard asked his wife’s question. “What if someone has already invented it and it’s already on the market somewhere out there?”
“That’s an excellent question,” the consultant said, “and it has a simple answer.” He explained what he meant. “Before we even get started on anything, we first have to do a complete, thorough patent search. The patent search will confirm or deny if you are the inventor of this idea. We do an outstanding job here at the Inventors of Florida. When we say you’re the inventor or not the inventor, we back it up with proof.”
The excited couple readily made a down payment on the process and initiated all of the paperwork that was necessary. They had to wait a few weeks for the patent search to be completed. Luckily, the search brought good news. There was no existing patent for this product on the market at that time.
Leonard was very excited. He knew that it was the greatest overlooked opportunity of its time, and he was overjoyed to have been the one to realize it.
He knew that he was about to change the world into a better place, even if it was only in the small area of flossing. Imagine millions and millions of boys and girls using his disposable dental floss device in the United States and all over the world. He knew that he was born to be a great human being, and he had done it. He had cleverly discovered a better, more acceptable, and easier way to do dental flossing, and he was now going to allow the experts at the Inventors of Florida to show him how to bring his original idea to life.
Within a month, the Inventors of Florida got engineers to make an artistic and detailed official drawing of the prototype of the product. An application for patent-pending status was filed and obtained. It was suggested by the experts that a patent-pending status was the way to go instead of a patent. It was the expected thing to do if you needed the company to build and market your invention for you.
Inventors of Florida put together a neat introduction package that described the product and marketed it to twenty-five large companies. These included Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, and Pfizer, along with a few other popular companies. At least fifteen of the twenty-five companies returned a response of noninterest. The other ten held on to the idea and gave it serious attention for a few months. They kept up constant communication with Leonard, letting him know the progress of their board meetings and follow-up decisions. They also kept him abreast of the method of assessment of his product to see how it might benefit their company. One particularly interested company took his idea all the way to the top level of their evaluation system before they finally came to a sudden denial decision.
It was heartbreaking for Leonard to learn that none of the twenty-five companies had chosen to accept his imaginative idea. Most of the companies concluded that it wasn’t worth their time and effort because they were involved in bigger and better things at the time.
Leonard decided that his shot at greatness was not in the invention department, so he decided to sign up at Nova Southeastern University to do a postgraduate PharmD program. A PharmD is a doctor of pharmacy degree. By doing this, he felt that he had a better chance of significantly impacting the world with his enhanced medical skills and knowledge.
Exactly one year later, Leonard walked into a Walgreens pharmacy and was shocked to see the very same product he had invented, with a little improvement, on the store shelf. How ironic was that? When he had marketed his idea to some of the largest companies in the United States, no one thought it was worth their time. Yet, one year later, a product that was not in existence was now a new item all over the country. Someone must have stolen his original idea—giving him no credit, not to mention a reward—for his great vision.
Burning with fury, Leonard took his case to a patent lawyer, who agreed that it was too much of a coincidence not to consider that his idea had been stolen. The lawyer advised that it would take lots of time and money to fight the case in a regular lawsuit. He suggested that Leonard fight his case for much less expense by taking each company that was now producing and marketing the product to small-claims court.
Dr. Leonard, for whatever reason, didn’t follow through on the fight to restore credit for his ingenious, well-timed, and inventive idea. After that, whenever he saw a dental floss holder, it still infuriated him. It hurt him to know that he was the bona fide inventor of that idea but he hadn’t gotten his due credit.
Still, his mother was correct when she said that her son was going to grow up to be a great man someday. Dr. Leonard did impact the world in a big way; the only problem was that the world hadn’t recognized him for his great idea. At least he had impacted the world by improving on a basic hygienic habit.
Immediately after the completion of his doctor of pharmacy degree, Dr. Leonard went on to publish a few medical articles in a popular, internationally distributed pharmacy news magazine. He wanted to reach a wide range of people with his newly acquired health-care knowledge. This activity still couldn’t heal his pain and disappointment. He had wanted to make his mother proud, and he knew that his invention of the disposable dental floss device would have been just the thing to do it.
However, Mrs. Essie Brown was quite proud of her son and was very happy every time she visited him and his wife in Florida.
Mrs. Essie Brown enjoyed visiting her oldest son, Junior, in Los Angeles. He was married, not to Pauline, but to Patricia. Junior worked at a Kodak firm fixing Kodak machines and was doing well for himself. He had also started going to church regularly. He had dropped the Rastafarian mentality and now truly believed in Christ.
Mrs. Essie Brown enjoyed traveling back and forth to Jamaica to visit her daughter Betty. Betty had been living with her in New York, but she decided that she wanted to return to Jamaica to attend to her beauty parlor business.
When Mrs. Essie Brown was in Jamaica, she also visited her son Bunny, who was married to Joyce and had three children: Fern, Neil, and a sweet little girl named Zena. They also had an adopted daughter named Brenda. Bunny was content to stay in Jamaica and refused to emigrate with the family to the United States because his leather business was doing very well. He and his wife traveled to the United States every now and then. He had obtained his permanent resident card, as had his two
sons, Neil and Fern, just like the rest of Essie’s family.
He later became a local politician and a respectable notary of the public of Jamaica.
When in Jamaica, Mrs. Essie Brown also visited her son Karl, who was a popular manager in the food and beverage department at the Holiday Inn Beach Resort in Montego Bay. He was still married to Marva, and they had two wonderful girls, Samantha and Sue Helen. Unfortunately, Karl had never forgiven his mother for leaving him with his dad, Tim, in the country while the rest of the family flourished in a modern city like Montego Bay.
He hated Mrs. Essie Brown for all of her shortcomings as a single mother, and he was vocal about it. Mrs. Essie Brown loved him anyway and tried many times to ask for his forgiveness, but Karl couldn’t find it in his heart to forgive her.
Karl was an honest and upright Christian in the Glenworth SDA Church, and it was because of his honesty and truthfulness that he couldn’t hide his feelings. He loved God. He loved his kids. He loved his father. He loved all mankind. But he hated Mrs. Essie Brown.
He hated his mother like a rat hated a dose of poison. It hurt him deeply every time he thought about the life he’d had as a boy growing up in the country. No one ever knew his full story because he never said much about why he so strongly despised his early days. They just assumed that a country life spoke for itself.
Karl didn’t attend his parents’ wedding, and he turned down Mrs. Essie Brown’s offer to file for him to emigrate to the United States with all of his siblings. She sent him the immigration form anyway, but he tore it to pieces. He refused to take anything from his mother and often called her a “dirty whore.” However, he obtained for himself a ten-year US visitor visa so he could travel whenever he wished. For the time being, he wanted to stay in Jamaica and take care of his family. After all, he had a great job at a large, popular hotel. Nevertheless, many years later Karl traveled on his own to Florida and then to New York to live temporarily.
