New Beginnings
By
Brenda Barrett
Published by Jamaica Treasures at Smashwords:
Copyright 2011 by Brenda Barrett
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CHAPTER ONE
"My husband was a pig,” Pamela shouted to the startled lawyer. “He was a pig when he was alive, and he is a pig in death. He’s punishing me.” She sat in the swivel chair across from her lawyer and wept bitterly.
The lawyer had never seen the dignified and snobbish Mrs. Walters cry, and he was enjoying the sorry display of misery. He had wanted to be the one to deliver the bad news, and he fought hard for it. They had actually held a raffle to see who would get the privilege of telling the cold, unfeeling Mrs. Walters that her late husband had another child, a child whom he had left half his fortune to.
She stopped sobbing long enough to delicately blow her nose. Her mascara ran in long streaks along her heavily made-up face, and he found himself trying not to laugh at her appearance.
“Tell me about this…this…bastard child,” she raged. “Tell me why, in the twenty-five years that I was married to the man, I did not know about this child.”
“Well, Mrs. Walters,” the lawyer said, putting on his most serious expression, “her name is Geneva. She’s twenty years old.”
Pamela was shuffling her feet under the desk, a murderous expression on her face.
“Run that by me again.”
“Her name is Geneva…”
“No, her age. Are you telling me that Stanley not only cheated on me while we were married, but he has a child the same age as our child, Melody.”
“Yes, Mrs. Walters,” the lawyer responded and nodded.
She rested her head on the back of the chair. “Where does this girl live?”
“She lives in an inner-city community with her boyfriend, who is said to be the don of the area.”
“What?” Pamela widened her bloodshot eyes and stared at the lawyer in consternation. “Stanley was rotten rich. He had investments in Cayman and hotels scattered over the island. How can this girl be living in the ghetto?”
“He did not know about her until two years ago. When her mother was dying from cancer, she contacted him. He did all the necessary tests and found out that she was really his. That’s when he instructed us to change his will, leaving his estate to his two children, Geneva and Melody.”
“Oh, I get it,” Pamela said nastily. “He was playing downtown and it came back to haunt him. So why tell me about my husband’s little indiscretion? How will it affect me? The man had so much money that giving half of it to a cat would not affect my lifestyle.”
“There is a stipulation, Mrs. Walters.” The lawyer had been waiting for this moment.
“What stipulation?” Pamela answered, looking at him fiercely, as if he were the one who made the stipulation.
“Geneva and Melody should live together for a year to forge sisterly bonds since they are siblings. He had wanted to see this in his lifetime, but his illness did not allow for it.”
“Not over my dead body,” screeched Pamela. “Never! I will never allow my daughter, who is the epitome of class, to mix with a member of the underclass.”
The lawyer waited for her to stop ranting before he delivered the final blow. “If they do not live together for a year, their inheritance will go to his aunt Ida in St. Mary.”
“Mad Ida? Was he crazy? I will contest it. He must have been crazy.”
“There is a note here for you,” the lawyer said.
“Read it,” Pamela demanded, as she stood up.
“To my wife Pamela, I am neither crazy nor hallucinating, neither am I a member of the animal kingdom. I want to foster a relationship between my children. Please do not stick your nose in affairs that don’t concern you.”
Pamela sat down hard in her chair. “And who is going to monitor this mess?”
“The lawyers from our firm will file a report every month, which means we’ll drop by unannounced to see if your husband’s requests are being carried out.”
Pamela grabbed the phone and started punching numbers. “Melody, where the hell are you?” she shouted into the telephone receiver.
“Preparing for the beauty pageant, Mom, remember?” The clear cultured tones of Melody’s voice could be heard over the telephone.
“Come home now. It's urgent.” With that, Pamela slammed down the phone and stared at the lawyer, a bitter expression on her face. “When will this girl come here?”
“We thought tomorrow would be as good a time as any, since it's the beginning of the New Year and easier to monitor that way.”
Pamela nodded calmly, but the pencil in her hand snapped.
****
Melody breezed into her father’s study, her slim frame encased in designer jeans and an expensive sweater. “Mother this had better be good; I was in the middle of my Elegant Walking course. If you really want me to go back to university this semester, you had better explain…” Her voice tapered off as she saw her mother’s face: it showed great distress.
Could it be that her mother was grieving for her father’s death? That was an alarming thought, especially since her mother had been extremely happy at the funeral and had thrown an after-party for the relatives and friends of the right ilk who had attended.
“What’s wrong?” She sat in front of her mother, reluctant to go around and hug her. Her mother was never into affectionate hugs, and those she got from her father were often reproved in the coldest way, so much so that she had only hugged her father when her mother was not at home.
“You have a sister. She is from the ghetto. She is coming to live with you for a year. That’s it in a nutshell.”
Melody was stunned. She stared at her mother open-mouthed. Pamela was not generally a person who gave jokes, and her tear-streaked face made it clear she wasn’t jesting.
Pamela explained: “She will be sharing your inheritance. Don’t worry: we are still rich. It’s just that this girl will be rich now and will probably have a say in board meetings and matters requiring your authorization as joint heirs.”
Melody stumbled into the sitting room and sat staring at nothing. She didn't know what to get used to first: the fact that she had a sister, her deepest wish, or the fact that her mother thought that she was so self-centered and greedy that she felt the need to reassure her that she was still rich.
Melody sat in the overstuffed armchair in the elegant sitting room and cried once again for her father who was gone and for the gift of a sister, no matter where she was from.
CHAPTER TWO
“An SUV just entered the lane,” a young man reported dutifully to Froggie, the don of Black Lane and its environs in downtown Kingston.
“What color?” Froggie asked.
“Green,” the boy replied. “It’s a hotshot man asking for Geneva.”
Froggie stood up, his spine straight. “Oh, we are expecting him. Tell the men not to shoot him and don’t trouble the van when it park. All right?”
The young man nodded and ran to tell the sentries who were strategically placed throughout the lane that the van was given the okay by the don.
“Geneva!�
�� Froggie shouted to the young woman in the house. His heart was aching though he understood why she was leaving him. Despite her promises to come back often, he knew that the upper class people with whom she would be rubbing shoulders would change her.
He had first met her when her mother had died and she came to his club to look for work. He saw the well-scrubbed, innocent face, and right away he knew that she was the only girl in the world for him. He hadn’t cheated on her once in their two-year relationship, and everyone knew that he would rather lose his life than lose her. To find out that she was rich was like a rock in his belly—he preferred when she depended on him.
He had forbidden her to work after two months into their relationship and sent her to school to finish her CXCs. He wanted her to be educated enough so that if he was killed, she could get a good job and not have to hustle on the streets like many of the women in the community. That is why they had no children yet, but suddenly he wished that they did, so that she would not get up so easily and go to live in Cherry Gardens in upper St. Andrew.
“Froggie,” she said, standing on the steps of their two-bedroom house, a suitcase in her hand. She was achingly beautiful, her full lips pouting. “Ask me to stay, please.”
“No,” he said determinedly, “you need the money. When you get it, we can leave here and live somewhere else. No more violence and foolishness.”
The SUV pulled up at the corner and Froggie helped her with the suitcase. “I love you, Froggie,” she whispered as she climbed into the vehicle. He held on to her hands tightly and then reluctantly released them.
****
On her way uptown, Geneva looked through the window, depressed. The lawyer who picked her up introduced himself as Mr. Devon Davis. He kept glancing at her legs in the short mini skirt that she wore, and more than once she caught him looking down her blouse at her well-endowed chest. She was not in the mood for his attention—she was apprehensive about meeting her sister.
Ever since her mother had told her that Rat Face was not her real father, Geneva had been in a mild state of shock. Then she heard that Stanley Walters, the man she saw in the business news on television almost every other week, was her father. She almost passed out. And to hear that he left her some of his wealth on the condition that she got to know his other child was amazing and overwhelming.
At first she had refused to do the bidding of a man who would have nothing to do with her when he was alive, but Froggie convinced her to do as the lawyers said. The war between Black Lane and Fourteenth Street was escalating, and more than one of Froggie’s friends had died in the past three months, either by the hands of Fourteenth Street men or the police.
Her mother would have wanted her to spend the time to get to know her sister too. She had always drummed it into Geneva’s head that she deserved much better than what the ghetto had to offer.
Her mother had been somewhat of an enigma when she was growing up. She had had a drinking problem and had been dependent on Rat Face for everything. He rewarded her dependence with regular and sometimes horrific abuse. Geneva thought about the man she originally believed was her father and gave a sigh of relief at the new knowledge that he wasn’t.
Rat Face had died in a bar room brawl when she was thirteen. Her mother buried him and moved on to the ‘strong woman’ phase in her life where she tried to make up for the years of negligence towards her only child. Unfortunately, her years of drinking and smoking and beatings from Rat Face had caught up with her by then, and she died of liver cancer at the age of thirty-six.
Her mother had not spoken of her life before Geneva’s birth, and now Geneva wondered if there was more to the ravaged shell of a woman that had given birth to her. She had never spoken of her family or how she came to be living in downtown Kingston, and pregnant at age sixteen, but now Geneva would never know. Her newly-found father was dead, and the only thing she knew about him was that he was Stanley Walters, age 54 at the time of his death, and that they had matching DNA.
She could only surmise that Stanley might have been twice her mother’s age when they met and that they had an affair or he raped her. Maybe her mother’s family had rejected her after she became pregnant and went to live in the ghetto with Rat Face. Maybe her mother’s mother had been a helper in the Walters’ household, and when her daughter came to visit, she proved too tempting for Stanley—maybe she ran away, scared of the repercussions.
The scenarios kept spinning around in Geneva’s head. She had never been so intrigued about her origins before, but the one thing that was obvious was that Stanley Walters had known where to find her for a while and he never contacted her. That must have meant something; he was probably ashamed to tell her the story of how he got involved with her mother. She would have asked the lawyer but thought better of it. Surely Stanley Walters would not have confided what happened with her mother to his lawyer.
“You look way better than your pictures,” the lawyer said, breaking her out of her reverie.
“Thanks,” she said, jumping. She had been completely lost in thought.
“You can call me at anytime,” he said, leering at her as he turned into what looked like an exclusive part of upper St. Andrew. They entered a tree-lined avenue that revealed an imposing house with lush flowers growing in front of a well-manicured lawn.
Geneva hurriedly jumped out of the van and grabbed her small black bag. It wasn't heavy, and she didn't want to encourage the lawyer, who seemed as if he wanted to eat her for his New Year’s meal. The graveled walkway made crunching sounds under her feet as her high-heeled shoes sunk into the little pebbles.
“Do you need any help?” the lawyer asked behind her, “I could introduce you and make sure that you are all right.”
“No, thanks,” Geneva mumbled as she hobbled ungainly up the walkway. “I know their names, Pamela and Melody. Pamela is the widow and Melody is my sister.”
The lawyer watched her until she rang the doorbell.
CHAPTER THREE
“Um… Is you name Melody?” Geneva asked uncertainly. Her feet in the high heels were killing her and this girl at the door was staring at her as if she had seen a ghost.
“Yes, and you are Geneva,” Melody replied when she finally found her voice. Though Geneva had a fuller figure and wore a red wig, Melody thought the girl could pass as her twin sister. A smile spread over her face, and she grabbed Geneva and hugged her tightly.
Geneva was dazed. She had no idea that this would be the reception she would receive. She was expecting a torrid interrogation and barely concealed hostility. Instead, she was enveloped in warmth and an acceptance that was puzzling. She hugged the slimmer girl and laughed. It was a laugh of relief; she was happy that she would not have to spend a horrid year with strange, hostile people.
“Okay, Gen. Here is the plan,” Melody began, talking a mile a minute. “I’ll show you to your room, and we can talk. I'm so excited that I have a sister. I used to pester my parents for one until I got older and realized that they were not interested in the reproductive process.”
Geneva traipsed behind the bundle of energy that was Melody and stopped in her tracks. The hall was so big she could probably fit all of Brick Lane in it.
“Wow,” she exclaimed, whistling as she looked around. “This is huge. I could see myself living here. I love it.”
Melody smiled. “Good, because I am sure we will get on great, and I won’t want you to leave.”
Geneva was beginning to like Melody already; it’s as if the girl was starving for some familial affection. She wondered what Pamela was like. Probably she was a bitter, rich woman whose only joy was in her charity work, or maybe she was like Claire Huxtable on The Cosby Show. But, as usual, Geneva realized that she was getting ahead of herself.
She oohed and aahed all the way up to her room, which looked like something out of a storybook. The carpet was lush and cream, there was a big canopied bed in the center and expensive-looking furniture was scattered throughout the room. A walk-in close
t which was half the size of the room and an en suite bathroom, which was done in shades of yellow, completed the luxurious image before her. Even the taps were stylishly shaped and had streaks of gold. Never in her life had she seen such luxury. “When you are finished in there, come in here,” Melody said, heading to a sitting room adjacent to her bedroom. The room also had a baby duck yellow theme. It was airy and light and had white settees, plush pale yellow carpet, and a mahogany center table covered with the latest editions of women’s magazines.
Melody took up a remote control and pressed a button, revealing the television. She sat in one of the settees and handed the remote to Geneva. She pressed the button and the television disappeared behind the panel. “Magic,” she breathed.
Melody laughed. “You will get used to it in no time. I don’t know what sort of magazines you like so I just got a bundle of mine.”
Geneva nodded, overwhelmed, thinking, do people really live like this?
“I want to know everything about you,” Melody gushed. “When were you born?”
“August 6, 1983.”
“Independence Day,” Melody exclaimed. “I was born on June 1983, so I'm your big sister.”
“Not by much,” Geneva pleasantly replied.
“I have always wanted to be a big sister.” Melody looked wistful. “And here you are, fulfilling my greatest wish.”
She hugged a cushion close to her and said sadly, “I never knew about you, and I'm sure that if Daddy did, you would have grown up with me.”
“Tell me about him,” Geneva said eagerly. She wanted so much to get a feel of her heritage. Then maybe she could find someone who could tell her about her mother.
Melody jumped up and headed for the door. “I will be right back. I have pictures.”
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