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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781449076733 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 04/06/2010 |
| Pages: | 328 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.73(d) |
Read an Excerpt
Forever My Soul Complete
By Jerry Hinson
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2010 Jerry HinsonAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4490-7673-3
Chapter One
THE EARLY YEARS
Amy Ann Michelle Bland was born June 3, 1931 in Aylesbury, England, a small town about fifteen miles northwest of London. Her mother, Estelle, was a housewife, and her father, Conner, worked at the linen mills in London. They lived in a lower middle-class home on the outskirts of the village that had a population of about eighteen hundred. Her mother was in poor health most of her life. Because of this, and the strenuous pregnancy she had with Amy, Amy was destined to be an only child. Also, because of her mother's health, Amy had been forced into the position of housekeeper, cook and caretaker almost from the time she was old enough to walk. Her father was an unloving and authoritarian man who had little time for the raising of a daughter. Conner had known while his wife was pregnant she would never be able to have another child, and he desperately longed for a son. Because of this - although it was something Amy could not help - a feeling of resentment dwelt inside her father, keeping him from showing the proper feelings for his daughter. Amy, even as a little girl, felt this resentment, and her heart ached because of it. The whole of her childhood was to please her daddy and draw from him a love she would never see. For some aloof and unpardonable reason, Conner Bland seemed to take out the frustrations of his unaccomplished life on his daughter. But still, she always did the best she could to make her father proud, to make him happy, and to relieve the agony of his sullen life in the hopes that one day he would smile in acceptance of her and show her the love she'd always been denied.
Amy's day started at 5:00 AM. She rose, fixed her father breakfast, and made his lunch that she placed in a brown paper bag by the door. Then she began the laundry before getting herself ready for school.
Because of her health, Amy's mother usually spent most of the day in bed. When she did rise, it was usually after Amy had left for school.
In the evenings, after Amy got home, she started her father's supper, cleaned the house and then finished the laundry. And then she would wait for the, "Thank you, Amy", she never heard. Usually it would be: "The damned laundry is piling up again", or "Try fixing supper so it won't be cold when I get here" or "I'm not telling you again about this dirty floor".
Nevertheless, Amy understood. Her father lived a superficial life with only a day's work ahead to look forward to. He worked a machine called a Lapp in the factory. He watched over twelve of these machines at a time, sometimes twelve or fourteen hours a day. They spun yarn onto spools that were then sent to a different section of the factory to be woven into cheap linen, some was used for mops. She could remember going to the factory and watching as he moved back and forth between the machines, cleaning the spools as they spun, placing his hands dangerously close to the gears and pulleys.
His movements were subconscious in motion and meticulous in action, as a spider spinning a web, back and forth, concerned only with the job that had to be finished.
This was why she never complained. She could see the torment of her father's life in his eyes.
The only break the family received from this monotonous existence was the weekly church services. They were devout Catholics. Amy and her father always attended Sunday and Wednesday services. Her mother attended when her health permitted.
This routine of life went on until Amy was eight years old. Then the war started. She could remember the bombings, day after day, but throughout the raids her father kept working to make them a living. He was lucky. His plant was one of the few not hit early on by the German Blitzkrieg that began in 1939. Because Aylesbury was a small town outside of the main target of London, it sustained less bombing. Still there were days during this period when there was little to eat. Sometimes all they had were rations handed out by the troops. There were long periods with no electricity or heat. But somehow, they made it through. These times were dire but three years later, when she was eleven years old, things worsened. Her mother's fragile health began to deteriorate. In 1942, while her mother lay sick in bed, close to death, she called for Amy. She entered the room with the sound of the war raging distantly in the background. In the midst of this consternation, she smiled softly for her mother. Slowly her mother began to speak. "I'm sorry I couldn't have been a better mother ... the one I know I should of been." Her emotions choked her words. She removed a silver necklace from around her neck and handed it to Amy.
"It's Saint Jude, the patron saint of lost causes. My mother gave it to me when I was young, like you ... now it's yours. I know I haven't been able to give you very much in life, but maybe this will bring you luck ... some, that I hope, I'll be a little part of. Maybe, one day when you have a little boy or girl, you can tell them it was their grandmother's."
She finished with a somnolent smile. Amy lifted the necklace over her head, and then around her neck; she reached out and held her mother's hand in appreciation for all she knew her mother had intended to give her in life, if only fate would have allowed.
Two days later, her mother peacefully passed from this world. The memory of that night would be scorched in her mind. Late in the evening the doctor came from her mother's bedroom and told them she had passed away. As the doctor spoke the words, her father stood silent, then dropped his head and slowly turned to Amy and began to cry, she remembered that as being the only time he ever held her.
His anguish was as unrelenting as was hers. At her father's request the doctor said he would call the undertaker the next morning. Then after he left, her father entered her mother's bedroom. The image of her father crying like a child for hours on his knees at her mother's deathbed, holding her hand, pleading for her to come back to him, would be an image Amy would carry with her throughout her life. No matter what her father did, or whatever else anyone thought of him, she would always respect him, solely because of the love he showed for her mother, and pain he suffered that night.
But beyond that, one of the most appalling memory of that time in her life was the next day, when the undertaker came to prepare her mother's body for burial. He was a tall, thin, saturnine man in a dark suit with expressionless, deep-set eyes ... a person that looked the part for his morbid job. He went about his work and asked questions as if intending to perform some everyday, menial task he had little time for.
"Where's the body? How long has she been deceased?" he asked with an apathetic attitude.
Amy's father ... his face red from crying, with tears and lost of sleep still in his eyes, pointed to the adjacent bedroom, and said in a voice lost in distress and emotion, "In there ... since sometime early last night."
She would never forget the sound she heard from that room as he dutifully went about his work - the empty resonance made by the blood from her mother's body draining into a tub as he prepared her body for embalming.
That day was the start of a dreadful succession of years. Only her depth of character and strong will would see her through.
After her mother's death her father's mental state seemed to worsen. She watched, day after day, until he reached a point where she was barely able to communicate with him at all. His demands got harsher until she prayed for some escape.
Overtime, the ever worsening part of her situation was not having a mother to talk with. Amy was growing into a beautiful young woman. Her father hardly ever spoke to her about anything, and surely not about the changes a girl goes through at that age. These were things totally unbeknownst to her. Because of her families' social status, she had low selfesteem and struggled with a feeling of inferiority. Because of this, she was shy and did not make many friends in school, but she had heard the other girls speak in their circles about the changes a girl's body goes through, but still she did not know enough about these things to be prepared as those years approached.
Amy had her first period at school one day just after she turned twelve. When she was in the restroom one of the older girls pulled her aside and told her she had blood on the back of her dress. It was after lunch and it distressed her to think of how long she had walked around that day with the blood on her. She was sent home to change. Her house was about four blocks away. She tied her coat around her waist and walked home. When she returned to school a teacher, Ms. Fitzgerald, pulled her aside and privately began to explained, in a motherly way, the things a "daughter" would need to know. Ms. Fitzgerald was a kindly, elderly lady and she tried to explain to Amy the best she could, without talking "down" to her.
"Now Amy, I know what happened today was embarrassing, but please don't be upset over it, Dear, a lot of girls go through the same thing at your age. I've been teaching for almost thirty five years and I could tell you stories you wouldn't believe. You're growing into a young woman," she said, trying to produce a smile to make Amy feel better.
Amy didn't say anything as she sat silently and listened to Ms. Fitzgerald, ashamed of being so ignorant about the things she spoke of.
After a moment Ms. Fitzgerald spoke again, "Amy, there's one other thing I need to talk to you about," she said with as a gentle a voice as possible, "You're beginning to develop. Amy, you'll need to wear a brassiere when you come to school."
"I don't have one and I couldn't ask my father," Amy answered in a lowered voice with her head down, "My mother died last year. He sold, or gave away, everything she had."
"But Amy, my dear, these are things any father should understand a girl of your age would need," Ms. Fitzgerald said with concern in her voice.
"You don't understand how it is between my father and me - no one could ever understand. That's just the way he is," Amy responded with a slight shake of her head.
Ms. Fitzgerald paused. She was touched by the sincerity in the young girl's voice. Not wanting to push the subject any farther she finally said, "What do you say we go and buy you one?" Amy looked up as Ms. Fitzgerald continued, "School will be over in another hour, Miss Moore can watch my class, and I'll go to the office and tell Mr. Anderson we're leaving early."
Ms. Fitzgerald placed her arm around Amy and hugged her, garnering the smile she received.
After 1943 the attacks on England slowed and the bombings were less frequent. Slowly life started to return to normal. The Germans were weakened by the onslaught of the American, British and Russia armies. As we all know, in 1945 the war finally ended.
Amy was now a young woman of fourteen.
Her father's factory was destroyed in in late 1943, but before the war ended he managed to get another job in Reading - about a twenty-five minute drive - working for a man that was replacing the telephone lines that had been destroyed in the war. The pay was actually a little better than the factory job, but the work was harder. They had to replace the poles that were bombed by the German Luftwaffe. Her father would sometimes come home, eat supper, and go to bed without as much as a single word. And during this period he struck her for the first time. A jar of preserves fell out of the cupboard and broke as she tried to remove a cup. He quickly rose from the table and slapped her. "Damn you, girl clean it up!" he said with an angry voice, "If you had to pay for that you'd be more careful."
The years after her mother died Amy watched as her father began to withdraw into a state of mind where religion was his only comfort. They attended services more regularly and his demands for perfection from Amy increased. It seemed the peace that religion offered was all he sought, although he practiced little of it at home. Sometimes Amy looked at the other families in church and often prayed her family could be like theirs.
Her father began to ask her question she thought where strange for a father to ask a daughter, questions concerning her desires toward boys and if she was planning to stay pure until marriage. His questions made her feel uncomfortable, almost dirty, because she was maturing into a young woman and she did, sometimes, have thoughts of boys. Her father's concern for what she thought were private matters also made her guilty - for when he asked these question she was forced to lie.
Chapter Two
CEDE OF INNOCENCE-
Amy was almost fifteen when she kissed her first boy. He was a young man of eighteen who worked in a market a block-and-a-half from her home. His name was Michael Lafont. His family had moved to England from France while he was still a baby. He was tall, intelligent and had thick, light colored hair; his deep blue eyes were like none she had ever seen before - eyes she could not get out of her mind, or dreams. She would often make excuses to go to the store in the hopes Michael would notice her. And notice her he did. One day while she was checking out he smiled graciously and asked her name. In a ladylike "uninterested" manner, she finally allowed him the special honor of knowing who she was - while bursting wide open inside to write her name across the sky for him. From that day forward Amy was in a state of nirvana, flying high above the clouds and all the world, and she believed her feet would never, never touch the ground again. More and more he noticed her, and more and more she loved it, until their mutual attraction could no longer be denied. From that start - it grew to a friendship, and from there - love.
Amy could remember the first time Michael touched her hand, the first time she felt his breath on her cheek. The memory of their first kiss would strengthen her throughout her life whenever times where bad. Michael took off early one day so he could walk Amy home. As they walked he asked, "Do you think your father would care if we went out together ... maybe this Friday?"
There was a long pause before Amy replied, "I'm sorry, but I know he wouldn't let me go." Michael didn't respond. Again she paused, and then said, "He's my father and I love him, but he has strange ways."
A block from her house Amy stopped and looked up at Michael. "I'm sorry, but I probably need to go on from here alone, please try to understand, maybe one day things will be different."
Michael turned to Amy, "It doesn't matter, your problems are my problems. I'll always be here." He kissed her, turned and walked back to the store.
As Amy walked home she prayed her father wouldn't drive a wedge between Michael and her. She wanted to introduce Michael to her father, but she knew her father would never accept the fact she had an affection for someone.
Michael never asked Amy about her father again ... just satisfied with the time they had together. They continued to steal away at every opportunity.
Amy was in love, for the first time in her life, and although only just turned fifteen, she was in love. Their happiness together didn't require a lot. They could sit and talk, or laugh, or plan their future together without the need or want of anything else.
Michael was the first great thing that happened to Amy. Just to watch him move or hear him speak transformed her drab life into Heaven. There was a force about him she could not explain, an energy she received just from his presence. She could never envision her life without him nor did she want to. And she was sure his love for her was just as absolute.
After seeing Michael in secret for a few months his youthful passions coerced him into asking her if they could make love. In her heart, she wasn't sure how long she could reject his longing for something she desired as much as he. Only her promise to her father and her belief in chastity until marriage made her strong enough to deny him. He respected her as much as he loved her and promised he would never bring it up again. Instead, he would wait until she was sure the time was right.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Forever My Soul Complete by Jerry Hinson Copyright © 2010 by Jerry Hinson . Excerpted by permission.
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